Private

by James Patterson; Maxine Paetro

  Nora braked in the street, and she and Justine jumped out of the squad car. One of a half dozen uniforms came up to Nora.

  “LT, here’s the thing. He was already parked when we located him. As soon as we pulled up, he put his hands on his head. His doors are locked and he won’t get out.”

  “He’s refusing to get out of the vehicle?”

  “Right. Who does that? He must have something locked in there. Dope, maybe. Or hot electronics. Guns. He can’t go anywhere, though.”

  Justine looked through the windshield at the young white guy with the wire-rim glasses. He looked out at her, seeming oddly calm.

  It was definitely Crocker, the savage sonofabitch psycho. She knew his face from the yearbook, and from seeing him yesterday in the Whiskey Blue. For the past two years, every couple of months he’d lured and killed young women who’d fallen for whatever story he and his partner had concocted.

  Justine knew the names of the victims and all about their promising, too-short lives, all thirteen of them. She hated Crocker. And she was also afraid.

  Neither she nor the LAPD had anything substantial on Crocker except for a five-year-old ID from a minor who might not even testify.

  Justine edged forward until she was close enough to Crocker to see that his nostrils were blanched, his eyebrows hitched up, and that he had a smile on his face.

  It was almost like he was excited and just daring someone to shoot him.

  What was this? A bid for suicide by cop?

  That would not do. Would not do.

  Justine went back to Nora’s car and took the ASP baton from where it rested on the console. She returned to where Nora held her gun with both hands, the muzzle pointed at Crocker through the closed driver-side window.

  “Get out of the car,” Nora shouted again to Crocker. “This is the last time I’m telling you. Get out. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Crocker shouted back, “I’m not armed. I don’t really think you’re going to shoot me.”

  Justine knew her anger was calling the shots here, but she didn’t care. She flicked the ASP down and out, the sound of it like racking a shotgun. The heavy six-inch metal bar extended to become a sixteen-inch nightstick.

  Justine said, “Stand back, Nora.”

  Holding the ASP like a bat, she swung it at the Sienna’s driver-side window. Crocker ducked too late. Glass shattered.

  Then Justine swung and hit the glass again.

  Nora gaped at Justine, then stuck her hand through the broken window and unlocked the door. She holstered her weapon and dragged Crocker out of his seat and down onto the pavement.

  As the lanky young man tumbled to the ground, guns came out all around.

  Nora barked, “On your stomach, hands on your head.” Blood streamed down Crocker’s face.

  Justine felt sudden fear. If she was wrong about Crocker, there were going to be lawsuits, big ones. Crocker would sue the city for false arrest, police brutality, assault on his person and property. At the same time, he would sue her personally, and because she wasn’t rich, he’d sue Private.

  But right now it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except this stone-cold killer stretched out on the asphalt.

  “Rudolph Crocker, we’re arresting you for interfering with police,” Nora said.

  “I didn’t interfere with anything. I was sitting in my car, minding my own business.”

  “Save it for the judge,” said Nora.

  “Man, are you going to look dumb,” said Crocker.

  Chapter 111

  CRUZ AND I reached Justine within minutes of her call. The four-lane roadway was jammed to the sidewalks. Traffic cops were rerouting the rush hour surge, and the two southbound lanes were cordoned off with squad cars.

  Cruz and I abandoned our car and walked through the cordon. I counted eight cruisers, twenty uniforms, and assorted other cops surrounding Nora Cronin, who had her small foot on the neck of a man who was lying facedown on the ground. Cronin was reading him his rights.

  Justine stood a couple of yards away, wearing an expression I’d have to call rapt. She barely glanced at Cruz and me, kept her eyes on Cronin as the lieutenant grabbed the guy up off the ground and got him to his feet.

  “I want to call my lawyer,” said the guy with the glasses.

  “Call all the lawyers you want, asshole,” Nora said.

  Four cops piled on and threw the guy across the hood of a squad car and cuffed him behind his back. The guy looked benign and, more than that, unworried.

  I said to Justine, “That’s Crocker?”

