11th hour wmc-11

by James Patterson

  Cindy was lost in her thoughts, came back to the present only when the cab pulled up to a side entrance of the hospital.

  “Faster for you if I drop you here,” the driver said. “Twenty-Second is jammed.”

  That’s when Cindy found that she didn’t have her purse, her wallet, had nothing but her phone.

  “Tell me your name. I’ll send you a check and a really good tip, I promise that I will.”

  “That’s great,” the driver said, meaning the opposite. “No, listen. Forget it. Don’t worry about it. Good luck.”

  Cindy had been to this hospital many times before. She walked through the lobby, passed the elevator bank, and headed down the long hallway, past radiology and the cafeteria; she followed the arrows pointing toward the ER.

  The waiting room outside the ER was dirty beige and crowded with people with all kinds of injuries. She found Yuki balled up in a chair in the corner of the room. Cindy called out to her, and Yuki stood up and flung herself into Cindy’s open arms.

  Yuki was sobbing and Cindy just held on to her, dying inside because she couldn’t make out anything Yuki was saying.

  “Yuki, what happened? Is Richie okay? Is he okay? ”

  Chapter 100

  It had been a night like no other I’d ever experienced. It felt like a military firestorm, gunshots cracking, bullets flying in all directions.

  A sixty-year-old shop owner fell at my feet; never said a word, just died.

  A drug dealer had been shot dead at point-blank range by an active cop who’d gone completely fucking rogue, and then there were other cops, my friends and my partner, who’d been injured in the line of duty.

  I’d fired my gun, shooting to kill.

  Maybe I was the one who brought Randall down.

  I came out of the ER and found Cindy, Claire, and Yuki huddled together in the small, crowded waiting room. Cindy looked stunned. Yuki had been crying and now seemed distracted, as if she’d turned entirely inward.

  Claire had the worn-down look of a person who hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours and had not yet gotten a second wind.

  My clothing was blood soaked. I wasn’t injured, but I was scared, and I’m pretty sure I’d never looked worse.

  When Yuki saw me, she jumped out of her chair and asked, “What did they tell you?”

  Brady had caught a bullet in his lung and had taken another through his inner thigh. That shot had hit an artery, and thank God the EMTs had arrived as fast as they had. Still, Brady’s condition was grave. He’d lost a lot of blood.

  “He’s in surgery,” I told Yuki. “Claire, you know Dr. Miller.”

  “Boyd Miller?”

  “That’s him.”

  Claire said to Yuki, “Miller is a fantastic surgeon, Yuki. The best of the best.”

  Yuki said to me, “They told me that it’s touch and go. Touch and go! ”

  “He’s strong, Yuki. He’s young,” Claire was saying.

  Conklin came into the waiting room from the hallway. His left arm was in a sling. He opened his right arm to Cindy, who threw herself at him. He hugged her hard, kissed the top of her head as she wept, then said to me, “I put Randall’s wife in the chapel.”

  I left the waiting room and went down the corridor to the chapel, a sad-looking place that tried to give solace on a financially strapped city hospital’s budget. An ecumenical altar was backlit with subdued lights, and comforting sayings had been written in script along the walls.

  Becky Randall sat in a pew with a little girl in her lap, three other kids hanging on to her arms, waist, and legs. She disentangled herself from her children, stood up, and said, “Willie, you’re in charge.”

  She and I walked together into the hallway.

  “No one will tell me anything,” she said. “Please, Sergeant. What happened? Tell me everything.”

  Tell her everything?

  I didn’t know everything yet myself, and considering what I did know, I had to edit my comments with compassion.

  Could I tell Becky Randall that it looked like her husband had shot several people before he shot Chaz Smith dead in the men’s room of a school with a hundred kids all around? Could I tell her that following the shooting of Chaz Smith, her husband had shot and killed even more people and that because of him my lieutenant might lose his life?

  Could I tell her that some of the five bullets inside her husband’s body had probably come from my gun?

