4th of July

by James Patterson

  I heard the sound of the police band sputtering in the background. I tapped my nails on the kitchen counter and counted to seventy-nine before the chief got on the line.

  “Boxer.”

  “That was a fast return on the lab report,” I said. “What have we got?”

  “It was fast for a reason. There were no prints, not that that surprises me. But unless you count bovine DNA, there was nothing else, either. Lindsay, the bastards dripped a little beef blood on the buckle.”

  “Aw, give me a break!”

  “I know. Shit. Look, I gotta go. Our mayor wants a few words with me.”

  The chief hung up, and, by God, I felt sorry for him.

  I walked out to the deck, took a seat in a plastic chair, and hung my ankles over the railing as Claire had advised me to do. I stared out beyond my sandals and the neighbors’ backyards to the aqua blue line of the bay.

  I thought again about that belt lying on the lawn this morning, and the bloodstain that had turned out to be nothing.

  One thing was clear.

  The killers hadn’t tried to kill me.

  The belt was a warning meant to scare me away.

  I wondered why they’d bothered.

  I hadn’t solved John Doe’s murder and ten years later I was still sucking swamp water here.

  Meanwhile, the killers were out there, and all the white hats had was a tantalizing handful of “what ifs” and “how comes” that went nowhere.

  We didn’t know why.

  We didn’t know who.

  And we didn’t know where they would strike again.

  Other than that, everything was the cat’s meow.

  Chapter 124

  FAMILIES, THE BANE OF modern civilization, where the scum of the past was kept alive, cultivated, and refined. At least that was the Watcher’s perspective tonight.

  He opened the mudroom door and entered the pink stucco house high up on Cliff Road. The Farleys were out for the night, so secure in their cocoon of wealth and privilege that they never even bothered to lock the door.

  The mudroom led into a glassed-in kitchen that was glowing with the last rays of sunset.

  This is just surveillance, the Watcher reminded himself. Get in and out in under five. Same as always.

  He took his camera from the inside pocket of his soft leather jacket and panned the room, taking a series of digital photos of the many tall glass panes, the mullions wide enough for a person to enter.

  Zzzzt, zzzzt, zzzzt.

  He moved quickly through the kitchen to the Farley family room, which cantilevered out over the mountainside. Amber light filled the woods, giving the shaggy eucalyptus bark an almost human presence, the trees like elderly men watching his movements. As though they understood and approved.

  Just surveillance, he told himself again. Things were too complex, too hot right now to go forward with their plans.

  He rapidly mounted the back stairs to the bedrooms, noting the steps that creaked the loudest, the solid banister. He proceeded down the hallway of the second floor, stepping inside each of the opened doors, taking his photos, memorizing the details. Frisking the rooms as if he were a cop patting down suspects.

  The Watcher checked his watch as he entered the master bedroom. Nearly three minutes gone. He quickly opened the closets, sniffed the scents of Vera Wang and Hermès, closed the doors.

  He ran down the steps to the kitchen and was about to leave when he thought of the basement. There was enough time for a quick look.

  He opened the door and skittered down.

  There was an extensive wine cellar to his left, and the laundry room was in front of him. But his eyes gravitated to a door on his right.

  The door was in shadow, secured with a combination padlock. The Watcher was good with combination locks. He was very good with his hands. He turned the dial left until he felt the minute resistance, then right and left again. The lock sprung open, and the Watcher unlatched the door.

  He identified the equipment in the basement’s half-light: the computer, the laser printer, and the reams of high-quality photo paper. The video and digital cameras with night vision capability.

  A thick stack of photo prints sat neatly on a counter.

  He stepped quickly inside and closed the door behind him. Flipped the switch that turned on the lights.

  It was just a harmless surveillance mission, that was all, one of many.

  But what he saw when the lights went on almost sent him over the edge.

