James Patterson - 10th Anniversary

“I’m here and you’re here,” I said. “I’ll rouse someone from the DA’s Office.”

YUKI ANSWERED HER PHONE on the first ring.

“He’s primed and the grill is hot,” I said. “You’re going to want to hear this.”

“Just marinate him a little. I’m bringing my appetite,” she said.

An hour later, I brought ADA Yuki Castellano into the interview room on the third floor of the Hall.

Ernesto Santana stood and shook her hand, and Lieutenant Hampton did the same. Guzman groused to Yuki, “You seriously work for the DA? How old are you? Twelve?”

“Old enough to have been certified in spotting bull,” she said. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

I took the photos out of the folder again, and Guzman said, “This girl — I don’t remember her name — she’s the one who tried to hire me. She’s connected back east. She contacted me through channels. I said I’d meet her.

“She was wearing a blond wig,” he went on. “I know because I saw long red hair coming out the back of that thing. She brought an envelope of small bills, tens and twenties. About a thousand bucks. She wanted me to take out the doctor. Candace Martin.”

“You’re saying she ordered a hit?”

“Yeah. She brought money and a picture.”

I found Guzman more believable than I’d found Ellen Lafferty, who’d insisted she’d been doing an errand for Dennis Martin. That she didn’t know who Guzman was. That she didn’t know what was in the envelope.

“Go on,” I said.

“I said to this chick, ‘Thanks, but you’re crazy. I don’t know where you got my name from, but this is not exactly my line of work.’”

“Okay, Mr. Guzman. We’ll check out your story.”

“Check it out?” he said. “Check out what? You think that bitch is going to admit to wanting to have the doctor whacked? Candace Martin is alive, right? What more proof do you need?”

“Ms. Castellano,” I said. “Have you got enough to charge Ellen Lafferty with solicitation of first-degree murder?”

“I do, indeed,” she said. “And I’ll be following up on that in the morning. Mr. Santana, I’ll shelve the murder charge against your client for now. Sleep tight, Mr. Guzman.”

YUKI AND I left the Hall together in silence. We briefly clasped hands in the elevator, then walked out to Yuki’s Acura parked outside the ME’s office. We got into her car and sat staring out at the dim streetlight in the parking lot.

I was thinking that I’d gone way over the line. That Brady was going to nail my hide to the squad room door if this plan of mine didn’t pay off, and maybe even if it did. I’d gone above, around, and behind my superior in investigating the Martin case, and saying “I was working on my own time” sounded lame, even to me.

Yuki was lost in her own thoughts.

I was about to break the silence and ask her to talk to me, when a car door slammed on the far side of the lot. I looked over my shoulder.

“Okay, she’s here,” I said.

A minute later, the back door opened and Cindy slipped into the backseat.

“I can’t believe Richie let you out at four in the morning,” Yuki said.

“ Let me? Very funny. What have we got?”

I filled Cindy in on the fake charge we’d dropped on Guzman for the murder of Dennis Martin, and I told her what he’d told us: that Ellen Lafferty tried to hire him to kill Candace Martin and that he’d kicked young Ms. Lafferty to the curb.

“He was credible?”

“He was motivated to be credible.”

“Nice work, Linds,” Cindy said. “But what do we have to show for it?”

“I think we can eliminate Guzman as a suspect in Dennis Martin’s death.”

“Agreed.”

I said, “Ellen lies as easily as she breathes. If she knew that Caitlin was being molested, what did she do to stop it?”

“Do you seriously think Ellen killed Dennis?” Yuki asked.

“She had the means, the motive, and the opportunity,” I said. “And she’s smart in a vicious, clueless, stupid kind of way.”

Cindy said, “She didn’t have the opportunity to kill Dennis. Her alibi checks out for the time of the murder. Rich and I went to see her last night.

“Ellen told us that she left the Martin house at six p.m. — exactly what she’s maintained since the murder. She texted her friend Veronica from six until she met up with her at six-fifteen. She showed us a record of text messages that fill her window of opportunity.”

Cindy went on, “Ellen’s friend Veronica verifies that they met for dinner at Dow’s at six-fifteen, and the waiter remembers the time, because their table wasn’t ready. And he remembers the two of them because they were hot and flirting with two guys who were sitting next to them at the bar.

“Ellen picked up the bar tab at six-thirty-two,” Cindy said, “and he has her signature on the credit-card receipt.”

“Okay, so moving past Ellen Lafferty, what about Caitlin?” I asked Yuki. “Did she take her father’s gun and shoot him?”

“I’m talking to her court-appointed shrink in, uh, five hours. I’ll let you know what he says.”

I said to Cindy, “I don’t need to say, ‘Sit on this until we say go,’ do I?”

“I haven’t got a story yet anyhow.”

“You sure don’t.” I grinned, slapping her a high five.

Yuki leaned forward and started the engine. Cindy and I reached for our door handles.

Yuki said, “Linds. I’ve been so sure Candace killed Dennis. If Caitlin hadn’t confessed in open court to shooting her father, I think I would have gotten the doctor convicted. It scares me. What if I’ve been wrong?”

OVERRIDING THE PROTEST from the director of security at Metropolitan Hospital, Conklin and I took the two empty seats at the back of an amphitheater above an operating room.

The room was packed with interns and specialists. Two monitors showed close-ups of the operating table fifteen feet below, and cameras exported streaming video to medical people all over the country who wanted to see Candace Martin perform heart surgery on Leon Antin, a legendary seventy-five-year-old violinist with the San Francisco Symphony.

The patient was draped in blue, his rib cage separated and his heart open to the bright lights. Candace Martin was accompanied by other doctors, nurses, and an anesthesiologist operating the cardiac-bypass machine.

A young intern sat to my right, Dr. Ryan Pitt, according to the ID tag pinned to his pocket, and he was currently bringing me up to speed.

According to Pitt, this was a complex operation under any circumstances, but even more so because of the patient’s age.

Pitt said, “The surgery is not going to improve his longevity by much — he’s an ASA class four. That’s high-risk. But the patient wanted his chance now that Dr. Martin was available. He just wanted his friend to do the surgery. Only her.”

Pitt explained that in the previous three hours, two of Antin’s veins had been harvested from his thighs and three of four grafts had been implanted into the coronary arteries. Dr. Martin was stitching in the last implant now.

I was staring at the screen above my head when I saw the medical personnel suddenly become highly agitated. Green lines jumped on the monitors below, and Candace Martin began shouting at the anesthesiologist while massaging Antin’s heart with her hands.

I said to the intern, “What is this? What’s going on?”

Pitt spoke pure medicalese, but I got the drift. The patient’s heart was beat-up and worn out, and it refused to work anymore. Dr. Martin was spraying curses all around the operating room, but she wasn’t giving up.