16th Seduction: (Women’s Murder Club 16) (Women's Murder Club)

by James Patterson

  He was fearless. He was tough. He was loyal to the max and he was a decider. You couldn’t ask much more from your commanding officer. Last year Brady had married Yuki Castellano, another of my closest friends. Welcome to the family, Brady.

  He stood up when I entered his small office. He came around his desk and hugged me. He patted my shoulder and asked after Joe. I told him what the doctor had said: “We have to wait and see.”

  When we were all seated, I asked about Connor Grant.

  “He’s in a cell by his lonesome, round-the-clock guard,” said Brady. He raked back his longish white-blond hair with his fingers and took a long, cold pull from his coffee mug.

  Then he said to me with a voice still faintly colored by a Southern drawl after all these years, “Git talkin’, Boxer. Don’t leave anything out.”

  CHAPTER 8

  IT WAS ALMOST two in the morning when I came through the front door of the apartment I used to share with Joe. It’s a roomy space in a former commercial building. The ceilings are high, and the kitchen is open to the main room, which is furnished in leather and neutral tones, and has tall windows west and south, facing Lake Street.

  Tonight home sweet home never felt so good.

  Martha, my longtime border collie best dog friend, charged across the floor, her barking waking Mrs. Rose, our saintly nanny, who’d been asleep in Joe’s big chair.

  Martha also awakened Julie Anne, age twenty-two months, who called out for me.

  “Mommmmeeeeeeeeeeee.”

  “Be right there, sweetie,” I croaked.

  “You need some honeyed tea for that throat,” Mrs. Rose said. I followed her into the kitchen, and as I washed my hands and face I told her that Joe’s condition hadn’t changed.

  She said she would pray for him, and after she made tea and assured me that both baby and dog had had their needs addressed, I walked her through my front door and across the hall to her own domicile.

  We hugged, and I said, “See you in the morning. Um. See you in six hours.”

  Back inside, I went to Julie’s buttercup-yellow room. My dark-haired, blue-eyed girl was standing up in her crib with her hands up for a hug—which I gave her in full.

  We have a big, JFK-style rocking chair with a cushion and a view. I lifted my sweetie and pulled her into my lap. I rocked as I cuddled with her. I smelled her hair, kissed her fingers, listened to her breathing lengthen, before I settled her back down into her bedding. I whispered, “I love you soooooo much. Sweet dreams, babycakes.”

  I checked my cell phone to see if I’d missed a call from San Francisco General. I had not.

  Martha joined me in the bathroom, watching over me from the bath mat while I showered and scrubbed off the grit and stink of diesel fuel that had glommed on to me that night. As the spray beat down on my back and shoulders, I thought of my poor Joe with his gashed, shaven, and drilled head, his eyes swollen shut, his broken bones.

  Please, God, don’t let him die.

  I don’t remember getting into bed with my best dog friend, but she woofed me awake and then my phone buzzed.

  Joe!

  I grabbed it from the nightstand and saw San Francisco Hospital on the caller ID. I jammed down the green button and said hello to Dr. Dalrymple.

  She told me, “Joe’s condition hasn’t improved to my satisfaction. We’re going into surgery right now,” she said. “I’m putting in a second drain.”

  “Oh, no, no.”

  “It’s okay, Lindsay. I’ll tell you when to get worried. I promise you. Okay?”

  The doctor did her best to assure me that this second drain wasn’t a bad thing and that I should call her later. When I’d clicked off with Joe’s surgeon, the phone buzzed in my hand.

  Brady was calling.

  “You planning on coming in?” he asked me.

  It was Friday, right?

  “What time is it?”

  “Time to interrogate the pris-nah,” he said.

  CHAPTER 9

  BRADY AND I huddled in his office.

  He gave me the official body count, just tallied.

  “Twenty-five people dead. Forty-five injured. Some of them critical, with low to terrible odds of survival.”

  He handed me a list of the casualties. I skimmed it for Joe’s name. Then I folded the paper into thirds and stuffed it into the inside breast pocket of my everyday blue blazer.

