Worst Case

by James Patterson

  He got to 137th Street without a minute to spare. He was headed to the apartment of the death-row inmate Reginald Franklin’s mother. Even with all his plans and all his incredibly important work, his conscience wouldn’t let him forget the doomed man.

  Off Lenox Avenue, down from the Harlem Hospital Center, he entered the battered front door of a narrow three-story brick tenement. The barking started the second he stepped through the open inner door and into a rancid-smelling stairwell.

  No wonder Kurt from New York Heart had been reluctant to follow up on the case, he thought, listening to the unbelievably loud barks. No matter. Dogs or no dogs, someone’s life was at stake here.

  The door to Mrs. Franklin’s second-floor apartment cracked open when Francis X. made the landing. He froze as an enormous dog lunged out of the apartment. It looked like a monster. It was a Presa Canario, the same breed of unbelievably vicious dog that had mauled a woman to death in San Francisco. It had a brindled coat and had to weigh close to 150 pounds.

  Francis X. started breathing again only when he saw that there was a taut chain around its neck. It was being clutched by a wiry old black woman.

  “I’m from New York Heart, ma’am,” Francis said quickly. “The lawyer advocacy group? I’m here about your son, Reggie. I’d like to try to help him get a stay of execution. Could you please put up your pet, ma’am?”

  “You got any ID, white boy?” she said between the ear-splitting barks.

  Francis showed her his card from the social services agency. The dog snapped for it, almost swallowing it along with Francis’s hand.

  “Okay, okay. Just a second,” the old woman finally said.

  Was it him, or did the old African American woman have a smirk on her face?

  “You said you was coming, too, right? Must have forgot. Sit tight till I get Chester back in the closet.”

  The door shut and opened again. The sound of Chester going absolutely batshit came from the rear of the apartment.

  “C’mon in, I guess,” she said, waving impatiently. “Close the damn door behind you. What did you say about Reggie?”

  He followed her into the living room. Judge Judy was on the TV. The woman lay down on a couch and put up her feet. She didn’t lower the volume.

  “Well? What you want?”

  “I heard about Reginald’s latest denial, and I’ve gone to the liberty of writing up a request of stay to the governor. It’s all done. I just need you to sign it. Then I’ll take it to FedEx. A friend of mine from law school is in the Florida State Legislature, and though he can’t guarantee anything, he is going to personally advocate for Reggie. I think we have a real good shot.”

  “I gotta pay?” Mrs. Franklin said as she motioned for him to bring her the paper.

  “For my legal services? Of course not, Mrs. Franklin.”

  “No, I know that,” she said as she scratched her signature. “I meant for the FedEx. That shit’s expensive.”

  “No, that’s covered, too, of course.”

  “Good,” she said with another little smirk. “Anything else?”

  How about a fucking thank-you? Francis X. thought, unable to control his anger. Then he looked around the room. It wasn’t her fault, he realized. Abject poverty made people this way. Mrs. Franklin was a victim, like her son.

  “That’s all,” Francis said. “I’d better get going. Helping you and your son is my pleasure. It’s the least I could do.”

  Chapter 55

  IT WAS COMING on five when I had Emily drop me off at my apartment. The end-of-day task force meeting downtown at headquarters had been bumped up to six-thirty, and I was in desperate need of a shower and a change of clothes. I wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. They would be looking to blame someone for the missing five million.

  Inside, I grabbed a suit fresh from the dry cleaners from the front hall closet. It’s always been a policy of mine to make sure to look my best when I’m going to be called on the carpet.

  “It can’t be, but it is! Daddy’s home before dinner! Ahhhhh!” one of my daughters, Fiona, shrieked ecstatically as I appeared in the dining room doorway.

  The gang, still in their school uniforms, were home from school and in the midst of getting their homework out of the way. I went around, slapping high fives and administering hugs and even a few atomic tickles where appropriate.

  Many cops I’ve worked with have asked me why the hell I would want so many kids, and I’ve always had trouble explaining it. Yes, there are fights. Legendary lines for the bathroom. Clutter beyond the nightmares of professional organizers. Not to mention the expense. I envy people who can live paycheck to paycheck. But it’s moments like these, when my guys are all safe and happy and busy and together, that every bit of it is incredibly worth it, when it is pure, unabashed happiness.

