James Patterson - 11th hour

He put his keys in the dish on the hall table, called out, “Honey, I’m home.” Heard a faint “Hey” in response.

He hung up his coat and gun, went into the kitchen, saw Cindy at the table exactly as he’d pictured her.

Her head was bent over her laptop, eyes obscured by the blond curls falling across her face, fingers dancing over the keys. She paused, turned, lifted her face for a kiss, and, after getting a peck, said, “Everything okay?”

“Had a completely terrible day is all.” Cindy said, “Did anyone die?”

“No.”

“Shots fired?”

He laughed. “Has to be a shooting for it to be a bad day?”

“Then — can you tell me about it later, Richie, because I’ve got to get this done.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll see you in bed.”

Conklin opened the fridge, got out a couple of frozen dinners, put them in the microwave. While the microwave turned the turkey dinners into something resembling hot meals, he went into the bathroom and got in the shower.

Nothing like hydrotherapy at the end of the day. He thought about Jacobi saying if Rich didn’t walk away from his front door, he was going to throw some shots through it.

That scene was followed by Brady chewing him out, chewing Lindsay out too, saying that they had royally screwed the pooch and were off the surveillance detail.

And he thought about Lindsay being a bitch and accusing him of cheating on Cindy, which was the last thing he’d ever do in his life.

Yes, it had been a crap day. All the way around.

Conklin got out of the shower, put on a pair of shorts, and went to the kitchen, where Cindy was still absorbed in whatever she was doing that left almost no time for him.

He pulled the plastic film off the dinners, asked, “What are you working on?”

“The Chron website. They gave me a blog.”

“A blog, huh?”

“Tons of mail coming in on Revenge. Do you have anything I can use?”

“Negative,” said Conklin. “Whatever is less than negative.”

“Okay,” Cindy said, tapping at the keys.

“Jeez, don’t quote me, Cindy. I’m off duty.”

“I wasn’t quoting you.”

“Good.”

Conklin sat down at the table, cleaned his plate, guzzled half a liter of Pepsi, and then finished off a half-full container of double chocolate ice cream, scraping the bottom with his spoon.

He watched Cindy as he ate. Her attention never broke. Bomb could go off across the street, and unless there was a story in it, she wouldn’t move.

He stood up, tousled her hair.

“I’m almost done,” she said.

Conklin went to bed. He was dozing when Cindy finally came into the bedroom and took off her clothes in the dark. She slid under the sheets without touching him.

Her breathing slowed and then deepened.

“Cindy?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.” She sighed.

Cindy’s phone call woke me up out of a deep sleep.

“Sorry,” she said. “I know it’s early, but I wanted to catch you before you left the house. Can you have coffee with Richie and me?”

I said, “Sure,” agreed to the time and place. I lay in bed with Martha for twenty more minutes, first savagely missing Joe, then being flooded by thoughts of all the relationships I’d trashed in the previous twenty-four hours.

I supposed my asking Rich if he had cheated on Cindy had prompted Cindy’s call and the breakfast meeting. I owed apologies to them both.

I met Rich and Cindy at Old Jerusalem Cafe, a coffeehouse on Irving and Fourteenth that had a wide assortment of coffees and teas and delicious Mediterranean pastries. I found Mr. Conklin and the future Mrs. Conklin sitting at a table waiting for me.

I said, “Hi,” slid into the seat across from them, ordered Turkish coffee, and braced myself for a confrontation. I hoped I could handle it without snapping.

Rich brushed his hair out of his eyes with his fingers and said, “Cindy told me. About Joe.”

I nodded miserably, looked down.

“You’ll work it out,” he said. “You will.”

“I’m sorry about what I said, Rich.”

“Yeah. It’s okay. Cindy’s got something for us.”

I glanced up, wondering what he meant.

“Lookit,” Cindy said.

She took her iPad out of her handbag, began to type. My coffee came and I sugared it heavily and then followed up the sugar with a triple dose of cream.

Cindy turned the tablet toward me. “It’s numerology,” she said. She showed me this equation.

1 0 4 = 5

“In numerology, you add the numbers together. One plus zero is one. One plus four equals five.”

“Okay.”

“Now,” Cindy said, “let’s look at six one three.”

She typed:

6 1 3 = 10 = 1

“I get it,” I said. “Six and one is seven, and three makes ten.”

“Right. Then you reduce the ten by adding one and zero together. That equals one.”

“Got it.”

Cindy was typing numbers. She said, “Now add the two reduced numbers together.”

5 + 1 = 6

I waited for drums to roll. Cymbals to clash.

“What does six mean?”

“It means number six. As in number six Ellsworth Place.”

I sucked in a breath. Cindy was referring to one of the four brick buildings adjacent to the main Ellsworth house, the detached houses that backed onto the garden.

“We didn’t have a warrant to search number six,” I said.

“Cindy spoke to Yuki,” Rich said. “Yuki thinks she can make a case that the original warrant should have included those buildings. That the compound is all one property.”

“I’m coming with you to the compound,” said Cindy.

Rich and I turned to her and in unison said, “No.”

“Yes,” she said. “The numbers are mine. Lindsay, you gave them to me and asked me to solve them, and I think I did it. If you want me to ever talk to you again, either of you, I’m coming with you. The answer is yes.”

Yuki and I were in her cubicle at the DA’s offices in room 325, third floor of the Hall of Justice. I sat in a side chair, my white-knuckled hands clasped on her desk.

Yuki hooked her glossy black hair behind her ears, dialed the phone, and spoke to several people before she got Judge Stephen Rubenstein on the line.

Yuki explained to the judge precisely and urgently that a credible tip had come in referring to a suspicious location adjoining the Ellsworth house. She told Rubenstein that this location had not been included in the original search warrant because the authorities hadn’t realized that the two properties were connected.

Yuki stopped talking and listened. She spoke, apologized for interrupting, and listened some more.

She signaled to me to bring my chair closer, which I did, then Yuki held out her phone so that I could hear the judge.

“Let me get this straight. You want me to expand the search warrant because you got an anonymous tip that there’s some evidence — you can’t even tell me exactly what. And based on that, you want to go rummaging around in this other house, which isn’t even the crime scene?”

“Yes, Your Honor, but a person of interest owns the entire property. Number six is in close proximity to the crime scene, almost touching it.”

“Oh, that’s supposed to make a difference? Ms. Castellano, go Google the Fourth Amendment and brush up on it. Highlight the part about unreasonable search. No warrants shall be issued without a probable cause.”

“Okay, Your Honor. Thanks anyway.”

Yuki put down the phone and said to me, “So maybe if I’d told him about the numerology, it would’ve helped us,” she said.

“You never know.”

Yuki laughed. “I’m sorry, Linds.”

If I wanted to get into 6 Ellsworth Place, and I did, I had to call Harry Chandler and ask permission.