  “You sure you’re up to this?” he asked me.

  I was mad. I was hurting. I was worried about Joe, sleep deprived, and still in shock from last night’s horror show, which would very likely stay with me for the rest of my life. I was stressed to the bone and I knew that it showed on my face.

  Still, that Brady even questioned my ability to do the interrogation pissed me off.

  “Who can do this interview better than me? I was there. He talked to me.”

  Brady said, “Okay. I was being considerate. Trying to be considerate. So look, Boxer. Here’s what we know about Connor Grant.”

  Brady makes lists. Whenever possible, he writes them in red grease pencil on a yellow legal pad. I looked at the pad. What I saw was a very short list.

  Said Brady, “He’s forty-five. Drives a late-model Hyundai. Never married, no kids, no family we could find, but there are a lot of Grants in this country. Anyway. He teaches ninth-grade science at Saint Brendan High School. Been there for about five years. Science teacher blows up a science museum. That’s interesting, right? His reviews on Rate My Teachers are good. The kids like him.”

  “He doesn’t have a sheet?”

  “Nope. He’s clean as a nun’s habit. A solid citizen. Pays his taxes. Obeys traffic laws. Colors within the lines.”

  “Humph. I find this hard to believe.”

  Brady went on. “Parisi will be observing. Jacobi, too.”

  I wasn’t surprised that the DA and the chief of police would be watching our interrogation. We had an admitted mass murderer in the box.

  I asked Brady, “What else do I need to know?”

  “You take the lead. Be nice. The tape could be used in court. If nice doesn’t do the job, I’ll step in as badass.”

  Brady handed me a folder of eight-by-ten photos. I flipped through them, then looked back into Brady’s iceblue eyes. All we had in the way of leverage was Grant’s on-the-scene admission. We didn’t have it in writing.

  Brady said, “Boxer. Don’t worry about the big picture right now. I don’t care who he knows, what he hates, et cetera. If he’s talking, great. We want it all. But right now, this morning, be his friend. We just need him to say, ‘I did it.’ Anything else is gravy.”

  CHAPTER 10

  BRADY AND I left his office and walked the short length of corridor to Interview 2. He held the door open and followed me inside.

  Connor Grant was seated at the table wearing a brightorange jumpsuit and a smirk. His hands were cuffed, ankles shackled. He looked happy to see me, and oddly, I was happy to see him, too.

  I nodded to the two guards standing in the corners and shot a glance at the red blinking camera eye in the ceiling. Then I looked at the two-way mirror. I was glad that Parisi and Jacobi were behind it. Top brass on deck.

  Brady had given me a clear-cut assignment: Get Grant’s confession on the record. Get it to stick. After that Len Parisi could negotiate with this monster for convincing details, names of others involved, then either make a deal or prosecute him to the full extent of the law for killing more than two dozen human beings.

  I took a seat in one of the straight-backed aluminum chairs across the table from Grant, and Brady did the same.

  To the “pris-nah” I said, “Hello again, Mr. Grant. How are you this morning? Sleep okay?”

  “Not bad. I forget. How do I know you?”

  “Last night at the pier. I arrested you, remember?”

  “Oh. Right. For destruction of property? I still don’t get that.”

  I opened the folder full of photos and started laying them down on the table. The pict
ures were post-explosion: the fire licking the foundation of the museum, the emergency vehicles, the stretchers coming out of Sci-Tron, the double lines of body bags. And then there were shots, from different angles, of the museum’s metal framework looking like the skeleton of a large, prehistoric animal kneeling down on the pier.

  “Oh, wow,” said Mr. Grant. “These are great pictures.”

  “Aren’t they? If you like, I’ll get you copies.”

  “Sure. Thanks a lot.”

  I smiled at this wretched specimen of a human being.

  “If you could help me by thinking back …,” I said to Grant, leaning in, crossing my arms on the table, doing my best to look nonthreatening, not like a cop at all.

