Scott Free

by James Patterson

  No movies for adults. Nothing that wasn’t animated.

  And Scott didn’t have any kids.

  A chill traveled up John’s spine. The apartment suddenly took on a sinister tone. What kind of man was so devoted to cleanliness and kids’ movies? What kind of weird combination was that?

  At the kitchen counter, he eyed the knife block. Grasped the black handles, sliding the knives out one by one, wondering which was sharpest. He pulled out the biggest and touched his thumb to it. He felt a tiny jolt of pain and a thin red sliver appeared on his skin. He put the knife back and stuck his finger into his mouth.

  No, he thought. No knife. He’d do it with his hands.

  He moved to the bathroom. The room glowed orange from a small nightlight. The room smelled like bleach. There was a toothbrush in a holder, a tube of toothpaste, and a bar of soap in a soapdish, all placed neatly on the counter. John stepped inside and sat on the closed toilet, his knee twinging from when he’d slammed it into the pavement earlier.

  It was so stupid to attack Scott in public like that, but he couldn’t help himself. The second he saw Scott, the whole world went red.

  At least here he’d have some privacy. Nobody to pull him off.

  More important than that, he’d have time. All the time he wanted.

  In an hour, he was supposed to be at the Friends of Compassion meeting, in the basement of St. Francis Church, down the block from his house. He was supposed to take comfort in the support group for parents who had lost young children. He was supposed to sit and drink bad coffee and listen to parents who were completely lost, unsure of what to do with themselves in the face of such cataclysmic loss.

  John wouldn’t be attending. He wasn’t lost. He knew what he wanted. What he needed.

  He moved the shower curtain aside. There wasn’t a hint of mold or mildew. The tub looked brand new. He ran his hand across it and found the surface was smooth and cold.

  He wondered if that was where John Junior died.

  Drowned in the tub, struggling to breathe, and that son of a bitch holding him down under the water until the life was gone from the most perfect thing John had ever made.

  He was breathing faster, his vision blurring. He could never tell which memory was going to smack into the side of his head like a fist. They just came at random. This one was from the Staten Island Ferry. Eight months ago? It was a clear spring day, and they were headed to their first Yankees game.

  “Just the boys!” John Junior proclaimed for days, marching around the house in his brand-new Yankees cap. It was a few sizes too big and came down over his ears. John wanted it to be something John Junior could wear for the rest of his life. It would fit one day.

  The boy loved the hat. He wouldn’t take it off, not even when he got into bed.

  When they got on the boat, John sat his son on the rail. They watched as the boat approached the Manhattan skyline, the buildings sparkling in the sunlight. John had taken that boat five days a week for years, to his brokerage firm on Vesey Street. That day, seeing it through his son’s eyes, the wonder and the excitement, it was like seeing the majesty and grandeur of the city for the first time.

  John reached up and adjusted the cap on his head. It was a little too small for him, but he hated to take it off. When he wore it, he felt like he could live inside that memory. And that memory was preferable to this hollow, hateful reality.

  It was his fault. All his fault. He dropped John Junior off at school one morning, and somehow the boy went missing between the front door and his first activity of the day. No one noticed for four hours. After getting the call and chewing out the administrators for their foolish lack of responsibility, John combed the neighborhood around the school, thinking the boy had wandered off—John Junior had a habit of wandering.

  He wouldn’t allow himself to let in that primal fear, the fear every parent has. Refusing to believe that the worst could have happened.

  And then the worst did happen.

  A jogger found John Junior in Hamilton Park. Laid out on a slide, his clothes damp, arms folded across his chest. The third victim of the Playground Killer.

  No. The third victim of Scott. It was Scott who did this.

  John slipped off the toilet and folded over the lip of the tub, running his hands across the bottom of it, wishing with everything he had to be struck dead in that moment, if it could somehow bring back his son.

  He’d lived a good life. Long enough. He’d trade it in, trade everything in, to give John Junior a second chance.

  A pair of hands ran over his shoulders, and he felt Susan kneeling behind him, wrapping her arms around his stomach. Her long blond hair tickled the back of his neck as she pressed herself against him.

  “We need to go,” she said. “We shouldn’t be here.”

  John sniffled and cleared his throat. “No.”

  “Do you really think he’s coming back?”

  “He has to come back eventually.”

  “And what if he’s with someone?” Susan asked, her voice gentle. “You’re not thinking this through, John.”

  “Damnit!” John slammed his fist on the lip of the tub. A jolt of pain shot through his arm and he cried out, cradling the fist in his stomach. The pain broke down the wall he’d been building, and he cried so hard he shook.

  Susan hugged him tighter, but she also seemed to be pulling him up and away.

  After a few moments, John was able to compose himself.

  “It’s not right, Susan,” he said. “He was five. He had a whole life. And that monster gets to go on? I won’t let it.” He felt tears rising to his eyes again. “I can’t let that be, Susan. I can’t. I won’t live in a world where something like that can happen.”

  “John—” Susan said, running her hand through his hair.

