James Patterson: 12th of Never

“Why? Because I was breaking Randy out. Don’t you get that, you moron? We were running off with Ben. It was finally our time.”

Conklin muzzled his outrage. He liked this girl, really liked her, but clearly he didn’t know her. Whatever he’d been thinking about her was a reflection of what he wanted her to be.

She grabbed his wrist. It was like being clapped into an iron wristband.

“I don’t want to die,” she said.

“We don’t have a lot of time, Mackie.”

“Oh, no, oh, no.”

“Talk to me now. What’s your connection to Randy Fish?”

“Damn you. You want your dying declaration, Richie? Here’s the whole enchilada. I killed that Whole Foods woman. Harriet Adams.”

“Say that again?”

“Yeah, and I killed the streetcar driver, too, okay? It was me . It was a real fucking rush, believe me.”

Conklin’s bullshit meter was going off. It was impossible to pull off a murder that someone else dreamed. Mackie was delusional. She was concussed and probably had bleeding in her brain.

He glanced at the corner of the ceiling. Saw the red light on the video camera. It was recording.

Mackie gave a shrill scream of pain.

Conklin pulled up a chair so that he was sitting right near her head. “ Make me believe you,” he said. “Because what you’re telling me is hard to understand.”

“Then listen . I watched you interview the professor. I typed your notes, remember that?”

Her angry expression collapsed. She begged him, “Richie, I need drugs. I hurt so bad.”

A nurse was at the exam table.

“We’re going to roll you onto a stretcher, dear. We’ll be very careful.”

Conklin shook his head, said, “Another minute. We need one more minute.”

He turned away from the nurse and back to Morales.

“Who are you protecting, Mackie?”

Her face changed again, tightened into a scowl, and then she laughed. It was like the bark of a small dog confronting a larger one—manic, hysterical, definitely no mirth in it.

She said, “You would think I was covering for someone, you jerk. You underestimated me, Inspector. I watched your interviews with Professor Judd, then after I made his dreams come true, I went to the aquarium and shot him.

“Look at the video. Look at the fucking video. I’m on it. In a baseball cap. We looked at that tape together and you never connected the dots. What a laugh. What? Why are you looking at me that way?

“Oh. You don’t get me, right? You never did. I was playing you, Richie. I did it for Randy and he is proud of me. Now get me drugs. I want to die in peace.”

Conklin stood up, attached Mackie’s wrist to the stretcher with a restraint, and said, “MacKenzie Morales, you’re under arrest for murder—”

She said, “You didn’t read me my rights. You can’t use what I said.”

“You gave me your dying declaration, and it’s all been recorded on disk. But I hope you don’t die, Mackie. You shouldn’t get off so easy. You shouldn’t get off.”

Chapter 106

I WAS SLEEPING in our bed in the oncology wing when a booming voice paging Dr. Sebetic ended in a feedback squeal that rudely woke me. I groaned, reached for Joe, but he wasn’t there.

I rolled over and saw that the baby’s incubator was no longer at our bedside. Seeing that empty spot dropped me into unadulterated, heart-stopping, blinding terror.

What had happened while I slept?

Where was my baby?

I was on my feet when Joe rounded the doorway to our room. He was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and paper slippers, and was holding two containers of coffee.

“Hey. I’ve got something for you,” he said. “If you want a shower, go now. We’ve got a meeting with Dr. Sebetic in fifteen minutes.”

“Where’s Julie?”

“She’s in the baby room. Go. Splash some water on yourself.”

I stood in the tiny stall under the hot spray, not moving, just letting the water work on me. The baby was in her incubator. We were going to meet with Dr. Sebetic and he was going to give us a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. And whatever he said, we were going to deal with it.

Still, I didn’t like the freaking odds.

Joe rapped on the shower door.

“Let’s go, Lindsay. We don’t want to keep the doctor waiting.”

I dried off with a towel the size of a dinner napkin, then dressed in yesterday’s smoky jeans and one of Joe’s clean Tshirts. If paper shoes were good enough for Joe, they were good enough for me. I opened a packet and put them on.

After brushing my teeth and hair, I went out into our room, drank down my coffee in one long gulp, then said to my husband, “Are you ready?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

We went into each other’s arms and held on tight. I gathered strength from my husband and I asked God to please let her live. Joe dropped his head to my shoulder and I put my hand in his hair.

Then Joe released me. “We’re late,” he said.

Chapter 107

DR. SEBETIC WAS in his forties, stood 6 feet 3 inches tall, weighed about 170, had red hair, black-framed glasses, and wore a sporty green plaid tie with his lab coat. He had seemed distracted each time we had met with him, but he was a hematologist and oncologist of distinction, and that was all that mattered.

The doctor looked up when we entered his office, said hello, and offered us chairs across from him at his desk. He called out to the hallway, “Nurse Kathy, please bring in Baby Girl Molinari.”

The nurse called back, “Coming right up, Doctor,” then came into the room with our baby. Julie was swaddled in a blanket, wearing a pink stocking cap, and waving her fists.

“She had a good breakfast,” Nurse Kathy said.

I stood up, took Julie from the nurse, thanked her, and sat back down. Then I held the baby up so that Joe could kiss her, took her back, kissed her cheek, wiped my tears off her face, nestled her in my arms.

“So,” said Dr. Sebetic, looking at the space between me and Joe. “I have news.”

He removed his glasses, polished them with a tissue, then squared them on the bridge of his nose.

“The test results are back and the blood cell appearance is returning to normal. It’s what’s called a polyclonal lymphocytosis, which is a benign, temporary, self-limiting disorder—”

“For God’s sake, Doctor,” Joe said. “In English, please.”

“I’m sorry. Let me say it another way. Julie had abnormal lymphocytes, and that diagnosis is a banana peel that many an experienced specialist has slipped on.

“You see, the blood cells in mononucleosis look just like the ones that you find in lymphoma.”

I didn’t see.

I said, “Mononucleosis? The kissing disease?”

“Exactly. You didn’t have a sterile delivery room, correct? As I was saying, you can look at two slides and one is malignant lymphoma, the other is mononucleosis, and you can’t tell the two apart. Many a pathologist has made the wrong call.”

I thought I was tracking him, but I was afraid to hope. I held on to my child and my wits, pictured the two slides, imagined doctors slipping on banana peels.

Dr. Sebetic said, “The bottom line is that Julie is getting better all by herself.”

“She’s out of danger?” I asked. “She’s going to live?”

“She’s perfectly healthy and as cute as ten buttons. I’m sorry, but I have to be in a teleconference with Shanghai, uh, five minutes ago. Nurse Kathy will be happy to help you check Julie out of Saint Francis.”

Chapter 108

OH, MAN, TALK about home sweet home.

A half hour after leaving the hospital, Joe, Julie, and I were safely and joyously back in our nest on Lake Street.