  Will Randall was alive, but he was on a ventilator and going into surgery. If he survived, he was looking at multiple charges of murder in the first degree.

  Even if he lived, life as he had known it was over. “Your husband shot a drug dealer tonight, Becky. The man’s name was Jimmy Lesko. Does the name mean anything to you?”

  “No,” she said. “Why did he shoot him? It must have been in self-defense.”

  An hour later, all I knew from Becky Randall was that she had no idea about her husband’s secret life and in fact denied that he had one. What was it Joe had said?

  Do we ever really know anyone?

  I’ll never forget that hour in the corridor outside the chapel. Kids skated on the linoleum hallway on socked feet, asked for quarters for the vending machines, fooled around with wheelchairs while Becky sat in shock, denial, disbelief.

  “Will is a wonderful, decent man,” Becky told me. “What’s going to happen if my husband dies?”

  Chapter 101

  The TV was on in the waiting room.

  Jason Blayney was on the screen, standing outside Metropolitan Hospital in a smart jacket and tie, telling the network news what had gone down on Haight Street.

  He looked and sounded authoritative, as if he knew what he was talking about. But Blayney was doing what he always did. He didn’t know what happened, so he made up the facts.

  As Blayney told it, the cops had come onto Haight Street and started firing.

  “William Randall, a ten-year veteran in Vice, was pursuing a drug dealer named Jimmy Lesko,” Blayney said. “Lesko was a small-time drug dealer, and according to witnesses, Lesko was unarmed. Randall fired at Lesko without provocation, kept firing until Lesko was dead.

  “Homicide detectives were alerted to the shooting and tore onto Haight Street, where they began firing at anything that moved.

  “Sergeant Randall was seriously wounded and is now in surgery at Metropolitan Hospital, fighting for his life.

  “Nicholas Kiernan, age sixty-two, was a resident of the Lower Haight, an innocent bystander who stepped outside his home and was caught in the cross fire,” Blayney went on. “Mr. Kiernan, father of three, died at the scene.

  “Two other police officers were shot in the blistering hail of gunfire. Lieutenant Jackson Brady, head of the Southern District Homicide Division, and Inspector Richard Conklin are in surgery right now, their lives hanging by threads.

  “This is a shameful night for the San Francisco Police Department, which can truly be described as the gang who couldn’t shoot straight.”

  It was a nasty story, the worst of Blayney. There was no mention of Randall’s being a bona fide rogue cop, no hint that the SFPD had warned Randall to drop his weapon, no indication that the police had fired on him only when he refused to drop his gun. And Blayney’s biased reporting was now flashing around the world as truth.

  I grabbed the remote control and turned off the set.

  Randall was still in surgery, and from what I’d been told, the odds were against his coming out of the OR alive. Brady was also fighting terrible odds. As he was being cut and stitched, a whole lot of prayers came his way from the waiting room.

  At around two in the morning, Cindy took Richie home to bed, and Claire let me walk her out to the parking lot. She made me promise to call her when Brady was out of surgery.

  After that, Yuki and I sat together surrounded by Homicide cops who had come to show support for Brady. Lieutenant Meile arrived in street clothes and apologized to me in front of a packed waiting room.

  “I’m
sorry for the things I said to you, Sergeant. And I’m sorry for a few things you didn’t hear me say. I’m a dumbass, but I believed in Will Randall’s innocence. He’d better not die before he tells me what the hell he was thinking. Damn him. I have to know.”

  Chapter 102

  I wasn’t thinking about Randall.

  I sat close to Yuki, thought about Brady, and revisited some pretty deep memories of the months I’d known him.

  The first time I saw Brady was his first day with Homicide. I’d noticed the hard-eyed, suntanned looker who was sitting in a folding chair at the back of the squad room.

  I got up and gave an update on a case I was working. It was a bad one: a madman had just shot a mother and her little kid and had left a cryptic message behind.

  I was almost nowhere on the case, but I presented what I had with confidence.

