James Patterson - Run For Your Life

People were definitely starting to get freaked. And why shouldn’t they? Even by New York standards, the body count was alarming.

I found Detective Beth Peters inside by the check-in desk. She was still cool and crisp, but subdued.

She led me across the white marble lobby to the elevators. The body was covered with a sheet. I crouched down and lifted it away.

The woman lying there was still beautiful, with a mane of blond hair spread out around her head – except for the small black entry wounds in her face and chest, and the sticky pool of blood that had seeped out onto the floor around her.

I stared at the bouquet of flowers on her chest. The fallen petals on the marble around her seemed like offerings in a human sacrifice.

The typed message from the 21 Club crime scene appeared in my mind like a computer pop-up.

Your blood is my paint.

Your flesh is my clay.

“Are you getting anything from this, Mike, about what he’s trying to say?” Beth asked. “Because I’m not.”

I replaced the sheet.

“I’m pretty sure he’s saying, ‘Catch me,’?” I said.

“Her name was Martine Broussard,” Beth Peters said as we huddled together by the check-in desk. “She was an Air France flight attendant, due out on today’s two P.M. to Paris. Around eleven this morning, a tall guy with black hair comes into the hotel with a bouquet of flowers. The desk clerk tells him he can wait on the couch by the elevator. When Martine comes out, he shoots her point-blank with a gun that was hidden in the roses. Once in the head, twice in the chest. Real charmer.”

I let out a long, tired breath.

“But there’s some good news,” Beth said. “Come on.”

She led me into the large back office behind the check-in desk and introduced me to the hotel security chief, a white-haired ex-FBI agent named Brian Navril. He looked pretty nervous as he shook my hand. After what had just happened, I guess he was worried that he was about to become an ex-hotel security head, too.

“I think I found something that might be useful to you,” he said, motioning us over to his desk. “At least I hope so.”

He brought up the video feed of the hotel’s various surveillance cameras on his laptop and quickly clicked on the square that showed the registration desk. When the screen popped up, he hit Zoom and then Pause.

A relatively clear image appeared of a man in sunglasses and an expensive leather jacket. He was holding a bouquet of roses and grinning, apparently chatting with the check-in clerk.

Beth and I exchanged satisfied looks. Bingo! Finally, a solid lead! With the sunglasses it wasn’t the best of pictures, but not the worst either by any stretch. He had a stack of the already printed photos on the desk, ready for distribution.

“Where’s the clerk?” I said. “I need to talk with her.”

Her name was Angie Hamilton. She was a petite, attractive brunette in her midtwenties, who still looked shaken up as Beth brought her into the office.

“Hi, Angie,” I said. “I’m Detective Bennett. I know this is tough for you right now, but we need to know everything you can tell us about the man who shot Ms. Broussard. You talked to him, right?”

“He asked if Martine Broussard had left yet,” Angie Hamilton said. “He told me they’d just met, and he was bringing her flowers because… because…” She was starting to cry. Beth put an arm around her, murmured sympathetically, and fished a tissue out of her pocket. Angie dried her tears and continued stammering.

“H-he said he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t let her know how he felt. I thought it was so romantic.”

Double score, I thought, catching Beth’s eye. She nodded back. The shooter had asked specifically for Martine Broussard. He had known the victim. Now, for the first time, it was certain that we were looking at a nonrandom shooting. And the odds were greatly increased that this was connected to the other incidents.

We’d caught another break, and it gave us another avenue to run down.

“How did he act, Angie? Did he seem nervous? Cocky?”

“Not cocky,” the desk clerk said. “A little nervous, but sweet… kind of charming, really. That’s what made it even more awful. I told him to go wait on the couch so he wouldn’t miss her when she came out of the elevator. But – but I killed her.” Angie broke into tears again, bending forward with deep wracking sobs.

This time I joined with Beth in putting an arm around her.

“You didn’t do anything wrong at all, Angie,” I said. “You were just trying to be decent. The only one who did wrong is this madman who’s going around shooting innocent people.”

Run For Your Life

The first cops on the scene had transported the victim’s fellow flight attendants to Midtown North. The Air France women were hysterical – so freaked out, in fact, that the first responding detectives couldn’t get anything but French from them. Being typical cops, their mastery of French began and ended with -Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir. They’d sent for a translator, but nobody had shown up yet.

Fortunately, I wasn’t a completely typical cop.

“Je suis vraiment désolé pour votre amie,” I said to the ladies as I entered the upstairs interview room. “Je suis ici pour trouver le responsible, mais je vais avoir besoin de votre aide.”

Basically, that told them that I needed their help in finding the killer. At least, I thought that’s what I was saying. Years ago, my French had been pretty fair, but I was rusty. Maybe my words had really come out more like “Have you seen my sister’s wolverine?”

Whatever I had said, the gorgeous women jumped up excitedly and converged on me. I’d never engaged in a group hug with five blond French supermodel look-alikes before. Somehow I managed to endure it, thinking about the dean of students at Regis, who’d urged me to take Spanish because it was more practical.

I showed them the photo of the shooter from the surveillance video. One of them, Gabrielle Monchecourt, stared at it with widening eyes, then started jabbering a mile a minute. After getting her to slow way down, I managed to piece together what she was saying.

She thought she’d seen the shooter before! She wasn’t a hundred percent positive, but maybe at a British Airways party in Amsterdam a year ago – where there’d been a lot of pilots from a dozen different airlines.

Another big break! A pilot! And another connection to what I’d been guessing from the first – had never really doubted. Well, maybe for just a second. How about that? My diplomacy and ham-handed attempt at French had actually paid off. Go Regis!

We finally had a lead solid enough to pursue.

I took my cell phone out into the hall and communicated the breaks in the case to Chief McGinnis.

“Nice work, Mike” was the first thing he said, stunning me. The second was almost as surprising – that he was giving me office space at the Police Academy on 20th Street, along with ten detectives to work my leads.

I did some head scratching at the chief’s change of attitude as I drove to my new digs.

With his arms full of grocery bags, the Teacher had to use his foot to shut the battered door of the Hell’s Kitchen apartment behind him. He placed the bags on the kitchen counter, tossed his guns on top of the fridge, and, without pausing, tied on his apron with a snug bow. He was starving, same as he’d been after yesterday’s work.

Past noon, the pickings were pretty slim at the farmers’ market in the north end of Union Square Park, but he’d managed to find some fresh Belgian endive and porcini mushrooms. He was going to use the porcini as a crust for the finely marbled Kobe fillet he’d scored at Balducci’s on Eighth Avenue.