James Patterson - Lifeguard

Paul Angelos, the murdered bodyguard, was a former Miami cop. Why would someone on Stratton’s payroll be carrying a dirty gun?

Ellie looked back for the officers who had been assigned to the Miami case. She figured Angelos’s name would be there, but it was the name at the bottom of the page that made her freeze.

This could be happenstance, she told herself. What she needed was solid proof .

Next, she started digging into the background of Earl Anson, the guy who had killed Ned’s brother up in Brockton. How would he find his way to Stratton?

Anson had been a longtime criminal from down in Florida. Armed robbery, extortion, trafficking in drugs. He’d spent time in Tampa and Glades prisons. But what puzzled her was that for both prison stints, despite a spotty record, he was bumped up for early parole. A four-to-six for robbery bargained down to fourteen months. A second-offense felony tossed to time served.

Anson knew someone on the inside .

Ellie called up the warden’s office at Glades, a max to medium institution about forty miles west of Palm Beach. She managed to get Assistant Warden Kevin Fletcher on the line. She asked him how Earl Anson had qualified twice for early release.

“Anson,” Fletcher said, punching up his record, “didn’t I read he just get waxed up in Boston?”

“You won’t be seeing him a third time, if that’s what you mean,” Ellie confirmed.

“No loss there,” the assistant warden sighed, “but someone seemed to be pretty tight with him. He had a sugar daddy.”

“Sugar daddy?” Ellie said.

“Someone who was protecting him, Agent Shurtleff. And not for what he was giving up in here. My guess? He was someone’s CI.”

Someone’s informant .

Ellie thanked Fletcher, but now she felt stymied. Finding out who was handling a CI would be impossible without running up a bright red flag.

So she tried another tack. She called a friend, Gail Silver, in the Miami District Attorney’s Office.

“I’m looking into an ex-con named Earl Anson. He was a hit man in this art heist I’m working on. I was hoping you could get me a list of trials he was a testifying witness at?”

“What is he, some kind of rent-a-witness?” Gail kidded her.

“CI,” Ellie said. “I’m trying to see if he had any connections to fences or art rings that I could track these paintings through.” Not entirely a lie.

“What are you looking for?” the ADA replied, seeming to treat her request as routine.

“Defendants, convictions…” Ellie said casually. She held her breath. “Case agents, Gail… if you’re able to provide that, too.”

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON Ellie knocked on Moretti’s office door. She caught her boss leafing through a file, and he grudgingly waved her in. “Something to report?”

Things had gone from bad to worse with Special Agent in Charge Moretti. Clearly, he felt upstaged, shown up after Ned’s arrest, by the little art agent who was suddenly getting all the publicity.

“I’ve been looking into something,” Ellie said at the door. “Something’s come up I’m not sure what to do with. On the art.”

“Okay,” Moretti leaned back, shifting a file.

“Ned Kelly mentioned something,” Ellie said, sitting down, a file on her lap. “You know, he went to Boston for his brother’s funeral.”

“Right, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about him.” Moretti crossed his legs.

“He talked to his father up there. It’s a little out of the blue, sir, but he indicated he knew who this Dr. Gachet is.”

“ Who did?” Her boss sat up.

“Kelly’s father,” Ellie said. “More so, he seemed to imply it was someone in law enforcement. Someone down here .”

Moretti narrowed his gaze. “How would Ned Kelly’s father have any idea who was behind the heist?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Ellie said, “that’s what I want to find out. But I started wondering why the Palm Beach police had never acted on that Stratton thing with Tess McAuliffe I laid out for you. You did pass it along?”

Moretti nodded. “Of course…”

“You know Lawson, who heads the detectives unit up there? I’ve always had some doubts about him.”

“Lawson?”

“I’ve seen him at Stratton’s house all three times I’ve been there,” Ellie went on.

“You don’t stop trying to put two and two together, do you, Special Agent Shurtleff?”

“So I checked into the.32 that Liz Stratton used,” she said, ignoring him. “You know where it came from? It was stolen from a police evidence bin.”

“You don’t think I know where you’re headed with this? You get to take a big bow to the press for bringing in Ned Kelly, then you say so long to playing Mrs. Kojak. Wasn’t that our agreement? As far as the Bureau is concerned, these murders are solved. Ballistics. Motive. Airtight .”

“I’m talking about the art,” Ellie said, looking right back at him. “I thought I might go up there and hear the old man out. If that’s okay?”

Moretti shrugged. “I could send a local team…”

“A local team’s not familiar with fences, or what to ask about the art,” Ellie countered.

Moretti didn’t answer. He hid his face behind a steeple of his hands. “Just when do you plan to go?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Ellie said. “Six A.M. If the guy’s as sick as I’ve heard, it might be good to get up there now.”

“Tomorrow morning.” Moretti nodded sort of glumly, as if he were thinking something over. Then, a second later he shrugged, as if he had made up his mind.

“Try to be careful this time,” he said, and smiled. “You remember what happened the last time you went up there?”

“Don’t worry,” Ellie said. “What are the chances of something like that happening two times in a row?”

THAT NIGHT Ellie put on an old wrinkled T-shirt, cleaned her face, and slid into bed about eleven.

She was tired, but also wired. She didn’t turn on the TV. For a while she leafed through a book on van der Heyden, a Dutch painter from the seventeenth century, but mostly found herself staring off into space.

She’d found out what she needed to know; now it was just a question of what to do next. She finally flicked off the lights and lay in the dark. No way she could sleep.

Ellie pulled the covers up over her shoulders. She glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes had passed. She listened to the silence in the house.

Suddenly she heard a creaking sound from out in the living room. Ellie froze. The fl oor groaning, or maybe someone sliding through the window . She usually left it open for the breeze.

She listened some more, eyes stretched wide, not moving a muscle. She waited for a second sound.

Nothing .

Then she heard the creaking sound again.

This time Ellie lay completely silent for a full twenty seconds. She wasn’t imagining anything. It was unmistakable.

Someone was in the house .

Jesus Christ . Ellie sucked in a breath. Her heart was racing. She reached under the pillow and wrapped her fingers around the gun that she usually kept on the coatrack but tonight, just to be sure, had by her side. Ellie carefully switched off the safety and eased the pistol out from under her pillow. She told herself to be calm, but her mouth was completely dry.

She hadn’t read it wrong. This was happening tonight !

The creaking sounds came closer. Ellie could feel someone advancing in the dark toward her bedroom. She wrapped her fingers around the gun.

You can do this , a voice said inside. You knew it was going to happen. Just wait a little longer. C’mon, Ellie .