Джеймс Паттерсон - Unsolved

“Bonita, is it?” Tom raises one hand, palm out. “Listen to me. I’m not coming any closer. I just—”

“Don’t listen to him, Rabbit. Listen to me. I won’t turn you in .”

Tom snaps his head toward me, then back to Bonita.

“Yes, she will,” he says. “But you know who won’t? Me, Bonita. I won’t turn you in. I don’t even know what you did.”

“Shut up!” Rabbit snaps, spit spraying from her mouth.

“Think about it,” he says. “Use that gun on Emmy and let me go. You blame the shooting on me. Everyone will believe that—”

“No, Rabbit, listen—”

I move toward her, but she steps back, turning the gun in my direction. “Both of you, stay where you are!”

Both of us.

“You,” she spits at me. “You know I did the right thing. I never hurt anybody. I made sure I didn’t hurt anybody. You, ” she snarls at Tom. “Taking what I did and bastardizing it. Killing hundreds of people who never hurt a soul in their lives.”

I look at Tom, who has moved away from me. We are a triangle, each separated by about ten feet. Only one of us has a weapon, but the harder Rabbit trembles, the less in control she seems.

“You’re a good person who shouldn’t go to prison,” says Tom.

“He’s playing you, Rabbit—”

“And you can still try to catch me after I’m gone!” Tom shouts over me. “You can keep doing your good work! Don’t let her ruin your life, Bonita!”

Rabbit’s mouth opens, and she draws deep, ragged breaths. The weapon is still in her hands, but it’s not held straight out, more of a sixty-degree angle from the floor. She looks at me. She looks at Tom.

In the distance, through the window shattered by Rabbit’s bullet, we hear sirens. The cavalry is coming.

“Shoot me if you want,” I say. “But keep Tom right where he is.”

Rabbit takes a breath and gives me a look. “I’m not going to shoot you, Emmy—”

Tom is already in full sprint, rushing her—

“Rabbit!”

She raises her gun but he’s too fast; he puts his hands on the weapon as he barrels into her, pinning her against the wall.

I rush forward too—

—an explosion of gunfire, once, twice—

—and, off balance, I ram my shoulder into Tom.

We both fall, and Rabbit crumples to the floor, two bloody gashes coloring her shirt, the gun still in her hands.

I reach for her. “Bonita! Rabbit!” I shout, staring into her vacant eyes.

I hear shuffling to my right as Tom gets to his feet.

I take the gun from Rabbit as Tom starts toward me. I fire once, twice, three times.

The third shot hits him, stopping his momentum, staining the right side of his shirt red. He staggers back a step, looks down at his chest, then at me.

I turn to Rabbit. Her head has lolled to the side; her eyes are open, her body still.

Tom reaches out for the wall, wincing, struggling to remain upright.

“Rabbit,” I whisper in her ear, “I’m so sorry.”

I stand up, gun still in my hand, my body no longer on fire.

Now I feel cold.

I approach Tom Miller as the sirens grow louder, as I hear a commotion downstairs, men calling out, “FBI! FBI!”

One hand on the wound to his upper chest, hunched against the wall, Tom lets out a moan. He’ll probably survive that wound. And what he said before was right. We’ll have a very difficult time ever proving in a court of law that he killed a single person. He killed Rabbit, but now he has some kind of story to spin about her too, something about her going to prison. And if he was paying attention, he might even figure out what it was she did.

I raise the weapon. We lock eyes. We understand each other.

“If it had to be anybody,” he says, “I’m glad it was you.”

I nod and fire the gun.

127

BOOKS WALKS away from Emmy, who’s still seated in the hallway outside the conference room, motionless, her eyes vacant. Eric Pullman, with his wild hair and big ears and tear-streaked face, is nearby. Books puts his hand on Pully’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he says.

Pully doesn’t respond; he’s too choked up, a mess of emotion. “Oh,” he says, pulling a file out of the bag. “Here’s the background on Michelle Fontaine.”

“Go sit with Emmy,” he says. “You two need each other right now.”

He glances at the file on Michelle Fontaine, compiled today after the fingerprint sample was confirmed. She’d been a volleyball star at New Mexico State and after graduation, she became a physical therapist focused on athlete rehabilitation. She moved in with a man after dating him for four months. The abuse, according to the petition for the restraining order she filed a year ago, escalated from slaps and punches to sexual assault and threats to her life. She left New Mexico and moved to Seattle. He found her and almost killed her. After his arrest, she changed her name and moved across the country to Virginia, hoping that chapter of her life was closed forever.

Books finds Michelle downstairs. She pulled into the parking lot only ten minutes after he and the rest of the FBI agents did. Books spoke with her briefly two hours ago, and she’s stuck around since.

Someone found her a chair. Her head is buried in her hands. He finds a chair of his own and pulls it up next to her.

“I seem to attract violence wherever I go,” she says with a bitter chuckle.

“That’s why you quit when Wagner got too…creepy.”

“Scary. Whatever.” She looks up at him. “I couldn’t be around…anything like that. Then when I heard he was missing…”

“You thought he might come looking for you. That makes sense, Michelle. You didn’t do anything wrong. Not one thing.”

“I actually had a crush on Tom,” she says, tears welling up again. “Can you believe that? What is it with me and predators?”

“He fooled a lot of people,” says Books. “For a very long time, Michelle. It wasn’t just you. Remember that, okay? It wasn’t just you. Your only crime is being a good person.”

One of the investigating agents comes down the stairs and nods to Books. “We don’t need Emmy anymore,” he says. “If you want to take her.”

“The shooting was righteous,” says Books.

“Hell yes, it was.”

Good. Emmy was ready to blame herself up there when they first arrived. She kept saying, I shot him . Books was always quick to add, After he charged you, and after he already killed Bonita .

Emmy and Pully walk down the stairs, holding hands. She kisses him on the cheek, hugs him, whispers something to him that makes him cry, and walks over to Books.

“I’m going to stay with Pully,” she says. “He needs me right now.”

“Sure, of course, Em. But… you need me .” There’s a catch in his throat as he says those last words, part statement, part question.

She puts her hand on his cheek. “I do. But someone else needs you right now too.”

Books nods.

“So go,” she says. “I’ll see you later.”

128

BOOKS PARKS the car at the Meredith Court and Gardens in Huntington. He gives his name at the front desk. A moment later, he’s buzzed in and takes the elevator to the seventh floor. He knocks on the door, softer than he did earlier today and with much less adrenaline.

The door opens. Sergeant Petty nods to him.

“Sergeant Petty.”

“Agent Bookman. You, uh, wanna…come in?”

“Only if you want me to.”

Petty backs up and lets Books in. The last time Books came through the door, he was ready to use his weapon, ready to order the SWAT team to open fire.

“How’s Mary Ann doing?” he asks, nodding toward the bedroom.