Джеймс Паттерсон - The Red Book

“No, this is Jericho cleaning up his own mess,” Carla says. “The extra gunshots and what they did to the girlfriend was to tell Junior that’s what you get for screwing up and killing a four-year-old.”

That’s where my money is, too.

The techies are working the scene now, lifting prints and pulling fibers, snapping photos and examining the victims. I take another look at the back door, where the entry was forced. They picked the lock and snapped the chain clean.

We step out onto the back staircase, where someone’s flagged a crushed cigarette butt by the door.

“You smell any cigarette smoke in there?”

Carla shakes her head no. “Faint smell of reefer, maybe. Didn’t see any packs of cigarettes, either.”

“Westbrook!” I call out.

Diane Westbrook, from Forensic Services, comes out from inside the house.

“Diane, bag this cigarette butt and run it over now. Upload a DNA sample onto the database. Maybe we get lucky with a match.”

“Got it,” she says.

“Diane,” I say, making sure we’re eye to eye. “This goes to the head of the line. Anyone has any doubts about that, you call me. I’ll have the supe on the phone within minutes. Head of the line, Diane. I have these results by lunch or someone’s gonna lose their job.”

“Roger that,” she says. “Believe it or not, I can be a bitch once in a while.”

“You, Diane? No.”

Soscia is standing by the sedan parked behind the house, Junior’s key ring dangling from his index finger. He’s already peeked in through the windows and seen nothing. He pops the trunk. Nothing of interest initially—a food wrapper, blanket, jumper cables.

But underneath the floorboard, an AR-15.

Soscia lifts it out of the car like he’s holding the Holy Grail. The dozen or so cops, detectives, officers, and techies out here—everyone wants in on this—all but break out in applause.

“I’m gonna personally run this to Ballistics,” he says.

Carla and I watch Sosh drive away with the prize.

“Well, gee whiz, Harney,” she says, “your little stunt with Jericho may have worked.”

Chapter 24

BACK AT SOS, the house is buzzing with the news, an extra skip in everyone’s stride. We aren’t saying anything officially yet. Everyone thinks there was more than one person involved in the K-Town shooting. It would be hard to pull that off solo.

Which means there’s at least one other man at large.

Mat Rodriguez pulls paper from the database. The list of known associates of Junior Peppers reaches the double digits. We start cross-referencing, lining up addresses, and getting patrols ready.

And getting an affidavit ready for a warrant. We just need the name to fill in.

Superintendent Tristan Driscoll is camped in Wizniewski’s office, working on an official statement he’ll make, presumably taking complete credit for solving this case, if that’s what we’re about to do.

Reporters are camped out downstairs, having heard some murmurs about a suspect taken into custody.

Sosh calls in at ten o’clock. “Ballistics are a fuckin’ match!” he shouts.

“Match,” I mouth to Carla, who gives me a high five, the most animation she’s shown. So the AR-15 we found in Junior’s car was the one used in the K-Town shooting.

One down, at least one to go.

“Great—now get your ass back here,” I tell Sosh.

Carla and I break the news to Lieutenant Wizniewski and our favorite superintendent, Tristan Driscoll.

“And you’re confident there’s a second offender involved,” says the supe.

Carla takes that one. “Hard to imagine one person would drive up and open fire,” she says. “More likely, there was a driver and a second guy in the back seat.”

Driscoll nods. “And where are we on that?”

“Hopeful for a DNA match,” I say. I tell him about the discarded cigarette butt. “It looked fresh, and neither Junior nor his girlfriend appeared to be smokers.”

“A full DNA analysis could take a while,” Carla adds. “But submitting a sample to a database for a match, at least a preliminary match—we should have that soon. Enough for a warrant, at least.”

“So when am I releasing a statement?” he asks, which was clearly all he wanted to know. How quickly can he take credit for this?

“Prefer you hold it,” I say. “We’d prefer that the first our guy hears about it is when we’re knocking on his door.”

“I can only hold it so long.” He leans back in his chair. “The press is already hearing about a suspect in custody.”

“Hold it as long as you can,” I say. “And let me know when it’s going to drop.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I’m taking orders from you now, Detective?”

“Pretty please,” I say. “With sugar on top.”

“What Detective Harney means,” says Wizniewski, dressed today in a full suit and tie, I notice, “is he’d appreciate a heads-up, sir.”

I point to the Wiz. “That’s what I meant.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Diane Westbrook come bounding into the squad room.

“Excuse me,” I say.

We pop out of Wizniewski’s office. Diane is out of breath.

“We have a preliminary match,” she says. She looks at the printout in her hand. “Prince Valentine.”

“That an alias?”

“That’s his given name. Prince Allan Valentine. Got a sheet a mile long, including a juvie murder, agg batt, some drugs. Reputed member of the Imperial Gangster Nation.” She sings the last words, proud of herself.

“Diane, I could kiss you.” I nod to Carla, catch the eye of Rodriguez. “Mat, run the affidavit over to Judge Peters. We’re not screwing this up on a procedural.”

Diane walks over and confers with Mat while we read his rap sheet. Diane’s right. Violence and gangs all over. This is our guy.

“Gear up,” I say. “Let’s get a solve.”

Chapter 25

PRINCE VALENTINE lives on the far West Side, on the third floor of a yellow-brick apartment building in the middle of the block with an alley to the north. I don’t like alleys. Alleys cause problems. So we have a cruiser—driven by Officer Bostwick, who deserves to be in on this, along with three of his fellow patrolmen—blocking the alley a ways down, out of sight from Prince’s alley-side window but close enough to respond within seconds if we need it.

Carla, Soscia, Rodriguez, and I sit in the Taurus, curbed down the street, waiting. Someone could’ve made us already. Our “unmarked” vehicles don’t fool anyone who knows what they’re doing, and this is a neighborhood that’s seen plenty of crime. I’m pretty sure we broke up a drug deal on our drive here, four guys standing on a sidewalk, scattering as we approached.

“No roof access,” Sosh says. “Fire escape’s half falling off the building. The ladder to the roof is swinging on one hinge.”

Mat has the warrant. I had a pretty good sense we could’ve gone in without one, but better to be careful, a case like this, all the attention it’ll get. And the time to wait didn’t cost us. We had patrols watching his house within five minutes of getting those DNA results from Forensics.

“Don’t knock and announce,” Sosh says.

“We’re gonna knock and announce,” I say.

“Better we surprise him.”

“Yeah, if you’re last through the door, like you’ll be. How about if you’re first, Captain Courage?”

“Fine,” Sosh says. “You wanna use Betsy? I’ll go fuckin’ first.”

“ Mierda, it’s like I’ve got two more children,” Carla interrupts. “Harney’s lead, so we freakin’ knock and announce. Next time, we’ll do what you want, Soscia. I promise.”

“There,” I say. “Let’s go.” We get out into the blazing heat of high noon and hustle up the sidewalk as a woman walks out the front door of the apartment building. “Excuse me, ma’am,” I say, meeting her as she comes down the porch steps. My shield is already dangling from a lanyard, but I hold it and show it to her. “Help us get through that front door, would you?”