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

by James Patterson

  “So what happened on that particular day?”

  Zac focused all of his attention on the jurors.

  He said, “Let me offer a speculative explanation.”

  Yuki stole a look at Clay Warren, at his unchanged, masklike expression, then turned back to watch Zac mount his case.

  “It’s self-evident that the man Mr. Warren was driving in the white Chevy was dangerous,” Zac said. “He had a gun, a stolen car, and a million dollars of drugs in the trunk. He killed a police officer in cold blood. Mr. Warren was arrested as an accomplice. I’m going to add ‘unwitting.’ That he was an unwitting accomplice, and he may have been forced take part in this criminal endeavor.

  “After his arrest my client was locked up in the general population of old-time jail in the Hall of Justice. He recently attempted suicide by hanging. Despite being placed under observation, within days he was attacked by one or more prisoners and stabbed repeatedly to his abdomen with a sharp implement and nearly bled to death.

  “Since then Mr. Warren has been held in solitary confinement, under constant watch, so that he isn’t murdered and doesn’t kill himself for being victimized by the true criminal, and to the eternal grief of his family.

  “One could even say that he has been punished and has paid his debt to society.

  “Clay’s life is now hell, and the only way out is through the good graces of the twelve men and women of this jury.”

  CHAPTER 102

  I WAS TEXTING an apology to Claire for standing her up for yesterday’s lunch, when my desk phone rang.

  I snatched up the receiver.

  “Boxer.”

  “Sergeant, it’s May Hess.”

  May Hess is a dispatch supervisor who calls herself the Queen of the Batphone. She also works the tip line because she’s good at helping people, cutting through the panic and distress.

  She said, “I’ve got something for you, Sergeant. A tourist witnessed the shooting at the jazz center.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “I can do better than that. I’ve cued up the tape. Listen here.”

  I heard a recorded voice over my phone.

  “Police? Police?”

  Hess’s voice answered on the tape. “This is the police. Do you have an emergency?”

  “No. It’s about the shooting yesterday. At the jazz center.”

  “Okay. And what’s your name?”

  “Sharon Fogel.”

  “Spell it for me?”

  After the caller spelled it out, Hess said, “What do you know about the shooting, Ms. Fogel?”

  “I saw it, but I didn’t know it. I was taking pictures. I’m from Sheboygan. Wisconsin. I’m on vacation. I was going to go to the jazz center, and I took some pictures of the building, and then those men were shot and I ran. I only realized what I had on my phone this morning.”

  “Tell me about the pictures,” said Hess.

  “It’s two pictures, actually. One shows his car. The other shows him.”

  I heard the caller panting, and I was panting a bit myself. Had Sharon Fogel really snapped a photo of the killer?

  Hess said, “Ms. Fogel, give me your address. I’ll have a police officer come by and get your statement and take a look at the photos while she’s there.”

  I heard a man’s voice speaking in Sharon Fogel’s room.

  Fogel’s voice was muffled. I thought she was saying, “Just a minute.” Then she was back on the line.

  “My husband wants me to stay out of this.”

  “Ms. Fogel, you won’t be involved in any way—”

  “I can’t.”

  “You may have something of real value to the ongoing investigation. What about this? Send the pictures to me. I’ll forward them to the homicide team.”

  “Give me your email address,” said Fogel.

  The voice of the man speaking in Fogel’s room was growing louder. “You’ve always got to be the star of the show, Sharon.”

  “Have you got them?” Fogel asked Hess.

  “Let me open your email ….”

  I heard the clatter of the phone hitting the floor. Then the click of the phone disconnecting. The taped call was over, but Hess was there.

  “Lindsay. Did you hear all of that?”

  I said, “Maybe. Did you get the pictures?”

  “Forwarding them to you now. She’s staying at the Hilton. I have her cell number.”

  I told Hess, “Great job.”

  And then I waited for Hess’s email to hit my inbox.

