James Patterson - #1 Suspect

“So?”

“The sun was going down. Maybe you thought it was me because you expected to see me. It wasn’t me, Bobbie.”

“Tell it to the judge,” she said.

Bobbie raised her hand above her head, cocked it in a football hold, and trotted up the beach.

I stared after her. What the hell was she talking about?

I hadn’t been on the beach the night I found Colleen’s body in my bed. But Bobbie was unshakable. And as a gossip reporter, she was well-connected. She had to be the one who’d set the Internet wildfire naming me as the number one suspect in Colleen’s murder.

I hiked back up the beach, twenty yards behind Bobbie, wondering if she’d actually seen Tommy, thinking he was me. Or had she seen no one?

Had she made this story up to show me payback is a bitch?

I walked from the beach to my driveway and got into my car. I took off, south on PCH toward Santa Monica. I wanted to see Colleen’s closest friend. Through her, he’d become a friend of mine. I had to be with someone who knew her, felt what I felt, who would understand my grief.

My mind churned, and the next time I checked, I was on the 10 going east, not knowing if I was driving the Lambo or it was driving me.

But I knew exactly where to find Mike Donahue. I pictured him as I had last seen him, standing behind the bar.

Mike Donahue’s tavern was an Irish pub with a restaurant that could have been transported from Galway or Cork and simply planted in Los Feliz.

When Colleen first came to Los Angeles, she was determined to get her citizenship. In the hours between quitting time at Private and going home to study, she stopped at Donahue’s. It was where everyone knew your name, and nearly everyone in front of the bar and behind it had relatives in Ireland.

Mike Donahue came from a town only a few country miles from where Colleen grew up. He had gone to school with Colleen’s father, and when they met, Donahue became an uncle to her in the City of Angels.

I was outside Donahue’s Tavern, the red-painted, gold-lettered sign hanging above the doorway, patrons spilling out to the curb.

Inside, the place was throbbing with loud music and the shouts of customers trying to be heard. The horseshoe bar was packed three deep all the way around. There was a raucous dart game going on in the back.

Mike was at the taps, serving up the suds. He was a heavyset man with a thick beard and deep lines around his eyes and across his forehead, grooves that came from smoke and sun and laughter.

But when he lifted his eyes and recognized me in the doorway, I saw terrible sorrow there.

He threw a cloth down on the bar and came out from behind it. I lost sight of him as he worked his way through the crowd, then he broke through a knot of drinkers and approached me.

I never saw the punch coming.

I was taken down by a fist like a two-by-four. The pain in my jaw seemed to shoot to all points: my nose, neck, shoulder, out to my fingertips. When I opened my eyes I was staring up into a circle of angry faces. Mike’s was one of them.

I wasn’t welcome here.

I’d gotten it all wrong. And so had Donahue.

I was enraged-with everything and everybody. I wanted to strike, fast and hard. I could take Donahue. I thought I could take the three bruisers standing around him too. And if I couldn’t, it might even feel good to take a beating.

Turn the emotional pain into the physical kind.

I struggled to my feet, and Donahue put his hand on my chest and pushed me into the wall. He said, “You shouldn’t have come here, Jack. I’m mad enough to do bloody murder in front of God and witnesses.”

I clenched my fists at my sides. “Mike. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.”

“Is that your story, then?”

“Story? I was crazy about Colleen. Why would I want to kill her?”

“Maybe she was cramping your style, Jack.”

“Listen to me.”

I felt desperate for him to believe me. I grabbed both his biceps and shook him, shouted into his face. “ I didn’t do it. But I promise, I will find out who killed Colleen. And I will hurt him.”

I held an ice pack to my jaw with one hand, a Guinness in the other. Donahue sat across from me at a small table in his dark restaurant, a candle flickering between us. After twenty minutes of shouting at each other, I had managed to convince him of my innocence.

“Did I say I’m sorry, Jack?” Donahue said in his Irish brogue.

“Yes. You did.”

Donahue sighed.

“It’s okay, Mike. I understand. And no harm done.”

A waiter brought my dinner, a plate of chops and chips, and put it down in front of me. I refused another drink, looking at my plate with two minds.

One, I hadn’t eaten in a long time.

Two, I wanted to throw up.

The dinner was Donahue’s peace offering, so I put down the ice and picked up my cutlery.

“She was sad,” Donahue said. “We talked about this boyfriend of hers, in Dublin, and I think she loved him in a way, but he didn’t make her heart race. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Not in love with him.”

Donahue nodded. “Do you want me to cut your meat for you, boy-o?”

I smiled painfully, speared potatoes with my fork, and said, “She didn’t tell me that. She said she was happy.”

“Putting on a brave face, more like it,” said Donahue. “Or maybe looking to see if you’d changed your mind. If you still loved her.

“But anyway,” he continued, “I’d stopped worrying she was going to hurt herself. I never thought that someone would do this terrible thing to her.”

“Everyone loved her, Mike.”

“So why? ” Donahue asked me. He thumped the table with his fists. China jumped. Beer sloshed. “Why am I sending her back to Dublin in a box?”

I laid down my knife and fork, pushed my plate away.

“It had nothing to do with Colleen,” I said. “Someone killed her to hurt me. Someone who hates me.”

“Who was it, Jack?”

“I don’t know. Yet. I’m working on it. Whoever he was, he was a pro. He could have found a way to kill me without putting Colleen in the middle. But that wasn’t what he wanted.

“He set me up so that I would get taken down one step at a time. First, this…loss. Then humiliation. Then I’d be locked up for life. Or get the needle. That was the plan.”

“May the cat eat him. And may the divil eat the cat.”

“Copy that.”

We sat silently as the dishes were cleared.

When we were alone again, I looked into Mike’s sad eyes. “I’m sorry, Mike. I’m the one who owes you an apology. If Colleen hadn’t been involved with me, she’d still be alive.”

I pulled up to the Beverly Hills Sun, Jinx Poole’s flagship hotel, at just after ten. I stepped out of my two-hundred-thousand-dollar car looking as if I’d been dragged behind it for a couple of miles. I gave my car keys to the valet and checked in at the desk.

The clerk said, “Mr. Morgan, I believe the woman on the red sofa is waiting for you.”

It was Justine.

Thank God.

I was so glad to see her, my eyes got wet. Thinking about stretching out on clean sheets, Justine lying beside me, of feeling her skin against mine, flooded me with relief.

But why was she here? I called her name. She looked up, and I crossed the plush and glittering lobby to her, saying, “How long have you been waiting? Are you okay?”

I couldn’t read her expression.

“What’s going on, Justine?”

“It’s just-we have to talk. Gloves off. Nothing but the truth.”

“Let’s go to my room,” I said. I turned my head, pointed to my bruised jaw, and said, “I’ve got to lie down.”