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

by James Patterson

  Parisi stopped by with cupcakes and gave me a hug. When Parisi hugged me, I knew I’d been thoroughly hugged.

  I called Joe from work and said, “How about dinner at our place?”

  It was a big step, and I thought I was ready for it. I left work at six without anyone throwing spike strips in front of me and got home without incident.

  I didn’t have much time, but I dressed for the occasion, wearing tight distressed jeans and a loose white shirt, and let my hair down, the way Joe likes it. I topped off my act with aqua-blue toenails, which I showed off by going barefoot.

  Joe rang the doorbell at seven on the dot and was greeted by everyone—Julie, best dog, and me. And wouldn’t you know, even on short notice he brought imported sauce from a small town in northern Italy, dessert from b. Patisserie, and a bottle of Brunello, a varietal from Tuscany, which he’d bought at the liquor store down the street. I’m pretty sure that bottle cost an extravagant hundred bucks.

  Joe looked like the Joe I loved and had known in so many ways: lover, husband, companion, father of my child, and secret keeper who’d sworn to make things right. His dark curls had grown out, so I asked to see his scars so that I could put my hands in his hair.

  And then I was in his arms.

  He kissed me, and it felt like the first time years ago when we’d worked a case together, him with the FBI, me a lieutenant with the SFPD, and there had come a moment when we both just knew—this, the two of us, it was going to happen.

  Joe said, “I knew Grant’s complaint was going nowhere.”

  “I didn’t. But I couldn’t make a plan B. I didn’t want a plan B.”

  “I’m really happy with plan A.”

  “Me, too.”

  He kissed me again, and I almost forgot the pasta on the stove and a darling little girl who looked like her dad, who was underfoot, and so was Martha. We stole another kiss. And the promise was made without words.

  There would be more.

  Joe stirred his special red sauce, and I made the salad with radicchio and romaine, escarole, and ripe Campari tomatoes. I whipped up a balsamic vinaigrette, spiced per Joe’s own recipe.

  And as we cooked, we talked about bringing down Haight, of course. And we talked about Julie, how bright she was, how talkative, how she wanted a bed “without fences,” and we laughed at that. Soon she would be going to kindergarten, but not yet. There was plenty of time before Julie went to school. Family time.

  I set the table, and Joe brought Julie over to her chair. I was trying on the thought of asking Joe to stay the night. It was up to me. It might be better to let dinner go with kisses and hugs and have another date next week. But I knew and he knew that I missed him. Julie missed him. So much time had passed and so much had happened since we’d split up, it was crazy to obsess about the past. Right?

  Joe was dishing up dinner for Julie and me when my phone buzzed, rattling the glass top of the coffee table, far away in the living room.

  Joe said, “Don’t take it, Linds.”

  Then the landline rang.

  “I’d better,” I said. “I’ll make it quick.”

  I answered the wall phone in the kitchen, where I could watch Joe cutting up spaghetti for Julie.

  “Right now?” I said to Jacobi. “Okay.”

  I switched on the living room TV and called my husband over.

  “Joe. Look.”

  He stood up, came over, and focused on what I couldn’t believe I was seeing. A retina-searing blast had lit up the television screen. The newsman was saying that this explosion had happened in front of City Hall.

  I pressed the phone to my ear.

  “Oh, my God. Warren, please tell me again what he said.”

  He talked and talked, and I listened even though I kept saying, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

  CHAPTER 94

  CONNOR GRANT DOUBLE-CHECKED the room for anything left behind, placed fifteen dollars on the dresser for the housekeeper. He strapped his big duffel onto the trolley, hung his travel bag over his shoulder, and headed down to the front desk.

  Connor Grant’s credit card was currently in good standing, and after the charges that would never be paid were rung up, he rolled his duffel bag through the doors and out to the front of the motel.

  A cab was waiting.

  The driver was a woman built like a jockey. She wanted to help him with his bag, but he said, “No, no. Please just open the trunk. I’ll handle this.”

  He got into the cab, telling the driver, “Two stops, please. First, City Hall. And then SFO, international departure.”

