James Patterson - The Quickie

The next time I looked up, the squad room windows were dark. What time was it?

Mike hung up his phone and growled like a bear awakened from hibernation two months early.

"Get this. These DEA geniuses have the Brothers Ordonez's location, and I quote, 'pinned down to this after-hours club they partially own in Mott Haven or to an apartment in the ass end of Brooklyn.' "

"That's some or ," I said.

"My sentiments exactly. Bottom line, we're looking at a long night," Mike said. "It's your turn to crash. Go home and see what that husband of yours is looking like these days. Keep your cell phone on. The second I get the word, you'll get it. Go home."

I HEARD THE TV in the den when I came in. A lone voice followed by studio audience laughter. Letterman, probably. Great. He'd be doing a Top Ten about me and Paul soon enough.

I put my keys on the pub mirror and looked at the blue TV light spilling through the crack onto the runner of carpet in the hall. Of all the difficult things I'd done all day, this one felt like the hardest.

Nothing could quite top off a long day of covering up a murder like having to admit to your husband that you cheated on him.

I took a long lungful of oxygen, slowly let it out, and pushed the door open.

Paul was lying on the couch with a Yankees throw pulled up to his chin. He clicked off the set when he saw me standing there.

"Hey," he said with a smile. He still had a nice smile, even at the most inappropriate times.

I stared at him. I don't know what I was expecting, but a cheerful "hey" wasn't it. "Hey, slut" maybe.

"Hey, yourself?" I said tentatively.

I didn't know what the next dance step was supposed to be. Not even a wild guess. I'd never had Paul murder my lover before.

"How was work?" Paul asked me.

"Work was fine, Paul," I said. "Um, don't you think that maybe we should talk a little bit about last night?"

Paul lowered his eyes to the floor. Now maybe we were getting somewhere.

"I was pretty loaded, huh?" he said.

That's what generally happens when you practically polish off a bottle of scotch by yourself, I wanted to say. But I guess I needed to be supportive. I definitely needed Paul to open up, unburden himself. Tell me exactly what happened. Hear his side of things.

It would make things so much easier. He could get it off his chest, and I could tell him that he didn't have to worry, that I was already taking care of everything.

"What's going on, Paul?" I whispered. "You can tell me."

Paul glanced at me, his lower lip caught between his teeth.

"My God, Lauren," he said. "My flight. It was a nightmare. There was this loud boom, and we started plum-meting. I was convinced it was another terrorist attack. That I was dead. Then it just stopped. The plane leveled out, but the pilot landed it in Groton. I never made it to Boston.

"It was like I'd been spared, you know? After we touched down, I rented a car and drove home. I guess I was still in shock when I got back in. I opened the bottle to have a drink to calm myself, and pretty soon, the bottle was my drink. Don't ask me what happened to my clothes. Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

My face burned in the dark. Why was Paul lying to me now? Acting as if he wasn't aware I knew what was going on? On the other hand, it wasn't uncommon for murderers to enter a state of denial. Sometimes it was so impenetrable, it was like they themselves truly believed they didn't commit the crime. Was that it? Was Paul in shock and so racked with guilt that he'd become delusional?

"Paul!" I finally said. "Please!"

Paul looked up at me, confused.

"Please what?" he said.

My God, I thought. As if this wasn't hard enough. Was Paul playing some type of game with me? It was as if he didn't know I'd been there, too. That he thought Scott had been alone and…

Holy shit! That was it! A hand went to my gaping mouth. I couldn't believe it.

Paul didn't know that I'd been there!

Paul hadn't come to confront us, I realized. He must have seen an e-mail or two, suspected what was going on, and gone over to Scott's to deliver an ass kicking in order to scare him away from me. That's why he'd left without confronting me! And that was why he was acting oblivious now. He wasn't acting. Paul was oblivious!

Paul didn't know I'd cheated on him.

NOW, THAT CHANGED THINGS, didn't it? I stared across the room as Paul lifted up the throw.

"Get in here with me, Lauren," he said. "You've been working too hard. Hell, we both have. C'mere."

Seeing Paul lying there like that reminded me of the time when I'd thrown out my back, chasing a suspect down a Throgs Neck fire escape the year before. I was laid up for two weeks, and Paul had used his vacation to take care of me. Really take care of me . He'd cooked us three meals a day, and we'd eaten here together watching daytime TV, reading, Paul reading to me. The water heater gave up the ghost in the middle of the second week, and I'll never forget how Paul had washed my hair in the kitchen sink with water heated from the stove.

Bottom line was, he'd been there for me.

Now he needed me to be there for him.

I took a breath and stepped over and lay down beside him. Paul switched off the light. I reached out in the dark until I found Paul's hand, then I held it tight.

"Well, I'm glad you made it home to me," I finally said. "Even if your clothes didn't."

THE NEXT MORNING, I got dressed quickly after Paul left for work. I'd been waiting for him to leave, actually. More accurate: I couldn't wait for Paul to go.

As I was about to dump my handbag into my Mini, I suddenly very distinctly remembered what ADA Jeff Buslik had said about the gun used to kill Scott. How it was absolutely critical to proving the case .

I moved away from the car and hurried toward the work shed, a single question racing through my brain.

Which river was I going to dump the gun in – the Hudson, the East, or the Harlem?

But I swallowed hard as soon as I unlocked the shed's door. I hadn't been expecting this. Not in my wildest dreams.

There was an empty space where the bag of evidence had been! There was just air.

I looked behind the rakes, the bags of fertilizer, the watering can. No gun. No bloody paper towels. No nothing.

What now?

I stared at the spot, wondering what Paul might have done with the murder gun. Had he dumped it when he went to return the car? If so, where?

That worried me. A lot. The murder weapon still around someplace, probably with Paul's prints on it.

I was standing there, stomach churning, when I noticed the shovel. The tip of its blade was dark. I touched it. It was wet with mud. I took it out of the shed with me and jogged toward the backyard.

Where would I bury a murder weapon if I were Paul? I thought.

I'd want to hide it someplace close, I decided. Someplace where I could glance out my window and see if the area had been disturbed.

I scanned my backyard. It got only afternoon sun, so it was still shaded. I paced its entire length, staring at the cool, shadowed ground for twenty minutes, but there were no obvious disturbances. Not in the plant beds, not beneath the hedges or azaleas.

About ten minutes later, next to the grill, beside a stack of garden bricks we'd bought at Home Depot a year before, I noticed something a little curious. To the right of the pile, I could see faint indentations of bricks in the dirt.

The bricks had been moved slightly over to the left, I realized.

I began removing the top row of bricks and placing them back in their original formation. Under the last row, the earth was loose.