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

was asking me, as good as pleading with me, to talk to the shooter I’d seen commit murder.

“Geez.”

“Close enough,” said Chief Belinky. “I checked the flights and there’s one that’ll get you here by five. A car will be waiting to pick you up.”

I couldn’t think of a good enough reason to turn him down and maybe, maybe I could help.

“Yes. Yes. Okay.”

Belinky gave me the flight info. I hung up and told Joe the news. He backed Belinky.

“Linds. This could be your Ted Bundy moment. When you come home tomorrow, Bugs, Martha, and I will be here to meet you.”

My family walked me back into the terminal. I showed Julie the huge metallic lights hanging from the ceiling. We bought her a T-shirt in the gift shop and a pink hoodie for Mrs. Rose. We consumed a fully loaded pizza in the food court, and then Joe and Julie waved good-bye to me at the check-in line.

I flew back to Las Vegas, wondering what the hell Evan Burke wanted to tell me. He was a magnetic character, but I didn’t trust him at all.

Chapter 106

Chief Belinky was waiting inside the entrance to Sunrise Medical Center. He was in his fifties, wearing a blue suit, red tie, about five eleven with salt-and-pepper hair.

He came toward me and shook my hand with both of his.

“Thanks for coming, sergeant. I think you’ll be glad you did.”

I doubted that.

Belinky said, “Burke is cuffed to a bed in the ICU. He’s doped up, on antibiotics, apparently his lungs are full of goop, but I still don’t trust him.”

He went on.

“I promised to protect you, and we’ve taken the following precautions. The stall has a glass wall. We can see everything and there’s a camera overhead. Here’s your mic. That’ll record whatever he tells you.”

“Excellent.”

I clipped it to my lapel.

We took an elevator up a couple of flights and followed the arrows to the intensive care unit. Belinky continued to brief me.

“Officers are stationed outside the door. Keep it ajar when you go in. His good arm and ankles are cuffed. His right arm is unrestrained, but it’s in a sling and you can see his hand. I’ve promised everyone with a shield in the state of California that you’re walking out of that room unharmed.”

“Thanks, chief.”

“Now, this guy has not lawyered up and I would say he has no expectation of privacy, right?”

“Right. People are coming in and out of his room. It’s a hospital.”

“Good. We agree.”

We were in the ICU ward and Burke’s stall was visible because of the two beefy cops standing on either side of the doorway.

“Ready or not,” I said.

I said hello to the two officers and took a moment to observe Burke through the glass. He was lying flat in the bed with his eyes closed, blanket up to his chin, his bandaged wing cradled against his body. I entered the stall, leaving the door open a crack.

Pulling a chair up to his bed, I called “Burke,” and he opened his eyes.

“Oh. Is that you, sergeant? I asked for you.”

“And here I sit.”

He pressed a gadget within reach of his cuffed hand, and the back of his bed rose.

“Could you?” he asked, tipping his chin to the table near the bed. There was a glass of water with a straw. I moved the glass toward him so he could reach it and sip, and then he returned the glass.

“Thanks. They don’t know what I’ve got, but it’s pneumonia and something else that I couldn’t fight off and it’s supposedly not contagious.”

I said, “How’s your arm?”

“It’s been better.”

“Well. I flew in to see you, Burke, because you asked to see me. What do you want to tell me?”

“I want to tell you that I’ve killed people in my life. Quite a few. Quite. A few.”

What was this now? False confession for leverage? Or braggadocio?

“So, you want to give some families closure? Is that it?”

“I told you back at the cabin, sergeant. My son, Lucas, is also a murderer,” Burke said. “He’s a killer who started very young. His first victims were small animals, and years later, I’m pretty sure he took out Corinne and Jodie. He came home from school without telling anyone. Corinne and Jodie were never seen or heard from again.”

“Still, not proof, Evan. Why are you telling me this?”

“Because. I don’t know how much time I have left. I want to make sure that the story is told right.”

“Got it,” I said.

I didn’t. These two Burkes were twisted and they’d twisted me. Senior didn’t sound repentant for the girl he’d killed in front of me. What did he want?

I said, “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”

“All in good time,” he said. “I’m thinking about what—”

Without warning, he jerked, coughed, inhaled noisily, and was seized with a terrible-sounding coughing fit. The wheeze alone sounded like an accordion with pleurisy. He couldn’t grab at his chest or even roll because he was cuffed at the wrist and chained at the ankles.

I stood up to get help, but help had seen through the glass walls and came through in the form of a nurse, an aide, and the ICU doctor.

The nurse pulled a mask over Burke’s face and I heard the hiss of oxygen. The doctor asked me to please leave.

She said please, but it was a direct order and I followed it.

Evan Burke had accused his son, Lucas Burke, of killing Corinne and Jodie Burke, but he hadn’t shed any light on the triple homicide for which Lucas was now standing trial. As much as Yuki wanted to depose Evan Burke, that was not going to happen.

Chapter 107

Newt Gardner sat with Lucas Burke in the seventh-floor client-attorney conference room, killing time until the jurors came in with their verdict.

The room was a cage the size of a cell, furnished with a small table and four straight chairs. Gardner sat across from Luke and put his hand on his client’s arm. Luke was depressed, down and deep