  When the meeting was over, Brady introduced himself, said he was transferring to our squad from Miami PD. Then he told me that what impressed him about my presentation was that I was sucking swamp water.

  His blunt assessment didn’t endear him to me, but days later, there was a standoff in front of the madman’s house. A bomb went off, a diversion, and the madman made it to his car. Brady stepped in front of the car and emptied his gun into the windshield in an attempt to bring the bad guy down.

  I had been impressed with his bravery.

  But I still didn’t like him.

  When Brady started dating Yuki, I was shocked and I was worried. Yuki’s a fighter, don’t get me wrong, but she’s got terrible judgment when it comes to men, and I couldn’t see her with a badass cop like Brady.

  I thought he would hurt her; I really did.

  Then I saw them together.

  I pictured them now at a lawn party, first tossing footballs, then Brady carrying Yuki around slung over his shoulder. He was sweet with her. And she made him laugh. They brought out the best in each other and that counted in his favor.

  I hadn’t forgotten that he was only legally separated from his wife, who still lived in the Sunshine State. I hadn’t forgotten that he was my superior officer or that I didn’t like his rough management style.

  And I certainly hadn’t forgotten that he’d accused Warren Jacobi of being Revenge. He was going to have to take that back for sure. I hoped to hell he lived to do it.

  I looked up when Dr. Boyd Miller came into the hallway outside the waiting room. He was thirty, bald, thin-lipped. He did not look warm and fuzzy. He did not look like he was bringing good news.

  “Is Mrs. Brady here?” he asked.

  “I’m his girlfriend,” Yuki said. “He’s with me.”

  “He’s my commanding officer,” I said. “I was on the scene when he was shot. What’s his condition?”

  I expected that Miller was going to say that he could speak only to Brady’s immediate family. I didn’t think either Yuki or I could handle that.

  “We successfully repaired the damage to his femoral artery,” he said. “His lung is going to be fine. He has two broken ribs and there’s not much we can do about that. He’s on his way to the ICU now. I’m optimistic,” Dr. Miller said. “But officially his condition is guarded.”

  “Can I see him?” Yuki asked. “I have to see him.”

  “Not yet. I’ll let you know when it’s okay.”

  It was just about five in the morning when Yuki was told she could look at Brady through the glass.

  When she came back to the waiting room, her expression was soft. She sat down next to me, squeezed my hand.

  “He’s going to be all right,” Yuki said. “My mom told me that he’s going to be fine. And she likes him now. She said, ‘Brady very good man.’”

  I nodded, said, “That’s great.”

  I had to accept that Yuki thought that her dead mother spoke to her. Maybe she did.

  “I think your mom is usually right,” I said.

  “Good, because she also said that you should go home now, Lindsay, and get some sleep.”

  Chapter 103

  Claire turned her car into the lot on Harriet Street, parked in the space with her name stenciled on the asphalt. It was after ten in the morning, the first time in a year that she’d been late for work.

  The reception room of the Medical Examiner’s Office was churning; the new girl with big brown eyes was at the desk juggling the constantly ringing phones. Messengers came and went. Cops milled around, waiting for bullets and other forensic material to take out to the lab.

  Claire waved at the receptionist, went through the glass door to her office, hung her coat and voluminous bag on a rack in the corner, and sat down at her desk.

  She was dialing Lindsay when the brown-eyed girl knocked on the door and opened it. She came toward Claire with a flat package in her hands.

  “This just came, Dr. Washburn. It’s marked urgent.”

  Claire took the package, looked at the return address. It was from Ann Perlmutter, the forensic anthropologist at UC Santa Cruz.

  Claire sliced open the package with a scalpel and found six disks, each in its own case. And there was a letter from Dr. Perlmutter.

  Sorry this took so long, Claire. Call me if you have questions. Ann

  Claire inserted one of the disks into her computer’s DVD drive. A picture of a woman appeared on the screen, so lifelike it could have been a photograph — but it was a computer-generated 3D facial reconstruction of one of the skulls from the Ellsworth compound case.

