20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20) - James Patterson Page 0,79
slept in the bed next to Ray, who’d been wheeled out of the room, his face covered with a sheet.
He thought about meetings with three of the people who’d lost loved ones—all Murray’s patients—his interviews with night-shift nurses and four people who worked in the winery itself, including the elderly handyman who brought his dogs with him in his truck when he mowed the lawn.
Motive, anyone?
One person rose to the surface of Joe’s mind. Not as a suspect but because he felt he hadn’t given the man enough attention, hadn’t asked enough questions.
Johann Archer, the writer who’d lost his thirty-eight-year-old fiancée, Tansy Mallory, and had written a touching tribute to her in Great Grapes. Tansy had been a fit long-distance runner and had shown no signs of cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Alex Murray had been the attending doctor the day Tansy Mallory was brought in to Saint John’s small ER. The surgeon had treated her for heat exhaustion and ordered her kept overnight for observation. Typical recovery time should have been a matter of hours, but Tansy had died overnight.
What distinguished Tansy from the other two cases was her survivor’s take on her death. Archer believed Murray had killed Tansy through either neglect or intent. Joe hadn’t bought the murder plot at that time, but now? Dave Channing and Johann Archer had never met, but Dave had gotten Johann’s contact info, and Joe had left him a voice-mail last week.
Joe sat up, retrieved his phone from the floor near the bed, and tapped in Archer’s number.
“Yes?”
“Johann. It’s Joe Molinari. I called you last week? Sorry to call again so early. Do you have time to see me? I’d like to get your thoughts about suspicious deaths at Saint John’s Hospital.”
“Good. I’m having plenty of them,” said Archer. “Something—or rather someone—occurred to me, and it might be the guilty party. I need to tell you.
“And I mean you, Joe, specifically.”
CHAPTER 99
THE COURTROOM WAS small enough for Yuki to be heard from the counsel table, but she wanted to speak with the jurors face-to-face.
She left her notes on the table, crossed the well to the jury box, introduced herself, and thanked the jurors for serving.
“As an assistant district attorney,” she said, “I work for the people of San Francisco. It’s my job to tell you about the case you will be deciding and why the defendant has been charged.
“To start, please picture this: At 11:27 on March 15, Officer Todd Morton and his partner, Officer William Scarborough, are driving in the Sunset District on Nineteenth Avenue when a white Chevy Impala speeds through a red light at the intersection of Nineteenth and Taraval.
“Officer Scarborough is at the wheel, and Officer Morton is in the passenger seat. Morton turns on the flashers and sirens, and Scarborough follows the Chevy. Normally, the driver sees the lights and hears the sirens and pulls over.
“But the Chevy’s driver speeds up.
“Officer Morton calls it in, and the police dispatcher tells him that the vehicle in question has been reported stolen. Now the Chevy hits Highway 1 South at ninety-plus miles an hour. Cars are going off the road as they see this car running up on them.
“But there is something the driver of the Chevy doesn’t expect. The vehicle in front of him doesn’t have enough pickup to get out of his way, and now the Chevy is boxed in by the slow-moving car ahead of him and cars streaming past him on both sides.
“Officer Scarborough pulls into the fast lane and makes a hard right in front of the Chevy, road-blocking the lane. The Chevy brakes but skids, hitting the rear compartment of the squad car. Fenders bend, drivers lean on their horns. A simple traffic stop has gone all to hell.”
Leaving that image with the jury, Yuki walked back to her table and returned with a large foam-core board. She turned it so that the jurors could see the attached photos of the white Chevy in various degrees of speeding ahead and burning rubber as it was brought to a halt by the patrol car.
Yuki told the jury, “Officer Scarborough will take us through the entire fifteen-second video, but for now we’ve cut and pasted the relevant frames. See here. This is Officer Morton. He has gotten out of his cruiser with his gun drawn. Officer Scarborough is still behind the wheel. He’s calling for backup and making sure that the dash cam is working.”