Dead Heat: BookShots (Book Shots)

by James Patterson

‘I don’t think so. That wouldn’t explain why she then killed herself.’

  Behind the stricken body of the Chinese athlete, the sound of heavy boots begins to reverberate along the deserted corridor. The SWAT team is arriving.

  ‘Come on, then,’ Paz says. ‘What’s your theory?’

  I look down at the girl, and the madness of it all makes me angry. Two more athletes wasted in the prime of their lives.

  ‘She’s either a rifle star or a pistol star. She’s not both. My guess is rifle, judging by the job she did on Witt. So why is she carrying both guns?’

  Paz looks blankly at me.

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Because she came here to do a job. She’s come equipped. A rifle for him and a pistol for herself.’

  ‘A paid assassin?’

  ‘No, but I think she knew him. I think she knew Witt was going to kill himself. He put the gun to his head, after all. And when he couldn’t finish the job, she did it for him.’

  ‘And for herself,’ Paz says.

  I nod. The SWAT team bursts through an entrance adjacent to ours and fans out into the arena. I’ve already pulled my badge out from my pocket, and I hold it above my head. Paz does the same.

  ‘Too late,’ I call to the team of black-clad officers. ‘The woman up here shot the guy down there. We saw it happen. You fill in the form and I’ll sign it.’

  The corners of Paz’s mouth lift for a split second, and then she returns to her steely evaluation of the scene.

  ‘What makes you think she knew Witt?’

  I crouch down so that my eyes are at the same level as Zou Jaihui. Paz hears both of my knees crack on the way down, but she’s kind enough to ignore it.

  ‘This girl was careful how she killed herself,’ I tell Paz. ‘She shot herself through the mouth. She didn’t touch her features. She looks like she’s asleep.’

  Paz looks at the slack features of the slumped shooter.

  ‘Meaning what?’ Paz asks urgently as the SWAT team approaches.

  ‘Meaning she didn’t want to put her relatives through the pain of identifying a disfigured face.’

  ‘Same as most suicides, probably.’

  I smile for a moment.

  ‘Sure,’ I tell her. ‘But Zou did the same for Witt. Perfect aim. Perfect shot. Straight through the back of his throat, without a speck of blood on his face. She didn’t want to damage him any more than she wanted to damage herself. Makes me think she cared about him.’

  ‘She cared about him? Carvalho, the back of his skull is missing.’

  ‘Yeah, but she never saw that, did she? The simplest job would have been three rifle shots, dead centre. She’d have taken out everything from the neck up. But she didn’t do that. She went to the trouble of aiming through his mouth with a single shot. Maybe she didn’t want to see him broken. My guess is: whatever was driving Oliver Witt crazy, I’ll bet you that Zou Jaihui knew all about it.’

  CHAPTER 13

  THREE PARAMEDICS RUSH towards us as we head wearily out of the arena. They’re moving fast, pumped with adrenalin.

  ‘No rush,’ I tell them.

  As we walk back through the exit, I flash back to the blonde woman who had been pushing past us as we arrived.

  ‘Yeah, I saw her,’ Paz says. ‘A coincidence?’

  I scowl.

  ‘We ruled out coincidence, remember?’

  Before Paz can apologise, her phone rings.

  ‘Meyer’s bloods,’ she says when the call ends. ‘Nothing unusual, apart from the sleeping pills.’

  ‘Well, if he was hooked on an undetectable drug, I guess it wouldn’t show up. His body could be pumped full of something and we wouldn’t know.’

  We drive back across town without saying much, both of us turning over the shootings in our minds. I watch the mid-morning sun warming the waters of Guanabara Bay, the huge expanse of sea lapping against Rio’s golden shore. The sun warms the water, and the sand, and the concrete, and the lush vegetation, and finally the soaring rock of Sugarloaf, and Christ the Redeemer as he reaches out to gather in the day.

  I think about the split second when I shot Tim Gilmore. The confusion of the scene. I think about Meyer’s lonely apartment and his mottled blue skin. I think of Witt, angry and afraid like a wounded animal. And of Zou, and the terrible sound her body made when it slumped to the floor.

