Woman of God Page 27

  What next? A leg? An ear? The Soldier was surprised at his own callousness. He knew it wasn’t military justice to play with the traitor while doling out his sentence, but the rage still burned in him.

  You would have given us away, he seethed as he watched the boy running in the dark. You would have sacrificed us all.

  There was no lesser creature on earth than a liar, a cheat, and a traitor. And bringing about a fellow soldier’s end was never easy. In some ways, it felt like a second betrayal. Look what you’ve forced me to do, the Soldier thought, watching the kid screaming into the wind. The Soldier let the boy scream. The wind would carry his voice south, away from the camp.

  The cry of a traitor. He would remember it for his own times of weakness.

  The Soldier shifted in the sand, lined up a headshot, and followed Danny in the crosshairs as he got up one last time.

  “Target acquired,” the Soldier murmured to himself, exhaling slowly. “Executing directive.”

  He pulled the trigger. What the Soldier saw through the scope made him smile sadly. He rose, flicked the bipod down on the end of the huge gun and slung the weapon over his shoulder.

  “Target terminated. Mission complete.”

  He walked down the embankment into the dark.

  Chapter 4

  IT WAS Chief Morris who called me into the interrogation room. He was sitting on the left side of the table, in one of the investigator’s chairs, and motioned for me to sit on the right, where the perps sit.

  “What?” I said. “What’s this all about, Pops? I’ve got work to do.”

  His face was grave. I hadn’t seen him look that way since the last time I punched Nigel over in Homicide for taking my parking spot. The Chief had been forced to give me a serious reprimand, on paper, and it hurt him.

  “Sit down, Detective Blue,” he said.

  Holy crap, I thought. This is bad. I know I’m in trouble when the Chief calls me by my official title.

  The truth is, most of our time together is spent far from the busy halls of the Sydney Police Center in Surry Hills.

  I was twenty-one when I started working Sex Crimes. It was my first assignment after two years on street patrol, so I moved into the Sydney Metro offices with more than a little terror in my heart at my new role and the responsibility that came with it. I’d been told I was the first woman in the Sex Crimes department in half a decade. It was up to me to show the boys how to handle women in crisis. The department was broken; I needed to fix it, fast. The Chief had grunted a demoralised hello at me a few times in the coffee room in those early weeks, and that had been it. I’d lain awake plenty of nights thinking about his obvious lack of faith in me, wondering how I could prove him wrong.

  After a first month punctuated by a couple of violent rape cases and three or four aggravated assaults, I’d signed up for one-on-one boxing training at a gym near my apartment. From what I’d seen, I figured it was a good idea for a woman in this city to know how to land a swift uppercut. I’d waited outside the gym office that night sure that the young, muscle-bound woman wrapping her knuckles by the lockers was my trainer.

  But it was Chief Morris in a sweaty grey singlet who tapped me on the shoulder and told me to get into the ring.

  Inside the ropes, the Chief called me “Blue.” Inside the office, he grunted.

  Here in the interrogation room there was none of the warmth and trust we shared in the ring. The Chief’s eyes were cold. I felt a little of that old terror from my first days on the job.

  “Pops,” I said. “What’s the deal?”

  He took the statement notepad and a pencil from beside the interview recorder and pushed them towards me.

  “Make a list of items from your apartment that you’ll need while you’re away. It may be for weeks,” he said. “Toiletries. Clothes. That sort of stuff.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “As far away as you can get,” he sighed.

  “Chief, you’re talking crazy,” I said. “Why can’t I go home and get this stuff myself?”

  “Because right now your apartment is crawling with Forensics officers. Patrol have blockaded the street. They’ve impounded your car, Detective Blue,” he said. “You’re not going home.”

  Chapter 5

  I LAUGHED, hard, in the Chief’s face.

  “Good work, Pops,” I said, standing up so that my chair scraped loudly on the tiles. “Look, I like a good prank as much as anyone, but I’m busier than a one-armed bricklayer out there. I can’t believe they roped you into this one. Good work, mate. Now open this door.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Harriet. Sit back down.”

