James Patterson - #1 Suspect

“I saw you on TV,” Ned said. I put the bottle down, and Ned was back in my arms, talking into my chest. “They said you killed someone. Colleen.”

“It’s not true, honey. I know what people say, but I didn’t kill her. I’m being framed.”

He looked up at me, questions and tears in his eyes.

“Someone lied about you? But why? ”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not right. That’s whack, Uncle Jack.”

“He’s not going to get away with it. I’m not kidding.”

“Good. Go get him. Bring the dirty dog down.”

I bumped fists with the little guy and hugged him again. Then I left the house with its elaborate coved ceilings, formal furniture, and fireplaces in every room, walked past the Olympic-sized heated pool and out to the six-bay car barn.

Tommy had a classic American car collection, a passion he’d shared with Dad. I found him under a 1948 Buick Roadmaster, a pewter-gray automobile that looked as if it had been blown from a bubble machine. It was a beautiful thing.

I grabbed Tommy’s ankles and pulled him out on the dolly he’d rolled in on.

He stared at me, his expression changing as his initial fear turned to mocking anger.

“What’s your problem, Jack?”

“I know who set me up, Junior. I know who killed Colleen.”

“Take a look at this,” I said to Tommy.

I cued my iPhone to Mo-bot’s video and handed the gadget to my brother. He pushed the “play” button, and I heard the tinny sound of reporters shouting to get my attention outside my office on a day I would never forget.

“This is you being taken to the hoosegow,” my brother said. “That’s a rough crowd.”

“Keep looking. You see someone we know?”

“Huh. Clay Harris. What’s he doing there?”

“He works for you, Tom.”

“Part-time. He’s a charity case, believe me.”

“So you had nothing to do with him being there?”

“Hell, no. What are you saying? That I knew you were going to jail? And that I called Clay? Why would I do that?”

“Let’s go talk to him,” I said.

“Now?”

“No better time than now.”

“If you say so. I’ll tell Annie I’m going out for a while. I’ll meet you at the car.”

A few minutes later, Tommy met me in the driveway. He was wearing a jacket, different shoes. He walked around to the back of my car.

He ran his hand over the Lambo’s left rear haunch and along the crease to the door. His jacket fell open, and I saw the gun stuck in his waistband.

“Christ,” he said. “What the hell happened to your car?”

“I went to the supermarket. When I came out…”

“I’ve got a great body shop guy. I’ll give you his number. But as good as Wayne is, this is never going to look the same again,” Tommy said. “It’s a damned shame.”

“Get in, will you?”

“Are you allowed to drive?”

“Get in. Try not to shoot yourself in the dick.”

Tommy got into the car. I pulled out onto West Sixth, toward the 5 going north. I figured it would be forty-five minutes to Santa Clarita at this time of night.

“Why do you want to talk to Clay?” Tommy asked me.

Clay Harris had worked for my father as an investigator, and when I took over Private, he was on the payroll.

I didn’t like him, but he was great at surveillance. He could stay on a tail or sit in a vehicle for days at a time. He looked like an unemployed factory worker, could blend into a crowd on the street. And he knew his way around electronics.

But he was a cheat and a liar.

Clay Harris had fattened his expense report. He had done work on the side. And one day he sold photos of a client in a compromising position. I found out.

That’s when I fired him.

Next day, Harris went to Tommy, who gave him a job.

Thinking about him now, standing in the crowd, smirking as I was marched off to jail, put Clay Harris in a new category. He disliked me. He had the skills to hurt me. And I couldn’t say murder was out of his league.

I said to Tommy, “I want to talk to Clay about Colleen.”

I took the 5, heading toward the Tehachapi mountain range linking Southern and Central California.

Clay Harris lived on a dirt road in an isolated area made up of remote ranches, parks, and forest service land. From the satellite view, I knew his house was at the edge of a three-hundred-acre parcel, marked for development then abandoned when the bubble burst in 2009. Harris’s house was two miles away from any other man-made thing.

I took the 126 to Copper Hill Drive, which sent me past a minimall and then a cluster of migrant-worker housing. After the development, there was nothing to see but dry scrub and low hills, copses of native trees, and miles of flat land untouched by the hand of man.

“Here’s our turn,” I said, taking a left onto San Francisquito Canyon Road.

Tommy had been talking about himself since we left Hancock Park, filling the air with self-aggrandizing stories about his bodyguard service to celebrities, the stunts the A-listers pulled. But he stopped talking as my headlights lit up the chain-link fence and signs reading “Harris. No Trespassing.”

I slowed as the house came into view, parked on the shoulder, turned off my headlights.

The house was at the end of a long drive, placed far back on the property; a ranch-style rambler, white with dark trim and a plain front porch.

There was a clump of mature native oaks in the yard and more oaks at the fence line, but what grabbed my attention was a brand-new Lexus SUV at the top of the drive.

I knew how much Clay Harris had earned when he worked for me, and assuming Tommy hadn’t quadrupled his income, the Lexus didn’t fit. Unless someone had given him about seventy-five thousand dollars.

I reached across my brother and opened the glove box, took out a gun.

“I don’t think you have a license for that,” Tommy said.

“Let’s just keep this between us, okay, Junior?”

We got out of the car and edged along the chain-link fence, getting cover from the trees. The gate latch was open, an oversight on the part of Mr. Harris, I thought. We were still thirty feet from the porch when the motion detector found us.

Lights blazed.

A siren blared across the open land followed by a fusillade of bullets.

Harris was unloading a semiautomatic, and shots were whizzing through the trees. Then there was a pause in the shooting.

Had Clay Harris seen us? Or was he just firing in response to the alarm? Thinking coyote. Or bear. Or, If you’re on my property, you’re dead.

I whispered, “You take the back door and I’ll take the front.”

“No, Jack. You take the back.”

“Fine,” I said.

It wasn’t fine.

I hadn’t planned for a shootout.

In fact, as of right now, I had no plan at all.

We were trespassing.

If I called out Harris’s name and he wanted to shoot me, he could get a bead on my voice and nail me. Legally.

I dropped to the ground and pulled myself across the yard with my elbows until I had reached the side of the house, out of gunshot range.

With my back to the wall, I negotiated piles of junk and brush as I made my way to the back entrance.

I held my gun with both hands, using my foot to push the door open. Hinges creaked and I stepped into a mudroom. I expected shots or at least a challenge, but I heard nothing.

A light glowed from the center of the house, and I made for it. Using the wall as a guide, I moved forward, past garments hanging from hooks, stacks of newspapers, and towers of boxed, empty beer bottles. Clay Harris was one of those people who didn’t throw things out.