12th of Never wmc-12

by James Patterson

  My husband is older than me, has been uncle to more than a dozen children, and has made life-and-death decisions for other people his entire professional life. But we loved Julie equally. We had to agree on the best course of treatment for our baby.

  We had to decide together what was best for her.

  Chapter 78

  CONKLIN TURNED AWAY from the dead man’s partially submerged body and saw Claire Washburn coming toward him in the watery gloom. Her scene kit was in hand and three techs trailed in her wake.

  “Hey, cowboy,” she called out. “Where’s your partner?”

  Conklin said, “You got me. She’s a mom first these days. I keep getting her voice mail. So what happened, Claire? You ducked out the back door and Dr. Morse doesn’t know you’re missing?”

  “If we didn’t have a ten-car smashup on the freeway, he’d be here instead of me. Hey, Charlie,” she said. “How goes it?”

  “What I love about this job is that it’s always different. Take a look at that.” Charlie Clapper pointed to the hole in the wall, six feet off the ground, water flowing through it as though it were a fire hose. He said, “Could be that the shot went wild, or could be it was deliberate, so that everyone’s mind would go to the six hundred million gallons of water coming into the tunnel, not to the vic or the shooter.”

  “I hope someone’s going to put their finger in the dike,” Claire said, looking at the stream. “Meanwhile, I need to get a look at the DB.”

  Conklin stood beside Claire as she photographed the body and the wound. He said, “I think I know this guy.”

  “You do? Tell me about it,” she said.

  “This English professor came in to see us a couple of weeks ago. He said he’s been having these dreams.”

  Claire moved around the body, got another angle on the head wound. “What do you mean, ‘dreams’? I’ve been a little out of the loop since Faye Farmer was boosted from my freezer.”

  “This professor had dreams of people being murdered. First time, it was a woman who liked to shop at his local grocery store. He described her down to her toenail polish. Bang, she takes a hit in the ice cream section. Just what he dreamed.”

  “So you’re saying this professor sees dead people? But he sees them when they’re alive?”

  “Something like that. So a few days after the supermarket hit, the professor comes in again. This time he’s dreamed that a female streetcar driver on the F line took one through the forehead. He described her as blond-haired. Even described advertising inside the car.”

  Claire said, “Richie, if you’re waiting to ID this man, let me put your mind at rest. I’m not turning the body in this swamp. Lyle, call Henry, tell him to hurry up with that stretcher.”

  “Just turn his face,” Conklin said. “I’ve got to see if this man is the professor.”

  “You’ll get your chance later. I’m gonna process this body by the book, and that means back at the office.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “If you must. So the blond-haired streetcar driver was murdered like the professor dreamed?”

  “Well, that’s the weird thing. The victim was a streetcar driver. She did take a shot right between the eyes, but she wasn’t blond. She was a black woman, had black hair.”

  “So he got it wrong, but at the same time not that wrong,” Claire said.

  “Correct,” said Conklin. “Then he came in yesterday with another dream; this time his dream takes place right here. He’s moving along the walkway, then he hears a gunshot. But he tells me he didn’t see anyone get hit. So I say, ‘This isn’t a murder case.’ And he said that if I wasn’t going to help him, he was going to come to the aquarium and see if he could pick the shooter out of the crowd before he pulled the trigger.”

  “Maybe he did see the shooter, huh? And that’s why he got shot.”

  “From behind?”

  “Well, maybe the killer recognized him.”

  Clapper trudged through the water, past the guys on a tall ladder and under the divers who were inside the tank, pressing something that looked like a piece of neoprene against the hole in the glass.

  Charlie held the butt of a gun with his gloved fingertips.

  He said, “Inspector, look at this. We found it at the far end of the walkway. It’s drenched, but I can still smell that it’s been fired. This is going to be our murder weapon.”

  “Excellent,” said Richie. “Good job.”

  “Unless, of course,” Clapper said with a wink, “I’m dreaming.”

