James Patterson - Private

After parking her car on Martel, a narrow road in West Hollywood, Justine walked a dozen yards to where Nora Cronin was lying on her stomach, peering underneath an ancient Ford junker parked at the curb.

“Hey, Nora, it’s me,” Justine said.

“Oh, happy day,” Cronin muttered. She came out from under the car with a knife in her gloved hand. She gave the knife to a uniform, saying, “Edison, bag this, tag it, take it to the lab.”

“Yes, ma’am, Nora, ma’am. Forthwith.”

Cronin stripped off her latex gloves and scowled at Justine. “So what’s the deal, Justine? I hear you and Bobby are kaput, and you didn’t even tell me. I have to wonder: Are you still even working the Schoolgirl case?”

“Private is under contract to the city. We’re doing this for free. No billable hours.”

Justine waited for Cronin’s next crack, but it didn’t come. Cronin put a hand on her hip and said, “Is your air conditioner working?”

The two women sat in the Jag with the air on high while Justine briefed Nora on Christine Castiglia.

“In 2006, Castiglia saw two kids toss a girl who looked like Wendy Borman into a black van. An hour ago, she identified one of them. I think Wendy Borman might have been the first schoolgirl in the spree.”

“I know about that Castiglia girl. Kid was eleven at the time, right? Her mother put up a firewall to keep the cops away from her. You saying you trust her five years later to make a positive ID?”

“Not entirely, no. I got Borman’s clothes out of evidence, ran them at our lab. The DNA is good,” Justine said to Cronin. “Two male single-source samples. But no bells went off in the database.”

“So what do you want from me? I’m a little lost here.”

“We have reason to believe that another murder is going down in two days.”

“Oh, really? But you can’t tell me how you know this, right? So, I repeat, what do you want from me?”

“Christine Castiglia saw a Gateway Prep decal on the kidnap van,” Justine said. She tapped buttons on the dashboard computer and called up the photo of Rudolph Crocker’s face.

“This is the guy Christine Castiglia ID’d. Name is Rudolph Crocker. He graduated from Gateway in 2006. Now he’s a suit at a brokerage house. Christine is sure he’s the one she saw.”

“Uh-huh. Now what, Justine?”

“So, I’ve got a suspect over here,” Justine said, holding up one hand. “And I’ve got a DNA sample over here.” She held up the other hand. “If we can put this hand and this hand together, we might just put a bloody psychopath out of business.”

“Saying I want to do it, I’d have to know everything you know,” Cronin said. “None of this ‘We have reason to believe’ crap. You hold anything back from me, I quit.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t answer to you.”

“No, you don’t. And you can’t bring anyone from LAPD into this without my okay. Okay?”

“Yeah,” said Nora.

She was smiling now. It was probably the first time Justine had seen a smile from her. “I’m gonna take a lotta crap for working with you. After all the names I’ve called you.”

Justine nodded. “Deal?”

“Deal.” They slapped high fives in the frigid air.

“We’re going to make a great team,” said Justine.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Nora Cronin. “I still don’t particularly like you.”

Justine finally smiled. “Oh, you will.”

I was heading into the office, stuck in a swamp of traffic on Pico, when Mo-bot called me from the tech center.

“Five minutes ago, our friends at the LAX Marriott made a call to a bottling plant in Reno asking for a donation to the State Troopers’ Widows Fund,” she said, her voice trilling with excitement. “The plant is owned by none other than Anthony Marzullo. Happy, Jack?”

“Good catch, Mo. That’s excellent. But you know what I really want.”

“To hear the sound of coins changing hands?” Mo laughed. “After the call to Nevada, Victor Spano called Kenny Owen on his mobile. They’re meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Bungalow four this afternoon.”

Mo had been tapping into Kenny Owen’s and Lance Richter’s phones since they’d arrived in LA in advance of tomorrow’s game. We already knew that the professional handicappers expected the Titans to crush the Raiders by three touchdowns. And we knew that if the two refs could skew the calls, could make a seventeen-point spread hold up, tens of millions in illegal bets would slide over to the Marzullos’ side of the ledger.

But Uncle Fred and his associates would want more than idle chitchat and suspicion. They’d need proof.

I called Del Rio, met him at the garage, and swapped my car for one of our Honda CR-Vs. The Honda was black with tinted windows, outfitted with cutting-edge wireless electronics.

I drove myself and my wingman to Sunset, pulled the car under the porte cochere at the entrance to the Beverly Hills Hotel, and dropped Del Rio off.

He pulled down the bill of his cap and adjusted his camera bag as he entered the hotel. Once he was inside, I looped around Sunset and parked on Crescent Drive, a hundred yards and a stucco wall away from the pretty white cottage in the lush garden surrounding the hotel.

Del Rio kept me posted through his lapel mic as he planted the pin cams, one at the bungalow’s front door and another at the patio, and stuck three more “spider eyes” on windows facing into the three rooms.

A long twelve minutes later, Del Rio was back in the CR-V, and the microcameras were streaming wireless AV to our laptops.

The only things moving inside the bungalow were dust motes wafting upward in columns of sunlight.

For all of his volatility, Del Rio could sit on a tail for ten hours without having to take a leak. I was still suffering mental whiplash from the earthquake and the devastating memory it had dislodged. After a half hour of staring at sunbeams, I had to say something or I was going to explode.

“Rick. Did you take a look at Danny Young when I brought him out of the helicopter?”

“Huh? Yeah. Why?”

My voice was flat as I told him about my morning. I was a dead man talking, but I got to the point. I didn’t need to add color commentary. Del Rio had been there.

“So let me get this straight,” Del Rio said when I’d finished. “You’re beating yourself up for leaving Jeff Albert in the Phrog and trying to save Danny Young? What about the other guys? We took a missile, Jack. And you landed the goddamn aircraft.”

“Do you remember Albert?”

“Sure. He was a good kid. They were all good kids. Jack, you were just a kid yourself.”

“I think Danny Young was dead when I pulled him out.”

Del Rio stared at me for a few seconds before he said, “Danny’s blood was still pumping out of his chest when I got to you. He died on the ground. The helicopter blew up, Jack. If you’d gone back in, Danny Young, Jeff Albert, and you would have died.

“And nobody could’ve brought you back.”

Del Rio was right. Danny’s blood had been splashing on my shoes. He had been alive. I had brought him out alive.

I almost felt fully alive myself.

Neither of us spoke again until two men came up the bungalow’s front walk.

One was Victor Spano. The other was a short man in a good suit. The guy in the suit put a key card into the slot and opened the door to Bungalow 4.

I put my arms up like a football referee.

“Touchdown!”

I had big news, but not necessarily good news, to tell.

It was dark when I pulled up to my uncle’s huge Italianate manse in Oakland. I parked at the top of the circular drive and trotted up the walkway.