Women's Murder Club [05] The 5th Horseman

by James Patterson

  Shoes were scattered against the baseboards under black scuff marks where they’d been hurled at the walls.

  Cosmetics had been swept off the dresser, and a perfume bottle was lying broken on the hardwood floor.

  Inside the bathroom, a cordless phone had been hammered against the green marble counter, splintered into plastic shards and colored wire.

  That explained the busy signal.

  Had Maureen gotten a phone call she didn’t like?

  My radio sputtered at my hip, Dispatch with a report from a squad car.

  The patrol unit had been going north on the 101 when it spotted Garza’s Mercedes heading in the opposite direction. The cruiser had crossed the nearest break in the divider, tried to follow, but had lost him.

  This much we knew: only minutes ago, Garza’s Mercedes was pointed toward the airport.

  Chapter 129

  DENNIS GARZA GRIPPED the steering wheel, stared at the center line as the dull highway scenery blew past his windshield.

  His mouth was hanging half open, and his reflexes were dull. He knew he was in some kind of shock, but the outrage was tangible, just below the feelings of vertigo and disbelief.

  What had happened today still made no sense to him.

  He’d woken up feeling fantastic. Then the day had taken a one-hundred-eighty-degree header straight to hell.

  Fucking Maureen.

  She’d known from the start that after the trial, he was going to take his share and leave the country.

  She was supposed to stay in San Francisco, bank her millions, become the hottest litigator in town.

  That was her dream, wasn’t it?

  When had she gone off track? Why had she changed her mind?

  It had been a memorable affair and an elegant heist. No doubt about that. They’d both come out huge winners. Wasn’t that enough?

  Why couldn’t she leave perfect alone?

  “I didn’t do it for the money,” she’d told him this morning, her voice swimming in tears. “The money is nothing. I did it for you, Dennis. I did it because I loved doing this with you.”

  He would have shaken his head in disgust, but he was feeling queasy again.

  He clenched the steering wheel. Then he touched the loose teeth in his lower jaw with his tongue, felt his whole head throbbing.

  A wave of images flooded back. Unbelievable. Unthinkable.

  First, the shouting match with Maureen. Then the sickening events that followed. He could still hear the terrible screams. See the torrents of blood all over fucking everything, until finally the screaming had stopped.

  Garza wrenched himself back into the present. He had to keep a grip on himself. Forget what had just happened and get the hell away from San Francisco.

  Staying within the speed limit, Garza took the exit at South Airport Road. He followed the green overhead signs to the Park ’n’ Fly long-term lot.

  His hand was shaking as he collected his ticket from the machine and parked the car along the Cyclone fence on the west side of the ugly, dust-blown lot between two dirty American cars.

  Good-bye to all this. Good-bye, USA.

  He could already see the approach to Rio from the air. The magnificent South American city planted in the green-sheathed mountains, rising up from the sea. The stunning statue of Christ presiding over everything.

  He could sort out everything once he got to Brazil.

  Garza turned off the car engine; then he shook her awake. Not wasting any charm on her now.

  “Hey, let’s go,” he said. “C’mon. You’re going to have to handle your own bags.”

  Garza got out of the car, opened the door of the Roadster, pulled his luggage out of the backseat.

  Called out to her again.

  “Did you hear me, Maureen? The bus to the terminal is loading now. If we miss this flight, we’re fucked.”

  Chapter 130

  I INSISTED ON DRIVING us to the airport, and Jacobi reluctantly let me take the wheel.

  “Whatsa matter, Boxer? What’s your problem?”

  “I want to drive, okay? Rank has its privileges.”

  “Suit yourself, Lieutenant.”

  I sped throughout that twenty-minute drive, cars parting left and right in front of our wailing siren. I turned up the volume on the crackling two-way radio, hoping for another update, worried, because after that single reported sighting of Garza’s car, it hadn’t been seen again.

  As I drove, two questions chased around inside my head.

  Who had been driving Garza’s Mercedes?

  Who had been stabbed to death on Garza’s floor?

