James Patterson - Run For Your Life

This was their daughter’s room, I realized as I reholstered. I regretted all the negative thoughts I’d had about her. Despite appearances and her bristly personality, the woman was going through hell. A place I knew all too well.

I retreated as quietly as I could. At the top of the stairs, I spotted a photo of Erica, with a man I assumed was her first husband. They were walking with their daughters on a glowing white-sand beach beside deep blue water, laughing, the wind whipping their hair back.

As I stared, I thought of all the pictures I had of Maeve and the kids. All the happy moments, frozen and captured forever. That was it, wasn’t it? What life was all about. What could never be taken away. The moments shared with family and the people you loved.

I coordinated security from the Blanchettes’ grand-hotel-sized kitchen – the farthest, most out-of-the-way corner of it that I could find. The last thing I needed was to be standing by the penthouse’s front door when the mayor arrived, so hizzoner could give me another earful.

Despite the short amount of time we’d had to beef up security, we’d managed to do an excellent job. Fortunately, the employees of the Blanchettes’ upscale catering firm had worked UN events and presidential fund-raisers, so we were able to get background checks from the Feds without too much fuss.

It was the guests and hosts who turned out to be the pain in the butt. When we insisted on bag checks at the door, I thought some of them would have to be sedated. We reached a compromise only when a borrowed metal detector was shuttled up from the Manhattan criminal courthouse, on the order of Mrs. Blanchette’s good friend the mayor.

About the only high note came when the Cajun head chef, Maw-Maw Josephine, heard that one of the Midtown North detectives had volunteered down in the Big Easy after Hurricane Katrina. Next thing we knew, all us cops were getting hooked up with as much gumbo, shrimp, and corn bread as we could stuff ourselves with.

It was ominously quiet during the first hour, as the most favored guests arrived for the pre-event private dinner. Of course I was relieved that everyone stayed safe, but on the other hand, I was hoping Gladstone would make a move so we could nail him to the floorboards. His unpredictability was burning a slow hole through the lining of my stomach. Or was that Maw-Maw’s Tabasco jambalaya?

I’d just done my hundredth radio check with the bored-stiff ESU gang across the street at Central Park, when Beth Peters rang my cell phone.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she said excitedly.

“What? We got him?”

“Get over here to West Thirty-eighth near Eleventh Avenue, and maybe you can tell me,” she said.

What the heck did that mean? And West 38th? That was where the French photographer had gotten whacked.

“Come on, Beth, no games,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m honestly not sure, Mike,” she said. “I just really need you over here. The scene’ll be easy to spot. It’s the building with all the fire trucks out front. Oh, yeah, and the horses.”

Horses?

The top of the Hell’s Kitchen tenement was still smoldering when I pulled my Chevy up on the sidewalk behind a FDNY rescue truck.

Beth Peters came over to meet me as I climbed out, blinking in astonishment at what I saw.

“I told you, you wouldn’t believe it,” she said.

She’d been true to her word. A herd of spooked-looking horses was milling around on the sidewalk beyond the fire lines. As she and I followed a smoke eater into the building, he told us that a stable of Central Park buggy horses was right next door to the blaze.

Well, why not horses at this point? I thought. We already had an outlaw and gunfighting. All I needed was a white hat. Maybe I could borrow one from that Naked Cowboy lunatic in Times Square.

The walls of the top-floor apartment were even more blackened than the Cajun shrimp I’d just eaten. Beth talked to some CSU techs in the wasteland of one of the torched rooms, then handed me a dust mask before guiding me to a scorched lump of ash in the center.

My stomach clenched like a fist as I stared down at a badly burnt body. The fire had charred and melted its features into a horror movie rictus.

“I had the techs take some dental shots. And we got Thomas Gladstone’s dentist, out in Locust Valley, to e-mail us his X-rays,” Beth said. “The ME’s pretty sure it’s a match.”

The surprise of seeing the horses was nothing by comparison to that. My jaw just about went unhinged.

“You’re telling me this is Gladstone?” I said.

“One and the same.”

I know it’s not right to disrespect the dead, but I couldn’t deny that I was pleased. This ulcer-inducing case was finally over. In fact, I couldn’t help smiling, and I let out a long sigh of relief as what felt like a piano was lifted from my back.

“What do you know?” I said. “He offed himself, huh? Literally went down in a blaze of glory. Thank God it’s over.”

But Beth was shaking her head. I’d spoken too soon.

She crouched beside the corpse and moved her gloved finger to a small circular hole in the temple. Then she showed me the bigger hole on the other side of the head, a jagged exit wound.

“Shooting yourself is pretty easy, but shooting yourself and then setting yourself on fire, well, that’s a notch trickier,” she said.

“Maybe he did it the other way around,” I tried desperately. “Torched the place first, then boom.”

“So what happened to the gun? Even if it melted, there’d be traces left, but the techs haven’t found any. Plus Cleary says there’s fly larva embedded in the left upper arm. That means he’s been dead for two, maybe three days. And that means? -”

“ Gladstone couldn’t have killed all those people,” I finished for her. I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes.

“Sorry, Mike, but he’s not our shooter.”

I cursed under my breath. If it wasn’t Thomas Gladstone, then who the hell was it?

“That’s not all,” Beth said, standing. She led me to a closet with a barbecued door and walls.

I winced at the slight young blond woman crumpled up inside it. The fire hadn’t gotten to her too badly, but she was still very dead – shot in the back of the head.

“We found her purse. Name’s Wendy Stub. Twenty-six. Her business card says she’s a publicist at Stoa Holdings, a hotshot Park Avenue South PR firm.”

A publicist? What was her connection to this?

As I listened to firemen ripping open the walls in the other rooms, I wondered if FDNY was still hiring. A midlife career change seemed like just the ticket. Or maybe the stable next door could use a horse whisperer, to help the poor creatures get over their trauma.

Beth was watching me inquiringly. “What now?”

“You’re asking me?” I said.

Rush hour was still in full swing when the Teacher’s cab stopped behind a police car that was parked in front of the Pierre Hotel. It made him a little nervous, but Vinny, the doorman, came bustling over to open the taxi’s door like nothing was out of the ordinary. Cops didn’t come to places like this to pick up people – they came to protect people. Still, the Teacher kept his face averted and his hand on the butt of his.45 as he got out.

“Welcome home, Mr. Meyer!” Vinny said. “How was your trip? Paris, wasn’t it?”

That’s where he’d told everyone at the Pierre he was going. In fact, he’d gone infinitely farther. To other dimensions. But now he was home, the place where he’d actually lived for the past three years.

“It was great, Vinny. Especially the food,” the Teacher said, smiling despite himself. He’d liked Vinny since the moment he decided to move into the world-famous hotel. That was right after his mother had passed away, and he’d become the sole beneficiary of the twenty-four-million-dollar Ronald Meyer fortune. He’d decided that he owed it to his asshole stepdaddy to blow every last red penny of the old man’s dough. And he’d kept his Hell’s Kitchen apartment as a command center.