James Patterson - 11th hour

Bunny laid a sheet down on the floor. It was blindingly bright in the gloom. Clapper placed a wrapped body part on the sheet, and Claire took photos.

Bunny unwrapped the plastic, tagged the arm with the number 501, and Claire put it back on the sheet; she took a couple of pictures before she wrapped the sheet around the limb. A CSI zipped the arm into a body bag.

A new sheet went down and Clapper lifted another part out of the freezer, and once again they tagged and bagged. There were dozens of parts, and Claire saw that processing this chop shop would take many long hours; first here, then a repeat of every step in the lab.

Clapper lowered a body part to the sheet. It was half a chest, sawed lengthwise between the breasts.

Bunny moaned. “I’m going to pass out,” she said. “Excuse me.”

“No, no, don’t — ”

But the girl scrambled to her feet, found a corner of the basement, and heaved.

And then she started to cry.

Claire went over and put her arm around her assistant. “It’s okay, Bunny.”

“No, it’s not. I contaminated the crime scene.”

“Everyone does it at one time or another. I threw up on a body once. Go upstairs. Take a break.”

“I’m okay,” Bunny said. “I’m here for the duration.”

“That’s good, because I need you. Go upstairs and wash your face. Then please call our husbands. We’re not going home tonight.”

Nicole Worley and I were facing off in Interview 1 while Conklin interviewed Janet in the room next door.

Our suspects were in custody and our forensic team was awash in grisly artifacts, but we were still waiting for solid evidence that conclusively tied Janet or Nicole to the human remains.

Nicole hadn’t asked for a lawyer, but psychopathic serial murderers don’t always want lawyers. Some like to talk to the police for days on end, a cat-and-mouse game in which they believe themselves to be the cats.

I wasn’t sure what Nicole was up to, but I was willing to play along. A CSI was dusting surfaces, searching her room for evidence. And for the past couple of hours, Claire had been processing body parts taken from the basement freezer.

Nicole denied any knowledge of murders at the Ellsworth compound other than what she had learned since the police answered her mother’s 911 call.

But she did like to talk about Harry Chandler.

She told me how she’d seen all of Harry’s pictures dozens of times. How people she knew couldn’t believe that she knew him personally. That he had been a friend of her childhood. She knew special things about him, what he liked to eat, funny things he had said.

Nicole Worley was just wild about Harry.

Or you could say she was obsessed with him.

It was time to get to the point.

“We opened the freezer,” I said.

“What? The one in my basement? I haven’t used that freezer in years. I can’t remember the last time.”

“We lifted fingerprints from the inside of the lid,” I lied. “And as we speak, body parts are being cataloged.”

“That’s terrible. Just terrible,” she said with a tone and an expression that showed me that she didn’t care at all.

I said, “I’m going to check on how things are going at the morgue.”

I called Claire and she picked up on the first ring. I said, “Have you got a progress report?”

Then I turned to Nicole and said, “Sit tight. I’ll be back in a while.”

“I’ve got a headache,” she said.

I left Nicole in handcuffs and went down the stairs to the lobby and out the back door, then took a brisk and chilly walk to the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Claire came to the door and I followed her through to the autopsy suite.

Claire had a chunk of meat on the table in front of her. She pulled down her mask, said to me, “See, I’ve got to treat each part like an individual specimen. I’m x-raying each part, looking for anything that will help ID this person. Metal plates or bullets or old fractures.”

“Have you found anything like that?” I asked.

The chunk of meat looked like a haunch that had belonged to a small white person, probably female.

Claire was saying, “I’ve got to use a clean scalpel for each part, do a unique description of each part, weigh each, look for GSR and wounds. I’ve taken fingerprints from a couple of hands, found one that matches our girl Marilyn Varick.”

“Got anything solid that connects body parts to our killer?”

“I pulled blood whenever I could. And I made some muscle-tissue samples for DNA testing…”

“Claire. Claire. Have you got something for me? I’ve got two suspects in custody. Give me something.”

Claire picked up the block of flesh on the table and turned it around. She pointed to a bloody line. I followed her finger as she showed me several other identical lines.

“See these knife wounds? Could be they’re going to match that knife of Nicole’s. And look at this,” Claire said.

She took a sheet off the top of a metal basin, showed me the section of shoulder in there.

She said, “Consistent with stun-gun burns. I’m guessing that’s how she knocked her victims down.”

“I need pictures,” I said.

It was two in the morning when I got back upstairs to Homicide. Conklin met me in the squad room. He said, “Harry Chandler is in Brady’s office. He’s waiting for you.”

“Good. I asked him to come down. We can use his help. Where’s Janet?”

“She’s in a holding cell. I’m not getting anything believable out of her. I’ll try her again in the morning.”

I went into Brady’s office, said hello to Harry Chandler, and thanked him for coming in at that hour.

“Happy to do it,” he said. “Have you learned anything about what happened to Cecily?”

“Janet is taking responsibility for the seven women whose heads were buried in the garden, but she can’t give us any details on the murders. Nicole maintains that she’s innocent. So far, nothing about your wife.”

Harry nodded, then said, “Has Janet or Nicole asked for a lawyer?”

“No.”

“Lindsay, I need to know what happened to Cecily. Ten years after her death, even after I was acquitted, the public still believes I killed my wife. And now people are coming up to me in restaurants calling me a murderer. They think I killed those other women too.

“I can’t keep living this way. I’ve got an offer for Janet or Nicole, whichever one of them can name the killer and give you enough evidence to prove it.”

Chandler and I discussed his offer for another minute or two, and then I asked him to stand by.

Conklin and I found Nicole napping in the interview room, cheek down on the old gray metal table. I kicked the chair and it scraped across the floor. She lifted her head and Conklin and I took chairs on either side of her.

“How’s it going, Nicole?” the good cop asked her.

“It’s late. I want to go home now.”

I slapped morgue photos down on the table one after the other, close-up shots of arms, legs, thighs, buttocks with knife wounds, and a right shoulder blemished by burns from a stun gun.

“Do you recognize these body parts, Nicole?”

“Oh. Gross.”

I pointed to the knife cuts in the quartered haunch of human flesh.

“See these? These are stab wounds. And I’m betting they’re going to perfectly match the knife you were waving around a few hours ago. The lab is doing the workup now.”

“Well, you gotta do what you gotta do,” Nicole said.

Her words were flippant, but her expression had changed. She was starting to believe that we had evidence to indict and convict. Her eyes flicked from the photos to me and then back.