  Chapter 79

  CONKLIN SPOKE TO Sheila, who was answering phones at the front desk at the medical examiner’s office.

  “I’m expecting Mackie Morales from Homicide. You can send her in when she gets here.”

  “If Dr. Washburn says okay.”

  “She already did.”

  And then Morales appeared at the glass door.

  “And here she is,” Conklin said.

  He opened the door for Morales, who was looking terrific in tight jeans, a man-tailored shirt, and a fitted camel-hair jacket. Her dark hair was loose and bouncy. She had a very fresh and inviting look about her. An all-American girl by way of Scotland and Mexico. She smelled good, too.

  “Did the victim turn out to be Professor Judd?” Morales asked Conklin. She stood close enough for Conklin to see down into her cleavage.

  “It’s him,” Conklin said. “If you believe this psychic stuff, then Perry Judd dreamed his own death. He didn’t see the shooter in his dream, because he was shot from behind.”

  “I’m on the fence about precognition,” Morales said. “But I believe that Professor Judd believed it.”

  “I’m open to other ideas,” Conklin said.

  He held the door to the autopsy suite for Morales, then followed her in. Claire was weighing Perry Judd’s liver when they got there.

  Once again, Conklin felt the cold shock of guilt. A day ago he had been sitting with Perry Judd upstairs in Interview 2. Now the little guy’s chest was open like a book and his guts were overlapping the rim of a stainless steel bowl.

  Morales said, “Dr. Washburn, I’ll run that bullet out to the lab for you. Save some time.”

  “It’s in the envelope on the table over there,” Claire said. “Thanks for helping out.”

  “Happy to do it,” said Morales. “See you later, Rich.”

  Morales left with the semimangled round Claire had taken out of Perry Judd’s skull. Claire said to Conklin, “The shooter was standing three to five feet behind the victim when he fired. There was no stippling around the wound.”

  “Can you confirm that the cause of death was the gunshot wound to the back of the head?”

  “Yes. I can say that—conditionally,” said Claire. “It’s still off the record until I finish here, in about six hours.”

  Conklin nodded at Claire, then went back upstairs to the squad room. He was transferring his notes to the case file when Charlie Clapper called him on his cell phone.

  “Here’s something that will make your ears stand up,” Clapper said. “The round fired from the gun matches the one Claire took from Perry Judd’s head, so we definitely have the murder weapon. And I’m not done yet.”

  “Go ahead,” Conklin said. Brady appeared out of nowhere and was standing over him, looking frayed and impatient.

  “The murder weapon is registered to the victim,” Clapper said.

  “What? You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes, I am sure. A hundred percent sure.”

  “Any prints? Please say yes.”

  “Wiped clean.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Conklin ended the call, said to the lieutenant, “Perry Judd was shot dead with his own gun. And no, he didn’t shoot himself in the back of the head. The killer was three to five feet behind him. But it still makes no sense. The professor dreams his own death without knowing it. And then someone shoots him with his own gun.

  “What do you make of this, boss?” Conklin said
. “Because it seems way off the hook to me.”

  “This just came from the aquarium,” Brady said, putting two disks down on Conklin’s desk. “Let’s go to the video.”

  Chapter 80

  CONKLIN SAT AT his computer, screening the surveillance footage from the aquarium.

  He was looking for the moment that the professor was shot, and it was hard to see very much. The surveillance camera was old and its focal point was indeterminate. The dark areas of the aquarium were lit with pin lights that burned hot spots in the video and made the unlit areas seem even darker.

  Conklin skimmed the footage, running it forward and back, looking for the professor. Then he saw him.

  Professor Judd was on the walkway, wearing a herring-bone jacket and khakis—the same outfit Conklin had seen on the DB. Judd was gazing around in all directions, probably looking for a shooter or someone he had seen in his dream. He touched the bulge at the back of his waistband, as though he were assuring himself that his gun was there. In every way, he was doing just what he had told Rich he was planning to do.

