Read Private: #1 Suspect Online
Authors: James Patterson; Maxine Paetro
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Suspense, #General
I PULLED UP to the Beverly Hills Sun, Jinx Poole’s flagship hotel, at just after ten. I stepped out of my two-hundred-thousand-dollar car looking as if I’d been dragged behind it for a couple of miles. I gave my car keys to the valet and checked in at the desk.
The clerk said, “Mr. Morgan, I believe the woman on the red sofa is waiting for you.”
It was Justine.
Thank God.
I was so glad to see her, my eyes got wet. Thinking about stretching out on clean sheets, Justine lying beside me, of feeling her skin against mine, flooded me with relief.
But why was she here? I called her name. She looked up, and I crossed the plush and glittering lobby to her, saying, “How long have you been waiting? Are you okay?”
I couldn’t read her expression.
“What’s going on, Justine?”
“It’s just—we have to talk. Gloves off. Nothing but the truth.”
“Let’s go to my room,” I said. I turned my head, pointed to my bruised jaw, and said, “I’ve got to lie down.”
“You stink of beer. You were in a bar fight?”
“You don’t miss a thing.”
“Sit down. Please. This won’t take long.”
It didn’t sound good, whatever was coming. I eased myself onto the sofa next to Justine.
“I’m just about brain dead. Maybe we should talk tomorrow.”
“Very little of your brain is required.”
I looked at her and she hooked me in with her eyes. I loved Justine. I loved her.
“When you saw Colleen last week, before you left for Europe—what happened?”
“We had lunch at Smitty’s. I have a receipt somewhere. I haven’t had time to go over my credit card bill.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“Christ. You shouldn’t do this. Do I ever grill you? Can’t you just trust me?”
“Did you say ‘trust me’? I’ll take that to mean it wasn’t just lunch. Oh, Jack.”
She shook her head.
I threw up my hands. “If you don’t believe me about this,” I said, “then what’s the point? How can we work things out if you don’t trust me?”
Justine got up, hooked the strap of her handbag over her shoulder, and without looking back, left the hotel through the revolving doors. I watched her through the glass. She gave her ticket to the valet and faced the street as he went for her car.
Justine could read me like an FBI polygraph. Lying to her was futile. I could chase after her, but what more could I say?
The valet brought her car, and Justine slid in behind the wheel, strapped in, and took off fast down South Santa Monica.
This time I was sure I’d lost her. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was pretty much what I deserved.
THE NEXT MORNING, I walked from my office across the hall to the “war room,” thinking about Colleen. I wondered what she’d been doing in her last hours, trying to see through her eyes how she’d been trapped by a man with murderous intentions. I imagined her horror when that gun—probably
my
gun—had been aimed at her chest, her killer taunting her before he squeezed the trigger.
I had a horrifying thought.
What if she’d believed her killer was
me?
I stiff-armed the door, saw that the conference room was packed: Sci, Cruz, Mo, and Del Rio, arrayed around the black table, hunched over coffee, texting and phoning, looking up when I came in.
Associates filled the row of swivel chairs around the perimeter, buzzing about a hot case that had been resolved at four this morning when a team of Private investigators caught a runaway teen and her user boyfriend withdrawing funds from an ATM with her mom’s bank card.
Justine’s seat was empty. Justine was never late for a meeting. Had never been late in five years.
The chatter stopped as I pulled out my chair.
Cody brought in my Red Bull and a list of names.
“What’s this?”
“Candidates for my job. I’m setting up appointments for you to meet the best three. Best three in my humble opinion.”
I nodded. “Let’s get started.” I introduced Christian Scott, said that Scotty had been with the Joffrey Ballet, suffered a knee injury, joined the California Highway Patrol as a motorcycle cop.
“Scotty was one of three guys who brought down a major doper, four hundred pounds of weed in the trunk. It was Scotty who pulled him over on a hunch—”
“A hunch and the rear of the car was sending up sparks on the freeway,” Scotty said.
“He’s got good hunches and, I’ve been told, a pretty decent pirouette,” I said into the laughter. “Scotty has just finished his six thousand hours as an investigator at California Casualty, so his license is in the mail.
“Stand up and show us your face.”
There was applause. Scotty stood and said he was glad to be here. Then investigator Lauri Green raised her hand and said, “Jack, I gotta go in a minute. Just to let you know Mara Tracey is out on bail.”
Lauri was talking about our shoplifting movie star, made ten million a picture and still lifted a hundred-dollar sweatshirt from a boutique, attracting tabloid headlines, paparazzi popping up out of the shrubbery, and a publicized date next week in front of a judge.
Mara’s husband had hired us to keep eyes on her. We discussed tailing Ms. Tracey, then Cruz got up and filled the group in on the dead businessman at the Beverly Hills Sun. He sketched in the backstory: the string of four other dead men in other hotels, and the dead-end lead to an escort service. He talked about research he was doing now, interviews with hotel staff, and so on. He was keeping himself in the background, he said, now that the cops were on the case.
