Джеймс Паттерсон - The 13-Minute Murder

“Maria!?” I called out.

I inhaled the air in the kitchen. What had happened in the last hour?

All I could smell was my own breath—the faint trace of beer. There was nothing else to know in this kitchen.

“Maria!?” I let loose.

I stood up and ran from room to room. The den. The guest bathroom. The guest bedroom. No answer. I banged open every random door I could find. The closet. The laundry room. The hallway cupboards. I waded through piles of folded linen, books strewn, broken paintings, broken mirrors. A storm had come through this place. My gun’s muzzle led the way.

I was ready to blast anything that moved until I found Updike—my dog. He was curled up, ears flattened, tail rigid, shivering with fear.

“Here, li’l man,” I called to him. “Good? Where’s your mom?”

Whoever had come through here must’ve been a tornado of violence. Updike was now a cowering wreck. Part corgi, part Lab, part Jack Russell—rarely does this hyphenated beast back down. Yet he stayed glued to the wall, quivering, looking like he’d seen a ghost, like he was still seeing one.

“Maria Amelia Ryan!” I yelled.

I took a step back from Updike. Poor guy—he looked eternally relieved when I retreated.

I don’t know why I checked the bedroom last. I opened the door and there she was. My wife. Cut in half.

Chapter 13

There was blood across the majority of the bed. There was spattering on the walls, even on our ceiling fan.

“Baby?” I squished the nearly inaudible word from my empty lungs.

There she was.

I grabbed her outstretched hand, the last remaining body part that was clean. A sliver of moonlight found its way through our window. With my horror was a tinge of fear.

I listened for breathing. Hers. Mine. The dog’s. Was her killer here? I heard nothing, my gun aimed toward the closet. If anything burst out of those doors, I’d bury every bullet I owned in it.

But nothing would come that night.

“Baby, we have to get up,” I whispered to her rigid body.

I gathered the front half of her, staring at her face, looking for a greeting, a nod of approval—that what I was about to do needed to be done.

“Babe?”

I carried her torso down to the basement.

“This is just for now, okay?”

In the basement, we have a Kolpak 1010, one of the first walk-in freezers available for installation in a residential home. No, she didn’t get a Whole Foods employee discount. What she did get was the most consistent cooling flow professionally feasible. I opened the door without setting her body down, crouching awkwardly to get my left hand on the knob. She loved this freezer. It contained about forty pounds of top sirloin, thirty pounds of pork, thirty pounds of salmon, and now its owner.

As I left her resting, I don’t know how I was able to think with such merciless objectivity, but I knew it was imperative to avoid calling the cops.

Cops would occupy my time. Contain me. They would try to prevent me from doing what I had to do next. I went upstairs and grabbed my shotgun. I grabbed a dozen shells. I grabbed my dog and his leash. Sadness was giving way to a new feeling, a very important one. The French word is spelled very similarly to its English translation. Revenche .

Chapter 14

I drove to the one place I knew I’d find none of the answers I needed and even less of the satisfaction I craved. Shotgun in my lap, I drove to Milt’s home.

Milt would resist my inquiries, but I had nowhere else to go. My fingers were trembling on the steering wheel. I was taking deep breaths to fend off a panic attack. I screeched to a halt and stormed out of the car, pulling my dog’s leash. Shotgun in my right hand, Cerberus in the other. Revenche. Revenge.

“Milt!” I yelled toward the house as I started dashing up his steps. “Milton!”

He opened the door and I instantly bashed him in the stomach with the back of my weapon.

“Ooooph!” said his diaphragm.

He tumbled onto his back while my momentum took me right into his house. I donkey-kicked the front door shut behind me. We were in a shady neighborhood, but not so shady that neighbors wouldn’t take an interest.

Things got loud. Updike barked a few times at our commotion, then skedaddled into the corner of the living room, paws clawing with zero traction on the wood floor. I grabbed Milt by the scruff and shoved his crumpled, compliant body into the crook of his couch.

He was heaving for breath until he gathered his strength to say, “What the living hell is wrong with you?”

“You tell me,” I replied.

His face was mostly angry but now a little puzzled.

“She’s dead!” I yelled.

“Who?”

I shifted my tone a bit. Business mode. “I’m only going to ask you once, Milt.”

“Who’s dead?”

“My wife!” I yelled, then returned to the mode. “I’m only going to ask you once.”

His face was going into shock. Brilliant acting on his part. He looked authentically sad.

“Who ordered the hits?” I asked him.

“Wait,” he responded. “What do you mean? Maria? Your wife?”

“Stop pretending.”

“She’s dead?” He looked genuinely upset, more upset than I had anticipated.

“They obviously tried to kill me and ended up with her carcass. Who ordered the hit?”

“Uh…the…the hit on Goran? I told you I don’t—”

“No! The hit on me! ”

This silenced him. He stared at me, unsure if I was really asking what I was asking. He stood up. He knew I’d allow him to do so. There was a protocol. He walked to his wet bar and poured himself a dizzying ratio of bourbon and water. Stalling.

“That’s…That’s crazy talk,” he said, beginning to gesture toward me. “Why would anyone put a hit on this town’s best mechanic?”

Just as he was about to drink, I smashed my shotgun through his cabinet.

“No more charades!” I shouted. Slightly overblown.

“What are you…? What are you talking about?”

“Milt, I swear to God, if you ask me one more question…” I raised my shotgun to aim near him. Not at him. Not yet. Near him. Hovering in his southeast region. “I’m the one with the twelve gauge. You’re the one envying it.”

“Jesus, Mike, yeah, of course, I’m telling you all I know. I just wanted to clarify what you mean by charades is all.” He paused and realized he shouldn’t pause. “The guy who called the hit was just a middleman. I don’t have access to the top of the food chain.”

“Who’s the middleman?”

“The name? I don’t know who it was”—catching himself again—“but-but-but I was told at the docks. What I was told was, uh, that place at four fifty-one. At the docks. I’m sorry about Maria. Is she okay?”

“Is death okay?”

He took this in for a moment. It was starting to sink in. He started to cry.

So I shot him.

Chapter 15

Milt wasn’t dead. Milt was dying. I sat on the couch with him.

“Milt,” I said calmly. “I’m going to shoot you a second time. I shot you once. Just now. But I’m also going to shoot you again.”

“Kh…h…” he said.

A twelve gauge will tend to make an argument one-sided.

“But before I shoot you again,” I added, “I’m going to tell you something.”

He struggled to breathe and burbled up blood.

“I’m going to tell you that, in my opinion, the second most vile thing in this world is…classism. I hate classism. That’s number two.”

“Call…” he said. “An…n…n…an am…bulance.”

“Would you like to know number one?”

“Please.”

“Good. Thank you. The number one thing I hate in this world…is…disloyal pricks who stick their log in another man’s fireplace.”