  One minute he was walking alone, then a moment later, he was eclipsed by a group of people who were walking faster than he was, and they were closing in on him. As the group encompassed him, Judd suddenly jerked, stiffened, and fell facedown on the walkway.

  Some people in the crowd stopped to see the fallen body, but within a few seconds the walkway was emptied of living people.

  Conklin backed up the video, pushed in on the shooting, added fill light. Then he scrutinized the people who were around Perry Judd when he dropped.

  He printed out fuzzy stills of the bystanders: an elderly man and a young boy who could be his grandson, three teenage girls, hands to their mouths, probably shrieking. And there was a slim guy in jeans, a dark blue Windbreaker, and a baseball cap, walking behind the others.

  Conklin backed the video up another thirty seconds, to the point where the professor entered the field of view, hands in his pants pockets, turning his head from side to side as he glided forward on the walkway. Then the group of tourists that had been moving faster than the professor surrounded him—and Rich saw the guy in the cap join the group.

  Conklin stopped the video and let it feed forward a frame at a time. He watched the ball-cap guy bump into the professor and snake his hand under the back of the professor’s herringbone jacket. It was a classic pickpocket maneuver called dipping. Then the guy in the cap lifted his hand and aimed the gun that he had removed from the back of Judd’s pants.

  Conklin saw the flare as the ball-cap guy fired on Professor Judd.

  The professor jerked, fell. Then the guy in the cap raised the muzzle and fired again. This time the bullet went into the Plexiglas wall.

  It was clearly a diversion.

  Water spouted. People glanced at the body, turned away, sprinted up the walkway.

  Conklin pressed the forward button and watched the jerky image of the man in the cap. The assailant never looked up, never looked at the camera. After he threw his two shots, he disappeared into the shadows at the end of the walk. He had probably wiped and ditched the gun there, but that was a supposition. And while Conklin was sure that the ball-cap guy was the killer, he hadn’t seen the man’s face.

  Conklin ejected the disk from the DVD drawer and slipped in the second disk, which had been shot by a camera at the aquarium’s entrance.

  This time he knew whom he was looking for.

  Another hour went by as Conklin scanned the video and found the images of the guy with the cap, a guy who was starting to look familiar. He watched him go past the security guard, hold out his ticket to be punched, and enter the dark hole that was the entrance to the exhibit.

  The shooter was a pro. He had kept his face hidden at all times. Conklin had no image to compare with those of known criminals.

  So the questions remained. Who was the guy in the ball cap? How had he known that the professor was carrying a weapon at the back of his trousers? Why had he targeted the professor? And had he killed the two women the professor had seen in his dreams? If so, how had that happened?

  How had the killer tapped into the professor’s dreams?

  There was something crazy wrong about the entire dream-and-execution pattern. It was a puzzle, and Conklin felt there was more to it than the images on his screen.

  What was he missing?

  Conklin made a cup of coffee in the break room. Then he went back to his desk and watched the video again.

  Chapter 81

  FBI UBERAGENT RON PARKER sat with Randolph Fish in a small cement-block room in the bowels of the prison. Two cameras were focused on them; one angled through the oneway glass, and the other was positioned in a corner of the ceiling.

  Fish was shackled hand and foot by a chain that ran through a hole in the center of the table to a loop in the floor. He was so pale you could almost see through his skin. There was a fresh hand-size bruise on his jaw, and Parker had seen the photos of the larger bruises and abrasions all over his body.

  The day before, a couple of guards had been escorting Fish to the yard when they were drawn into a dispute between two other prisoners and took their eyes off Fish for a moment.

  The dispute was a diversion, giving another prisoner a chance to pull Fish against the bars of his cell. He twisted Fish’s arm until he went to his knees. Then a second prisoner got Fish’s pants down, kicked his legs apart, and did him with a sawed-off broom handle.