  ‘No more,’ I say to myself as much as to Paz. And I mean it.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m still pulling at threads and trying to make connections between the four athletes, as Paz drives the Fiat through the grey corrugated fortress gates to the police compound. The car park is surrounded by a ten-foot-high white brick wall, and the building itself is low-slung, with windows made of iron slats.

  ‘Our little Tent of Miracles,’ I say to Paz and she looks at me blankly. ‘Come on,’ I tell her. ‘Jorge Amado. Born 1912. Brazil’s greatest writer?’

  No reaction. I roll my eyes. This is our thing. I tell her about the great writers and our country’s history. She tells me about soap operas and reality TV.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she says suddenly. ‘Jorge Amado. 1912. Didn’t you go to school with him, Carvalho?’

  I swipe my badge across the security door and hear the heavy lock clunk open as Paz grins and pushes past me into the building. Inside there is a long, dreary corridor that aims for the heart of the station. It’s all walls and ceilings. No doors. No windows. No natural light. Nothing but stale air.

  ‘Find out what you can about Witt,’ I say as we walk. ‘If there’s anything in this drugs theory, then he was showing all the right signs. See if you can find a connection with Gilmore.’

  ‘Sure. Am I investigating him as a perpetrator or a victim?’

  Our feet thud on the worn carpet and the muffled sound bounces off the stark grey walls.

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘And Zou Jaihui?’

  That’s an even tougher call.

  ‘Perp for now. But let’s see what comes out in the wash. I can’t help thinking they’re all in something together.’

  We emerge into the main processing area. I call it ‘the bear pit’. In the centre are a handful of desks covered by a mountain of files. The files are surrounded by coffee cups and evidence bags, and every phone is ringing off the hook. Cases are being discussed, people are shouting. Criminals are being processed. We pause in the doorway, preparing, as if we’re about to jump from the back of a plane.

  ‘Find a connection, Paz.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And the blonde girl. Try to find out who she is.’

  Paz turns to look at me.

  ‘You think she knows something?’

  I take a long breath and think about it, trying to block out the bedlam.

  ‘Maybe.’

  Paz smiles her light-bulb smile.

  ‘What are you going to do, exactly?’

  I look across the room through the crowd and lock eyes with the Captain, who looks like he’s spoiling for a fight.

  ‘Me? I’m going to buy us some time.’

  CHAPTER 14

  IT IS NOT an easy thing to accept the authority of a younger man. However, the older I’ve become, the more I’ve had to get used to it. Silva is not a bad captain. But he is young. And right now he’s nervous.

  ‘You know this department is being watched?’ he says.

  He’s trying to stay level, and I guess I appreciate the effort.

  ‘Let me ask you a question,’ I say. ‘Would you rather I’d let Gilmore smash his javelin through the President?’

  ‘That doesn’t change the fact, Carvalho. You shot an athlete.’

  ‘Gilmore killed himself, when he took aim at the President. What I’m doing is trying to work out why.’

  ‘And in the meantime two more athletes are dead, and another one is barely alive.’

  ‘They’re connected.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, Carvalho,’ Silva tells me. ‘But what’s the deal? Why’s it happening? How man
y more are going to die?’

  ‘None.’

  Captain Silva scowls.

  ‘How do you know?’

  I stare through the glass. Paz has taken a seat at one of the desks in the pit, and I watch her as Silva closes his office door.

  ‘I need something solid,’ Silva says. ‘I trust you, Carvalho, but there is a wave of shit heading your way. My boss. His boss. They’re gunning for someone, and right now you’re in the cross-hairs.’

  ‘Nothing new.’

  ‘Help me to help you. What do you have?’

  I pull up a chair and fall gracelessly into it. I’m tired and I’m beyond trying to hide my years from my younger boss.

  ‘I don’t know, Marcelo. It might be drugs.’

  ‘It might be drugs?’

  ‘Maybe. Lucas Meyer’s psychologist is in town. He says Meyer was taking something that was making him paranoid.’

  ‘Was there anything in the tox report?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘But there wouldn’t be, according to the psychologist. He says it’s untraceable.’

  ‘You buy that?’

