Worst Case Read online

  Copyright © 2010 James Patterson

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/littlebrown.

  First eBook Edition: February 2010

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-12702-8

  Contents

  Copyright

  Books by James Patterson

  Prologue: GIVE PEACE A CHANCE… OR ELSE

  One

  Two

  Part One: ASHES TO ASHES

  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

  Part Two: FINAL EXAM

  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

  Part Three: SIGN OF THE CROSS

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  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

  Part Four: CHARITY CASE

  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

  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

  Chapter 102

  About the Authors

  Books by James Patterson

  Bonus Material

  Michael Bennett Character Profile

  Cases Solved by Michael Bennett Timeline

  Scene Locations

  BOOKS BY JAMES PATTERSON

  Featuring Michael Bennett

  Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)

  A complete list of books by James Patterson is here. For previews of upcoming books by James Patterson and more information about the author, visit www.JamesPatterson.com.

  For Susan Maloney, Sue Najork, Marlene Stang, and Kary Tangredi—J.P.

  For Mary Ann O’Donnell, World’s Greatest Adviser Special thanks to “Uncle” Ed Kelly and Judge Joe Len—M.L.

  Prologue

  GIVE PEACE A CHANCE… OR ELSE

  One

  THE STOCKY MAN with the salt-and-pepper hair felt light-headed as he crossed beneath the marble arch into Washington Square Park. He dropped his backpack, took off his circular glasses, and blotted the sudden tears in his eyes with the sleeve of his ancient jeans jacket.

  He hadn’t planned on breaking down, but My God, he thought, wiping at his rugged, lined face. Now he knew how Vietnam veterans felt when they visited their Wall down in Washington, DC. If veterans of the antiwar movement had a monument—a Wall of Tears—it was here, where it all began, Washington Square Park.

  Staring out over the windy park, he remembered all the incredible things that had occurred here. The antiwar demonstrations. Bob Dylan in the 4th Street basement clubs, singing about which way the wind was blowing. The candlelit faces of his old friends as they passed bottles and smoke. The whispered promises they had made to one another to change things, to make things better.

  He looked out over the Friday-afternoon crowd by the center fountain, the people hovering over the chess tables, as if he might find a familiar face. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? he thought with a shrug. They’d all moved on, like he had. Grown up. Sold out. Or were underground. Figuratively. Literally.

  That time, his time, was almost completely faded now, just about dead and gone.

  Just about, he thought as he knelt and removed the box of flyers from his knapsack.

  But not quite.

  On each of the five hundred sheets was a three-paragraph message entitled LOVE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.

  Who says you can’t go home? he thought. A quote from Keith Richards popped into his head as he stacked the sheets.

  “I got news for you. We’re still a bunch of tough bastards. String us up and we still won’t die.”

  You said it, Keith, he thought, giggling to himself. Right on, brother. You and me both.

  More and more over the last year, his thoughts kept coming back to his youth. It was the only time in his entire life when he’d felt like he meant something, when he’d felt he was making a positive difference.

  Was coming back now after all this time a midlife crisis? Maybe. He didn’t care. He’d decided he wanted that feeling again. Especially in light of recent events. The world now was in even more dire straits than the one he and his friends had fought to affect. It was time to do it again. Wake people up before it was too late.

  That’s why he was here. It had worked once. They had, after all, stopped a war. Maybe it could happen again. Even if he was a lot older, he wasn’t dead yet. Not by any means.

  He licked his thumb and took the first sheet from the stack. He smiled, remembering the countless flyers he’d handed out in Berkeley and Seattle, and in Chicago in ’68. After all this time, here he was. Unbelievable. What a crazy life. Back in the saddle again.

  T
wo

  “HI THERE,” he said, offering the flyer to a young black woman pushing a toddler in a stroller.

  He smiled at her, making eye contact. He was good with people, always had been. “I have a message here that I think you should take a look at, if it’s not too much trouble. It concerns, well, everything.”

  “Leave me the hell alone with that nonsense,” she said with surprising vehemence, almost smacking it out of his hand.

  Had to expect a little of that, he thought with a nod. Some people were a hard sell. Came with the territory. Unfazed, he immediately walked over toward a group of teenagers skateboarding by the statue of Garibaldi.

  “Afternoon, guys. I have a message here that I’d like you to read. Only take a second out of your day. If you’re concerned about the state of affairs and about our future, I think it’s something you should really consider.”