  The driver said, “Okay, boss,” and flipped the meter.

  The man wearing the blue cap leaned back and enjoyed the ride. His plans were vivid in his mind.

  He wanted his good-bye kiss to be incendiary and unforgettable. City Hall was an architectural masterpiece. Inaccessible, of course, but he had scoped out a vulnerable spot. There was a short ramp off McAllister Street that led to a valet parking area just below street level.

  There would be no valet there at night, and as he saw it, he could simply leave the duffel with the timer set for when he was high above the clouds.

  The driver’s name was Minnie.

  She was a careful driver and he liked that. She didn’t speed, wasn’t aggressive, and even used turn signals. They drove along McAllister, lit up and with a modest amount of traffic. Passing the intersection at Polk, they approached City Hall, and Grant leaned forward and spoke to the driver.

  “Just pull in over there.”

  “Valet parking, you mean?” Minnie asked. “I can’t. That’s not allowed.”

  “It’s okay. Completely okay,” Grant said. “We’re only stopping for half a minute.”

  She looked into the rearview mirror, caught his eyes. He smiled encouragingly. She put on her directional signal, crossed McAllister, and stopped at the top of the short ramp.

  “Okay, this is good,” Grant said. He could walk his duffel down to the entrance. “Just open the trunk latch for me.”

  “Why?” she asked. “We’re still going to the airport, aren’t we?”

  “Yes. I’m just getting something out of the trunk.”

  “No, sir. I can’t do that. Please understand, I’ve had people run off without paying the fare. You owe me thirteen dollars fifty cents.”

  “Open the damned latch,” he said, barely keeping his anger in check. “I’m not bolting on the fare.”

  He got out of the cab and walked toward the trunk. Then he saw her hand out.

  “Goddamnit.”

  His wallet was in his travel case, inside the car. Thirteen fucking dollars.

  Swearing, he opened the rear door again.

  CHAPTER 95

  MASTER SERGEANT CARY Woodhouse was part of a three-man vigilante team made up of his father, Micah; his brother, Jeff; and himself.

  When Connor Grant had put the jury under a spell and gotten away with twenty-five counts of murder, including that of Cary’s dear wife, Lisa, he’d stood tall in the courtroom and promised Grant that he would pay for what he’d done.

  Those weren’t just words. It wasn’t a casual promise.

  Jeff had been watching Grant’s house when that sicko pulled out of his driveway on Jamestown Avenue and took Route 101 to the Travelers’ Inn on Lombard Street.

  Jeff had waited for Micah to take the next shift, and Cary had called the hotel, asked to speak to Mr. Grant—what was his room number again? He had sweet-talked the operator, said he only wanted the room number so he could send a Priority letter. That he’d tried, but the courier service would not accept the front desk as an address.

  The operator had caved.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” she said.

  “I promise,” Woodhouse said, and hung up his phone.

  After that the three Woodhouse men took eight-hour shifts watching Grant’s window from where they’d parked across the street on Lombard, in front of the Gala Restaurant and Lounge. They knew when he was sleeping.
They knew when he was awake. And Cary was on watch when Grant left the Travelers’ Inn carrying two bags. One hung by a strap over his shoulder. The other was a large duffel bag, which he loaded into the cab’s trunk himself.

  Cary Woodhouse pulled into traffic and stayed four cars back from Grant’s cab. When it headed into town toward the Civic Center, five by six blocks of majestic old granite buildings surrounding a treed plaza, Woodhouse felt some alarm. City Hall was the focal point of the Civic Center, with its huge gilded dome, which was taller than even the dome topping the Capitol Building in DC.

  The Civic Center Plaza was always open. It was a public square, but why would Grant be coming here at night? Cary Woodhouse continued following the cab along McAllister, crossing Polk. The cab reduced speed and signaled for a left turn. It looked like the taxi was taking the short ramp in front of City Hall that led down to a valet parking area below.

  Then the cab stopped at the top of the ramp.

  Woodhouse pulled his car into the fire lane, out of the way of sparse traffic, and watched Grant’s cab from fifty feet away. He called Micah and Jeff, told them what he’d seen and that he was pretty sure what was on Connor Grant’s program for the night.

