James Patterson - #1 Suspect

The local news was on video six, tight close-up of a talking head reporting on the sensational “Murder in Malibu.”

Sci reclined and rocked in a swivel chair, but Mo was on the edge of her seat, visibly angry and agitated. An accomplished warrior on a multilevel, real-time online combat game, Mo sometimes felt the lines blur between game and reality.

The feeling was coming over her, that rush of being in a warrior frame of mind.

As she watched the reporter speak to the camera, Mo assumed her avatar’s personality, thought about weapons in her arsenal, and assembled her virtual army.

The reporter staring back through the screen was Randi Turner, who had been a fixture on Channel 9 for the past couple of years. Turner said to the camera’s eye, “Jack Morgan, CEO of Private Investigations, is widely viewed as the prime suspect in the murder of his former lover and personal assistant Colleen Molloy.”

Pictures of Jack flashed on the screen, and then shots of Jack, his arm around Colleen, running through rain from a restaurant marquee to his car. After that, there was a film clip of them at a Hollywood party, whispering and laughing.

Turner spoke throughout the slide show.

Turner said, “Jack Morgan’s father was the late Thomas Morgan, convicted of extortion and murder in 2003, died in prison in 2006. Like his father, Jack Morgan is said to have links to organized crime.”

Mo had had enough.

She sprang up from her chair and yelled at the TV, “Links to organized crime? Paid off his brother’s gambling debt, you mean.”

“Take it easy,” Sci said. “All this means is that the press is reaching. If they had something on Jack, they wouldn’t need to refer to his father. They wouldn’t have to imply anything.”

Turner spoke from the high-def screen on the wall above Mo’s desk. “Sources close to the police tell Channel 9 that physical evidence found on the victim implicates Jack Morgan, but the nature of that evidence is being withheld from the press.”

“Damn you. Die, bitch!”

Sci grabbed the remote from Mo’s hand and shut the TV off.

Mo said, “I could cut off her head, slice her below the knees, and leave her standing in sections. She wouldn’t even know she was dead.”

“Maureen, emotion is counterproductive.”

“Jack could never have killed Colleen.”

“No, he couldn’t, he didn’t, and he won’t get charged. This is just the free press at work, churning the news.”

“Oh, and you’re saying no innocent person has ever gone to prison? That never happens?”

“What do you say? What if you put all this energy into working the case?”

“Sure, I will. But you and I both know,” Mo-bot said, “the only thing that can save Jack is a confession from the killer. A confession that includes an explanation of how he got Jack’s semen into Colleen’s body.”

I went through my voicemail as I drove.

I listened to a message from an edgy Carmine Noccia, heard from Del Rio and Scotty, then got an update from Cruz about the murder at the Beverly Hills Sun. I talked at length to our Rome office, during which time Justine returned my call. I called her back and got her voicemail.

“I’m on the road,” I said. “I’ll try you again later.”

At just after eight p.m., I pulled into my driveway. I was undoing my seat belt when a police cruiser drove up behind me and parked on the shoulder of the highway. The cruiser’s grill lights sent bursts of color across the gates and the stucco wall.

The lights came on in my mind too. I’d been driving on autopilot for the past forty minutes, had driven myself home, although I hadn’t meant to come here at all.

The squad car door slammed behind me. I buzzed down my window, and a flashlight beam blinded me so that I could only see the patrolman’s silhouette.

“License and registration, please.”

I couldn’t swear to it, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t been speeding. I got my license out of my wallet, handed it out the window, reached across the seat to the glove box, and located my registration. Handed that out too.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” said the cop.

I waited. Stared at the yellow tape and the notice on my front door. I listened to the crackling and chirping of the cop’s radio, remembering how two nights ago, right about this time, I’d gotten out of the car right in this spot.

I’d signed the voucher, said good night to Aldo, passed my fob across the gate card reader, entered the house, and stripped down as I made for the shower.

A couple hours after that, I was being grilled by two hardened LA cops who’d determined I was guilty of killing Colleen before I’d said a word.

As I waited for the cop to come back to the car, I thought about being interrogated that night. Detective Tandy’s theory, part of it, anyway, seemed plausible.

Had Colleen come to my house to surprise me?

I could see her doing that. She would have known it was risky, but it was in her character to take a chance that after all we’d had together she could change my mind.

I pictured Colleen curled up in a chair in my living room, waiting for me to arrive. Maybe she’d heard a car stop outside the gate.

I could see her going to the window, peering out into the dark, hearing the whirr of the gates rolling back. Maybe she’d opened the door, called out, “Jack?”

Had someone said, “Hey, Colleen.”

Had he looked just like me?

Had Tommy caught her by surprise, backed her into the house, made her lie down on the bed? Maybe Colleen went for my gun-she knew where it was. But she wasn’t fast enough. Wasn’t strong enough. The gun was snatched out of her hand. And she was shot three times.

Did Tommy really do that?

Another set of images spooled out in my mind’s eye.

In this scenario someone had been tailing me.

Say he was watching when I left Colleen’s hotel room the week before. He knew me. He knew Colleen. He wished me harm, and he’d come up with a plan.

I saw Tommy.

Let’s just say he’d kept his eye on Colleen while I was in Europe. At some point in that four-day period, he’d kidnapped her, and an hour before I was due to land at LAX, he’d restrained her somehow and driven her to my house. He’d used her gate key, pressed her finger to the biometric lock…

My thoughts were interrupted by a car door slamming behind me. I heard the cop walking back to my car.

The flashlight beam was pointed at my face again as he handed me my identification.

“Mr. Morgan, do you know why I stopped you?”

“No. I live here. You know that, right? This is my house.”

“This is a crime scene. Why are you here?”

“I need a change of clothes.”

“That’s not happening, Mr. Morgan.”

“Okay,” I said. I started up the engine. It roared.

But the cop wasn’t letting me go. Not yet. He scrutinized my face from behind his light.

I understood why he’d stopped me.

The cops were watching my house in case the killer came back to the scene of the crime.

The cop looked at me as if that was just what I’d done.

Jinx Poole’s flagship hotel was set like a diamond tiara at the top of the intersection of South Santa Monica and Wilshire.

I drove my Lambo around the generous, curving driveway to the front doors of the Beverly Hills Sun, handed my car keys to the valet, and went directly through the busy marble-lined lobby to the elevator bank.

A gang of partygoers broke around me, and when they had dispersed, I got into the elevator. I leaned against a cool stone-paneled wall as it rose to the fifth floor, where Marcus Bingham had been strangled to death and where I was staying until my house was mine again.