Worst Case

by James Patterson

  “Turns out the suspect didn’t dump the body into the fridge, John,” I said. “This guy actually dumped the fridge with the body already in it.”

  “No shit?” Cleary said, removing his cell phone from where it was clipped to the collar of his Tyvek suit. “In that case, instead of dislodging the body here,” he said, “we’ll put the whole fridge onto a flatbed and do it at the lab.”

  Back in my unmarked car, I called Detective Ramirez, still at the Skinners’ house, and broke the bad news. He let out a deep breath.

  “That sucks,” Ramirez said. “This poor woman. She doesn’t deserve this. I’ll let her know, Mike. I’d rather shoot myself in the kneecap, but I’ll tell her.”

  Not wanting to hear the grieving that would soon follow, I hung up quickly.

  “So, what do you think?” Parker said, getting back into the car.

  “I think we should eat,” I said. “I know the perfect place. It’ll almost make you forget the past couple of hours.”

  Ten minutes later, we walked through the door of Sylvia’s restaurant on Lenox Avenue a few blocks away.

  “You’re in luck,” I said to Emily, pointing to the menu after we sat down in the cozy, incredible-smelling place. “Not only do they have grits, they have collard greens, too.”

  “Collard greens? Well, lordy me,” Emily drawled, wafting an imaginary fan at herself. “I’ll never be hungry again, though I definitely wouldn’t have pegged you as a soul food aficionado, Mike.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Parker. I can put away a six-pack and potato with the best of me Irish brethren. It was my wife who introduced me to it. She was the foodie. Every Saturday, she’d con Seamus into watching the gang, and she’d take me to new places. We used to come to the jazz brunch they throw here on Saturday afternoons.”

  Over a couple of racks of Sylvia’s fall-off-the-bone ribs, we went over the case.

  “I think things are looking up a little,” Emily said between bites. “The witness was horrible, but by allowing there to be one, at least it means our guy is human, capable of making mistakes. I wasn’t sure there for a little while. But bringing the body in a fridge and then dumping the fridge? That’s… bizarre, wouldn’t you say? He’s going to an awful lot of trouble.”

  “Yeah,” I said, wiping my mouth with a napkin. “It’s not just a job for this freak. It’s an adventure.”

  “I keep asking myself why he’s doing it,” Emily continued. “Why bother pretending it’s a kidnapping at all? He hasn’t asked for any ransom. I mean, why even contact the families if you’re just going to kill the vics?”

  “Attention,” I said. “Has to be. He’s making this as dramatic as he can. Why do most of these psychopaths do this? They’re inadequate in some fundamental way, yet have this grandiose ego. Look at Oswald. The Columbine fools. They can’t be famous in a regular way, so they get attention by killing.”

  “But,” Emily said, raising a barbecue-sauce-coated finger across the table, “you’ve spoken to this guy, Mike. He seems educated and very articulate. He doesn’t strike me as inadequate.”

  I shrugged.

  “Then he must be deformed or something, because no way is that staging and Q-and-A stuff a setup. Our cultured friend is getting his rocks off.”

  “You have a point there,” Emily said.

  I was shocked when the waitress came back around and Emily ordered a Jack Daniel’s.

  “What happened to the full-sugar Coke? You hear that rumbling sound? That’s the sound of J. Edgar rolling over in his grave.”

  “What can I say, Mike? You’ve completely corrupted me,” Emily said with a wink. “They warned me about you New York cops. Stupid me. I should have listened.”

  When the check came, I tucked my credit card over the bill.

  “Hold on. What are you doing?” Emily said, going into her purse. “We’re splitting this. You’re acting like this is a date.”

  “Am I?” I said, staring into her eyes as I handed the bill to the waitress.

  She stared back for a couple of long, very pleasant moments. She blushed. No, actually that was me.

  What the hell I was doing, I didn’t know. My wife had been dead two years, and usually I felt unsettled when it came to new lady friends. Special Agent Emily Parker was different, I guess.

  Or maybe I was just going crazy. That was probably it.

