James Patterson: Private

“What? That’s not right. What happened to her?”

“Look. Okay, she’s pregnant with my kid. She told me to tell you she’s spotting and she could lose the baby.” Fitzhugh teared up. “It’s your decision. She really needs you, though.”

“You know what? You’re bullshitting me, man. She woulda told me she was hooking up with a white boy, ’specially one as old as you.”

“Don’t you understand English? I said she needs help.”

The girl’s face stretched in anger. She screamed, “You liar. Get away from me.” She backed up into a train of shopping carts, stumbled, righted herself, tried to run.

Fitzhugh caught up with her easily. He grabbed her arm, dragged her to a halt, and held her firm. “Stop, Gracie, you moron. Stop that. I’m for real, okay? Look-I’ll let you go.”

The girl was almost buying it. He was going to tell her that Lulu was waiting in the van, but he never got to say another word.

There was a stunning blow to his ribs. He fell back, looked up at the slick Mexican guy who had thrown him to the ground and was now yanking his arms behind his back, practically wrenching his right shoulder out of the socket. Fitzhugh screamed.

“What are you trying to do to this girl, you little prick? What’s your name?” Cruz said. “I’m talking to you!”

Cruz bent down, grabbed the kid’s wallet out of the back of his jeans, and handed it to Jack. Then he said to the guy on the ground, “Where’s Rudolph Crocker?”

“I don’t know any Rudolph Crocker. Let me go or I’ll yell for the police.”

“Don’t sweat it, Mr. Fitzhugh. The police are already on the way. I called them for you.”

Justine gripped the armrest tightly with her right hand, held her phone with the other, and shouted to Jack over the sirens. “I’m with Nora Cronin. We’ve located Crocker’s van a block from Ralph’s. The van is pinned in by black-and-whites… Jack, I’ll call you back. This thing could blow up right now.”

Nora braked in the street, and she and Justine jumped out of the squad car. One of a half dozen uniforms came up to Nora.

“LT, here’s the thing. He was already parked when we located him. As soon as we pulled up, he put his hands on his head. His doors are locked and he won’t get out.”

“He’s refusing to get out of the vehicle?”

“Right. Who does that? He must have something locked in there. Dope, maybe. Or hot electronics. Guns. He can’t go anywhere, though.”

Justine looked through the windshield at the young white guy with the wire-rim glasses. He looked out at her, seeming oddly calm.

It was definitely Crocker, the savage sonofabitch psycho. She knew his face from the yearbook, and from seeing him yesterday in the Whiskey Blue. For the past two years, every couple of months he’d lured and killed young women who’d fallen for whatever story he and his partner had concocted.

Justine knew the names of the victims and all about their promising, too-short lives, all thirteen of them. She hated Crocker. And she was also afraid.

Neither she nor the LAPD had anything substantial on Crocker except for a five-year-old ID from a minor who might not even testify.

Justine edged forward until she was close enough to Crocker to see that his nostrils were blanched, his eyebrows hitched up, and that he had a smile on his face.

It was almost like he was excited and just daring someone to shoot him.

What was this? A bid for suicide by cop?

That would not do. Would not do.

Justine went back to Nora’s car and took the ASP baton from where it rested on the console. She returned to where Nora held her gun with both hands, the muzzle pointed at Crocker through the closed driver-side window.

“Get out of the car,” Nora shouted again to Crocker. “This is the last time I’m telling you. Get out. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Crocker shouted back, “I’m not armed. I don’t really think you’re going to shoot me.”

Justine knew her anger was calling the shots here, but she didn’t care. She flicked the ASP down and out, the sound of it like racking a shotgun. The heavy six-inch metal bar extended to become a sixteen-inch nightstick.

Justine said, “Stand back, Nora.”

Holding the ASP like a bat, she swung it at the Sienna’s driver-side window. Crocker ducked too late. Glass shattered.

Then Justine swung and hit the glass again.

Nora gaped at Justine, then stuck her hand through the broken window and unlocked the door. She holstered her weapon and dragged Crocker out of his seat and down onto the pavement.

As the lanky young man tumbled to the ground, guns came out all around.

Nora barked, “On your stomach, hands on your head.” Blood streamed down Crocker’s face.

Justine felt sudden fear. If she was wrong about Crocker, there were going to be lawsuits, big ones. Crocker would sue the city for false arrest, police brutality, assault on his person and property. At the same time, he would sue her personally, and because she wasn’t rich, he’d sue Private.

But right now it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except this stone-cold killer stretched out on the asphalt.

“Rudolph Crocker, we’re arresting you for interfering with police,” Nora said.

“I didn’t interfere with anything. I was sitting in my car, minding my own business.”

“Save it for the judge,” said Nora.

“Man, are you going to look dumb,” said Crocker.

Cruz and I reached Justine within minutes of her call. The four-lane roadway was jammed to the sidewalks. Traffic cops were rerouting the rush hour surge, and the two southbound lanes were cordoned off with squad cars.

Cruz and I abandoned our car and walked through the cordon. I counted eight cruisers, twenty uniforms, and assorted other cops surrounding Nora Cronin, who had her small foot on the neck of a man who was lying facedown on the ground. Cronin was reading him his rights.

Justine stood a couple of yards away, wearing an expression I’d have to call rapt. She barely glanced at Cruz and me, kept her eyes on Cronin as the lieutenant grabbed the guy up off the ground and got him to his feet.

“I want to call my lawyer,” said the guy with the glasses.

“Call all the lawyers you want, asshole,” Nora said.

Four cops piled on and threw the guy across the hood of a squad car and cuffed him behind his back. The guy looked benign and, more than that, unworried.

I said to Justine, “That’s Crocker?”

She looked up at me, said, “Yeah, that’s him. Did he kill anyone? I don’t know. Maybe someone will get us that warrant now so we can collect his freakin’ DNA.”

News choppers materialized overhead. A BMW, a Ford sedan, and a TV satellite van came up the street.

Chief Michael Fescoe got out of the Ford. I couldn’t believe he was here already.

DA Bobby Petino got out of the BMW.

The two of them converged, talked briefly, then came over to where Cruz and I stood with Justine.

“What happened to you?” Bobby said to Justine.

She looked down, saw blood streaks from her elbow to her wrist. “It’s not mine,” she said. “It’s Crocker’s.”

Her face flamed-but why?

She turned away from Bobby as Fescoe said to me, “The one Cruz assaulted. Eamon Fitzhugh. What happened to him?”

I said, “In brief, we learned that he and Crocker were going to commit a murder tonight. Nothing we could verify. We tailed Fitzhugh, caught him getting into something hinky with a fifteen-year-old in the parking lot at Ralph’s.”

“He’s at the hospital, dislocated shoulder and contusions, shouting about police brutality,” Fescoe said.