James Patterson - Tick Tock

"EMTs are inbound, but I saw him, Mike. Humpty had a great fall out of his stretcher. His face is a bright strawberry red like I've never seen before. I don't know what, but something happened. Something bad."

Something bad had happened, indeed, I thought, twenty siren-blaring minutes later as I burst into Berger's holding cell in the back of the precinct.

Berger had fallen out of the bed. Also, his butt had fallen out of his sheet again, I couldn't help but notice, to my horror.

The EMTs were long gone, replaced by the thin, birdlike female Medical Examiner I'd worked with before named Alejandra Robles.

As Alejandra went through her routine, I stared down at the massive dead man. He'd had everything-education, wealth, the coolest apartment in Manhattan-and decided on this? Setting off plastic explosives? Killing children? Committing suicide? He was the most inadequate person I'd ever come across, and that was saying a lot.

The worst part of it was that it all felt almost scripted. The people who'd been killed seemed like they'd been bought for Berger's fifteen minutes of slimy fame.

I tried not to think about what it meant, about what kind of future the human race was heading toward. But I couldn't help it.

Alejandra knelt in front of Berger, pointing a flashlight into his mouth.

"I take it he's having trouble saying ah," I said.

"You take it correctly," she said, beckoning me over. "I think it was poison. Cyanide, I'd guess by the bright red rash, but we won't know until the toxicology."

She held the light over his upper back teeth.

"Check this out," she said, directing me to peer into Berger's pie hole. "See that molar? That's not a cavity, Mike. It's a fake tooth. That must be where he hid the poison. Can you believe it?"

After Berger was rolled out, I called Emily Parker at her hotel from the hallway outside the precinct detective squad room upstairs.

"If you thought the pantie bomber was crazy, have a seat," I said when she answered.

"You found Carl?" she guessed.

"Nope," I said. "It's Berger. He's gone. Killed himself. He had poison in a hollowed-out tooth, a cyanide pill most likely, like a Nazi spy. How's this for an epitaph? 'Lawrence Berger, weird in life, weird in death, weird in the hearts of his countrymen.' "

"Wait. Did you say cyanide? Hold on. Let me get my notes. Crapola! He's done it again. It's happened before. Maggie O'Malley, a nurse dubbed the 'Dark Angel of Bellevue,' swallowed a cyanide pill after she was accused of some baby murders in the early nineteen twenties."

"I need to watch more of the History Channel," I said squeezing my temples.

A noontime three-car pileup halted the traffic on the Sunrise Highway two miles west of Hampton Bays, Long Island.

Behind the wheel of the Mercedes convertible, Carl Apt watched a Suffolk County Highway Patrol cruiser drive past on the grass center berm to his left, followed by an ambulance. Frowning, he slipped on his designer aviator shades. He cranked the A/C as he pressed the button for the automatic hardtop.

Why had he pushed it? he thought, watching the cop's bubble lights spin. He knew he should have ditched the car already.

He held his head in his hands. Christ, he was exhausted. The sun was like an ice pick in his eyes. He'd had a splitting headache since four a.m., when he'd climbed from the basement through a sidewalk grate on the 70th Street side of Berger's building.

What he wouldn't do for one last soak in his penthouse bath.

As he waited in the dead-stopped traffic, he glanced at the motorists around him. There were a lot of Range Rovers and Cadillac sedans. What was it Lawrence had called loud-mouthed, showy people from Long Island? LIDS. Short for Long Island Dimwits.

After a few minutes, from three cars behind him, a group of lug-nut teens with gelled hair, no shirts, and bottle tans started making some noise. A painful thump of rap music bass began to emanate from their tricked-out convertible Mustang.

"Anywhere, anywhere, woo-whooo, woo-whooo," they sang along to The Show's instant summer classic. A fat girl wearing a bikini top and short shorts stood in the passenger seat, threw her hands above her head, and started grinding her hips.

"Real slow, real slow, woo-whooo, woo-whooo," her mutt friends intoned.

A bead of sweat rolled down Carl's temple as he eyed them in his rearview. He felt like taking the Steyr AUG submachine gun from under the blanket in the foot well beside him and emptying all thirty 5.56 NATO rounds into the car. Roll out, put it to his shoulder and bear down full auto with the bullpup machine gun. Gel the ginzo driver's hair with his own blood before blowing out the bitch's tattooed spine, ending her pole-dancing career and having her piss in a bag for the rest of her miserable life.

Why stop there? he thought. After he raked the Mustang, he could easily kill thirty or forty more people sitting in their cars before the Gomer Long Island cops down the road figured out a response. Turn the LIE into the DOA. Sounded like a plan.

Instead, he let out a breath and popped a Percocet as the traffic started to move. After another minute, he saw a cutout in the berm and spun a U-turn.

He pulled off the southbound highway at the next exit. Strip malls began to appear, followed by box stores. He pulled into the Roanoke Plaza in Riverhead and cruised up and down the aisles of the massive parking lot.

When he found a '90-something Buick in a Target parking lot, he squealed out of the lot. Half a mile east, he pulled back off the road into a small, dumpy-looking strip mall that had a pizza place, an optometrist, and something called Edible Arrangements. He drove around the rear of the low, decrepit building and parked the Merc beside a Dumpster.

He got out and locked up and began walking back toward the Target parking lot. Halfway there, he stopped into an Ace Hardware store and bought a set of jumper cables, a can of lighter fluid, and the largest flat-blade screwdriver he could find.

"That'll be nineteen-ninety-nine plus shipping and handling," the red-vested fool behind the counter said.

Carl stared at the LID without speaking.

"Just kidding," the clerk said sheepishly as he handed him back his change.

When he got back to the Buick parked outside Target, Carl jammed the screwdriver into the slot of the window and broke it as quietly as he could. He unlatched the door and popped the hood. With the jumper cables he'd just bought, he ran a line from the positive battery node to the red coil at the back of the engine.

With the engine now powering the dash, he knelt in the open driver's-side door and cracked the plastic steering column with the flat blade of the screwdriver. Then using the metal blade, he crossed the now-exposed terminals for the solenoid and the battery. The engine chugged for a moment and then grumbled to life.

Carl flicked glass off the seat before slipping behind the wheel and pulling out.

He drove back to the Merc, unlocked the door, and soaked the interior with the lighter fluid after he transferred his bag and the assault rifle to the Buick. He lit a book of matches. He winced as he tossed them into the beautiful, six-figure car's front seat.

He looked around at the piece-of-crap Buick for the first time as he pulled out back toward the highway. McDonald's soda cups everywhere. A Jets Snuggie blanket covering the rear pleather seat.

He popped another vitamin P, then thought about it and popped another. His cheeks bulged as he inhaled and let out a long, aggravated breath.

Carl pulled off the LIE into East Meadow, Long Island, an hour later.