  I said, “Do you remember last night when I asked you if you knew what happened at Sci-Tron?”

  I pushed one of the photos toward him. It was timestamped 7:23 p.m. Smoke was still coming off the rubble heap on the pier.

  Grant said, “No. What did I say?”

  “You said to me, ‘Did I see it? I created this …. This is my work.’”

  Grant was shaking his head no throughout.

  I kept my voice soft and pressed on.

  “You know what really got to me, Mr. Grant?”

  I tapped my chest somewhere near my heart. “When you told me you wanted to create beauty. You were so happy about the sunset-lit sky. Gave yourself bonus points for the color of the sky. Too bad we don’t have a picture of that, right?”

  “Well, that’s just crazy,” said Grant with a laugh. “How could I take credit for a sunset?”

  I was prepared for total denial even though he’d freely offered his confession in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, while glass was still falling from above. For a second I flashed on Joe. I saw him standing with me, covering Grant with his gun. Joe looked solid, intelligent, brave. This freak, the one with the smirk, had brought Joe down.

  Grant said, “Oh, I get it now. You’re saying that I actually told you that I blew up Sci-Tron? That’s hilarious. You must have misunderstood me, Sergeant. Or the explosion affected your hearing. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

  He kept talking.

  “What I must have said was that I saw the explosion, but honest to everything, I had nothing to do with ‘bombing’ that place.”

  He made awkward air quotes when he said “bombing.”

  I nodded politely.

  “I think I know that this wasn’t your doing, Mr. Grant. Not alone, anyway. You had help from a terror network. Maybe they instigated bombing the museum. Maybe they planned it all. Why should you take the heat yourself?”

  He shook his head, said, “Nope. I know nothing about who bombed the museum. It wasn’t me.”

  Had Grant played me then? Or was he playing us now? Was he GAR’s “devoted soldier”? Or here was an idea: Was he teeing up his insanity defense?

  Brady tensed up beside me.

  Fifteen minutes ago Brady had told me, “Be his friend. We just need him to say, ‘I did it.’”

  What would it take to push that button?

  It felt to me like Grant had taken a position before we walked into that room and then he’d dug in. He was entrenched. And he was happy and secure in his foxhole.

  CHAPTER 11

  GRANT’S FOXHOLE WASN’T going to protect him or stop me.

  He had totally denied his confession, acted as though I were the crazy one, and that was infuriating. Still, I couldn’t show him my anger. I had to stop thinking that this jerk was making a fool of me and that Brady was sitting next to me. The tape was rolling. All I had to do was get Grant to repeat three of the roughly one hundred words he’d spoken to me just before I’d arrested him. All I needed him to say was “I did it.”

  He’d been proud of himself when he took credit for the blast, no doubt in my mind about that. I would appeal to his vanity. I moved my chair to the corner of the table so that it wasn’t between us and I was sitting closer to him. I made a conscious effort to relax the muscles in my face, and I smiled again at my dear friend Connor Grant.

  “People misunderstand each other all the time. You’re upset. Who wouldn’t be? You’re worried, of course.”

  “Nope.”

  “Mr. Grant, I saw the museum explode. I was right there when it happened and it was really … just awesome. That’s why I’m so interested, and when you told me you’d blown it up—”

  “Nope.”

  “I’d really love to know, how did you do it? You’re a science teacher, aren’t you? Maybe if you just use layman’s terms, so I can understand you—”

  “Well, I don’t understand you at all.”

  Brady got up from his seat. He’s powerfully built, and just his standing up shifted the atmosphere, like when a rodeo bull explodes out of the chute.

  He spun the chair away from him. It scraped the floor, toppled over, clattered. I bit my lip as Brady slammed both hands down on the table. It shook. As promised, Lieutenant Badass was stepping in.

  He said, “No more games, sir. We have you at the scene of the bombing. You confessed to Sergeant Boxer and also to Joseph Molinari, who happens to be a former government agent and the former deputy director of Homeland Security. These two unimpeachable witnesses corroborate each other’s statements, and they will testify against you.”

