Patterson, James - Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Bob stooped, dipping his face behind Allison’s head, turning her into a shield. I knew he would put his blade across her throat next and tell me to throw down my gun. I’d have to do it.

I didn’t expect the look of terrible sadness that came over his face as he pressed his cheek to Allison’s. “Oh, Ali, Ali, you aren’t old enough to understand.”

Ali shook her head.

“I know everything, Bobby. You have to give up. I have to tell Lindsay all of it.”

A flash of red tore my attention from the haunting tableau in front of me. Melissa Farley half fell through the bathroom doorway. The front of her nightgown was dark with blood.

“Ambulance,” she panted. “Get an ambulance. Please! Ed is still alive.”

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 142

ABOUT TEN MINUTES LATER, sirens wailed and the flashing lights of patrol cars raced up the winding road below. Medevac chopper blades roared overhead.

Melissa Farley was back in the bathroom with her husband. “Allison,” I said. “Please go downstairs and open the door for the police.” Bob still held Allison tightly in his arms. She turned her round-eyed stare on me. Her lips were quivering as she held back sobs.

“Go ahead, darling,” Carolee said from where she lay on the floor. “It’s all right.”

Ten steps away from me, Bob’s face sagged; his expression was that of a beaten man. He squeezed Ali’s shoulders, and I gasped involuntarily. Then he released the child.

As soon as Ali was safely out of the room, my anger exploded.

“Who are you two? What made you think you could get away with this?”

I stepped over to Bob Hinton, ripped away the knife, and ordered him to put his hands against the wall. I Mirandized him as I frisked him.

“Do you understand your rights?”

His laughter was shrill but sardonic. “Better than most,” he said.

I found glass-cutting tools and a camera on Hinton, which I removed. Then I forced him to the ground and sat on the edge of the king-size bed, holding my gun on him and Carolee.

I didn’t even blink until I heard heavy footsteps rumbling up the stairs.

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 143

IT WAS AFTER THREE in the morning, and I was back at the police station. Chief Stark was with Bob Hinton in the interrogation room, where Bob was describing in detail the many homicides that he, Carolee, and Keith had committed in Half Moon Bay.

I sat with Carolee in the chief’s office, an old Sony tape recorder between us on Peter Stark’s messy desk. A detective brought cups of coffee into the room in a cardboard box, then he took a position inside the doorway as I interviewed Carolee.

“I think I’d like to talk to my lawyer,” Carolee said flatly.

“You mean Bob? Can you wait a few minutes?” I snapped. “He’s giving you up right now, and we’d like to get it all down.”

Carolee gave me a bemused smile.

She flicked a strand of hair from the front of her black silk turtleneck, then folded her manicured hands in her lap. I couldn’t help but stare.

Carolee had been a friend. We’d traded confidences. I’d told her to call me if she ever needed me. I idolized her daughter.

Even now, she was dignified, articulate, seemingly sane.

“Maybe you’d like a different lawyer,” I said.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s not going to matter.”

“Okay, then. Why don’t you talk to me?”

I switched on the tape recorder, spoke my name, the time and date, my badge number, and the subject’s name. Then I rewound the tape and played it back to make sure the machine was working. Satisfied, I leaned back in the chief’s swivel chair.

“Okay, Carolee. Let’s hear it,” I said.

The lovely-looking woman in her Donna Karan perfection took a moment to organize her thoughts before she spoke for the record.

“Lindsay,” she said thoughtfully, “you need to understand that they brought it upon themselves. The Whittakers were making child pornography. The Daltrys were actually starving their twins. They were part of some freaking religious cult that told them their children shouldn’t eat solid food.”

“And you didn’t think to get Children’s Services involved?”

“I reported it again and again. Jake and Alice were clever, though. They stocked their shelves with food, but they never fed the children!”

“And Doc O’Malley? What about him and his wife?”

“Doc was selling his own child on the Internet. There was a camera in her room. That stupid Lorelei knew. Caitlin knew. I only hope that her grandparents get her the help she needs. I wish I could do it myself.”

The more she talked, the more I understood the depths of her narcissism. Carolee and her cohorts had taken on the mission of cleaning up child abuse in Half Moon Bay—acting as the whole judicial package: judge, jury, and executioners. And the way she described it, it almost made sense.

If you didn’t know what she’d done.

“Carolee. You killed eight people.”

We were interrupted by a knock on the door. The detective cracked it open a few inches, and I saw the chief outside. His face was gray with fatigue. I stepped out into the hallway.

“Coastside hospital called,” he told me. “Hinton administered the coup de grâce after all.”

I stepped back into the chief’s office. Sat down in the swivel chair.

“Make that nine, Carolee. Ed Farley just died.”

“And thank God for that,” Carolee said. “When you people open the barn at the back of the Farleys’ yard you’re going to have to pin a medal on me. The Farleys have been trafficking in little Mexican girls. Selling them for sex all across the country. Call the FBI, Lindsay. This is a big one.”

Carolee’s posture relaxed even as I grappled with this new bombshell. She leaned forward confidingly. The earnestness in her face was absolutely stunning.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you something since I met you,” she said. “And it doesn’t matter to anyone but you. Your John Doe? That terrible shit had a name. Brian Miller. And I’m the one who killed him.”

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 144

I COULD HARDLY ABSORB what Carolee had just told me.

She’d killed my John Doe.

That boy’s death had been on my mind for ten full years. Carolee was my sister’s friend. Now I tried to grasp that John Doe’s killer and I had been traveling on adjacent paths, paths that had finally converged in this room.

“It’s traditional for the condemned to have a cigarette, isn’t it, Lindsay?”

“Hell, yes,” I said. “As many as you want.”

I reached on top of a filing cabinet for a carton of Marlboros. I broke open the box and placed a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches beside Carolee’s elbow with a casualness I had to fake.

I was desperate to hear about the boy whose lost life I’d been carrying with me in spirit for so many years.

“Thank you,” said Carolee, the schoolteacher, the mom, the savior of abused children.

She peeled cellophane and foil from the mouth of the packet, tapped out a cigarette. A match sparked, and the smell of sulfur rose into the air.

“Keith was only twelve when he came to my school. Same age as my son, Bob,” she said. “Lovely boys, both of them. Tons of promise.”

I listened intently as Carolee described the appearance of Brian Miller, an older boy, a runaway who gained her confidence and eventually become a counselor at the school.

“Brian raped them repeatedly, both Bob and Keith, and he raped their minds, too. He had a Special Forces knife. Said he’d turn them into girls if they ever told anyone what he’d done.”