Scott Free

by James Patterson

  Paul climbed to his feet and looked around the room.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked.

  But John was already crossing to the door where they had entered the room. He tried to open it, but the door wouldn’t budge. He pressed his face to the small square window.

  “Something fell in front of the door,” he said. “It’s blocked.”

  “Does anyone smell smoke?” Susan asked.

  It took a second, but Paul noticed it, too. The acrid stench sneaking into the air.

  “Where the hell is Kat?” Hanlon asked.

  Chapter 37

  Kat Taylor

  KAT OPENED HER purse and removed the slim leather wallet. She undid the button holding it closed, revealing the picture of her son, Billy. His black hair perfectly combed, eating an ice pop, so his mouth and lips were rimmed in cherry red. It was from the annual block party. A candid shot taken by her neighbor, slipped into the mailbox a few days after the event.

  Looking at it now, though, she couldn’t remember the picnic. Only that terrible morning when she thought Billy was watching television while she made breakfast, but instead had decided he wanted to go for a swim in the pool. Even though he wasn’t allowed to go in by himself.

  He slipped out and closed the door behind him, so she never heard him calling for help, thrashing to keep himself above water. Instead she found him floating face down, and his lips were already blue by the time she pulled him out.

  Her vision grew blurry with tears and she shivered, running her finger down the picture.

  “I’m so sorry, Billy,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t paying attention.”

  She knew she should call the police, but what then? They’d take Billy to a lab and poke and prod him and put him in the deep, dark ground. And Billy was so afraid of the dark. That wasn’t where he was supposed to be. So she dressed him and brought him to his favorite playground.

  It hurt like hell to leave him there, and she hoped that’s where his soul would stay. The police would show up eventually, yes, but maybe he’d be tethered to that playground.

  It was a comforting thought.

  But it wasn’t long before she realized her son would be alone. It would be a very long time before all his friends caught up with him in heaven.

  And Billy’s father had gone in the opposite direction. Kat was sure of that.

  The thought ate at her. Billy on a swing by himself, with no one to push. Climbing up the slide and coming down with no one to cheer him on. She thought of killing herself so she could join him, but realized that first he would need some friends his own age.

  Jian, Mei, and John Junior had been good friends of Billy in day care. And Kat could see their families were falling apart. Susan was terrified of John. Daisy was drifting away from Paul. The four of them such a mess, and wouldn’t their children’s lives be so much better on an eternal playground, free from worry and pain?

  It wasn’t easy, holding Mei and John Junior under the water in her tub. And dragging them to different playgrounds—Kat knew going to the same one would be a sure way of getting caught. She was sure they’d find each other. Staten Island was an island, after all.

  She was preparing to send Jian to them when Hanlon came sniffing around.

  Kat was indifferent about spending the rest of her life in jail—she was going to kill herself at the first opportunity anyway—but she didn’t want to leave the job undone. Mei, surely, would want her brother to join them.

  So she went with Hanlon to Scott’s apartment, and she planted—then “found”—the pictures there. They’d been easy enough to get. It took less than a half-hour of clicking around on Facebook, where private grief was now a matter of public record. She needed more time, and she knew Scott would be the perfect suspect. He had no friends or family, he looked a little creepy, and he had odd fascinations with children and cartoons.

  It was easy enough, making Hanlon think it was his idea for her to break into Scott’s apartment. She didn’t anticipate they’d be caught, so when John attacked Scott outside court, she knew the best thing to do next was to turn their anger onto Scott.

  Everyone was in such desperate need for an outlet, it blinded them and kept them from thinking critically. Paul was a problem, but even he fell in line. Honestly, with so many moving parts, she was a little surprised that it worked.

  Until it didn’t.

  So while they argued with each other, she sneaked out, toppled some industrial shelving in front of the door to block their exit, and lit a fire. It wasn’t elegant, but it would give her enough time to finish with Jian. She would follow right after him.

  She turned the key in the ignition, and the Zhous’ van roared to life. She yanked the car into drive and maneuvered it away from the warehouse and toward the road.

  “All your friends will be with you soon, Billy,” Kat said, hoping her son could hear her.

  Chapter 38

  Thomas Scott

  THOMAS HUFFED, TRYING to get the water out of his nose. He could smell the smoke, too, growing thicker as the seconds passed. He looked around the room from his vantage point, on the platform over the tank.

  John Junior’s dad was throwing his shoulder into the door. Hanlon ran to help him. Mei’s mom was checking on Mei’s dad, who was sitting on the staircase, while John Junior’s mom was helping Amato up, getting him free from the zip ties.

  Everyone was talking at once, words stumbling over each other, but Thomas could make out one phrase from Hanlon, as he and John Junior’s dad took turns throwing themselves into the door.

  “It was her,” he said.

  The “her” was Billy’s mom. She’d disappeared, and someone had set them up to die. He had no idea why, and he didn’t even care. He was just glad to be out of the water.

  “Will someone just call the police or the fire department?” John Junior’s mom yelled.

  “We can’t do that,” Mei’s mom yelled back. “All the cell phones are in the car. Another brilliant idea from Hanlon.”

