James Patterson - Murder House

He reads through the packet of information behind the letter — the hospital records, the county adoption records, the photographs.

Noah goes upstairs to his bedroom loft, finds the handgun he hasn’t held in years. Checks it for ammunition. Stuffs it in his pants. Puts on a clean shirt, pulls it down over the gun.

He grabs his leather jacket on the way out and hops on his Harley.

Her apartment isn’t far. And she’s definitely not home. She’s in jail, stuck on a two-million-dollar bond.

He parks his Harley outside her apartment and approaches it. It’s broad daylight, and cars occasionally whisk by on Main Street. But no pedestrians approach.

His heartbeat speeds up. Should he do it?

Yes.

He slams against the door, four times, five times, violent thrusts, wood splintering, sharp pain in his shoulder, until enough of the door frame has been compromised that he can reach inside and unlock the dead bolt and open the knob from the inside.

He pushes open the battered door and he’s inside Jenna Murphy’s apartment.

A mess. A train wreck.

A timeline, on her wall, covering all of the murders. Right. He’s seen that before.

But there’s something he hasn’t seen before. On her desk, beneath the timeline. A newspaper clipping, jagged edges, still with tape attached to all four corners, as if she removed it from something:

Noah’s heart skips a beat.

She knows, he thinks. She already knows .

Knowing what he has to do now. Wishing it hadn’t come to this.

He was really starting to like Jenna Murphy.

Another day in this cramped, drafty jail cell. A special kind of torture for me, listening to the hustle and bustle one floor above me, hearing the police department at work, reminding me of how far I’ve fallen in such a short time.

Isaac wanted it that way. He normally would transfer me to the Suffolk County Jail after my bond hearing, where I’d be placed in administrative segregation because I’m a former cop, who can’t be put in with ordinary inmates. But the jail is overcrowded, which gave Isaac the excuse to keep me here, so close and yet so far from the job I once had, the job I loved.

Footsteps. Somebody approaching my cell. It’s not lunch. I ate a half hour ago. Tea and crumpets, maybe? A complimentary massage?

No, and no.

It’s Isaac, staring at me, looking... not so happy. I mean, he’s not Mr. Sunshine on a good day, but... why shouldn’t he be happy? He should be dancing a jig, the way things are going.

He produces a key from behind his back and opens the door. He walks in and sizes me up. I try to put on a brave front, to look like I’m holding up much better than I really am. But I can’t hide the dark circles under my eyes, and I haven’t showered in two days; my hair is flat and oily. My clothes look exactly as they should — like I’ve slept in them for two nights.

He doesn’t just look unhappy. He looks like he just swallowed a bug.

Why the long face, Isaac?

“You have the right to remain silent,” he says to me. And then he runs through the rest of the Miranda warnings. I could say them backward by now.

“Why are you Mirandizing me?” I ask.

“I want you to acknowledge I’ve made you aware of your rights,” he says.

“Fine. Done.”

But fresh Miranda warnings? Only one reason for that.

He wants to question me on a new topic.

“What happened in 1994?” he asks.

I draw back. Why is he asking me about 1994? When I was just a kid. The year that thing happened, when I disappeared, only to be found on the beach by 7 Ocean Drive. The day my parents whisked me away from the Hamptons, never to return during my childhood.

Seven hours of hell, Aunt Chloe called it.

“There was a missing-persons report that summer,” he says. “It lasted less than a day. I saw it myself. July—”

“I have nothing to say to you, Isaac. Zilch.”

Isaac steps back. He can’t be surprised that I’d clam up. His face turns tomato red.

“I just want you to know,” he says, “that I know you’re behind this. I don’t know what kind of crap you’re pulling here, but I’m going to figure it out. You may have won this battle, but you won’t win the war.”

What the hell is he talking about? What battle did I win? As far as I can tell, right now I’m getting the royal crap beaten out of me.

He opens his hand. “You’re free to leave,” he says.

Oh. Justin came through with the money that quickly? Quicker than he thought he could.

But this doesn’t seem right. Isaac doesn’t have any handcuffs.

There’s a protocol when you bond out. You’re transported to the sheriff, who makes arrangements for your home confinement, gets a list of addresses for doctors and lawyers and grocery stores so they can input the coordinates into the GPS. Then someone fits the ankle bracelet on you.

But until then, you’re still locked up. You’re handcuffed and transported.

“I said you’re free to leave,” he says. “You’re being released.”

“I don’t understand.”

Isaac shoots me a look. He thinks I do understand. He thinks I’ve pulled some kind of fast one, that I’m just playing dumb.

“You’re no longer under arrest for the murders of Dede Paris and Annie Church,” he says.

My head spins, some strange version of hope floating through me.

“The DNA came back on the murder weapon,” he says. “None of the blood on the knife matches those girls. Their stab wounds don’t match up with the knife blade, either. That knife wasn’t used to kill Dede and Annie.”

I stand up for the first time, unsteady, certain I’m not hearing this correctly. A bloody knife, with both Aiden’s and my fingerprints on it, but...

“We did get matches on the blood, though,” says Isaac. “Not Dede or Annie, but two matches. One of the matches was you, Murphy.”

Like the floor has dropped out from beneath me, like I’m spinning, falling...

“My... blood?”

My blood on the knife? My prints and my blood?

“And... who else’s blood?” I manage. “You said... two matches.”

“You know,” says Isaac, fuming. “You damn well know. Tell me, Murphy. Tell me everything.”

But I can’t. I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell is going on.

“That knife wasn’t used to kill Annie and Dede,” says Isaac. “It was the knife used to kill Holden Dahlquist the Sixth, on July 13, 1994. The same day that you went missing for seven hours.”

I stumble out of the police station with a bag holding my cell phone, wallet, keys.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know where to go.

I look at my hand, at the inch-long scar across my palm. The only injury they found on me, Aunt Chloe said, after I went missing for seven hours and then was found on the beach, otherwise unharmed.

That scar must have come from the knife. The knife that had my fingerprints on it. It cut my hand. I must have touched it, too.

My prints, my blood.

On the knife that Holden VI used to kill himself.

On July 13, 1994.

I was there. I was there when it happened.

What the hell happened that day?

Aiden, I think. I need to find Aiden.

But how? And whom can I trust at this point? Not Noah. Not Ricketts, not anymore.

Only one person I can think of.

I make the call, and not fifteen minutes later, Justin’s Jaguar pulls up in front of the substation.

He pops out. “What happened? How did you get out?”

I shake my head. It’s a long story. A story I don’t even understand.