  She looked up at me, said, “Yeah, that’s him. Did he kill anyone? I don’t know. Maybe someone will get us that warrant now so we can collect his freakin’ DNA.”

  News choppers materialized overhead. A BMW, a Ford sedan, and a TV satellite van came up the street.

  Chief Michael Fescoe got out of the Ford. I couldn’t believe he was here already.

  DA Bobby Petino got out of the BMW.

  The two of them converged, talked briefly, then came over to where Cruz and I stood with Justine.

  “What happened to you?” Bobby said to Justine.

  She looked down, saw blood streaks from her elbow to her wrist. “It’s not mine,” she said. “It’s Crocker’s.”

  Her face flamed—but why?

  She turned away from Bobby as Fescoe said to me, “The one Cruz assaulted. Eamon Fitzhugh. What happened to him?”

  I said, “In brief, we learned that he and Crocker were going to commit a murder tonight. Nothing we could verify. We tailed Fitzhugh, caught him getting into something hinky with a fifteen-year-old in the parking lot at Ralph’s.”

  “He’s at the hospital, dislocated shoulder and contusions, shouting about police brutality,” Fescoe said.

  Cruz said, “He was going to kill that girl—”

  “So you say,” Fescoe interjected.

  “So I say,” said Cruz. “All I did was tackle him with conviction. He’s a bantamweight.”

  Fescoe’s eyes were wild with anger when he looked at me. “Jack, this is crap. You’ve got unnamed sources. Putting guys in the hospital. Arrests without cause. I want you in my office in half an hour. Bring Cruz and Smith. If this disaster isn’t explained to my satisfaction, I will be pulling your license.”

  As he walked off, I asked Justine, “You say that blood is Crocker’s?”

  She nodded. “Yep.”

  There was shattered glass all over the seat of the Sienna. Before the uniform could tell me not to, I put on a latex glove, picked up a few shards with blood on them, and folded the pieces into another glove. I handed the impromptu evidence bag to Justine along with the keys to my car.

  “Get this to the lab, pronto. I’ll meet you in Fescoe’s office. Should be fun.”

  Justine didn’t exactly smile, but her look softened. “Thanks, Jack.”

  Chapter 112

  CHIEF MICHAEL FESCOE’S office smelled of yesterday’s lunch.

  The blinds over the interior glass walls were opened halfway so that Fescoe could see the squad room. The smudged windows peered onto Los Angeles Street, where cars rushed by like phantoms in the dark.

  The tension in the room was electric and not in a good or positive way.

  There wasn’t a person sitting there who could say with confidence that as a result of today’s operations, he or she wouldn’t be sued or fired or jailed—or all three.

  As Private’s sole proprietor, I would be the first to face the firing squad. I was just a contractor. Private would be blamed for everything in the first round. We were guilty of using electronics that would be illegal except that laws against this advanced technique for remote wiretaps hadn’t even been written yet.

  On our say-so and at our urging, Lieutenant Nora Cronin had arrested a man who’d been injured by one of our operatives during the arrest, and our evidence against Rudolph Crocker was based solely on the five-year-old memory of a teenage girl who might not be willing to testify.
r />   True, Fitzhugh had left DNA on the clothes of the murder victim five years before, but DNA on an ankle sock wasn’t proof that he had killed her.

  If we didn’t prove a connection between Crocker and Fitzhugh and the deaths of any of the schoolgirls from Borman through Esperanza, their lawyers would get them out of jail free.

  Petino and Fescoe both had a lot at stake, but the police chief in particular had his cajones in a waffle iron. One of his cops was involved. As Fescoe uncapped his coffee container, Petino paced at the back of the room. Because of his relationship with Justine, he’d brought Private to Fescoe and had vouched for us all. If we went down, Bobby Petino would never eat lunch in this town again—let alone become governor of the state.

  People took their seats. Nora Cronin sat between Fescoe and Justine. Justine sat to my right, Cruz to my left.

  “I want to go over all of it,” Fescoe said. “But keep it simple. Justine, you first. Let’s cut through all the bullshit—at least inside this office.”

