12th of Never (Womens Murder Club 12)

by Patterson, James

  “Here’s something that will make your ears stand up,” Clapper said. “The round fired from the gun matches the one Claire took from Perry Judd’s head, so we definitely have the murder weapon. And I’m not done yet.”

  “Go ahead,” Conklin said. Brady appeared out of nowhere and was standing over him, looking frayed and impatient.

  “The murder weapon is registered to the victim,” Clapper said.

  “What? You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes, I am sure. A hundred percent sure.”

  “Any prints? Please say yes.”

  “Wiped clean.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Conklin ended the call, said to the lieutenant, “Perry Judd was shot dead with his own gun. And no, he didn’t shoot himself in the back of the head. The killer was three to five feet behind him. But it still makes no sense. The professor dreams his own death without knowing it. And then someone shoots him with his own gun.

  “What do you make of this, boss?” Conklin said. “Because it seems way off the hook to me.”

  “This just came from the aquarium,” Brady said, putting two disks down on Conklin’s desk. “Let’s go to the video.”

  Chapter 80

  CONKLIN SAT AT his computer, screening the surveillance footage from the aquarium.

  He was looking for the moment that the professor was shot, and it was hard to see very much. The surveillance camera was old and its focal point was indeterminate. The dark areas of the aquarium were lit with pin lights that burned hot spots in the video and made the unlit areas seem even darker.

  Conklin skimmed the footage, running it forward and back, looking for the professor. Then he saw him.

  Professor Judd was on the walkway, wearing a herring-bone jacket and khakis—the same outfit Conklin had seen on the DB. Judd was gazing around in all directions, probably looking for a shooter or someone he had seen in his dream. He touched the bulge at the back of his waistband, as though he were assuring himself that his gun was there. In every way, he was doing just what he had told Rich he was planning to do.

  One minute he was walking alone, then a moment later, he was eclipsed by a group of people who were walking faster than he was, and they were closing in on him. As the group encompassed him, Judd suddenly jerked, stiffened, and fell facedown on the walkway.

  Some people in the crowd stopped to see the fallen body, but within a few seconds the walkway was emptied of living people.

  Conklin backed up the video, pushed in on the shooting, added fill light. Then he scrutinized the people who were around Perry Judd when he dropped.

  He printed out fuzzy stills of the bystanders: an elderly man and a young boy who could be his grandson, three teenage girls, hands to their mouths, probably shrieking. And there was a slim guy in jeans, a dark blue Windbreaker, and a baseball cap, walking behind the others.

  Conklin backed the video up another thirty seconds, to the point where the professor entered the field of view, hands in his pants pockets, turning his head from side to side as he glided forward on the walkway. Then the group of tourists that had been moving faster than the professor surrounded him—and Rich saw the guy in the cap join the group.

  Conklin stopped the video and let it feed forward a frame at a time. He watched the ball-cap guy bump into the professor and snake his hand under the back of the professor’s herringbone jacket. It was a classic pickpocket maneuver called dipping. Then the guy in the cap lifted his hand and aimed the gun that he had removed from the back of Judd’s pants.

  Conklin saw the flare as the ball-cap guy fired on Professor Judd.

  The professor jerked, fell. Then the guy in the cap raised the muzzle and fired again. This time the bullet went into the Plexiglas wall.

  It was clearly a diversion.

  Water spouted. People glanced at the body, turned away, sprinted up the walkway.

  Conklin pressed the forward button and watched the jerky image of the man in the cap. The assailant never looked up, never looked at the camera. After he threw his two shots, he disappeared into the shadows at the end of the walk. He had probably wiped and ditched the gun there, but that was a supposition. And while Conklin was sure that the ball-cap guy was the killer, he hadn’t seen the man’s face.

  Conklin ejected the disk from the DVD drawer and slipped in the second disk, which had been shot by a camera at the aquarium’s entrance.

  This time he knew whom he was looking for.