  They stared at him, dumbfounded. Up close, he was surprised to see the crow’s-feet around their eyes. They weren’t teenagers. They were in their late twenties and early thirties. Hard-looking. Kind of mean, actually.

  “Holy shit! It’s John Lennon!” one of them said. “I thought somebody shot you. Where’s Yoko? When you getting back with Paul?”

  The rest of them burst into sharp laughter.

  Jerks, he thought, heading immediately over toward the center fountain, where a street comedian was giving a performance. Yeah, the fate of the world was a real rip, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t let those assholes get to him. He just needed to hit on the right person and things would start rolling. Persistence was the name of the game.

  People averted their eyes as he approached them. Not one person would take a flyer. What the hell was this? he wondered.

  It was fifteen fruitless minutes later when a petite woman walking past took the flyer from his hand. Finally, the man thought. His smile collapsed as the woman crumpled it and dropped it to the paved path. He ran forward and scooped it up before he caught up to her.

  “The least you could do was wait until you were out of sight before you threw it out in a garbage can,” he said as he whirled in front of her. “You have to litter, too?”

  “I’m… sorry?” the woman said, pulling the white iPod buds from her ears. She hadn’t heard a word he’d said. Were all young people today retarded or something? Didn’t they see where everything was heading? Didn’t they care?

  “You certainly are,” he mumbled as she walked off. “You are sorry. A sorry excuse for a human being.”

  He stopped dead when he got back to the park’s entrance. Someone had kicked over the stack, and most of the flyers were wafting away under the arch, over the sidewalk, whipping north up Fifth Avenue.

  He ran out of the park and chased them for a while. He finally stopped. He felt completely drained and idiotic as he sat on the curb between a couple of parked cars.

  He held his head in his hands as he wept. For twenty minutes he cried, listening to the wind, watching the relentless roll of traffic in the street.

  Flyers? he thought, sniffling. He thought he could change things with a sheet of paper and a concerned expression? He looked down at the antique jeans jacket he’d taken from the back of his closet. So proud that it still fit. He really was a complete fool.

  There was only one thing that could get people to sit up straight, only one thing that would open their eyes.

  Only one thing then.

  And only one thing now.

  He nodded, finally resolving himself. He wasn’t going to be getting any help. He had to do it himself. Fine. Enough of this nonsense. The clock was ticking. He didn’t have any more time to fool the fuck around.

  He discovered he was still holding on to a crumpled flyer. He smoothed it out on the cold pavement beside him, took out a pen, and made a vital correction. It snapped like an unfurled flag as he let the wind take it from his fingers.

  The broad man with the graying hair wiped his eyes as the sheet he’d written on caught high on the corner lamppost behind him.

  The word LOVE in the title had been X’ed out. Against an ash-gray sky above him it now said,

  Blood CAN CHANGE THE WORLD!

  Part One

  ASHES TO ASHES

  Chapter 1

  BOUND IN THE dark, Jacob Dunning thought about all the things he would give for a shower.

  All his possessions? Done. One of his toes? In a heartbeat. One of his fingers? Hmmm, he thought. Did he really need his left pinkie?

  Unidentified mudlike filth stuck to his cheek, his hair. Wearing only his NYU T-shirt and boxers, the handsome brown-haired college freshman lay on a soiled concrete floor in a very tight space.

  An angry industrial hum raged in the vague distance. He was blindfolded, and his hands were cuffed to a pipe behind him. A gag around his mouth was knotted tight against the hollow indentation at the base of his skull.

  The indentation was called the foramen magnum, he knew. It was where your spinal cord passed into your skull. Jacob had learned about it in anatomy class a month or so ago. NYU was step one in his lifelong dream to become a doctor. His father had an 1862 edition of Gray’s Anatomy in his study, and ever since he was a little kid, Jacob had loved going through it. Kneeling in his father’s great padded office chair with his chin in his hands, he’d spend hours poring over the elegant, fascinating sketches, the topography of the human body shaded and named like distant lands, like treasure maps.

  Jacob sobbed at the safe, happy memory. A drop of lukewarm water landed on the back of his neck and dripped down his spine. The itch of it was unbearable. He would get sores soon if he wasn’t able to stand. Bedsores, staph infection, disease.