  Chapter 125

  MARINARA SAUCE WAS IN the air as I came up the walk to Carolee’s Victorian live-in schoolhouse. I shielded my eyes against the last rays of sun flashing off the many-paned windows and dropped the brass knocker on the big front door.

  A dark-skinned boy of about twelve opened up and said, “Greetings, police lady.”

  “You’re Eddie, right?”

  “Ready-Eddie,” he said, grinning. “How’d you know that?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good memory,” I told him.

  “That’s good, since you’re a cop.”

  A cheer went up as I entered the “mess hall,” a large open and airy dining room facing the highway.

  Carolee gave me a hug and told me to sit at the head of the table. “That’s the ‘honored guest’ spot,” she said. With Allison grabbing the chair to my left and Fern, a small red-haired girl, fighting for the chair to my right, I felt welcomed and at home in this huge “family.”

  Bowls of spaghetti and a tub of salad with oil and vinegar journeyed around the table, and chunks of Italian bread flew across it even as the kids pelted me with questions and riddles—which I fielded and occasionally aced.

  “When I grow up,” Ali whispered, “I want to be just like you.”

  “You know what I want? When you grow up, I want you to be exactly like you.”

  Carolee clapped her hands together, laughing gaily.

  “Give Lindsay a break,” she said. “Let the poor woman eat her dinner. She’s our guest, not something for you to devour along with your food.”

  As she got up to bring a liter of cola from the sideboard, Carolee put her hand on my shoulder and leaned down to say, “Do you mind? They love you.”

  “I love them, too.”

  When the dishes were cleared and the children had gone upstairs for their study hour, Carolee and I took our coffee mugs out to the screened-in porch facing the playground. We sat in matching rockers and listened to the crickets singing in the darkening night. It was good to have a friend in town, and I felt especially close to Carolee that night.

  “Any news on whoever shot up Cat’s house?” Carolee asked, concern edging into her voice.

  “Nope. But you remember that guy we had a run-in with at the Cormorant?”

  “Dennis Agnew?”

  “Yeah. He’s been harassing me, Carolee. And the chief isn’t making a secret of the fact that he likes Agnew for the murders.”

  Carolee looked surprised, even shocked. “Really? I’m having a hard time imagining that. I mean, he’s a creep, all right,” she said, pausing. “But I don’t see him as a murderer.”

  “Just what they said about Jeffrey Dahmer.” I laughed.

  Then I drummed my fingers on the arm of the chair; Carolee crossed her arms over her chest, and I imagined we’d both gone inside our heads to think about killers in the wind.

  “It’s pretty quiet here, huh?” said Carolee at last.

  “Remarkably. I love it.”

  “Hurry up and catch that maniac, okay?”

  “Listen, if you ever get nervous about anything, Carolee—even if you think it’s just your imagination—call nine-one-one. Then call me.”

  “Sure, thanks. I will.” After a moment of silence, Carolee said, “They always get caught eventually, don’t they, Lindsay?”

  “Almost always,” I answered, though that wasn’t exactly the truth. The really smart ones not only didn’t get caught, they weren’t even noticed.

  Chapter 126r />
  I HAD A ROUGH night’s sleep, riding my nightmares on a steeplechase of drive-by shootings and whipped corpses and faceless killers with no names. I awoke to a dismal, gray morning, the kind that makes you want to stay in bed.

  But Martha and I needed exercise, so I dressed in my blue tracksuit, tucked my gun into its shoulder holster, and put my cell phone in the pocket of my denim jacket.

  Then Sweet Martha and I took off to the beach.

  Thunderheads were moving in from the west, bringing the sky so low to the bay that seabirds coasting through the clouds looked like airships in newsreels about the Second World War.

  I noticed a few hardy souls jogging or meandering far ahead and behind us, so I let Martha off her lead. She trotted after a little flock of plovers, making them scatter, and I headed south at a moderate clip.

  I’d only gone about a quarter of a mile when the rain started to fall. Soon, the intermittent drops thickened, pockmarking the sand and firming my running surface.