  Another hour went by as Conklin scanned the video and found the images of the guy with the cap, a guy who was starting to look familiar. He watched him go past the security guard, hold out his ticket to be punched, and enter the dark hole that was the entrance to the exhibit.

  The shooter was a pro. He had kept his face hidden at all times. Conklin had no image to compare with those of known criminals.

  So the questions remained. Who was the guy in the ball cap? How had he known that the professor was carrying a weapon at the back of his trousers? Why had he targeted the professor? And had he killed the two women the professor had seen in his dreams? If so, how had that happened?

  How had the killer tapped into the professor’s dreams?

  There was something crazy wrong about the entire dream-and-execution pattern. It was a puzzle, and Conklin felt there was more to it than the images on his screen.

  What was he missing?

  Conklin made a cup of coffee in the break room. Then he went back to his desk and watched the video again.

  Chapter 81

  FBI UBERAGENT RON PARKER sat with Randolph Fish in a small cement-block room in the bowels of the prison. Two cameras were focused on them; one angled through the oneway glass, and the other was positioned in a corner of the ceiling.

  Fish was shackled hand and foot by a chain that ran through a hole in the center of the table to a loop in the floor. He was so pale you could almost see through his skin. There was a fresh hand-size bruise on his jaw, and Parker had seen the photos of the larger bruises and abrasions all over his body.

  The day before, a couple of guards had been escorting Fish to the yard when they were drawn into a dispute between two other prisoners and took their eyes off Fish for a moment.

  The dispute was a diversion, giving another prisoner a chance to pull Fish against the bars of his cell. He twisted Fish’s arm until he went to his knees. Then a second prisoner got Fish’s pants down, kicked his legs apart, and did him with a sawed-off broom handle.

  The assault had been over quickly, but it had turned Fish’s head around entirely. After the emergency medical treatment, which involved a row of stitches in a place where the sun don’t shine, Fish had asked for Ron Parker, who had driven up from L.A. to see him.

  Now Parker was watching Randolph Fish, killer of at least five but possibly twice as many young women, think over what he was going to say in an effort to come up with something the G-man might go for.

  “I can’t stay here,” Fish finally said. “I’ll be killed.”

  “I feel for you, I really do,” Parker said in a voice that conveyed that he really didn’t give a crap. “I would raise a real stink if I were you. Name your attackers. That’s what I would do.”

  Fish didn’t rise to the bait.

  “I’m ready to make a deal,” he said.

  “Yeah? Listen, you dumb shit. I can’t promise anything anymore. You made me look like a moron too many times. The governor has had enough of your bull. He said, and I quote, ‘Don’t tell me anything about that psycho unless his last words were “I’m deeply sorry” and that he suffered before he croaked.’”

  “The guards could’ve protected me. They didn’t, and I think they set me up,” Fish said.

  “I’ve got a meeting in an hour,” said Ron Parker. “What do you want and what are you going to give up? Get real or drop dead. I no longer care which.”

  “Move me to another prison. I’ll give you the names of four girls you know nothing about. I’ll tell you where they are.”

>   “That’s what you told me last time, Randy.”

  “Last time I hadn’t been corn-holed with a broom.”

  “Give me the names,” Parker said.

  Fish squirmed. “Got a pen?”

  Parker typed the names on his phone and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” He called for a guard, then turned before he left the room.

  “Stay out of trouble,” Parker said to the serial killer. “Watch your ass.”

  Chapter 82

  THE NEW WOMEN’S jail was a few blocks away, on 7th Street. It was a model facility, but Yuki made sure that Lynnette Lagrande was held in a special unit in the grubby, outdated, and overcrowded facility on the seventh floor of the Hall of Justice.

  Lynnette would be uncomfortable there and maybe terrified, which was all to the good. The first grade teacher with the diamond necklace and the sixty-thousand-dollar car needed a reality check, and Yuki planned to spell out to Lynnette exactly how much pain she was facing.

  Yuki had a statement from Lieutenant Floyd Meserve in her briefcase. Meserve admitted that he had been in love with Lynnette Lagrande, but he hadn’t liked her at all. He said she was as mad as a box of snakes and he hated himself for ever getting involved with her. He said he was glad to help the DA and he wanted to just walk away from the whole deal with no charges against him.

