Lifeguard

by James Patterson

  “Ned Kelly mentioned something,” Ellie said, sitting down, a file on her lap. “You know, he went to Boston for his brother’s funeral.”

  “Right, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about him.” Moretti crossed his legs.

  “He talked to his father up there. It’s a little out of the blue, sir, but he indicated he knew who this Dr. Gachet is.”

  “Who did?” Her boss sat up.

  “Kelly’s father,” Ellie said. “More so, he seemed to imply it was someone in law enforcement. Someone down here.”

  Moretti narrowed his gaze. “How would Ned Kelly’s father have any idea who was behind the heist?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Ellie said, “that’s what I want to find out. But I started wondering why the Palm Beach police had never acted on that Stratton thing with Tess McAuliffe I laid out for you. You did pass it along?”

  Moretti nodded. “Of course . . .”

  “You know Lawson, who heads the detectives unit up there? I’ve always had some doubts about him.”

  “Lawson?”

  “I’ve seen him at Stratton’s house all three times I’ve been there,” Ellie went on.

  “You don’t stop trying to put two and two together, do you, Special Agent Shurtleff?”

  “So I checked into the .32 that Liz Stratton used,” she said, ignoring him. “You know where it came from? It was stolen from a police evidence bin.”

  “You don’t think I know where you’re headed with this? You get to take a big bow to the press for bringing in Ned Kelly, then you say so long to playing Mrs. Kojak. Wasn’t that our agreement? As far as the Bureau is concerned, these murders are solved. Ballistics. Motive. Airtight.”

  “I’m talking about the art,” Ellie said, looking right back at him. “I thought I might go up there and hear the old man out. If that’s okay?”

  Moretti shrugged. “I could send a local team. . . .”

  “A local team’s not familiar with fences, or what to ask about the art,” Ellie countered.

  Moretti didn’t answer. He hid his face behind a steeple of his hands. “Just when do you plan to go?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Ellie said. “Six A.M. If the guy’s as sick as I’ve heard, it might be good to get up there now.”

  “Tomorrow morning.” Moretti nodded sort of glumly, as if he were thinking something over. Then, a second later he shrugged, as if he had made up his mind.

  “Try to be careful this time,” he said, and smiled. “You remember what happened the last time you went up there?”

  “Don’t worry,” Ellie said. “What are the chances of something like that happening two times in a row?”

  Chapter 89

  THAT NIGHT Ellie put on an old wrinkled T-shirt, cleaned her face, and slid into bed about eleven.

  She was tired, but also wired. She didn’t turn on the TV. For a while she leafed through a book on van der Heyden, a Dutch painter from the seventeenth century, but mostly found herself staring off into space.

  She’d found out what she needed to know; now it was just a question of what to do next. She finally flicked off the lights and lay in the dark. No way she could sleep.

  Ellie pulled the covers up over her shoulders. She glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes had passed. She listened to the silence in the house.

  Suddenly she heard a creaking sound from out in the living room. Ellie froze. The floor groaning, or maybe someone sliding through the window. She usually left it open for the breeze.

  She listened some more, eyes stretched wide, not moving a muscle. She waited for a second sound.

  Nothing.

  Then she heard the creaking sound again.

  This time Ellie lay completely silent for a full twenty seconds. She wasn’t imagining anything. It was unmistakable.

  Someone was in the house.

  Jesus Christ. Ellie sucked in a breath. Her heart was racing. She reached under the pillow and wrapped her fingers around the gun that she usually kept on the coatrack but tonight, just to be sure, had by her side. Ellie carefully switched off the safety and eased the pistol out from under her pillow. She told herself to be calm, but her mouth was completely dry.

  She hadn’t read it wrong. This was happening tonight!

  The creaking sounds came closer. Ellie could feel someone advancing in the dark toward her bedroom. She wrapped her fingers around the gun.

  You can do this, a voice said inside. You knew it was going to happen. Just wait a little longer. C’mon, Ellie.

  She peeked above the covers at the door as a shape slipped through.

  Then the sound that sent a tremor down her spine. The click of a gun.

  Oh shit. Ellie’s heart nearly stopped. The bastard’s going to shoot me.

