James Patterson - Murder House

“I’m serious, though,” Uncle Lang says. “You look worn out. Are you still having nightmares?”

I shrug. It’s been a thing, since I returned to Bridgehampton. Usually they come at night, the sensation of choking, the terror, the desperate cries. What happened to me today, at 7 Ocean Drive, was the first time it ever happened during daylight.

Lang pours me an inch of gin and slides the glass across the table. “Maybe you never should have come back here.”

The thought has crossed my mind. It leads to another thought. “Why did my family stop coming here when I was a kid?” I ask.

The chief shrugs. “A story for another time.”

“So there’s a story . Something happened?”

Lang casts a fleeting glance at me, then deflects. “Did you move the body tonight?”

I nod. “We had to cut the tree from underneath her. Didn’t want to separate her from the trunk yet. Never know what forensics might pick up.”

“Good. Good that you moved her. I don’t need to see photos in the Patch tomorrow. This is a dead hooker, Detective. Not a dead hooker who was split in half on a tree stump like some human shish kebab . Understand me? A dead hooker, to the media. That’s it. Just another hooker adiosed in the Hamptons. That’s a one-day story.”

A one-day story. Appearances. Politics. There’s an election coming up, and the town supervisor is already feeling heat from the Zach Stern / Melanie Phillips murders. Another sensational murder would just add pressure. It’s good police procedure, too, not mentioning gory details to the press. In Manhattan, that plan never worked; the NYPD leaked like a colander. But here, it might.

“Your case has nothing to do with Noah Walker,” Lang says.

Oh, Isaac, you little shit. Talk about leaks. No wonder the chief wanted to meet me tonight. Isaac must have sneaked away from me in a free moment and called him. So now I know where his loyalties lie. That little twerp.

“Too early to tell,” I say.

The chief casts his eyes in my direction. He takes a sip of Beefeater and lets out a breath. “A few hours ago, you thought Noah was an innocent man, wrongly accused. Now you like him for the carnage in the woods, too.”

“I don’t like him or dislike him. Not yet. But it’s possible the prostitute was killed while Noah was still a free man, not yet in custody. I’m just playing all the angles. That’s what I’m paid to do.”

He makes a noise as he finishes another sip. “No, you’re paid to do what I tell you to do.”

“I’m a detective,” I say. “Once in a while, I try to detect.”

The gin is sharp on my tongue, hot down my throat, leaving a delicious citrus aftertaste. Tastes better than it should. I take the bottle and pour myself another. “Let me ask you a question, Chief.”

He shows me a wary look but doesn’t speak.

“Why did we go in so hard on the arrest?”

“What do you mean?” He pours himself another drink.

“When we arrested Walker. The SWAT team. The automatic weapons. We were braced for a firefight. Noah didn’t have any weapons.”

The chief’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t make eye contact with me. “Missy, you’re lucky you’re my favorite niece.”

“I’m your only niece.”

“Don’t fuck with my case, Jenna.” He slams down his glass. “I’ve got Noah Walker dead to rights. I need that solved. I’ve got orders from on high. You start tying this dead-hooker murder in with it, then we have to turn your report over to Walker’s lawyer, and he’ll play with that window of time — maybe two days, maybe three, maybe Noah was already in custody when the hooker got hers — and suddenly Clarence Darrow is saying that one person did both murders, and that one person couldn’t have been Noah Walker.”

“And what if that’s true?”

My uncle gives me a look that I remember seeing as a child, that look an adult gives when a kid is being adorably precocious, a combination of pride and annoyance. But in this case, the annoyance is outweighing the pride.

“Stay away from Noah Walker. Don’t make your case something it’s not.”

“Just ‘another hooker adiosed in the Hamptons,’ right?” I push myself out of the chair. “I’m not going to do it. I’m following the leads wherever they go. You don’t like it, relieve me.”

The chief looks exhausted. He gestures toward me, the sign of the cross, absolution from a priest. “You are hereby relieved of any responsibility for the dead hooker in the woods.”

“That’s bullshit, Lang!” With the back of my hand, I whack my glass off the table, smashing it against the sink.

“Yeah? You wanna go for a suspension, too?”

“Sure!”

“Great! You’re suspended without pay for a week.”

“Only a week?” I yell, lost in my rage now, spinning out of control.

“Fine, then, a month! How about dismissal? You want me to can you?” The chief rises from his chair, directing a finger at me. “And before you answer that, missy, remember that being a cop is all you know. And I gave you a second chance. You’d think that would buy me just a little bit of loyalty from you, but oh, no!”

I shake my head, fuming. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

He waves me away with a hand. “One-month suspension, Detective, effective immediately. Now get out of my house.”

For the first time in over a week, he breathes fresh air, he walks in grass, he wears his own clothes, he sees the sun, not over a concrete wall for one hour a day but out in the open. Noah Walker takes a moment to savor it before he steps into the minibus that will transport him to the train station for passage from Riverhead to Bridgehampton.

When he’s home, he first takes a shower — no fancy showerhead or immaculate tub, but at least a healthy flow of water, without mold on the fixtures, without raw sewage bubbling from the drain, without having to look over his shoulder to wonder whether he was going to have an unexpected visitor. The biggest problem with Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead was the temporary nature of it all. Nobody in Riverhead had been convicted of a crime — if they had, they’d be in prison. Riverhead was just a pretrial holding facility for people with unaffordable bail or no bail at all, and thus there was nothing in the way of remedial programs or education, no recreational facilities, no pretense of nutritious meals. It was just walls, a handful of books, a chaplain on Sunday, shit for food, and an overpopulation of pissed-off detainees. He met someone inside, a guy named Rufus, who’d been in county lockup for over four years waiting for his trial.

None of that for Noah. He’s demanded a speedy trial, his constitutional right. He can’t stomach the thought of waiting months, even years, wondering.

Out of the shower, hair dripping wet, feeling warm and refreshed, he picks up his cell phone and hits the speed dial.

“Are you out?” Paige says breathlessly when she answers.

“I’m out,” he says, thanks to her, and the checking account that bears only her name, that her husband doesn’t control. “I’m home now.”

“I can... I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He feels a rush, a longing for her, tempered with fear. “Are you sure? What about—”

“I don’t care. I’ll figure something out. I’ll tell him something. I don’t think he knows about us. He’s never said a word—”

“He knows about us,” Noah says. Of course her husband knows. That has to be what’s going on here. John Sulzman is a man of boundless influence. Influential enough to snap his fingers and have someone thrown in prison? Noah’s no expert on backroom deals, but he doesn’t doubt it.