  The kids are simply my tribe, my pack. We gathered them together, and everything good that my wife, Maeve, and I had ever learned, we passed on to them. Not only have they taken those lessons to heart in our house—being kind to one another, being polite, being good even when they don’t feel like it—as they get older, they’ve started spreading that goodness to the world. I can’t count how many times teachers and neighbors and school parents have said to me how wonderful, polite, and thoughtful they thought my kids were.

  Maeve, and now Mary Catherine, being home with them every day, could take ninety-nine percent of the credit for that. But that one percent that makes me proud of myself exceeds everything I have ever accomplished professionally, hands down.

  Mary Catherine smiled up at me from where she was surrounded by a sea of blue-and-gold Catholic-school plaid.

  “Mike, is it you?” she said. “Can I fix dinner?”

  “Don’t bother,” I said, putting my cell on the sideboard as I headed for my room. “This is just a pit stop. I have an hour, maybe less, until this evil object summons me again.”

  Twenty minutes later, wearing a suit not covered in sweat, antifreeze, and grass stains, I stepped back into the dining room and almost fainted. Instead of being covered in textbooks, workbooks, red pens, calculators, and rulers, the table was set like it was Sunday all over again.

  Mary Catherine and Brian and Juliana came in a second later with a plate of homemade fried chicken, jalapeño corn bread, and a fresh salad. Another incredible meal brought to you by my personal savior, Mary Catherine.

  I shook my head at her for going to all the trouble. Besides my wife, Mary Catherine was the most genuinely generous person I’d ever met.

  Who knew? Maybe this meant she was even a little less pissed at me.

  After we said our prayers, I wolfed down a piece of hot corn bread. I closed my eyes in ecstasy.

  “How can an Irish girl do Southern cooking this well?” I said, spraying crumbs. “Let me guess, you’re from the southwest part of Ireland?”

  The smiles and happy, fuzzy mood all popped like a cigarette on a balloon when my blasted phone rang. I was standing up to get it when Chrissy reached back and grabbed it.

  “Oh, no, Daddy,” she said, tossing it across the table to Bridget. “You’re staying right here. No phone means no work.”

  They actually started chanting, “No phone! No work!” as our game of Monkey in the Middle began. Guess who the monkey was.

  “That’s not funny, guys,” I said, trying not to laugh and failing.

  I also failed to get to the phone. A game of Monkey in the Middle really isn’t fair against ten people. Eleven, actually, as Mary pretended to offer it to me and then passed it behind her back to the waiting Brian. He tossed it to Eddie, who opened it.

  “I’m sorry, but Mr. Bennett is not available,” Eddie said as everyone cracked up. “Please leave your name at the sound of the beep. Beep!”

  “Mike, is that you?” Emily said as I finally wrested it from him.

  “Sorry about that, Parker. My family is being funny. At least they think they are. What’s up?”

  “One guess,” she said.

 
“No,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said grimly. “Another kid was grabbed, Mike. I’m pulling up in front of your building right now.”

  Chapter 56

  EMILY HANDED ME her notes on the latest kidnapping as I buckled myself into the passenger seat of her Fedmobile. She surprised me by having a piping-hot black venti in my drink holder and a black-and-white cookie from Zaro’s on the dash. I noticed she was also doing a pretty professional job of carving our way south through the chaos of midtown Manhattan dinner traffic.

  Unhealthy food and a healthy dose of road rage, I thought with an impressed nod. My new partner was getting this New York cop thing down pretty fast.

  The calm from my shower and my visit with the kids lasted less than a New York minute as I scanned the pages of her notes. The latest victim was the youngest yet: a seventeen-year-old high school student named Mary Beth Haas. She’d been missing since noon. She’d last been spotted leaving the very exclusive all-girls Brearley School on East 83rd Street to go to the school’s gym on East 87th. She’d never made it there. The poor teenage girl seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

  “The similarity to the Hastings kidnapping is striking,” I said. “Both were grabbed from exclusive Manhattan schools. We need to check for teaching staff who have a history in both places.”