  Ned . . . now!

  The bedroom lights shot on. Ned was standing on the other side of the room with a gun pointed at the intruder. “Put it down, you sonuvabitch. Now!”

  Ellie bolted upright with her own gun, leveling it, two-handed, at the man’s chest.

  He stood there, blinded by the sudden light, his gun suspended somewhere between Ellie and Ned.

  Moretti.

  “Put it down,” Ellie said again. “Or if he won’t shoot, I will.”

  Chapter 90

  I HAD NO IDEA what was going to happen next. What would Moretti do? We were in some kind of standoff. I’d never shot anyone before. Neither had Ellie.

  “One last time,” Ellie said, straightening up on her bed. “Put it down. I will shoot you!”

  “Okay,” Moretti said, eyeing both of us. He was acting calm, as though he’d been in this situation before. He slowly lowered the gun to a nonthreatening angle, then placed it gently on Ellie’s bed.

  “We’ve had the house under surveillance, Ellie. We spotted Kelly coming in. Thought he might be up to something. We were worried. I know what this looks like, but I thought it would be best if I —”

  “It doesn’t wash, Moretti.” Ellie shook her head, climbing out of bed. “I told you, I traced Liz’s gun. I know where it came from. A bust you were an agent on. What about this one? Was it stolen out of the Miami office, too?”

  “Jesus,” the FBI man said, “you’re not actually thinking —”

  “I’m totally thinking that, you slimy son of a bitch. I know! I know about you and Earl Anson. I know you ran him as a CI. It’s too late to bullshit your way out of this. I don’t have to go to Boston. Ned’s father—he already talked. He told Ned he knew you from your days up in Boston.” Moretti swallowed hard. “You had me under surveillance? So, where’s your backup, Moretti? Be my guest. Call them in.”

  Tightness crept onto the FBI agent’s face. Then a shrug of resignation.

  “Is this how you killed Tess McAuliffe?” Ellie picked up his gun. “Sneaking up on her in the bath, stuffing her head under?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Moretti said. “I didn’t kill Tess McAuliffe. Stratton’s man did that.”

  I tightened my fist on the gun. “But my friends, in Lake Worth . . . You did that, you sonuvabitch.”

  “Anson did.” Moretti shrugged coolly. “Sorry, Neddie-boy, didn’t your mother ever tell you what happens when you take something that doesn’t belong to you?”

  I started to move toward Moretti. Nothing would’ve made me happier than to break his jaw.

  Ellie held me back. “You don’t get off that easily, Moretti. There were two guns used in Lake Worth. The .32 and a shotgun. One person didn’t do that killing.”

  “Why?” I stared at him, my hand tightening on the gun. “Why did you have to kill them? We didn’t take the art.”

  “No, you didn’t take the art. Stratton did that himself. In fact, he had the art sold before you ever heard of the job.”

  “Sold?” I looked at Ellie. I was hoping she could make some sense of this.

  Moretti smiled. “You had it pegged all the time, didn’t you, Ellie? Ned’s big score, it was just a cover. How does it feel, your buddies ending up getting killed fo
r a scam?”

  Moretti was grinning at me as if he knew the answer to the next question would hurt even more. “A scam for what? Why did you need to come after us—if the art was already sold? Why Dave?”

  “You still don’t know, do you?” Moretti shook his head.

  Tears were burning in my eyes.

  “Something else got taken,” Moretti said. “Something that wasn’t part of the original deal.”

  Ellie was staring at me now. “The Gaume,” she said.

  Chapter 91

  “CONGRATULATIONS,” Moretti clapped. “I knew if we stayed here long enough, somebody would say something smart.”

  Ellie’s eyes drifted from Moretti to me. “The Gaume’s barely collectible. Nobody would kill for that.”

  Moretti shrugged. “I’m afraid it’s lawyer time now, Ellie.” The FBI man’s haughty grin returned. “Nothing I said will be admissible. You’ll have to prove it all, if you can, which I doubt. The gun, Anson . . . everything you brought up before is circumstantial. Stratton will protect me. Sorry to ruin the bust, but I’ll be drinking margaritas and you’ll still be filling out case sheets for your pension.”