  I laughed again. That’s what I do when I’m nervous. I laugh, and I grin. “I’ve got cases.”

  “Your apartment and car are being forensically examined in connection with the Georges River Three case,” the Chief said. He slapped a thick manila folder on the table between us. It was bursting with papers and photographs, yellow witness reports, and pink forensics sheets.

  I knew the folder well. I’d watched it as it was carried around by the Homicide guys, back and forth, hand to hand, a bible of horror. Three beautiful university students, all brunettes, all found along the same stretch of the muddy Georges River. Their deaths, exactly thirty days apart, had been violent, drawn-out horrors. The stuff of mothers’ nightmares. Of my nightmares. I’d wanted the Georges River Three case badly, at least to consult on it due to the sexual violence the women had endured. I’d hungered for that case. But it had been given to the parking-spot thief Detective Nigel Spader and his team of Homicide hounds. For weeks I’d sat at my desk seething at the closed door of their case room before the rage finally dissipated.

  I sank back into my chair.

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “It’s routine, Blue,” the Chief said gently. He reached out and put his hand on mine. “They’re just making sure you didn’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “We found the Georges River Killer,” he said. He looked at my eyes. “It’s your brother, Blue. It’s Sam.”

  Chapter 6

  I SLAMMED the door of the interrogation room in the Chief’s face and marched across the office to the Homicide case room. Dozens of eyes followed me. I threw open the door and spotted that slimeball Nigel Spader standing before a huge corkboard stuffed with pinned images, pages, sketches. He flinched for a blow as I walked over but I restrained myself and smacked the folder he was holding out of his hands instead. Papers flew everywhere.

  “You sniveling prick,” I said, shoving a finger in his face. “You dirty, sniveling…dick hole!”

  I was so mad I couldn’t speak, and that’s a real first for me. I couldn’t breathe. My whole throat was aflame. The restraint faltered and I grabbed a wide-eyed Nigel by the shirtfront, gathering up two fistfuls of his orange chest-hair as I dragged him to the floor. Someone caught my fist before I could land a punch. It took two more men to release my grip. We struggled backwards into a table full of coffee cups and plates of muffins. Crockery shattered on the floor.

  “How could you be so completely wrong?” I shouted. “How could you be so completely, completely useless! You pathetic piece of—”

  “That’s enough!” The Chief stepped forward into the fray and took my arm. “Detective Blue, you get a fucking hold of yourself right now, or I’ll have the boys escort you out onto the street.”

  I was suddenly free of all arms and I stumbled, my head pounding.

  And then I saw it.

  The three girls, their autopsy portraits beside smiling, sunlit shots provided by the families. A handprint on a throat. A picture of my brother’s hand. A map of Sydney, studded with pins where the victims lived, where their families lived, where my brother lived, where the bodies of the girls were found. Photographs of the inside of my brother’s apartment, but not as I knew it. Unfamiliar things had been pulled out of drawers and brought down from cupboards. Porn. Tubs and tubs of magazines, DVDs,
glossy pictures. A rope. A knife. A bloody T-shirt. Photographs of onlookers at the crime scenes. My brother’s face among the crowd.

  In the middle of it all, a photograph of Sam. I tugged the photo from the board and unfolded the half of the image that had been tucked away. My own face. The two of us were squeezed into the frame, the flash glinting in my brother’s blue eyes.

  We looked so alike. Detective Harry Blue and the Georges River Killer.

  Chapter 7

  I’VE HAD two cigarettes in the past ten years. Both of them I smoked outside the funeral home where a fallen colleague’s body was being laid to rest. I stood now in the alleyway behind headquarters, finishing off the third. I chain-lit the fourth, sucked hard, exhaled into the icy morning. Despite the chill, my shirt was sticking to me with sweat. I tried to call my brother’s phone three times. No answer.

