James Patterson - #1 Suspect

“It’s a pretty good concussion. He’s depressed. He was in love with Piper. Do you understand?”

“I don’t understand, Larry. What do you want from me?”

“You’re a shrink. And Danny trusts you. He asked me to get you, and I said I would try.”

“I’m a shrink, but I’m not Danny’s shrink.”

“I told the cops that you are so that I could get you in to see him. Will you just talk to him? Maybe you can make some sense of this, Dr. Smith, because I know Danny very well. I’ve seen him every day for the last four years, and I’m telling you, Danny didn’t kill anybody.”

Justine was exhausted, stressed out, sleep deprived, and now she was conflicted too.

Should she go see Danny because he was still her client and he had asked for her?

Or should she wait until she’d spoken to Jack and Private’s lawyer, Eric Caine?

Nefertiti rubbed against her.

Justine bent to pet her cat.

Everything about Danny Whitman was bothering her. Was he a psychopath? Was that why neither she nor Larry Schuster had seen Danny’s potential for violence? Or was he a lamb, as innocent as Schuster said?

For her own peace of mind, she had to know.

“Dr. Smith?” Schuster said.

“I’m here.”

It was an hour’s drive to Twin Towers in traffic. Getting past the bureaucracy at TTCF could take all day, and she still might not get to see Danny.

“I’m being paged,” said Schuster. “I’ve left your name at the main gate.”

In the four hours since Justine had last seen Danny Whitman, he’d been transferred from Lost Hills, the best jail in the state, to TTCF.

He was now in the Twin Towers medical services building, which was packed to the walls with prisoners, many of them mentally unbalanced.

She’d worked in places like this one. They were never good.

After being patted down again and sent through a metal detector again, Justine stood in the doorway and looked around.

The rectangular room had armed guards on both sides of the door, bars in the small high windows, fresh industrial-green paint on the walls, and a pervasive, almost punishing odor of disinfectant.

She located Danny in one of the hospital beds, two down from the glass-enclosed nursing station. He had two black eyes, wore a paper robe and a gauze turban, and he was handcuffed to the bed rails.

Justine had been told that she had fifteen minutes with Danny, no physical contact permitted, and that if she broke that rule, her meeting with Danny would be terminated immediately.

Danny looked up when she came toward him. He appeared happier to see her than she had expected. She hardly knew him. What did he think she could do for him?

Justine pulled a plastic chair up to the side of the bed. “We don’t have much time, Danny. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Piper and I were in love, but we couldn’t tell anyone because of her age, and listen, the paparazzi-”

“I’m sorry, Danny. The short version, okay?”

Justine was assessing him. Did he comprehend? Was he lucid? Was he truthful? Was he living in this time and place or in a world of his own creation?

“Yesterday morning when we were setting up in the Ferrari, Piper said to me, ‘Too bad we can’t just get out of here,’ and I was thinking with my heart. We’d never spent the night together…It was a great opportunity…I drove to the cabin I bought last year under a fake name. Oh, God. If I’d used my brain, she’d still be alive.”

He was crying again.

“Danny. In twelve minutes, I’ll be thrown out of here, so please talk to me. Did you have a fight with Piper?”

“Oh, no. We had a wonderful day. We partied until we both passed out in bed. I woke up-maybe something woke me up. Piper wasn’t there.”

“Then what happened?”

Danny dried his face with the sleeve of his gown and went on.

“I went out to look for Piper. It was totally dark outside, but I saw a car parked next to the Ferrari. It was right in the flower bed. No car should have been there. Then I saw a flashlight moving through the trees, and I started walking up the trail and calling Piper.

“All of a sudden, the light disappeared. I heard the car start up behind me, and I thought maybe Piper was having regrets, that she had called for someone to pick her up. But then…I found her shoe at the edge of the drop. I thought, ‘No, she can’t be down there,’ but when I looked over the edge…I knew there was nothing I could do for her. I called you. I called everyone.”

The guard came toward Danny’s bed and said, “Time’s up.”

Danny looked directly into Justine’s eyes. “I swear to you, Dr. Smith, I didn’t do that to Piper. You have to believe me. Someone is doing something to me. I don’t know what it is and I don’t know who’s doing it. But that car I saw at my cabin? Whoever owns it is the one who killed Piper.”

Carmine Noccia’s Father was a thug; so was mine. Carmine and I had both gone to Ivy League schools, we’d both served in the Corps, and both our fathers had given us the keys to the family business.

Beyond that, Carmine Noccia and I had nothing in common.

Carmine was a third-generation killer, never caught, never even charged. The FBI had him on their watch list, but they had no evidence to support their certain knowledge that he’d had three people murdered.

There’d been no fingerprints. No smoking guns. No surveillance tape.

Snitches had been killed before testifying.

Carmine’s father, the don, was ready to retire, and Carmine was rumored to be stepping into his job-and more. According to the stories, the Noccia family was expanding east in the coming year, from their Vegas hub to Chicago.

It was unprecedented in Mob history for a satellite organization to return to its roots, but Noccia had brass and his father had raised him to accomplish big things.

The hijacked van stuffed with thirty million in pharmaceuticals had been the first major move in Carmine’s expansion plan, and now that same van was standing in his way. And because six months ago I’d reached out to Carmine to protect my brother from a lesson he might not have lived to regret, I was in bed with a mobster. On a first-name basis.

Noccia called me at around three in the morning. He didn’t say hello. He said that his distributors, having paid for the drugs, were very unhappy.

He’d made this point to me before.

I said, “We’re on the job, Carmine. I didn’t need the wake-up call.”

“We don’t have clocks around here,” he said.

Another way of saying that my time was his time.

I brought Noccia up to date on the plan going forward, and he hung up without saying good-bye.

I fell back to sleep.

I was running after Colleen, trying to tell her that I was sorry, but she wouldn’t stop running away from me. The phone rang again.

This time my caller was my good friend Lieutenant Mitchell Tandy.

“I’m in the neighborhood, Jack. I’d be happy to stop by if there’s anything you’d like to tell me.”

“I told you, Mitch. I didn’t do it.”

Tandy laughed pleasantly and hung up.

By the time Justine phoned to report on Danny Whitman’s arrest on suspicion of murder, I was wide awake.

I checked out of the Sun and drove to work, keeping the car to ten miles below the speed limit. Tandy tailed me to Figueroa Street, gave me a two-blast salute from his horn when I turned into the underground garage below my office building.

Mitchell Tandy was a hyena.

I walked into my office at half past seven, caught Justine’s second call that morning. She told me that Danny Whitman was in the hospital at TTCF.