  I veered right into the departure lanes, Jacobi calling out the side window as he saw Sergeant Wayne Murray from the Airport Bureau waving us down outside terminal A.

  Sergeant Murray climbed into the backseat. He directed us through a service entrance to the core of the terminal. From there, we followed on foot through unmarked doors and up back stairways to the squad room and the office of Lieutenant Frank Mendez.

  Mendez was wiry, five foot nine, about my age, polite but busy. He stood to shake our hands, offered us chairs across from his desk.

  Then he briefed us on the American Airlines triple 7 jet that had been grounded a hundred yards south of gate 12 for the past hour, doors sealed, takeoff denied.

  “Dr. Garza’s name is on the passenger manifest,” he told us. “So is Ms. O’Mara’s. They’re on a flight to Miami, connecting to Rio. I don’t know how much longer we can keep that bird on the ground, though.”

  Mendez pointed out the Mr. Coffee machine on top of his file cabinet; then he disappeared out of the office.

  The phones on the lieutenant’s desk rang without pause. Just outside the office, banks of flickering video monitors showed grainy black-and-white images of passengers going through ticket checkpoints, scenes of luggage loading docks and carousels.

  Uniforms and military units bustled around the room while Jacobi and I babysat the lieutenant’s fax machine, waiting for it to cough up the paperwork we needed.

  I wondered if Garza and O’Mara believed that a maintenance crew was working on a small mechanical problem.

  Were they sipping mimosas and reading the Financial Times?

  I slugged down the dregs of my coffee, sunk the empty container into the trash can.

  Jacobi coughed, buried his face in his hands, said, “Damn,” and coughed again.

  At 6:05 p.m., the fax machine burped, and the DA’s letterhead chugged out of its works followed by the warrant we’d been waiting for.

  As the last sheet ended its halting journey, Mendez returned. He took the pages out of the tray, read them.

  “Okay,” he said with a smile. “Let’s rock and roll. We’re legal.”

  Chapter 131

  MY PULSE RACED as sixteen of us put on oversized black Windbreakers with POLICE stenciled front and back. We all checked our weapons, then jogged down four steep flights of stairs to the garage.

  I joined Mendez in the lead cruiser, thinking ahead as we sped across the tarmac. Mendez contacted the control tower. Barked into his radio, “Shut down this runway. Forthwith.”

  I was anxious, but more than that, I was exhilarated to be leading this command. And I was anticipating bringing Garza down. I wanted him so badly it hurt just to think about it.

  Striplights blazed on the airfield, and a United jumbo jet roared overhead, its impossible weight lifting into the wind-whipped gloaming.

  I peered up at the grounded American 777, then watched as the rolling staircase was locked to the side of the aircraft.

  Patrol-car doors opened and closed all around the plane.

  Cloaked in twilight, we trotted toward the aircraft.

  My adrenaline flowed as Mendez, Jacobi, and a sharp team of young cops followed me up the stairs, the soles of our shoes ringing on metal as we climbed skyward.

  I tapped on the aft door with my gun butt, and it slid open.

  I signaled to the flight attendant to be quiet
and to step aside. We entered the first-class cabin from the rear.

  I saw the back of Dennis Garza’s head right away. He was in the third row, right side, aisle seat, an ugly red gash blazing through his hair.

  A redheaded woman sat beside him at the window.

  Maureen O’Mara.

  And I saw a problem. A big one.

  Two hundred pounds of beverage cart filled the aisle from one side to the other. That cart and two flight attendants stood between us and Garza.

  Garza heard us approach, turned his head, and squinted at me.

  “You,” he said.

  O’Mara patted his hand, said, “Be cool, Dennis. Everything’s okay.”

  “Dennis Garza. Maureen O’Mara,” I called out. “I have warrants to take you both into custody as material witnesses.”

  “Like hell,” Garza shouted. He fumbled in his jacket pocket. Then he rose out of his seat, stepped into the aisle.

  O’Mara yelled out, “Dennis. No!”