  “How’s this for circumstantial, Moretti?” I nailed him as hard as I could in the mouth. He almost went down, blood flowing from his lip.

  “That’s for Mickey and my friends,” I said. I hit Moretti again, and this time he did go down. “That one was for Dave.”

  It took about five minutes for two police cars responding to the 911 to screech to a halt in front of the house. Four officers rushed in as Ellie explained who it was and what had happened. She was already on the phone to the FBI. Lights were whirling everywhere. The policemen led Moretti down the front steps. Such a sweet moment.

  “Hey, Moretti,” Ellie called. He turned on the lawn. “Not half bad,” she said with a wink, “for an art agent, huh?”

  I watched them take him away and I was thinking that the whole thing had to break now. It couldn’t hold together. Moretti would talk. He’d have to.

  That’s when a whole new picture of horror began to unfold for me.

  A man with a hand inside his jacket stepped out of a car down the street, walking onto Ellie’s lawn.

  I saw what was happening. The man just walked past the flashing police cars; his hand came out of his sports jacket. He got close to Moretti, in the arms of the cops.

  Two loud shots into the FBI man’s chest.

  “No!” I screamed, starting to run. Then my voice got softer as I came to a horrified halt. “Pop, no . . .”

  I had watched my father kill Special Agent in Charge George Moretti.

  Part Six

  ONE THING PENDING

  Chapter 92

  FBI SUPERVISOR Hank Cole stared out at the view of the Miami skyline from his office window. Behind it, nothing but gorgeous blue sea. Sure beat the hell out of Detroit, the ADIC reminded himself. Or Fairbanks! He wondered if they even had golf courses in Alaska. Cole knew he had to salvage something out of this mess. And fast. If he wanted to keep that fancy title in front of his name, if he wanted to keep seeing this delicious view every day.

  First, his office had spearheaded an all-out, national manhunt for the wrong man. Okay, that happens. Anyone could see how Kelly fit the bill. But then the lead FBI investigator on the case accuses her own boss of trying to kill her in her home to cover up that he was the trigger man in the whole thing. Then Moretti gets gunned down as the cops are taking him away.

  And by whom? Cole crumpled a piece of paper tightly in his fist. By the father of the original suspect!

  Oh, he was going down! ADIC Cole clenched his teeth. The press was going to have a field day. There’d have to be an internal investigation. The Bureau would tear flesh out of his throat. Cole felt a pain in his chest, thought maybe it was a heart attack. A heart attack . . . I should be so lucky.

  “Assistant Director Cole?”

  Cole turned away from the window and back to the meeting in his office.

  Sitting around his conference table were James Harpering, the Bureau’s chief local counsel; Mary Rappaport, Palm Beach County DA; and Art Ficke, the new agent in charge.

  As well as his own private, career torpedoer herself, Special Agent Ellie Shurtleff.

  “So, what do we have,” Cole tried to ask calmly, “to back up Special Agent Shurtleff’s allegations against Moretti?”

  “There’s the gun trace,” Ficke proposed. “And Moretti’s prior connection to Earl Anson. Adds up to some good detective work.” He nodded to Ellie Shurtleff. “But all about as circumstantial as you can get.”

  “There’s Frank Kelly’s testimony,” Ellie said.

  “The admission of a career felon? With a grudge against the deceased?” Harpering, the lawyer, shrugged. “It could stand up, if we could establish a prior connection between the two.”

  “We have about forty-eight hours,” Cole sniffed, “before someone from Washington takes over. So giving some credence to Special Agent Shurtleff’s claim, how do we stand on Stratton? Can we tie him to Moretti in any way?”

  “Contact between Moretti and Stratton would have been understandable,” Harpering injected. “He was the agent in charge on his case.”

  “What about prior to the art being stolen?”

  “Moretti was a pro, sir,” Ficke said.

  “Goddammit.” Cole pushed back his chair. “If Moretti was dirty, I want it out. Stratton, too. So, for the sake of this group, Special Agent Shurtleff”—he looked at Ellie—“and your career, would you please tell us again how Special Agent in Charge Moretti happened to end up at your house?”