  CHAPTER 103

  CONKLIN LOOKED OVER the top of his computer and asked, “What was that all about?”

  “Roll your chair over.”

  He pulled his chair around to my desk so that he could see my monitor.

  I said, “Hotline thinks we might have a witness to the jazz center shootings. And … the witness sent pictures.”

  “Let’s see.”

  I opened the email, daring to hope.

  The first photo was a glamour shot of the jazz center, the corner view of the building’s expanse of glass windows sparkling in morning sunlight. The street was quiet. There was some traffic at the intersection, but this shot had clearly been taken before three people, a semi-well-known guitarist and his two bodyguards, were picked off one shot at a time.

  Fogel had said she’d taken a picture of the car.

  In the lower right corner of the photo, on the opposite side of the street from the jazz center, was a black Ford Taurus.

  I said, “The witness said that the gunman fired from inside a car. Maybe this one. I can read, uh, four numbers on the tag.”

  “Not a bad line of sight from the car to the entrance of the building.”

  There were a couple of other cars parked in front of the Taurus, all of which would have to be checked out.

  I jotted down the tag numbers as Conklin said, “I’m ready for the next one.”

  I clicked on the next picture. It had been shot only a few seconds after the first. It showed a man in the driver’s seat of the Taurus, his gloved hand on the window frame, pulling the door closed.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “So much for his prints.”

  My partner adjusted the monitor so it faced him square on. “Am I hallucinating? Or is that Barkley without the beard?”

  I enlarged the man’s face so that it took up most of the screen, but the more enlarged I made it, the more his features went out of focus. I had seen photos of Barkley with and without the beard. But I couldn’t be sure that this was him.

  I said, “I’ll find Stempien. You run the plates.”

  I called Stempien, but he didn’t pick up. It was twenty after twelve. Lunch hour. When I ate out close to the Hall, my cheap eatery of choice was MacBain’s. Was it Stempien’s go-to joint, too?

  Conklin looked up from his computer and said, “The Taurus was reported stolen thirty-six hours ago.”

  “Could be Barkley stole it before the shooting and still has it,” I said, trying out a theory. “Or, Richie. He could’ve left the car after the shooting and walked off the scene. The car could be right where it was yesterday. The street was closed all day for CSI and until late last night.”

  “I’ll go take a look,” he said. “You find Stempien.”

  I transferred the two pictures to a flash drive and went across the street to MacBain’s.

  The place was crowded. It always was at lunchtime. True detective that I am, I spotted Stempien at a table by himself, a plate of steak fries, a burger, and an iPad Pro in front of him. I navigated a path through the congested bar and grill, and when our FBI computer guru looked up, I smiled and said, “May I join you?”

  He said, “Absolutely,” but his look told me that he was checking out my face.

  “Fistfight,” I said.

  “Whoa. You okay?”

  “Never better,” I said.

  Syd came to the table and I ordered what Stempien was having. Once she’d departed, I held up the thumb drive and said, “Mike. You
feeling heroic today?”

  “Love to be a hero. How can I help?”

  “I brought you a snapshot. Can you look and tell me if it’s Barkley? If you’re not sure, you have to run it through your DeepFace recognition program. ASAP.”

  “What you call ASAP is what I call normal. As if I’ve heard anyone in the past five years say, ‘Mike. Take your time.’ And I’ve been waiting.”

  I laughed. Stempien pushed his plate aside and plugged my thumb drive into his tablet. He stared at his device. He finger-swiped and pressed buttons, but he didn’t speak.

  I don’t think I breathed as I watched him work.

  CHAPTER 104

  THE JUDGE ASKED Yuki to call her first witness.

  She called Officer William Scarborough, and once he’d been sworn in, Yuki told the jury that the witness would run the video and explain what had happened at each moment in time.

  Yuki asked the court officer to dim the lights, and then Officer Scarborough pointed the remote at the laptop downloading the digital recording from the cloud.