  Justine used her most professional voice, but I knew her well enough to see and hear her fears. She held it together as she told Fescoe about Christine Castiglia, the witness to Wendy Borman’s abduction, a claim that had been borne out by the results from our lab.

  “Two single-source DNA samples were recovered from Wendy’s clothing,” she said. “One of those samples absolutely matches Eamon Fitzhugh. The other sample doesn’t match anyone yet. But from Castiglia’s eyewitness report, Rudolph Crocker was the second boy who hustled Wendy Borman into the van.”

  Fescoe asked how Wendy Borman linked up with the Schoolgirl killings, and that’s where it got dicey. I jumped in eventually and explained that the MOs were similar if not identical. “We think Wendy Borman was the first victim.”

  “If not the first victim, certainly an early one,” said Justine.

  I explained that Crocker and Fitzhugh hadn’t made any substantial mistakes until Fitzhugh recruited Jason Pilser, possibly to raise the stakes of the game.

  “We intercepted Pilser’s electronic footprints. This bastard was bragging to his virtual friends about a club he was inducted into called the Street Freeks. And that the Street Freeks were doing killings in real life.”

  “You’re losing me a little bit,” said Fescoe.

  “You asked for the simple version, Mickey. The point here is that we intercepted messages from Crocker to Pilser, and again from Crocker to Fitzhugh, describing a plan for them to kill another girl tonight. The girl he named was the girl Fitzhugh was talking to when Cruz brought him down.”

  “I see dots all over the place and zero connections,” said Fescoe. Storm clouds were forming in his eyes. “Everything you’ve told me is either circumstantial or inadmissible or too damn obscure to convince a jury of our inferiors. I want murder weapons. I want forensics that match up. I want eyewitnesses who weren’t eleven years old or who didn’t jump or get pushed off their terraces to their deaths.

  “Do you people understand me? Beri Hunt is going to represent Crocker. If we don’t button this up, this case will never even go to trial.”

  “You have to keep Crocker and Fitzhugh apart,” I said. “We need a little time to run Crocker’s DNA against Wendy Borman’s clothes.”

  I turned to Bobby Petino, who was still pacing a rut in Fescoe’s carpet behind me.

  “We need search warrants for Crocker’s and Fitzhugh’s homes and offices, Bobby. You think you can help us out? Don’t let these two walk.”

  Chapter 113

  NORA EASED INTO Crocker’s apartment with her gun in hand, turned on the lights, slapped the warrant down on the hall table, then checked off what she saw in the one-bedroom apartment.

  No visible computer in the main room.

  Windows closed.

  Air conditioning on.

  Apparently no one home.

  “Don’t be sorry, Justine,” Nora said over her shoulder, answering Justine’s apology, delivered on the way up in the elevator. “I’m not the one going down. I can’t speak for you, but seems like little Nora is the low man on the totem pole. I’m just your whatchacallit. Pawn. Clear,” she said.

  Justine entered the apartment and followed Nora into the kitchenette, the bedroom, the bath.

  Nora cleared all the rooms and closets, then put her gun away.

  “Nobody here but us chickens. You take the bedroom and the bathroom,” Nora said. “Shout if you find anything.”

  Justine stood in the bedroom doorway, studying the place. The room definitely showed an active brain. It was painted dark blue and had woodwork in different neon colors—pink, green, yellow—and orange baseboards and moldings. There was a California King platform bed for the young killer.

  His books covered the full range of human knowledge, from arts and sciences to politics and ecology. His nightstand held a flashlight, an unopened box of rubbers, ChapStick, TV remote control, batteries.

  There was a desk, and Justine went to it. No computer on the surface. The drawer was locked.

  She took a pair of scissors out of the pencil cup and pried the lock as quickly as a B and E artist could. That was probably illegal, but what the crap? She’d bashed in his car window. That had to be worse.

  Crocker’s desk drawer was a disappointment, though. Six Krugerrands in an empty paper clip box. A baggie with some loose dope and rolling papers. The rest was office supplies. Not even any photographs.

