James Patterson - 12th of Never

“Am I smokin’ now, Randy?”

“You’re red-hot,” said the Fish Man.

Chapter 96

FISH HADN’T GIVEN me anything, but by humming “The Twelfth of Never,” he’d let me know that the map to his dump sites was inside the record sleeve.

I felt a flutter of hope, even elation. Good, Randy. Prove to yourself that you can change.

But now, Fish was laughing. Had he taken us on another flier into his twisted mind? Was he screwing with me again?

I asked him, “What’s the joke, Randy?”

“I’m just enjoying myself,” he said. “It’s okay for me to have a few laughs, isn’t it, Lindsay? You don’t have to play bad cop with me. I’m your pal.”

Parker hauled the killer to his feet, and he wasn’t too gentle about it. Since Parker was doing a perfect bad cop, he’d left me free to wonder what that 1950s love song meant to Fish. “The Twelfth of Never” was about a man’s love for a woman. I remembered one of the first lines.

I need you, oh my darling, like roses need rain.

Did Fish love an actual person? Or was this psycho-killer love? Did Randy Fish “love” women so much that he had to be the last man to touch them, talk to them, own them …

I straightened out the map Fish had drawn on the back of the receipt. Conklin came up behind me and said, “So let’s take a look at the latest bullshit.”

Parker handed Fish off to one of the uniformed cops and joined us in the huddle. We scrutinized the x ’s and tiny handwritten notations. I was pointing out previously unknown locations where bodies might have been dumped—when something inexplicable happened.

I was thrown to the ground, as if I’d been hit by a bus.

Everything went dark and silent and my brain flickered with a single thought: What had happened? I got onto my hands and knees, started crawling, bumping into things, like the deaf and blind thing I was.

A couple of long minutes later, someone shook my arm. I saw a blurry uniformed cop. His name was Mooney. Or Rooney. I wasn’t sure.

“Are you all right, Sergeant?”

Stars were popping behind my eyes. I could hardly breathe. I was gagging, but somehow managed to ask, “Is anyone hurt?”

“Can you see me, Sergeant?”

I fought nausea, said, “I can see you. I hear you.”

Conklin and Parker were on their feet. Conklin came over to me and said, “You okay? You okay, Lindsay?”

I grabbed his arm and stood.

Officer Michael Rooney was saying, “It was a flashbang. I saw this uniform pull the pin and lob it toward the locker. I couldn’t get to him in time.”

“Flashbang” was a descriptive nickname for a stun grenade, a nonlethal military weapon designed to knock down the occupants of a room to give the shooter the upper hand. The effective range is a five-foot radius from the point of impact, and the stunning effect lasts only a minute or two, but you still would not want to be in a room with one.

As it was, I was still dazed, but I could see.

“Tell it again, from the beginning,” I told the cop.

Rooney said, “One of ours fired that grenade. I didn’t know him. He was five six or five seven, young guy.”

“You didn’t know him? How did you know he was a cop?”

“He was in uniform. Drove a cruiser. After he threw the grenade, he grabbed Fish and pushed him into the passenger side. Then he took off.”

“It was an abduction?” Parker asked. “Or a getaway?”

“Hard to say. Fish was very wobbly.”

“When did the grenade go off?” I asked.

“It’s only been a couple of minutes,” the cop said. “The cruiser is headed west on Amador. Two of our cars are in pursuit.”

“Call dispatch and clear a channel,” I said.

Parker was moving through the semicircle of headlights toward his vehicle. I started toward ours. Conklin gave me an arm to lean on.

He dangled the keys. “I’m driving,” he said.

Chapter 97

BY THE TIME we blew past the American flag and turned onto Amador, I had gathered my wits, even the ones that had rolled into the far corners of my mind.

For instance, I understood what Randy Fish had thought was so funny. While we were rooting around in his book and record collections, his ride was coming to get him.

Very frickin’ hilarious joke on the SFPD and the FBI.

And the punch line was that a heinous serial killer and a rogue cop were taking us on a high-speed chase through the city on a cloudy night, visibility of about ten feet in front of the headlights, precipitation coming on and slicking the road.

I was on the car radio, using the designated clear channel, talking to May Hess in dispatch, also to Sergeant Bob Nardone and Officer Gary Hoffman in the lead pursuit car.

Nardone’s voice came through the speaker as he shouted over the blare of sirens: “Turning left onto Cesar Chavez at sixty. I can’t read his plates.”

We were gaining on Nardone and Hoffman, and other cars joined in as dispatch sent units ahead to cut off the renegade cop car. Conklin and I followed a more or less straight route over the Illinois Street Bridge, took a heart-stopping turn onto Cesar Chavez, then an equally hard right onto 3rd. We sped parallel to the streetcar tracks on 3rd and continued over the Lefty O’Doul Bridge.

On the far side of the bridge was AT&T Park, the Giants home field—and there was a game on tonight. I could see the neon marquee and the stadium lights like a row of stars blazing through the fog. If the sirens hadn’t been screaming, I might have been able to hear the fans cheering as a game-winning Giants home run cleared the wall and plopped into McCovey Cove.

As it was, the sirens were screaming, but I knew that the Giants had won because inebriated fans, euphoric with victory, had begun wandering out onto the glistening street.

I was looking ahead as we hit King Street and Willie Mays Plaza, and that’s when, in the space of an instant, Randy Fish’s ride ran into trouble.

A tractor trailer was coming toward us in the opposite lane, like a freight train appearing out of nowhere in the night. Fish’s car was speeding, weaving through traffic, and had almost cleared the length of the big rig when the driver turned the wheel ever so slightly to the left.

Maybe the driver miscalculated how far he was from the semi, or maybe his hand slipped on the steering wheel. But whatever the reason, the getaway car clipped the back wheel of the looming, fifty-three-foot, twin-screw tractor trailer, and the whole freaking night exploded.

Chapter 98

I SAW IT all go down, every second of it.

Time didn’t freeze. There was no stop-motion, just the awful sight of the rogue squad car winging the back wheel of a monster truck and the front of the car whipping around, being dragged beneath the undercarriage, where it was mashed and mangled.

Tires exploded like gunshots.

Plumes of sparks lit the pavement, trailing behind the semi, as its brakes screeched and the truck jackknifed across two lanes, smacking into cars like a bowling ball taking down pins before it came to a halt.

At the same time as the accident was burning up King Street, Conklin was braking and turning the wheel of our car in the direction of our skid. As I braced for a crash, I saw what was happening just ahead of us.

Nardone’s car had slewed into the railing alongside the Mission Creek and the following car had piled into it. Our car slid sideways. I don’t know if I actually screamed, but I can tell you that I was screaming inside my mind.

I was thinking of my daughter, my baby, and that I couldn’t leave her now. My God, not now .

Conklin was doing his best, but still our car caromed off a guardrail, sideswiped Nardone’s car, and continued moving in a sickening spin, rocking from side to side. We balanced on two wheels, right at the tipping point, then, mercifully, dropped into a four-point crouch.