  This 3D-imaging technique was a kind of miracle, and Claire knew how much time, skill, and artistry had gone into creating this likeness.

  A 3D representation had been made of each skull by a laser scanner that utilized light, mirrors, and sensors to capture the image and generate a wire-frame matrix. Information from CT scans of living persons was added, and the sophisticated software program distorted reference points on the 3D skull to correspond with points on a reference CT scan, creating a facial shape for each skull.

  The six bare skulls that had been exhumed from the Ellsworth garden had faces now. These representations could not be 100 percent accurate — but they would be close.

  The face on Claire’s screen had been labeled JANE DOE EC 1. The woman had rounded eyes, a wide forehead, a small nose, and long, wavy hair.

  In real life, Jane Doe EC 1 had had a family, and soon, Claire hoped, she would have a name.

  Chapter 104

  Dr. Andrea Shaw came to the waiting room just before the sun came up. She was a small woman with a sweet expression and wavy silver hair.

  She said to Yuki, “Jackson is going to be okay. He’s asking for you.”

  Yuki’s face brightened. It was as if all the stars had come out at once and the sun and moon had done the tango together just for her.

  She hugged the doctor almost off her feet, then she hugged me, making tears jump out of my eyes.

  “Go to him. Go,” I said.

  A few hours and a change of clothes later, I was at my desk in the Homicide squad room. I would be subbing for Brady until he was back on the job. All the phone lines were ringing at once, but when I saw Claire’s name come up on the caller ID, I stabbed the button, didn’t wait for her to say hello.

  “Brady’s condition is stable,” I told her. “Randall is still critical. No change.”

  “Man, that’s great news about Brady. Listen, I’ve got something for you, girlfriend. I’ve got faces on those heads from the trophy garden.”

  The wind went right out of me.

  I blinked stupidly long enough for Claire to repeat herself, and then I got it. Ann Perlmutter had done the facial reconstructions. With faces, we might be able to ID the Ellsworth compound skulls.

  “Have you run the images through missing persons?”

  “There are six heads here, Lindsay. And I’ve got only one pair of eyes, one pair of hands.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Within an hour, Cindy, Yuki, Claire, and I each had at least one Jane Doe disk. Cindy was at home; Yuki worked
from her laptop inside Brady’s hospital room. Claire was downstairs at her desk, and I was at mine. The Women’s Murder Club was connected by a mission and our shared network.

  I booted up the disk and stared at Jane Doe EC 2 as she came on my screen. She was pretty, with short, dark hair, arched brows, and full lips. I pressed Next and saw that Dr. Perlmutter had provided variations on this depiction of my Jane Doe to account for the artistry and guesswork that had gone into creating the image.

  She’d made it easy for us.

  But matching virtual images to real people was still an enormous job with plenty of room for error.

  We ran the 3D images through NamUs, the Doe Network, the SF missing-persons databases, and the FBI criminal database. Matches came up.

  It was amazing, almost magical.

  Claire got the first hit: Jane Doe EC 1 was Lina Rupert from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Cindy’s match was to Margaret Shubert from Toronto. The other four victims appeared to be missing persons from Chicago, New York, Omaha, and Tokyo.

  We four shared the pictures in a Windows Cloud and chatted together in a dialogue box on the screen. Comparing notes took very little time. The victims were of all ages, the youngest only eighteen, the oldest forty-eight.

  The victims weren’t criminals, and none of them was local.

  Apart from their burial ground, what did these six women have in common? What had brought them together in a homemade boneyard in Pacific Heights?

  Chapter 105

  Yuki was sitting in the enormous chair in Brady’s hospital room. He had woken up for a moment, long enough to give her a lazy “Hiiii… Yu… ki.”

  He told her he was enjoying the drugs and then fell asleep again.

  The phone rang after that. It was a woman who said she was Jennifer Brady, Jackson’s wife.

  “Who is this?” she’d asked.