  I turned to check on Martha, running backward long enough to see that she was right behind a man in a hooded yellow slicker, maybe a hundred yards back.

  I put my face into the slanting rain and was hitting my stride when Martha’s yipping bark grabbed my attention. She was nipping at the heels of the guy behind me. She was herding him!

  “Martha,” I shouted, “that’ll do.”

  That was the command to return to my side, but Martha totally ignored me. Instead, she drove the guy at a right angle away from me, uphill toward the grassy tops of the dunes.

  That’s when I realized that Martha wasn’t fooling around with him. She was protecting me.

  Son of a bitch.

  I’d been followed again!

  Chapter 127

  I YELLED OUT, “HEY. Stop running and she’ll back off,” but neither dog nor man paid any attention. Finally, I charged after them, but climbing the crumbling twenty-foot-high incline was a little like running under water.

  I bent low, clutched at the sand, and at last pulled myself up to the grassy plateau of the Francis Beach campground. But the driving rain plastered my hair to my face, and for a moment I was completely blind.

  In the time it took to drag the hair away from my eyes, I felt the situation slip out of control. I looked wildly around, but I couldn’t even see the guy who’d been tailing me. Damn it! He’d gotten away again.

  “Mar-thaaaa.”

  Just then, a smear of yellow shot out from behind the restrooms, across my field of vision—with Martha still close on his heels. The guy kicked out at her but failed to shake her off as they cut across the picnic grounds.

  I pulled out my nine and yelled, “Freeze. Police.” But the man in the slicker veered around the picnic tables and sprinted toward a multihued pickup truck in the parking lot.

  Martha stayed on him, growling, grabbing on to his leg, keeping him from getting into his vehicle. I screamed “Police!” again, and I ran with my loaded gun in front of me.

  “On your knees,” I ordered when I got within range. “Keep your hands where I can see them. Get down on your belly, mister. Do it now!”

  The guy in the slicker did what I told him, and I approached quickly as the soaking rain pelted down on us. I pulled off his hood, keeping my gun pointed at his back.

  I recognized the yellow hair instantly, but I tried to deny what I saw. He lifted his face toward me, his eyes seeming to throw off sparks of fury.

  “Keith! What are you doing? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, nothing, nothing. All I was doing was trying to warn you.”

  “Is that so? Why didn’t you call me on the phone?” I panted.

  My heart was pounding: ba-boom, ba-boom.

  My God. I had a loaded gun in my hand—again.

  I kicked Keith’s legs apart and patted him down, finding a nine-inch-long Buckmaster hunting knife in a leather sheath at his hip. I removed the fearsome knife and tossed it aside. This was getting worse by the second.

  “Did you say ‘nothing’?”

  “Lindsay, let me talk.”

  “Me first,” I said. “You’re under arrest.”

  “What for?”

  “For carrying a concealed weapon.”

  I stood where Keith could clearly see both my gun and the look on my face that showed I would use it.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” I said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. If you don’t have an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand your rights?”

  “You’ve got me all wrong!”

  “Do you understand your rights?”

  “Yeah. I get it.”

  I fished inside my jacket pocket for my cell phone. Keith twisted, as if he were about to make a break for it. Martha bared her teeth.

  “Stay right where you are, Keith. I don’t want to have to shoot you.”

  Chapter 128

  THE THREE OF US were in “the box,” the small gray-tiled interrogation room inside the police station. The chief had already told me that he had his doubts.

  He’d known Keith Howard for a dozen years as the Man in the Moon auto mechanic with nothing more on his mind than a steady dollar and a well-tuned car.

  But the chief was going along with my instincts, thank God, because I’d seen a look in Keith’s eyes that frankly scared the hell out of me. It was the same soulless look I’d seen on the faces of sociopaths before.

  I sat opposite Keith at the scarred metal table, both of us dripping rainwater, while Chief Stark leaned against the wall in a corner of the room. Behind the glass, other cops watched, hoping that I was right, that soon they’d have more to go on than a knife and a hunch.

