Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

Because I had one last move. It was a long shot. The way I was seated on the bed, my legs out in front of me, made my ability to spring forward almost nonexistent. And Pop wasn’t dumb enough to get so close to me that I could reach out and grab the gun.

But I was out of good choices. I clenched the muscles in my calves and thighs, tried to shift my balance forward without being too obvious, while Amy pulled her shirt over her head.

I thought of my beautiful little daughter, taken so young, those angelic eyes beaming up at me, and told her that I would see her soon.

Then I placed my hands on the bed and prepared to spring off it. There was only one way this could possibly succeed. I was counting on one thing and only one thing.

I was counting on my father not being able to shoot his own son.

One Hundred Five

The Present

I STARE at the floor as Stilson Tomita struggles for the next question. I don’t want to look at Patti, who was ordered by the sheriff’s deputy to sit back down.

I don’t want to look at my father, either.

“He didn’t hesitate,” I say. “He knew I was going to make a move on him. He shot me before I had the chance. Amy must have—she…probably turned away by instinct, and my blood spattered on her bare back. For their purposes, it laid the scene out perfectly.”

I wipe at my face. The courtroom rings with utter silence.

“I wish I’d died right then.”

But I didn’t.

“They killed Amy, too,” says Stilson, a choke in his voice.

I nod.

Eventually, so the doctors tell me, my brain and heart clicked off for a while before I came back to life, but I didn’t check out right away. I heard what they did to Amy. I couldn’t see anything at that point, but for some reason I could still hear.

“Amy, this can still turn out okay for you,” said Goldie. “They shot each other. You were an innocent bystander.”

“Just give us the thumb drive, and we’re on our way,” said my father.

I heard her voice as though it were far away, a muted, low mumble. I could hear Amy’s desperate whispers:

“Incline, O Lord, thine ears to our prayers, in which we humbly beseech thy mercy, that thou would place the soul of thy servant Billy, which thou hast caused to depart from this world—”

“Amy! Work with me here. Focus. Give us the little black book.”

But Amy was no longer listening. As these two predators closed in on her, ready to steal away her life at any second, Amy wasn’t thinking of herself.

She was thinking of me. She was praying for my soul.

“We don’t want to shoot you, Amy.”

I had forgotten how to pray after I lost my wife and daughter. I had rejected God and lost my faith. But now I prayed. Inside my wrecked brain, I prayed that Amy’s death would come quickly and without pain. I prayed that God would take Amy into his kingdom and surround her with all the love she deserved.

“She’s not gonna talk,” said my father. “It’s in here somewhere. We’ll find it. Just get on with it.”

I felt no pain. I felt nothing but Amy’s love wrapped around me, the warmth spreading through me. I didn’t feel the touch of her hand or her breath on my face or her lips on mine. I felt all of her, all at once.

I heard the gunshot, the startled gasp escaping Amy’s mouth.

And then I heard nothing at all.

I look up at Stilson Tomita through blurry eyes, my face soaked with tears, unable to speak, my heartbeat banging against my shirt.

Right now I feel her again; I am filled with her. A feeling that wants to be pain, but I won’t let it hurt. She wouldn’t want that. Amy would want me to feel the joy of her love, not the sadness.

I will never forget you, Amy. I will move on, because I know you want me to. But you will always be part of me.

Stilson Tomita clears his throat, wipes at his eyes.

“No further questions, Your Honor,” he says.

One Hundred Six

“MAXIMUM MARGARET” Olson moves from the prosecutor’s table and slithers toward me, her eyes on me, filled with hatred. This trial has been about me. I’ve had to fight for my life. But now this trial is about something else, too. It’s about Margaret Olson, front-runner in the race for Chicago mayor. In every way that counts, she is now fighting for her life, too.

“That was quite a story, Mr. Harney. Lots of revelations!” She makes a show with her hands. “Little black books and cover-ups! But let me see if I understand this.”

She stops only a foot away from me, puts her hands on the wooden frame of the witness stand, bracing herself, leaning forward toward me. I’m half expecting a serpent’s tongue to lash out and pluck out my eyeballs.

It’s all I can do not to lunge forward and grab her throat. Margaret didn’t commit murder, but her ambition and corruption were part of this, too. She is just as much to blame as my father and Goldie.

“Amy Lentini isn’t here to corroborate your testimony, is she?”

I inhale and exhale. I am in a court of law, and I am still on trial. I think of Amy, and what she would want, her by-the-book, respect-the-law way.

Fine, Margaret. I can hurt you without ever laying a finger on you.

“No, Amy is not here,” I say, drawing out the words.

“Neither is Kate Fenton, is she?”

“No.”

“Now that they’re dead, you can say whatever you want about them, can’t you?”

“If you say so.”

“And I assume that two of the most decorated members of the Chicago Police Department, Chief of Detectives Daniel Harney and the chief of the Bureau of Internal Affairs, Michael Goldberger, can—”

“I’m sure they’ll deny everything,” I say.

She didn’t expect me to agree so readily. “And when the police searched the crime scene afterward, they didn’t find any eavesdropping devices, did they?”

“No. They would be easy to remove.”

“The point is there’s no evidence of that, is there?”

“That’s correct, Ms. Olson.”

She nods. Feeling a little adrenaline now. Scoring some points. Finally getting to fight back after I testified for four agonizing hours.

“And nobody ever found a little black book, did they? I mean, there’s no proof it ever existed, is there?”

I look over at my sister, Patti, in the front row, who has her face in her hands. At this last question, her face pops back up, and peeks at me through her splayed fingers.

I say, “I don’t have a copy of the little black book, if that’s what you mean. My guess is that both the original and the thumb drive have been destroyed.”

“How convenient,” Olson says.

“Not for me, it isn’t.”

“So no witnesses to corroborate, no little black book to corroborate.”

“Correct.”

“So this whole thing,” she says, and with that her hands leave the witness box, and she turns toward the jury, toward the gallery, toward the reporters who have breathlessly tweeted out these juicy, scandalous revelations, “this entire thing you’ve just told us—we only have your word to take for it.”

She pauses on that.

I clear my throat.

“Margaret, I recorded the whole thing on my smartphone.”

She does a half turn in my direction, as if afraid to fully confront what I’ve just said.

“My sister was good enough to install an icon on my phone so I can just hit one button and start recording. I hit it when Goldie first walked into the apartment and Kate’s head turned away from me for a moment. One touch, and it started recording. And just before my father shot me I touched the icon again, to stop it.”