4th of July (2005)

by JAMES PATTERSON (with Maxine Paetro)

  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 126

  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 Distillery, 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.”

  Keith swung his head to the chief, to me, to the chief again. “I get what you’re doing,” he said.

  I ignored him, continuing to direct my remarks at the chief.

  “And I think you were right about Agnew,” I continued. “Now, there’s a guy with balls enough to knock off people at close range. Watch them squirm. Watch them die. And he has the brains to get away with it.”

  “Right. Him being connected and all,” said the chief, patting down the back of his hair. “It only makes sense.”

  “You shouldn’t be talking this way,” Keith muttered.

  I turned back to him with a questioning look.

  “Keith, you know Agnew,” I said. “What do you think? Is he our guy?”

  It was as if a timer had tripped and a bomb had detonated far underground. First there was a tremor, then a rumble, then everything broke loose.

  “Dennis Ag-new?” Keith spat. “That dick-for-brains freaking porno has-been. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him. And believe me, I’ve thought about it.”

  Keith clasped his hands together and brought them down hard on the tabletop, making the pens, the notepad, the soda cans jump.

  “Look. I’m a brighter bulb than you think, Lindsay. Killing those people was the easiest thing I ever did.”

  Chapter 130

  KEITH WORE THE SAME coldly furious expression he’d shown me when I’d put my gun to his neck. I didn’t know this Keith.

  But I needed to.

  “You’re totally wrong about me, both of you,” he said. “And even if you’re playing me, that’s fine. I’m sick of the whole deal. Nobody cares.”

  When Keith said “Nobody cares,” I sat back hard in my chair. The Cabot kids had spray-painted the same words on the wall where they’d killed their victims. And so had the killer of John Doe #24, ten years ago.

  “What do you mean, ‘Nobody cares’?”

  Keith fixed me with his hard blue eyes. “You’re the smart one, right? You figure it out.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Keith. I do care. And I’m really listening.”

  As the video camera recorded his confession, it was a cop’s dream come true. Keith gave it all up: the names, the dates, the minutiae only the killer could possibly know.

  He talked about using different knives, different belts, described every murder, including how he’d tricked Ben O’Malley.

  “Yeah, I clubbed him with a rock before cutting his throat. I threw the knife over the side of the road.”

  Keith laid out the details in an orderly fashion, like so many cards in a game of solitaire, and they were convincing enough to convict him many times over. But it was still hard for me to believe that he’d done these bloody crimes alone.

  “You killed Joe and Annemarie Sarducci by yourself? Without a fight? What are you, Spider-Man?”

  “You’re starting to catch on, Lindsay.” He lurched forward in his seat, scraping the chair against the floor, sticking his face too close to mine.

  “I charmed them into submission,” he said. “And you better believe it. I worked alone. Spin that for the DA. Yeah, I’m Spider-Man.”

  “But why? What did these people ever do to you?”

  Keith shook his head as if he pitied me. “You couldn’t understand, Lindsay.”

  “Try me.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m through talking.”

  And that was it. He ran his hands through his blond hair, guzzled down the last of his Classic Coke, and smiled pleasantly, as if he were taking a curtain call.

  I wanted to punch his face until he didn’t look so smug anymore. All those people slaughtered, and it made no sense at all.

  Why wouldn’t he say why he’d done it?

  Still, it was a great day for the good guys. Keith Howard was booked, printed, photographed, slapped back into cuffs, and taken to a holding cell pending his transport and arraignment in San Francisco.

  I stopped by Chief Stark’s office on my way out.

  “What’s wrong, Boxer? Where’s your party hat?”

  “It’s bothering me, Chief. He’s protecting other people, I’m sure of it.”

  “That’s your theory. Guess what? I believe the guy. He’s said he’s smarter than we think, and I’m gonna give him credit for being the big, bright bulb he claims to be.”

  I gave the chief a tired smile.

  “Shit, Boxer. He confessed. Be happy. This goose is cooked. Let me be the first to congratulate you, Lieutenant. Great catch. Great interview. It’s over now. Thank God, it’s finally over.”

  Chapter 131

  THE PHONE RANG, YANKING me out of a sleep so deep, I thought I was in Kansas. I fumbled around in the dark for the receiver.

  “Who is this?” I croaked.

  “It’s me,
Lindsay. Sorry to call so early.”

  “Joe.” I pulled the clock toward me; it read 5:15 in bright red numbers. I felt a jolt of alarm. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  “Everything’s fine with me,” he said, his voice calm, warming, sexy. “There’s a crowd outside your house, though.”