James Patterson - The 8th Confession

Big storm coming in.

Claire ticked off the possible causes of Sara Needleman’s death.

“Leaving poison aside for now, stomach cramps are often caused by a perforated ulcer or an ectopic pregnancy gone bust.”

“But not this time,” Conklin guessed.

“Correct, Mr. Man. So the cramps could’ve been unrelated to her death. I checked for aneurysms, stroke, heart attack – found nothing. I examined all her organs. You could gift wrap them, tie ’em with a bow. Show ’em to med students to let them know what normal organs look like.”

“Huh.”

“No marks on her body, no bruises of any kind. Nothing wrong with Sara Needleman except that she’s dead.”

Conklin said, “She was on my list of names. I hadn’t gotten to her yet.”

“Too late now,” I muttered.

Claire said, “So now I’m thinking we’ve got the Baileys and Needleman. Same social circle. Could be same cause of death. So when I sent out Sara’s blood, I ordered the works. I’ve got sections holding at minus seventy for testing by someone who’s going to be looking for something other than the usual herbs and spices,” Claire said glumly. “What am I going to say now, compadres?”

Conklin said it. “More police work.”

“Bingo, Ricardo. Someone’s got to figure this out, because I’ve hit the wall.”

Claire turned to Sara Needleman’s body, put her hand on the woman’s sheeted torso, and said, “I hear hoofbeats coming down the road, Sara darlin’, I’m thinking ‘horse.’ You are a definite zebra. ”

THE MORNING AFTER Sara Needleman died, Chief Anthony Tracchio called to say, “The mayor’s on my ass. Drop everything except this case, and don’t screw up.”

I said, “Yes, sir, Tony. No screwing up,” but I wanted to scream, “What are we looking for?”

Lieutenant Michael Hampton, a twenty-year veteran of the Special Investigation Division (SID), had also been assigned to our dead- millionaires case, and he looked half as happy as I was. We met in Hampton ’s office, broke down the tasks, and divvied up the list.

Hampton deployed a team to Dr. Dweck’s office to collect Sara Needleman’s records and interview the doctor and his staff. Another SID team shot over to Needleman’s showroom and office to interview Sara’s personal assistant, Toni Reynolds, and the rest of Needleman’s staff.

Conklin and I drove out to Needleman’s house in Cow Hollow with my four guys caravanning behind. Conklin parked on the street. Chi and McNeil, Lemke and Samuels, started the neighborhood canvass while Conklin and I found the main entrance to Needleman’s house.

Sara Needleman’s place wasn’t as Architectural Digest as the Bailey manse, but by any standard, it was stunning. The caretaker, a twentysomething hipster sporting black denim and a goatee, name of Lucas Wilde, met us at the door. He took us through the eight-thousand-square-foot house, a home Sotheby’s would be listing as soon as Disaster Masters cleaned up CSU’s mess.

After the tour of the seven-bedroom house, including the bi-level Japanese garden in back, we invited Lucas Wilde to come to the squad room and tell us what he knew about Sara Needleman.

He willingly complied.

“I know everyone who comes and goes,” he said.

Conklin left us in Interview Room Number Two, ran Wilde’s name, got nothing on him, came back with a legal pad and coffees all around.

We spent another hour with Wilde, and he dumped all his thoughts about Sara Needleman and the company she kept.

“Poofs and phonies, mostly. And then there were her clients.”

The young man laboriously listed all of Sara’s visitors, both friends and workers, including the housekeeper, the dog walker, the Japanese gardener, the tile man, the koi keeper, the yoga teacher, and the caterer.

“What kind of relationship did you have with Sara?” I asked.

“We got along fine. But I was no Lady Chatterley’s lover, if that’s where you’re going. I was the gofer and the handyman, which is what she wanted, and I was happy to have the job and the cool place to live.”

Wilde told us that he saw Sara briefly on the morning of her death. He brought her newspaper in from the gate, and she seemed okay to him.

“She just cracked the door, took the paper. She wouldn’t have told me if she was sick.”

“Got any ideas?” I asked Wilde. “If Sara Needleman was killed, who would’ve killed her?”

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Wilde said. “Sara was a snob. If you were a mover or a shaker, she was a sweetheart.

“Otherwise, man, she could be cold. I don’t know her friends from her enemies, and frankly I don’t think she knew either.”

SARA NEEDLEMAN was still chilling in the morgue that evening when the teams working her case were summoned to Chief Anthony Tracchio’s office with its high view of Bryant Street and a photographic panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge mounted across from his mahogany desk.

Tracchio was a bureaucrat by trade, had come up through the ranks by political appointment. He had no street experience, was squishy around the middle, and had a silly hair-sprayed comb-over, but I was starting to appreciate that he was politically shrewd, a quality that I lack entirely.

Tracchio was agitated in a way I’d rarely seen him. He said, “People, tell your families you won’t be home until we’ve got this case wrapped up. And buck up. Whoever solves this thing is going to be a hero. Or hero ine, ” he said in my direction.

Teams reported, and Tracchio, Hampton, and I questioned them before they were tasked to new assignments.

Conklin and I collected the names of every person interviewed regarding Sara Needleman, then went back to our desks to compare them with a similar list on the Baileys.

“Compare and contrast” was eye-glazing work, but it had to be done. I pulled my chair over to Conklin’s desk and read off names.

Whenever we had a match, Conklin slapped the Staples Easy Button and it squawked, “That was easy.”

By nine that night, our empty pizza box was in the round file. We’d eliminated the Baileys’ live-in household staff and a few hundred others, but still the lists yielded dozens of overlapping names.

The Baileys and Sara Needleman went to the same gym, were all members of the opera society, frequented the same restaurants and clubs. They even shared the same dry cleaner.

“Sara Needleman was thirty-three and so was Isa Bailey. Bet they went to the same school,” said Conklin.

I nodded. It was something.

Something that expanded the search.

I drained my soda can, tossed it in the trash, and said, “I read about a lab experiment. First up were the rats. Two lights, one flashes green, one flashes red. Guess the light that’s about to flash, and if you go to the correct light, you get food. Eight out of ten times, the green one flashes.”

“Go on.”

“The green light flashes so many times, the rats go to that chute every time. Why not? They’re rewarded eighty percent of the time.

“Now the behaviorists did the same experiment with humans.”

“Never been high on rat chow myself.”

I laughed. “The humans got M amp;M’s.”

“I know this is going somewhere,” said my partner.

“The people tried to predict when each light would go on. They were looking for a pattern – so many reds before a green, like that. And they were rewarded only sixty-seven percent of the time.”

“Proving that rats are smarter than people.”

I shook my head no.