James Patterson - Second Honeymoon

“Keep searching,” I said. “It’s small, but I’m sure it’s still there.”

The words were barely out of my mouth before he hit paydirt.

“Got it!” he practically shouted, so excited.

I lowered Max to the floor. He turned, opening his palm. The layer of dust notwithstanding, it was exactly as I’d left it fifteen years ago. The cork from the bottle of Champagne that Susan and I shared that night.

John Jr. leaned in to take a closer look. He didn’t say a word.

“Can you guys read it?” I asked.

Max placed the cork between his thumb and forefinger, spinning it slightly until he could see the date. JANUARY 14, 1998, I’d written in black felt-tip marker. Followed by SHE SAID YES!

Then Max saw what Susan had written. “Is that Mom’s handwriting?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Hi, kids!” he read aloud. His jaw dropped; he couldn’t believe it.

“It was her idea that one day we’d bring our children back here,” I said. “She thought it would be cool to show you this.”

I looked over at John Jr., who still hadn’t said a word. Now he couldn’t. He was too busy pretending it wasn’t a tear that had just fallen from his right eye. He wiped it away so fast that only I saw it, not his little brother.

Without a word, I reached out and gave him a hug. I squeezed hard. He squeezed back even harder. That was a first.

“So, like, what do we do with this, Dad?” asked Max. “Can we keep it?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Sure,” I said. “You guys hold on to it, okay?”

“Or maybe we can put it back,” said John Jr. softly. “You know, where it’s always been.”

I turned to Max, who wasn’t so sure. He was biting his lower lip.

“Your brother might have a good idea, buddy,” I said. “There’s something comforting about knowing the cork will always be here. It’s like a great memory you can keep forever.”

I watched as Max’s face suddenly lit up. Now it was my turn to cry.

“Yeah,” he said. “Kind of like Mom, right?”

Chapter 46

TRUE TO MY word, I got Max and his brother back to camp in time for pepperoni pizza night. I should’ve grabbed a slice for myself. Less than halfway home, I was starving. Who knew all this catharsis stuff would give me such an appetite?

Salvation came soon enough with a place off the Taconic State Parkway called the Heavenly Diner. A handmade sign in the window read SINNERS WELCOME, TOO! Nice touch.

I passed on one of their blue vinyl booths for a seat at the counter and promptly ordered the Lipitor Special: a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate milk shake, extra thick.

“Coming right up,” said the seasoned waitress, whose blond wig needed a little tug to the left, to put it politely.

She shuffled off and I reached for my cell to check my e-mail. Nothing pressing. Unless, that is, you count that dead uncle I apparently have in Nigeria who left me thirty-five million dollars.

I was about to slip the phone back into my pocket when it rang in my hands. The caller ID didn’t come up with a name, but I recognized the number. It was police commissioner Eldridge down in Turks and Caicos.

“Hey, Joe,” I said.

We were now on a first-name basis with each other. In fact, he even threw out a “Johnny-o” at me the last time we spoke. That’s when I asked if he could find out how many Chinese passports had entered his country over the past couple of weeks.

The results were in.

“Seven,” said Eldridge.

A billion Chinese people in the world and only seven had traveled to Turks and Caicos. Oddly enough, that sounded about right.

“Anyone jump out at you?” I asked.

“What is it your Sarah Palin says up there? You betcha .”

There were three Chinese couples—six people total—who arrived on three separate days, he explained. In each case, the hotel they listed on the customs declaration was the hotel at which they stayed. He’d checked it out.

“Not that the killer had to be staying at the same resort as Ethan and Abigail Breslow,” he acknowledged. “But guess who was?”

That’s right. Contestant number seven.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“His name is Huang Li,” he said. “He checked into the Governor’s Club two days before the murders.”

“When did he check out?”

“Two days after.”

“Do we know anything else?” I asked.

“Not really. A pool guy remembered seeing him, but that’s it so far. I’m having to conduct these interviews off campus, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ll look into the guy from here, see what I can dig up.”

“Let’s hope it’s more than I can find,” he said. “Of course, with all this I’m assuming that where the Breslows were honeymooning was public knowledge, right?”

I didn’t answer. In fact, I barely heard him. He might as well have been the adult in a Peanuts cartoon.

“John?” he asked. “You there?”

I was there, all right. But from the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw something that made me realize there was somewhere else I needed to be.

“Joe, I’ve got to call you back,” I said.

“Is everything all right?”

“I’m not sure.”

Chapter 47

THE PATHOLOGIST DIDN’T even bother to look up from his lunch. “You’re a friend of Larry’s, right?” he asked me.

Truth be told, I didn’t know Larry from Adam or the man in the moon, but I did know the woman with the Joint Terrorism Task Force who worked with Larry at the New York Port Authority, whose brother at the NYPD forensics lab was a friend of the guy in the Queens medical examiner’s office sitting before me at his desk with a diet peach Snapple in one hand and a half-eaten ham sandwich on rye in the other.

Call it six degrees of O’Hara needs a favor.

All starting with two words I saw on the television perched above the counter at the Heavenly Diner.

A CNN reporter was standing outside Kennedy Airport. The sound was muted, but the headline in big white type above the news crawl was screaming, at least to me. NEWLYWEDS DEAD.

As soon as I hung up with Joe, I immediately began calling in favors from my days with the NYPD. I needed details. I needed access.

Maybe these honeymooners dying so soon on the heels of the Breslows was nothing more than a coincidence, but as I learned the gruesome details of what happened at that Delta terminal, it was easy to think otherwise.

The hard part would be getting confirmation. Fast.

The totally uninterested pathologist—officially the deputy chief medical examiner—finally looked up at me in his cramped office in Queens. His name was Dr. Dimitri Papenziekas, and he was a Greek with a Noo Yawk attitude. “Hey, I’m not freakin’ Superman,” he informed me.

Yeah, and I’m not the Green Hornet. So now that we have that settled …

“How fast?” I asked. “That’s all I need to know.”

How fast could he complete a test to determine if cyclosarin was present in the airport couple’s bodies?

“Tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

“How about tonight?”

How about you go screw yourself? said his expression. And that was screw spelled with an f , by the way.

“Okay, okay…make it tomorrow morning,” I said as if I were the one doing him the favor.

Dimitri took a bite of the ham sandwich, his head bobbing in thought as he chewed.

“Fine, tomorrow morning,” he said. Then he wagged his finger. “Just don’t be one of those guys who call me in a few hours to see how it’s going. That’s when I really take my time.”

“Yeah, I hate those guys,” I said. “Those guys are dicks.”

Christ, good thing he said that. I would’ve called him for sure. That would’ve gone over well, huh, O’Hara? Like a fart in a crowded elevator.