  ‘Well, they all showed signs of paranoia.’

  ‘And the Chinese girl?’

  I raise my palms.

  ‘Who knows? Paz is digging up some background.’

  Silva looks hard at me.

  ‘She needs to dig fast, understand?’

  ‘She’s digging right now.’

  Silva stays quiet for a moment.

  ‘What if it’s something else?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, terrorism, for example. The Mayor’s office is on the phone every hour asking about security.’

  ‘If Gilmore was a terrorist, he wasn’t a very good one. He was never going to succeed. If I hadn’t shot him, somebody else would have. Witt didn’t seem as if he actually wanted to shoot anyone. Zou shot Witt, and Meyer tried to kill himself. Do they sound like terrorists to you?’

  ‘Okay,’ Silva concedes. ‘So it’s drugs?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure, Marcelo. I’m working on it.’ The Captain sighs.

  ‘Well, as I say . . . work fast.’

  Paz is behind a stack of files and an ancient computer screen when I get back to the bear pit. She puts the phone down as I approach. She looks stressed.

  ‘Bad news?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The phone call. Was it bad news?’

  ‘Oh – no, it was Hunter Brown. Gilmore’s trainer. I told him what Jaffari said about performance-enhancing drugs, but Brown’s convinced Gilmore wasn’t taking anything.’

  ‘Well, as a coach he’s hardly going to want to admit something like that.’

  ‘True, but I pushed him hard. I put him out of the frame, asked him if Gilmore could have been taking something without him knowing. But he’s pretty sure Gilmore was clean.’

  I call Meyer’s coach while Paz talks to Oliver Witt’s team. We both get the same answer. No drugs. No clues. They’re sure their athletes were clean.

  ‘Do you believe them?’ Paz asks, once we’ve compared notes.

  I shrug.

  ‘Do you?’

  I call the Chinese camp, hoping to talk to Zou’s coach. The phone rings for ever, and when someone eventually answers, they’re no help at all. The woman at the Chinese camp claims she doesn’t know Zou’s coach. Claims she doesn’t know Zou. Her answers are slippery and evasive. She says she doesn’t understand many of my questions, and when she does understand, she doesn’t have any authority to answer. I don’t like her, and she makes it obvious that she doesn’t like me.

  ‘First job tomorrow,’ I tell Paz as I put the phone down, ‘let’s go and turn the Chinese camp upside down.’

  CHAPTER 15

  TWELVE HOURS LATER, Paz is sucking on another early-morning cigarette as her Fiat speeds towards the Olympic Village. From the corner of her mouth she says, ‘Do you know how much money China has invested in Brazil since we got the Olympic Games?’

  I can tell she is pleased with herself. This is the kind of information I usually push on her while we’re driving, but today she has the upper hand.

  ‘Fifty-three billion US dollars,’ she says. ‘Can you believe that?’

  I think about the miles of new tarmac and the soaring new buildings all over town.

  ‘I guess I can.’

  I’m distracted by three boys playing in the dust at the side of the road ahead. Just like I used to play when I was a kid.

  ‘There’s another two hundred and fifty billion dollars on the way. I saw it on the news. You know that’s why Zou is going to matter, right?’

  A football rolls into the road in front of us and one of the boys bolts after it. My foot slams at an imaginary brake pedal as Paz swerves, but the boy stays on the kerb and we sail on past.

  ‘They all matter, Paz.’

  She turns her head and looks at me longer than she should while she’s driving, before eventually turning back to the road. She blows out smoke and says, ‘I know, Carvalho.’

  When we arrive, the Chinese camp is a hive of activity. Six gleaming coaches are snaked along the kerb outside the highrise athletes’ block, and the entire Chinese team appears to be surrounding them. We spend five minutes asking after Zou’s coach. Eventually Paz finds her on the other side of the crowd. I force my way through and Paz introduces me.

  ‘This is Chao Ling.’

  The woman next to Paz is compact and hard; paper-thin skin stretches over her taut muscles and thin blue veins. She looks through me and around me all at once, her clear eyes suggesting a smart brain.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  She tilts her angular face to meet my question, and lingers on my features for a moment before she draws breath to answer.

