12th of Never

by James Patterson

  But I kept hearing my little girl cry.

  Chapter 26

  BY THE TIME Conklin and I arrived on 4th Street, the CSIU van and half a dozen squad cars had blocked a lane of traffic and run up on the hundred-foot stretch of sidewalk in front of Whole Foods. Morning commuters beat on their horns and shouted out their car windows, but no amount of yelling moved the stalled traffic.

  Conklin double-parked and we exited the car into the wall of bystanders who were packed behind the barrier tape, sending a gale of tweets and snapshots out to the Web.

  Officer Tom Forcaretta was at the front door. He was new on the force, but appeared to be coping well with the chaos. I signed the log and asked him to tell me what he knew about the crime.

  “The shooting happened between seven thirty and seven thirty-five,” he said. “The vic is Harriet Adams, white female, thirty-eight, looks like she took three bullets—right arm, neck, right chest. She was alive, but barely conscious when I got here. She told me her name. That was all. Ambulance took her to Metropolitan but she was DOA.”

  “How many witnesses?” I asked.

  “Two semiwitnesses. A stock boy and a customer, but neither of them got a look at the shooter. They heard breaking glass and saw the victim go down. Both of them were interviewed and released.”

  “And where are the other customers?”

  “The ones we could stop from leaving are in the stock-room. A team from Robbery is interviewing them, then releasing them through the rear door.”

  “How many customers are we talking about?”

  “Too many to count, Sergeant. Over a hundred, prob’ly.”

  “And the people who work here? Could be an employee went postal.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Employees are in the manager’s office. Bambi Simmons, that’s the manager, said our vic was a regular customer and maybe a pain in the butt. She returned opened cans and so forth.”

  “I take it the weapon hasn’t been recovered.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “And the surveillance tape?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’ve got it, such as it is.”

  Automatic doors slid open and Conklin and I stepped into the thirty-thousand-square-foot crime scene. It wasn’t Columbine, but it was freaking overwhelming, anyway. Crime techs were all over the place, putting down markers, snapping photos. If they didn’t turn up two million unique fingerprints, it would be amazing.

  Conklin and I were directed to the far right-hand side of the store, where Charlie Clapper, head of our crime lab, was shooting pictures. He did a double take when he saw me.

  “Good God, Lindsay. Aren’t you on leave?”

  “I was. This is my welcome-back party.”

  “Good to see you, kiddo,” he said. “And here’s what we’ve got for you: a violent death in a humongous haystack. No idea if there’s a needle in here or even what a needle would look like. Did you hear? No witnesses, no weapon, no robbery. Just ‘bang, bang, bang.’ It’s a real who-freakin’-dunit.”

  Chapter 27

  THE DAPPER CHARLIE Clapper was a homicide cop before he became director of forensics, and we were lucky to have him. He was thorough, insightful, and after he pointed out the evidence, he got out of the way.

  Now he led us to the frozen-foods section, and Conklin and I got our first look at the primary scene.

  Blood spatter, mostly of the arterial kind, had sprayed the contents of the freezer and the doors on both sides of the shattered glass. There was a long smear of blood on the unbroken bottom half of one door, showing where Harriet Adams had slid down after taking those shots.

  An open handbag lay at the edge of a puddle made up of water, blood, and ice cream. The pool had been entirely corrupted by the EMTs’ attempt to save Harriet Adams’s life.

  Conklin and I gaped at the number and assortment of footprints, drag marks, handprints, and gurney-wheel tracks running in and out of the pool.

  “Textbook example of EMTs—evidence-mangling technicians—at work,” Clapper said. “Unless there’s a signed death threat in the victim’s handbag, we’ll never solve the case out of this.”

  Conklin said to Clapper, “You have a picture of the victim?”

  “The hospital just sent it,” he said. He pulled up a photo on his mobile phone. I took a look.

  Harriet Adams was on a metal table with a sheet pulled up to her chin.

  Conklin asked Clapper, “Can you make a call? Find out what she was wearing? Find out if she wore toenail polish?”

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  I called Joe from the soup-and-nuts aisle. He said Julie was sleeping. He didn’t want to wake her to take her temperature. I asked him a lot of questions: Was she hot? How did she look? Did he think maybe a run to the hospital was in order? Joe talked me down, and then I called Brady.

  “You need a senior team on this,” I told him. “We’ll take over again after we interview our person of interest.”

  Once again, Conklin and I bucked the crowd outside the food store on our way to the squad car.

  “What are your thoughts?” I asked my partner as we pulled out and headed east toward Brannan Street.

  “It’s crazy, Lindsay. The scene is exactly what the professor said he dreamed—except for one thing. He dreamed that the victim was shot dead in the store.

  “He didn’t get that right, but he nailed everything else, down to the green glass beads and the blue paint on her toenails. What the hell are we dealing with? A guy reports that he’s going to kill someone—and then he does it?

  “He’s crazy or he’s messing with us, one or the other,” Conklin said. “Right?”

  He leaned on the horn, then switched on the siren. It was as if the traffic were welded into one piece.

  “Right,” I said.