  Justine closed the drawer, went to the dresser, and opened every drawer.

  She was looking for evidence of heinous crimes or the slightest memorabilia of those crimes: newspaper clippings or a notebook with handwritten notes or souvenirs. Anything.

  Crocker took souvenirs from his victims, but unlike many trophy hunters, he had hidden them, then sent snarky, nose-thumbing e-mails to the mayor that led to the whistle-clean artifacts that proved nothing.

  Surely, with all his pride in his success, Crocker would have kept something. Or was he just too damned smart?

  Nora came into the room, and she and Justine flipped the mattress, revealing a clean box spring, no pockets cut into the fabric.

  Nora said, “I never met any guys this clean.”

  Justine went to the closet, reached up, and tugged on the light pull, a doodad attached to a chain.

  Crocker had six dark suits, six sport jackets, and several blue shirts, all hanging from hangers. Shoes were lined up neatly under the clothes. She checked pockets and felt inside shoes. And the longer she searched, the greater was the cold feeling of defeat.

  Had Christine been wrong about Crocker? Was that possible?

  Had Justine forced the girl to create false memories? Justine reached up to turn off the closet light, and that’s when it clicked.

  Crocker, that fool. He’d never expected anyone to look for it. Why would they? It had happened five years ago.

  Justine shouted for Nora, and she appeared almost instantly.

  Justine’s heart was doing a happy dance, and her blood was pounding so hard in her ears she could barely hear her own voice when she said, “Nora. Tell me I’m not seeing things. Tell me I’m not making this up.”

  Chapter 114

  JUSTINE LEANED BACK against the wall of “the box” and watched Nora Cronin doing her fearless, practiced interrogation.

  Across the table from Nora sat Rudolph Crocker. He had sutures in a couple of places on his face, but otherwise he looked almost happy, as if he were enjoying the hell out of being the center of attention.

  When he looked at Justine, he grinned as if to say, “You’re in trouble, lady. Look who I got on my side: Beri Hunt, criminal-defense attorney to the stars.”

  Beri Hunt looked the way she looked on TV: early forties, short dark hair, and porcelain white skin. Her suit was of fine summer-weight gray wool, and she wore a strand of gray Pacific island pearls at her throat.

  Hunt had already told Nora and her superiors up the line that yes, they could get away with holding Crocker for interfering with the police.
But as soon as Crocker was arraigned on this little misdemeanor, bail would be posted and her client would be out. At the same time, she’d be preparing lawsuits that would bring everyone involved in the arrest down. She’d smiled nicely as she said this.

  Nora said, “Mr. Crocker, I apologize again for the injuries you sustained, but you understand, we thought you had a gun in the front seat.”

  “Right. But I didn’t have a gun, and we’re going to sue you for unlawfully assaulting me, right, Beri? We’re going for millions.”

  “Rudy, let the lieutenant talk. We’re just listening to what she has to say.”

  “It’s Rude,” said Crocker. “My nickname.”

  “You also understand, don’t you, Mr. Crocker,” Nora continued as if Rude hadn’t spoken, “that once we were inside that van, we saw some very disturbing decor.”

  “Nothing in that van is admissible,” said the attorney. “My client was not armed. And you had no cause to search the vehicle. What else have you got?”

  “Let’s talk about the van, okay, Ms. Hunt? It was lined with construction-grade black plastic, and the toolbox we found inside there was full of electrodes and clamps. So we’ve gotta ask what those tools were for.

  “Any reasonable person, especially one who has seen the bodies of thirteen dead girls and has seen how they were killed, might think that the van was lined with plastic so as not to get any bodily fluids on the interior when your client tortured and killed another young girl.”

  “I just like to keep the van in mint condition for resale,” Crocker said, but his smile was gone, at least temporarily.

  “Don’t say anything,” Hunt said. “This detective is firing blanks in the dark.”

  “Well, I have some live ammo now,” said Nora. “And it’s getting nice and bright in here.”

  She opened the folder in front of her and turned the top sheet around so that Hunt and Crocker could see the report from Private’s lab.