He didn’t mention the Noccias’ stolen van full of boosted pharmaceuticals—I was keeping that one off-limits to the group.
When Cruz sat down, I tapped keys on my laptop and Colleen’s photo filled the center flat screen on the wall.
My ears hummed and my heart rate shot up when I saw that picture. Only two days ago, Colleen had been alive and well.
I dropped my eyes to the keyboard, trying to get a grip on my emotions. When I spoke, my voice cracked.
“Most of you knew Colleen. She was most likely killed to torment me and to implicate me in her death.”
Del Rio said quietly, “Dude.”
I swallowed hard and kept going.
“As you’ve probably heard, I’m not only the prime suspect, I’m the only suspect. Meanwhile, Colleen’s killer is out there somewhere—laughing his ass off.”
I LEANED BACK in my seat at the conference table. I was aware of my colleagues looking at me as I stared at Colleen’s face on the screen. Her expression was sunny, luminous, and it wasn’t a portrait, just a snapshot for her ID card taken on her first day of work at Private.
I remembered how an hour after that photo was taken, Colleen was sitting outside my office, going through my mail. She had looked up when my shadow crossed her desk and said, “Is someone wanting to harm ye, Mr. Morgan?”
“A dozen people I can think of. Why?”
She showed me a padded envelope marked up with red grease pencil, block letters reading, “Time Dated Material. Open Upon Receipt.”
An arrow pointed to the pull tab. It wasn’t ticking, but the envelope had no return address and the lettering looked insane.
We had evacuated the building, eighty of us standing out in the glaring sun on Figueroa while the bomb squad took the envelope out with a robot and x-rayed it in the bomb-mobile. The contents were shredded newspaper and a note, same red letters with a lot of rays coming out from the words
“BANGETY-BANG-BANG-BANG.”
Fingerprints were traced back to a repeat offender, Penn Runyon, a psycho who’d been incarcerated for the illegal sale of weapons and had been released a few months before.
Runyon was interrogated, said he’d read about me in the paper, how I’d tracked down and brought in an escaped con who was a friend of his.
Actually, it was
Tommy
had who brought down Runyon’s friend, not me.
Common mistake: Jack Morgan, Private Investigations. Tom Morgan Jr., Private Security.
Runyon wanted to know if he’d killed me. Really? You sent a nonexplosive paper bomb, buddy.
So Runyon got it all wrong.
Colleen, on the other hand, had gotten it all right. She was the best assistant I ever had. And more. I’d cared about her deeply.
I stopped reminiscing about Colleen and brought my attention back to the present. I said to my investigators, “Colleen worked here at Private for over a year. We started going out. It wasn’t a secret.”
“She was a great girl,” Del Rio said.
“Yes, she was. She was visiting friends here in LA and somehow she was captured or tricked, then murdered in my house.”
I talked about the terrible scene I had found in my bedroom, then turned the floor over to Sci, who looked fifteen years old in his pineapple-print aloha shirt, painter’s pants, and tennis sneakers.
He read from a report citing the cause and manner of Colleen’s death, homicide by gunshot to the heart. And he said that there was evidence that she’d had sex sometime before her death.
“We’ll have the DNA profile later today,” Sci said.
I said, “No matter what we find, the LAPD isn’t going to buy it because we can’t tell anyone that we processed the crime scene. So we’ll have to use what we’ve found to trap the doer and then lead the cops to him.”
There were questions about the time of Colleen’s death, where I was when it happened, whether the murder weapon had been found, and if the killer had written, called, or left a message for me to find.
“The killer was a pro. This was a well-planned murder, and it can only have been a setup to frame me. We’re working overtime until we nail the shit who killed Colleen.”
At that, the door to the conference room opened and Justine came in, tall, slim, elegant in navy-blue suit and cream-colored silk blouse.
“Sorry,” she said, taking the seat next to mine.
“We’re just wrapping up,” I said. “You want to report on Danny Whitman?”
“Possible new case,” she said to the group. “Young movie star with a criminal zipper problem. I’m meeting him today.”
“Thanks, Justine. Anyone else?”
“I need a few minutes with you, Jack,” Justine said. “If you can spare the time.”
I adjourned the meeting. And after the room emptied, I closed the door and sat down next to Justine.
SEVEN YEARS AGO, after I returned from the war, I went into therapy, saw an excellent guy, Josh Moskowitz, who specialized in vets like me. That is, ex-military who’d gone through bloody hell and weren’t adjusting too well back home.
Like many of us, I had night terrors.
I kept hearing those boys in the bombed-out rear section of the CH-46, screaming as the helicopter went up in flames.
Dr. Moskowitz had an office in Santa Monica, a little office in a tall building on Fifteenth Street. I didn’t know it then, but Dr. Justine Smith worked in the same building.