  Chapter 28

  I’D LEFT THE house this morning whistling heigh-ho, heigh-ho. Three hours, a sick baby, and one bad crime scene later, Conklin and I were sitting across the table from the squirrelly Professor Judd.

  My mind was only half in the moment. I opened my phone and put it on the table, staring at it as if staring would make it ring. While we waited for coffee, Conklin warmed up our person of interest with softball small talk.

  Judd was at ease, blathering to Conklin about a book he was reading. He didn’t seem surprised or alarmed or even aware that he was in our interrogation room because he had predicted a murder twenty-four hours before it had happened.

  I tried to picture this neat and bookish man as a killer, and it didn’t quite compute. Mackie brought coffee and left the room, stationing herself behind the one-way glass.

  “We need to go over a couple of things, Professor,” Conklin said. Have I said that Conklin has mastered the art of being the “good cop”? Most of the time, being sweet and a good listener gets suspects to tell him the truth. If sweetness doesn’t do the trick, he’s got me.

  “Sure,” said Perry Judd. “How can I help you?”

  “Can you tell us where you were at seven thirty this morning?”

  “Sure. Absolutely. I was in my office. Three of my students missed the second semester final and I was giving them a makeup exam before class. Why do you ask?”

  “And how long did it take them to do the test?” Conklin asked. He sugared his coffee. Gave it a stir.

  “I can tell you exactly because it was a timed test. Forty-five minutes.”

  “Were you in the room the entire time?”

  “Oh, sure. Not that I don’t trust the kids, but if you leave them alone, they’re bound to converse. Another way of saying, ‘They’ll cheat.’”

  “And all three of them will say you were in the room from seven thirty to eight fifteen?” asked Inspector Rich Conklin, the good cop to my bull in the china shop.

  “You bet they will.”

  I butted in, not because my partner wasn’t doing a perfect interrogation. He was. I did it so I could keep my mind in the room, and maybe get this a-hole to confess to premeditated murder.
/>   “Professor. The woman you described from your dream was shot and killed this morning in the frozen-foods section of Whole Foods. Just like you said. How did you know about the shooting? Or did you make a plan, report it, and then execute it?”

  “She was really shot?”

  Perry Judd seemed to be very pleasantly surprised. In fact, as I watched him, his face brightened from his goatee up to his hairline.

  “Really? You’re saying it actually did happen?”

  I scowled. “Middle-aged white woman, blond hair with dark roots, green beads, sandals, and blue toenail polish. Just the way you described her to my partner yesterday.”

  “Good God. It’s true; it’s really true.”

  “What’s true?”

  “It’s in literature going back to Macbeth. No, going back to the Greeks. The Iliad. Cassandra, who prophesied doom, but no one would believe her. It’s like schizophrenia, to have foresight and at the same time to be powerless to prevent tragedy.”

  I was worried about my baby. I snapped.

  “Professor, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “I have precognition,” he said. “I’m clairvoyant. I can see the future.”

  Chapter 29

  I HUDDLED WITH Brady in the break room and relayed the few facts we had about the late Harriet Adams, who’d picked a bad day to buy ice cream. She was divorced, had no children, had worked at Union Bank as a teller for the last seven years, and lived three blocks from Whole Foods in a one-room apartment on Zoe Street with her live-in boyfriend. The boyfriend was not a beneficiary of her five-thousand-dollar life insurance policy and he had a solid alibi for the time of the shooting.

  Harriet Adams didn’t have a rap sheet. She’d never disturbed the peace, jaywalked, or tossed a candy wrapper on the sidewalk. She was clean.

  I said, “Conklin is looking at the surveillance tapes taken from the two cameras in Whole Foods. One was trained on the manager’s office, the other on the bank of cash registers. Neither would have picked up the shooting, so if the shooter didn’t go through the checkout line with his gun in hand …”

  “And the professor?”

  “His alibi checks out. Three kids said he was breathing down their necks at the time of the shooting. Professor Judd says he’s clairvoyant. Maybe he is. But I’ve assigned a team to tail him, anyway.”

  I left Brady, went down the fire stairs and out the back of the Hall, then took the breezeway to the ME’s office. The receptionist’s voice came over Claire’s intercom as I passed through her open office door.

  “Dr. Washburn? Sergeant Boxer just bulled her way past me.”

  Claire was stuffing files into a cardboard box. She had another box on her desk already full of personal items—doodads and her diploma, awards certificates and framed photos.

  A picture of the Women’s Murder Club was on top of one of the boxes—Claire, Yuki, and Cindy looking bright and cheery; me, the tallest one in the group, brooding about something or other. As usual.

  “What is this?” I said, indicating the packing. “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been benched,” Claire said. “Haven’t you heard?”

  She looked awful—scared and mad and like she’d been kicked in the gut. I stretched out my arms and she came from around her desk and we hugged. A long minute later, I dropped into the side chair and Claire went back behind her desk. She put her feet up next to the phone.

  All eight buttons on the phone console were blinking.

  Claire drew a long sigh, then told me, “The city administrator said, and I quote, ‘You may occupy your office for now, but I’m relieving you of your command.’”

  “I didn’t know Carter was in the military.”