  He said, “First we see the Chevy speeding through the light, and we take off after him.”

  He stopped the video as the Chevy slowed.

  “What’s happening here is that the driver is going ninety, and that green minivan in front of him is full of kids and going about forty. For all the horn blowing, the van doesn’t speed up.”

  Scarborough started the film again.

  “Now the Chevy is forced to slow down. The van is crawling in front of him and traffic is flowing on his right and left sides. Here’s where it all goes down. I pull into the traffic on the left, speed ahead, and see daylight between the back of the van and front of the Chevy.”

  Scarborough paused the video to make sure the jurors got a fix on the next move.

  Scarborough said, “I make a hard right in front of the Chevy. It’s a tight squeeze, but I’m just trying to stop the guy. He T-bones our cruiser, hitting in the rear compartment, and we all come to a stop.”

  Scarborough explained the action in the last part of the video.

  “That’s Officer Morton walking over to the driver’s side of the Chevy, ordering the driver to step out of the car. But what Morton can’t see is that the passenger door opens and a tall man in black clothes gets out.

  “I can’t see his face,” Scarborough said. “I’ve watched this video so many times, but the crash put our car at an angle to the Chevy, and this guy walks out of the shot. I’ve got less than a second of his profile. He resembles a dangerous criminal I’ve seen on FBI posters, but ‘resemble’ isn’t enough for a positive ID.”

  Scarborough’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat and let the video roll.

  “He walks around the Chevy to where Todd Morton is standing with his back to him, talking to the driver.

  “Here. It’s painful to watch. The gunman opens up on Todd. He goes down, and then the son of a bitch fires at the cruiser. At me.

  “The dash cam catches me as I get out of the cruiser and go toward Todd, and I’m calling for an ambulance and traffic is going nuts, and by then the shooter has evicted the old man from his RAV4 and takes off.”

  Scarborough hit Pause again and said, “At this point Clay Warren gets out of the Chevy with his hands up, and I direct him to put his hands on the roof and not to move. I cuff him. Pat him down. He wasn’t armed. The ambulance arrived fast, but Todd was dead from the time he hit the ground.”

  Yuki asked for the lights to go on. Several people in the gallery were crying, and one person left her seat and pushed open the door.

  Yuki said, “I know everyone here feels for you and Todd Morton’s family. What can you tell us about your late partner?”

  Scarborough sighed and spoke for several emotional moments about Morton, lauding him and stating that neither of them had ever been involved in a shooting before.

  “You said you couldn’t identify the shooter?”

  “His features are regular. He wore sunglasses, and his jacket had a high collar. Mostly, he was on the move, standing away from me or half away from me, and then he was shooting at me. Things were happening fast.”

  Judge Rabinowitz asked defense counsel if he had any questions for the officer, and Zac Jordan said that he did not. Yuki thanked Officer Scarborough and asked him to step down.

  Rabinowitz said, “Ms. Castellano. Please call your next witness.”

  “We have no other witnesses, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Jordan?”

  “I have a character witness, Your Honor.”

  “In that case, let’s take a brief recess … uh, a half hour. And then after your witness, Counselor, we’ll hear your closing arguments.”

  CHAPTER 105

  I SNATCHED UP the receiver of my ringing phone.

  Conklin said, “I’m on Fell Street outside the entrance to the jazz center. You’re right again, Boxer.”

  “We got a break?”

  “Black Taurus with a one-eighty-degree view of the entrance to the jazz center and a surprise inside the car.”

  “Don’t make me beg.”

  “Try not to take all the fun out of this.”

  “Fine. Pleeease, Richie. Tell me.”

  “Good enough. I found a shell casing under the gas pedal. I’ll stay here until CSI comes with the flatbed. A uni is taking tag numbers up and down the street.”

  “Good work, Rich.”

  As I waited impatiently for my partner to return, I looked for Brady. He wasn’t in the bullpen. He wasn’t in Jacobi’s old office on five. His assistant told me he was in a meeting out of the office. And then he walked through the squad room door.