  She placed her hands on his cheeks and turned him around so he was facing her. She pressed her face to his, and he felt tears on her face, mixing with his. They sat there like that, holding each other. John had no idea how long. After a little while she stood and pulled him up. He felt like a puppet. The tension gone from his limbs, his chest wooden and empty. It was dark outside now, and they moved toward the front of the apartment.

  Maybe he would attend that Friends of Compassion meeting after all. It was probably better than what he planned to do now: Go home and drink whiskey until the bottle was empty or he passed out. The only way he was able to sleep through the night anymore.

  When they were within ten feet of the door, the knob jiggled.

  John and Susan stopped and watched the door crack. John set his feet and put his arm across Susan, herding her behind him.

  “John, think about this,” Susan said.

  “I have thought about it.”

  His heart raced. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. This was his chance to bring some order back to the universe. It was the most excited and happy he had been in weeks.

  The door swung open.

  The figure in the doorway was backlit by the harsh lights in the hallway. But immediately John knew something was off. Scott was tall and lean, built for labor. This person was shorter and stockier. Older. Definitely not Scott.

  “I thought I might find you here,” the figure said.

  And then John recognized the voice, along with the gray curly hair and the thin mustache.

  Detective Rex Hanlon.

  The man whose idiotic mistake freed his son’s killer.

  John found that the inferno of anger raging in his chest didn’t discriminate. A target was a target. He screamed and launched himself at Hanlon.

  Chapter 4

  Thomas Scott

  THOMAS STOOD IN line behind a woman in impossibly tight jeans, chunky green heels, and a sheer white tank top. A leopard-print bra peeked out from underneath. With long fingernails, she peeled twenty-dollar bills off a thick roll, placing them, one at a time, in the slot at the bottom of the scratched glass partition that separated the clerk from the rest of the lobby.


  Actually, “lobby” was too strong a word. It was a small room with two small chairs, a couple of cracked and faded magazines piled on a small coffee table.

  The clerk, a scruffy man in his forties, wore an indifferent expression as he watched the small pile of money grow. Once the woman was done, he put a key hanging from a diamond-shaped piece of plastic into the slot.

  The woman turned, her lips a deep brown, the corners of her eyes pointed into cat’s eyes with liner and mascara. She winked at Thomas and said, “Room 4 if you get bored later, tough guy.”

  Thomas didn’t acknowledge her. Didn’t even look her way, lest it be mistaken for some level of interest. The thought that he could just go over like nothing and just pay for it? He had a hard enough time talking to women as it was. That was somehow much scarier.

  He didn’t want to think about it. He had other things to worry about.

  Like staying alive.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about that cop who threatened him. And the look on the face of John Junior’s dad.

  He thought about Amato’s parting words, too. What the young lawyer said when the car dropped him off at the Staten Island Express Suites, a run-down motel off the expressway, not too far south of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

  “I’m sorry to do this,” Amato said. “At a bigger hotel, you’re going to get recognized. Place like this, nobody makes eye contact. That’s going to help right now, because you need to be anonymous. Do you understand?”

  Thomas didn’t, not really. He had already planned his perfect night: ordering in Chinese food—sesame chicken and a wonton soup with extra wontons. He’d eat while marathon-watching the Toy Story movies. His favorite meal and his favorite movies, to erase the stress and horror of the last week.

  But Amato seemed to know what he was doing—Thomas wasn’t in jail anymore, after all—so he figured it was best to listen. Given how many people knew his address, it probably wasn’t safe.

  At least Amato was willing to pay. He handed Thomas a stack of bills and said, “Take a shower, get some rest. Watch some TV and order in. I’ll show up in two days with some fresh clothes and we’ll figure out the next steps, okay?”

  “Why not tomorrow?” Thomas asked.

  “There’s a lot of work still to be done. Just think of it like a little vacation. It’s rare that a man gets two days with nothing to worry about. Try to enjoy it.”

  “Okay,” said Thomas, accepting the money, still feeling like he was being dumped on the side of the road. Which, essentially, he was.

  There wasn’t much to enjoy about this.

  As he approached the clerk, he thought about the pile of money in his pocket, and the cheapness of the rooms, and the fact that he was hungry. He didn’t want to go looking for an ATM, so he figured it would be better to just pay for the room on his credit card, hold onto the cash for now. He slid his card through the slot.

  The clerk took it and stared at the name for a few seconds before he jabbed at his keyboard. If he recognized Thomas, he didn’t betray it. He behaved with the same level of indifference as he had toward the woman before Thomas.

  “Can I get a room far away from the woman that came in before me?” Thomas asked.

  The clerk, who was reaching for a key hung up on the pegs on the wall, shrugged and moved his arm, reaching for another one—room 12.

  Thomas took the key, nodded to the clerk, and made his way outside and down the sidewalk, circling the parking lot. His room was the last one on the far end.

  The room was dark and musty inside, with an ancient smell of cigarette smoke permeating the carpet and blinds. He turned on the light next to the door and did a quick inventory. There was a small dresser with a television on it. Not even a flat-screen, just a chunky old tube television.

  There was one bed that sagged in the middle, with a floral spread that reminded him a little of his grandmother’s couch. The wallpaper, peeling in the corners, matched the bedspread. Inside the bathroom, there was a shower and a toilet and a window. The sink was outside the bathroom door, in the closet area.

