Джеймс Паттерсон - 14th Deadly Sin:

Joe picked up the small key. “On your stomach,” he said.

Hubbell rolled over, and Joe put his foot on the man’s neck. He maneuvered the key with his shaking hands until he had unlocked his cuffs. When his hands were free, he zipped up his fly.

Then he pulled Hubbell’s arms around his back and cuffed his wrists with the man’s own cuffs. He wrestled the bed to a standing position, scooped his gun up off the desk, and holstered it.

When he jerked Hubbell to his feet, the man didn’t kick out, squirm, or in any way fight him. He almost seemed accepting. Maybe twenty years of hard time did that to a person.

“You didn’t need to go bug-fuck,” Hubbell said to Joe.

“Yeah. Well, please accept my sincere apologies.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” said Hubbell. “I just wanted to tell you about the things I’ve done and how I did them.”

“Don’t worry. A lot of people are going to want to know all about you, Clem. You’ll get to tell your story many, many times.”

Wrapping the chain around his left hand, keeping his cuffed prisoner tightly in front of him, Joe pulled the weighted ladder down from the ceiling. The hatch door opened smoothly above them.

Joe said, “What do you say, Clem? Let’s get out of here.”

After the two men climbed the ladder and surfaced in the basement, Joe chained Clement Hubbell to the furnace and locked the basement door behind him. He called Lindsay from the kitchen, and then he called the sitter to say he was sorry he was late getting back, and to please hang in with Julie.

When he hung up, Joe washed his hands, turned on the oven to 375, and set the timer for thirty minutes.

Joe and Denise Hubbell were eating warm blueberry muffins when Lindsay, along with a fully armed tactical team, arrived at 355 Edgehill Way, where they proceeded to batter down the red-painted kitchen door.

CHAPTER 87

I HAD SOME explaining to do when Joe, the SWAT team, and I got back to the Hall with a confessed killer in cuffs: a killer no one in Homicide had on their radar or even knew existed.

I filled Brady in while Joe waited at my desk.

Brady gave me a very cold stare as I told him that Joe had merely followed up a hunch, that he had been invited into the Hubbell house by the owner, and that she’d given him carte blanche to go into her son’s room.

“Is this something like the hunch that took you into a house where the homeowner put a loaded Winchester rifle to your head?” Brady asked me.

“Yes. It’s exactly like that.”

“Personal feelings aside,” Brady said, “I should write you up for that. It was procedurally unsafe, to say the least. What if you’d gotten shot? What if you’d shot someone? And now Joe does the same dumb-ass thing? Are you running some sort of private police department out of your garage? Don’t you have enough work to do, Boxer?”

That was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer, but I flushed down to my toes. It was humiliating to have Brady kick my ass. Factually, Joe was in the clear. He was nobody, as far as the SFPD was concerned. He hadn’t messed up a case against Hubbell. But now it was official and I had to color strictly within the lines.

I waited a second or two, then said, “Lieutenant, while Hubbell had Joe cuffed and confined, he confessed to killing five people. I’m going to try to get him to say that again.”

Brady tipped so far back in his chair, I thought it would go over. He put his hands over his eyes and threw a sigh so deep and so long, I actually felt sorry for him.

He said, “Get Wang and Michaels. Strichler is their case. They should be in the interrogation. No mistakes, Lindsay. Video everything. From this point on, do it strictly by the book.”

“I get it. And I’m sorry, Brady. I’ll make it up to you.”

CHAPTER 88

HUBBELL HAD BEEN processed and was slouching in a small gray chair at a matching metal table in the small gray room we call Interview 2. Inspectors Michaels, Wang, and I took seats at the table, and Joe stood outside the two-way mirror with Brady. Brady wore a mic so that he could wirelessly fire comments and questions directly into my ear.

I was up to speed on Hubbell’s arrest for raping Tina Strichler twenty-five years before and his sterling record of good behavior while incarcerated at Pelican Bay and, later, at Corcoran. Hubbell’s personally inked “star map” of his homicides was now spread out on the table.

He’d even thoughtfully provided a key to the murders on the back of it: names, locations, and the date of each.

Wang and Michaels were there to watch and share in the glory—if there was any glory—and I would be happy to hand off this serial killer collar to them.

I formally introduced myself to Hubbell, introduced him to the other cops in the room, and told him I appreciated his coming in to talk to us. I said that without a trace of sarcasm.

But still, he laughed.

“That was a hell of an escort I got.”

“First-class treatment, Mr. Hubbell. Nothing but the best for you. You’re kind of a superstar, aren’t you?”

He laughed again. Oh, man. He was enjoying himself.

“Mr. Hubbell, you’ve told us that you killed five women in locations you’ve starred on your map of San Francisco. This is that map, right?”

Hubbell said, “You mind getting me something to drink?”

Wang took Hubbell’s order. “What can I get you?”

“Got any Mountain Dew?”

“One frosty-cold Mountain Dew coming right up.”

I was sitting directly across the table from Hubbell, and after he slugged down his soda, I said, “Are we ready now?”

“I have one other request.”

I said sweetly, “Tell me.”

“I want to go back to Pelican Bay. If you promise me that, I’ll tell you every single thing.”

“Why Pelican Bay?”

“I want to go home.”

Brady spoke in my ear. “Tell him that your CO gives you his word, and that we’ll get a commitment from the DA in the morning.”

I repeated that to Hubbell. I expected him to say, “Well, I guess this can wait until I hear from the DA.”

But he said, “OK. Just promise to do your best.”

“I promise,” I said, and that was all Hubbell needed. He was eager to talk about his attenuated five-year killing spree, and I’ve got to give it to Joe. He had been right from the beginning. Clement Hubbell killed on the anniversary of his conviction for rape. He called it a celebration of the start of his wonderful life in prison.

As for the murders themselves, with the exception of Tina Strichler, Hubbell said they were killings of opportunity.

“It was a test of my skill,” he told me, leaning over the table, really wanting me to understand.

“I selected a knife from my collection. I looked for a woman who was in a good place to be killed. Sometimes they were alone. Sometimes I’d see one in the thick of a crowd. Like the one I killed at the race last year. I gave myself twelve hours to do the job and earn another star for my map. And then, once I was back home, I would wait for news of my perfect crime.” He grinned. “And I’d think about it for another year.”

“But you couldn’t tell anyone? That must’ve hurt,” I said.

“Sure. That’s true,” Hubbell said. “I missed having a cell mate.”

“So Tina Strichler was the only victim you knew?” I asked.

“Bettina Monroe. The only girl I ever loved. Raping her, well, she was my first. I held a knife on her, but it was just a turn-on. I wasn’t going to kill her. I didn’t even think of killing her. I thought she might be willing to date me. I know you want to laugh, Sergeant—”

“No, no. I’m just surprised that you cared for her.”