18th Abduction - James Patterson Page 0,14

I didn’t buy her a Valentine. I didn’t introduce her to my mother. The relationship was casual. What don’t you get?”

After an hour of this combative back-and-forth, I thought I’d wrung everything out of Thomas Barry that he had to give; not only his work schedule but also the name of a woman who could vouch for him the night Carly, Susan, and Adele went missing. He gave us names of two other women he’d rolled with on the two nights after that. Thomas Barry was a player. We would send his prints to the lab, my thought being that maybe his prints would be found on Carly Myers’s car.

It was quarter to two in the afternoon.

Barry said, “Can I go now? I don’t want to get fired.”

I said, “I’ll have an officer give you a lift.”

“Okay. Finally.”

He stood to put on his jacket and gave me a peculiar look, which I read as a sign he was about to do us a favor.

“Sergeant, I had nothing to do with Carly being missing. Or any of them. If I were you, I’d be looking into Carly. My take is that she’s no angel. She has a dark side. That much I can tell you.”

There was a knock on the door and Jacobi came in, looking stricken.

He said, “Mr. Barry, I’ve got you a ride. Thanks for your help. Boxer, Conklin, I need to see you right away.”

I handed Barry off to Officer Mahoney and headed back to Jacobi’s glass-walled office at the back of the squad room.

He and Conklin were waiting for me.

I pulled out a chair, saying, “Waste of time. We don’t have enough cause to get a warrant—”

Jacobi cut me off.

“We’ve got a body. Might be Carly Myers. Big Four Motel, room 212. Call me when you get there.”

CHAPTER 18

Richie lost the coin flip, so I drove.

We reached Ellis Street in record time, then closed in on the Big Four, slowing only for the aimless druggies wandering down and across Larkin.

I pulled into the parking spot at the front of the seedy, rent-by-the-hour, no-tell motel, switched off the engine, and took a breath. We weren’t alone. A dozen homeless, impoverished, drug-dependent residents of the Tenderloin were camped out on the macadam between the parked cars.

They were about to lose their campground.

The parking lot was a secondary crime scene and would have to be vacated and taped off from the street.

Conklin and I got out of the car. My mind was racing with questions, none of which would be answered until we got into room 212.

Question one: Was the dead woman Carly Myers?

Questions two and three: If the DB was Carly, what had killed her? And why here?

A handful of the motel’s guests stood under the awning outside the manager’s office, complaining loudly that they needed to get into their goddamn rooms.

The manager said just as loudly, “Cops said when they’re done, they’re done. Nothing I can do.”

I interrupted the dispute to get the manager’s name, Jake Tuohy, and to tell him to stick around. We’d be back.

Room 212 was at the rear of the motel. My partner and I rounded the corner of the three-story stucco building and saw a small fleet of first responders: two cruisers, an ambulance, and two CSI vans, all empty.

We badged the uniform at the foot of the stairs, ducked under the crime-scene tape, and headed up to the second floor, where Nardone, another uniformed officer, was waiting for us. At that time, Officer Robert Nardone was a beat cop with ambition and promise. He told us that he was the first officer on the scene.

“Tell me what you know,” I said.

“Housekeeper, Nancy Koebel, went to clean 212 at twelve thirty or so and found the DB hanging by the neck from the shower head. She reported the body to the manager, Jake Tuohy, who took a look in the bathroom, closed the door, and called it in.”

“Where is Koebel?”

Nardone said, “By the time I got here, she’d taken off.”

Conklin asked him, “You checked out the room?”

“I was very careful not to contaminate anything. It was dark. I flipped on the light switch with my elbow and stepped into the bathroom. Saw the victim and went to check her vitals. She wasn’t breathing. I touched her leg. She was ice cold.”

Nardone looked sad, maybe ill. I pictured him in that bathroom, hand against the wall as he reached out to touch the victim. His prints were likely on the wall and definitely on