  “Hey, I had no idea something like this was going to happen,” Hanlon said.

  “Well, maybe you should have been paying more attention,” John Junior’s dad said, before throwing himself into the door again, wincing as it barely budged.

  Thomas reached for his phone, before realizing it was gone; Hanlon had taken it from him back at Amato’s office, wiped it down, and tossed it in the dumpster.

  The smoke was getting thicker. Thomas could feel it in his lungs now. He coughed once, twice. Looked around. No one was paying attention to him anymore.

  He rolled onto his side, and then his stomach, to push himself up, see if he could help with the door, when he noticed something built into the wall under the platform. He crawled to the edge and peeked over and saw an old vent. It looked just about person-sized, and where it led had to be better than here.

  His body ached, but he managed to roll onto the floor and duck-walk under the platform to the vent. It didn’t take too much effort to wrench free. After he did, he was glad his pants were wet, so he was able to wipe away the black streaks of dirt the vent left behind on his palms.

  He stepped out from under the staircase, the room now hazy. Amato and John Junior’s mom were coughing hard. John Junior’s dad was on his knees, panting. Hanlon was trying to get him back up. Mei’s dad, meanwhile, was screaming “Jian!” and kicking the door.

  Thomas coughed, said, “Hey.”

  Paul kept kicking, kept screaming.

  “Hey!” Thomas yelled.

  Everyone turned and looked at him, like they’d forgotten he was there.

  “I found a way out,” he said.

  He ducked under the staircase and got to the mouth of the vent. It was black beyond the opening, with nothing to light the way. No telling what kind of terrible things were in there. Living things. Dead things. Filthy things. And with his clothes wet like this he’d be like a mop, picking everything up along the way.

 
He shuddered, took a deep breath, and started crawling.

  Luckily, the trip didn’t last long, and as he moved toward a square of gray light, the smoke seemed to lessen. He came up on another vent. He put his shoulder into it and it collapsed forward, rattling to the floor.

  Thomas climbed into the main room of the warehouse, near where they had come in. Flames were licking up the walls, up into the wooden rafters. His chest and knees were nearly black. He wiped his hands off the best he could and tried not to think about it as he felt something pushing him.

  Thomas moved forward, and John Junior’s mom was behind him, climbing out of the vent.

  She stood up, stared at him for a moment, and said, “We were wrong.”

  Thomas looked down and saw that Daisy was next, with someone behind her.

  “I just…” Susan said.

  Thomas smiled. Tried to make it seem nice, even though he didn’t have a very nice smile. “Let’s get out of here first.”

  They ran through the door, the others behind them. The sky was draped in a heavy blanket of dark clouds, but the air was clean. Thomas took deep, greedy breaths of oxygen. He fell to his hands and knees, happy to be alive. He leaned back and felt raindrops smacking his face.

  Mei’s dad dashed past him, to Hanlon’s car, and screamed out, kicking the tire, pounding his fist on the hood. Thomas crawled a few feet forward to get a better look, to see what the problem was.

  The tire was flat, and there was a screwdriver sticking out of the side.

  Chapter 39

  Daisy Zhou

  KAT, OF ALL people! Daisy’s stomach twisted into a knot. She had told Kat so many intimate things. Living without her daughter while still caring for her son. The way she felt about her husband. That one night she spent too long looking at bottles of vodka and sleeping pills, sitting next to each other on the counter.

  She had trusted Kat.

  And the entire time, Kat had been the one who’d killed her daughter.

  It made her dizzy to think about it, so she pushed the thought away and focused on the task at hand. Everyone had made it out and was standing around the car. The warehouse was spitting black smoke from the windows, though how long it would take to attract the attention of the FDNY, she had no idea. This far back, it might be mistaken for something coming off a refinery in New Jersey.

  Paul had climbed into the car, opening and throwing things into the back seat.

  “There has to be a radio, something,” he said. “She might be going after my son.”

  “There’s not, just the scanner,” Hanlon said. “It doesn’t do outgoing.”

  Daisy pointed to Hanlon. “Tire, now.”

  He nodded and ran to the back, throwing open the trunk. John and Scott rushed over to help. The two of them reached the trunk at the same time, and for a moment, paused, staring at each other.

  Scott reached into the trunk and came out with the tire iron gripped in his meaty hand. Daisy thought he might swing it at John, who seemed to think the same thing, and took a few steps back.

  “Get the jack,” Scott said, turning to the flat tire and getting to work, loosening the nuts.

  The tire was changed with the speed of a NASCAR pit crew. John pumping the jack, Scott working the tire iron, Hanlon swapping the bad tire for the donut. Still, it felt like a million years. Daisy knew every second that passed was a second Kat got closer to her son.

  The job done, everyone threw their tools to the ground and piled into the car. Hanlon and Paul in the front, John and Susan and Daisy in the back. Amato and Scott climbed into the open trunk to hitch a ride, and the car began maneuvering the bumpy, uneven road.

  They neared Arthur Kill Road and the car slowed. Amato and Scott jumped off. John and Susan climbed out, too.

  “We’ll find a phone or flag down a car and call the police,” John said, leading Susan away, toward a cluster of buildings farther down the road.

