20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20) - James Patterson Page 0,24
at about that time the bus took a hard turn, and with tires squealing, we pulled into Metro’s ambulance bay.
The driver opened the rear doors. I jumped out ahead of the gurney and walked around the corner of the building to the main entrance to the ER. I’d been here so many times for family, for suspects like Randi Barkley, for my own injuries, I knew every corner of the bland beige waiting room by heart. Only the diverse collection of loved ones waiting for news and the magazines ever changed.
I knew the intake nurse as Kathleen. She spoke with a trace of an Irish brogue, asking, “How can I help you, Sergeant?”
I pointed to the doors to the ER. She buzzed me in, and I waved my thanks as I breezed through. I searched the curtained stalls and found Randi and a nurse in one of them.
The nurse had cut the plastic restraint on Randi’s bad arm and was cleaning up the wound. She said to her patient, “See how lucky you are? The bullet missed the bone.”
I entered the stall, closed the curtain, and said, “Randi, how’re you feeling?”
“Awesome. Haven’t you heard? This is my lucky day.”
I pulled up a chair. “Explain something to me, will you? Because I’m a little mystified. Why’d you fire on police with a handgun?”
She said, “Ever read a book called Competitive Shooting?”
“You’ve lost me.”
“I used a target pistol because that’s what I had. Before you showed up, I was going to go to the range and practice shooting to compete.”
I wanted to shout at her, Are you crazy? You fired on SWAT. You should be dead.
I just stared at her. She went on.
“SWAT was outside my field of vision. I only saw you and that cop with you. I wasn’t shooting to kill. I shot over your heads. Did you notice?”
The nurse was open-mouthed. Randi was looking at me—like I was stupid—saying, “Ever hear of a diversion?”
Now I got it. She’d created cover so that Barkley could get away.
“Helping your husband escape from the police makes you an accessory to whatever he’s done. Get me? At present, he’s under suspicion of committing murder.”
CHAPTER 34
IT WAS AFTER 6 p.m. when Brady pulled up a chair to our desks, tightened his white-blond ponytail to keep his hair out of his eyes, and, gripping a red grease pencil, made notes as we summarized our last ten hours.
Item one: Miranda White Barkley was in a cell waiting for her lawyer. Two: Conklin had traveled with SWAT through the tunnel under Barkley’s house, which was a short sprint to the nearest commuter rail station; Barkley had probably boarded the train and could now be anywhere.
“Son of a bitch,” Brady said.
We talked about Barkley, clever enough and physically able to dig out an exit. No doubt he’d been well trained by the military. At this point, Brady told us, teams were stationed to watch his house, and Caltrain had pulled surveillance footage from the ticketing area at the Twenty-Second Street station.
“Three,” said Brady, nodding to Conklin. “Stempien is going through Barkley’s devices now.”
“Item next,” I said. “Randi told me that she deliberately fired over our heads. She didn’t hit anyone, so that could be true. The slugs she fired were blanks.”
As Brady made notes, I thought about the two bodies, one sprawled across the desk, the other lying faceup on the carpet. Two perfectly placed kill shots had done that.
Who had done the shootings and why? What on earth would have motivated Barkley to murder the Barons, and how did those killings link up with the homicides of drug dealers in LA and Chicago at precisely the same time?
Brady pushed back his chair, linked his hands behind his neck. “Bottom line,” he said, “we don’t know where Barkley is, the wife ain’t talkin’, and there’s no known connection between Barkley and the Barons. Got a whole lot of parts on the floor of the shop, but can’t make a car.”
I repeated a version of what Joe always says to me when I’m overstimulated and a wreck about how much time is flying by.
“It’s ‘day one,’ Brady. Day one and we have Randi White Barkley in custody. That’s a start.”
Brady added that the picture of Leonard Barkley standing behind his car door on San Anselmo Avenue two days before the killings had been disseminated to every cop on the force—Northern, Central, and Southern Stations, as well as the motorcycle cops and the Sheriff’s Department.