James Patterson - 11th hour

We took a time-out to order breakfast from our waitress, then Claire picked up where she’d left off.

“So, I do Mr. Dickenson’s post. I can find nothing wrong with his brain. Hey, where’s the stroke? So I keep going. He didn’t get hit with a stroke. I find a dissecting aortic aneurysm. See, I learned something. Again. Never jump to conclusions.

“About then, midnight or so, Edmund calls. Rosie is running a really high fever. I say, ‘Take her to the hospital. Go. Now,’ and before I hang up with him, here come new patients through the ambulance bay. Two cars in a head-on collision on Henry, both drivers are DOA.”

Claire’s phone buzzed on the table and spun like a june bug on its back. She looked at the faceplate, shut off the ringer.

“How’s Rosie?” I asked as the waitress brought our coffee.

“She’s fine. Temperature back to normal. Edmund said she’s sleeping now. Both of us panicked, and that’s what you do when you have a little one — as you are about to find out, girlfriend. After the check, I’m outta here, and I’m not going back to work anytime soon. Swear to God. Now, sweetie. Talk to me about Joe.”

I put down my coffee cup, said to my friend, “He’s called me a hundred times and apparently he’s sleeping in his car, sometimes right outside the apartment. I haven’t said a word to him since I found out about his girlfriend. Not one fucking word.”

I’d just hung Martha’s leash on the coatrack and kicked off my shoes when the intercom buzzed. I looked at the video screen showing the foyer and saw T. Lawrence Oliver downstairs in the entranceway looking into the camera’s eye.

I was expecting him, but he was early.

“Be right down,” I said into the speaker.

A shiny black BMW was at the curb, and Oliver was holding open the back door. Harry Chandler dipped his head so that he could see me, said, “Please get in, Lindsay.”

I got in and Harry told Tommy Oliver to step out and take a long walk around the block, give the two of us a chance to talk.

I leaned back in the leather seat and said, “Thanks for coming, Harry.”

“It’s okay. I wanted to tell you about Connie Kerr in person. I don’t know if I should put up bail for her or not,” he said.

“Bail isn’t an issue — yet. Connie isn’t under arrest. We’re holding her as a material witness and if we can’t file charges against her by tomorrow afternoon, she walks. Do you want to file any charges?”

“No. I can’t do that to her. I spent eighteen months in the clink while awaiting trial. Incarceration made a deep impression on me.”

Chandler told me about his long-ago short-term romance with Connie and said that she had always seemed fragile to him. Crazy — maybe. A killer — no, he didn’t see it. I told Chandler that I appreciated his help, said good-bye, and got out of the car as Tommy Oliver got back into the driver’s seat.

I was deep in thought and had just put my key into the downstairs lock when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I whipped around, ready to throw a punch or lash out with a kick to the knee.

It was Joe.

I stared at Joe; no mugger could have made my heart beat faster. My brain was instantly thrown into shock and confusion. I saw Joe, my husband, the man I love.

And I was simultaneously hit with a current of revulsion.

I know I looked as though I could kill, and that must have been why Joe said, “Lindsay, it’s me, it’s me. Take it easy. Let’s talk, okay?”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“I have plenty to say to you, damn it. You’re all wrong about this, Linds, and you have to stop shutting me out.”

I was flooded with images of June Freundorfer looking into Joe’s face, and I felt deeply wounded all over again. I had trusted Joe with everything. I was having his baby. I was making a family with him for keeps — and then this. I had never felt so betrayed by anyone in my life. I had to get away from him. I couldn’t stand to look at him for another moment.

I put both my hands out and shoved him away. He took a step back; I turned the key and opened the door slightly. I wedged myself through the narrow space and slammed the door shut.

I darted for the elevator, and before the doors even closed, my phone started ringing. I ignored my cell and I ignored the landline that was ringing when I walked into the apartment.

Both phones went quiet, then the landline rang again, and I checked the caller ID.

I picked up the phone in the kitchen, said hello to my partner.

“Sure, Richie. I’ll meet you there.”

Constance Kerr sat with Conklin and me in a very small room at County Jail Number 2 on Seventh Street, only a couple of blocks from the Hall. Connie looked pitiful in her orange jumpsuit, her blondish-gray hair frizzed around her head like Frankenstein’s bride’s.

“This is a terrible place,” she said. “Horrid. The screaming. The language. It’s too much.”

I felt bad for her. I really did.

“What did you want to tell me?” Conklin asked her.

“I have to get out of here,” she said to my partner. “Tell me what I have to say to get out of here.”

“Tell us what you know about those heads, Connie, and this time let’s get on the path to truth. I’ll get you started,” I said. She switched her eyes to me as though she’d just realized I was there.

“I’ve spoken to Harry Chandler.”

“Yes? How is Harry?”

“He says you were never his girlfriend.”

Her laugh was the small feeble cousin of the long guffaws she’d let out previously.

“He says you stalked him, Connie, stalked him for years.”

“No.”

“So he can’t be a character reference for you, I’m sorry, and he said he wouldn’t be surprised if you’d killed his wife.”

“Oh, no, no, he can’t be serious.”

“It’s all serious. This is a homicide investigation.”

I had her attention now, and I knew when to shut up.

I folded my hands and watched Connie Kerr think it all through, how she could go from being a trespasser to being a murder suspect with a movie star willing to testify against her.

“I did see someone in the garden,” she blurted out.

“Don’t make anything up,” Conklin said.

“It’s true. I spied on the garden. It’s black as a damned soul in there at night, but every once in a silver moon, I’d see someone doing nighttime gardening — with a shovel. It looked more like a shadow than an actual person. The shadow would bury something, then put down a rock to mark the spot.”

Tears spurted, made tracks down her cheeks.

“I did suspect foul play, but I couldn’t tell anyone. I was afraid Harry would put me out on the street. Although I did want to know what was buried under those stones.

“That’s why I did what I did.”

“What did you do exactly?” Conklin asked.

“One night, when the lights were out in the house… Excuse me, I need to blow my nose.”

I had a packet of tissues in my jacket pocket; I gave them to Connie, waited for her to speak again.

“I took my hammer and went around to the front gate and I broke the lock,” she said. “Mercy. That’s breaking and entering.”

Conklin and I just kept up a steady gaze.

“I knew where the gardener kept his tools,” Connie said. “So I went around back to where the walls meet and there’s the toolshed. It wasn’t locked.”

“Okay.”

“I borrowed a shovel and gardening gloves and went to one of the stones — and I dug a hole. I didn’t have to go very deep.

“I found that old skull, and when I brushed it off, an idea came to me. That’s how it happens when you write, you know. Sometimes an idea just arrives fully dressed when you didn’t even know it was there.”