  In his sworn statement, Meserve said he had no proof but he had reason to believe that Lynnette Lagrande had arranged Jennifer Herman’s death.

  Meserve said that Lynnette had talked with him about getting Jennifer out of the way. She had insisted that he do the hit and said she would make it worth his while. When he had refused, she had thrown a fit and stopped returning his calls. After Jennifer Herman’s body was found, she’d called Meserve and told him she had nothing to do with it, which Meserve had thought showed that she felt guilty.

  Meserve had an alibi for the time of Jennifer Herman’s death. He said he was in Erie, Pennsylvania, staying with his brother, Morris, visiting their dying father every day. His story had checked out.

  Meserve’s statement was all that Yuki had on Lynnette Lagrande, but she could make the most of it. Meserve was a cop. The probability was high that after Lynnette was arraigned, she would be held without bail while the DA’s office put together the murder case against her. Yuki hoped that this stark view of her future would shock Lynnette into telling the truth.

  Yuki took the elevator from the DA’s offices on the eighth floor to the jail one floor below. She knew the security guard at the desk, Bubbleen Waters, and told her that she wanted to see Lynnette Lagrande. Then Yuki waited in the outer area for a half hour, returning e-mail, until her name was called.

  Officer Waters escorted Yuki along a dark corridor to an interrogation room the size of a typical apartment bathroom. She sat at the table, opened her briefcase, and put away her phone in time for the door to open and Officer Waters to show Lynnette Lagrande into the room.

  Lynnette looked wild. Her hair was flat, her nails were bitten off, and the residue of the eye makeup she’d been wearing two days ago ringed her eyes.

  “Hi, Lynnette. Bubbleen,” Yuki said to the guard, “could you please remove Ms. Lagrande’s handcuffs?”

  “I don’t advise it, Yuki. She’s taken a few pokes at people.” Yuki said, “Okay. I hear you. Lynnette, have a seat. How are you doing?”

  “I’m just fine,” Lynnette said. “I’m rooming with three crack whores and a baby killer. I’m teaching them how to insult each other using proper grammar.”

  The guard left the room and Lynnette Lagrande sat down. She said to Yuki, “Who do I have to blow to get out of here?”

  Chapter 83

  YUKI SAID, “A woman like you really shouldn’t be here, Lynnette. You need help and so do I. Tell me about Jennifer Herman’s murder. And I need to know where Lily Herman has been living for the last year.”

  “You don’t ask for much, do you?”

  “I’m asking you to tell me the truth.”

  “If I know something and didn’t tell the police about it, does that make me an accessory?”

  “Maybe, but you’ve got me in your corner. I’d be willing to help you if you help me.”

  “Could you possibly be more vague?”

  “Could you?”

  “Okay, listen, Yuki. I had nothing to do with Jennifer’s death. Actually, I liked her.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Lynnette sighed. “I met Jennifer a couple of times when she came to school to talk about Lily. Lily was a mess. Withdrawn. Evasive. We never really got into it. Jennifer was reluctant to talk about her husband, and I didn’t want to talk about him, either. I liked him a lot.”

  She shook her head, as if it hurt to remember.

  “Talk about a colossal error in judgment. But anyway. Whatever Floyd Meserve tells you, I didn’t kill Jennifer. I’ve never killed anything or anybody.”

  “Floyd will testify under oath that you set up the meeting with him and Keith.”

  “I made the introduction, but for God’s sake, I knew Floyd was a cop! Keith was always talking about making Jennifer disappear. So I told Keith a story. That I knew this fixer. Blah, blah. And I’m saying to Keith, ‘Can you imagine?’ And Keith said, ‘Give me the guy’s name. Hook us up.’

  “I told Floyd about Keith, and Floyd said, ‘I could play the part of a hit man. I know enough of them.’ I thought Floyd would lock Keith up and Jennifer would be fine. Get it? And then Jennifer could parent her daughter without Keith around terrorizing them.

