The 17th Suspect Read online

  CONTENTS

  About the Book

  About the Authors

  Also by James Patterson

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Part Two

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Part Three

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Acknowledgments

  Read On

  Meet the Women’s Murder Club

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  A KILLER WHO CHOOSES VICTIMS PERSONALLY GETS TOO CLOSE TO SERGEANT LINDSAY BOXER.

  A series of shootings exposes San Francisco to a methodical yet unpredictable killer, and a reluctant woman decides to put her trust in Lindsay Boxer. The confidential informant’s tip leads Lindsay to disturbing conclusions, including that something has gone horribly wrong inside the police department itself.

  The hunt for the killer lures Lindsay out of her jurisdiction, and gets inside her in dangerous ways. Lindsay’s friends and confidantes in the Women’s Murder Club warn her against taking the crimes too much to heart. With lives at stake, the detective can’t stop herself from following the case into ever more terrifying terrain.

  A decorated officer, loving wife, devoted mother and loyal friend, Lindsay is confronting a killer who is determined to undermine it all.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  James Patterson is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 365 million copies worldwide. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past two decades – the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, Detective Michael Bennett and Private novels – and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers.

  James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books for young readers including the Middle School, I Funny, Treasure Hunters, House of Robots, Confessions, and Maximum Ride series. James has donated millions in grants to independent bookshops and has been the most borrowed author of adult fiction in UK libraries for the past eleven years in a row. He lives in Florida with his wife and son.

  Maxine Paetro has collaborated with James Patterson on the bestselling Women’s Murder Club, Private, and Confessions series. She lives with her husband in New York State.

  Have You Read Them All?

  1ST TO DIE

  Four friends come together to form the Women’s Murder Club. Their job? To find a killer who is brutally slaughtering newly-wed couples on their wedding night.

  2ND CHANCE (with Andrew Gross)

  The Women’s Murder Club tracks a mystifying serial killer, but things get dangerous when he turns his pursuers into prey.

  3RD DEGREE (with Andrew Gross)

  A wave of violence sweeps the city, and whoever is behind it is intent on killing someone every three days. Now he has targeted one of the Women’s Murder Club …

  4TH OF JULY (with Maxine Paetro)

  In a deadly shoot-out, Detective Lindsay Boxer makes a split-second decision that threatens everything she’s ever worked for.

  THE 5TH HORSEMAN (with Maxine Paetro)

  Recovering patients are dying inexplicably in hospital. Nobody is claiming responsibility. Could these deaths be tragic coincidences, or something more sinister?

  THE 6TH TARGET (with Maxine Paetro)

  Children from rich families are being abducted off the streets – but the kidnappers aren’t demanding a ransom. Can Lindsay Boxer find the children before it’s too late?

  7TH HEAVEN (with Maxine Paetro)

  The hunt for a deranged murderer with a taste for fire and the disappearance of the governor’s son have pushed Lindsay to the limit. The trails have gone cold. But a raging fire is getting ever closer, and somebody will get burned.

  8TH CONFESSION (with Maxine Paetro)

  Four celebrities are found killed and there are no clues: the perfect crime. Few people are as interested when a lowly preacher is murdered. But could he have been hiding a dark secret?

  9TH JUDGEMENT (with Maxine Paetro)

  A psychopathic killer targets San Francisco’s most innocent and vulnerable, while a burglary gone horribly wrong leads to a high-profile murder.

  10TH ANNIVERSARY (with Maxine Paetro)

  A badly injured teenage girl is left for dead, and her newborn baby is nowhere to be found. But is the victim keeping secrets?

  11TH HOUR (with Maxine Paetro)

  Is one of Detective Lindsay Boxer’s colleagues a vicious killer? She won’t know until the 11th hour.

  12TH OF NEVER (with Maxine Paetro)

  A convicted serial killer wakes from a two-year coma. He says he’s ready to tell where the bodies are buried, but what does he want in return?

  UNLUCKY 13 (with Maxine Paetro)

  Someone returns to San Francisco to pay a visit to some old friends. But a cheerful reunion is not on the cards.

  14TH DEADLY SIN (with Maxine Paetro)

  A new terror is sweeping the streets of San Francisco, and the killers are dressed in polic
e uniform. Lindsay treads a dangerous line as she investigates whether the criminals are brilliant imposters or police officers gone rogue.

