20th Victim: (Women’s Murder Club 20) (Women's Murder Club)

by James Patterson

  “I’m speculating here. Say that Kennedy was with Moving Targets. It’s a wild thought, but according to Bud Moskowitz, ex-SWAT and former Moving Targets player, cops and military were members of the inner sanctum. Let’s also say that for some reason, Moving Targets turned on Kennedy. Did he know too much? Did he threaten them? Had he just found religion when he took out that female drug dealer and was going to turn himself in?

  “Joe, I just don’t know. Listen. You’ve never heard me say this before. These vigilantes outnumber us. They’re more organized than we are and probably smarter.”

  Joe listened to Lindsay’s breathing. She was exasperated and maybe on the verge of tears.

  He said, “Okay. I get it. Now that you’ve got that off your chest, what’s your next move?”

  She groaned, but Joe wasn’t letting her go without an answer.

  “Come on, Blondie. From your gut. Out with it.”

  “Okay. I have one thought.”

  “And that is?”

  “Paul and Ramona Baron are being buried on Saturday. Rich and I should go to the funeral. See who’s there. Take some pictures. And hope a suspect shows up with a long gun.”

  CHAPTER 75

  THE PRISONERS’ WARD at Metropolitan Hospital was grim, but no grimmer than the rest of the place.

  Same pale-green paint job, same dust-encrusted windows and gray-speckled linoleum floors. The ward had six beds, two of them in use. The bed closest to the door was occupied by a tattooed man the size of an oak tree, chained hand and foot, howling for something for the pain.

  The bed in the farthest corner was filled by Clay Warren, the eighteen-year-old miscreant Yuki would be prosecuting for possession with intent, car theft, and acting as an accomplice in the murder of a cop, though all concerned knew he’d merely been the wheelman. Also, it was widely known but legally suspected that the real perp was a major drug dealer who had ditched the kid and the car and gotten away clean.

  Said drug dealer was very likely living in a cute little cliffside hacienda overlooking the ocean, while the patsy had been stabbed in the chest with intent to kill him.

  No wonder he wouldn’t talk, even for a pass to a lighter sentence and the possibility of breathing free air in his twenties.

  Yuki knocked on the doorframe and, after passing the raging oak tree, headed toward Clay Warren.

  “Clay?” Yuki called out. “I brought you something. I hope you like sweets.”

  The young man turned his head toward her and almost instantly looked away.

  She noted the flex ties cuffing his wrists to the handrails. His ankles were under the sheets, but Clay Warren wasn’t going anywhere. There were tubes running from his chest, from under the sheets, from the IV above his head, to the monitors behind him.

  It was then that Yuki saw an older woman sitting in a chair at the far side of the bed, keeping the patient company. The woman, who was probably Clay’s mother, stood up. She was Yuki’s size, about forty, wearing drab gray clothing that hung to her ankles. And she was furious.

  Yuki said, “Hello, I’m ADA Castellano—”

  “I know you. I’ve seen you in court. How could you do this to my boy? Look at him. Look at him.”

  Clay, just barely conscious, was present enough to say, “Mom. Stop.”

  “Mrs. Warren?”

  The woman didn’t answer. She stood facing Yuki, her eyes locked in a hard stare, her fists clenched.

  “Mrs. Warren, I want to help Clay. Please understand that I need him to help me with the guy he worked for so I can go to the DA.”

  “You’re lying, ADA Cutthroat. ADA Career Woman. You don’t want to help Clay. You want to win. How much time do you get for lying to his mother?”

  Yuki looked down at the floor, not out of shame or to avoid the woman’s anger but in an effort to compose herself and explain her position. If Mrs. Warren could get Clay to agree to testify against Antoine Castro, Yuki would be able to get the charges against him lightened significantly.

  “Let’s go to the cafeteria and talk,” Yuki said. “Maybe together we can make a plan.”

  “You should leave. That’s what. Leave my son alone.”

  “Please tell me what happened to him.”

  “Do you need glasses?”

  Yuki was actually wearing glasses, through which she watched Clay’s mother point a shaking finger at the whole length of Clay’s chest and abdomen, bandages wrapped around him. He must have been stabbed multiple times.

