James Patterson - 10th Anniversary

“She’s like any kid. She makes things up. I don’t know if you should believe her or not.”

“Has she ever mentioned her English teacher? Mr. Jordan Ritter.”

“Dear?” Sonja Richardson asked her husband. “Has Avis mentioned Jordan Ritter?”

Paul Richardson was swirling his drink and didn’t look up or answer.

“I don’t think I’ve heard her talking about him recently, although I remember she was happy about being in his class,” Sonja Richardson said. “He’s a novelist, you know. And Avis thinks she’d like to write someday. Why are you asking about Mr. Ritter? Does he know something?”

“His name came up. I met him. He says he hardly knows Avis. Which is what she says about him, too.”

Sonja Richardson touched the corner of an eye with a tissue. “I guess we just have to get used to the idea that the baby is gone. But it’s hard, Sergeant. We never saw him. We don’t even know for sure if he’s alive or dead.”

When I got home at dusk, Joe was on the doorstep. I saw his wonderful smile from a hundred feet away. I ran and threw my arms around his neck and jumped into his arms, locking my legs around his waist. Joe’s hug was the warmest, safest place in my world.

“Let’s make a baby,” I said.

“If it involves sex, I’m in,” Joe said.

It did. And he was.

AFTER CINDY TOOK a couple of giddy laps around the office to show off her sparkly new engagement ring, she closed her office door and got to work. Line one was flashing, and she answered it as she logged on to her crime-tipsters blog.

She announced her name into the mouthpiece, and the man on the other end of the line announced his.

“This is Red Sanchez.”

“Ray Sanchez?”

“Red. The color. I think I saw something that could help you with that story you wrote about the guy raping women.”

“Okay, I’m listening. Whatcha got?”

Cindy adjusted her headphones and mic, opened a blank page in Word, and typed Red Sanchez in the top-left-hand corner with the phone number she took off the caller ID.

“That large woman who was on the TV?”

“I know who you mean,” Cindy said.

Sanchez was talking about Inez Fleming.

“They didn’t show her face, but I recognized her anyway.”

“When did you see her?” Cindy asked.

“It was night before last. I was walking my dog on Baker Street, right near the corner of Clay. Sadie is old. If I don’t walk her when she whines, it’s a mess on the carpet and my wife goes crazy —”

“Mr. Sanchez.”

“Call me Red.”

“Red, when you saw the woman you think might have been the one who was interviewed on TV, what was she doing?”

“She was doing nothing. That woman was out. I mean O-U-T. I thought she was drunk. Maybe she was drunk. The driver was half holding her up, half dragging her toward an apartment building. Here. I got the address. It’s not too far from my place.”

Sanchez read off the numbers of a house address on Baker Street. It was a few numbers from Inez Fleming’s home address, but then, Inez had woken up in an alley near her building. Cindy typed the house number on her file.

“Red, what do you mean ‘driver’? Driver of what?”

“Sorry. I thought I said it was a taxi. Like one of those minivan types.”

”What color was this minivan?” she asked. “Any marks or signs, or maybe you saw a phone number on the van’s door?”

Sanchez said, “It was a regular yellow-cab-color minivan. I think I did see something, like an ad on the back of it. Like for a movie. The name eludes me. I’ll think about it.”

“What about the driver? Did you get a good look at him?”

“Nah. I was putting my newspaper down for Sadie. I saw this man, he had dark hair, I think. Yeah, I know, that’s quite a clue. Anyway, this man was half dragging this lady along the sidewalk. I thought, ‘Man, is she drunk,’ and by the time my dog had done her business, both of them were gone.”

Cindy thanked Sanchez and asked him to call again if he remembered anything else. Then she called Richie.

“Sweetheart? I think I’ve got a lead on the serial rapist.”

YUKI AND NICK Gaines were leaving her office on the way to court that Monday morning, a half hour early, as Yuki insisted they be.

Nick looked Yuki up and down and said, “Something’s different about you this morning.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re smiling,” he said.

“You’re saying I don’t smile?”

“You don’t smile on the way to court. Huh. I know what it is. You had sex , didn’t you? I’m staring at post — boom boom glow, right?”

Yuki laughed. “No. Shut up. I had a doughnut. I’m on a sugar high and you’re not the Mentalist. I hope Angela Walker shows up. What did you think? Did she sound solid to you?”

“She sounded eager. It would be crazy if she didn’t show.”

They were now walking the long green-floored corridor that was the feeder artery to the courtrooms. Panels of fluorescent buzzed overhead. Yuki tipped her chin up to signal Nicky as she passed the woman sitting on one of the backless benches along the wall, talking to a bailiff.

It was Angela Walker, their surprise witness.

Walker was forty, had spun-sugar, strawberry-blond hair piled on top of her head, and was wearing a V-necked French-blue sweater and a dark blazer and tailored pants. Yuki thought, If Angela Walker’s testimony is half as good as she looks, this witness will do fine.

Yuki and Nick entered 3B, walked to the prosecution table, and nodded to Hoffman and his second chair, Kara Battinelli, one of those brainy grads a couple of years out of Boalt Law.

Battinelli gave Yuki a cat-that-got-the-cream look — which Yuki returned in kind.

Nick set up his laptop and Yuki’s and got them both squared away before the proceedings began.

The bailiff, a bald and expressionless man in a green uniform, called court into session, and Judge LaVan entered the packed courtroom, wearing a scowl. The gallery rose and then sat, causing a rustle to bounce and boomerang off the oak paneling. When the room was quiet again, LaVan greeted the jury.

Then, he said, “Ms. Castellano. You’re up.”

Yuki stood and asked that Ms. Angela Walker be called.

All eyes swiveled toward the aisle as a woman who, even to Yuki’s eyes, looked edible made her languid way to the witness stand and was sworn in.

“MS. WALKER,” YUKI said to her lovely looking witness, “do you know the defendant, Dr. Candace Martin?”

“I’ve never met her. But of course I know who she is.”

“Did you know her husband, Dennis Martin?”

“Yes. I was seeing Dennis for a couple of years. Until about a month before his death.”

Yuki tucked her hair behind her ears and said to Walker, “By ‘seeing’ Dennis Martin, do you mean you were having a sexual relationship with him?”

“Yes. I saw him two, three nights a week.”

“And you knew he was married?”

“Yes. Yes. I knew. But he told me his marriage was a sham. He was staying with his wife for the sake of the kids.”

Yuki liked what the witness was saying and the way she was saying it. She was calm and sounded credible and honest.

“Ms. Walker, can you tell the court why your relationship with Mr. Martin ended?”

“He told me he was seeing someone else and that it was serious. He said he just couldn’t contain the messiness of his social life anymore.”

“Did you believe him?”

“Oh yes. He was a hound. A goat. A snake. A shark. A skunk. Pick your animal, and that was Dennis.”

“And where were you when Dennis was killed?”