  It was not a nice room.

  And it certainly wasn’t clean.

  There were no visible bugs or vermin. That much he could count as a victory. The first thing he did was take a big wad of toilet paper, soak it, and wipe down the top of the dresser and the nightstand and the toilet. Then he took a dry wad and followed the same path.

  It wasn’t much, but it would do.

  Then he sat on the corner of the bed and tried not to think about the kinds of things these rooms were typically used for. He really hoped the sheets were laundered between guests.

  The walls seemed to be closing in on him. Even though he was free to walk outside, even though he could stand up and spread his arms and not touch the walls, he suddenly felt like he was back in his cell on Rikers.

  Trapped, alone, and everyone outside these four walls wanting to kill him.

  What he needed was a drink. He didn’t usually drink, but isn’t that what people turned to, in situations like this? Hopefully it would dull him enough so he’d be able to get through the night without tossing and turning too much.

  Without thinking about the children.

  Their soft, sweet faces, and the life that had been drowned out of them. The way they looked after they were dead, placid and serene.…

  When he closed his eyes, he saw their faces. Didn’t matter the time of day. Didn’t matter the circumstance. It’s what he saw. They haunted him, and sometimes he wondered if they would ever go away.

  He wondered if there was a bar nearby. A liquor store. Something.

  First things first: He needed a shower. A real shower, in private, not in a room full of other men.

  He stripped his clothes off, hanging up the suit jacket Amato had gotten for him, balling up his socks and placing them into his dress shoes. The rest he neatly folded and placed on the edge of the bed. Then he stepped into the bathroom and turned on the shower, letting the weak stream of water get as hot as possible.

  And like he did every time, he held his breath, counted to five, and climbed in, careful to keep the spray out of his face, getting nervous even at the thought of feeling water enter his nose.

  Chapter 5

  Rex Hanlon

  HANLON COULDN’T SIDESTEP; the hallway was too narrow. John Kennelly was a big man, which made him dangerous when he was in a good mood. And now he was furious.

  The way Hanlon figured it, he probably deserved what happened next.

  He braced for the impact when he felt something brush past him. Kat Taylor, swimming in her oversized white sweater, black hair pulled into a tight ponytail, stepped in front of him, blocking John’s path.

  She was half the size of John, and yet stood between the two without fear. Probably because she knew what would happen next: John stopped, almost falling forward from his momentum, not wanting to hurt her.

  That didn’t stop him from trying to get to Hanlon. He tried to step around her but she kept moving to block his path.

  Hanlon was relieved that he’d brought Kat. After having her break into the apartment, he thought it might be best not to involve her with anything else. But she raised the issue. She said they needed to do something about Scott—and that she would do whatever she could to help.

  Without her, this would have turned out very differently.

  And probably much bloodier.

  “Everyone, please, just stop,” Hanlon said, flicking on the wall switch. The blast of light made everyone squint, and his hand instinctively moved toward his belt, so he could jerk it up into his jacket and come out with his gun.

  Not that he wanted to shoot John. But just in case. He’d seen people at their worst, at that point where unspeakable acts of violence became very speakable, and John was well past that point.

  John finally gave up trying to get past Kat and stuck a finger toward Hanlon.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Let’s go in the livi
ng room, Mr. Kennelly,” he said.

  “Don’t ‘Mr. Kennelly’ me. My son’s killer is free because of you.”

  “And I’m here to make that right.”

  That made John stop and listen. His eyes went wide, and he suddenly looked a lot less likely to tear out Hanlon’s throat with his bare hands. That was a good start.

  John retreated toward the living room, backing up slowly, not taking his eyes off Hanlon. He sat back onto the couch, perched on the edge of it. Susan sat down beside him, while Kat stood off against the wall, her arms folded.

  Kat already knew what was coming. They’d talked on the walk over from the shopping plaza a few blocks away where they parked. Now it was time to get the Kennellys on board. It would be a tough job, and an extra set of hands—strong hands especially—would make the whole thing easier.

  Hanlon could feel retirement hiding right around the corner, waiting to pounce. He wasn’t a young man anymore. There was strength in numbers.

  And this, to his mind, would help make things right. He knew how it felt, to see justice not get done. He knew the pain and the ache that lived in your soul because of it. And he didn’t want them to go through that. More than that, he wanted to close what he was pretty sure was going to be his final case.

  He’d spent years watching an imperfect system let guilty men go.

  And he was tired of it.

  So he got ready to talk. The whole ride there, Hanlon had been rehearsing. Talking to the empty, rainy roadway. Trying to figure out the right combination of words. By the time he parked, he was feeling pretty good. He’d developed an apology that respected the parents and their loss, and put his own actions in the appropriate light, with a promise to fix it.

  But standing in front of such blatant fury and sadness, John and Susan perched on the couch and shaking with anticipation, he forgot everything he came up with. So he decided to wing it.

  “I can never apologize enough for what happened,” he said. Turning to Kat, he added, “I never should have put you in that position. Asking you to sneak in here—that was wrong. It was an act of desperation. But I knew—I know. Thomas Scott is the man who did this, and goddamn any system that would leave kids in danger.”