  The Chief emerged from the fire exit beside me. I held up a hand. Not only did I not want to talk, I wasn’t sure that I could if I tried. The old man stood watching as I smoked. My hands were shaking.

  “That…that rat…that stain on humanity, Nigel Spader, is going to go down for this,” I said. “If it’s my last act, I’m going to make sure he—”

  “I’ve overseen the entire operation,” the Chief said. “I couldn’t tell you it was going on, or you might have alerted Sam. We let you carry on, business as usual. Nigel and his team have done a very good job. They’ve been onto your brother for about three weeks now.”

  I looked at my Chief. My trainer. My friend.

  “I’ve thought you’ve been looking tired,” I sneered. “Can’t sleep at night, Boss?”

  “No,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I can’t. I haven’t slept since the morning the Homicide team told me of their suspicions. I hated lying to you, Blue.”

  He ground a piece of asphalt into the gutter with his heel. He looked ancient in the reflected light of the towering city blocks around us.

  “Where is my brother?”

  “They picked him up this morning,” he said. “He’s being interrogated by the Feds over at Parramatta headquarters.”

  “I need to get over there.”

  “You won’t get anywhere near him at this stage.” The Chief took me by the shoulders before I could barge past him through the fire door. “He’s in processing. Depending on whether he’s cooperative, he may not be approved for visitors for a week. Two, even.”

  “Sam didn’t do this,” I said. “You’ve got it wrong. Nigel’s got it wrong. I need to be here to straighten all this out.”

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “You need to get some stuff together and get out of here.”

  “What, just abandon him?”

  “Harry, Sam is about to go down as one of the nastiest sexual sadists since the Backpacker Murderer. Whether you think he did it or not, you’re public enemy number two right now. If the press gets hold of you, they’re going to eat you alive.”

  I shook another cigarette out of the pack I’d swiped from Nigel’s desk. My thoughts were racing.

  “You aren’t going to do yourself any favours here, Harry. If you go around shouting in front of the cameras the way you did in that case room just now, you’re going to look like a lunatic.”

  “I don’t give a shit what I look like!”

  “You should,” the Chief said. “The entire country is going tune in for this on the six o’clock news. People are angry. If they can’t get at Sam, they’re going to want to get at you. Think about it. It’s fucking poetry. The killer’s sister is a short-tempered, frequently violent cop with a mouth like a sailor. Better yet, she’s in Sex Crimes, and has somehow managed to remain completely oblivious to the sexual predator at the family barbecue.”

  He took a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket and handed it to me. It was a printout of a flight itinerary. He untucked a slim folder from under his arm and put it in my hands. I opened it and saw it was a case brief, but I couldn’t get my eyes to settle on it for more than a few seconds. I felt sick with fear, uncertainty.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “It’s an Unexplained Death case out on a mining camp in the desert near Kalgoorlie,” the Chief said.

  “I’m sex crimes, Pops. Not clean-up crew.”

  “I don’t care what you are. You’re going. I pulled some strings with some old mates in Perth. The case itself is bullshit, but the area is so isolated, it’ll make the perfect hideout.”

  “I don’t want to go to fucking Kalgoorlie! Are you nuts?”

  “You don’t get a choice, Detective. Even if you don’t know what’s best for you right now, I do. I’m giving you a direct order as your superior officer. You don’t go, I’ll have you locked up for interrogative purposes. I’ll tell a judge I want to know if you knew anything about the murders and I’ll throw away the key until this shitstorm is over. You want that?”

  I tried to walk away. The Chief grabbed my arm again.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  I didn’t look.

  “There is nothing you can do to help your brother, Blue,” the old man said. “It’s over.”

  About the Authors

  JAMES PATTERSON has created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He is the author of the Alex Cross novels, the most popular detective series of the past twenty-five years. His other bestselling novels feature the Women’s Murder Club, Michael Bennett, Private, and NYPD Red. Since his first novel won the Edgar Award in 1977, James Patterson’s books have sold more than 300 million copies.

