James Patterson - Murder House

All my body weight, plowing into Aiden, both hands gripping his wrist, sending Aiden and me over Justin to the floor. I hit the floor again, hard, colorful bursts dancing around my eyes.

But I have the knife.

Behind me, the shuffling of feet. With everything I can muster, I manage to crane my neck around.

Just as Aiden Willis is climbing up on the couch and jumping out through the window, the same way he came.

Justin moans. Blood coming from his forehead, his breathing shallow.

Around us, chaos. A piece of lawn furniture, the one that helped Aiden break through the window, the one that smacked me in the temple, lying by the bookcase. The glass table overturned. Food everywhere. Broken glass littering the couch and floor.

And blood. Justin’s blood. And mine, some of which is spilling into my eyes right now from the head wound.

“Are you... okay?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, short of breath. He props himself up on his elbows. Several cuts across his cheeks and forehead from the glass. Nothing too serious, nothing life-threatening. “How about you?”

“Were you cut?” I crawl toward him. “By the knife, I mean.”

He shakes his head. He looks about as stunned as I am. “What the hell just happened?”

The wind gusting through the open, shattered window.

“We have to call the police,” I say, just now catching my breath.

“But...” Justin forces himself to sit up, grimacing. “If there’s a warrant for your arrest, you can’t be—”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to report this.”

He reaches over and grabs my hand. I squeeze back. After a moment, we help each other to our feet. He brings me close, hugging me, our chests heaving, our hearts pounding in tandem.

“I’m... so sorry, Justin,” I say into his chest. “I brought this to you. I never should have come here.”

“No, no.” He cradles my head with his hand. “I want you here.”

“I think... you just saved my life,” I say.

“I’m just glad you’re okay. And here I told you... you were safe.”

I close my eyes and nestle in the comfort of his arms.

I was safe. Or at least, I should have been safe. How did Aiden even know I was here? I wasn’t followed in my car. I checked the rearview mirror the whole time for patrol cars. The streets were deserted. Nobody followed me by car.

So how did Aiden know?

Nobody knew I was coming here.

Then my eyes pop open.

A chill courses through me.

One person knew.

The East Hampton Town Police respond to Justin’s call. I know some members of that force from working on the multijurisdictional drug task force, but I don’t know any of the ones who arrive at the scene. It’s clear the officers know who I am when I give them my name, thanks to the Noah Walker trial. They are respectful and courteous as they scribble their notes and take photographs and scan the living room and backyard for evidence.

I sit quietly for hours, letting them do their work, waiting for one of them to inform me that there’s a warrant outstanding for my arrest, or an APB, from the STPD. But it doesn’t happen. No handcuffs come out. No perp walk. They just promise to keep us updated on their investigation and leave.

An armed invasion in East Hampton is something the cops take seriously, so I know they’re going to be looking hard for Aiden now.

Which also means that, if Aiden has a single functioning brain cell in his head, he’s in the wind now. Gone. Skedaddled.

“I’m sorry about this,” I say to Justin. “He was after me, not you. I brought him to your house.”

“He brought himself.” Justin touches my arm. “You’re the good guy, remember?”

Not sure about that. I’d say Justin’s the good guy. And dammit, I really wish my feelings for him went deeper than that. I wish I could manufacture some chemistry, a spark between us.

The wind whips up, straining the large pieces of cardboard that we used to cover the shattered window.

“I have to go,” I say.

“Stay. It’s after four in the morning. And you can’t go home.”

I probably can go home, actually. Apparently, Isaac’s plan to “take care of” me doesn’t include issuing a warrant for my arrest for breaking into Aiden’s house.

So yeah, I can probably go home. But I won’t. Not yet.

Aiden’s surely not home, after all. What better time to visit his house again?

I park my car on the shoulder of the road, just as I did last night, and I approach his house with caution, just as before.

First blush, I see nothing different about Aiden’s house. The front window through which I climbed, almost grabbing Aiden as he raced past me to his bedroom, is still open. If Aiden had come back, surely he would have closed it.

Same deal in the backyard. His bedroom window still open.

Isaac didn’t close up the house? Not his job, I suppose. And he was probably distracted.

Or maybe not. Maybe he knew I’d come back. Maybe I’m walking into a trap.

The front window would be an easier entry point, but the backyard is more private, nothing but a sloping yard and swaying trees, and total darkness.

I climb into the bedroom and stand for a moment, silent. Hard to hear much of anything inside the house. Wind coming in from windows in the front and back, simultaneously, like the entire house is whistling to me.

Daylight will come in an hour. I want to be home by then.

Start with the bedroom. A battered dresser with a framed photograph on top, one of those side-by-side frames. On the left, a beautiful young woman, probably in her late teens, with strawberry-blond hair and elegant features. On the right, the same woman, propped up against pillows in a hospital bed, her face pale, her hair unkempt, no makeup, but a radiant, beaming smile as she holds a newborn. Pretty much a standard postbirth hospital photo.

I remove the hospital photo and flip it over. On the back, handwritten in cheap blue ink:

Aiden and Mommy, 6-8-81

Aiden as a baby. And this very attractive woman, his mother. He doesn’t look a thing like her.

Then again, I haven’t seen the father yet.

I replace the photos and open some drawers, having no interest in his clothes or underwear but hoping for anything else that might be tucked away in here.

When I get to the final drawer, I don’t find clothes at all. I find a small photo album, a cheap one you’d get at a convenience store with plastic sleeves to hold the photos.

Most of them are of his mother, going back as far as the hospital photo. Little Aiden, with those raccoon eyes even as an infant, appears once or twice. And I get the first shot of the father, his cheek pressed against Aiden’s, smiling for the camera. A strong resemblance to Aiden, deep-set eyes and straw-colored hair, not by any means a handsome man.

But the mother dominates these photos. About twenty photos in all. Starting with the hospital and moving forward, chronologically I assume, but—

But she looks different as time moves on in these photos. Not older, but different. Hard to tell how much she has aged — not too much, a year or two, at most — but a definite change. Her eyes darker, deeper. Looking more gaunt, more tired.

Sick? Can’t tell, but — darker, for sure. More troubled, more weary, as the photos progress, like I’m watching the story of her decline in time-lapse photography.

And then the last photo, her head turned from the camera, her hand raised in a stop gesture, as if she didn’t want to be photographed.

And a baby bump, unmistakable, protruding from her belly, beneath her black T-shirt.

My heartbeat kicks up. A second child?