21st Birthday

by James Patterson

  I told him we were going to make a move.

  Conklin wasn’t grinning anymore, and I wasn’t thinking about singing along with Sheryl Crow on my guitar, either.

  I said, “Call Alvarez. Tell her we need her now. Is she ready for this . . . baptism by fire?”

  “I have no doubt.”

  By 8 p.m., the Burke task force met on the street in front of the Hall of Justice.

  Brady briefed us under a streetlight, laying out our objective: to bring him in to get his comments on his son on the record. “We want to bring him in without a shot fired or a door kicked in. But if it goes that way, we’re ready.”

  And then Brady got into a van with Cappy and Alvarez and two other cops with tac team experience.

  Conklin and I were assigned an unmarked car with a dedicated channel, high-tech navigation, and vest mics. Conklin wanted the wheel, so I willingly agreed to navigate us to a place I’d never been. Captain Brevoort had assigned the Wendy Franks investigators to join our caravan while Chi stayed back at the Hall and used Brady’s office as command center.

  As the mission clarified and became real, my emotions bounced between excitement and something resembling stark fear.

  The task force was acting on my secondhand intel. If Berney was wrong, I’d hold myself responsible for sending this crew on a road trip to nowhere, and God forbid resulting injuries or death.

  If Berney was right, we were about to confront a crafty killer without probable cause to arrest him. If Evan Burke, aka Jake Winslow, was that killer, he was remarkable for his cold-blooded brutality. He’d murdered his wife, daughter, his son’s wife, child, and lover as well as a few victims who matched his preferred victim profile. Lucas had thought there were more bodies than he knew.

  If all of that was true, tonight might be our best chance of capturing a mass murderer of the psychopathic kind. In doing so, we might save untold lives, close cold cases, and overall, feel the deep satisfaction of being a cop.

  But it could go wrong and tonight could end in tragedy.

  Chapter 63

  We started our engines and rolled out at 8:15 p.m.

  Conklin knew the way, leaving my mind free to picture a dead baby with pale red hair and the bloated, gnawed body of her mother strapped into a red Volvo. I felt Misty Fogarty clinging to me as we’d left the Comfy Corner Diner, four hours before a monster slashed her throat.

  I willed Conklin to drive faster. I projected into the near future and saw myself standing with my partner at Evan Burke’s door, hoping he’d put up a fight so we could arrest him for assaulting a police officer. Cuff him. Throw him into the back of the car and then treat him to a marathon interrogation in the box.

  “Linds?” Conklin said.

  “Hmmm?”

  “I asked if you wanted to stop for coffee.”

  “No thanks, Rich. Let’s just get there.”

  I needed to find out for myself whether Lucas Burke, the man awaiting trial on the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice, had been framed by his name-changing, face-changing father who lived in a cabin too remote for even Google Earth to have recorded.

  It only took our caravan fifteen minutes to cross the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito. Once within the Marin County lines, Brady patched us into his call to Captain Geoffrey Brevoort to let him know that we were in his territory.

  “Captain. We have to question a suspect on other homicides. As soon as we have him, we’ll bring you into the loop.”

  We exited the highway at 445B, passing the Commodore Dock and a small marina on our right-hand side. About a dozen houseboats were tied up to finger slips and a couple of seaplanes bobbing gently on the water. I didn’t see a cabin cruiser, but I made a mental note. Maybe he’s on it.

  For the next several miles, we drove through the pretty, upscale towns of Mill Valley. Our wheels hugged the road as it curved upward, taking us away from genteel civilization toward the deep woods of Mount Tamalpais.

  At one point I called Brady and we pulled up on the verge of the paved road, the police van sliding in behind us. We climbed out and leaned against our cars, examined the maps on our phones, and reviewed again the unlit twisting roads and trails that curled around rocky outcroppings and doubled back under the shadow of Mount Tam.