  Grant tilted his head back and just looked up at Brady. Like he was fascinated.

  “Your blood test came back, Mr. Grant. There were no drugs or alcohol in your system. You were flat-out sober when you told this officer of the SFPD that you bombed Sci-Tron. That was yesterday.

  “Now we have a search warrant and we’re going to take your house apart, board by board, until we find evidence. When that happens, you’re cooked, and I think you know it.”

  Brady retrieved his chair and sat back down.

  “Now look,” he went on. “Twenty-five people have died, man. As soon as we charge you with twenty-five counts of murder, your name is gonna get out, and the entire city and the whole country are going to be calling for your blood.

  “You want to live, Connor? You help us, we help you. If you come clean, Sergeant Boxer and I will see if we can get the DA to waive the death penalty. No promises, but this right here is your last best chance.”

  Grant’s cuffs clanked as he shrugged. I knew what was coming. I wasn’t wrong.

  “I want a lawyer,” said Connor Grant, the madman who no longer appeared insane. He looked me in the eye and smiled. He was still smiling when his guards yanked him out of his chair and took him back to his cell.

  CHAPTER 12

  BRADY AND I returned to the squad room, both of us looking like we had been knocked out in the first round.

  I was mortified. I thought Brady felt even worse.

  He said, “I shouldn’ta lost it.”

  “Nothing would have worked.”

  “Something has to.”

  He stomped off to his office. I stopped at the front of the room and looked up at the TV hanging from the ceiling, tilted so that everyone in the squad room had a good view. Even though the sound was off, the pictures spoke without using words.

  Thousands of people were banked outside the barricades on the Embarcadero that had been set up to preserve the crime scene. Some in the crowd held up hastily scrawled drawings of broken hearts. The camera panned across the grieving faces to the charred remains of Sci-Tron. The headline across the top of the screen was ANOTHER GAR STRIKE?

  Was GAR responsible? Or were they taking responsibility for a bomb not their own? Had GAR inspired Connor Grant? Or did we have the wrong freaking freak in a cell in the sixth-floor jail?

  I left the TV and walked toward the corner Rich and I had co-opted, equidistant from the entrance to the squad room and the window with its view of Bryant Street. Our desks faced each other, and Rich looked up when I slung my jacket over the back of my chair.

  He was on the phone, but he said, “Hold on, please,” and put his hand over the mouthpiece.

 
“You okay?” he asked.

  I shrugged, said, “Be right back,” and headed into the break room. When I looked up, Rich was standing with me at the coffeemaker, watching me pour a mug of mud with a shaky hand.

  “What happened in there?” he asked.

  “Typical dirtbag,” I told him. “He recanted his confession or whatever you call what he told me and Joe. Said I needed to clean out my ears. He didn’t do it, didn’t bomb anything, of course. And he lawyered up. The bastard.”

  Conklin said, “You sure you want coffee?”

  “I want something,” I said. “I’m going to run over to the hospital for a couple hours. Two of Joe’s brothers are just coming in from New York. I’m going to meet them there.”

  “Stay as long as you want,” he said. “We can’t get into Grant’s place until after the bomb squad clears it.”

  I took three sips of coffee, dumped the rest into the sink, and rinsed out the cup. I said, “Rich, what if I hadn’t seen Grant standing there on the sidewalk beaming at his masterpiece? We’d have less than nothing, and the Feds would be working this case.”

  “True.”

  “Is Grant having a good laugh at the SFPD? Or is he for real? I’d really like to know.”

  “If he did it, we’ll nail him,” Conklin said. Then, “Linds, did you see the message from Claire? She wants to see you ASAP.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I got my jacket and headed out.

  CHAPTER 13

  DR. CLAIRE WASHBURN is the city’s chief medical examiner and my closest friend. I needed to see her, too.

  The most direct path from Homicide to the ME’s office is out the lobby’s rear entrance and a hundred yards down the breezeway toward Harriet Street. I was on total autopilot until I opened the double doors to the ME’s office.