  15TH AFFAIR (with Maxine Paetro)

  Four bodies are found in a luxury hotel. Lindsay is sent in to investigate and hunt down an elusive and dangerous suspect. But when her husband Joe goes missing, she begins to fear that the suspect she is searching for could be him.

  16TH SEDUCTION (with Maxine Paetro)

  At the trial of a bomber Lindsay and Joe worked together to capture, his defence raises damning questions about Lindsay and Joe’s investigation.

  A list of more titles by James Patterson can be found at the back of this book

  To the friends of the Women’s Murder Club

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  JUST AFTER 4 A.M. under a starless sky, a man in a well-worn tweed coat and black knit cap crossed Broadway onto Front Street, humming a tune as he strolled south to Sydney G. Walton Square.

  The square was a cozy one-block park, bounded by iron fencing with an artifact of a brick gate set at a diagonal on one corner. Inside were paths and seating and garden beds, cut back now at the end of the growing season.

  During the day Walton Square was crowded with office workers from San Francisco’s Financial District, eating their take-out lunches near the fountain. At night the streets were empty and the park was occupied by homeless people going through the trash cans, sleeping on the benches, congregating near the gate.

  The man in the shapeless tweed coat stopped outside the iron fencing and looked around the park and surroundings with purpose. He was still humming tunelessly and gripping a 9mm gun in his right-hand pocket.

  The man, Michael, was looking for someone in particular. He watched for a while as the vagrants moseyed around the park and on the sidewalks that bounded it. He didn’t see the woman he was looking for, but he wasn’t going to let this night go to waste.

  As he watched, a man in a ragged layering of dirty clothing left the park and headed east, in the direction of the Embarcadero and the piers, where the garbage in the trash cans was more exotic than discarded office worker sandwiches.

  The ragged man was talking to himself, scratching his beard, and seemed to be counting, touching his right thumb to each of the fingers on his right hand and pensively repeating the ritual.

  He didn’t notice the man in the tweed coat standing against the fence.

  Michael called out to him. “Hey, buddy. Got a smoke?”

  The ragged man turned his bleary eyes to the man pointing the gun at him. He got it fast. He put up his hands and started to explain.

  “No, man, I didn’t take the money. It was her. I was an innocent—”

  The man in the coat raised the gun and pulled the trigger once, shooting the bum square in the chest. Pigeons flew up from the adjacent buildings.

  The bum clapped his hand over his chest and opened his mouth in a wordless expression of shock. But he was still standing, still staring at him.

  Michael fired another shot. The ragged man’s knees folded and he dropped without a sound.

  He said to the corpse, “Worthless piece of shit, you asked for that. You should thank me.”

  He looked around and ducked into a section of shade in the park. He placed his gun on the ground, stripped off his gloves, jammed them into his pockets, and shucked the old coat.

  He was dressed all in black under the coat, in jeans, a turtleneck, and a quilted jacket. He transferred the gun to his jacket, gathered up the coat, and stuffed it into a trash can.

  Someone would find them. Someone would put them on. And good luck to him.

  Michael slipped out from behind the copse of trees and took a seat on a bench. Screams started up. And the crummy vermin poured out of the park like a line of ants and surrounded the body.

  No one noticed him. There were no keening sirens, no “Dude, did you see what happened?”

  Nothing.

  After a few minutes the killer stood up and, with his hands in his jacket pockets, left the park and headed home.

  There would be other nights.

  One of these times he was bound to get lucky.

  CHAPTER 2

  ON MONDAY MORNING assistant district attorney Yuki Castellano was in the San Francisco DA’s conference room, sitting across the mahogany table from a boyishly handsome young man. Yuki was building a sexual abuse case that she thought, if brought to trial, could change the face of rape prosecution on a national scale. An executive at a top creative San Francisco ad agency had allegedly raped an employee at gunpoint, and Yuki was determined to try the case.

  After she quit her job and spent a year at the nonprofit Defense League, district attorney Leonard “Red Dog” Parisi had asked her to come back and try an explosive case as his second chair—but they had suffered a humiliating loss. Now Yuki wanted very much to have a win for herself, for Parisi, and for the city.

  She asked, “Marc, can we get you anything? Sparkling water? Coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I’m good.”

  Marc Christopher was a television commercial producer with the Ad Shop—and the victim in the case, claiming that Briana Hill, the head of the agency’s TV production department and his boss, had assaulted him. The Sex Crimes detail of SFPD’s Southern Station had investigated Christopher’s complaint and found convincing enough evidence to bring the case to the DA’s office.

