Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

The commissioner opened a laptop and swiveled it on the desk so that the screen was facing us. She pushed a button and a black-and-white video began to play.

Only minutes into the video, I could feel sweat sliding down my ribs beneath my shirt. I looked at Malone, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

McGinniskin pointed to a guy in the video. “Detective Jeremiah Malone,” she said. “Is that you there on the screen?”

Her tone was strangely heavy, like she was the one getting the bad news. Malone didn’t say anything. Just nodded, defeated. She let the video play a while longer.

“Detective William Robinson.” She pointed at the screen again and looked at me, her eyes blazing. “Is that you?”

“It is,” I said. Malone still wouldn’t meet my gaze. Look at me, you prick , I thought. But the bastard put his face in his hands. McGinniskin turned the laptop back around and slammed it shut.

“You’re both out,” she said. The muscles in her jaw and temples were so tight, they bulged from beneath the skin. “And I’ve got to admit, gentlemen, after seeing that tape, it gives me great pleasure to say it. There’s no place in my police force for people like you. Your discharge will take effect immediately. If I hear that either of you have inquired about pensions, I’ll make sure you can’t get a job in this city as a fucking mall cop.” McGinniskin swept her hair back from her temples, chasing composure. “Give me your badges and your weapons,” she said.

It was hard for me to get out of the chair. Gravity seemed to have tripled. I took my gun off, walked what seemed like a hundred miles to her desk, and put my weapon down at the same time Malone did. He finally looked at me as we took our badges off. Then we left. Neither of us spoke until we were outside her office.

“Bill,” Malone said. “Buddy, listen. I—”

“I can’t believe you did this.” I was shaking all over. “I can’t believe you did this to us. We’re out. That’s it. It’s over. You lying, backstabbing piece of shit.”

My job. My city. The walls of the old stone building were pulsing around me, closing in. Malone had killed us. We were being expelled from the living thing. Shed like dead skin, like waste. I couldn’t breathe.

“I’m so sorry, Bill.” Malone sounded panicky. “I was trying to—”

I grabbed my partner by the shirt and slammed him into the wall beside McGinniskin’s door. It was all I could do not to knock his teeth out right there. I put a finger in his face and eased the words out from between my locked jaw.

“You and me?” I said. “We’re done .”

CHAPTER THREE

Two Years and Five Months Later

THE DEATH TOLL was eight, according to Cline’s count.

He knew it was narcissistic, but every day he sat under the big bay windows on the second floor of his house where he could see the ocean beyond the cypress trees and checked the papers for signs of his work. Some days he told himself he was being too proud, and other days he knew it was just good business. Since he had moved to the tiny seaside town of Gloucester, there had been eight overdose deaths. Two a month. The papers were blaring out words that excited him. Epidemic. Crisis. Downfall . Whenever things started to slide, Cline felt happy. Being a criminal meant his concept of the world was upside down. Reversed. A downward slide for others meant an upward rise for him.

That didn’t mean it was time to take it easy on anyone. As he sat reading the paper spread flat on the table before him, the way he used to in the can so that he could keep an eye on the movement of other prisoners, his lieutenants started assembling before him. Cline had made sure from the outset that his standards were known and respected. Tailored shirts. Cuff links. Ties for meetings. No speed-stripe buzz cuts, no neck tattoos, none of this gold-chain, bling-bling shit. They were a business, not a gang. The men who entered the room looked like a bunch of lawyers attending a daily meeting, but they came in punching each other and giggling and talking trash, and he silenced them with a glance. They were street thugs and prison bitches and violence-intervention-program dropouts he had recruited from rock bottom, but he’d make them true soldiers before long.

“Where’s Newgate?” Cline asked when everyone was settled. “You fuckers know to be on time.” There were uncomfortable looks around the crew, and then Newgate appeared with a baby in his arms. No, not a baby, a little girl, though she seemed like a baby in this setting, surrounded by hard men who made their living dealing in death. Cline stood and watched as big, muscle-bound, scar-faced Newgate put the barefoot child on the floor.

“I’m real sorry, boss.” Newgate gave a dramatic sigh. “I had a fight with my girl and she dropped the baby on me this morning and ran off. I didn’t know what to do.”

Cline watched the girl toddling around the room, pulling books off his shelves, slapping her greasy palms on the huge bay windows. He felt a muscle twitching in his neck as he went to the desk and got his gun.

“No problem, Newby. These things happen,” Cline said. “I’m sure she won’t cause us any trouble. Let’s give her something to play with while we talk. Come here, little princess. Come on.”

The lieutenants watched in horror as Cline loaded a full clip into his pistol and flicked the safety off. Newgate’s daughter gave a coo of intrigue, tottered over to Cline, and took the gun. Squid, perched on the edge of the couch, didn’t dare retreat but he hid beneath his gangly arms like they could protect from the child’s aim. The little girl swung the heavy gun around wildly, then lifted the barrel to her eye and looked down into the blackness. Cline’s eyes seared into Newgate’s, daring him to protest. The little girl walked up to her father and pointed the gun at him.

“Bang-bang!” The girl laughed. Newgate reached for the weapon as his daughter fumbled with the trigger, unable to get her pudgy finger around the steel. Before Newgate could take the gun, Cline reached forward and grabbed it. He pointed it at Newgate, whose face contorted as he realized what was happening.

“Like this, princess,” Cline said, smiling.

CHAPTER FOUR

PLANE CRASH , I thought. That’s the only thing that can save me now .

I’d done everything I could to dissuade the residents of the Inn from holding a memorial service for my wife, Siobhan, on the second anniversary of her death. And yet here I sat at the end of a plastic foldout table in the forest of pines that surrounded the large house, tearing a yellow napkin into tiny pieces, waiting for it to begin, fantasizing about something that could interrupt it. Gas-leak explosion in the kitchen. Ferocious black bear suddenly appearing at the edge of the woods. Airbus A380 plunging into the slate-gray sea just visible through the trees. The truth was, nothing was coming. The people around me were going to talk about Siobhan, and I was going to have to listen.

They’d made a good effort, which was unusual for them, because it was difficult to get the permanent residents of the Inn to collaborate on anything. They had nothing in common save Siobhan’s recruitment of them in the months after I was fired. Siobhan had done everything to set up our new life in the north. She’d found the guesthouse for sale, sourced the furniture, got the licenses and approvals we needed to run a bed-and-breakfast by the sea—her retirement dream realized years earlier than she’d imagined it would be. She’d collected a motley crew of weirdos, down-and-outs, and deeply troubled characters, and she accommodated them all. I’d moped in my sweatpants about my lost job, having no idea that I was about to lose her too.