James Patterson - Run For Your Life

The little girls scurried away, finally frightened by their nanny’s harsh tone rather than by the man who might kill them.

He lifted a carrot stick off the cutting board and bit into it.

“Get on the phone and tell Mike he needs to get home fast,” he said to Mary Catherine as he chewed. “You won’t be lying if you say it’s a family emergency.”

“All right, young man, it’s Judgment Day,” Seamus said as he guided Eddie through the Bennetts’ front door.

Then someone on the other side of the door yanked it open, jerking the knob out of his hand.

Indignant, he started to say, “Well, that’s a fine way to welcome? -”

His sentence died at the amplified click in his ear. He peered to his left and saw a gun, a big one. A tall blond man in a suit pressed it to his temple.

“Another kid?” the man said, looking at Eddie. “What is this, a day care center? And a priest, too? Wow, that’s normal. Now I see why Bennett puts in so much overtime. I’d work twenty-four/seven if I had to live in this psych ward.”

Seamus’s stomach clenched as he instantly put it together. This was the serial shooter Mike was trying to catch. He must have fixated on Mike. Talk about nuts.

Maybe he could calm the man down, Seamus thought. Be the fatherly counselor. It was his job, after all.

“I can see you’re troubled, my son,” he said as the gunman guided him into the living room. “There’s ways to make this right, and I can help you. Unburden yourself, confess your sins. It’s never too late.”

“Just one little problem, you doddering imbecile – there is no God. So I’m going to take a rain check on the sin thing.”

Doddering? Seamus thought angrily. Time to switch to plan B.

“Well and good, then,” he said, ignoring the gun and turning to stare defiantly into the killer’s eyes. “I’m happy to know you’ll be going straight to hell where you belong.”

The kids gasped.

“Watch it, padre. Shooting kids isn’t against my religion. Priests, either, for that matter.”

“It’s Monsignor to you, asswipe,” Seamus said, still glaring at him like they were about to go fifteen rounds.

Seamus heard another, even louder gasp. Then he realized with shame that the killer was right. He was acting like an old fool. He had to tone down the temper and look out for these kids.

The psychopath grinned.

“I like your guts, old man, but mouth me like that again, and you’ll be saying midnight mass at the pearly gates with Saint Peter.”

Suddenly Fiona, the closest of the huddled group of children, let out a troubled grunt and doubled over. When the gunman realized what was happening he jumped back. But not fast enough to avoid her upchucking a stream of vomit onto his shoes.

Good girl, Seamus thought.

The man made a face of pure disgust as he flicked puke off his fancy footwear. Then his look turned confused when he noticed that Jane was furiously scribbling the whole scene in a notebook.

“You people are something else,” he muttered. “Bennett’s going to thank me when I put him out of his misery.”

After the Genelli “incident” was safely taken care of, I got a call from Mary Catherine. She said that Jane had become really, seriously ill – temperature of a hundred and two, and she couldn’t stop vomiting. Mary didn’t know whether or not to take her to the emergency room. Could I come home right away?

I didn’t see any choice. Luckily, things were still quiet here. I put Steve Reno in charge and headed for the door. The mayor, having a photo op in the foyer, gave me a nasty look as I walked by him. Was he pissed that the killer hadn’t shown?

Outside, the cold air and lack of headache-inducing dance music hit me like a refreshing tonic. I crossed the street to my Impala, taking deep breaths and rolling my stiff neck. I turned the engine over and squealed a right onto Eighty-fifth.

As I cut through pitch-black Central Park toward the West Side, I went back to brainstorming. Why did somebody kill Thomas Gladstone, his family, and a bunch of other seemingly random, hoity-toity New Yorkers?

Insanity? The guy was a psycho, sure, but he was organized, smart, very much in control. I didn’t believe that the killings were random, on impulse. He had a reason for what he was doing. Revenge? Maybe, but revenge for what? There was no way even to guess. Maybe both those things figured in, along with God-knew-what-else.

About all I was sure of was that he had to be somebody connected to Gladstone.

I turned down the Chevy’s police radio and turned up the real one to soothe my aching skull. Fat chance: 1010 WINS was going on about the serial shooter. So was CBS 880, so I twirled the dial over to ESPN sports talk.

But there was no escape there, either.

“Our next caller on the Giants Report is Mario from Staten Island,” the announcer said. “What’s shaking, Mario?”

“My mom, mostly,” the caller answered, in a Rocky Balboa voice. “She lives in Little Italy and she’s afraid to open her door. When are the cops going to catch dis friggin’ guy? Jeez!”

“I’m working on it, Mario,” I said, shutting off the damn noise box as Beth Peters rang my cell.

“Mike, I hope you’re sitting down. We just got word. The apartment is rented to a guy named William Meyer. Turns out this guy is a military contractor from Cobalt Partners. You know, the company that provides security to Americans in Iraq? The one that’s in super-deep shit from that recent shooting incident.”

I’d been busier making news than listening to it, but I vaguely remembered something about it. Shots had been fired at a convoy of State Department officials, and the Cobalt security people had returned fire into a large crowd. Eleven people had died, four of them children. An indictment was expected.

“This William Meyer is the main suspect. He was sup-posed to be on the Today show to defend himself but bailed. Before Cobalt, he was in the marines, Special Ops. That would definitely jibe with our guy’s military tactics and shooting skills.”

“Any idea why Gladstone was in Meyer’s apartment?” I asked.

“Absolutely none, Mike, but at least now we have a name. We’re trying to put together his picture. We’ll get him. It’s only a matter of time.”

William Meyer, I thought as I went up my elevator to my apartment. The way this guy had been taking people out, he seemed more like Michael Myers, the psycho from the movie Halloween.

There were still so many unanswered questions. Had Thomas Gladstone and William Meyer been old service buddies? I would have asked one of Gladstone’s friends or relatives, but they were all dead. Shot by Meyer, if our newest theory was right. Had Gladstone pissed Meyer off or something? And what about the fact that Meyer had been ID’d as Gladstone? They even looked the same?

The scent of apples permeated the foyer outside my apartment. On the antique mail table we shared with our neighbors, a silver bowl was brimming with apples, gourds, and cute baby pumpkins. A gold-and-crimson-colored dried-leaf wreath hung on their door.

While I’d been out chasing a psychopath and staring at charred bodies, Camille Underhill, the Martha Stewart clone next door, had done up our alcove in autumnal splendor. I’d have to remember to thank her when this was all over.

Then I glimpsed my own reflection in the mirror above the table, and it stopped me cold. I was as pale as death. I had garment bags under my eyes and a thumb-sized smudge of tenement-fire soot on my chin. Worse, my face was creased by a scowl that was taking on a permanency.

It was time to start getting serious about finding a different line of work, I decided. The sooner, the better.