  What Grant had done to Sci-Tron had described his character in full, and a man’s character didn’t change. Woodhouse felt strongly that Grant was looking for another highvalue target. The valet parking area was as close as a vehicle could get to the north entrance of City Hall, a beautiful and historic building, the jewel in San Francisco’s crown.

  The cab was still poised at the top of the ramp, not moving. He tried to anticipate Grant’s next move. As he watched, the cab’s left-side rear passenger door opened and Grant got out. He leaned down toward the driver’s window, seemed to be demanding that the cabdriver open the trunk. It also seemed to Woodhouse that the driver was refusing. He had his hand sticking out the window, the universal sign for Give me the money.

  Woodhouse took it that the driver wanted to be paid and that he wasn’t taking the cab any farther. Maybe he’d gotten a whiff of nutcase stink off his passenger.

  Woodhouse, a former military officer, didn’t need to wait for this dispute to be settled. He opened his car door and placed his Ruger 10/22 rifle on the doorframe. He took a bead on Grant’s temple and said softly, “This is for you, Lisa.”

  He fired.

  A split second before Woodhouse’s gun went off, Grant reached into the backseat of the cab. The crack of the rifle shot was loud enough to shock both Grant and the cabdriver.

  The driver leapt from the cab and ran. It was a woman, skinny, fast, and she just vamoosed. Good, thought Woodhouse. One less thing to worry about.

  Then he noticed that Grant had taken a position behind the cab’s rear passenger door. Grant fired his pistol at Woodhouse. He got off three quick shots. The first one hit Woodhouse in the shoulder, and the other two went through his windshield.

  Woodhouse fired back, but the pain and the bleeding from his shoulder threw off his aim. Instead of blowing a hole through Grant’s head, his shot hit the trunk of the cab.

  The last thing Cary Woodhouse expected to happen under that black, starry sky was for something loud and as bright as the sun to obliterate everything.

  CHAPTER 96

  I HUNG UP with Jacobi and tried to tell Joe what I could barely understand or believe.

  The TV was on mute and the explosion was on a short loop. It kept playing again and again, with a crawl at the bottom of the screen reading, “Bomb goes off at Civic Center. Area is closed while bomb squad, fire dept., police contain the perimeter.”

  Joe said, “What did Jacobi say?”

  I said, “It was about Connor Grant. Jacobi told me that Grant was trying to blow up City Hall.”

  “How does he know that?”

  Joe asked me to repeat every word of what Jacobi had told me. We stepped out of the kitchen and Julie’s earshot.

  I told Joe, “A man called the police station right after the explosion and asked for the chief. His name was Micah Woodhouse. He was the father-in-law of Lisa Woodhouse, one of the Sci-Tron victims. Micah told Jacobi that his son Cary had been watching Grant, making sure that he didn’t blow up anything again.

  “According to Micah Woodhouse, Cary had followed Grant to the Civic Center and had called his father to say he was suspicious. And then a taxi blew up in front of City Hall.

  “Micah thinks his son was killed in the blast.”

  Joe and I went over to the sofa, switched on the TV, and watched as new images came on the TV. It appeared that the roads had been torn up, a few vehicles had been overturned, and City Hall had taken some damage, not yet assessed. But the many iconic buildings were still standing. The body count wasn’t yet in, but when Joe picked up his phone to access the Twitterverse, he told me that it was confirmed: the passenger in the cab was dead.

  I tried not to show Julie that I was shaken when I put her to bed. Had Cary Woodhouse foiled Grant’s plan? Or was Grant’s entire escapade meant to end in a suicide car bomb?

  Connor Grant.

  Still a mystery to the final freaking kaboom.

  CHAPTER 97

  WHILE I QUELLED the fierce bedtime protests from our bambina, Joe took Martha for a walk. When he came back through the door, I realized I didn’t have to say anything about date nights anymore.

  I disabled the ringers on all the phones.

  Joe took me into his arms.

  We went to bed. I was full of so many feelings. That Connor Grant was no longer in our lives. That we were safe. That Joe was home.