  The assault had been over quickly, but it had turned Fish’s head around entirely. After the emergency medical treatment, which involved a row of stitches in a place where the sun don’t shine, Fish had asked for Ron Parker, who had driven up from L.A. to see him.

  Now Parker was watching Randolph Fish, killer of at least five but possibly twice as many young women, think over what he was going to say in an effort to come up with something the G-man might go for.

  “I can’t stay here,” Fish finally said. “I’ll be killed.”

  “I feel for you, I really do,” Parker said in a voice that conveyed that he really didn’t give a crap. “I would raise a real stink if I were you. Name your attackers. That’s what I would do.”

  Fish didn’t rise to the bait.

  “I’m ready to make a deal,” he said.

  “Yeah? Listen, you dumb shit. I can’t promise anything anymore. You made me look like a moron too many times. The governor has had enough of your bull. He said, and I quote, ‘Don’t tell me anything about that psycho unless his last words were “I’m deeply sorry” and that he suffered before he croaked.’”

  “The guards could’ve protected me. They didn’t, and I think they set me up,” Fish said.

  “I’ve got a meeting in an hour,” said Ron Parker. “What do you want and what are you going to give up? Get real or drop dead. I no longer care which.”

  “Move me to another prison. I’ll give you the names of four girls you know nothing about. I’ll tell you where they are.”

  “That’s what you told me last time, Randy.”

  “Last time I hadn’t been corn-holed with a broom.”

  “Give me the names,” Parker said.

  Fish squirmed. “Got a pen?”

  Parker typed the names on his phone and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” He called for a guard, then turned before he left the room.

  “Stay out of trouble,” Parker said to the serial killer. “Watch your ass.”

  Chapter 82

  THE NEW WOMEN’S jail was a few blocks away, on 7th Street. It was a model facility, but Yuki made sure that Lynnette Lagrande was held in a special unit in the grubby, outdated, and overcrowded facility on the seventh floor of the Hall of Justice.

  Lynnette would be uncomfortable there and maybe terrified, which was all to the good. The first grade teacher with the diamond necklace and the sixty-thousand-dollar car needed a reality check, and Yuki planned to spell out to Lynnette exactly how much pain she was facing.

  Yuki had a statement from
Lieutenant Floyd Meserve in her briefcase. Meserve admitted that he had been in love with Lynnette Lagrande, but he hadn’t liked her at all. He said she was as mad as a box of snakes and he hated himself for ever getting involved with her. He said he was glad to help the DA and he wanted to just walk away from the whole deal with no charges against him.

  In his sworn statement, Meserve said he had no proof but he had reason to believe that Lynnette Lagrande had arranged Jennifer Herman’s death.

  Meserve said that Lynnette had talked with him about getting Jennifer out of the way. She had insisted that he do the hit and said she would make it worth his while. When he had refused, she had thrown a fit and stopped returning his calls. After Jennifer Herman’s body was found, she’d called Meserve and told him she had nothing to do with it, which Meserve had thought showed that she felt guilty.

  Meserve had an alibi for the time of Jennifer Herman’s death. He said he was in Erie, Pennsylvania, staying with his brother, Morris, visiting their dying father every day. His story had checked out.

  Meserve’s statement was all that Yuki had on Lynnette Lagrande, but she could make the most of it. Meserve was a cop. The probability was high that after Lynnette was arraigned, she would be held without bail while the DA’s office put together the murder case against her. Yuki hoped that this stark view of her future would shock Lynnette into telling the truth.

  Yuki took the elevator from the DA’s offices on the eighth floor to the jail one floor below. She knew the security guard at the desk, Bubbleen Waters, and told her that she wanted to see Lynnette Lagrande. Then Yuki waited in the outer area for a half hour, returning e-mail, until her name was called.

  Officer Waters escorted Yuki along a dark corridor to an interrogation room the size of a typical apartment bathroom. She sat at the table, opened her briefcase, and put away her phone in time for the door to open and Officer Waters to show Lynnette Lagrande into the room.