James Patterson: 12th of Never

But he was not going to die without answering my questions. I just wouldn’t accept that.

“Randy. Can you hear me?”

“Lin?”

“Yes. It’s Lindsay. Who is Morales to you?”

“I love … her,” he said. “I love …”

I reached into the car, shook his shoulder. Blood was coming from his forehead, his chest, his twisted legs. His body was a sieve.

“Stay with me, Randy,” I said to him. “Please stay with me. We’re going to get you out of here in just another minute. Hey! Randy.”

Blood bubbled out of Fish’s mouth. He took another breath. I turned away from the car and toward the chaos around me. A fireman was six feet away from me, talking into his phone. Rain dripped from the brim of his hat.

“We got a survivor in there,” I shouted, pointing to the car.

“I know, Sergeant. We had to extract the ones who are going to make it first. But I didn’t forget him. I’ve got the Jaws coming back now.”

The firefighter came back to the car and leaned his face through the windshield as I had done. He said to Fish, “I’m Deputy Chief Robert Wilson. I’m called Robbie. Take it easy, sir. Everything is going to be okay.”

I had heard those words before, spoken in just the same way. And now I remembered the man called Robbie. The last time I’d seen him, I’d been naked, lightning blazing around me across the black sky. This man had helped deliver Julie.

“Don’t I know you, Sergeant?” he said to me. “Sure I do. How’s your little girl?”

My chest heaved. Tears welled, spilled, unnoticed in the rain. God, I was crying a lot these days. I sucked it up and pushed down the emotion that was on the verge of disabling me.

I put my hand on Deputy Wilson’s arm and said, “Mr. Fish is an important witness to several unsolved homicides. I have to talk to him.”

“Ma’am, that engine crushed his thighs and his pelvis. He’s got broken ribs, punctured lungs. He’s lost a lot of blood, and he’s either going to bleed out or the traumatic asphyxia is going to kill him.

“He’s going in and out of consciousness now, you understand?” Deputy Wilson said. “He’s not leaving that car. If you want to talk to him, you should tell him that he’s got very little time. I’d tell him that right away.”

Chapter 102

THE AMBULANCE TOOK off like a rocket. I stood in the street and stared after the taillights and flashers until they became the size of pin lights, trying to understand what made no sense to me at all.

Why had Mackie Morales, our summer intern, been driving a stolen squad car with her baby in the backseat? Had Fish gotten to her in some way? Had he threatened her or her baby?

That had to be it.

Why else would a bright young woman with a big future and a small child commit a felony? But if Fish had threatened her, how did that square with him saying that he loved her?

Fire bloomed under a car that had been beached on the sidewalk under the marquee. The neon sign reading HOME OF THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS flickered madly. Hoses came out, snaked around my feet, and that’s what broke the spell.

I walked back to the twisted patrol car, where Randolph Fish was pinned under the weight of the big V-8. The car interior, such as it was, was bright from the surrounding headlights and halogen lamps. I saw that Fish was still taking in air, but his breathing was shallow and labored.

I angled myself into the driver’s seat, said to the dying man, “Randy, it’s Lindsay. How’re you doing?”

Fish opened his eyes and slowly turned his head so that he could see me.

“Mackie?”

“She’s on the way to the emergency room. My partner is with her. That’s all I know.”

Blood oozed through his prison jumpsuit. The weight and pressure of the engine block on his lap was likely acting as a lower-torso tourniquet, keeping Fish from bleeding out.

“Ben?” he asked me.

“He’s at the hospital.”

Tears shot out of Fish’s eyes, ran together with the blood on his cheeks, dropped from his chin. Christ. I thought psychopaths didn’t have feelings. I reached over and tugged at the oxygen mask so that it covered his nose and mouth. He took a ragged breath.

I felt his life leaving him. It didn’t take an MD to see that he was going to die, right here, right now.

I spoke to him over the noises on the street; men calling to each other, winches and engines grinding and roaring, sirens near and far.

“I have to ask you some questions.”

He nodded.

“Who is Mackie to you?”

I moved the mask.

“Ben is. Our. Boy.” He sighed.

“Yours and Mackie’s?”

He nodded.

My thoughts scattered yet again and I did my best to corral them into a cohesive pattern.

If Fish wasn’t lying or fantasizing, he’d known Morales for at least four years. Mackie Morales was a college girl, then and now. She was dark-haired, slim, definitely his type.

But instead of killing her, he’d fallen in love with her? Was that right? And they’d had a child together? And then, while he was in a coma, she had gotten an internship at the SFPD?

If all that was true, Mackie Morales was a plant.

She’d embedded herself in our squad, the squad that had brought Fish down.

The idea was within my grasp, but it was slippery and I thought there was more to it that I didn’t get at all.

I held the mask for Fish so he could get oxygen to his brain. I wanted to know about him and Mackie, how long the escape had been planned, and why, if Fish could love a woman, he had killed so many women so viciously.

But Stone Phillips wasn’t here and there was no time to do the in-depth Dateline interview. Shouts got louder as a lot of men and machines converged outside the car.

The rescue team had returned with power tools to extract Randolph Fish from the wreck of the Ford Crown Vicky. It was highly likely that when the engine was lifted, Fish’s blood pressure would plummet and he would die.

I moved the mask away and said, “Randy? I’ve got something important to tell you. Are you listening to me?”

Chapter 103

RANDY FISH HAD all the starch and vigor of a sock puppet. His chin rested on his collarbone. His hands lay limp on the engine block. Could he still hear me?

“Randy? Are you with me, bud?”

I called his name several times, and then he exhaled a groan.

“Randy, listen to me. I’m sorry to have to give you some bad news. Your injuries are severe. Your lower body, your internal organs are crushed. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Your injuries are not survivable.”

He took in a breath, spoke on the exhale.

“Need doc …”

“Doctors want me to tell you that you have very little time.”

A moment passed and Fish didn’t inhale. Was he still alive? Or had he wandered down the tunnel toward the light?

“I’m tough,” he said.

He was making a joke as he faced death, with thoughts of loved ones who might also be dying or dead. I thought of Ben, the little boy who’d survived the horrific crash, and I felt sorry for Randy Fish.

Which pissed me off.

Fish was a sexual predator who had maimed, tortured, raped, and murdered his victims, getting off on causing as much pain as he could. He had never confessed and had never expressed remorse. He was filth, a heinous psycho, one of the worst.

But I needed him to trust me, to tell me where he’d hidden the unrecovered bodies. It wasn’t easy to find the right words.

“A miracle could happen, Randy. No one is giving up. But to be honest, you probably only have a few minutes left.”

He closed his eyes, then opened them.

“You want to get right with people who love you, Randy. You want your son to know that you helped the parents of those dead girls—”