  Chapter 33

  IT WAS ALMOST nine p.m. when the end-of-day task force meeting ended, and an exhausted Emily Parker arrived back at her hotel. Six minutes after that, the top of her head hit the surface of the hotel’s indoor lap pool with a satisfying smack.

  There was nothing like that first, magical moment for her. Like she did in every new pool she was in, she plunged down into the cold serenity of the water until her hand passed across the pool’s gritty bottom.

  She sat Indian-style and closed her eyes. There were no worries down here. No aggravated bosses. No stresses. Certainly no dead children.

  When she was growing up, her family had a pool in Virginia, and she’d spent practically every moment of every summer, from the time she was six until she turned ten, at the bottom of it pretending she was a mermaid. She’d close her eyes and put out her hand, waiting for it to be enveloped by her beloved mer-prince, who’d take her away to her lost kingdom.

  When her lungs began to burn almost a minute later, Emily remembered that Chelsea Skinner had been a lifeguard.

  She broke the surface and started her workout. Usually laps were enough to clear her head, but even after five, she couldn’t help thinking about the case. Swimming the English Channel probably wouldn’t have been enough to get her mind off this one.

  The PD’s lab had still been working on the body by the time the task force meeting wrapped up. Mike had told her they’d had to cut off the top of the freezer with a Sawzall in order to get Chelsea out.

  There was something so disturbing about this killer. Most serials went out of their way to avoid attention, Emily knew. This one seemed to relish it. It was as if he wanted to rub their noses in what he was doing.

  What had he said? “Tell Mom I said hi.” Even for a sociopath predator, the callousness and arrogance of it was mind-blowing. This guy wasn’t just confident, he was cocky. With the exception of letting the one drug dealer spot him, he hadn’t made a single mistake.

  Twenty laps later, Emily Parker carded back into her room and called home.

  “How is she?” she asked her brother, Tom.

  “You’re going to love this, Em. Today, one of Olivia’s knucklehead boy classmates overheard the teacher call her Olivia Jacqueline and then proceeded to call her OJ Parker for the rest of the morning.”

  “That little bum,” Emily said.

  “No, wait,” her brother said, laughing. “The kid’s name is Brian Kevin Sullivan, so the Olive dubbed him BK Sullivan. Now everybody calls him Burger King Sullivan. How do you like that? I think Burger King is going to think twice next time he wants to mess with the Olive.”

  Emily couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “Where is she now?”

  “She’s in bed. Her My Twinn doll came for a sleepover tonight, so quarters are a little tight. She wanted to remind you that the American Girl store is on Fifth Avenue. And to make sure you say hi to Eloise at the Plaza Hotel.”

  “Done,” Emily said, feeling a lightness in her heart that was sorely needed. “You’re the best uncle who ever lived, Tom.”

  “Don’t forget the best brother,” he said. “Stay safe.”

  As she hung up, she noticed that someone had left a message. Listening, she heard Mike’s voice, and she called him back.

  “What now?” she said when he picked up.

  “Nothing,” Bennett said. “I just wanted to let you know that there haven’t been any kidnappings in the past half hour.”

  She thought of him. Their lunch, the wonderful dinner with his family. She sat staring at the utter loneliness of her room, her life. She hadn’t even thought of getti
ng involved with anyone since her husband had abandoned ship. The more time she spent with Mike, though, the more she was starting to consider the possibility.

  “Where are you now, Mike?” she discovered herself saying.

  What the hell was she doing!

  “I can’t hear you. One of these kids is screaming bloody murder. Hang on. There. I’m in the kitchen now. What did you say?”

  Emily thought about it. She had to stop. A cop? In another city? How the hell would that work?

  “Nothing,” she said. “See you in the morning, Mike.”

  Chapter 34

  I STOOD THERE in my kitchen, staring at my cell phone.

  There had been a moment there between us, some kind of hovering opportunity, but goddammit, I’d missed it somehow.

  Still, it was nice just hearing her voice. Not as nice as seeing her face, but almost. She was a good cop, good for a laugh, and good-looking. All good, in my book. I felt like we’d known each other for two years instead of three days.