  Chapter 93

  ELLIE CLEARED HER THROAT. She was nervous. No, nervous didn’t even begin to describe how she felt. She told them again about Ned’s coming back from his brother’s funeral and what his father had said. What Liz Stratton had told them, too. How she and Ned had set up Moretti after she traced the gun.

  Crazy as it was, she felt they believed her. Sort of, anyway.

  “And just how long have you and this Kelly character been . . . cooperating on this case?” ADIC Cole asked.

  “Since he turned himself in,” Ellie answered, swallowing. She dropped her head. “Maybe a little before.”

  “Maybe a little before.” Cole tightened his jaw and glanced around the table as if for some kind of explanation.

  Ellie cleared her throat. “I can bring him down,” she said apprehensively. “Stratton.”

  “You’re on such incredibly thin ice already, Special Agent Shurtleff, your knees must be freezing cold.” Cole glared at her.

  “I can bring him down, sir,” she said, more firmly.

  Cole narrowed his gaze at her. She checked Harpering and Ficke to see if they were smirking. They weren’t.

  “All right,” the ADIC sighed, “how?”

  “He thinks we have something he wants,” Ellie said.

  “This painting,” Cole said, nodding. “The . . . Gaume? What is it about this thing?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Ellie said, “but Stratton doesn’t know we don’t know, either.”

  Cole looked at Harpering and Ficke. There was stiff, evaluating silence around the table.

  “You’re trained as an art investigator, aren’t you, Special Agent Shurtleff?” Cole inquired.

  “Yes, sir.” Ellie nodded. He knew she was.

  “So, you would think”—Cole placed his palms together—“knowing that, I’d have to be pretty much suicidal to let you run something like this after what you’ve done. We screw this up, you could basically sweep whatever’s left of my career into the trash.”

  “Mine, too, sir.” Ellie looked him in the eye.

  “Right,” the ADIC said. He cast a glance to Ficke and Harpering.

  “The way things are right now,” the lawyer said, “Stratton walks away and we’re left with the biggest cleanup mess since the Exxon Valdez.”

  Cole rubbed his temples hard. “Just for the sake of conversation, Special Agent
Shurtleff, what exactly would you need to do this job?”

  “I’d need it leaked that Moretti didn’t talk. That he didn’t say a word about Stratton. And that I’ve been taken off the case. That I’m under investigation.”

  “That won’t be hard,” Cole said.

  “And something else,” Ellie went on, since she was on such a hot streak.

  “What’s that?” The ADIC rolled his eyes impatiently.

  “This could get a little unorthodox, sir. . . .”

  “Oh, and it’s been going along so ‘by the book’ up to this point.” Cole couldn’t help but smile.

  Ellie sucked in a breath. “I’ll need Ned Kelly, sir.”

  Chapter 94

  I WAS PLAYING GIN at the house with Sollie.

  We were outside, in the covered cabana by the pool. I’d been confined to Sollie’s until my role in what happened at Ellie’s house was fully resolved.

  A little matter of having violated my bail agreement—possession of a firearm.

  I knew Ellie was in trouble. I knew what we did could cost her her job. Everything was out now: my dad’s involvement, what Ellie had found out about Moretti, our conversations with Liz. Me.

  With Liz and Moretti dead, we didn’t have much to hang on Stratton. He had orchestrated everything perfectly. That made me the angriest of all. That, and my father. Frank thought he was squaring things with the Man, but the irony was that by pulling the trigger, he had let Stratton go free.

  “You keep throwing me hearts, I keep taking them,” Sol said with an apologetic sigh.

  “I guess I’m not much competition today,” I said, drawing a card.

  “Competition? This is rehabilitation, Ned. I promised the judge. Besides, at this rate I’ll have made back your bail by tomorrow afternoon. Then you can get the hell out.”

  I smiled at the old guy. “I’m worried about Ellie, Sol.”

  “I can see that, kid, but you know, I think it’ll be all right. The girl can handle herself fine.”

  “She tried to help me, and I got her in trouble. I want to get Stratton, Sollie. I was sure we had him nailed.”