James Patterson - 12th of Never

My phone rang. Conklin. We exchanged a few words, then I closed the phone, told Claire that I had to go.

Claire ground her cigarette out on the cement step. Ground it to powder. We both stood up. The look in Claire’s eyes was unutterably sad.

I hugged her and said, “This case is only thirty-six hours old. We’ve just gotten started.”

“I know. Shit.”

As she went back to the morgue, I trotted a half flight down to the squad room. I was already thinking about what Conklin had said: “The nutty professor is back.”

Chapter 47

PERRY JUDD LOOKED as elated as if he’d just won a million dollars and the title of Mr. America at the same time. He stood up from the chair in Interview 2 and grabbed my hand with both of his. His color was high. There was spittle in the corners of his mouth.

“I had a dream,” he said.

Conklin was rocking on the back legs of his chair. Morales brought coffee for three and left the room. I was pretty sure everyone in the squad was behind the one-way glass. We had a soothsayer in the house who had accurately predicted a fatal shooting.

It was a first for all of us.

I uncapped my coffee container and glanced at the corner of the ceiling to make sure that the camera was recording. Conklin said to the professor, “When did you have the dream?”

“It was with me upon awakening,” said Judd. “It was so real, I thought I truly was on a streetcar. When I say ‘real,’ I mean it was as if I were actually there.”

“So take us through the dream from the top,” I said.

“Certainly. I was on the F line, heading toward the Ferry Building. I go to the Ferry sometimes, on the weekends. But in my dream, if that’s what it was, it was a weekday. There were commuters and tourists, all of us packed in.”

“Morning?” I asked him. “Afternoon?”

“I can’t tell,” said the professor. He squinted as if he were trying to get the scene in focus. “Daylight, anyway. And I recognized the driver. She’s about your age,” he said to me. “A little slimmer than you are. Her hair was blond, but not like yours. She had coarser hair.”

“Have you ever seen her in real life?” Conklin asked.

“Yes. But I don’t know her name. In my vision, she was taking tickets. I was looking at the advertising above the windows. A Geico ad. ‘Save fifteen percent in fifteen minutes.’ I told you it was that real.”

“Go on,” I said.

“I held out my ticket to the driver. She was looking at me—and that’s when I heard a cracking sound. A shot. I saw the blood come from her forehead. I was staring at that hole in her head and her brown eyes were locked on mine. Locked.

“This was something out of this world, Inspectors. To see someone’s eyes just full of life—and then go utterly blank. I couldn’t have made this up. It has to be a premonition. It has to be foresight. I’m telling you, I’ve never had dreams like these.”

“So she was shot dead,” Conklin said. “You’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“What did the shooter look like?” I asked.

“People panicked,” said the professor. “The driver dropped and people jumped back, screaming. The streetcar was stopped and everyone rushed out onto Market.”

“Professor Judd,” I said. “Be there now. Look into the corners of your mind. What did the shooter look like? Male? Female? Old, young? You should have seen someone if you were there.”

“I never saw the person with the gun. I woke up. I was shocked to find myself in my own bed. I thought I had gone to sleep in my chair.”

“And when is this shooting supposed to happen? Today? Tomorrow? This week?”

“I don’t know,” said Professor Judd.

I stepped into the hallway with Conklin and the two of us talked about the professor’s dream. Then I went into the standing-room-only observation room and asked Inspector Paul Chi to join us outside.

Chi is not only smarter than all of us put together but he can also slip almost unseen into a crowd, observe minute details of behavior, put two and two together, and come up with forty-four.

“What do you make of Professor Judd?” I asked him.

“He’s enjoying this too much,” Chi said. “Someone should shadow him. I should go to the SFMTA, see if I can pull up the name and schedule of a thin, blond-haired conductor on the F line. And then I should be her bodyguard.”

“Do it,” I said.

BOOK III

103 IN THE SHADE

Chapter 48

I’VE BEEN MERE yards from the epicenter of a bus bomb. I’ve been a target in a shooting gallery in the ‘hood, and I’ve taken bullets and almost died.

But nothing was as scary or as emotionally devastating as my tiny daughter having a fever of 103.

The second I got home and read the thermometer, I called Julie’s pediatrician and insisted that she be paged, because I wasn’t getting off the phone until I spoke with her.

Dr. Gordon was very patient. She said that Julie’s fever meant that she was fighting an infection—that she could have an earache, for instance—and to give her a lukewarm bath followed by liquid Tylenol every four hours.

I made an appointment to bring Julie in to see the doctor in the morning. Then I sat in the bathtub with my baby in my lap. I desperately wanted to bathe away her fever without letting her know that I was scared out of my freaking mind.

Joe sat on the toilet seat, singing “Oh! Susanna” in the soft, slow way James Taylor recorded it. His singing was like a lullaby, but it didn’t soothe the baby.

She cried. She was limp. I wanted to take her to the hospital right then, but Joe said no.

“It’s too risky. She could pick up a worse infection in the hospital,” he said. “Let’s do what Dr. Gordon said.”

I sponged Julie down with the tepid water and when we were both wrinkled, Joe helped us out of the bath and we took her with us into bed.

Her temperature had dropped to 102. It was a change in the right direction, but still outside my comfort zone. I called Dr. Gordon again and she phoned back at just before ten that night.

“It’s probably nothing. Try not to worry,” she said.

“Right,” I said into the phone.

“If her temperature goes to a hundred and four, take her straight to the emergency room.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll see you in the morning. Try to get some sleep.”

“Thanks, Doctor,” I said.

No one slept at our house except Martha, and we were at the doctor’s office as soon as the doors opened.

Dr. Gordon weighed Julie, examined her, made notes on her chart. The doctor’s expression was so neutral I couldn’t read it, not even between the lines.

“I wish she’d put on a little more weight,” she said.

“She’s been fussy from the beginning,” I said.

“I’m going to draw some blood. Standard procedure,” said the doctor. “Just to get a baseline.”

Joe held Julie as the stick pricked my daughter’s tiny pink heel. Julie howled, of course, and I just hid my face until it was over.

I asked the doctor to tell us everything. “Don’t hold anything back.”

Finally, Dr. Gordon cracked a smile.

“She’s got a fever, but it’s not abnormal. I’ll call you when I get back her blood work. Meanwhile, you should all get some sleep.”

As soon as I hit the sheets, my cell phone rang. I read the caller ID and then told Brady, “Whatever it is has got to wait. I need four hours of sleep. Just four.”

Brady ignored me.

“Boxer, that streetcar driver on the F line?”

“What? Who?”

“Your professor said a streetcar driver was going to be shot, remember?”

“Oh. No. Don’t tell me.”

“We’ve got a female streetcar driver who took a bullet about an hour ago. Right between the eyes. Just like the professor said.”