  Since his arrest, Keith had regressed, seeming much younger than his twenty-seven years.

  “I don’t need a lawyer,” he said, directing his pitch to me. “I was just following you. Girls always know when a guy likes them. You know that, so just tell them, okay?”

  “You mean you were stalking me,” I said. “That’s your explanation?”

  “No, I was following you. Big difference, Lindsay.”

  “What can I say? I don’t get it. Why were you following me?”

  “You know why! Someone was trying to hurt you.”

  “Is that why you shot at my sister’s house?”

  “Me? I didn’t do that.” Keith’s voice cracked and he put a steeple of fingers across the bridge of his nose. “I like you, always have. And now you’re going to hold that against me.”

  “You’re pissing me off, you little ass wipe,” the chief finally muttered. He stepped forward and slapped Keith across the back of his head. “Be a man. What have you done?”

  Keith seemed to fold into himself then. He dropped his head to the table, rolled it from side to side, and moaned, a hollow cry that seemed to come from some bottomless place of misery and fear.

  But all the moans in the world wouldn’t help him. I’d been suckered by crocodile tears recently, and it was a terrible mistake I wouldn’t make again.

  “Keith, you’re scaring me, buddy,” I said evenly. “You’re in a real jam right now, so don’t be stupid. Tell us what you’ve done so we can help you spin the story to the DA. I’ll help you, Keith. I mean it. So tell me. Are we going to find blood stains on your knife?”

  “Noooo,” he howled. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  I relaxed the muscles in my face. Then I smiled. I covered Keith’s hand with my own.

  “Would you feel more comfortable if we took off those cuffs?”

  I looked up at the chief, who nodded. He took keys from his shirt pocket and undid the lock. Keith regained his composure. He shook his hands, unzipped his slicker, and flung it over the back of the chair. Then he peeled off the sweater he wore underneath.

  If I had been standing up, my knees would have buckled and I would have dropped to the floor.

  Keith was wearing an orange T-shirt emblazoned with the logo from the Distiller
y, the tourist restaurant on Highway 1 in Moss Beach.

  It was a carbon copy of the shirt John Doe #24 had been wearing when he was whipped and killed ten years before.

  Chapter 129

  KEITH SAW ME STARING at his shirt.

  “You like?” he asked breezily, his smile returning as if we were back at his garage. “This one’s practically a classic,” he said. “The Distillery doesn’t even sell T-shirts anymore.”

  Maybe not, but its bloody twin was locked in the evidence room at the Hall of Justice.

  “Where were you the night before last, Keith?” I pressed.

  “Do you own a gun?”

  “What did you want to warn me about?”

  “Tell me something I can believe.”

  He was defiant at first, then giddy, then tearful, and sometimes he just went mute. As the hours crawled by, Stark took over to ask Keith if he knew the victims of the recent homicides.

  Keith admitted that he knew them all.

  He also knew nearly every person who lived in Half Moon Bay or had passed through his little gas station at the crossroads, he told us.

  “We have a witness,” said the chief, putting both of his hands on the table, giving Keith a stare that could have bored through steel. “You were seen, my friend, leaving the Sarducci house on the night of their murder.”

  “Come on, Pete. Don’t make me laugh. That’s so lame.”

  We were getting nowhere, and at any minute Keith could say, “Charge me for the knife and let me out of here,” and he’d be within his rights to post bond and walk away.

  I stood up from the table and talked to the chief over Keith’s head, my voice colored with compassion.

  “You know what? He didn’t do it, Chief. You were right. He doesn’t have it in him. Look. He’s not too bright, and he’s not exactly mentally stable. I mean, I’m sorry, Keith, you’re a pretty good grease monkey, but it’s crazy to think you have the chops to do those murders. And without leaving a clue? I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah, we’re wasting our time,” the chief said, following my lead. “This little punk couldn’t get away with stealing dimes out of parking meters.”