James Patterson: 10th Anniversary

I was right behind my partner as we raced up the stairs toward the light.

THOSE SNEEZES had given me hope that Cindy was alive.

But Conklin and I had been unprepared for the elevator to start moving. If the car stopped between floors, if we got to the top floor and then the elevator descended, or if whoever was in the elevator beat us to the exit on Turk Street, we had very little chance of stopping him.

Conklin and I took the stairs two at a time, using the banisters to launch ourselves around corners. Conklin stiff-armed the NO EXIT fire door to Turk Street, and a piercing alarm went off.

I pounded behind him out onto the sidewalk, where I saw an assortment of law enforcement vehicles screaming onto Turk and Jones: fire trucks, cruisers, plainclothes detectives, and narcs pulling up in unmarked cars. Every law enforcement officer in the Mission had responded to the call.

I yelled out to two beat cops I knew.

“Noonan, Mackey, lock this garage down! No one comes in or goes out!”

Conklin was running up Turk toward the elevator exit, and I had to put on speed to catch up with him. He’d just reached the freight bay when the elevator door began to roll up.

A yellow cab was revealed by inches inside the mouth of the elevator. Conklin took a shooting stance square on the opening and was gripping his 9-millimeter with both hands when the cab rolled out of the elevator.

It was dark, but the driver and the backseat passenger were lit by headlights and streetlights. I could tell the passenger was Cindy from the light limning her curls.

The cab’s headlights were full-on.

There was no way the driver didn’t see Conklin.

Conklin yelled, “ Police! ” He shot out the left front tire, but the driver gunned the engine and the car leapt forward. Conklin was lit by the headlights, and yet the cab kept rolling, driving straight at him.

Conklin yelled, “ Stop! ” and then fired two shots high into the windshield. He jumped away in time to avoid being run down, but the cab kept moving, out of control now. It sideswiped a squad car on the far side of Turk, caromed off it, and plowed into a fire hydrant.

The cab rocked, then tipped, hanging on two wheels before settling down on all four. Water spewed. People screamed.

Conklin pulled at the passenger-side door, but he couldn’t get it open.

“I need help here!” he shouted.

The fire crew came with the Jaws of Life and wrenched open the back door. Cindy lay crumpled on the slanted floor of the cab, wedged between the backseat and the divider. Conklin leaned all the way in, calling her name.

“Rich, is she okay?” I yelled to him.

“She’s alive,” Conklin said. “Thank God. She’s alive.”

He hooked Cindy’s arms around his neck and pulled her out into the air. Cindy was fully dressed and I saw no blood. Conklin’s voice cracked as he said to her, “Cindy, it’s me. I’m right here.”

She opened her eyes halfway and said, “Heyyyyy.”

Conklin held her so tight, I thought he was going to crush the air right out of her.

And then her eyes closed and she started snoring softly, her cheek on his shoulder.

MARILYN BURNS was screaming, “God, oh God, I can’t believe this. What happened?”

She peered between her fingers and identified the dead man with one neat hole in his forehead, another in his neck, as Albert Wysocki.

I joined Conklin as he helped the paramedics strap Cindy in and load the gurney into the ambulance. He was panting and he was pale, and I knew he wanted to go to the hospital with Cindy. But he’d shot a man. He had to follow protocol for a shooting that was witnessed by thirty law enforcement officers. Conklin would have to wait for the ME, the Crime Scene Unit, and Brady to arrive.

I touched his shoulder, and his eyes met mine. His expression was flat, drained of emotion.

I’ve done what he had done. I’ve felt the same adrenaline overload covering rage and fear and the emotional numbness of shock.

“Is Wysocki dead?” my partner asked me. “Did I kill him?”

“It was him or you, Richie. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“I’m glad I nailed the bastard.”

“Heeyyyy … Lindsayyyy,” Cindy called out to me from inside the ambulance.

“I’m right here, girlfriend,” I called back.

“You’ll go with Cindy to the hospital?” Conklin asked me.

I nodded and climbed up into the ambulance. I gripped Cindy’s hand and told her that I loved her and that everything was going to be okay.

“Did I get the story?” she asked me.

“You sure did.”

Conklin stood at the rear doors. He said, “Lindsay?”

“I’ll stay with her until you get to the hospital,” I said to him. “She’s going to be fine.”

LIGHT FROM THE SUNRISE was streaking through the windows when I greeted Martha inside the front door. I stripped off my jacket, my holster, and my shoes, and tiptoed down the hall to the master bathroom. I stepped into the “car wash,” let it blast me pink, and then put on my cloudy blue pj’s that were on the hook behind the door where I’d left them what seemed like a year ago.

Déjà vu all over again.

When I edged under the covers, Joe woke up and opened his arms to me, and that was good, because I wanted to tell him everything that had happened since I’d called him from the hospital.

“Hey,” he said, kissing me. “How’s Cindy?”

“Honestly? It’s like it never even happened,” I told him. “She was asleep a minute after she got into the cab and woke up in a hospital bed five hours later.”

“Is she … all right?”

“He didn’t get around to raping her,” I said. “Thank God.”

I made myself comfortable under Joe’s arm, fitting my whole body tightly against him, my left leg over his, my left arm across his chest. “The doctor says she’ll be fine when the drugs wear off.”

“What did you find out about the bad guy?”

“He was some kind of lowlife freak, Joe. A friendless, unmarried, psychotic loner, fifty-five years old. He put in about eighteen hours a day in the Quick Express garage. Apparently he slept there in his car half the time.”

I told Joe that Wysocki had managed the place for some guy who lived in Michigan, so he had run of the place. Had the keys. Kept the log sheets. Ran the scheduling.

“No one questioned anything he did. And so he hangs an ‘Out of Service’ sign on the freight elevator, and that box becomes his own private real estate.”

“A big fish in a mud puddle,” said Joe.

“Exactly,” I said. “We found a date book in Wysocki’s jacket pocket. Actually had the words ‘Date Book’ inked on the cover. Inside, he’d written a list of his victims, six of them, and times, dates, places, what they were wearing.

“He had Cindy’s name in there,” I said. “Just made me sick to see her name written in that lineup.”

“He called it a date book?” Joe said. “So maybe he was acting like he was on a date.”

“That makes some kind of psycho sense, I suppose. He picks up a girl, drugs her. Drives her back to his little out-of-service boudoir. I’m guessing he waits until his victims are semiconscious, then rapes them before the drugs wear off. Oh, yeah. Always the gentleman, he drives them home — or to a nearby alley. Perfect evening for Al Wysocki. Doesn’t even have to send flowers the next day.”

“How’s Conklin doing?”

“Crazed. A wreck. He says to Cindy at the hospital, ‘Don’t you ever do that again.’ She says, ‘What? Catch a cab?’”

We both laughed.

My indomitable friend Cindy.