  Moving with the sudden-strike swiftness of a snake, Garza grabbed the flight attendant closest to him, wrapping her streaked hair around his hand, pulling her head back hard so that it was only inches from his face.

  I saw something glint in his hand. It was a syringe!

  He had his thumb on the plunger, the needle already piercing the taut skin of the flight attendant’s neck.

  The young woman screamed, the sound of her terror filling the cabin, reverberating off the walls.

  “I want safe passage out of here. Or I’ll shoot her full of insulin. She’ll be dead before she hits the floor,” Garza threatened.

  Garza’s once handsome face was almost unrecognizable. His features were bruised and twisted, his lips curled back, pupils huge, eyes darting.

  He looked every bit the maniac I believed him to be.

  “It’s up to you,” he said. “I don’t care if she lives or dies.”

  I finally spoke back to Garza. “That much I already knew.”

  Chapter 132

  I WENT COLD INSIDE, staring into Garza’s dark, thoroughly crazy eyes. Maureen O’Mara was kneeling on her seat, staring at Garza in horror, as if she didn’t know who he was, either.

  Sweat beaded on my upper lip as panic drove shrieking passengers to push past the cops and clear the rear half of the cabin.

  In front of me, the remaining first-class passengers hunched forward, covering their heads as sharpshooters formed a wall behind me, using the seat backs as gun rests.

  Garza’s back was to the cockpit. He couldn’t move forward or back, but he could endanger everyone on the aircraft.

  And he could kill the flight attendant on his way down.

  Garza tightened his painful grip on the attendant’s hair. A drop of blood at the girl’s neck fell, spotting the collar of her starched white blouse. She whimpered, stretched up onto her toes.

  I read her name stamped into the gold wings pinned to her vest. “It’s going to be okay, Krista,” I said, making eye contact, watching the tears slide out of her eyes.

  “Let her go, Dennis. No one is putting away their guns,” I said in a steady voice. “And you’re not going to kill anyone. We’re all getting out of here alive.”

  Just then, the cockpit door opened behind Garza with a sound like a vacuum seal breaking. A young flight officer stepped into the cabin, a baton cocked like a baseball bat over his shoulder.

  Garza turned his head, only slightly loosening his hold on the flight attendant. She wriggled and tried to wrench herself free.

  The split second I needed was there, in the grip of my hand. I aimed and squeezed the Taser gun trigger, sending fifty thousand volts into Garza’s shoulder. It was enough juice to stun a rhino.

  Garza choked out a scream and dropped to the cabin floor, curling into a fetal position. I stood over him, Taser pointed at his head as Jacobi cuffed him.

  “You’re under arrest for reckless endangerment,” I said as Garza groaned and writhed at my feet. “You have the right to remain silent, you son of a bitch. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.” And it most certainly will be.

  Chapter 133

  IT WAS AFTER 9:00 P.M. when Jacobi and I brought Dennis Garza and Maureen O’Mara into the squad room, both of them in handcuffs.

  “How the mighty have fallen,” cracked Jacobi.

  I was bone tired, scraping the bottom of my energy reserves, but elation kept me going. Dennis Garza was in custody, charged with reckless endangerment, possession of a deadly weapon, obstruction, and suspicion of murder.

  He wasn’t killing people at Municipal Hospital.

  And he wasn’t sunning himself on a beach in Rio.

  O’Mara had been charged as an accessory after the fact, but we were bluffing and she knew it.

  We had no evidence whatsoever that O’Mara had witnessed a crime or had even seen the blood in Garza’s house.

  Twenty minutes after we brought them in, O’Mara was calmly reading a book in her cell, keeping her mouth shut, waiting for one of her law partners to bail her out of jail.

  But we weren’t finished with her yet.

  I still felt a little shaky and weak in the knees. I went to the bathroom, washed my hands and face in the old porcelain sink. Ran my damp hands through my hair.

  I remembered the last time I’d eaten, the granola bar I’d bolted down after Noddie Wilkins called to tell me that Jamie Sweet had died.

  All of that seemed like a week ago.