  “He’s a World War Two buff. That jerk. My access to my computer is blocked. Sheila is taking my calls out front, and it’s just as well. Ninety-nine out of a hundred calls are from the tabloids. And then there are the calls from next of kin wanting to check that their loved ones hadn’t been sold to body shops for spare parts.”

  “This is so wrong.”

  “When Dr. Morse arrives, I’m supposed to give him administrative assistance until—”

  “Dr. Morse?”

  “Retired ME from Orange County. Last time he held a scalpel was in 2003. I don’t know if he can even manage the paperwork, let alone the actual job. Anyway. He can have my desk,” Claire said with a sigh, “until we find Faye Farmer’s body.”

  “What’s your gut say happened to her?”

  “My guts are, like, taking Lombard Street at ninety miles per hour, at night, without headlights—and no brakes, either. So I’m not consulting my gut.

  “But listen, Lindsay. I do have an idea who could have had something to do with it.”

  Chapter 30

  “TAKE A LOOK at this.”

  Claire handed me a manila folder with a name printed on the tab: Tracey Pendleton.

  There was a photo stapled to the top sheet of Tracey Pendleton’s employment records. She had short gray hair and her face was plain, without a single distinguishing feature. Her DOB said that she was in her late thirties, but she looked fifty. She probably smoked and drank, might have had drugs in her past.

  The word Hired was stamped on the first page, as was the date—August 23, 2009. Reading further, I learned that Ms. Pendleton had a license to carry a weapon, owned a registered 9mm Glock semiauto, and was employed as a security guard for the ME’s office.

  I flipped through her time sheets.

  Tracey Pendleton worked nights—including last night.

  Claire was watching me, and when I looked up, she said, “Tracey clocked in at twelve oh two. She didn’t punch out.”

  “You’ve called her?”

  “Every ten minutes. No answer. I also texted her and sent her a bunch of e-mails. No answer to those, either.”

  “Tell me what you know about her,” I said.

  I teed up the question, but my mind was already racing ahead. Had Tracey Pendleton stolen Faye Farmer’s body? If so, what was her motive?

  “I don’t know her at all,” Claire said. “Our schedules only overlap if I come in way early or I’m working way late. And even then, it’s ‘Hey, how ya doing?’”

  “When was the last time you saw Pendleton?”

  “A couple of weeks ago. She seemed okay to me, Lindsay. But when I look at her, I’m just looking to see if she’s sober. She failed to show up for work a couple of times and was on warning. But not showing up and not punching out are two different things entirely.”

  I asked, “She just forgot to punch out?”

  Claire shrugged.

  “It would be the first time. The time clock is right there at the back door.”

  “Okay. Could she have taken the surveillance disk, switched the John Doe for Faye Farmer, and gotten Farmer’s body into her car? Is she strong enough to do that?”

  “I think it’s physically possible.”

  “You think someone could’ve paid Pendleton for the body?” I asked.

  “They say everyone has a price,” said Claire. “Tracey Pendleton makes fifteen dollars an hour. I guess her tipping point wouldn’t be too high.”

  Chapter 31

  FLOYD MESERVE WAS clean-shaven, neatly dressed, his hair in a ponytail short enough to reveal the tattoo of a naked woman just above his collar.

  Yuki approached her witness and said, “Lieutenant Meserve, what is your job title?”

  “Lieutenant, Crimes Against Persons Division, Northern District, SFPD.”

  “Do you know the defendant?”

  “Yes. I met with him on February twentieth of last year.”

  “What were the circumstances of your meeting?”

  The jurors were attentive, some of them leaning forward in their seats. The gallery was still. Yuki was absolutely sure there would be no surprises with Floyd Meserve.

  “I was working undercover at the time,” said Meserve. “One of my CIs told me that a lawyer was looking for a hit
man. I told him that I could pose as such.”

  “Did this confidential informant give your contact number to the defendant?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did the defendant contact you?”

  “Yes, the same day. We set up a meeting.”

  “When did you meet the defendant?”

  “I met the defendant in a parking lot outside the Westlake Shopping Center on Southgate Avenue at five in the evening. We each drove there in our own vehicle. The defendant wanted me to talk to him inside his car, but I told him I don’t do that. He had to get into my vehicle.”

  “And why did you want him to get into your vehicle?”

  “I had a video recorder set up.”

  “I see. So did Mr. Herman get into your car?”

  “Yes. He got straight to the point.”

  “What did he say?” Yuki asked.

  “He said he wanted me to dispose of his wife because she was abusing their daughter. And he said he wanted me to kill his daughter, too, because he said his wife had ruined her.”

  “He wanted you to kill a seven-year-old?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “And what did you say to this proposition?”

  “I asked him if he was sure. He said he had thought about it for a long time. So I told him it would cost him a lot to take out a woman and a child.”

  “Was a dollar amount discussed?” Yuki asked.

  “We negotiated the price of one hundred thousand for both people. Half down, half after proof of the hits.”

  “Did your recording equipment capture this conversation?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  Yuki said, “Your Honor, I’d like to show the video to the jury.”

  “You have the transcript?” the judge asked.

  “Right here, Your Honor.”

  “I’ll take that, and if you would give a copy to the defense, you may roll the video.”