James Patterson - 12th of Never

Morales said, “Dr. Washburn, I’ll run that bullet out to the lab for you. Save some time.”

“It’s in the envelope on the table over there,” Claire said. “Thanks for helping out.”

“Happy to do it,” said Morales. “See you later, Rich.”

Morales left with the semimangled round Claire had taken out of Perry Judd’s skull. Claire said to Conklin, “The shooter was standing three to five feet behind the victim when he fired. There was no stippling around the wound.”

“Can you confirm that the cause of death was the gunshot wound to the back of the head?”

“Yes. I can say that—conditionally,” said Claire. “It’s still off the record until I finish here, in about six hours.”

Conklin nodded at Claire, then went back upstairs to the squad room. He was transferring his notes to the case file when Charlie Clapper called him on his cell phone.

“Here’s something that will make your ears stand up,” Clapper said. “The round fired from the gun matches the one Claire took from Perry Judd’s head, so we definitely have the murder weapon. And I’m not done yet.”

“Go ahead,” Conklin said. Brady appeared out of nowhere and was standing over him, looking frayed and impatient.

“The murder weapon is registered to the victim,” Clapper said.

“What? You’re sure about that?”

“Yes, I am sure. A hundred percent sure.”

“Any prints? Please say yes.”

“Wiped clean.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Conklin ended the call, said to the lieutenant, “Perry Judd was shot dead with his own gun. And no, he didn’t shoot himself in the back of the head. The killer was three to five feet behind him. But it still makes no sense. The professor dreams his own death without knowing it. And then someone shoots him with his own gun.

“What do you make of this, boss?” Conklin said. “Because it seems way off the hook to me.”

“This just came from the aquarium,” Brady said, putting two disks down on Conklin’s desk. “Let’s go to the video.”

Chapter 80

CONKLIN SAT AT his computer, screening the surveillance footage from the aquarium.

He was looking for the moment that the professor was shot, and it was hard to see very much. The surveillance camera was old and its focal point was indeterminate. The dark areas of the aquarium were lit with pin lights that burned hot spots in the video and made the unlit areas seem even darker.

Conklin skimmed the footage, running it forward and back, looking for the professor. Then he saw him.

Professor Judd was on the walkway, wearing a herring-bone jacket and khakis—the same outfit Conklin had seen on the DB. Judd was gazing around in all directions, probably looking for a shooter or someone he had seen in his dream. He touched the bulge at the back of his waistband, as though he were assuring himself that his gun was there. In every way, he was doing just what he had told Rich he was planning to do.

One minute he was walking alone, then a moment later, he was eclipsed by a group of people who were walking faster than he was, and they were closing in on him. As the group encompassed him, Judd suddenly jerked, stiffened, and fell facedown on the walkway.

Some people in the crowd stopped to see the fallen body, but within a few seconds the walkway was emptied of living people.

Conklin backed up the video, pushed in on the shooting, added fill light. Then he scrutinized the people who were around Perry Judd when he dropped.

He printed out fuzzy stills of the bystanders: an elderly man and a young boy who could be his grandson, three teenage girls, hands to their mouths, probably shrieking. And there was a slim guy in jeans, a dark blue Windbreaker, and a baseball cap, walking behind the others.

Conklin backed the video up another thirty seconds, to the point where the professor entered the field of view, hands in his pants pockets, turning his head from side to side as he glided forward on the walkway. Then the group of tourists that had been moving faster than the professor surrounded him—and Rich saw the guy in the cap join the group.

Conklin stopped the video and let it feed forward a frame at a time. He watched the ball-cap guy bump into the professor and snake his hand under the back of the professor’s herringbone jacket. It was a classic pickpocket maneuver called dipping. Then the guy in the cap lifted his hand and aimed the gun that he had removed from the back of Judd’s pants.

Conklin saw the flare as the ball-cap guy fired on Professor Judd.

The professor jerked, fell. Then the guy in the cap raised the muzzle and fired again. This time the bullet went into the Plexiglas wall.

It was clearly a diversion.

Water spouted. People glanced at the body, turned away, sprinted up the walkway.

Conklin pressed the forward button and watched the jerky image of the man in the cap. The assailant never looked up, never looked at the camera. After he threw his two shots, he disappeared into the shadows at the end of the walk. He had probably wiped and ditched the gun there, but that was a supposition. And while Conklin was sure that the ball-cap guy was the killer, he hadn’t seen the man’s face.

Conklin ejected the disk from the DVD drawer and slipped in the second disk, which had been shot by a camera at the aquarium’s entrance.

This time he knew whom he was looking for.

Another hour went by as Conklin scanned the video and found the images of the guy with the cap, a guy who was starting to look familiar. He watched him go past the security guard, hold out his ticket to be punched, and enter the dark hole that was the entrance to the exhibit.

The shooter was a pro. He had kept his face hidden at all times. Conklin had no image to compare with those of known criminals.

So the questions remained. Who was the guy in the ball cap? How had he known that the professor was carrying a weapon at the back of his trousers? Why had he targeted the professor? And had he killed the two women the professor had seen in his dreams? If so, how had that happened?

How had the killer tapped into the professor’s dreams?

There was something crazy wrong about the entire dream-and-execution pattern. It was a puzzle, and Conklin felt there was more to it than the images on his screen.

What was he missing?

Conklin made a cup of coffee in the break room. Then he went back to his desk and watched the video again.

Chapter 81

FBI UBERAGENT RON PARKER sat with Randolph Fish in a small cement-block room in the bowels of the prison. Two cameras were focused on them; one angled through the oneway glass, and the other was positioned in a corner of the ceiling.

Fish was shackled hand and foot by a chain that ran through a hole in the center of the table to a loop in the floor. He was so pale you could almost see through his skin. There was a fresh hand-size bruise on his jaw, and Parker had seen the photos of the larger bruises and abrasions all over his body.

The day before, a couple of guards had been escorting Fish to the yard when they were drawn into a dispute between two other prisoners and took their eyes off Fish for a moment.

The dispute was a diversion, giving another prisoner a chance to pull Fish against the bars of his cell. He twisted Fish’s arm until he went to his knees. Then a second prisoner got Fish’s pants down, kicked his legs apart, and did him with a sawed-off broom handle.

The assault had been over quickly, but it had turned Fish’s head around entirely. After the emergency medical treatment, which involved a row of stitches in a place where the sun don’t shine, Fish had asked for Ron Parker, who had driven up from L.A. to see him.

Now Parker was watching Randolph Fish, killer of at least five but possibly twice as many young women, think over what he was going to say in an effort to come up with something the G-man might go for.