20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20) - James Patterson Page 0,38

my text messages while I took sweet Martha for a quick walk. Joe had written to let me know he was going to stay longer with Dave.

Julie-Bug was still sleeping when we returned from our rounds, and I made up a wake-up song on the spot. My voice was a little rusty but not bad for an impromptu performance.

“Bumblebees, bumblebees.

Time to wake up the banana trees.

Bzzzzz, bzzz, bzzzz.”

Julie’s eyelids flew open, and she laughed at my singing, then told me that I was wrong.

“Bees don’t wake up banana trees.”

I challenged her on that point, saying, “Well then, who wakes them, smarty?”

“Bees wake the flowers, Mommy.”

“Okay. But rhyming counts.”

She giggled, I kissed her head, and she gave in.

“We both win, Mommy. I’m hungry.”

I made oatmeal, and using a magic trick I’d swiped from the back of a cereal box when I was a kid, I pierced the banana skin with a needle near the stem. Using the needle as a little knife, I sliced the fruit crosswise every quarter of an inch from stem to stern, leaving the skin whole. The pinpricks were almost invisible, and I didn’t give anything away.

I watched Julie peel the banana, and her look of disbelief and amazement as perfect banana slices fell onto her cereal.

“Mommy. Look at this!”

“Bumblebees did that,” I said, very pleased with myself.

“Noooooo. Really?”

The doorbell rang at eight on the nose, and Mrs. Rose came into the kitchen and, clapping her hands, said, “Children wait for school buses. But school buses don’t wait for children.”

Julie ran to the doorway and I was right behind her. I gave her the pink-and-silver backpack and received kisses and hugs in return. And once the door was closed, the worry I’d been stifling crashed in on me.

I called Edmund, got a wrong number, tried again.

“Hang on, Lindsay. I’m outside the hospital looking for a quiet spot. Can you hear me?”

“I can. How’s Claire? What’s happening?”

There was a pause; maybe it lasted only a few seconds, but all of my attention was focused on that connection.

“She’s changing the scope of the surgery, Linds.”

“What? Why?”

“She was brainstorming with the surgical team. That’s all she wrote. She’s not in her room right now.”

I said, “I don’t think I’m getting this.”

“The docs have been watching this little spot in her lung for years. I’ll bet she didn’t tell you that.”

“No. She only just told me.”

“So she’s saying, ‘Spot, spot, it’s just a spot,’ and even Dr. Terk thought so. She skipped her X-ray last year, and now it’s two spots, 100 percent cancer. Terk planned to take out the spot, but now that it’s two and visible, he’s gotta get it all.”

“Edmund. It didn’t metastasize?”

“Nobody said that. As far as I know, Dr. Claire had a change of heart about what kind of surgery, something she read or thought up or wanted to bounce off the surgeons. She sent me a text saying, I got this. Love you, then shut off her phone. I can’t reach her or her doctor. Nurse said she’s in radiology, then on to the operating theater. I’ll call you, Lindsay. As soon as I know what’s going on.”

I said, “I’ll call you when I get to work.” That wasn’t a question.

“Makes more sense for me to call you. I promise I will.”

“Okay,” I said. “I hear you, Edmund. I’ll wait for your call.”

CHAPTER 50

I SNATCHED THE car keys from the coatrack in the foyer and was halfway out the door when my phone rang.

I grabbed it. “Edmund?”

“It’s Brady.”

“Brady. I just spoke with Edmund Washburn.”

“How’s Claire?”

I condensed what Edmund had told me, and Brady made appropriate sounds and comments but asked no questions. I pictured him standing in Jacobi’s old office, impatiently staring out the window at the morning rush on Bryant, and I got it. Something was on his mind, and once I stopped talking, he was going to tell me.

I took a breath.

He said, “Are you on the way?”

“What’s wrong?”

“There were three fatal shootings,” he said. “Two in Houston and another in San Antonio. The MO looks the same as the others. The victims are known drug dealers. All were shot at the same time, at eight thirty a.m., local time.”

“So you’re saying the shootings are connected to the Baron murders?”

“Could be. Or it’s a hell of a coincidence.”

“What can you tell me?”

“At eight thirty a shot was heard on Warm Springs Road in the residential Westbury neighborhood in Houston. Cops responded to the 911 call. Couple of minutes later Anonymous phoned the tip

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