  “He was shanked in the shower,” Mrs. Warren said so loudly she got the attention of the huge man at the front of the ward.

  “Is that right?” he said.

  Clay’s mother ignored him. “You have children, ADA Castellano? Try to imagine it. My son had lost gallons of blood by the time they got him here. His heart even stopped. Grace of God he’s alive. He should be out on bail, not in that place with those animals.”

  There was laughter from the oak tree. “You don’t mean me, right? Because I didn’t do it.”

  “Mrs. Warren, I have no power over Clay’s situation if he doesn’t help himself. He was driving a stolen car with a trunk full of dope. A cop was shot dead. The gun was inside the car. If Clay won’t testify against the real criminal, I cannot do a thing but try to convict him.”

  “If he talks, he’ll be dead before his birthday.”

  After strafing Yuki with her condemning eyes, Clay’s mother, who had dressed as though she was already in mourning, returned to her pale and motionless son. She sobbed as she leaned over the side rails and caressed her boy’s head. Yuki went over and touched her arm. She was roughly shaken off.

  Yuki knew damned well she shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t see Clay without his attorney present, but she felt sick for the kid. His mother didn’t really get it. It was highly probable that Clay wasn’t talking in order to protect her.

  If Yuki couldn’t turn him around, he was cooked.

  Could he hear her?

  “Clay. Here’s my card again. Feel better soon.”

  Yuki placed the card and a bag of small chocolate bars on the side table, said “Take care” to Clay’s mother, and headed for the doorway.

  Mrs. Warren shouted after her, “Pull some strings, damn it. Throw your weight. Be humane. If you don’t stand up, you will think of Clay every day he is in prison, and then, when they kill him, you will think of him forever. Welcome to hell, ADA Castellano.”

  Yuki called for a taxi, and one was waiting by the time she got to the street.

  “Hall of Justice,” she said to the driver.

  She stared out the window as she headed back to work. Parisi would have to listen to her. This wasn’t justice. This was closing a case by charging the wrong man.

  CHAPTER 76

  I WATCHED YUKI blow through the swinging gates to the squad room in a great big hurry.

  She waved at Brenda without stopping and landed at my desk, saying, “Lindsay, you’ve got to come with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  She pointed to the far end of the room, took me by the wrist, and led me to Brady’s office. He was working, head down, but he looked up when she spoke his name from the doorway.

  “I can’t go downstairs,” she told him. “Can we use your office for a couple of minutes?”

  His look said, Why?

  “We need some privacy.”

  “Okay. Sure thing. Have fun, darlin’.”

  He headed to the front of the bullpen and appropriated my desk. Yuki dropped into Brady’s well-worn swivel chair. I closed the door and pulled up a seat. We settled in, but I didn’t think we were going to have any fun.

  I was highly agitated. My brain was sparking from three sugared cups of black coffee and my newfound obsession with the so-called “new war on drugs.” I pictured the photos on the casualty wall of the war room, starting with Paul’s body splayed across the desk, Ramona’s dead and staring eyes, and the ruby cabochon hanging just above the bullet hole through her chest. From there I
ticked off the victims in LA, Chicago, San Antonio, and Houston. At that point I stopped ticking off and dwelled on Detective Carl Kennedy, a murdered cop, leaving even more questions about Moving Targets.

  As is completely normal for detectives, I was obsessing, or as I call it, searching what I knew for a missed clue, an anomaly, or a pattern, beyond the one obvious correlation. The victims had all sold drugs.

  Had Kennedy been killed because he threatened Moving Targets? Or had he been marked as a target because he, too, sold drugs? I didn’t know and neither did Houston PD. But we knew the shooters were active in multiple cities and states, either a constellation of groups or one group making their kill, then changing location and killing again.

  Cops in five major cities had no idea where the snipers would strike next. But we agreed. There would be a next.

  Yuki was also agitated, and it had nothing to do with high-octane caffeine or snipers.

  She said, “I’ve just been to the hospital prisoners’ ward. You know the kid I’m prosecuting—”

  “Clay Warren.”

