Джеймс Паттерсон - The 13-Minute Murder

The door opened into a short hallway—only a couple of feet—before a living room and kitchen area. There was another short hallway branching off the living room, probably leading to a bedroom. Beck could see a door at the end of the short hall. It was closed.

On the inside, the house was tiny and cramped, but spotless. The thin gray carpet was peeling from the floor, but it had recently been vacuumed within an inch of its life. Bargain furniture was placed in front of a flatscreen on the wall, and a laptop computer sat open on a small dining table.

Beck walked over to the laptop. It was powered on and running a screen saver showing pictures from Kevin Scott’s photos. Beck watched the pictures dissolve, one into another, souvenirs from a life cut short just a couple of hours ago.

In one photo, Scott was grinning with a group of other men, all in camouflage, gathered for a group shot in the middle of some desert in the Middle East. They all looked young and healthy and unstoppable.

My patient is dead, Beck thought.

At that moment, he knew why he was doing this. Why he couldn’t just give up. He hated to lose a patient. It always filled him with equal parts despair and rage. But to have a patient taken from him—that was unacceptable. Even if it was all in his head, Beck had to know why this had happened.

He tapped the space bar on the keyboard. The photos vanished, replaced by a log-in screen. There was Kevin Scott’s name, followed by a space for a password.

Beck hit Return. The screen vibrated and reset itself. He’d hoped that Scott hadn’t set a password. No luck. In fact, the screen told him he had only THREE ATTEMPTS REMAINING. Scott must have set a limit on attempts to log in, to keep people from breaking into his computer. Not surprising, considering he used to work top-secret missions.

Susan was searching the rest of the small room. She was thorough, but there wasn’t much to see. She set down a pile of mail, putting it back in the neat stack on the kitchen counter.

“Anything?” she asked.

Beck shook his head. There was nothing here. Maybe he really was losing it. Perhaps this was all in his head. Perhaps he was hallucinating. Perhaps he was becoming paranoid and losing his grip on reality.

He’d seen it before, in some patients. They were so convinced they were right, even as they babbled on about the shadow government and aliens and conspiracies.

Was he making all of this up? Did he injure two Secret Service agents just because of his brain tumor? He couldn’t be that crazy, could he? Was that possible? Had his brain really turned on him like that?

Then he heard a noise from down the hall.

He looked at Susan. “You heard that, too, right?”

She nodded.

Beck went down the hall. Susan followed. He started to open the door, when it whipped open all by itself.

Beck found himself looking at a woman holding a gun.

Well. At least I’m not crazy, he thought.

Chapter 12

Beck winced, but no gunshot came.

Instead, the young woman just stood there.

She was blond and gym-toned, with sharp cheekbones and bright-blue eyes. And she looked terrified.

“Don’t move,” she said, her voice—and the gun—shaking.

“Don’t worry,” Beck said. Both he and Susan put up their hands. She quickly slammed the door behind her.

The woman gestured for them to back up. They did. She backed them down the hall, into the living room.

Then they stood there. No one seemed to be sure of the next move.

“Are you Jennifer?” Beck asked.

She blinked. “Who are you?”

“I’m Kevin’s doctor,” Beck said. “Dr. Randall Beck. Remember? I’m the one he went to see this morning. This is my colleague, Dr. Susan Carpenter.”

She blinked again, holding back tears. “Is he—is he all right?” She stopped and put a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes as she choked back a sob.

The gun remained up, however.

She doesn’t know, Beck realized. But she was still armed. And afraid. Clearly something was going on here.

He decided not to tell her about Scott’s death. Not while she was still so agitated and holding a gun, anyway.

Susan had clearly come to the same conclusion.

“Please,” Susan said gently. “Put that down. We’re here to help.”

She stepped forward. Braver than Beck felt, the way that gun was waving around. But Jennifer Scott lowered the weapon, and then let Susan fold her into her arms.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, and then stood up straight, pushing Susan back.

“What happened to Kevin?” she said. “He went to see you this morning. He was ranting and crazy and paranoid. I thought he might—might actually hurt me. So I was hiding in the bedroom with his gun. Just in case. And then you two show up. What are you doing here? Is he all right?”

Beck had delivered bad news to relatives before, both as a med student and when his patients decided they couldn’t take the pain anymore. There was no good way to say it, ever. So he always thought it was best to just say it.

“He’s dead, Jennifer. I’m so sorry.”

For a second, her face showed nothing. “What?”

“He was shot outside my office. We don’t know why. I thought the police would have told you—”

Then the news seemed to hit her all at once, and she turned away quickly.

Susan reached out to her again, but she pulled away. “Please. I need a minute,” she said, and hurried down the hall and into the bedroom. The door slammed again.

Beck let out a long deep breath. None of this made any sense. Where were the police? Why hadn’t they come to see her?

And something about Jennifer’s story nagged at him, too. Kevin Scott had been angry, but not violent when he arrived at Beck’s office that morning. He didn’t seem like a man who’d just threatened his wife. In fact, the only time he did get angry was when Beck suggested he was having an affair.

That didn’t necessarily mean anything, of course. Beck had seen domestic abusers who were as cool as ice outside of the home. But it was just one more thing that didn’t add up.

Plus, there was just something off about her. He’d seen many people grieve—too many. He knew everyone reacted differently. But there was always a feeling of depth to it—he could always see the impact of the loss, how it almost echoed inside them, like a stone dropped in a well. Jennifer Scott had seemed like she was holding back a sneeze, not like someone holding back tears.

He said to Susan, “Did it seem like she—”

Susan interrupted. “Randall,” she said.

“What?”

She pointed at the laptop. The screen saver had activated again. It was going through family photos of Kevin Scott. There was a series of pictures from his wedding.

And the woman in the pictures had dark-brown hair.

She was not the woman who said she was Jennifer Scott.

Chapter 13

The woman’s real name was Natalie Mullen. She made sure that Jennifer Scott’s body was stashed completely behind the bed. She hadn’t had much time to hide it before.

Killing Jennifer Scott was easy. Mullen had knocked and said a big friendly hello when Jennifer had opened the door earlier—no one ever suspected that a woman might be dangerous, especially not another woman. It was a real asset in her line of work.

Then before Jennifer could say anything else, Mullen used the butt of her pistol to hit her in the face, knocking her back into the house.

They’d struggled. Jennifer was badly hurt, but still managed to fight back, which shouldn’t have been too surprising since she was a soldier’s wife.

Mullen had hit her with the pistol again. She collapsed on the floor. Mullen dragged her to the bedroom and shot her in the face.