  “No new leads on Hastings?” Emily inquired.

  “Some Twenty-sixth Precinct squad guys are out looking for the Russian girlfriend, but so far nothing,” I said as I looked back down at the report.

  I read that Mary Beth Haas’s mother, Ann, was the CEO and main shareholder in the Price Templeton Fund, the second-largest mutual fund on Wall Street. No wonder our newest case had loudly rung every alarm bell down at One Police Plaza.

  “I Googled the mother,” Emily said. “She’s, like, the fifth- or sixth-richest woman in the country. Her father started the fund, but they said she worked herself up from an analyst and probably would have ended up as CEO even if she hadn’t been left thirty-four percent of the stock in her dad’s will. She’s also one of the largest contributors to the New York Philharmonic and Public Library.”

  “Another only child of an A-list mega-wealthy New Yorker, like the Dunnings, the Skinners, and Gordon Hastings?” I asked.

  Emily nodded. “I can’t believe he’s hit another one so fast. He actually had to have grabbed Mary Beth before we did the money exchange for Hastings.”

  “For the love of God,” I said, wanting to punch something. “I thought he’d be done after getting his five million. Now two in one day? What is this guy made of? And what the hell is he after if it’s not money?”

  We shot over the Brooklyn Bridge and pulled off the first exit into the borough’s most exclusive neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights. Two undercover cars were already parked in front of the Haases’ stately Greek Revival brownstone on a tree-lined street called Columbia Heights. It overlooked the Brooklyn Promenade and had, perhaps, the most majestic view of lower Manhattan that exists.

  A female detective I knew from Brooklyn South Homicide answered the door. Behind her, a task force techie in an NYPD Geek Squad Windbreaker was taking apart a wall phone.

  I looked up as a petite fiftyish woman with very short blond hair came down the stairs. She kept passing a hand back obsessively through her hair as she spoke rapidly into a cell phone. I groaned inwardly at the intense sorrow and despair on Ann Haas’s face. I could only imagine what she was going through. Could only guess how unimaginably sad and angry and destroyed I’d feel if one of my kids were missing. Mrs. Haas was a woman who was most definitely going through hell.

  “I think the FBI’s here now, John. I’ll call you back,” the distraught mother said into the cell as she arrived at the bottom of the stairs. She waved us into the living room.

  Her dropped cell phone clattered off an antique oak steamer trunk she used as a coffee table as she collapsed back onto a huge, silk-upholstered coach. Despite her expensive power suit, when she pulled her black-hose-clad legs up underneath her, she suddenly looked like a little girl. A little girl who’d lost her only doll, I thought to myself.

  The high-def night skyline of lower Manhattan seemed to scratch up against the glass of the bay window behind her. She turned and stared at the office towers.

  “I took us out of that insane place in order to provide some sort of normalcy and security after Mary Beth was born,” she said quietly as she shook her head. “I wanted to send her to and from Brearley by car, but ever since Mary Beth was fourteen, she’s insisted on taking the subway.

  “I have friends who hire professionals to try to get their wealthy kids to understand how normal people live, but it was almost the opposite with Mary Beth. It was like pulling teeth every time I had to convince her that it was okay to use the resources we’ve been fortunate enough to acquire.”

  She looked at me, perplexed, as if I might know the answer to the affliction she was now suffering from. It pissed me off that I didn’t.

  “Is your husband here?” I said.

  “He works for UBS in London during the week, but he’s on the next plane back. Did you know some fool at Brearley actually tried to tell me my daughter might have just cut class? Mary Beth is the captain of both the lacrosse and volleyball teams. She got an early acceptance to Bard, for the love of God. This is not a girl who cuts classes.

  “Please tell me you have an idea of who this person is who might have taken her. Please tell me you’re going to bring my Mary Beth back home.”

  The woman’s hurt eyes locked on mine again as she started to silently weep. They only tore away as Emily sat down next to the woman and laid a hand on her wrist.