  Brady had a collection of drone shots of a cabin presumed to belong to Burke/Winslow. It sat alone in a clearing the size of my fingertip, and in the darkness we would have good cover. There were no other cabins within a quarter mile of Burke’s. We surely would surprise him, and he would agree to come back with us to the Hall. Please, God, without bloodshed. And since I was reaching out to God, I put in another request.

  That Evan Burke would say, “You got me. I did it all.”

  Brady asked us to run mic checks again. Afterward, we all tightened our vest straps and got back into our vehicles, the van right behind us. As the road climbed, it narrowed, changed from macadam to rutted clay. Tree roots encroached on the dirt roads. It quickly became clear that the van would be unable to negotiate the tree-bound trails. Brady found a better road for the van, but it was a good five minutes from the Burke cabin.

  It was the best we could do.

  Conklin took a narrow trail on our right, keeping only the parking lights on. Unmarked vehicles were not meant for off-road travel, but surprisingly our tires made good contact with the ruts we were riding. There was one moment of unplanned confusion when our downlights showed our trail diverging into two.

  I grabbed the mic and talked to Brady and we decided that Conklin and I would take the right fork; the van would still be within jogging distance of the cabin.

  Even with low visibility and little knowledge of the terrain, our plan looked good. We kept driving, startling flapping, scurrying, and leaping creatures as we drove. Conklin made a turn onto a driveway of sorts and we parked there.

  We radioed the van, and while waiting for confirmation that they were in place, Conklin and I sized up Burke/Winslow’s house and grounds.

  Chapter 64

  The cabin was centered in a weedy clearing encircled by a half dozen trees of various types and heights. A toolshed stood off to one side.

  Small, approximately four hundred square feet, the cabin was too makeshift to be a prefab “tiny house” but could have been built from scratch in a few days by a reasonably handy worker or two.

  That might explain why there was no record of this house in the tax rolls, no transfer of title. One day this area had been a clearing, part of state protected lands, a few days later a small corner had been confiscated, unnoticed.

  I hoped to see a car with a license plate, but there was none such. But I did see the blue light of a screen, and firelight flickering through the windows.

  Someone was home.

  I radioed Brady, summarized what we knew and that we were about to make our approach.

  I said to Conklin, “Ready?”

  “Let’s go.”

  We drew our guns and proceeded toward the front door, but when we were twenty feet from the porch, floodlights snapped on and blazed from under the eaves.

  The light was blinding. I could no longer see the cabin.

  A man’s voice rang out. “Drop your weapons. Now.”

  He stepped out onto his porch, a silhouette, but I saw the AK in his hands. A light pull on the trigger and he could cut me and Conklin down.

  This was on me. All of it was on me. My idea. I was the senior officer on scene. I had no time flat to figure out how to get us out.

  The voice called out, again. “Trespassers. Toss your guns toward me.”

  “Can’t do that,” I said. “We’re SFPD. I’m holstering my weapon and backing away.”

  The speaker said, “Police? Why didn’t you say so? Show me your hands. Believe me,” said the man standing behind the floodlights. “I’m not kidding around.”

  Chapter 65

  I holstered my gun.

  I showed the SOB on the porch my hands and Conklin did the same. In the process,
I thumbed my mic into the open position so that Brady could hear us.

  “We’re not going to shoot,” I called out to the man with the assault rifle. “You’re in no danger. We came here to talk. How about you cut the lights so we can do that?”

  He stepped inside his cabin, and pulled a plug or threw a switch. All but one of the security lights went out. We were twenty yards away from the porch, close enough to recognize the man from the photo Berney had passed on to Joe. His gun was still aimed at us.

  “Talk fast,” he said.

  I identified myself and asked him to do the same.

  “Winslow,” he said. “Jake. You’re here about my son?”

  “Right,” I said.

  My heart pounded right about where Burke was aiming his weapon.

  He said, “Then this is what you need to know. You won’t prove a thing against Lucas. He’s a strategic genius with a gift for the dramatic. He has no conscience. None at all. But I’ll tell you this—he did it. He killed his mother and sister. Now he’s gone and killed his wife and baby girl.”