  Joe was home.

  Joe and I held each other for a good long time before kisses turned up the heat and our clothes came off fast. Making love with Joe wasn’t the homey tumble of the last time we’d been together so long ago, and it wasn’t the desperate passion we’d felt when our story first began.

  This was both making love with my husband and the release of the anger and resentment I’d harbored for so long. I told him I loved him, and he told me he loved me so much.

  “I’ll never let you down again,” he said. “I’ll never let you go.”

  We spent the rest of the night talking like we used to do.

  We never slept, and we heard Julie calling out for me as the sky began to lighten.

  I went into her room and grabbed her up over the “fences” and carried her into our bedroom. She crawled in between Joe and me, turned her head to look at each of us.

  “Nice,” she said.

  “Isn’t it?” I said, grinning at our adorable, blue-eyed, curly-haired child. It was better than nice. This was all that mattered.

  Acknowledgments

  Our thanks to Captain Richard Conklin, BCI commander, Stamford, Connecticut, PD; to Humphrey Germaniuk, medical examiner and coroner, Trumbull County, Ohio; and to Chuck Hanni, IAAI-certified fire investigator, Youngstown, Ohio, for sharing their wisdom and expertise. We are also grateful to attorneys Philip R. Hoffman and Steven Rabinowitz of Pryor, Cashman, NYC, for their wise legal counsel. And many thanks to the home team, John A. Duffy, Mary Jordan, Lynn Colomello, and to our amazing researcher, Ingrid Taylar, West Coast, USA.

  DETECTIVE BILLY HARNEY rubbed his hands, his breath lingering, frozen, in front of him, a wispy reminder of how cold Chicago can be in the middle of March. Three hours was long enough inside the SUV. He hated stakeouts. Even though this one was his idea. His case.

  It started with a dead undergrad, a junior at U of C. The area around the campus—Hyde Park—had some rough spots, and everyone chalked up the murder to urban violence. But they didn’t know what Billy knew from a download of the data on her cell phone—that this young woman made money in her spare time as an escort. She worked through an Internet site that was taken down the day after her death, but her text messages indicated that she had one particular client who had some unusual needs and was willing to pay top dollar for them.

  In a nutshell, he liked to choke her during sex.

  He was
a trader, married with kids, who made more money in a week than Billy made in two years. The kind of guy who could buy an army of top-shelf lawyers to defend him. Billy wanted this asshole to drop his guard, to relax, so he leaked some news that a suspect was in custody for the undergrad’s murder, that it looked like another garden-variety attack in Hyde Park. And then Billy followed the scumbag trader.

  Precisely one week ago, at 9:00 p.m., the trader entered the brownstone down the street. Billy got him on video but wasn’t sure what was happening inside, so he laid low. A little recon work told him that this place was a high-rent brothel.

  So assuming that this guy had a regular appointment—and Billy was willing to lay down good money that he did—tonight should be the night. Catch him with his pants down and offer a simple trade: no arrest for the prostitution if you answer a few questions about a dead undergrad. Billy could take it from there. Always better to start a Q and A with the subject sweating his ass off and eager to please.

  He pushed back the sleeve of his overcoat and checked his watch. Half past eight. He blew warm air into his hands.

  “Sosh, how we doin’?” he said into his radio to Soscia, the cop in one of the other vehicles, two blocks down, staking out the brownstone from the east.

  The response came through Billy’s wireless earbud. “Ready, willing, and able,” Sosh said. “Just like your sister.”

  “My sister wouldn’t touch you with a six-foot pole. And neither would Stanislowski.”

  “Who the fuck is Stanislowski?”

  “A six-foot Pole.”

  “Harney, get back in the car.” This from his partner, Katherine Fenton, sitting in the warm car just next to him.

  “Sosh, how’s your rook holding up?” Soscia had a new detective working with him, a nice kid named Reynolds. “You know I bought him lunch today.”

  “Yeah, I fuckin’ know. He said putting extra pinto beans on the burrito was your idea. And I’ve been stuck in this truck with him for three hours.”