  “We’ll do everything possible, Mrs. Haas,” Emily said. “I can’t guarantee you anything except that we’ll go to the ends of the earth to bring your little girl home again.”

  Chapter 57

  DESPITE ANN HAAS’S obvious pain, she managed to tell Emily and me about her daughter, Mary Beth. She was a solid 4.0 student whose dream was to help the poor of Latin America, where she’d summered from the time she was fourteen at various volunteer camps.

  “This year, instead of going to Europe like a lot of her friends, Mary Beth is planning to run a children’s theater in Pérez Zeledón, one of the poorest sections of Costa Rica,” the CEO told us as she handed us a picture. “It’s all she can talk about.”

  Mary Beth was a slightly overweight, attractive, blue-eyed girl with long jet-black hair. In the picture, she was wearing a green bandanna and matching camo shirt and cargo shorts as she smiled and waved from some muddy jungle path.

  Most surprising of all to me was that Mary Beth didn’t have a social networking account on either MySpace or Facebook, unlike the other victims. A throwback, I thought, looking at her smile. A very good and special kid.

  Ann Haas was about to take us up to her daughter’s room, when her wall phone rang. The department geek set up by the fireplace glanced at his laptop and nodded vigorously. I motioned for Mrs. Haas to pick up the phone in the family room as the tech handed me a set of headphones.

  Mrs. Haas’s knuckles were as bloodless as her face as she lifted the cordless phone.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Mrs. Haas,” the kidnapper said. “Poor, poor Mrs. Haas. How ironic, considering the latest Forbes listing, wouldn’t you say?”

  I nodded to everyone around the room. It was the same guy.

  “Oh, Mrs. Haas,” the kidnapper continued. “How glorious you look at your charity events. How brightly the flash packs of the paparazzi reflect off your diamonds. While the lights dazzled, did you maybe for a moment think that you had become more than mortal? I think you did. Pride is one of your main sins, Ann. I can call you Ann, can’t I? I hope you don’t mind. After spending so much time with your daughter, I feel like we’re practically related.”

  “You fucking prick son of a bitch!” Mrs. Haas screamed. “Give her back!”

  The kidnapper let out a long, sad sigh.
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br />   “My, my. What filth even a daughter of the highest privilege is capable of in our tainted society. Is that really any way to talk? Did those tight-ass lily-white-tower academics teach you to speak like that at Sarah Lawrence? Or did you learn that potty mouth at Daddy’s trading desk? Mustn’t we have been turned on, being one of the few women amongst all that heady Wall Street warrior testosterone?

  “Which leads us to your next sin, Ann. Lust. Multiple acts of adultery with multiple partners, if the rumors are true. Shall I get into specifics?

  “Isn’t that what being rich is all about? Sex and money and hiring people to clean the eight-hundred-thread-count sheets? You’re a filthy sinner, Ann, and so’s your lackluster English poseur of a husband.”

  “Please let me speak to Mary Beth,” Mrs. Haas begged. “Just for a second. For whatever I’ve done to you, I’m sorry.”

  “So am I,” the kidnapper said. “But talking to Mary Beth won’t be possible. I’m here to teach you that you are human, Ann. And like all humans, you must come to terms with the reality of loss. Sin and loss go hand in hand. Please put my friend Detective Bennett on the phone now. It’s been a real pleasure speaking to you, despite your disgusting language. I hope he hasn’t pumped up your hopes concerning Mary Beth, Madam Chief Executive. On second thought, I hope he has. All the more pride to goeth before the fall. Ta-ta.”

  “Detective Bennett here,” I said, taking the phone from the weeping CEO. “How’s Mary Beth? Is she okay?”

  “Mary Beth is fine, Mike. For now. She has a big test coming up, though. A final final, you might say. It’s all in her hands. I’ll call you back the second her score is tallied.”

  “Wait a minute. Don’t you want money?”

  “All the money on this earth couldn’t prevent Mary Beth from facing her destiny, Mike.”

  What the hell did that mean? How did that make sense? There was a sharp sound in the background suddenly, a distinctive click-clack. I winced. Goddammit. He’d just chambered an automatic pistol.

  “Pray for her, Mike. That’s all she has now.”