  My phone rang while I was still standing there, pining like one of my love-struck tweens. Back to reality, Casanova, I thought.

  It was my boss, Carol Fleming.

  “Mike, I just heard some City Hall flack came by the task force for a copy of all your reports. You have any idea what the deputy mayor would want with them?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “we banged heads with Hottinger when the Dunning kid was snatched. She’s probably just trying to make trouble for me, boss. Looking for something to jam me up.”

  “That anorexic bitch can pound sand,” my boss said angrily. “Internal police records are strictly confidential, and if she wants information, it’ll come from me personally. This case couldn’t be run more professionally. Don’t you worry about her or anyone else as long as I’m around. Get some sleep, Bennett.”

  Wow, I thought after I hung up. A boss who had confidence in me and who was willing to stick her neck out to protect me. That was a nice switch.

  But about that sleep, I thought, walking out of the kitchen and staring at the wreckage that used to be my dining room table.

  There were beakers, plastic tubing, stopwatches, food dye. Enough poster board to build a light aircraft.

  Yep, it was that dreaded time of year again. Holy Name’s annual science fair.

  Six of my ten kids were furiously finishing their projects. Jane was testing the soil in Riverside Park. Eddie was investigating the geometry of shadows. Brian was doing something on television watching and brainpower. Or was he just watching television instead of getting his work done? I wasn’t exactly sure.

  Even my five-year-old, Chrissy, had been enslaved by the science police. They had her making a stethoscope out of toilet tissue tubes. The Manhattan Project had taken less work.

  I reached out as a streak of tinfoil went past my head.

  “Is this ball yours, Trent?” I said, handing it back to him.

  “That’s not a ball, Dad,” I was informed with a groan. “That’s Jupiter.”

  After I’d gotten in from work, I’d been immediately dispatched to our local Staples for some last-minute items. I hadn’t seen that many crazed-looking adults since April 15 at the post office. Didn’t the guidelines say that the students were to put together their own experiments? Yeah, right.

  Ten minutes before midnight, I tucked in the last of the Edisons and Galileos and headed for the kitchen.

  With glue-speckled cheeks and Sharpie-stained fingers, Mary Catherine was busy putting on all the finishing touches.

  “Hey, Mary. I bet you never thought you’d have the pleasure of immersing yourself this deeply in the joys of science. Is your mind feeling as expanded as mine?”

  “I have an idea for an experiment I’d like to run by those science people,” she said as she twirled a pipe cleaner.

  “How much stress can people take before their heads actually explode?”

  Chapter 35

  IT WAS 2:20 in the morning when Dan Hastings exited Butler, Columbia University’s main library. Instead of heading toward the handicap ramp, the handsome blond freshman economics major smiled mischievously, zipped his iBOT wheelchair into stair mode, and rode the sucker all the way down the massive building’s Greek temple stairs.

  You’d think I’d have learned my lesson, he thought as the expensive computer-balanced wheelchair bounced hard off the last step. His legs had become paralyzed in a mountain-biking accident.

  He’d been on an extreme adventure trip to the Orkhon Valley in Central Mongolia with his dad. One second he was flying down a jeep track like the reincarnated Genghis Khan, and the next, his front tire got jacked between a couple of boulders.

  His landing at the bottom of the ravine had pulverized his ninth, tenth, and eleventh thoracic vertebrae, but he wasn’t complaining. He still had his brain and his heart and, as a Mongolian parting bonus, the full use of his penis. With his iBOT, the so-called Ferrari of wheelchairs, he was putting the whole thing where it belonged. Behind him. He could and would continue to go anywhere he wanted.

  Tonight’s late studying marathon was due to a mother of a stats test he had the next day. That, and the fact that his roomie was hosting a party for his Peace Studies group. He’d rather sleep in the stacks than hang with those tree huggers.

  If truth be known, he was the biggest conservative he’d ever met. At liberal Columbia, that made him a spy, embedded deep in enemy territory.