  I rejoined Jacobi in my office and had just ordered a meatball pizza, extra large, when Sonja Engstrom returned my call.

  She, too, was pulling a late night at her office in the hospital.

  “We’re going through the dispensary computer’s history, byte by byte,” she said in her crisp, self-assured tone. “The hospital is completely invested in getting to the truth.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “If Dennis was screwing with the computer system, he’s a killer and he was acting alone. The police can have him,” she said. “We’re happy to help.”

  We still had no proof that Garza had killed anyone at Municipal. I wished we could subpoena the hospital’s computer records ourselves, but I knew what the DA would tell me.

  You want us to scrutinize three years of Municipal’s computer records? With what staff, Lieutenant? We don’t have the time, the money, or the manpower to go fishing.

  But with the hospital backing her up, maybe Engstrom could pin a tail on our killer.

  I said, “Sonja, for God’s sake don’t burn, shred, alter, or delete anything. Call me if you detect a pattern or find anything I can take to the DA. Please.”

  I’d just wished her good luck when the next call came in. It was Conklin. His voice was triumphant, almost giddy.

  “Lieutenant,” he said. “I’m looking at Garza’s car.”

  Chapter 134

  I LEANED FORWARD in my seat, slapped the desk to get Jacobi’s attention. I put Conklin on the speakerphone.

  “Garza’s Mercedes is in the Park ’n’ Fly lot,” Conklin told me. “We haven’t touched it.”

  “Excellent. What do you see?”

  “Car’s clean and empty, Lieutenant, except for a newspaper on the floor of the passenger side. The doors and trunk are locked.”

  “Stay where you are. Don’t touch anything,” I said to Conklin. “We’re doing this a hundred percent by the book.”

  I still had friends in the DA’s office, and I found one who was young, persuasive, and not afraid to call a judge after the dinner hour. Forty-five minutes later, I had a search warrant in my hand.

  I called Conklin.

  “Open up the trunk,” I told him. “I’ll hold while you do it.”

  I heard Conklin talking to McNeil in the background, the metallic crack of a crowbar snapping the trunk lock, McNeil barking, “Oh, shit. Goddamn it.”

  “Conklin? Conklin?” I was gripping the edge of my desk, white-knuckled by the time Rich got back on the line. He was breathing h
ard.

  “There’s a frickin’ body in the trunk, Lou. Wrapped up in a quilt.”

  I stared at Jacobi, not having to say what I was thinking because I knew he was thinking it, too. The missing body had turned up. But whose body was it?

  “You checked for a pulse?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. He’s dead. White male. Brown hair. Looks to be in his thirties. He’s covered with blood, Lieutenant. Soaked with it.”

  “Lock down the scene. Stay with that car until the ME and CSU arrive,” I said. “I want that car brought back to the lab. And, Richie, make sure it’s handled like a newborn baby.”

  Chapter 135

  IT WAS AFTER 11:00 P.M. on what was turning out to be one of the longest days of my life. Jacobi and I were in the box with Garza, the three of us stinking of sweat. The flat overhead light was making shadows dance dizzyingly against the gray tile walls.

  I figured that I felt like Garza looked.

  And he looked like a gargoyle, a monstrous, murdering gargoyle. And like a gargoyle, he wasn’t talking.

  I was this close to squeezing his purpled jaw between my fingers to make him scream. I hated the sight of him so much.

  Instead, I gave him a Tylenol, a cup of water, and a bunch of ice cubes in a paper towel for his swollen jaw.

  And he’d given me nothing back.

  His arrogance was remarkable, stonewalling us even though we’d found a dead man inside his car.

  “You should help yourself, you know, Dennis?” I was on a first-name basis with him because I knew he resented it.

  “I should have an X ray.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m pretty sure my jaw is fractured. I might have a concussion, too.”

  “How’d that happen?” Jacobi asked, tapping the point of a pencil on the table. It was a faint, brittle sound. Irritating. And menacing. I thought if I left Jacobi alone with Garza he’d bounce him off the walls. Might even kill him. I pulled out a chair and sat down.