  “You have any proof he did any of these murders?” I called out. “A witness? A letter? A taped conversation?”

  “Do you?” he shouted back. “Take my word for it, or don’t. Lucas has been a killer since he was a kid. Animals, of course. But my wife and daughter were his first human kills—that I know about.”

  His voice broke. He coughed. Then he spoke again.

  “I do not know what he did with their bodies. Maybe he’ll tell you if you make him a deal. He wouldn’t tell me. Lucas is a sick human being. And he’s a liar. He’s the one who sent you here, isn’t he?”

  “Your name came up,” Conklin said.

  Burke snorted.

  “We’d like your comments about your son for the record,” Conklin continued. “We can give you a lift to our station, get this on tape, and drive you back. Door-to-door service and that will be the end of it. Check off, ‘did my civic duty.’”

  “That’s not happening. You’ve got your man and I’m done with you two and him. Now get off my property and stay off it.

  “You know the drill. ‘All trespassers will be shot on sight.’”

  Chapter 66

  Brady was standing on the road when our headlights hit him.

  Conklin pulled in next to the van and Brady opened my door. “Tell me every detail,” Brady said. “Start with when the guy called you out.”

  I told him about the floodlights, the AK, the man who looked like the picture we’d seen of Evan Burke.

  “His features were smooth and ordinary,” I said, “what we could see of him. He said his son, Lucas, has killed a lot of people, starting with his own mother and sister, and including Tara and Lorrie Burke. But he, Evan, doesn’t have any evidence whatsoever.”

  Brady said, “He was too far from you for me to hear what he said about Lucas.”

  Conklin said, “He said that his son is a psychopath and a genius and that we’ll never catch him in the act of anything. But sure as shootin’, Luke did it.”

  “Starting to sound like both of them are psycho,” said Brady. “Suggest we keep our vehicles so we can see the roads leading to Burke’s place tonight. Maybe he’ll bolt and we can follow him.”

  Cappy and Alvarez got out of the van, stretched their legs, and Brady brought out a cooler from the back. There was enough water and sandwiches to take the edge off our hunger, but I still felt the sting of being run off by Burke.

  We returned to our vehicles and prepared for an all-night stakeout. As the adrenaline I’d been mainlining burned off, I felt deflated, bordering on depressed.

  One good thing.

  I was in a car with Conklin.

  It felt good. Like old times.

  Sometime later, when Rich shook me awake, I said, “What?”

  “Motorcycle. Alvarez saw it coming down from Burke’s house. Buckle up.”

  Brady’s voice came over the radio. “Boxer. Conklin. Follow the bike. No flashers. No sirens. Do not lose him.”

  The bike had a head start and we pulled out, followed it at a distance of thirty yards. There were no other cars on the road. I looked in the rearview and saw our van behind us.

  We were keeping up when the bike took a hard turn, uphill. It wasn’t going to Burke’s cabin, so where? I was on the comms with Brady when another motorcycle came down the mountain from a different mountain trail. One of these bikes was a decoy, the other could be Burke. The second bike was on Route 1 heading south toward the bridge. Conklin sped up and passed the bike and as we passed him, the biker made the motion of pulling the chain that blows a trucker’s horn.

  His helmet and goggles covered most of his face, but not his mouth and I saw that he was grinning.

  When the bike took Morton Road I knew that in fact our chain had been yanked. Brady made a U-turn back to where we’d come from. He must have used the force of his will to get that van up the mountain or maybe they pulled over and ran.

  Brady’s voice came over the receiver.

  “House is empty. I threw a rock through the window to see what would happen, but nothing did. No lights, horns, or explosives. I pushed in the door and had a look around. No one was home.

  “The bastard’s playing with us.”

  Didn’t surprise me. At all.

  Brady went on. “Where’re you at?”

  “Coming up on the marina, this side of the bridge,” I told Brady. “We’re going to stop there and look around.”

