James Patterson - Lifeguard

“Radio it in,” Lawson barked to a young plainclothesman. “The FBI, too. Tell ’em we just apprehended Ned Kelly.”

I was taken to a patrol car, pushed inside, the door slammed shut. I took one last look over my shoulder at Ellie. She didn’t wave. Nothing.

Less than fifteen minutes later I was at the holding cells in the Palm Beach police station. I was stripped, searched, photographed, and tossed into one of the cells. The place was really buzzing. Cops craned their necks for a look.

They didn’t charge me with anything right away. I guess the police were waiting to sort things out. I knew they had no direct evidence linking me with anything – other than the guy who killed my brother in Boston.

They were actually taking it easy on me. The Palm Beach cops were pretty good guys, and I eventually made a phone call up to Boston, looking for my father. My mother answered. He wasn’t home. “Listen, Mom, you have to tell him to come clean. My life is in the balance.” She hesitated a little, then started to cry. “Just ask him, Mom. He knows I’m innocent.”

Then I sat back and waited – for whatever was going to happen next.

In that cell, it all started to sink in. Mickey and Bobby, Barney and Dee. The horrible way they had died. I thought of Tess, poor Tess. So many victims. All killed by Gachet? Who the hell was he? There I was in jail – and he was out there, free.

It just didn’t seem right somehow.

THEY FED ME a meal. They gave me blankets and a sheet. I sat down on the cot and passed a lonely night in a cell. I figured this would be the first of many. There was a lot of noise down the hall – the clang of cell doors, someone throwing up.

It wasn’t until the next morning that somebody finally came for me. A heavyset black cop from the day before. With two others.

“Free to go, I guess?” I said with a fatalistic smile.

“Oh, yeah, right,” he chuckled. “They’re waiting for you up in the spa. Don’t forget your robe.”

They took me upstairs to a small interview room. Just a table and three chairs, a mirror on the wall that I figured was two-way. I waited alone for about ten minutes. The nerves were starting to go. Finally the door opened and two cops stepped in.

One was the tall white-haired detective who was there when I surrendered at Stratton’s. Lawson. Palm Beach PD. The other was a short, barrel-chested guy in a blue shirt and tan suit. He flicked me his card as if I were supposed to be impressed by the initials.

Special Agent in Charge George Moretti. FBI.

Ellie’s boss.

“So, Mr. Kelly,” Lawson said, squeezing into a wooden chair across from me. “What are we going to do with you?”

“What am I being charged with?” I asked.

He spoke in a slow, relaxed drawl. “What do you think we should charge you with? You left us about the whole criminal statutes book to choose from. The murder of Tess McAuliffe? Or your friends?” He consulted a sheet. “Michael Kelly, Robert O’ Reilly, Barnabas Flint. Diane Lynch?”

“I didn’t do any of that…”

“Okay, plan B, then,” Lawson said. “Burglary. Interstate traffic of stolen goods, resisting arrest… The death of one Earl Anson, up in Brockton…”

“He killed my brother,” I shot back. “And he was trying to kill me. What would you have done?”

“Me, I wouldn’t have gotten into this mess in the first place, Mr. Kelly,” the cop replied. ”And just for the record, it was your prints off that knife, not his…”

“You’re in a shitload of trouble,” the FBI man said, pulling up a chair. “You got two things that can save your ass. One, where are the paintings? Two, how was Tess McAuliffe connected to any of this?”

“ I don’t have the paintings ,” I said. “And Tess wasn’t connected. I met her on the beach.”

“Oh, she was connected,” the FBI man said, and nodded knowingly, leaning close, “and, son, you don’t come straight with us now, your whole life as you knew it is going to be a memory from this point on. You know what it’s like in a federal prison, Ned. No beaches there, son, no pools to tend.”

“I am being straight with you,” I interrupted. “You see a lawyer here? Did I ask for one? Yes, I got involved to steal those paintings. I set off alarms around Palm Beach. Check . You got reports of several break-ins around town prior to the theft that night, didn’t you? I can give you the addresses. And I didn’t kill my friends. I think you know that by now. I got a call from Dee that the art wasn’t there. That someone had set them up. Someone named Dr. Gachet. She told me to meet them back at the house in Lake Worth, and by the time I got there they were dead. So I freaked. I fled. Maybe that was wrong. I’d just seen my lifelong friends carried out in bags. What the hell would anyone do?”

The FBI man blinked. He sort of narrowed his eyes at me, like, Enough of the yuks, kid. You don’t even know the trouble I could cause you .

“Besides,” I said, turning to Lawson, “you’re not even asking the right questions.”

“OKAY,” THE COP SAID with a shrug, “so tell me the right questions.”

“Like, who else knew the art was going to be stolen?” I said. “And who was in Tess McAuliffe’s suite after me? Who sent that punk up to Boston to kill my brother. And who is Gachet ?”

They looked at each other for a second, then the FBI man smiled. “You ever stop to think that’s because we know the answers to those questions, Ned?”

My gaze hardened on him. I waited for him to blink. They knew . They knew I didn’t kill anybody. They had me in there, grilling me, and they knew I didn’t kill Tess or Dave. They even knew who Gachet was. The longer he waited to answer, the more I was sure he was going to say, Your father is Dr. Gachet .

“The ballistics matched,” the Palm Beach detective said, grinning. “The gun we found at Stratton’s. Just like we suspected. It belonged to Paul Angelos, the Strattons’ bodyguard. Same gun was involved in the Lake Worth murders. He was sexually involved with Liz Stratton. Another of Stratton’s men confirmed it. He was doing her dirty work. She was setting up her husband. Seems pretty clear to us. She wanted the money; she wanted to get away from Dennis Stratton. She was linked to Tess McAuliffe. You want to know who Gachet is, Ned? You want to know who sent that guy to Boston? It was Liz. Special Agent Shurtleff said she basically admitted as much at the restaurant.”

Liz… Gachet ? I looked at them incredulously. Waiting, as though they were going to crack big smiles.

Liz wasn’t Gachet. Stratton had twisted this, set her up. He had maneuvered the whole thing. And they were buying it!

“Actually, there’s only one question we still have for you ,” Lawson said, leaning in close.

“ What the hell happened to the art ?”

I WAS BROUGHT BEFORE a judge and charged with burglary, resisting arrest, and interstate flight.

For once, they got the charges right. I was guilty of all three.

The public defender they assigned me advised me to plead not guilty, which I did, until I figured I could call Uncle George in Watertown and have him get me one of his fancy lawyers, as he had offered. I sure needed one now.

They set my bail at $500,000.

“Can the defendant post bail?” The judge looked down from the bench.

“No, Your Honor, I can’t.” So they took me back to my cell.

I stared at the cold, concrete walls, thinking this was going to be the first day of many like it.