James Patterson - Lifeguard

It was only a short drive from Stratton’s over to the Brazilian Court. Ellie had actually been there once when she had first moved down, for brunch at the Café Boulud, with her eighty-year-old aunt, Ruthie.

At the hotel, she badged her way past the police and the press vans gathered outside and made her way to room 121 on the first floor. The Bogart Suite. It reminded Ellie that Bogart and Bacall, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and Garbo had all stayed at this hotel.

A Palm Beach cop was guarding the door. She flashed her FBI ID to the usual look – a long, scrutinizing stare at the photo and then her again – as if the cop were some skeptical bouncer checking fake IDs.

“It’s real .” Ellie let her eyes linger on him, slightly annoyed. “I’m real, too.”

Inside, there was a large living room decorated smartly in a sort of a tropical Bombay theme: British Colonial antique furniture, reproduction amaryllis prints, palm trees waving outside every window. A Crime Scene tech was spraying the coffee table, trying to dig up prints.

Ellie’s stomach shifted. She hadn’t done many homicides. Actually, she hadn’t done any – only tagged along as part of her training at Quantico.

She stepped into the bedroom. It didn’t matter that her badge said FBI, there was something really creepy about this: the room, completely undisturbed, precisely as it had been at the time of a grisly murder last night. C’mon, Ellie, you’re FBI .

She panned the room and didn’t have even the slightest idea what she was looking for. A sexy backless evening gown was draped across the rumpled bed. Dolce & Gabbana. A pair of expensive heels on the floor. Manolos. The gal had some money – and taste!

Something else caught her eye. Some loose change in a plastic evidence bag, already tagged. Something else – a golf tee. A black one, with gold lettering.

Ellie held the evidence Baggie close. She could make out lettering on the golf tee: Trump International.

“The FBI training tour isn’t scheduled for another forty minutes,” came a voice from behind, startling her.

Ellie spun around and saw a tan, good-looking guy in a sport jacket with his hands in his pockets, leaning against the bedroom door.

“Carl Breen,” the jacket said. “ Palm Beach PD. Violent Crimes. Relax,” he went on, smiling, “it’s a compliment. Most of the feds who come through here look like they were stamped out of officers training school.”

“Thanks,” Ellie said, smoothing out her pants, adjusting her holster, which was digging into her waist.

“So what brings the FBI to our little playpen? Homicide’s still a local statute, isn’t it?”

“Actually, I’m looking into a robbery. An art theft, from one of the big estates down the road. Up the road, I guess.”

“Art detail, huh?” Breen nodded with a kind of a grin. “Just checking up that the local drones are holding up our end?”

“Actually, I was looking to see if any of these murders tied in, in any way,” Ellie answered.

Breen took his hands out of his pockets. “Tied in to the art theft. Let’s see…” He glanced around. “There’s a print over there on the wall. That the kind of thing you’re looking for?”

Ellie felt a slap of blood rush to her cheeks. “Not quite, but it’s good to know you have an eye for quality, Detective.”

The detective grinned to let her know he was just kidding. He had a nice smile, actually. “Now if you said Sex Crimes, we’d be humming. Some Palm Beach social whirl. She’s been camped here for a couple of months. People going in and out every day. I’m sure when we find out who’s footing the bill, it’ll be some trust fund or something.”

He led Ellie down the corridor to the bathroom. “You may want to hold your breath. I’m pretty sure van Gogh never painted anything like this.”

There was a series of crime-scene photos taped to the tile walls. Horrific ones. The deceased. The poor girl’s eyes wide and her cheeks inflated out like tires. Naked. Ellie tried not to wince. She was very pretty , she thought. Exceptional. “She was raped?”

“Jury’s still out,” the Palm Beach cop said, “but see those sheets over there? Those stains don’t look like applesauce. And the preliminary on the scene indicates she was dilated like she’d had sex minutes before. Call it a guess, but I’m figuring whoever did this was on some terms with her.”

“Yeah.” Ellie swallowed. Clearly Breen was right. She was probably wasting her time there.

“The tech on the scene pegged it between five and seven o’clock last night. What time your robbery take place?”

“Eight-fifteen,” Ellie said.

“Eight-fifteen, huh?” Breen smiled and elbowed her, friendly, not condescending. “Can’t say I’m much of an art expert, Special Agent, but I’m thinking, this tie-in of yours might just be a bit of a reach. What about you?”

SHE FELT A LITTLE BIT like a jerk. Angry at herself, embarrassed. The Palm Beach detective had actually tried to be helpful.

As Ellie climbed back in her car, her cheeks flushed and grew hot again. Art detail . Did it have to be so totally obvious that she was out of her element?

Next was the run-down house in Lake Worth, just off the Interstate, where four people in their twenties and early thirties had been killed, execution-style. This one was a totally different scene. Much worse. A quadruple homicide always got national attention. Press vans and police vehicles still blocked off a two-block radius around the house. It seemed that every cop and Crime Scene tech in south Florida was buzzing inside.

As soon as she stepped inside the yellow shingled house, Ellie had trouble breathing. This was really bad. The outlines of three of the victims were chalked out on the floor of the sparsely furnished bedroom and kitchen. Blotches of blood and stuff Ellie knew was even worse were still sprayed all over the floors and thinly painted walls. A wave of nausea rolled in her stomach. She swallowed. This is one hell of a long way from an MFA .

Across the room, she spotted Ralph Woodward from the local office. Ellie went over, glad to find a familiar face.

He seemed surprised to see her. “What’re you thinking, Special Agent,” he asked, rolling his eyes around the stark room, “slap a few pictures on the walls, a plant here and there, and you’d never know the place, right?”

Ellie was getting tired of hearing this crap. Ralph wasn’t such a bad guy really, but jeez.

“Thinking drugs, myself.” Ralph Woodward shrugged. “Who else kills like this?”

A review of their IDs pegged the victims from the Boston area. They all had sheets – petty crimes and B-class felonies. Break-ins, auto thefts. One of them had worked part-time at the bar at Bradley’s, a hangout near the Intracoastal in West Palm. Another parked cars at one of the local country clubs. Another, Ellie winced when she read the report, was female.

She spotted Palm Beach ’s head of detectives, Vern Lawson, coming into the house. He chatted for a second with a few officers, then caught her eye. “A bit out of your field, Special Agent Shurtleff?”

He sidled up to Woodward as if they were old chums. “Got a minute, Ralphie?”

Ellie watched as the two men huddled near the kitchen. It occurred to her that maybe they were talking about her. Fuck ’em, if they are . This was her case. No one was bouncing her. Sixty million in stolen art, or whatever the hell it was, wasn’t exactly petty theft.

Ellie went up to a series of crime photos. If staring at Tess McAuliffe in the tub had made her stomach turn, this almost brought up breakfast. One victim had been dropped right at the front door, shot through the head. The guy with the red hair was shot at the kitchen table. Shotgun. Two were killed in the bedroom, the heavyset one through the back, maybe trying to flee; and the girl, huddled in the corner, probably begging for her life, a straight-on blast. Bullet and shotgun marks were numbered all over the walls.