  James Patterson has also written numerous #1 bestsellers for young readers, including the Maximum Ride, Witch & Wizard, Middle School, and Treasure Hunter series. In total, these books have spent more than 330 weeks on national bestseller lists. In 2010, James Patterson was named Author of the Year at the Children’s Choice Book Awards.

  His lifelong passion for books and reading led James Patterson to create the innovative website ReadKiddoRead.com, giving adults an invaluable tool to find the books that get kids reading for life. He writes full time and lives in Florida with his family.

  jamespatterson.com

  facebook.com/jamespatterson

  MAXINE PAETRO is the author of three novels and two works of nonfiction as well as more than twenty bestsellers coauthored with James Patterson. These include The Women’s Murder Club, Confessions, Private, and other series and stand-alone books. Paetro and her husband, John, live in New York.

  Books by James Patterson

  Featuring Alex Cross

  Hope to Die • Cross My Heart • Alex Cross, Run • Merry Christmas, Alex Cross • Kill Alex Cross • Cross Fire • I, Alex Cross • Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo) • Cross Country • Double Cross • Cross (also published as Alex Cross) • Mary, Mary • London Bridges • The Big Bad Wolf • Four Blind Mice • Violets Are Blue • Roses Are Red • Pop Goes the Weasel • Cat & Mouse • Jack & Jill • Kiss the Girls • Along Came a Spider

  The Women’s Murder Club

  14th Deadly Sin (with Maxine Paetro) • Unlucky 13 (with Maxine Paetro) • 12th of Never (with Maxine Paetro) • 11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro) • 10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro) • The 9th Judgment (with Maxine Paetro) • The 8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro) • 7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro) • The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro) • The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro) • 4th of July (with Maxine Paetro) • 3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross) • 2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross) • 1st to Die

  Featuring Michael Bennett

  Burn (with Michael Ledwidge) • Gone (with Michael Ledwidge) • I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge) • Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge) • Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge) • Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge) • Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)

  The Private Novels

  Private Vegas (with Maxine Paetro) • Private India: City on Fire (with Ashwin Sanghi) • Private Down Under (with Michael White) • Private L.A. (with Mark
Sullivan) • Private Berlin (with Mark Sullivan) • Private London (with Mark Pearson) • Private Games (with Mark Sullivan) • Private: #1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro) • Private (with Maxine Paetro)

  NYPD Red Novels

  NYPD Red 3 (with Marshall Karp) • NYPD Red 2 (with Marshall Karp) • NYPD Red (with Marshall Karp)

  Summer Novels

  Second Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan) • Now You See Her (with Michael Ledwidge) • Swimsuit (with Maxine Paetro) • Sail (with Howard Roughan) • Beach Road (with Peter de Jonge) • Lifeguard (with Andrew Gross) • Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan) • The Beach House (with Peter de Jonge)

  Stand-alone Novels

  Truth or Die (with Howard Roughan) • Miracle at Augusta (with Peter de Jonge) • Invisible (with David Ellis) • First Love (with Emily Raymond) • Mistress (with David Ellis) • Zoo (with Michael Ledwidge) • Guilty Wives (with David Ellis) • The Christmas Wedding (with Richard DiLallo) • Kill Me If You Can (with Marshall Karp) • Toys (with Neil McMahon) • Don’t Blink (with Howard Roughan) • The Postcard Killers (with Liza Marklund) • The Murder of King Tut (with Martin Dugard) • Against Medical Advice (with Hal Friedman) • Sundays at Tiffany’s (with Gabrielle Charbonnet) • You’ve Been Warned (with Howard Roughan) • The Quickie (with Michael Ledwidge) • Judge & Jury (with Andrew Gross) • Sam’s Letters to Jennifer • The Lake House • The Jester (with Andrew Gross) • Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas • Cradle and All • When the Wind Blows • Miracle on the 17th Green (with Peter de Jonge) • Hide & Seek • The Midnight Club • Black Friday (originally published as Black Market) • See How They Run • Season of the Machete • The Thomas Berryman Number