  His chair’s motor hummed as he opened it up across College Walk into Low Plaza. Usually, the area was filled with sunbathers and Hacky Sackers, but it was completely deserted now, the lit-up majestic dome of Low Library looking strangely ominous against the dark night sky.

  Hadn’t the antiwar hippies taken over that beautiful building during the sixties? What a disgrace. What was even worse was that a lot of his fellow students still believed in that garbage.

  Not him. He was an economics major. His original plan was to work his ass off, graduate summa, and get his ticket punched as an intern for one of the major Wall Street investment banks. But ever since Bear Stearns, Goldman, and Merrill had blown themselves up, he’d been thinking about trying to get on with a private-equity firm. He didn’t care which, just so long as it was big.

  Go big or go home in a Med-Lift chopper was pretty much the Dan Hastings credo.

  He popped in his iPod earbuds and scrolled himself up a little Fall Out Boy. That and My Chemical Romance were the greatest in wheelchair-cruising tunes.

  He was passing Lewisohn Hall when he saw the light. A strange blue strobing coming from a doorway on its south side. Was it a cell phone? He slowed the chair and tugged out his earbuds.

  “Hey, Dan. C’mere,” called a voice in a loud whisper.

  What was up? Dan thought, zooming over. Was it somebody from one of his classes? College high jinks? Maybe it was a pantie raid. He was down with that. What was a pantie raid, anyway?

  When he was about five feet away, Dan almost jerked out of his chair as he braked to a dead stop. A guy in a black pea coat and a ski mask stepped out of the doorway, holding a pistol.

  What the fuck was this? And where the hell was Security?

  He’d heard that Morningside Heights, the neighborhood around the Ivy League school, was notoriously dangerous, but he’d never heard of someone actually being mugged on campus.

  “Take it,” Dan said, offering him the iPod. “There’s a hundred and fifty dollars and an American Express card in the wallet in my bag. You can have that, too, buddy.”

  “Gee, aren’t you nice?” the man wearing the ski mask said as he grabbed Dan by his jacket and ripped him full out of the chair. The service door beside the man boomed as he kicked it open.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Dan cried as he was carried into the dark building.

  The man hoisted him over his knee and violently wrapped his arms, legs, and mouth with masking tape.

  “Shhh,” the man said, slinging him over his shoulder. “Quiet down now. No talking i
n class.”

  Part Three

  SIGN OF THE CROSS

  Chapter 36

  “DAD, DON’T TRIP, and whatever you do, please don’t drop it!” Jane called after me as I zombie-shuffled over the curb toward Holy Name’s auditorium, bearing the awkward display boards.

  Though the science projects were officially completed, this next stage was like on the Food Network show where the contestants have to move their cakes to the judging table.

  Only I had to do it six times, and there would be no chance for a $10,000 check.

  Once everything had been safely transported, I started to relax, though when I passed a blood pressure cuff on one of the gymnasium’s many displays, I was tempted to test mine.

  I walked Chrissy to her kindergarten class’s door. She pulled away from me as I went to give her a hug.

  “Not here, Daddy. They’ll say I’m a baby,” she told me.

  But you are a baby, I thought.

  “Can’t we at least shake hands, Miss Bennett?” I said. She gave me a quick, businesslike pump and bolted off without looking back. I smiled from the door as she linked arms and began whispering in earnest with one of her classmates. The kids were all growing up so quickly.

  Thank God I, miraculously, wasn’t aging with them.

  I was coming down the school’s front steps when I noticed that I hadn’t turned on my phone after charging it. No wonder my morning had been filled with peace and quiet.

  Uh-oh, I thought. In the past twenty minutes, there had been two messages from my boss and four from Emily Parker. I called Emily back first. She was cuter.

  “What now?” I said.

  “The Fox Channel. Turn it on.”

  I ducked into Holy Name’s rectory, adjoining the school. Mrs. Maynard, the parish secretary, looked up from stuffing envelopes at her desk.

  “Father Bennett is still saying the eight o’clock, Mike,” she said to me.

  “Is he? Could I borrow your TV?” I said, going into the lounge beside her without waiting for an answer.