  The last thing he remembered was leaving Conrad’s, an Alphabet City bar that didn’t care about fake IDs. After a monstrously long chem lab, he’d been trying to chat up Heli, a stunning Finnish girl from his class. But after his fifth mojito, his tongue was losing speed. He’d called it a night when he noticed she was talking more to the male model of a bartender than to him.

  His memory seemed to stop at the point when he stepped outside. How he got from there to here he couldn’t recall.

  For the billionth time, he tried to come up with a scenario in which everything turned out all right. His favorite was that it was a fraternity thing. A bunch of jocks had mistaken him for some other freshman, and this was a really messed-up hazing incident.

  He started weeping. Where were his clothes? Why would somebody take his jeans, his socks and shoes? The scenarios in his head were too black to allow light to enter. He couldn’t fool himself. He was in the deepest shit of his young life.

  He banged his head on the pipe he was chained to as he heard a sound. It was the distant boom of a door. He felt his heart boom with it. His breath didn’t seem to know if it wanted to come in or go out.

  He was pretty much convulsing when he made out a jangle interspersed with the steady approach of footsteps. He suddenly thought of the handyman at his parents’ building, the merry jingle of keys that bounced off his thigh. Skinny Mr. Durkin, who always had a tool in his hand. Hope gave him courage. It was a friend, he decided. Somebody who would save him.

  “Hppp!” Jacob screamed from behind the gag.

  The footsteps stopped. A lock clacked open, and cool air passed over the skin of his face. The gag was pulled off.

  “Thank you! Oh, thank you! I don’t know what happened. I—”

  Jacob’s breath blasted out of him as he was hit in the stomach with something tremendously hard. It was a steel-toed boot, and it seemed to knock his stomach clear through his spine.

  Oh, God, Jacob thought, his head scraping the stone floor as he dry-heaved in filth. Dear God, please help me.

  Chapter 2

  JACOB WAS UNCUFFED and pulled roughly for twenty or so steps and slammed into a hard-backed seat. Light spiked his eyes as his blindfold was sliced away, and his hands were cuffed again behind his back.

  He was in a child’s school desk in a vast, windowless space. In fron
t of him was an old-fashioned wooden rolling blackboard with nothing written on it. Behind him was a cold presence that lifted the hairs from his neck.

  Jacob sobbed silently as a lighter hissed. The faintly spicy scent of tobacco smoke filled the air.

  “Good morning, Master Dunning,” said a voice behind him.

  It was a man’s voice. The man sounded perfectly sane, highly educated, in fact. He reminded him of a popular English teacher he’d had at Horace Mann, Mr. Manducci.

  Hey, wait. Maybe it was Mr. Manducci. He always did seem a little too, er, friendly with some of the male students. Could this be a kidnapping or something? Jacob’s CEO father was extremely wealthy.

  Jacob could actually feel the relief emit from his pores. He decided he’d take a kidnapping at this point. Ransom, being released. He was down with that. Please be a kidnapping, he found himself thinking.

  “My family has money, sir,” Jacob said, carefully trying to keep the terror out of his voice and failing.

  “Yes, they do,” the man said pleasantly. He could have been the DJ for a classical music station. “That’s precisely the problem. They have too much money and too little sense. They own a Mercedes McLaren, a Bentley—oh, and a Prius. How green of them. You can thank their hypocrisy for bringing you here. Unfortunately for you, your father seems to have forgotten his Exodus twenty, verse five: ‘For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons.’ ”

  Jacob twitched violently in the hard chair as a stainless-steel pistol barrel softly caressed his right cheek.

  “Now I’m going to ask you some questions,” his captor said. “Your answers are very, very important. You’ve heard of pass-fail, haven’t you?”

  The pistol jabbed hard into Jacob’s face, its hammer cocking with a sharp click.

  “This test you’re about to take is pass-die. Now, question one: What was your nanny’s name?”

  Who? My nanny? Jacob thought. What the hell was this?

  “R-R-Rosa?” Jacob said.

  “That’s right. Rosa. So far, so good, Master Dunning. Now, what was her last name?”

  Oh, shit, Jacob thought. Abando? Abrado? Something. He didn’t know. The sweet, silly woman that he had played hide-and-seek with. Who’d fed him after school. Rosa, pressing her warm cheek against his as she helped him blow out the candles on his birthday cake. How could he not know her last name?