James Patterson - #1 Suspect

I thought about Justine, the way she’d looked at me in the courtroom. I’d felt the pain and her deep disappointment. I thought about lying with her under cool sheets in a big bed.

Early the next morning, the first sound I heard was the loudspeaker, feedback screeching, the blasting voice echoing across the pods.

This time my name was called.

Caine was waiting for me on the freedom side of the chain-link barrier. He put an arm around me and hurried me quickly through the seething throng of bikers and gangbangers outside the jail.

The car was waiting for us. Aldo sprang from the front seat and moved fast to open the back door for me.

“You okay, Jack?”

“No worse than if I got hit by a car and slept it off for a couple of days in a drainage ditch,” I said.

Aldo grinned. “Oh, man, that’s bad. But we’ve got you now. Listen, there’s coffee for you in back.”

Had it only been five days since Aldo had picked me up at the airport and driven me home? It felt like at least a decade had passed.

Caine got into the backseat beside me, and the Mercedes shot out into the stream of traffic.

“I want to stop home and change.”

“The hotel would be better, Jack. They just took down the tape around your house an hour ago. No one’s been inside to clean. Cody brought some clothes to the hotel.”

I nodded, thought about my blood-soaked bed. My house forever colored by that blood.

There was a newspaper on the seat beside me. A big photo on page one. It took me a second to realize that the shackled man standing in line for the TTCF bus was me.

The headline read “Morgan Freed on Bail.” The subhead was “Accused Killer Walks on Twenty Million Bail.”

The lede paragraph was about Colleen’s murder, then a few lines about Phil Spector, Robert Blake, O. J. Simpson. Other LA killers.

“When’s the trial?” I asked Caine.

“We don’t have a date. Not yet,” Caine said. “And we don’t want one too soon.”

I knew what he meant. All we had in our favor was me telling the cops I didn’t do it. Another way of saying we had jack shit.

The car waited for me outside the Beverly Hills Sun. I went up to my opulent, gilded room. I stripped down, stood under the six shower heads in the travertine marble stall. Those streams of clean hot water almost resurrected me.

Thirty minutes later, about noon, I walked through the doors of Private and loped up the stairs.

Cody’s workstation was vacant, but there was a client pacing the open space outside my office. It was Dewey Arnold, lead attorney for Hamilton-Price, the biggest sports agency in the world.

“Dewey, come in. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I don’t need to come in, Jack.”

“No?”

I had been headed toward my office, but I stopped, turned around, and looked into Dewey Arnold’s craggy face.

I had known Dewey since I was a teenager. His firm had represented me during my one-season shot at professional football. Hamilton-Price had been my father’s client. Hamilton was still friends with my uncle Fred, who co-owned the Oakland Raiders.

Hamilton-Price had been with Private for the past five years.

“Let me just say it, Jack. You’re fired. We don’t want to work with you anymore.”

“Dewey. Come in. Let’s talk about this. I’m not guilty of anything. It’s a-”

“I’ve heard. It’s a frame,” he said. “We don’t care. We don’t like the stink. I settled up with accounting and I’m putting out a press release this afternoon. We’re moving our business to Private Security.”

“You’re going to my brother?”

“Out of loyalty to your family. Hamilton said to tell you good luck.”

If you say the word luck and put a lot of power behind that ck sound, spit comes out of your mouth. I wiped my cheek as Dewey Arnold stalked toward the elevator.

I turned away from Dewey Arnold and saw a large black woman coming out of my office. She was pretty, late twenties, a good 225 pounds, five foot eleven in flats. She wore a white blouse with some lace in the V neck, kelly-green pants. There was a scared look on her face-but, then, the shower hadn’t washed away the past few days. I still looked scary.

More to the point, I didn’t know her.

So what was she doing in my office?

“I’m Valerie Kenney,” she said. “Val. I’m Cody’s replacement.”

She stuck out her hand and I shook it, but I didn’t get it. Cody had said he’d stay for another week. He’d told me that I would interview his top three candidates.

“Cody wanted to break me in. Give me some training while he’s still here,” Valerie said. “He’s setting up some meetings for me right now.”

“Please come into my office,” I said.

I showed Val Kenney to the seating area. “I’m sure Cody would have told me about you, but I haven’t had a phone for a couple of days.”

“Being without a phone. That’s hell, isn’t it?”

I laughed. First time in a while.

“So what’s your story, Val?”

She summarized her life, hitting the high points. She had rehearsed it, sure, but it wasn’t too pat. Val was from Miami; her mother still lived in the Gables. She’d gone to Boston University, graduated four years ago with a bachelor of science degree.

“I took criminology postgrad at the University of Miami,” she told me. “My mom needed me at home to help her with my brother for a while. He was a teenager, you know, out of control. Do you remember when you came to Miami and gave a lecture on crime detection?”

“I do.”

“I was in the front row.”

“Sorry. There were a lot of people there.”

“Oh, that’s okay. But you really made an impression on me, Mr. Morgan.”

“Jack.”

“Jack. So how am I doing?” she asked. “Am I still hired?”

Second time I’d laughed. I guess I must’ve missed laughter if I was counting.

“Let’s see how it goes,” I said. “Keep talking.”

Val told me she’d done a stint with Miami PD in the back office, got her master’s at night, and told her mother that she was going to move to LA one day and work for Private.

“That last part’s a lie,” I said.

She grinned. “It’s what you say on interviews, ‘I always wanted to work here.’ But damn it, I did. I do.”

“Have you moved to LA?”

“Yes. I’m a big one for bold moves.”

First time she’d looked nervous in fifteen minutes, since Dewey Arnold told me good luck like he was wishing I’d get the plague.

“When Cody answered my e-mail, I got on a plane and flew out to meet him,” Valerie continued. “Speaking of e-mail, you’ve got a lot of it. Phone calls too. Three clients resigned-I cued up their contact info on your computer. And there are about five meetings I should rebook for you, if you’re ready. Mr. Del Rio, urgent. Ms. Poole, urgent. Should I go on?”

“You know what has happened to me?”

“Yes.”

“Solving Colleen Molloy’s murder-we’re going to be working nights. Weekends. You’ve got an advanced degree. Are you sure you want to answer phones?”

“Yes. And I can do anything you need me to do. This is a dream job, Mr., ah, Jack. I’ll work my butt off. That’s a promise. You’re looking at a former scholarship student. I got into the best schools on scholarship.”

Her hands were clasped tightly together in her lap. She was leaning toward me, hopeful.

I had to smile. She was smart and she was motivated, but was she as good as her act?

“When you think I’m ready, we’ll talk about me moving up to investigation,” Val Kenney said.

I had a murder rap hanging over my head. I had to take a chance that the smart and motivated Ms. Kenney could watch my back while I did whatever I had to do to save my life.