Джеймс Паттерсон: The Red Book

A garbled cry from the mother, fresh tears. “You’re not taking my baby. Ain’t nobody taking my baby!” She lowers her cheek against her dead daughter’s, that cherubic face.

I feel it across my chest first, radiating heat, then a thud thud pounding between my ears, sweat bursting from every pore, the images everywhere—

The memories from four years ago:

The hospital smells of iodine and bleach. The gentle beeps and whooshes and gurgles from the machines keeping her alive.

Her tiny hand engulfed in mine. My mumbling whispers: C’mon, you can do it, wake up, honey, please wake up .

Knowing she’d never wake up.

Praying to God to bring her back. Begging and pleading and bartering with Him. Take me instead of her . Berating and threatening and shouting at Him. How could you let my three-year-old daughter die?

An elbow pokes my arm. My daughter’s face dissolves into the past. I turn to Mary Bryant as if jarred awake from a dream, her eyebrows creased in concern, a curt nod of the head, as in Get a grip or You okay?

I snap out of it, nod, draw a breath. I traveled there and back, but my feet are still planted where they were, next to Carla, who is squatting down, speaking with the mother in hushed tones, the woman struggling to answer amid heaving gasps.

I wipe my arm across my greasy forehead, useless and shaky, a spectator in my own investigation. I’m joining the conversation late, but I get the gist of the mother’s story, most of which we already knew—she was at work, left LaTisha here with Shiv, her boyfriend. Got the call to come home and hasn’t let go of her daughter since.

I follow Carla and Mary outside, feeling better with fresh air, no matter how thick and humid. Hoping that my new partner didn’t notice me getting lost in there. She has a low enough opinion of me already.

“Poor woman,” says Bryant. “No one’s been able to find it in their heart to make her let go of that little kid.”

I see Detective Soscia and his new partner slip under the yellow tape, heading toward our scene. That’s good. I could use a friendly face on this one.

“So the only eyewitness is in surgery and might not survive,” I summarize.

Bryant nods. “Unless one of the neighbors saw something. Anyone taking bets?”

Her skepticism isn’t far off; there will be plenty of nope-didn’t-see-nuthin’ in our canvass. But there are a lot of people out here who don’t want to live among this violence and who will stick their necks out, even at risk to themselves. We just have to find them.

“Keep us posted on the canvass,” I say to Mary. “We’re gonna do some of our own.”

“Will do.” Mary walks carefully down the porch steps.

I look at Carla, blinking away tears in her eyes. At least I wasn’t the only one affected. “Both girls were collateral damage,” she says, clearing her throat, nodding at the young woman lying on the porch. “And the courier wasn’t the target. It had to be a hit on Shiv.”

“Looks that way, yeah. Why hit a lieutenant with the K-Street Hustlers?”

She shrugs, looks out over the street. “We can hope he owed someone money, or he was doinking someone else’s lady.”

That would make it easier, if this whole thing was personal. Maybe LaTisha’s mommy inside used to go with another guy who wasn’t too pleased when Shiv stole her away. That would be easy.

But Carla doesn’t think that. Neither do I.

No, this doesn’t seem personal. This feels like business.

I tap her on the arm. “You didn’t say ‘turf war.’ I didn’t say ‘turf war.’”

Because if the gangs are fighting over territory, this would be only the first shot in a long, bloody fight.

Chapter 9

THIS ONE is different. We know it immediately.

There are dozens of shootings a week in the city, headlines every Monday morning—19 SHOT OVER BLOODY WEEKEND—grim faces from our mayor and superintendent. We grunt with despair and mumble that somebody really has to do something before pouring our second cup of coffee. Next weekend’s the same thing.

No names, no faces. Just a bunch of black people dead on the West Side.

But this one’s different. Within an hour the crowd has swelled, filling a city block in each direction. Megaphones and chants: Justice for LaTisha! News trucks by every barricade, news copters buzzing overhead.

Because this time it was a cute chubby-cheeked little girl. Perfect for television. Somebody has already obtained a photo of little LaTisha wearing a ruffled chiffon dress, pigtails, and a radiant smile, and her image is showing up on cell phones everywhere.

The murder scene is mobbed. We try to bring order, to find out if anybody saw anything, but it’s like trying to find a dropped penny on a crowded, sweaty dance floor. Our officers work a door-to-door canvass, but nobody’s at home. They’ve all joined the crowd outside, the spectacle.

Nobody saw nothing. Or everybody saw everything.

The K-Street Hustlers did it. Those boys by Clark Park. Those folks who drive in from the suburbs for their dope. Someone saw a red sports car. Someone else, a blue SUV. It was three Mexicans. They were African American. It was two white guys. It’s probably the Cannibals that did it, or the Jackson Street Crew, or the Nation, or the Disciples, or some crooked cops, angry they didn’t get their payoff last week.

One woman yells at me about the burglary at her house two weeks ago, took the cops over an hour to show. An old man tells me we need to put in cul-de-sacs like they do on the South Side to prevent drive-bys.

Carla is finishing up an interview. I look over just as she slips a hand into her pants pocket. It comes out as a fist that she raises to her mouth, as if she’s coughing, but instead she slips something between her lips before lowering her hand back down to the pocket. She glances around and catches my eye, does a double take, like I caught her doing something. But doing what? What did she slip into her mouth?

Cough drop? Aspirin? God, don’t tell me Carla’s a pill popper. Is that what Wizniewski meant when he apologized “in advance” for my partner?

What do we want?

Justice for LaTisha!

When do we want it?

Now!

My head ringing, made no easier with the sun beating down and several hundred people chanting and shouting while I try to take witness statements.

Detective Soscia, red and sweaty, grabs my arm. “We got some POD footage!” he shouts into my ear. Police observation devices, he means—closed-circuit cameras, usually mounted on traffic-control devices around the city. “There’s one on Kilpatrick north of here by the park. A better one’s near Kolmar on Van Buren. Just around the corner.”

Screw it. It could be a lead. We’re not getting anything from this crowd. We’ll be lucky if all their anger and frustration doesn’t turn this thing into a riot.

“Let’s go check it out!” I shout back.

“We got no rope on this one, Billy Boy,” Sosh says. “We need this solved by yesterday.”

Chapter 10

“YOU GOT informants, work ’em,” I say to the roomful of detectives and uniforms. “You need informants, pick ’em up on whatever you can and flip ’em. Tell ’em the CPD is holding a tag sale, 99 percent off for information leading to an arrest. Route all information through Soscia or Officer Bostwick. And let ’em know about the hotline number, too.

“Gang Crimes,” I say. “We have a UC in the K-Street Hustlers?”

Nobody knows. SOS is a new unit, just up and started, not local. But it’s likely the cops in the Eleventh would have an undercover with the gang.

A guy shouts out, name of Jimenez. “Don’t know about any UCs, but I’ll find out.”