  The harbor master was in his small multi-windowed office on the pier. He was a windblown but upbeat and talkative man in his sixties who introduced himself as Monty McAllister. Sure, he said, he knew Jake Winslow, said he did keep a boat at the marina, but no, he hadn’t seen him in weeks.

  “No motorcycles came in tonight, nope. Not a one.”

  Conklin asked to see Winslow’s boat. McAllister said, “Follow me.”

  The boat, in good repair, was a Century Boats 30 Express named Lucky Strike. Definitely not occupied.

  We went back to our car and reported in. Brady said, “Stay there. He could show up at any time.”

  “Any time” came and went. The sun was rising in the east, lighting the upper architecture of the famous bridge. McAllister brought us mugs of coffee and we sat in the car until eight in the morning.

  Brady called to ask, “Anything?”

  “No, boss.”

  “Me, neither. Burke didn’t go back to his house, either. Fucking guy is just fucking gone.”

  Chapter 67

  Cindy Thomas was driving over the Golden Gate Bridge while Jonny Samuels dozed in the seat beside her.

  They were on a field trip to Mount Tam with one objective: to interview Evan Burke or people who knew him, get a verifiable story, an unshakable quote, and if feasible, a good photo of Burke talking with her.

  Cindy felt lucky to be the one reporter with an actual smoking-hot lead. She had reliable sources at the Hall, four of whom had told and then confirmed that Lucas Burke claimed that his father, Evan, had killed Tara and Lorrie Burke. Lucas implied that there was a strong likelihood that Evan had also killed Wendy Franks, Misty Fogarty, and Susan Wenthauser, and even Evan’s own wife and child. Lucas was telling everyone in the sixth-floor jail that his father was a serial killer, out to frame his son.

  That was his story, Lucas Burke’s defense, but as far as Cindy had been told, he had no evidence to prove it.

  That said, if true, this story of familial murder was stunning, a bombshell with staying power and ripe for movie interest. If true.

  Lucas Burke’s claim had leaked like fuel from a broken gas line and caught fire. Cindy’s crime blog had been flooded with questions and accusations against Evan and against Luke. People had taken sides. Cindy had published a few logical and well-written posts from readers and with the disclaimer that posts from the readers did not represent the opinion of the Chronicle.

  Cindy had done her own after-hours research, phoning friends who did administr
ative grunt work throughout the Hall, and she had learned something that she could possibly verify. That Evan Burke might be living in Sausalito in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais.

  She hadn’t been able to confirm this location with anyone who would actually know. For instance, her lover, Rich Conklin, or close friends, Lindsay Boxer, Yuki Castellano, and Jackson Brady—but at least she had a lead. And she’d been working that lead all morning, driving from hill to dale around and up Mount Tam, knocking on doors, asking whomever answered if he, she, or they happened to know Evan Burke.

  She had worn a dress. Yes, a dress. A somber print that hung below her knees and a navy blue blazer. In her opinion, she looked fetching, not slick.

  But she’d gotten the door-to-door salesman treatment.

  Once she said she worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, the door was slammed in her face.

  This had been going on all day.

  It was a terrible feeling. She knew that the old-timers around Mount Tam hated the “fake” press more than almost any other institution. This was disturbing, and at the same time motivating. She was sure she could get someone to talk to her, and she had good company in Samuels, who would back her up, physically, if needed.

  Samuels was six two and 220 with a black belt in karate. He was an intimidating force, for sure.

  But for now, Cindy let Samuels sleep.

  She’d studied the map while at home, and as soon as she’d brought it to Richie, he’d started shaking his head no, saying, “You know I can’t help you with your story. But you are so nosy—”

  “Inquisitive.”

  “—and I know to lock my phone. Which I forgot to do.”

  He went on to say, “If any of this Evan Burke story is true, you could be poking a serial killer, and if so, Cindy, you’re inviting very big trouble. You look like the kind of victim this killer likes best.”

  “What kind is that?”

  “Cute. Female. Small. With a nice-looking neck. Don’t quote me.”