  After reviewing the evidence and meeting with Christopher, Yuki had asked Parisi to let her take the case to the grand jury.

  Parisi said, “Yuki, this could be a glue trap. You’re going to have to convince a jury that this kid could keep it up with a loaded weapon pointed at his head. That a woman could rape him. You really want to do this? Win or lose, this case is going to stick to you.”

  She said, “Len, I’m absolutely sure he was raped and I can prove it. If we get an indictment, I want to run with this.”

  “Okay,” Len said dubiously. “Give it your best shot.”

  In Yuki’s opinion, nonconsensual sex was rape, irrespective of gender. Women raping men rarely got traction unless the woman was a schoolteacher or in another position of authority, and the victim was a child or, more commonly, a teenage boy. In those instances the crime had more to do with the age of the victim than a presumed act of brutality by a woman.

  In this case Briana Hill and Marc Christopher were about the same age, both in their late twenties. Christopher was Hill’s subordinate at the Ad Shop, true, but he wasn’t accusing her of sexual harassment at work. He claimed that Hill had threatened to shoot him if he didn’t comply with a sadistic sex act.

  Would Hill really have pulled the trigger? For legal purposes, it didn’t matter.

  It mattered only that Marc Christopher had believed she would shoot him.

  As Len Parisi had said, it was going to be a challenge to convince a jury that this confident young man couldn’t have fought Hill off; that he’d maintained an erection at gunpoint, against his will; and that he’d been forced to have sex with a woman he had dated and had sex with many times before.

  But Yuki would tell Christopher’s story: he’d said no and Hill had violated him anyway. Yuki had seen the proof. The grand jury would have to decide if there was enough evidence to support that version of events. Once this case went to trial, win or lose, Marc would be known for accusing a woman of raping him. If Briana Hill was found guilty, she would go to jail—and the face of workplace sexual harassment would change.

  CHAPTER 3

  GLASS WALLS SEPARATED the conference room from the hallway, with its flow of busy, noisy, and nosy foot traffic.

  Yuki ignored those who were sneaking looks at the broad-shouldered, dark-haired agency producer slumping slightly in his chair. He was clearly wounded, describing what he claimed had transpired two months before, and seemed very vulnerable.

  Yuki stepped outside the conference room to have a word with a colleague. When she returned to her seat, Christopher had turned his chai
r so that he was staring out through the windows at the uninspiring third-floor view of Bryant Street.

  Yuki said, “Marc, let’s talk it through again, okay?”

  He swiveled the chair back around and said, “I understand that I have to testify to the grand jury. I can do that. I’m worried about going to trial and how I’m going to react when Briana’s attorney calls me a liar.”

  Yuki was glad Marc had dropped in to talk about this. He was right to be apprehensive. Briana Hill’s attorney, James Giftos, looked and dressed like a mild-mannered shoe salesman, but that was just a disarming guise for an attack attorney who would do whatever it took to destroy Marc Christopher’s credibility.

  Yuki asked, “How do you think you might react?”

  “I don’t know. I could get angry and go after the guy. I could break down and come across as a complete wimp.”

  “It’s good to think about this in advance,” Yuki said, “but Giftos won’t be at the grand jury hearing. We’re just asking the jury for an indictment based on the facts of this case. I think the jury is going to believe you, as I do.

  “If Hill is indicted,” Yuki continued, “we go to court. She’ll be there to contest your testimony and present her version of this attack. James Giftos will do everything he can to make you look like a liar and worse.”

  “Oh, God. Can you walk me through that?”

  “Okay, I’ll give it to you straight. Because you dated Briana, you won’t be protected by the rape shield law. Giftos could ask you about your sex life with Briana in detail—how often, what it was like, what made you invite her to your apartment. Nothing will be off-limits.”

  “Wonderful,” said Christopher miserably. “Piece o’ cake.”

  “The press will cover the trial. Public opinion may favor Briana, and you may be verbally attacked. It could get very ugly, Marc. And when we win, your life may never be quite the same.”

  The young man covered his face with his hands.

  “Marc, if you don’t want to go through with this, I’ll understand.”

  “Thanks for that. I’ll be ready. I’ll make myself be ready.”

  “You have my number. Call me, anytime.”

  Yuki walked Christopher to the elevator, and as she shook his hand, he said, “I thought of something.”