20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20) - James Patterson Page 0,22
checked in with Joe, who told me he was still with Dave Channing. He told me that he’d spoken with Julie’s nanny, Gloria Rose, who was now in charge of our darling and our home.
I asked myself, as I always did when my gun was in my hand, why I thought I had the right to take chances like this when I had a child. But I didn’t take time to search for an answer. A very dangerous man, likely a killer with an agenda, was inside his house only thirty yards away.
I looked at Richie. He said, “I prayed. We’re covered.” I grinned at the man I loved like a brother and trusted with my life, just as he trusted me with his.
We gripped hands for a second or two, then I spoke to Covington over our channel. I waited until his BearCat pulled up next to our car and in front of Barkley’s house. Then I called the subject on his landline.
I let the phone ring until a man’s voice spoke on the outgoing recording. Same thing happened when I called Barkley’s cell.
I did as requested and left a message.
“Mr. Barkley, this is Sergeant Lindsay Boxer, SFPD. I need to speak with you. Please come out your front door with your hands up. Do it now or we’re coming in.”
No one picked up the phone, but there was a response, the sound of breaking glass coming from a dormer on the second floor. A gun barrel poked through the opening and shots cracked the air. Covington’s team let loose with a fusillade of gunfire followed by a flashbang grenade.
The explosion rang out up and down the street, and finally there was a tense silence.
Time to go in.
CHAPTER 32
THERE’D BEEN NO sign of life from that small stucco home in the middle of the block since the gunshots had been fired from the second floor.
No doubt the flashbang grenade had laid out the occupants, and they were still in shock and misery. I squeezed the bullhorn’s pistol grip and blasted my voice toward the Barkleys’ house and whoever might be conscious inside.
“This is the police. Come out through the front door with your hands in the air.”
I announced again, and then Covington’s voice was in my earpiece.
“We’re going in.”
A half dozen men in tactical gear boiled out of the BearCat and swarmed the narrow front yard. Other armored cars screamed down the hill, and the tac team took positions around the house. Two men and our SWAT commander charged up to the front door.
I heard Covington through my earbud, “On five.”
Five seconds passed, then the men with the battering ram bashed in the door. Once SWAT cleared the ground floor, my partner and I went in.
The house was boxy.
A staircase in the center hall rose to the second floor. The kitchen was to the left. There were dishes in the sink and breakfast remains on the table. Refrigerator door was hanging open. A TV room to the right was tuned to the History Channel, showing a World War II documentary. In the center of the house a large Rottweiler mix lay groaning in front of a closed door.
Nothing moved. No one cried out. But our arrival had been a surprise, and someone had fled to the second floor in order to take shots at us. With gun drawn, I took the stairs up and looked into the right-hand bedroom. There was a double bed, piles of clothes on the chair and floor. On the dresser was a framed picture of a bearded man wearing a navy uniform with a SEAL trident. That had to be Barkley.
A Caucasian woman was lying on a blood-spattered carpet in front of the window seat with a .380 handgun beside her hand.
The woman was wearing a large T-shirt with an auto repair shop logo. Her long brown hair fell around her shoulders like a shawl, obscuring the tattoos on her neck. I guessed her age as somewhere between thirty and forty, but in any case, she’d had it rough. Now she was breathing hard, and blood ran from a wound in her upper arm.
I kicked the gun aside, spoke into my shoulder mike, and requested an ambulance. I stooped down and said to the injured woman, “I’m Sergeant Boxer, SFPD. I’ve called for medical help. What’s your name?”
She didn’t say. She closed her eyes. Could she hear me? Flashbangs could make a person deaf and sick for a while.