  Daisy rolled down the window and looked at Amato and Scott. The two of them stood there, still bloodied, sticking out like sore thumbs.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  It made her feel stupid saying it. That such a common, five-letter word could possibly undo everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. But with her son’s life hanging in the balance, it would have to do.

  Hanlon slammed his foot on the gas, and the car leapt onto the road.

  As they made their way to the overpass that would lead over the expressway, Daisy said, “Maybe we should stop and try to call someone, too.”

  “We need to trust that John and Susan will find a phone,” Paul said.

  “And what about Thomas and the lawyer?”

  She was met with silence from the front. Just the sound of the tires on the road and the rain, growing in intensity, smacking on the windshield.

  They’d been discovered. They’d plotted to kill both men. Nearly accomplished it, in the case of Scott. And while Paul had saved him, that would only go so far. She couldn’t help but think of her husband’s proposal: That he would take the fall, try to make it so she would stay out of prison.

  She didn’t want to leave him, but she couldn’t leave Jian, either. They didn’t have any other family. There was no one to take him.

  He’d be alone. She couldn’t think of anything in this world worse than a child left alone.

  Hanlon whipped the car around, leaning on the horn, running red lights. The roadway was getting slick and there were moments where it almost felt like the tires were coming off the surface.

  They weren’t even that far from the house. Another couple of minutes, tops. Less, with the way Hanlon was driving. For once, the usually brutal Staten Island traffic wasn’t too bad.

  Daisy pressed her hands over her chest, closed her eyes, breathed in deep, tried to calm herself.

  And that’s when she was thrown against the side of the car.

  There was an explosion of glass and metal. Something cut her scalp, pain screaming through her skull. She opened her eyes, only for them to fill with blood as they spun in a circle and the car twisted around her.

  Chapter 40

  Staten Island Register Twitter account

  -BREAKING TRAFFIC ALERT, Eltingville: Accident w/multiple injuries, caused by car speeding @ Katan & Wainwright. Advise detour via Richmond.

  Chapter 41

  Kat Taylor

  KAT CROSSED THE porch and knocked on the door. There was no sound from inside. She checked behind her and found the street to be quiet. It was just before 5 p.m., so a lot of people weren’t home from work yet, and anyone home would have been sent inside by the rain.

  She knocked again and rang the doorbell.

  There was a sound of a lock unclasping, and the door, chained to the jamb, opened a few inches. She couldn’t really make out who was behind it—just a brush of blond hair and a big blue eye with thick eyelashes. It was a young woman’s voice that asked, “Yes?”

  “Hi, I’m a friend of Daisy and Paul,” she said. “They asked me to come over and relieve you. They got held up.”

  The blue eye stared at her for a couple of seconds, not moving, not blinking, and Kat wondered if maybe she had said the wrong thing, or if the girl was too suspicious to let her in.

  The door closed, there was a sound of metal sliding on metal, and the door swung open. Kat was faced with a petite, perky blond girl with curly hair. “Hi, I recognize you. Why don’t you come in?”

  Kat smiled, happy she didn’t have to work any harder to get inside. The others had taken so much planning, luring the kids away, convincing them that she was allowed to give them a bath.

  The girl would be a problem, but one she could solve for good when she was finished with Jian. Right now she just needed to buy a little time.

  The whole thing was a little more slapdash than she would like, but at least there was a playground just down the street.

  She stepped over the threshold, closed the door behind her, and kicked off her muddy shoes, not wanting t
o dirty the house. She asked, “Where’s Jian?”

  “He’s upstairs napping,” the girl said. “Actually, this would be a good time to see if he’s awake. Want to come up with me?”

  “That’d be great,” Kat said. “You lead the way.”

  The girl turned. Just inside the entry to the house was a table holding a glass vase full of flowers. Kat picked it up and swung it at the girl’s head as hard as she could.

  Chapter 42

  John Kennelly

  JOHN HATED RUNNING. Ever since John Junior died, he’d been eating more, drinking more, packing on extra pounds. Suddenly he was cutting a new notch at the very end of his belt and finding some of his dress shirts didn’t exactly fit anymore. Susan had been gently goading him into getting back to the gym, or at least thinking more about what he ate.

  And he had ignored her.

  Now he wished he hadn’t. His chest was constricted and he was already sweating, despite the cool rain that was now coming down harder. He glanced back and saw that Susan was keeping up as they reached the end of the road, a big gray building looming on the other side.

  It looked abandoned, but as they turned the corner they found an open garage door and a red sports car inside. A young skinny guy in coveralls, listening to a large pair of headphones, was doing something to the engine with a wrench. John called out, “Hey, you, hey!”

  The man didn’t even look over. The music must be too loud. John swore and ran harder, pumping his legs, muscles burning. The man finally noticed him and pulled off his headphones. John reached him and spoke between gasps. “I need…to use…your phone.”

  “Whoa, what’s going on?” the man said.

  “If I don’t use your phone right now, someone is going to die.”

  The man’s eyes went wide and he pointed to the wall, to an ancient plastic phone with a curly cord that probably had started out white and had turned yellow with age. “Okay okay, right there. No long distance.”