James Patterson - Truth or Die

I stopped, took a deep breath, and began again to detail what had happened since I shook his hand on my way out of the Midtown North precinct house. “Talk to you soon,” Lamont had told me. He’d had no idea just how soon.

I could tell now that I was trying his patience. The fact that Claire had left my apartment to go see a source did nothing to challenge what he knew — or, at least, thought he knew — to be true: that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time in the back of that taxi.

And why wouldn’t he believe that? I certainly had. The incident was designed that way, caught on video for all to see.

I told him about the phone call Claire had received, and how I’d figured out the address.

Lamont interrupted me. “Where are you going with all this?” he asked, wanting me to move the story along.

“To the Lucinda Hotel,” I answered.

“Hurry up and get there.”

I couldn’t blame the guy. It was late and he was tired. But I knew all would be forgiven with one sentence about room 1701.

“The guy in the bathtub is the guy who killed Claire,” I said.

I could literally hear him sit bolt upright in his chair.

“Where are you right now?” he asked. No, demanded.

“Eighth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth.”

“Don’t move, I’ll have it radioed right now. A cruiser will be there shortly,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the hotel.”

“Hold on, there’s one more thing,” I said.

I was back to talking a million words a minute as I tried to explain the guy with the magic pliers. The more I listened to myself, the more I realized how crazy it must sound to Lamont. If it did, though, he didn’t let on. Instead, he cut to the chase, the only thing that mattered at the moment.

“Good guy or bad guy?” he asked.

“Bad guy,” I said.

He paused for a moment. “Aren’t they all?”

Click .

From the moment I first got the call from Claire’s sister, Ellen, so much had changed, and then changed again. Still, in some ways, I couldn’t help thinking I was right back where I’d started. With more questions than answers.

The kid is still alive.

As I waited for the cruiser courtesy of Lamont, I kept repeating the line in my head. It couldn’t literally be a kid, could it? I didn’t think so, but anything was possible. The night so far was a testament to that, and here we were rolling into the next day.

A few minutes later, I caught a flash of red and blue lights out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see my escorts pulling up along the curb on Eighth Avenue. The officer riding shotgun stepped out. He looked like a very young version of Kiefer Sutherland, albeit on some serious steroids. The guy was ripped and he knew it. Had the sleeves on his uniform been rolled up any higher, he would’ve officially been wearing a tank top.

“Trevor Mann?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He nodded at the door to the backseat. “Let’s go.”

I climbed in and answered a rapid-fire succession of questions from him while his partner, a guy who didn’t resemble any actor I knew, took the turn onto Thirty-Fourth Street, driving slowly toward the front of the Lucinda.

Basically, I was confirming everything I’d told Lamont. The room number. The guy in the bathtub. The other guy who still might be in the room.

“And this other guy, you never actually saw him?” asked the officer.

“No, I just heard him through the door.”

“What did he sound like? Black? White? Hispanic?”

“White,” I said.

He turned to his partner behind the wheel and smirked. “Shoot the white guy.”

They both chuckled as we pulled up in front of the hotel. Engine off, battery on. I reached for the door handle, thinking I was going inside with them. Silly me.

“Stay here,” I was told.

It made sense. Of the three of us, I was the only one who didn’t have a 9mm pistol strapped to my belt. Besides, I was happy never to set foot inside the Lucinda again.

“Do me a favor, though,” I said. “Could you turn off the flashers?”

The cop behind the wheel smiled and nodded. He understood. There might not have been a lot of foot traffic on the cusp of dawn, but there was still no need for me to look like a perp sitting in the backseat. Off went the flashers.

The two disappeared into the hotel as I did my best to keep my eyes open. I was exhausted, my lack of sleep suddenly crashing down on me. Point being, I had no idea how much time had passed when I was jolted awake by the sound of knuckles rapping on the window. Kiefer’s doppelganger was waving for me to join him on the curb.

I stepped out, glancing quickly at his name plate. OFFICER BOWMAN, it read. The moment seemed to suggest that it was time I knew that.

“Was the other guy in the room gone?” I asked.

He nodded. It was the way he nodded, though. There was something else, more to it.

“How long did you wait before you called this in?” he asked.

“I didn’t wait,” I said. “It was right away.”

He nodded again. The same kind of nod.

“Follow me,” he said.

So much for my never setting foot in the Lucinda again.

I followed Officer Bowman through the lobby, where his partner was questioning — who else? — the wary-eyed woman in the turquoise blazer behind the front desk. I kept waiting for her to glare at me as we passed by, but it didn’t happen.

On the ride up in the elevator, I kept waiting for Bowman to give some clue about what was going on. But that didn’t happen, either.

We walked the long, beige hallway in silence, and as we reached the door of room 1701, he stepped inside first and immediately spun around to look at me. Only in hindsight did I realize what he was doing. Gauging my reaction.

I turned and stared into the bathroom, my jaw literally dropping. It was as if nothing had happened.

The light was working. The hair dryer was unplugged and sitting on the shelf beneath the sink, the cord neatly wound. There wasn’t a drop of water on the floor or in the tub.

Also not in the tub? The guy who killed Claire. He was gone.

I stared back at Bowman, who was still watching me like I was a science experiment, or more accurately, a science experiment with the title “Is This Man Telling the Truth?”

“You don’t seriously think I’ve made this up, do you?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he said. “That would make you crazy.”

Of course, the way he said it made clear that he was leaving the door open. Speaking of which...

“You did notice the sheared-off door guard behind me, right?” I asked. I certainly had as I walked in.

Bowman nodded. “Yep, saw it,” he said. “I can also feel the squish beneath my feet. The carpet’s definitely wet.”

He left it at that. I knew what he was thinking, though, if only because I was thinking the same thing. There was no dead body in the bathtub, and the combination of a sheared-off door guard and some wet carpet didn’t prove there ever had been.

“They must have moved the body and cleaned up afterward,” I said.

“They?”

“I heard only one voice through the door, but that doesn’t mean there was only one person.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t,” said Bowman before checking his watch. “And about how much time would they have had to do this?”

“Apparently enough.”

But even I was doing the math in my head. Ten minutes. Fifteen, tops. I looked back into the bathroom at the neatly folded dry towels, and especially the dry floor. In addition to the magic pliers, was there also a magic mop?

I could see how Bowman or anyone else would be a bit skeptical. That didn’t concern me. Truth was, it didn’t matter how it’d been done. It had been done. Quickly. Quietly. Professionally. And that combination could mean only one thing. The story that Claire was working on was getting bigger by the minute.