21st Birthday, James Patterson [best mystery novels of all time TXT] 📗

to Lucas about his still missing wife. He says, ‘She’s run away before. I destroyed her credit card. She’ll be back when she runs out of gas. There’s nothing to see here.’”

Joe said, “Then Wednesday morning, his daughter washes up dead on the beach.”

“Correct.”

I checked my watch to be sure of the date.

“Yes, that was Wednesday. Claire estimates that the baby had been dead for about thirty hours. Asphyxiation. The story is a media bomb, and still no sign of Tara.”

“So, who killed Lorrie?” Joe asked.

I slugged down some wine, pushed my plate to the side.

“I feel strongly that Tara is dead, which means she can’t have killed Lorrie and skipped town. My sketchy theory? Lorrie and Tara are killed together by Tara’s unknown rumored boyfriend. Or—track me here. Lucas meets Tara somehow, somewhere, after classes on Monday. He tells her all about Misty, and when Tara goes off on him, he kills her and smothers the baby with his hand. He wants nothing to do with this family.”

Joe was nodding, saying, “Yep, yep, yep,” so I kept going.

“Burke tosses the baby into the ocean. Maybe he doesn’t expect her to wash up so quickly, to be identified so soon. He takes longer to get rid of Tara. If I’m right that she’s dead, then I feel certain that when her body is found there will be marks on her body indicating murder.”

Joe said, “As theories go, yours works for me. If he killed the baby, he’d have to kill Tara and vice versa. If he had killed them at home, you’d have evidence, so that speaks to luring Tara to some location, remote probably—”

The doorknob turned and Martha got her old haunches under her and trotted to the foyer.

“To be continued,” said Joe. He went to the door and a grinning Julie stepped in, Gloria Rose behind her holding a tray of chocolate-chip cookies that smelled a hundred percent delicious.

“See the faces?” Julie said, pointing to how the chocolate chips formed smiles, frowns; some cookies looked like they were laughing and some seemed very stern. Cracked me up. I grabbed Martha’s collar and said to our lovely neighbor and nanny, “I’ll fire up a pot of decaf.”

“I’m all coffeed out,” she said, “but dying to taste the cookies. Got milk?”

“Pull up a stool,” Joe said.

He and Julie slid the cookies onto a plate, and minutes later, Julie was telling us who all the faces were—a kind of chocolate-chip-cookie mug book: guy at the grocery store, lady with a cat on a leash, me, Joe, Gloria Rose, and Martha.

“This is me,” Julie said. “No one can eat this one. Not even me.”

It was hilarious, chocolate chips arrayed across the upper curve of the cookie standing in for her curls and a chippy smile from side to side.

For an hour, I lost myself in family magic time. It was all delicious and I soaked it up. I might need to draw on the good feelings in the days to come if the horrible Burke case continued to be unsolved, devolving from horrible to cold.

Chapter 36

I came through the bullpen gate at eight on Saturday morning and headed straight into the break room.

Rich Conklin got up and followed me in, watched me vigorously clean out the coffee maker, refill the tank and the filter, tap the brew button with a vengeance.

I said, “Any word on Burke? Please tell me he came home last night.”

“No such luck,” said my old friend.

During the years I’ve been partnered with Rich, we’ve both grown some stress-induced gray hairs. I plucked. He didn’t. A little silver looked good on him.

He took my mug down from the high shelf and we stood together watching the coffee drip into the pot. It was hypnotic and I felt myself relax.

He asked “How you doin’?” The Joey Tribbiani imitation was our shorthand way of saying “we’re friends.”

I replied, “How you doin’?”

“I asked first.”

“Do I look ragged? I think I had 100 percent REM sleep. I was running all night.”

“From or to?”

“After, I think. I was chasing, not catching.”

We took our coffee to a table that had stood in this room since the Kennedy years, kicked the chairs out from under, and sat down.

Rich said, “Speaking of chasing, Cindy interviewed Clapper this morning.”

“Good for her.”

“Yep. It aired on KRON.”

“What did Clapper say?”

Rich was saying “Same old bull—” when Brady appeared right beside us.

“Where’s Alvarez?” he asked Conklin.

“She left her charger in her car. She’ll be right back.”

Brady said, “I need alla y’all in my office, PDQ.”

PDQ turned out to be under five minutes.

Brady’s hands were clasped on his desk. Alvarez had retrieved her charger and was inside the glass box in time for roll call. We all were. Alvarez and I sat across the desk from Brady. Conklin leaned against the doorframe. Chi stuck his head in, read the tension in the room, and backed out without speaking.

Conklin closed the door.

Brady said, “There’s been another ugly-ass murder.”

I was thinking, Tara.

“Teenage girl, throat cut in her car in the parking lot at her school.”

“ID on the vic?” I said, my mouth suddenly dry.

“Yeah. Sorry, Boxer, I know you talked to her. It’s Melissa Fogarty, aka Misty.”

I jumped up and shouted, “That son of a bitch!”

Every cop in the department turned their head.

Brady said, “Down, Boxer.”

“She said she was going to break up with him.”

He said, “You go to the ME’s office and take a look at the victim. Conklin, Alvarez, go to the crime scene. The car will be transported to the lab soon. Stay with the CSIs at the scene and then head out to Hunters Point and have someone there show you the car. Killer had to leave something at the scene, in the vehicle or on the girl. Y’all stay in close touch with me.”

Alvarez and Conklin edged past and Brady shook his finger at me. “Get a grip, Lindsay. No mistakes.”

I nodded, left Brady’s office, took the stairs at a jog, exited by the lobby’s back door to