James Patterson - 12th of Never

I don’t know how much a four-week-old baby can sense, but I didn’t want her to know how scared I was. How scared we were.

I said, “Hi, sweetie. How’s my girl?” “I want a second opinion,” said Joe.

“What do you mean, Joe? We shouldn’t do the chemo?”

“I want someone else to see her, to do the tests again, see if we get the same results.”

“But that could waste valuable time. Maybe that loss of time would just tilt the odds from fifty–fifty to sixty–forty against her. I like Dr. Dwy. I like this hospital.”

Joe said, “May I hold her?”

I gave the baby to my husband and he held her against his shoulder the way he likes to. He walked around the small room with her, rubbed her back. She closed her eyes and started to breathe rhythmically until she was in a deep sleep.

I thought about my mother’s cancer, what a tenacious bitch it was, and how, despite the chemotherapy, the radiation, the surgery, and my mother’s strong will to live, she had died.

I heard Dr. Dwy in my mind saying, “These acute leukemias move very quickly.”

“I want to take her to Saint Francis,” Joe said. “I’ve done a lot of research. There’s a very highly regarded hem-onc there.”

“A what did you say?”

“Hematologist-oncologist. I want to bring Julie to Mark Sebetic. He’s busy. He’s famous. He’s well guarded by his staff. I’m going to knock down whatever doors I have to. I won’t accept ‘no’ for an answer. I’ll sleep outside his office if that’s what it takes.”

I was torn right down the middle of my heart. I didn’t want Julie to go through the sickness and discomfort of chemotherapy, but I also didn’t want to delay treatment that could save her life.

My husband is older than me, has been uncle to more than a dozen children, and has made life-and-death decisions for other people his entire professional life. But we loved Julie equally. We had to agree on the best course of treatment for our baby.

We had to decide together what was best for her.

Chapter 78

CONKLIN TURNED AWAY from the dead man’s partially submerged body and saw Claire Washburn coming toward him in the watery gloom. Her scene kit was in hand and three techs trailed in her wake.

“Hey, cowboy,” she called out. “Where’s your partner?”

Conklin said, “You got me. She’s a mom first these days. I keep getting her voice mail. So what happened, Claire? You ducked out the back door and Dr. Morse doesn’t know you’re missing?”

“If we didn’t have a ten-car smashup on the freeway, he’d be here instead of me. Hey, Charlie,” she said. “How goes it?”

“What I love about this job is that it’s always different. Take a look at that.” Charlie Clapper pointed to the hole in the wall, six feet off the ground, water flowing through it as though it were a fire hose. He said, “Could be that the shot went wild, or could be it was deliberate, so that everyone’s mind would go to the six hundred million gallons of water coming into the tunnel, not to the vic or the shooter.”

“I hope someone’s going to put their finger in the dike,” Claire said, looking at the stream. “Meanwhile, I need to get a look at the DB.”

Conklin stood beside Claire as she photographed the body and the wound. He said, “I think I know this guy.”

“You do? Tell me about it,” she said.

“This English professor came in to see us a couple of weeks ago. He said he’s been having these dreams.”

Claire moved around the body, got another angle on the head wound. “What do you mean, ‘dreams’? I’ve been a little out of the loop since Faye Farmer was boosted from my freezer.”

“This professor had dreams of people being murdered. First time, it was a woman who liked to shop at his local grocery store. He described her down to her toenail polish. Bang, she takes a hit in the ice cream section. Just what he dreamed.”

“So you’re saying this professor sees dead people? But he sees them when they’re alive?”

“Something like that. So a few days after the supermarket hit, the professor comes in again. This time he’s dreamed that a female streetcar driver on the F line took one through the forehead. He described her as blond-haired. Even described advertising inside the car.”

Claire said, “Richie, if you’re waiting to ID this man, let me put your mind at rest. I’m not turning the body in this swamp. Lyle, call Henry, tell him to hurry up with that stretcher.”

“Just turn his face,” Conklin said. “I’ve got to see if this man is the professor.”

“You’ll get your chance later. I’m gonna process this body by the book, and that means back at the office.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“If you must. So the blond-haired streetcar driver was murdered like the professor dreamed?”

“Well, that’s the weird thing. The victim was a streetcar driver. She did take a shot right between the eyes, but she wasn’t blond. She was a black woman, had black hair.”

“So he got it wrong, but at the same time not that wrong,” Claire said.

“Correct,” said Conklin. “Then he came in yesterday with another dream; this time his dream takes place right here. He’s moving along the walkway, then he hears a gunshot. But he tells me he didn’t see anyone get hit. So I say, ‘This isn’t a murder case.’ And he said that if I wasn’t going to help him, he was going to come to the aquarium and see if he could pick the shooter out of the crowd before he pulled the trigger.”

“Maybe he did see the shooter, huh? And that’s why he got shot.”

“From behind?”

“Well, maybe the killer recognized him .”

Clapper trudged through the water, past the guys on a tall ladder and under the divers who were inside the tank, pressing something that looked like a piece of neoprene against the hole in the glass.

Charlie held the butt of a gun with his gloved fingertips.

He said, “Inspector, look at this. We found it at the far end of the walkway. It’s drenched, but I can still smell that it’s been fired. This is going to be our murder weapon.”

“Excellent,” said Richie. “Good job.”

“Unless, of course,” Clapper said with a wink, “I’m dreaming.”

Chapter 79

CONKLIN SPOKE TO Sheila, who was answering phones at the front desk at the medical examiner’s office.

“I’m expecting Mackie Morales from Homicide. You can send her in when she gets here.”

“If Dr. Washburn says okay.”

“She already did.”

And then Morales appeared at the glass door.

“And here she is,” Conklin said.

He opened the door for Morales, who was looking terrific in tight jeans, a man-tailored shirt, and a fitted camel-hair jacket. Her dark hair was loose and bouncy. She had a very fresh and inviting look about her. An all-American girl by way of Scotland and Mexico. She smelled good, too.

“Did the victim turn out to be Professor Judd?” Morales asked Conklin. She stood close enough for Conklin to see down into her cleavage.

“It’s him,” Conklin said. “If you believe this psychic stuff, then Perry Judd dreamed his own death. He didn’t see the shooter in his dream, because he was shot from behind.”

“I’m on the fence about precognition,” Morales said. “But I believe that Professor Judd believed it.”

“I’m open to other ideas,” Conklin said.

He held the door to the autopsy suite for Morales, then followed her in. Claire was weighing Perry Judd’s liver when they got there.

Once again, Conklin felt the cold shock of guilt. A day ago he had been sitting with Perry Judd upstairs in Interview 2. Now the little guy’s chest was open like a book and his guts were overlapping the rim of a stainless steel bowl.