James Patterson - Murder House

Taking another look at my phone, I see that the chief actually called me twice, once a minute ago and once twenty-four minutes ago.

Still standing outside the car, I dial him back.

“Jenna Rose,” he answers, the only person who’s ever incorporated my middle name when addressing me. The only one who’s lived to tell about it, anyway. “I was about to give up on you.”

“How can I help you, Chief? Were you looking for my recipe for grilled asparagus? It’s not that hard. Just grill the asparagus.”

“No, missy, not just now. You wanted to work a homicide, right?”

I spring to attention. “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”

“Then get your butt in gear, Detective,” he says. “You just got a homicide. One you may never forget.”

“It’s my job. It’s not like I have a choice,” I say to Matty, his knuckles white on the leather steering wheel of his Beemer as we drive along the back roads. “A woman was murdered.”

“It can’t wait until after dinner? She’ll still be dead.”

I close my eyes. “You didn’t really just say that, did you?”

The back roads are narrow and winding and unforgiving, two lanes at best, with no shoulders. Driving them in the dark is even worse. But without the back roads, the locals in Bridgehampton would collectively commit suicide during the tourist season, when the principal artery — Main Street or, if you prefer, Montauk Highway — is clogged like a golf ball in a lower intestine.

“I passed up Yankees tickets on the third-base line,” he says. “Sabathia against Beckett in game one.”

I know. I watched it in the bar. Sabathia got tagged for six earned runs in five innings. “It’s my job,” I say again. “What am I sup—”

“No, it’s not.”

“What do you mean, it’s not—”

“Not tonight it’s not!”

We find our destination, lit up by the STPD like a nighttime construction job, spotlights shining on the scene deep within the woods. The road has been reduced to one lane by traffic cones and flares.

Matty pulls up, puts it in park, and shifts in his seat to face me. “Don’t act like you have no choice. There are detectives on duty right now. You’re not one of them. You didn’t have to take this assignment. You wanted it.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Sorry about your Yankees tickets.”

“Jenna, c’mon.”

I step out of the Beemer and flash my badge to the uniform minding the perimeter. I dip under the crime-scene tape and watch my step as I walk through the woods, with their uneven footing and stray branches.

It’s a large lot, undeveloped land full of tall trees, with a FOR SALE sign near the road. Whoever did this picked a remote location.

Isaac Marks approaches me. “Bru-tal,” he says. “C’mon.” I follow him through the brush, my feet crunching leaves and twigs. “The guy who owns this lot found her,” he says. “Nice old guy, late seventies. He was stopping by for some routine maintenance and heard a swarm of insects buzzing around.”

I slow my approach when I see her. It’s hard to miss her, under the garish lighting. She looks artificial, like a museum exhibit — Woman in Repose, except in this case, it would be more like Woman with a tree stump through her midsection.

“Jesus,” I mumble.

The woman is naked, arms and legs splayed out, her head fallen back, as she lies suspended several feet off the ground, impaled on the trunk of a tree that has been shaved down to the point of a thick spear.

Technicians are working her over right now, photographing and gently probing her. The insects buzzing around her are fierce. She’s suffered some animal bites, too. That, plus the look of her skin, gives me an approximate window on time of death.

“She died... maybe one, two days ago,” I say.

Isaac looks at me. “Very good, Detective. At least that’s what the ME is saying at first glance. One to two days.”

“That’s a significant difference, one versus two days.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Two days ago,” I say, “Noah Walker was a free man. But one day ago, we took him into custody, and he couldn’t have done this.”

“You’re connecting this with Noah Walker? ” Isaac gives me a crosswise glance. “This is nothing like those murders.”

I move in for a closer look at the victim. This nameless woman, hardened and discolored now, with the ravages of nature having taken their toll, is hard to categorize. I’m thinking she’s pretty young, from the bone structure and lithe build. Early twenties, maybe, what appear to be nice features, and beautiful brown hair hanging down inches from the grass.

She was pretty. Before some monster impaled her on a wooden spear like a sacrificial offering to the gods, this woman was pretty.

“No ID yet,” says Isaac. “But we have a missing-persons from Sag Harbor that we think will check out. If it does, then this is...” He flips open a notepad and holds it in the artificial light. “Bonnie Stamos. Age twenty-four. Couple of arrests for take-a-wild-guess.”

“She was a working girl.” Not terribly surprising. The clients a prostitute serves come in all shapes and sizes, but it’s like I felt when I was on patrol, approaching a car I’d just pulled over — you’re never really sure what’s waiting for you.

“This is totally different than what we found on Ocean Drive,” Isaac says. “Those were a bloodbath. This thing is... what... posed, I guess. Dramatic. Like some ritual thing, some ancient Mayan ceremony. How do you connect these two crimes?”

I squat down next to the tree stump and gesture at it. “See the side of the tree and the surrounding grass and dirt?”

“I see blood everywhere, if that’s what you mean.”

“Exactly,” I say. “Blood everywhere. Her heart was still pumping. That’s how I connect these crimes.”

“Not following.”

“She was still alive when he did this, when he impaled her on the tree trunk.” I stand back up and feel a wave of nausea. “The symbolism was incidental, a means to an end,” I say. “He wanted her to die a slow death, Isaac. He wanted her to suffer.”

The chief has the porch light on for me when I walk up the steps to his house. The squad car that drove me here idles in the driveway. The door is open, and Uncle Lang has a bottle of gin and two glasses on the kitchen table. Dirty dishes are piled high in the sink just as they were earlier today, with evidence of meal choices — remnants of dried catsup or smears of brown gravy, a bit of hamburger. The floor could use a good wash, too. The clock on the wall says it’s almost two in the morning.

My uncle doesn’t look well. He’s gained a lot of weight since Aunt Chloe left him two years ago. His face is splotchy, broken capillaries on his prominent nose, his eyes rimmed with heavy bags. He’s wearing a wife-beater T-shirt that accentuates his added poundage, tufts of curly white chest hair peeking over the top.

“You don’t look good,” he says to me.

I kiss him on the forehead before I turn to the refrigerator. “I was just thinking the same about you. Still drinking, I see.” I take another glance into his refrigerator. The fruit container still hasn’t been touched, but a second square is missing from the pan of spinach lasagna.

I look back at him with an eyebrow raised.

“See?” he says. “I listen to you.”

“Yeah?” I take a seat across from him. “And if I look through your trash, will I find an entire square piece of lasagna, without a bite taken?”

“Now you’ve insulted me. I’m insulted.”

That’s not a denial. But I can’t spend every waking moment hectoring him.