Джеймс Паттерсон - The Midwife Murders

Finding Tracy Anne wasn’t much of a challenge for the FBI. She grew up in Menasha, Wisconsin, a little town on Lake Winnebago. She was not-too-cleverly “hiding out” there with her mother and father. One amusing little tidbit. The Town of Menasha is located right next to a little town called Neenah.

Yep, it’s pronounced exactly the way you think it is.

The greatest tragedies of Sarkar and Orlov’s living nightmare was of course the awful harm done to the innocent babies and their parents. No doubt about that. The case goes down in medical history as one of the most bizarre, and certainly one of the most horrid.

But there was one other personal tragedy. Orlov and Sarkar had bullied and threatened Nina incessantly. Orlov had forced her into her role—he even admitted that to the police. Nina Kozlova truly had wanted to escape from the gang, and she found only one way to do that.

The NYPD found her dead in the bathroom of a Days Inn hotel in the Bronx. Nina had shot herself in the heart.

If Leon Blumenthal had not asked Social Services to arrange a funeral for Nina, she would have been buried on Hart Island, New York City’s potter’s field. Social Services even found a Russian Orthodox priest to preside over the graveside ceremony.

Blumenthal thought we should attend the service. And so he and I did. To my way of thinking, it was a perfect day for the funeral of a sad Ukrainian woman. The weather wasn’t quite rainy, but it wasn’t quite clear. A warm mist showed up on a warm day to make everything even warmer and more humid. The sky was a flat blanket of gray—no clouds, no light, nothing but gray.

The only bright spot in the entire area was the Russian priest, an old man with a very long white beard. His religious vestments were bright red and white with long threads of gold running through. He held a golden crucifix with a golden image of the dying Christ on the cross. The priest was the only ray of lightness, brightness, and sunshine on that dead and dreary day.

“I’ll wait a few more minutes,” the priest said to Blumenthal and me. “Then I must leave. I have other commitments.”

The priest spoke to us because, sadly, we were the only people at the service. Two cemetery workers stood smoking at a respectful distance from our tiny group. I assumed that once the ceremony was over these two guys would put Nina in the ground and cover her with dirt. And that would be that.

“I’ll begin,” said the priest.

He said some prayers in Russian, or maybe in Ukrainian. He blessed the coffin. He held his right hand on the coffin itself and continued to speak softly in the foreign tongue. When he finished that prayer, he asked that Blumenthal and I touch the coffin. We did, holding our hands on the coffin precisely as the priest had.

I said the Hail Mary. Blumenthal said something in Hebrew. The entire program took no longer than fifteen minutes, maybe not even that. The priest gave the final blessing:

Have compassion on me, the work of your hands, O Lord. Cleanse me through your loving-kindness.

And that was it. It was over, all over.

I couldn’t help but think in police terms: the terror, the horror, the tragedy, all finished, solved and resolved. Case closed.

Both Leon Blumenthal and I said good-bye to the priest and walked to our car.

As we walked away, Leon Blumenthal turned to me and said, “That was pretty sad.” Then he took my hand and held it gently. “So what do you think about all this, Lucy?” he asked as we walked.

I looked up at him, and I considered, as always, telling him exactly what I was thinking. “You really want to know what I think?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I really do.”

“I think we just had a helluva first date.”

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the two splendid midwives who helped birth this book, Lizzie Witten and Eileen Conde.

OFFICER RORY YATES IS TRACKING TWO

KILLERS. THE TEXAS RANGERS ARE

TRACKING HIM …

READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF TEXAS OUTLAW ,

OUT NOW

I PULL MY Ford F-150 into the small parking lot at the Rio Grande Bank and Trust in Waco. A big Dodge pickup, even bigger than mine, is taking up two handicapped spaces right in front. I drive around to the shady side and find an opening far from the door.

It’s my lunch break, and I need to deposit a check for my girlfriend.

“Tell me again, Rory,” my lieutenant and new boss says from the passenger seat, “why your girlfriend doesn’t get a bank account in Tennessee.”

Kyle Hendricks and I became Rangers right around the same time and have always been competitive. Up until about a month ago, Kyle and I were the same rank. Then my old boss, friend, and mentor, Lieutenant Ted Creasy, retired and Kyle got promoted. A lot of Rangers wanted me to take the lieutenant’s exam, but I wasn’t in the right headspace to apply for the job. I’ve been through hell and back in the last year.

Now that Kyle’s my boss, I remind myself to be respectful of his position. After all, he’s in his late thirties, a few years older than me. The Texas-bred good old boy has hair the color of straw and the long, lean body of the baseball pitcher he was back in high school and college. Since football was my sport, I thought of Kyle and me as two quarterbacks vying for the starting spot, fueled by a mix of mutual respect and distaste—then suddenly one of them became the coach.

“Coach” invited me to lunch at a local restaurant called Butter My Biscuit, which I took as a good sign that he wants to smooth this transition. But the way he’s been ribbing me about Willow makes me think that maybe he hasn’t changed much after all.

“Hell,” Kyle says, “it’s the twenty-first century. They got national banks now, you know. Wells Fargo. Capital One. You might have heard of ’em.”

I ignore him. The guys at work tease me all the time about Willow, who moved to Nashville a good eight months ago. She’s a country singer—a hell of a good one, too. Through most of her twenties, she played in bars and roadhouses from Texas to Nashville. But she never got her big break—until last fall, when she broke her ankle and a video of her singing on a barstool in a leg cast went viral. Suddenly producers and talent scouts were asking for demos of her songs, inviting her to fly out to Nashville for auditions. She and I had really only just started dating. But I encouraged her to go and pursue her dreams. Take her shot.

She’s done well so far. A couple of songs she wrote were recorded by Miranda Lambert and Little Big Town, and are already earning her royalty checks. Her own album is due out later this summer. People are saying Willow is going to be the next big thing, but she knows every new artist is next up for fame, though fame passes most of them by.

She’s been cautiously optimistic, and maybe a little superstitious. She doesn’t want to open a bank account in Nashville until she feels sure this is a permanent move. Which also has a little something to do with me. The Nashville Police Department has a job opening for a detective, and she’s asked me to consider applying.

I’m honored to be a Texas Ranger, born and raised in Texas, and the thought of leaving the top division of state law enforcement isn’t a decision I take lightly. Times have changed since the Wild West days, but not the legendary status of Texas Rangers. The badge still carries a mystique.

“How much is that check for anyway?” Kyle says, gesturing to the sealed envelope in my hand.

I ignore this question, too. “I’ll be right back,” I say.

“Take your time,” he says, leaning his head back and tilting his Stetson down over his eyes. “I’m going to take me a little nap.”