  “I was with the ME,” Brady said, speaking of Claire’s stand-in. “Where’s Conklin?”

  “Right here,” he said, coming through the gate.

  Brady said, “Follow me.”

  Once we were seated in his office, Brady said, “Close the door, will ya?”

  Conklin reached behind him and swung it shut.

  I was dying to start the meeting with what we knew. A witness to the massacre at the jazz center had come forward. She had taken pictures of the probable shooter. The photo had been vetted by Stempien, who had stated with 95 percent certainty that the man in the picture was Barkley. Conklin had found a shell casing that had gone with the car back to the lab, and the odds were good that it would match the caliber of the rounds in the three dead men.

  We’d need prints on Barkley’s gun to put these pieces together, but we knew more now than when I woke up this morning.

  My gut told me that Barkley was the jazz center killer.

  We needed to find him, alive and willing to talk, and we had something to trade. The release of Randi White Barkley.

  Brady’s expression told me that he had something big to say, so I listened.

  “Northern Station got IDs on Kreisler’s bodyguards. The one who was walking in front of Kreisler was Bernie Quant, a well-known body man, freelanced for celebrities up and down the coast. The other one is the prize. Name is Antoine Castro, number three on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted.”

  “Antoine Castro? Are you sure?”

  Brady passed me Castro’s jacket. I saw his mug shot and his morgue shot dated today. They were a match to his photo on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted bulletin. Also in his jacket was a long list of prior offenses, convictions he’d dodged because of lack of evidence, and the big one: a bank heist in Seattle. Four people died. The gang fled. A survivor identified Castro, absolutely, positively, and that had vaulted him onto the FBI list.

  In more recent news, Yuki had told me that before Clay Warren went mute, he’d once mentioned Castro as Todd Morton’s killer but had stopped short of positively, then backtracked, and had refused to cooperate ever since.

  Now Castro was dead, and I was shocked. After the shootout on Highway 1, I had theorized that Castro had gotten a fresh horse and ridden out of town.

  It seemed that he’d been in San Francisco all along.

&
nbsp; I said, “Castro is the number one suspect in the killing of Todd Morton. Yuki is trying the kid Castro left twisting in the wind. Brady, don’t you and Yuki talk about your cases at home?”

  “She never mentioned his name,” Brady said.

  I said, “Warren is on trial right now. With Castro dead, maybe he’ll talk about him, his drug operation, where he lived, you know what I’m saying, Brady? Make himself useful in exchange for a deal.”

  “Go,” he said.

  I left the office at a fast clip, leaving Conklin to watch Brady’s face when he told him that we had a phone shot of Leonard Barkley getting into a stolen car outside the jazz center, where three people, including Castro, had been killed.

  For Clay Warren, Castro’s death might be the best thing that could have happened to him.

  I ran to the courtroom.

  I had to find Yuki before the jury came back with a verdict.

  CHAPTER 106

  DAVE HAD PARKED his van in the medical center parking lot.

  He had reclined the seat back a few degrees so that he could watch the lot and also see Dr. Murray’s second-floor office. At 4 p.m. on the nose Murray left the building, got into his car, and drove away.

  The open bottle of wine rested between Dave’s thighs. He lifted it, took a couple of pills along with some fine Channing Cabernet, and waited for his pulse to slow.

  Then he made a phone call to the doctor’s office.

  He recognized her voice.

  “Nurse … Atkins?”

  “Yes. To whom am I speaking?”

  “Uh. It’s Dave. Channing.”

  “What do you want, jackass?”

  His words were coming slowly. He took long breaths and exhaled deeply. He said, “I came to, uh, bring something for, uh, the doctor.”

  “He just left,” she snapped. “Don’t call here again.”

  Before she hung up, Dave shouted, “Wait! I brought something. An apology. And a check. For the damage … for what I did, uh, to his car.”