Джеймс Паттерсон - The Red Book

It takes me a minute, trying to regain composure, because I have a reason to be here, and it’s not to blubber and sob like a child, certainly not in front of a man who’s had his life stolen from him for a crime he almost certainly did not commit.

And any chance of hiding my connection is long down the toilet now.

“Oh, shit,” says Antoine. “Her husband was a cop. You’re…Billy.”

I do a final wipe of my face, take a deep breath, clear my throat, and nod. “I was the one who called her Valerie, yeah,” I say.

“Well, you gotta leave, Billy,” he says, his voice different now, stronger, hostile. “I’m sorry, but you gotta leave right now.”

Chapter 82

“I’M NOT going anywhere,” I tell Antoine. “You know what she was doing better than I do. She was looking at alternative suspects for Nathan Stofer’s murder.”

“No,” he says, but he doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

“The sex-trafficking ring,” I say. “You know she was looking at that, right?”

He turns his head away.

“The Ukrainian general’s business, KB Investors Group. The one Nathan Stofer was trying to keep from joining the Stratton Tower project. C’mon, Antoine, you know all this! You know more than I do about—”

“Man, I can’t .” He slams down his fists, the shackles clanging on the table. His words come out as a plea through a choked throat, tears coming now, his turn to cry. “You’re already putting my family at risk, just being here.”

“They threatened you,” I say. What I figured. He pleads guilty four days after Valerie’s death. Someone got to him.

He leans forward, pauses, looks over at the prison guard through the glass door, leans farther forward still, his chin only inches from the table. His words spill out in a harsh whisper. “You think I like sitting in this shithole for something I didn’t do? It’s keeping my family alive.”

“Your fiancée, Cassietta. Your mother and sister. They threatened them.”

He looks at me, defiant, but something else, too. Sympathetic. Apologetic. “How do I know, just being here, you didn’t get them killed?”

“Nobody knows I’m here,” I say.

He laughs. Shakes his head as if he pities my ignorance. Then turns stone cold. “They can kill a cop’s wife and make it look like suicide,” he whispers. “They can waltz into County all official and dressed up, like it’s nothing, and lay it out for me. Cassie’s home address, where she works, how they’re gonna take turns on her before they slit her throat. How they’re gonna dump gasoline on my sister and light a match while my mama watches. Then the motherfucker walks back out like nothing? They got people everywhere, man.”

“It didn’t come from you,” I say. “I’d never give you up.”

“You probably already did, just coming here.”

“I’m gonna take them down, Antoine. Every one of them. They won’t be able to hurt you or your family.”

He pauses. Thinks about it. That thing he’s been suppressing, that has secretly plagued him since the first day they locked him up—hope.

“Don’t you want out of here, Antoine? Don’t you wanna be free? Marry Cassie? See your mother and sister? Have your life back?”

He wags a finger at me, cocks his head. “Don’t do that, man.”

“I can make that happen, Antoine. All I need—”

“Go on now!” he says, slamming back from the table, the shackles sliding off the table as he bounces to his feet. “I got nothin’ to say to you, cracker po-lice! I took my twenty cuz I shot that damn fool. I didn’t like the look on his smug-ass face, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Just a name, Antoine,” I say. “Just a location.”

He bangs on the glass window. “Man, I got nothin’ to say to this guy!” he calls out. “Let me the fuck outta here!”

I drop my head. It’s over.

Two corrections officers enter the room. “Sorry, Detective. If he doesn’t want to talk to you…”

…then he doesn’t have to. I know.

“What a waste of a morning,” I say, loud enough for the guards in the room, and probably the ones outside, to hear. “I come all this way, and this kid doesn’t tell me squat.”

Antoine, back to his cocky prison-yard attitude, catches my eye. He knows my last comment was for him.

But in fact, Antoine did tell me a couple of things.

One: those dreams of mine are wrong. Valerie didn’t kill herself. I wasn’t there when she did. They killed her. They did this.

And two: the person who delivered the threat to Antoine? The man who waltzed into county lockup in a fancy suit, as he said?

Only a lawyer could have done that.

Chapter 83

THE LAST thing Patti feels like doing today is heading to the prison.

She takes a personal day. No way she could justify this trip as official police business.

No way she can justify it, period.

Last night was another restless one, full of nightmares and, worse still, the reality of what happened four years ago.

She can’t sleep. Can’t do her training runs. Can’t eat. Can’t focus at work.

All she can think about is Val. And Billy.

And a gun, Billy’s service weapon.

The trip to the prison feels like a life sentence itself. She pulls off the highway at one point and retches by the side of the road, but there’s no food to vomit. Her body is feverish, though she doubts she’s sick.

Her hands tremble on the steering wheel. But she focuses on Billy.

She’s doing this for Billy.

She parks in the designated spot and looks up at the imposing structure. “I can’t do this,” she mumbles. But she doesn’t have anywhere else to turn.

She shows her credentials at intake, gives up her weapon and cell phone, endures the pat-down and wanding and warnings, which even cops have to undergo.

They lead her into a private interview room. She finds herself hoping, praying, that the guard will say there’s been some glitch, that inmate number 28507-024 isn’t available.

She begs for such a glitch.

Then the door opens. She hears the leg irons dragging along the floor, the guard’s calm but stern directions. The snap of the lock when the shackles are affixed to the table.

She cries. She swore she wouldn’t. Once it comes, there’s no use fighting it. She lets it go, covering her face in her hands, shaking so hard she can hardly stay seated in the chair.

She can’t bear to look.

But she’s doing this for Billy.

“At some point,” says the prisoner, “are you going to look at me or say something?”

It sends a chill through her. The voice. The voice she once trusted, the voice that soothed her and guided her.

She looks up at former chief of detectives Daniel Harney.

“Hi, Daddy,” she says.

Chapter 84

PATTI HAD tried to get it all off her chest before she came. Even spoke it aloud in the car as she drove from Chicago to Terre Haute, Indiana, the federal supermax.

How could you do that to us?

How could you betray us?

We trusted you.

I trusted you.

Variations on that, over and over during the three-hour trip. The man she worshipped, the man who made everything right, in reality a bent cop, corrupt to the core.

She’d hoped to tire herself out on the ride over, have her first—and last—visit be focused on Billy.

But it all floods back, all the hurt, all the insults she wanted to hurl, all the pain she wanted to inflict.

“It’s good to see you, honey. I wasn’t sure you’d ever come.”

Dirty snow atop his head, far whiter than before. He’s lost considerable weight, sunken eyes, a skinny stalk for a neck, shoulders drawn tight. Like someone put him in a dryer and shrunk him two sizes.