  “Right. He got shivved in the shower last night. Someone upstairs loves him, because it’s a miracle he survived. So I went to see if I could, you know, talk him into giving up the actual drug dealer and cop shooter. He’s bandaged from here to here,” she said, demonstrating from below the waist to collarbone.

  “But, noooooo. His mother kicked my butt around the room, told me to do something. That he’s going to get killed. Lit my fuse but good, Lindsay. And she was right.”

  I nodded and said, “Go on.”

  “So I charged into Red Dog’s office,” she told me. “He was meeting with a couple of suits,” Yuki said. “I didn’t recognize them, and I didn’t care. I just let Red Dog have it at the top of my voice. Picture me screaming, ‘We can’t prosecute a man who is not guilty. Clay Warren was a kid wheelman, and now he’s in the hospital with a dozen holes in his guts and a compromised kidney. Now I’m supposed to send him to prison for things he couldn’t have done? Come on, Len. Have a heart. We’re doing this?’”

  I clapped my hands over my cheeks and leaned in.

  “What did he say?”

  “He stood up, all six foot three of him, and he barked, ‘Grow up, Castellano. We have a dead cop. This so-called kid wheelman either shot him or witnessed the shooting, for Christ’s sake. You’ve been here too long for this candy-assed crap. A good prosecutor can prosecute anyone.’”

  Yuki put her elbows on Brady’s desk and lowered her head into her hands. Her next words were muffled by her palms and a blackout curtain of blunt-cut hair. She shook her head, then lifted her face to look at me.

  “I was standing my ground, but he was coming toward me. I started backing up. This was his parting shot, Lindsay: ‘I don’t appreciate you barging in here. We’re done.’”

  “Yow,” I said.

  “I’m mortified,” she said. “I almost said, ‘I don’t give a flip what you appreciate.’ Am I trying to get fired?”

  “Are you?”

  “When I quit before, I was sad all the time. Len begged me to come back.”

  “I remember.”

  “I emailed him an apology, but I didn’t grovel.”

  “Good. On both counts. What now?”

  “I’m going to avoid Red Dog for a couple of days if I can. I’ve got to tell Zac that I saw his client and what happened, and he has to get a continuance for the latest possible date.”

  I said, “Could be when cops come to take Clay back to jail, his mother will change her mind. Get him to give up the crime boss in exchange for witness protection.”

  She said, “Yeah, I saw GoodFellas a few times, too.”

  I smiled, and my phone buzzed. I glanced at the screen.

  “It’s your dearly beloved,” I said. “I gotta take it.”

  Just as I hung up with Lieutenant Brady, Yuki’s phone rang. She handed it to me. “It’s Conklin.”

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Conklin through the glass wall. He signaled to me and at the same time spoke into my ear, “Need you, Lindsay. We have to make a plan.”

  “I’m coming,” I said. I walked Yuki to the elevator, hugged her good-bye, and rejoined Conklin. “We’ve got to get organized for the funeral tomorrow,” he said. “And please do not fight me on this. In the interest of domestic harmony, I’m bringing Cindy.”

  CHAPTER 77

  CONKLIN AND I were attending the Barons’ funeral because there was a chance that their killer might show up.

  It happens. Sometimes a killer will return to the scene of the crime to gloat or bathe in the memories. Funerals are the after party, not only to exult in and rerun the bloody memories but also to enjoy the grief of the bereaved.

  We were in the town of Bolinas, population sixteen hundred, on the edge of the Pacific. If the Barons’ killer paid a call, he would see that it was a beautiful day for a funeral. Soft sunlight warmed the clean lines of the old Presbyterian church. The cemetery was across the road, an acre of sloping clipped grass, marked with old tombstones and ringed with a stone wall. There was also an imposing wrought-iron gate.

  Dozens of people would be in attendance, but the hundreds of fans, press members, tourists, and curiosity seekers were not welcome.

  Warren Jacobi, former chief of police and my close friend, had volunteered to be a consultant, my undercover escort for the day. Partnering with him was like old times, and as clueless as we were about whodunit, the whole team was revved up. We were hoping that Leonard Barkley or Jacob Stoll or a previously unknown suspicious character might crash the funeral.

