James Patterson - Lifeguard

He massaged his hand across the polished casket lid, slick with rain. “Even Davey would’ve understood.”

I moved close and put my hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, Pop, I know what you mean.”

PALM BEACH Detective Carl Breen was sipping a Starbucks on a bench facing the marina across the bridge off Flagler Drive. Ellie turned to him. “I need you to help me, Carl.”

They stared at the fancy white yachts across the lake, beauties, crews in white uniforms hosing them down.

“Why me?” Breen asked. “Why not go to Lawson? You and he seem to be buddies.”

“Great friends, Carl. Stratton, too. That’s why I’m here.”

“Slip’s okay,” the Palm Beach detective said, and smiled, speaking of Lawson. “He’s just been here a long time.”

“I’m sure he’s okay,” Ellie said. “It’s who he works for I don’t trust.”

A gull cawed from a mooring a few feet away. Breen shook his head.

“You’ve sure come a ways in a couple of weeks since you stumbled into my crime scene. The most sought after suspect in America falls in your lap. Now you’re making accusations against one of the most important people in town.”

“Art’s booming, Carl. What can I say? And I wouldn’t have exactly called it ‘falling into my lap.’ I was abducted, remember.”

Breen raised his palms. “Hey, I actually meant it as a compliment. So, what’s in all this for me?”

“Biggest bust of your career,” Ellie said.

Breen let out an amused laugh. He took a last gulp of the coffee and crumpled the cup into a ball. “Okay, I’m listening…”

“Stratton had Tess McAuliffe killed,” Ellie said, eyes fixed on him.

“Knew you were going to say that,” Breen sniffed.

“Yeah? Well, what you probably didn’t know was that Tess McAuliffe wasn’t her real name. It was Marty Miller. And the reason you haven’t been able to find out a thing about her is that she’s from Australia. She was a hooker down there. She was hired to do a job. Stratton .”

“And where did you get this?” Breen faced her.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ellie said. “You can have it, too. What does matter is that Dennis Stratton was having an affair with her, and that your own department knows about this and hasn’t done shit. And that he killed his wife in retaliation and pinned the whole mess on her and the bodyguard.”

“Killed her?” Breen’s eyes shone. “In retaliation for what?”

“In retaliation for conspiring with Tess. Liz wanted out.

She was coming clean with us. Stratton did it. To get rid of her and get the heat off himself.”

“One thing I still don’t get,” Breen said, nodding cautiously. “You said my department already knew about this relationship, between Tess and Stratton? You want to explain?”

“Dennis Stratton was seen there, at the Brazilian Court, with Tess on several occasions. I saw a golf tee in his home that matched one found at the murder scene. I ran his picture by the staff of the hotel myself. The PBPD has all this.”

Breen’s blank expression took Ellie by surprise.

“This shouldn’t come as a surprise, Carl. You didn’t get this information passed along?”

“You think if we had, we wouldn’t have followed up on something like that? You don’t think we would’ve been all over Stratton? Lawson, too. I assure you, he hates the arrogant SOB as much as you do.” Breen screwed his eyes into her. “Just who was it that supposedly passed along this information?”

Ellie didn’t answer. She stared back at him just as blankly. A hollow, sick feeling had swelled in her chest. Everything changed. She had the sensation she was sliding, slowly at first, then faster, against her will.

“Forget it, Carl,” she muttered, rewinding everything she knew about this case, back to its very first moments.

Everything had just changed .

IT WAS A LONG, quiet flight back to Florida. Agent Rodriguez and I barely exchanged a word. I had buried my brother. I’d maybe seen my father for the last time. And I was bringing something back with me as well. Something pretty earthshaking.

The name of the person who’d killed my brother and my closest friends.

As I came through the Jetway at the Palm Beach airport, I spotted Ellie waiting for me. She was standing apart from the usual crowd of giddy family members welcoming their relatives to the Florida sunshine. She was still on duty, I guess, dressed in a black pantsuit, her hair tied back in a ponytail. She smiled as she saw me, but she looked as though it were the end of a stressful day.

Hector Rodriguez bent down and took off the monitoring device strapped to my ankle. He shook my hand and wished me luck. “You’re back to being the FBI’s problem now.”

For a second, Ellie and I just stood there. I could see her reading the stress in my eyes. “You okay?”

“I’m okay,” I lied. I checked around to see if anyone was watching, then I folded her into her arms. “I have some news.”

I could feel her face brushing against my chest. For a second, I wasn’t sure who was holding whom. “I have news, too, Ned.”

“I know who Gachet is, Ellie.”

Her eyes grew moist and she nodded. “C’mon, I’ll drive you home.”

I guess I expected her to be completely stunned when on the way back to Sollie’s I told her the name my father had given me. But she just seemed to nod, turning onto Okeechobee.

“The Palm Beach police never followed up the lead on Stratton,” she said, pulling over and putting the car in park.

“I thought you informed them,” I said, a little dazed.

“I did,” Ellie said. “Or I thought so.”

It took me a second to see where she was going.

I think until that moment, hiding from the law, trying to prove my innocence, I’d never focused on just how angry I felt. But now I felt it coming on like some storm I couldn’t hold back. Stratton always had someone on the inside. He held all the cards.

“How do we handle this?” I asked Ellie, cars shooting by.

“We can get a deposition from your father, but these are law enforcement people, Ned. It’s going to take more than an accusation from a guy who’s got a grudge and whose history isn’t exactly unimpeachable. That’s not exactly proof .”

“But you got proof.”

“No, all I got was that someone covered up on the Tess McAuliffe case. If I brought that to my boss, it would barely raise an eyebrow.”

“I just buried my brother, Ellie. You don’t expect me to just sit here and let Stratton and these bastards get away with it.”

“No, I don’t expect that, Ned.”

I saw a look of resolve in her soft blue eyes. The look said, I need you to help me prove this, Ned .

And all I said was “I’m in.”

IT TOOK ELLIE two days to get the proof.

It was like looking at a painting from a different angle, the prism turned upside down. Every image, every piece of light refracted differently. She knew that whatever she came up with, everything depended on this. She’d better be sure.

First, she went into the PBPD file on the murder-suicide involving Liz Stratton. There was a NIBIN search in there, tracing the history of the gun. As Lawson had suspected, it matched up positively as one of the weapons used in the massacre of Ned’s friends in Lake Worth. It also made the case against Liz and the bodyguard appear pretty airtight.

She flipped the page.

The Beretta.32 had been confiscated in a drug bust two years before by a joint operation of the Miami-Dade County Police Department and the FBI. It had been held in a police evidence bin in Miami and had been part of a weapons cache that had mysteriously disappeared a year before.