James Patterson - #1 Suspect

“You stink of beer. You were in a bar fight?”

“You don’t miss a thing.”

“Sit down. Please. This won’t take long.”

It didn’t sound good, whatever was coming. I eased myself onto the sofa next to Justine.

“I’m just about brain dead. Maybe we should talk tomorrow.”

“Very little of your brain is required.”

I looked at her and she hooked me in with her eyes. I loved Justine. I loved her.

“When you saw Colleen last week, before you left for Europe-what happened?”

“We had lunch at Smitty’s. I have a receipt somewhere. I haven’t had time to go over my credit card bill.”

“Did you sleep with her?”

“Christ. You shouldn’t do this. Do I ever grill you? Can’t you just trust me?”

“Did you say ‘trust me’? I’ll take that to mean it wasn’t just lunch. Oh, Jack.”

She shook her head.

I threw up my hands. “If you don’t believe me about this,” I said, “then what’s the point? How can we work things out if you don’t trust me?”

Justine got up, hooked the strap of her handbag over her shoulder, and without looking back, left the hotel through the revolving doors. I watched her through the glass. She gave her ticket to the valet and faced the street as he went for her car.

Justine could read me like an FBI polygraph. Lying to her was futile. I could chase after her, but what more could I say?

The valet brought her car, and Justine slid in behind the wheel, strapped in, and took off fast down South Santa Monica.

This time I was sure I’d lost her. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was pretty much what I deserved.

The next morning, I walked from my office across the hall to the “war room,” thinking about Colleen. I wondered what she’d been doing in her last hours, trying to see through her eyes how she’d been trapped by a man with murderous intentions. I imagined her horror when that gun-probably my gun-had been aimed at her chest, her killer taunting her before he squeezed the trigger.

I had a horrifying thought.

What if she’d believed her killer was me?

I stiff-armed the door, saw that the conference room was packed: Sci, Cruz, Mo, and Del Rio, arrayed around the black table, hunched over coffee, texting and phoning, looking up when I came in.

Associates filled the row of swivel chairs around the perimeter, buzzing about a hot case that had been resolved at four this morning when a team of Private investigators caught a runaway teen and her user boyfriend withdrawing funds from an ATM with her mom’s bank card.

Justine’s seat was empty. Justine was never late for a meeting. Had never been late in five years.

The chatter stopped as I pulled out my chair.

Cody brought in my Red Bull and a list of names.

“What’s this?”

“Candidates for my job. I’m setting up appointments for you to meet the best three. Best three in my humble opinion.”

I nodded. “Let’s get started.” I introduced Christian Scott, said that Scotty had been with the Joffrey Ballet, suffered a knee injury, joined the California Highway Patrol as a motorcycle cop.

“Scotty was one of three guys who brought down a major doper, four hundred pounds of weed in the trunk. It was Scotty who pulled him over on a hunch-”

“A hunch and the rear of the car was sending up sparks on the freeway,” Scotty said.

“He’s got good hunches and, I’ve been told, a pretty decent pirouette,” I said into the laughter. “Scotty has just finished his six thousand hours as an investigator at California Casualty, so his license is in the mail.

“Stand up and show us your face.”

There was applause. Scotty stood and said he was glad to be here. Then investigator Lauri Green raised her hand and said, “Jack, I gotta go in a minute. Just to let you know Mara Tracey is out on bail.”

Lauri was talking about our shoplifting movie star, made ten million a picture and still lifted a hundred-dollar sweatshirt from a boutique, attracting tabloid headlines, paparazzi popping up out of the shrubbery, and a publicized date next week in front of a judge.

Mara’s husband had hired us to keep eyes on her. We discussed tailing Ms. Tracey, then Cruz got up and filled the group in on the dead businessman at the Beverly Hills Sun. He sketched in the backstory: the string of four other dead men in other hotels, and the dead-end lead to an escort service. He talked about research he was doing now, interviews with hotel staff, and so on. He was keeping himself in the background, he said, now that the cops were on the case.

He didn’t mention the Noccias’ stolen van full of boosted pharmaceuticals-I was keeping that one off-limits to the group.

When Cruz sat down, I tapped keys on my laptop and Colleen’s photo filled the center flat screen on the wall.

My ears hummed and my heart rate shot up when I saw that picture. Only two days ago, Colleen had been alive and well.

I dropped my eyes to the keyboard, trying to get a grip on my emotions. When I spoke, my voice cracked.

“Most of you knew Colleen. She was most likely killed to torment me and to implicate me in her death.”

Del Rio said quietly, “Dude.”

I swallowed hard and kept going.

“As you’ve probably heard, I’m not only the prime suspect, I’m the only suspect. Meanwhile, Colleen’s killer is out there somewhere-laughing his ass off.”

I leaned back in my seat at the conference table. I was aware of my colleagues looking at me as I stared at Colleen’s face on the screen. Her expression was sunny, luminous, and it wasn’t a portrait, just a snapshot for her ID card taken on her first day of work at Private.

I remembered how an hour after that photo was taken, Colleen was sitting outside my office, going through my mail. She had looked up when my shadow crossed her desk and said, “Is someone wanting to harm ye, Mr. Morgan?”

“A dozen people I can think of. Why?”

She showed me a padded envelope marked up with red grease pencil, block letters reading, “Time Dated Material. Open Upon Receipt.”

An arrow pointed to the pull tab. It wasn’t ticking, but the envelope had no return address and the lettering looked insane.

We had evacuated the building, eighty of us standing out in the glaring sun on Figueroa while the bomb squad took the envelope out with a robot and x-rayed it in the bomb-mobile. The contents were shredded newspaper and a note, same red letters with a lot of rays coming out from the words “BANGETY-BANG-BANG-BANG.”

Fingerprints were traced back to a repeat offender, Penn Runyon, a psycho who’d been incarcerated for the illegal sale of weapons and had been released a few months before.

Runyon was interrogated, said he’d read about me in the paper, how I’d tracked down and brought in an escaped con who was a friend of his.

Actually, it was Tommy had who brought down Runyon’s friend, not me.

Common mistake: Jack Morgan, Private Investigations. Tom Morgan Jr., Private Security.

Runyon wanted to know if he’d killed me. Really? You sent a nonexplosive paper bomb, buddy.

So Runyon got it all wrong.

Colleen, on the other hand, had gotten it all right. She was the best assistant I ever had. And more. I’d cared about her deeply.

I stopped reminiscing about Colleen and brought my attention back to the present. I said to my investigators, “Colleen worked here at Private for over a year. We started going out. It wasn’t a secret.”

“She was a great girl,” Del Rio said.

“Yes, she was. She was visiting friends here in LA and somehow she was captured or tricked, then murdered in my house.”