James Patterson - Murder House

An initial buzz is kicking in from the wine, maybe loosening me up a little.

“I was working undercover,” I say. “Going after meth dealers. High up on the chain. I got close to the top guy.”

“How’d you do that? Get close to him.” He settles his elbows on the table.

“I slept with him,” I say. “I became his girlfriend.”

“Wow.” He leans back. “Wow.”

“Yeah, it was pretty intense. Only way to do it, though. These guys are wired tight. They don’t trust anybody. But when it comes to sex, they don’t use their brains so much.”

“That’s — that’s pretty — wow.”

“So anyway,” I say, “I came to find out that some of the people helping the boss were cops. There was a whole ring set up. The cops were running protection for the dealers. So I sent that information back to headquarters. I reported it. I made a big mistake, though.”

“What?”

“I didn’t report it to IAD. Internal Affairs.”

“Who’d you report it to?”

“My boss, my lieutenant.”

“Why was that a mistake?”

I gesture with my wineglass, take a sip. “Two days later, totally out of the blue, three cops are suddenly claiming that I skimmed off the top of a drug raid before I went undercover.”

“Skimmed off the...”

“They said I stole money and drugs from drug dealers. That I arrested them and only turned in some of the money and some of the drugs — kept the rest for myself.”

“That kind of thing happens?”

“It happens if you’re a dirty cop,” I say. “The drug dealers aren’t going to complain, right? If you’re busted, would you rather be busted with a thousand grams of cocaine and a hundred thousand dollars, or with ten grams and ten thousand bucks? Either way, you’re not getting any of it back. But you get a lesser sentence this way. It’s a pretty classic shakedown. If you’re a dirty cop.”

He nods slowly.

“Which I am not,” I say. “I touched a nerve in the department, I told the wrong person, and they wanted to silence me. So they trumped up these charges and gave me a choice — resign or go to prison.”

We don’t speak for a while. I drain my first glass of the Pinot. Easy, Murphy. Don’t let the emotions bubble to the surface.

“Do you regret it?” he asks.

I let out air. “Do I regret not staying and fighting for my job? Every single day.”

“But it was three cops against one,” he says.

I nod. “That’s what Lang said. He said I couldn’t beat those odds. He said, ‘Get out while you still have your badge, come work for me.’ So I did.”

“Well, I’m glad you did. Hope you like it here.”

I shrug. “I won’t be here much longer,” I say. “I’m just staying until I figure out who killed my uncle.”

His smile loses a few degrees of wattage. It seems he might have had some ideas about me. I figured I should let him know, up front, that I’m not in his long-term plans.

For the main course, I have scallops with sweet corn and shishito peppers. They are absolutely delicious — but really no better than the ones at Tasty’s.

“They get their seafood from the same place we do,” Justin says.

“Really? You guys and this restaurant?”

“Yeah,” he says, cocking his head, surprised at my surprise.

I put down my fork. “Your food is as good as this place’s,” I say. “But you can’t be operating Tasty’s at a profit with the prices you’re charging.”

“Who said I was operating at a profit?” He smiles and takes the last sip of his wine. He calls over the waiter and orders a second bottle.

“Okay, so what’s your angle?” I ask. “This whole man-of-the-people thing about not raising prices for ten years.”

“Angle? Why does there have to be an angle?”

I look him over. Good looks, private schools growing up, an expensive dinner tonight, a restaurant that loses money...

“I’m no saint,” he says. “We come close to breaking even some years. It’s... fun to have a place where everyone comes and enjoys themselves. It’s fun for me, too.”

“There’s gotta be something wrong with you,” I say. “Are you sure you’re not a serial killer or something?”

“I never said I wasn’t.” He smiles and wipes his mouth with his napkin. “You’ve been a cop too long, Jenna. You only see bad people. There are lots of good people in the world, too.”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe not everyone in this world has an angle. Maybe I’ve been so closed off in the cocoon of crime and punishment that I’ve lost sight of some things. Maybe losing my badge is a good thing.

Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Justin says, pulling his Jaguar up to the curb. It’s a nice ride, this car.

Nice dinner. Nice car. Nice guy.

“This was fun,” he says as he steps up onto the porch.

My cell phone vibrates in my purse.

I stand at my door, fishing for my keys.

“So listen.” Justin claps his hands together. “I had a great time. I had a... great time. It was a...”

“Great time?” I rise up on my toes and kiss him softly on the lips. He responds, but awkwardly, his hand touching my arm, unsure whether he should open his mouth.

Shy and clumsy.

“It was fun for me, too,” I say as we draw back. His face has lost a bit of color.

Very shy.

“Call me,” I say.

He nods, then cocks his head. “Why would I call you?”

I draw back. “Oh, I mean, if you want to... have dinner again.”

“We already had dinner. Why would we do it again?”

I stare at him, at a loss for words.

“Gotcha.” He breaks into laughter. “You should see the look on your face.”

Score one for him. He did get me. A little corny... but he got me.

“I will call you, Jenna. For sure.”

He pauses, like he’s thinking about another kiss, but he steps off the porch and heads to his car, whistling. I don’t know very many people who whistle. I don’t know anybody who whistles.

Snap assessment: nice guy, but not a lot of sparks.

Then again, that’s always been my problem. I look for chemistry right away and if I don’t feel it, I walk. Maybe that can develop over time. Maybe if I just let someone in... someone really nice...

Someone without an angle...

Justin drives away with a brief toot of his horn.

Yeah, I don’t know... maybe...

I walk inside my tornado of an apartment and fish my cell phone out of my purse.

The call was from Lauren Ricketts. I punch her up and she answers on the second ring.

“Murphy,” she says.

“Ricketts. What’s up?”

Suddenly my enjoyable Saturday night with Justin is over, and I’m slipping back into the darkness, the quagmire, slogging through evidence and driving myself crazy.

“I finished going through criminal complaints and missing-persons reports,” she says. “I went back to the eighties and got through the mid-nineties.”

“And?” I say, my heartbeat kicking up. “Did you find any criminal complaints?”

“No. Nobody ever filed a criminal charge against Holden the Sixth.”

“Shit.” I really thought that was promising. “And what about unsolveds or missing-persons bulletins?”

“No unsolveds that look interesting, not from that time period.”

“And no missing-persons reports that looked interesting?”

“Just one from 1994,” she says. “I guess it would go under the category of interesting. I wish you’d prepared me for it.”

“Prepared you for what?” I ask. “Who was the missing person?”

A pause on the other end of the line.

“You don’t know?” she asks.

“Ricketts, just freakin’ tell me,” I say. “Who went missing?”