James Patterson - Murder House

“You sure about Aiden?” she asks again, pacing the room, disappearing into her bedroom and coming out again.

“Am I sure Aiden’s not a killer? Yes, I’m sure. Why?”

She shakes her head absently, still pacing. “I’ve been having these... nightmares. Ever since I came here.”

“What kind of nightmares?”

She throws up her hands. “Like I’m trapped. Enclosed. Pleading to get out. And there’s someone above me, a boy, reaching down for me, going to hurt me. And I’m begging, Please, let me go, don’t hurt me, that kind of thing.”

That explains the sleep deprivation he’s noticed since he met her. She must have had a doozy of a nightmare last night, because it looks like she didn’t sleep much at all.

“Last night, Aiden showed up in the dream.”

“Aiden was the boy?” Noah nods. “That’s because you have Aiden on the brain, Murphy. You think there’s some meaning to your dream? Like, you’re assuming the role of one of the victims? Or you’re... seeing the future or something?”

“How the hell should I know?” She’s still pacing; then she stops and puts her hands on the wall. “Sorry. I don’t know. I... there’s probably no meaning to it. I don’t know. It’s just...”

It’s just making you crazy, he thinks.

She turns and looks at Noah, sizes him up, narrows her eyes.

“What?” he asks.

“The BB gun shooting at the school,” she says. “Back when you were a kid.”

“Oh, come on, Murphy.”

“I’m shaking trees,” she says.

“You’re what?”

“Tell me.” She walks toward him, then stops short, her hands on her hips. She could practically fall over. “Someone did it with you. A second shooter. And then set you up to take the fall. And you let him get away with it. Some kind of... code with you. Never rat out your friends or something.”

Noah looks down, pinches the bridge of his nose. All these years, all the investigation that took place back when it happened — everyone was sure it was Noah and Noah alone. Nobody ever questioned that. Any evidence to the contrary was swept aside, and the unanimous conclusion was that Noah shot all those kids on the playground, all by his lonesome self.

Not until sixteen, almost seventeen years later, when Detective Jenna Murphy from Manhattan came along and patched together a couple of interviews and some dry reports and reached a different conclusion.

“If you’re right,” he says, “and I live by the code that you don’t rat out your friends, why would I rat them out now?”

She works her jaw, her deep-set eyes burrowing into him.

“What’s it matter, Murphy? It doesn’t have anything to do with—”

“You were set up,” she says. “You were set up for Melanie’s and Zach’s murders. You were set up for the murder in the woods, the hooker, Bonnie Stamos. You were set up for my uncle’s—”

Her voice falters. Her whole body is trembling now.

She clears her throat hard, like an engine struggling to start. “And you were set up to take the fall with the BB gun shooting.”

Noah shakes his head. What happened in that school yard doesn’t have anything to do with the murders. It was close to seventeen years ago now. She doesn’t need to know this.

“This guy is smart,” she says. “He’s careful. He might be deranged, he might be schizophrenic or a psychopath, but he does not make mistakes. He handed you to us as a suspect. Shit, I almost shot you myself, I was so sure you were guilty.”

That’s true. Something he’ll never forget, when she broke into his house after her uncle was attacked.

“Look, I’m grasping at straws, I’m looking for anything I can,” she says. “You said you wanted to help. You gave me this bullshit pep talk about—”

“I do want to help.” Noah slings his bag off his shoulder. “You didn’t even ask me why I’m here. Remember the research assignment you gave me?”

Jenna’s eyes move to the satchel.

“You found something,” she says.

“It’s not much,” Noah tells me, opening his satchel. “I searched all the public records. Turns out I knew one of the clerks there, someone who grew up down the street from me. She helped.”

He removes a manila folder from his bag. “Holden the Sixth was part of three lawsuits in Suffolk County that we know of,” he says.

“Anything on paternity?” I ask.

“No, but my friend at the clerk’s office said, a lot of times, paternity lawsuits are filed under seal. She said that means the—”

“The names are redacted from the lawsuit,” I say. “Kept out of the public domain. So it’s possible there was a paternity suit, but we wouldn’t know it.”

“Yeah. I made copies of the three lawsuits I did find. They aren’t criminal cases. They’re civil. One is a property dispute and one is a defamation suit, whatever that means, and the last one is a lawsuit for assault and battery brought by a neighbor, some guy who said Holden punched him at a party.”

He hands me copies of the three civil complaints. He’s no lawyer, and neither am I, though a cop knows a thing or two about the legal system.

“Nobody claiming rape, nobody claiming paternity,” I say. “So we don’t know anything.”

“We know one thing.” Noah takes the papers and flips through each of them to a particular page.

He hands them to me. Each of these lawsuits has a sheet attached to the front of it, with the names of the attorneys representing the plaintiff and defendant.

“We know the name of Holden’s lawyer,” Noah says.

The waiter opens the bottle of wine and hands the cork to Justin, who defers to me. The waiter pours an inch of Pinot into my glass and I swirl it, sniff it, taste it, and nod my approval.

“Cheers,” says Justin, looking very nice in a white shirt with an open collar, and a blue sport coat. We clink our glasses.

It’s a nice place near the intersection of Main Street and the turnpike — not very far, really, from Justin’s own restaurant, Tasty’s. But this is more than a slight step up from his diner — dark oak and caramel leather, dim lighting, people dressed as formally as it gets in the Hamptons.

“What made you change your mind?” he asks me.

I shrug. “My friend told me I should have dinner with you.”

That, and I’ve gone about seventy-two hours straight obsessing about the case. A little battery recharging may be in order.

“Well, I’m glad.” He takes a drink of the wine. “Hey, this is good.”

“It is good.” If I saw the price correctly on the menu, this bottle was over two hundred dollars, a 2011 Pinot from the Russian River Valley. All I know about wine is what I learned from Matty, who would always line up the year it was bottled with the vintage and location to find the “perfect” bottle to pair with our meal.

“I gotta say, I don’t know anything about wine,” says Justin. “I’m the kind of guy who picks based on the label.” He laughs at himself.

“Me too.”

An awkward silence follows. He seems a little nervous. Not so adept at small talk, that’s for sure. But that part, I like. I’ve had enough of the smooth talkers.

Still, with two people who aren’t good at chatter, there is a palpable sense of relief when the appetizers arrive — chilled zucchini soup for me, burrata with peaches for him.

“So what brought you to the Hamptons?” he asks.

I stop on that one. “I thought everyone knew about that,” I say.

“Well, I remember the trial,” he says. “Some trouble you had with the NYPD. But I always figure, there’s two sides to every story. I mean, if you want.”