James Patterson: 12th of Never

“Be back in a sec,” Joe said.

I rocked my daughter. Even with her fists waving and her little face as pink as a rose, she was a spectacular, fully formed human being made from love. I was in awe of her perfection. And more than anything, I wanted her to feel good.

I jounced her in my arms and sang a nonsense song that I made up as I went along. “Ju-lee, you’re breaking my heart. What can I do for my bay-bee?”

I fished an old Irish lullaby from the vault of long-buried memories, and then hauled out a couple of nursery rhymes. Mice ran up a clock, cradles rocked, but nothing worked.

Joe appeared, like a genie, with a warm bottle of formula. I tested a drop on the back of my hand, and then I tried the bottle on Julie. And—thank you, God—she began to suck.

I was elated. Euphoric. Ecstatic. Julie was eating. Joe and I watched our daughter pulling at the bottle with intense attention, and when a few ounces had gone down and she turned away from the bottle, Joe said, “I’ll take her, Blondie. You go to bed.”

He put Julie over his shoulder and burped her like a pro.

“I love you, Julie Anne Molinari,” Joe said to our baby.

“You’ve told her twenty eleven times today. She knows it,” I said, standing up and kissing my husband.

“She can’t hear it too much. This is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”

“I believe that. But I think something is bothering you,” I said.

“God. I can’t sneak anything past you, Blondie. Even when you’re dog-tired. Even when you shouldn’t notice anything but Julie’s fingers and toes.”

I felt the first frisson of alarm.

“Is something going on? Tell me now.”

Joe sighed. “How can I put this delicately? I got fired.”

“ What? Come on. Don’t kid with me about this.”

I was searching his eyes, looking for the joke.

“Really,” Joe said. He looked embarrassed. Honest to God. I’d never seen this look on his face before.

“I got axed. It’s being chalked up to cutbacks due to the financial deficit. Naturally, freelancers are the first to go. Don’t worry, Linds. I know things about homeland security very few people know. As soon as the word gets out, I’ll get calls.”

My mouth was dry. My heart was thudding almost audibly.

I make a cop’s salary. It isn’t bad money, but it wouldn’t support our airy three-bedroom apartment on Lake Street, which Joe had rented when he was working for the government as deputy director of Homeland Security.

When he was making a ton.

“How much money do we have?”

“We’ll be fine for quite a few months. I’ll find a job before we run dry. We’ll be fine, Lindsay,” he said. “I’m not going to disappoint my two fabulous girls.”

“We love you, Joe,” I said.

Our little daughter started to cry.

Chapter 7

YUKI WAS NAKED, lying flat on her back on the bedroom carpet, panting, her pulse slowing after her heart’s wild gallop over the hills during the morning’s romp.

She turned her head and looked at her gorgeous and in every way fantastic lover.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried, but I was distracted. Thinking about other things.”

Brady laughed.

He rolled toward her, put his arm across her body, and pulled her to him. “You’re too much fun. I’m crazy about you, you know that?”

She knew. She was crazy about him . Was this just the best sex she’d ever had? Or were she and Brady traveling in lockstep toward the real deal?

She touched Brady’s mouth and he kissed her palm. She swept his damp blond hair back from his eyes and kissed the side of his mouth.

He took her face in one hand and kissed her lips and she felt him start to get hard again. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her gently, saying, “I hate to do it, but I’ve got to leave.”

Brady was Lieutenant Jackson Brady, head of the homicide squad, SFPD, Southern District. Yuki reached down and ran her fingers up his leg, stopping at the round pink scar on his thigh, where he took a bullet that nicked his femoral artery. It was sheer good fortune that he had gotten to the hospital in time.

She said, “Me, too. I’ve got court in an hour.”

Yuki got up, pulled her robe from the bedpost, and started for the kitchen of the condo her mother had left her. In a way, Keiko Castellano still lived here. She often talked to Yuki, although not out loud. It was as though Keiko’s voice, her opinions, her experiences were so embedded in Yuki’s mind that Keiko was just always there .

Now her mother said, “You good girl, Yuki-eh, but foolish. Brady still married. Look what you doing.”

“You shouldn’t be watching,” Yuki muttered as she picked pillows off the floor and threw them onto the bed.

“I can’t help myself,” Brady said. He zipped up his fly and reached for his shirt. “You’re so very cute.”

Yuki grinned, slapped his butt. He yelled, “Hey,” grabbed her, lifted her into his arms, kissed her.

Then Brady said, “I wanted to tell you about this case.”

“Start talking.”

As Yuki made coffee, she mentally rebutted her mother’s commentary, telling Keiko that, as she well knew, Brady was separated, and his soon-to-be-ex-wife lived in Miami, as far across the country as possible.

Brady was saying, “You’ve heard of Jeff Kennedy?”

Yuki poured coffee into Brady’s mug.

“Basketball player.”

“He’s a 49er, sweetie. His girlfriend turned up dead in her car, couple miles from his house.”

“Homicide? And you think this Niner is the doer?”

Brady laughed, shook his head. “You’re a tough talker.”

Yuki put her hands on her hips and grinned at him. “It’s been said more than once that I’m one tough cookie.”

Brady took a sip of coffee, put the mug in the sink, put his arms around Yuki, and said, “Kill ‘em in court today, Cookie. I’ll call you later.”

He kissed the center part in her hair and went for the door.

Chapter 8

AT NINE THAT morning, Dr. Perry Judd walked through the swinging half door at the entrance to the homicide squad room and demanded the attention of a detective, saying, “I want to report a murder.”

Rich Conklin had walked Dr. Judd back to Interview 2 and had been trying to get a straight story ever since.

Dr. Judd said that he taught English literature at UC Berkeley. He was fifty, had brown hair, a goatee, and small eyeglasses with round frames the size of quarters. His jacket and button-down shirt were blue, and he wore a pair of khakis with a pleated front.

He had seemed to be a solid citizen.

“I was going into Whole Foods on Fourth Street last night,” Judd said. “There was a woman right in front of me and it just happened that I followed her into the store. She said hello to one of the cashiers. I got the feeling she was a regular there.”

The professor then described the woman in extraordinary detail.

“She was blond, about two inches of black roots showing. She was about forty, a ‘squishy’ size ten, wore a white blouse with a ruffled neckline and a necklace. Green beads, glass ones.”

Judd had gone on to say that the woman had been wearing sandals, her toenails painted baby blue.

Then the professor had gone completely off-road. He began quoting from obscure books, and although Conklin seriously tried to get the connection, the guy sounded psycho.

Conklin liked to let a witness lay out the whole story in one piece. That way he could shape and sharpen his followup questions and determine from the answers if the witness was telling the truth or talking crap.

Dr. Judd had stopped talking altogether and was staring into the one-way glass behind Conklin’s back.