  ‘We’re all moving out.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  I remember what Paz said in the car: That’s why Zou is going to matter.

  Chao says, ‘We’re moving out because you cannot protect us.’

  Her lips seal tightly together and she seems hostile. She studies me, waiting to see how I’ll respond to her accusation. The crowd continues to mill around us. Full retreat. Confused athletes ship holdalls and equipment into the yawning underbellies of the coaches.

  I don’t know whether I trust Chao. Maybe it’s true that her federation is protecting its athletes from harm. But from years of chasing criminals, I’ve learned that people who run away are usually guilty of something. Maybe Zou was doping. Maybe she wasn’t alone in the Chinese camp. That would be a reason for the team to run.

  ‘The Games are cursed,’ Chao says drily.

  I glance at Paz. That’s a theory we haven’t considered. I hold Chao Ling’s gaze a little longer, but she gives nothing away.

  ‘We need to see Zou Jaihui’s room.’

  Zou Jaihui’s apartment is eight floors up and is just like Gilmore’s place, and Meyer’s. The scene is becoming depressingly familiar. Paz moves around, noting anything that might be of interest, and ends up in the bathroom where she finds a clutch of medications, which she starts bagging up for testing. Chao Ling stares from the doorway as if we’re grave-robbers. The news is flickering from a tiny television on the wall in the open-plan kitchen. The screen is showing grainy mobile-phone coverage of Oliver Witt opening fire in the shooting arena. Paz emerges from the bathroom and watches the report over my shoulder.

  ‘You think she saw the first reports and headed down to the arena?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘She was there too soon. She must have been nearby.’

  Unwashed crockery waits by the sink and there’s a half-finished game of mah-jong on the kitchen table. Life, interrupted. Zou has turned the windowsill into a temporary bookshelf and, beyond the books, there’s a breathtaking view of the Olympic Village and the city beyond. I run a finger across the spines of the books. I’m three-quarters along when I stop. One of them is out of place. It’s written in Portuguese and the rest are
Chinese. Curious, I pull it out. It’s Paolo Coelho.

  ‘O Alquimista,’ Paz says.

  I leaf through it and a bookmark falls from its page. I pick it up and on it is a telephone number. My heart skips. It’s the same number that we found in Tim Gilmore’s apartment. On this paper, in black and white, is concrete proof that all of this is connected.

  CHAPTER 16

  ‘IT’S PROBABLY THEIR dealer’s number,’ Paz says as we walk back to the car. ‘Chao Ling was pretty quiet when you told her it matched the one in Gilmore’s apartment.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she knows anything. She’s probably scared to death.’

  I watch Paz trying to summon up sympathy for Chao, without much success, as we fight our way through the bottleneck of departing athletes. The mid-morning sun is hot on the side of my face and the feeling of bodies crushing in on us is unwelcome. I check my Casio: 11.30 a.m.

  ‘Fancy a Coke?’

  Paz nods, and we muscle through the rest of the crowd and duck into a brand-new cafeteria on the corner of the block. The walls are painted in the same calm magnolia as the athletes’ apartments, and the owner has compensated by scattering garish beanbags across the polished-concrete floor. The counter is dominated by a chrome coffee machine. I order the soda and head back to Paz. She’s settled in the corner of the room and has the good grace not to laugh as I slump into a lurid green beanbag that matches hers.

  ‘Some people will think this is Brazil,’ Paz says sadly. Her eyes scan the walls, which feature overblown prints of iconic Rio scenes. One is a sunrise over Sugarloaf, and another features bathers on the Copacabana sands. Between the prints, TV screens are showing the latest action from the Games.

  ‘What do you think about Zou now?’

  I shrug.

  ‘Well, she’s the connection that we didn’t have before. Gilmore led to Meyer, Meyer led to Witt, and Witt gave us Zou. The phone number connects the start and the end. It tells us that none of this is a coincidence.’

  Paz pulls out her mobile phone and hits redial. She’s been calling the number every couple of hours since we found it in Gilmore’s apartment. It rings out, as it has every time.

  ‘Well, that tells us nothing.’