  I wore a skirt and a boxy black jacket to hide the holster at the small of my back. Jacobi and Conklin were both armed, and Cindy wore a somber gray dress, playing her part as Conklin’s civilian date.

  We all blended in and took our seats in pews at the front and the rear of the church. The church was lovely inside and out, and the funeral service was touching and hopeful, given the circumstances. Reverend Grandgeorge was elderly and sweet; he talked about the Barons being at home in heaven and said that he knew we hoped they were comfortable and at peace.

  I had a different take on that.

  I thought that if there was a heaven and they were in it, they would be enraged that their lives had been cut short and that their children would be raised by other people.

  The organ played. People prayed. And when the service ended, we all left by the double-wide front doors.

  Outside the church, in parked cars camouflaged by a fringe of woodland around the parking area, our colleagues Chi and McNeil, Lemke and Samuels, were armed with guns and cameras, ready to pursue a fleeing suspect.

  Jacobi offered me his arm and I took it, tottering a bit on my high heels as we crossed the dirt road between two lines of yellow tape, backed by local police who were charged with keeping the press in check. Which wouldn’t be easy.

  Photographers jostled for good angles as reporters shouted questions about the police investigation. Paul Baron’s parents were long dead, but we accompanied Ramona’s family—her parents, Jill and Charles Greeley; her sister, Bea; and the two small children, DeeDee and Christopher—through the cemetery gates. We mingled with mourners, walked a few hundred yards across the acre of grass, coming at last to the white tent over the two open graves.

  The mourners gathered. Remembrances of Ramona as a child were offered, as well as shared laughs, hugs, and tears. The children clung to their grandmother.

  I looked around surreptitiously and noticed a beefy man in a canvas jacket, red-faced with clenched fists, standing off to the side. I nudged Jacobi. Conklin was already looking at the big man as he stepped toward the tent.

  When he was standing near the open graves, the man in canvas said loudly, “What a load of crap.”

  He then coughed up a wad of phlegm and spat on Paul Baron’s coffin.

  CHAPTER 78

  THE FORTY PEOPLE standing under the tent gasped as one.

  Even I was shocked, but
my reflexes snapped me out of it. At the same time someone shouted, “You asshole,” and two men moved toward the one who’d spat on Paul’s coffin. They each took an arm and pulled the man in canvas away from the gathering—but he stuck out a leg and snagged the tent pole, and the pole bent.

  The tent wobbled and slowly, hypnotically collapsed.

  Screaming broke out and anger rose up. Men began milling in a loose circle. Jackets came off and were flung to the ground. Provocative curses flew, and the circle of men broke into two groups. It looked to me as though it was Paul’s friends and family against those of Ramona.

  There were many obstacles on the hill of the cemetery lawn: trees, headstones, stunned women and children. The local cops were three hundred yards away out on the street. I couldn’t gauge how bad this would get. Guns could come out. Knives. We, the undercover team, would have to prevent violence, and yet if we drew our guns, we could set it off.

  I looked for my teammates and made eye contact with Conklin.

  My badge hung from a chain around my neck, inside my jacket. I pulled it free and held it up.

  “SFPD. Everyone freeze.”

  The red-faced man was six feet tall and heavily muscled, and he acted like I wasn’t there. He waved his arms and yelled to the opposing group, “Don’t you see the hypocrisy of burying them together? It’s his fault. Paul corrupted her. She would never be in that box if not for him. He might as well have shot her himself.”

  He was shouted down, called names, and that made him even wilder. He was on the move, dodging, weaving, swinging his head around, shouting accusations. And since the collapse of the tent, the media had jumped the tape. They outnumbered the local cops and were now climbing over the walls.

  Still yelling “It’s Paul’s fault,” the red-faced man ranged in and around the broken group of mourners.

  Charles Greeley was fit, in his late fifties. He’d been watching, but he couldn’t stand still any longer. I watched as he broke away from his wife, a slim woman who looked like her daughter’s death had broken her. Greeley reached the red-faced man and shoved him hard, sending him staggering back and away from the fermenting crowd, hissing, “Anderson. You bastard. Control yourself. This is my daughter’s funeral.”