  “So I gave Floyd’s number to Keith and at the same time I told Keith I was done with him. He’s a scary man, Yuki. Even scarier when he’s frustrated. So like I said, I went up to my cottage to be alone. When I heard that Jennifer and Lily were missing, I thought Floyd actually took the job from Keith. Or if Floyd didn’t do it, maybe Keith did it himself. I was afraid for my own life.”

  “And where was Lily at this time? Do you know?”

  “Oh, I know where Lily was. That’s what I’m going to trade for getting these stupid charges against me dismissed.”

  Yuki thought about what Lynnette had said. It sounded true, and it wasn’t even at odds, really, with Floyd Meserve’s statement.

  “Hey,” Lynnette said. “I’m talking to you, you little gook bitch. I can help you nail Keith Herman. Have we got a deal?”

  Chapter 84

  YUKI SAID, “WHAT did you say?”

  Yuki had never been called a gook in her life. Her mother was Japanese but had been an American citizen for twenty-five years before her death. Her father had been Italian American, US Army, a veteran. Yuki was born in San Francisco.

  She was astonished by this new version of Lynnette Lagrande, who was not only a changeling but an ugly person through and through.

  Lynnette said, “I said, pay attention, Yuki.”

  Yuki considered launching a couple of stinging come-backs, but decided to take the high road. She ignored the insult and again asked Lynnette Lagrande to tell her what she knew about Lily’s disappearance and whereabouts between the first of March the previous year and last week.

  Lynnette spoke with her trademark good diction and grammar, and she named names. Yuki put her notebook away and slammed the lid on her briefcase. She said, “I’ll get back to you.”

  “When? How long do I have to stay here?” Lynnette called after Yuki as she exited the interrogation room.

  Yuki went out into the hallway, found people stacked three deep at the elevator bank, and headed down the fire stairs. When she got to the third floor, she opened the door leading to the homicide squad room.

  Brenda greeted her with a smile and said, “The boss is in.”

  Yuki thanked Brenda, breezed through the gate, and crossed the bull pen to the corner office. She knocked on the glass door and Lieutenant Jackson Brady got to his feet, opened the door, and asked Yuki to come in.

  “Are you okay?”

  Yuki took the seat across from Brady and said, �
�You’ve got to hear this.”

  Brady punched all his phone lines so that no calls could come through.

  “You’ve got my full attention,” he said.

  “Lynnette Lagrande just told me who was keeping Lily Herman for the last year, and I’ve got their full names. Marcia Kohl, née Kransky, and Alan Kohl.”

  Brady typed the names into a known-criminals law enforcement database.

  “They’re low-level jerkoffs. Insurance fraud. Petty theft. Last known address was Bolinas,” he said.

  “Right. Well, according to Lynnette, they did some insurance schemes with Keith Herman. They slipped in restaurants. Fell down in front of expensive cars that were slowing for traffic lights. Herman went after the insurance companies, split the take with the Kohls.”

  “Okay, here we go,” said Brady. “Alan Kohl, insurance fraud, charges dismissed August 2007. Attorney, Keith Herman.”

  “That was Keith Herman working his way up to full-blown dirtbag criminal defense attorney,” Yuki said.

  “So how does Lily Herman fit into this?”

  “Lynnette says she overheard Keith talking to the Kohls about babysitting Lily. She presumes he wanted to get the child out of the house and away from Jennifer. Then Jennifer turned up in garbage bags and Keith was arrested. Lynnette thinks the Kohls continued to babysit and charge Keith for their services.”

  Brady printed out the Kohls’ address, then said to Yuki, “We’ve got probable cause.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Want to ask Arthur Nussbaum for a search warrant?”

  Chapter 85

  YUKI SAT IN the passenger seat beside Brady, who was driving the squad car, responding to radio calls, and taking quick glances in the rearview mirror at the cop cars behind him, bumping up the narrow dirt road that ran out from the town toward the far-flung farmlands beyond it.