James Patterson - #1 Suspect

Siggy tapped his number into Cruz’s phone. Then the two clasped hands, bumped shoulders. The big kid lumbered off down an alley.

And Cruz called Jack.

“We’ve got a lead on the van,” Cruz said. “It’s stashed inside a warehouse. Sure. Okay. Really? No kidding.”

Cruz told Jack where they would be and closed his phone. He said to Del Rio, “Jack has a new guy he wants us to work with. He used to be a ballet dancer.” Cruz paused. “Does that mean he’s gay?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of don’t ask, don’t tell?” Del Rio said.

Del Rio had parked on South Anderson, across from the Red Cat Pottery warehouse. The warehouse was red brick that had been whitewashed a few times; whitewash was flaking off, revealing partial names of previous, now defunct, businesses.

From their spot on South Anderson, they could clearly see the loading dock around the corner on Artemus. There was a sixteen-wheeler parked in the bay, a guy with a forklift loading pallets into the back. A couple of brothers were on the sidewalk smoking, then they flicked their butts into the gutter and climbed up into the cab of the big rig.

At five in the afternoon, vans and small trucks were making their last drops in this mixed-use light-industrial area. Gates were closing, people leaving for the day.

Twenty minutes into their wait, Del Rio heard a motorcycle coming up the street behind him, then the motor cut out. In the rearview mirror he saw a guy get off the bike and disappear into his blind spot.

Del Rio heard the back door of the fleet car open.

He jerked around to see a guy get into the backseat with a black-and-silver helmet. He was about thirty, blond, blue eyes, five-ten, 160, and tight. Muscles rippled under his T-shirt.

Had to be the ballet dancer.

Dude reached a paw over the seat, said, “I’m Christian Scott. Scotty. How ya doing?”

Del Rio shook his hand. “Rick Del Rio. This is Emilio Cruz. My sidekick.”

Cruz said, “Yeah, I kick him in the side from time to time. Nice to meet you, Scotty.”

“Thanks. You too. Is this the place?” he asked, looking out at the Red Cat warehouse.

“We’ve been told it is.”

“Have you checked it out?”

“Nah, we’re just watching the paint fall off. They should be closing up in about a half hour.”

“Okay with you if I do a little reconnaissance now?”

“No problem,” said Del Rio.

Scotty got out of the car. There was a little spring in his step as he crossed the wide street, went over to the loading dock on Artemus, and shouted something up to the forklift driver.

The driver pointed to a door up a flight of metal stairs and Scotty waved at him, took out his phone, sprinted up the steps, and pulled the door open.

“I don’t know if he’s gay,” said Del Rio. “A little bouncy on his feet, maybe.”

“Bet you a hundred this Scotty was a cop.”

“How do you figure?”

“I know eleven hundred cops. He feels like one of them.”

“Then I’ll keep my money. And I’ll ask him,” Del Rio said.

Another fifteen minutes had passed-Del Rio feeling uneasy that the guy had been in there for so long, wondering what Jack knew about him and how Scotty was supposed to fit into the team-when Scotty came around the corner, a piece of paper rolled up in his hand.

He looked both ways as he negotiated the street traffic, then he got back into the car.

“I inquired about a job,” he said, grinning. “This is my application form. I got a little tour of the place.”

Del Rio was laughing inside, but he didn’t show it. The kid was smart.

“What did you see?”

“Very decent security,” he said. “Got cameras over the doors, wires in the windows. The van, gotta be the one we want. It’s white, scraped all to hell on one side. Parked in the back northeast corner. I didn’t want to be too obvious, but I walked by it.”

“Jesus,” said Cruz. “You do a lot with fifteen minutes, dude.”

“Let’s get this fifty-thousand-dollar ride off this block,” Scotty said. “I got pictures.” He showed his phone. “Maybe we can work up some ideas.”

I drove the Lamborghini into my short stub of a driveway and swiped the key fob across the pad. The iron gates rolled open, and I saw a notice taped to my front door. I wasn’t close enough to read it, but I knew what it said.

“Do Not Enter by Order of the LAPD.”

I turned off my engine and sat for a couple of minutes, trying to imagine my brother walking Colleen up to the door at gunpoint. I saw him jabbing a gun into her back, going into the house with her. And then I couldn’t see any more.

Was Tommy so sick, so morally corrupt, he could actually kill Colleen? Honest to God, I didn’t know.

I got out of my car and walked down the narrow side yard, along the fence and out to the beach. The sun was still bright at five p.m. Yesterday at about this time, someone had been readying Colleen for her last mile.

I headed south, parallel to the shoreline, passing two enormous houses and one small one that had resisted the real estate brokers and the bulldozers. The fourth house had a hybrid Victorian-contemporary design with a high profile and a wide deck.

It was where Bobbie Newton lived.

Bobbie was a gossip columnist, the queen of prime-time celebrity news, and the ex-wife of some Wall Streeter back east. She was sitting out on her deck, tall drink in her hand, feet up on the railing. She wore an open shirt over her hot-pink bikini, a white visor in her blond curls, dark glasses, and a Bluetooth cuddling her left ear.

She was talking and watching the waves.

I called to her and she took down her feet, sat upright.

“Bobbie-can I come up? I need to speak to you.”

“I’ll come down,” she said. “Call ya later,” she told whoever she was talking to. “I gotta go.”

She set her drink on the deck and came down the short flight of wooden steps, holding on tight to the handrail.

I thought about my history with Bobbie. It had happened after my first breakup with Justine, way before Colleen. I thought it had ended okay-no-fault incompatibility. But when I found the envelope at my back door without a note, my key inside, it was a crystal-clear “Screw you.”

Bobbie was combustible, and I didn’t like that about her. I’m sure there were a few things she didn’t like about me. But we’d been neighborly since our split.

Now, as she crossed the beach and came toward me, seabirds flew up from the sand. And I saw from her expression that we weren’t friends.

She put her hands on her hips and said, “If you want to know if I told the police I saw you last night, the answer is yeah, Jack, I damn well did.”

“I wasn’t on the beach last night,” I told Bobbie Newton. She had taken off her glasses, and I was looking into her little bloodshot eyes. She drank early and often. Another thing I hadn’t liked about Bobbie.

“I wasn’t hallucinating,” she said. “You were on your phone. I heard it ring. I ran by and called out to you, ‘Hey, Jack.’ You pointed to your phone, like, ‘I’m talking.’ And then you waved. That signature wave of yours.”

“What? You’re saying I have some kind of…wave?”

“Like this.”

She lifted her right arm, cocked her hand back, fingers spread like she was holding a football.

I used to play college ball. Tommy didn’t.

“Nobody ever told me I have a unique wave.”

“Yeah, well, I’m telling you. I’ve seen you wave, what? A hundred thousand times?”

“It was past six o’clock, Bobbie. That’s what you told the police.”