Джеймс Паттерсон - 14th Deadly Sin:

But seeing my beautiful child brought me straight back to Maya Perez’s apartment. I visualized the small, windowless room she had turned into a chick-yellow nest for her baby, who would never be.

I watched Julie breathing for more than a few minutes. Then I shucked my clothes and hit the rain box for fifteen delicious minutes. When I returned to the living room in my man-in-the-moon-patterned PJs, Joe was dishing up the chicken cacciatore.

I went over to him and got a big hug, a kiss, and a belated jumpety howdy-do from Martha.

I said, “Lucky, lucky me.” And I meant it.

“Vino?” Joe asked me.

“You don’t have to twist my arm,” I said. “So what did the home team do today?”

“I’ve been doing a little work,” he told me.

“Really?”

“Free work. I’ve been looking into the CBM case.”

Joe seemed to be in a very perky mood. He pulled out a bar stool for me and another for himself and we sat down at the kitchen island to eat.

“What, I have to ask, is CBM?”

He poured out the glasses of wine and explained, “Claire’s Birthday Murders.”

“Really?” I said, repeating myself. “And you came up with something?”

“I think so,” he said. “The start of something, anyway.”

I liked what I was hearing, but at the same time, I felt a little bad. Here was this big-time law enforcement guy on the bench, now doing unpaid busy work—for me. But he wasn’t complaining.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“I’m gonna do that. Eat your dinner before it gets cold.”

I tucked in. Joe leaned closer and said, “I went back five years and found every crime that happened on the twelfth of May in San Francisco. A lot of shit happened, Linds.”

“I’m guessing fifty-sixty murders a year,” I said.

“Sixty-eight last year,” he said.

We grinned at each other. I loved working with Joe. I was even a little envious that my husband had the time to focus on this case and work it from home.

“Although there was no shortage of violent crime, very little of it resembled the murder of your victim on Balmy Alley. Along with the three fatal stabbings from this year and the previous two, I found a stabbing fatality in each of the two previous years that met my narrowly defined parameters. And I didn’t find any stabbing fatalities just like it on any other days or in the years preceding the one that happened five years back.”

“Tell me about the stabbings in years one and two.”

Joe grinned. “You don’t have to beg.”

He took our empty plates to the sink and brought two slices of pie to the island. It was apple pie, and he’d stopped to put ice cream on top. I looked up at him like, Is this for real?

“Nope. I didn’t make the pie. But then, I was busy on a very twisted and highly interesting case.”

I laughed at him, grabbed a plate, and stuck in a fork.

“Run it for me, will you?”

“Yes, I will, Sergeant,” said Joe.

CHAPTER 29

“SO I DID a little time-traveling,” Joe said. “The victim in year one of the five was an uptown lady, Ms. Alicia Thompson. She had been to Neiman’s and she was on her way to her car.”

“We know this how?” I asked.

“Shopping bags and keys in her hand. And she was killed a half block from Union Square Garage, where her car was parked.”

“Did anyone see anything?”

“Nope, and Ms. Thompson got the full five-star investigation. Chi was the lead investigator.”

“And how did the case play out?”

“Not only were there no witnesses, there were also no forensics, no footage, no nothing. Not even the knife. Make a note, Sergeant Blondie. Taking the knife is a common thread.”

“Duly noted,” I said.

“OK, next victim was very different than Ms. Thompson.”

“Do tell,” I said.

I took the empty dessert plates away and put them in the dishwasher while Martha and Joe headed to the living room. We all settled into the oversize leather sofa. Martha put her head on my lap, letting out a contented sigh.

“Victim number two, Krista Toomey, was homeless,” Joe said. “Twenty-five years old, in bad shape even for a meth addict. She was sleeping in an alley in the Tenderloin. Olive Street. No witnesses, but plenty of people knew her.”

“And were they able to contribute anything?”

“Nothing useful. I found the autopsy report. Like your victim who was stabbed in the back outside her father’s diner, this girl was also stabbed from behind. The first or second blows were fatal, but the killer kept going. Stabbed her all over her back, arms, buttocks—thirty-five separate wounds.

“Based on the shape and depth of the wounds, the weapon was probably a paring knife, but it wasn’t found. Again, no witnesses, no evidence—and because there were no leads, and no friends or relatives stepping forward putting pressure on the police, and there were a whole lot of open cases at that time, this one went cold.”

I understood. I might even have been aware of this crime. All murder cases should be worked and solved. But there’s not enough manpower, not enough time, and some cases just don’t get solved.

I said, “Whoever killed these women is smart, aware of cameras and bystanders and what constitutes forensic evidence. The victims were all women, and it looks like the five you’ve identified were all killed by a common type of knife that is never left behind.”

“Agreed, Linds. Add all that to the date they were all killed, May twelfth. And that’s why I suspect one person killed the five of them.”

“So you conclude what about the killer?”

“If my theory is right, this dude didn’t know his victims,” said Joe. “He chose these women because the circumstances were favorable to him. And whatever his motive for murder, he was driven to kill violently. This is a guess, but I’d say he was mad as hell. He kills people he doesn’t know in a ferocious rage .”

“Yeah, I can see that. And since he kills in daylight, and no one sees him, he’s got a cloak of invisibility.”

“I decided to leave something for you to figure out.”

“Awww. Thanks.”

My husband patted my thigh. “I believe my work here is done. Let’s go to bed.”

CHAPTER 30

AT QUARTER TO eight the next morning, my partner and I met in the break room and made coffee. Conklin’s face was lined from sleeping facedown, and I’m sure I looked like I’d gotten no sleep at all. Which was true.

When Julie wasn’t calling for something, Martha was edging me off my side of the bed.

And then there were my vivid, disturbing dreams about Maya Perez, in which she begged me not to let her die. I knew enough pop-culture dream analysis to know that I was Maya in that dream and I didn’t want to die or let anything hurt my baby.

Conklin and I sugared our coffees and went to our computers. I took A to M and he took N to Z as we started going through Human Resources files looking for “sore thumbs.” That was what we were calling disgruntled cops who’d been demoted or dropped or had stalled in dead-end careers—the type of malcontent who might risk life in a federal pen without chance of parole in return for a quick payday.

We found plenty of sore thumbs, none of them named Juan, but every last one of them had guns and a navy-blue Windbreaker with white letters across the chest and back spelling out SFPD.

At eight thirty Brady called us into his office.

One look at him and I knew it was Groundhog Day. Just as he’d been every day this week, Brady was grouchy.

I almost said “What now?” but I kept my mouth shut.

Brady said, “I’m sorry I’ve been a pain in the ass.”