I ran into her in the elevator one night, was thunderstruck in a way that you can’t explain by describing hair and eyes and curves. I rode up ten floors just staring at her before I realized that the elevator wasn’t going down.
She’d laughed at me, or maybe she just enjoyed seeing me go from zero to smitten in sixty seconds. Next time I saw her, I held the elevator door open, told her my name, and asked her to have dinner with me.
She said okay.
It was as if she’d cupped her hands around my heart.
Justine was a couple years younger than I was and maybe a decade wiser. Beautiful. Smart. Worked in a mental hospital most of the week, had a private practice and saw a handful of patients on Mondays and Wednesdays.
We had dinner together at a little Italian place out at Hermosa Beach, and I talked through it all. I told her more about myself over that one dinner than I’d told her since. I sensed she was a safe person, trustworthy, accepting, and she must have thought I was the kind of person who could open up.
Later she said that I was like a clam. With a rubber band around my shell. I laughed it off, said that she’d now met my real self when not in crisis. By the time we had that conversation, we were already in love.
Now Justine sat in a leather chair, swiveling gently from side to side. I came around the table and sat down next to her. Her face looked stiff.
She was so angry at me.
“I have a job offer,” she said. “A good one.”
“That didn’t take long.”
“I’ll complete my cases, including the new one if it’s a go. I didn’t give an answer yet, but that’s just negotiation. I’ll probably take the job.”
“I know this is a long shot, Justine, but imagine that I’m actually innocent here. Imagine that I never needed you more than I need you now.”
“Okay, Jack. Now you imagine that I just don’t care anymore.”
JUSTINE WAS AT the wheel of her midnight-blue Jaguar, Scotty in the passenger seat beside her. They turned off Melrose, passed under the arched gates of the Harlequin Pictures lot, and stopped at the guard booth.
Justine said to the guard, “Justine Smith to see Danny Whitman.”
The guard ran his finger down a list on his laptop, did a visual match between the picture on Justine’s driver’s license and her face. He said her name into a phone, then turned back to her and said, “Take a right, then left on Avenue P. Keep going until you see 231 on the corner of Eleventh.” He waved her through.
Scotty said, “I’ve seen everything Danny Whitman has ever made. I saw his first film,
Badger.
Played the kid with the wild dogs? I knew he was going to take off.”
Justine flashed him a smile, slowed for a speed bump, took a left at the second intersection, and headed down a street lined by soundstages and two- and three-story white stucco buildings once used as studio homes for writers and actors, now mainly production and administration offices.
Her mind ranged as she drove, thinking about Jack, about Jack with Colleen, about how she was sure he’d lied about what had happened at lunch with Colleen. Justine also thought about the job she’d been offered, which wouldn’t be as good as the one she had now—except for one important detail. She wouldn’t be seeing Jack five days a week.
Scotty was looking at her. She recalled what he’d said. Excited about working with Danny Whitman.
“We don’t have a check yet, Scotty. But if we take the job, bet you ten bucks you’ll be happy when it’s over.”
She lifted the visor, downshifted, and said to Scotty, “He’s just starting this new film. Action-adventure, of course. The question is, will he get to finish it?”
“Shades of Green,”
said Scotty. “I read about it. Spies and counterspies in the twenty-first century.”
“Okay, I’m impressed,” Justine said. “You do your homework.”
Justine’s mind flicked over this assignment. She wished she hadn’t told Jack she would do it. It could drag on. And the one thing you could absolutely count on with movie stars, it was going to get messy.
Please, God. Let this one be the exception to the rule. Let this one be easy.
“Sorry?” she said to Scotty. He was speaking again.
“So you missed the meeting. Jack was talking about Colleen Molloy. People seemed to like her.”
“She was adorable,” Justine said. “What number is that?” Scanning the nearly identical white buildings.
“
Adorable.
Interesting word choice.”
“Genuine. Funny. Unaffected.”
“And you dated Jack too?”
“Boy, you’re quite the background checker,” Justine said. “There it is. On the corner. Now listen, Scotty, I don’t even know if we’re going to get this job, so just watch and listen.”
“I can do that.” He grinned. “But you didn’t answer my question.”
Justine braked the car at the curb, turned off the engine, and looked at the new guy on the team. He was young, regular features. Probably a little German, a little Brit, a little American Indian. Nice looking and kind of full of himself, but he was also curious and dogged. Good-natured too. He was going to be a fine addition to Private. As long as he stayed optimistic.
“Jack breaks hearts,” Justine said. “That’s what he does. I don’t even know if it’s his fault. Women want to fix Jack, and they think they can. I thought I could too.”
She reached into the backseat for her shiny leather handbag, opened it, and found a makeup kit in there. She took out her lipstick and a mirror, put fresh color on.
Scotty said, “So it is as Jack says. He was framed.”
“Jack is a lot of things, but he’s not a killer.”
Justine snapped her handbag closed and opened the car door. Scotty was saying, “But wasn’t he in the war? Wasn’t he a marine?”