The Chef - James Patterson Page 0,98

were obsessed about David Needham…the wrong Needham! We had hundreds of tips! Hundreds! And DC kept on promising to help us with some back-channel nonsense…which never panned out.”

“You could have done more!”

“We all could have done more…all of us…and for Christ’s sake, what was I supposed to do? Drop everything and focus on you…a fry cook? A disgraced police detective?”

He storms off into the conference room, and one by one, others follow him in—state police, Homeland Security, more FBI, NOPD, and Cunningham, who nods at me to join him.

I feel like going back home to Vanessa and, yes, even Marlene.

But I steel myself and go in.

By the time I’m able to get into the crowded room, I stand in the corner, along with others who don’t have the juice to sit around the conference room table. I only recognize about a quarter of the attendees—local, state, parish—and Morgan goes through a detailed report of how they’re trying to track down Billy Needham. Photographs are all over the television and internet. Wiretaps have been placed on his business and home phones…as if, I think. His credit cards have been flagged to announce any activity. Every employee who either currently works or has worked for Billy is being interrogated. All of his properties have been raided, and are under surveillance.

All good work, but still, too late.

We were all too late.

A brief pause and I call out, “Casualties. What’s the number on casualties?”

The air grows still and Morgan looks down, and then a burly tactical NOPD officer—still in black jumpsuit and battle rattle—pushes forward to the conference room table and says, “Well, this is what I’ve got.” He unfolds a sheet of paper and says, “Hard to believe, but number of deaths is under twenty.”

A murmur of voices, and the officer—his nametag says DUBUS—says, “And some of those are from being trampled. Wounded is about fifty or sixty, but shit, guys, it could have been worse, much, much worse.”

Dubus folds up the paper. “Luckily we got intel about the red and green glasses. Once my shooters got prepped, we shot the bastards every time they appeared, like gophers popping up from their burrows. So thanks to whoever got that intel out.”

I keep quiet.

So does Morgan.

The meeting breaks down with lots of arguing, more talking, and I try to slip out, and Cunningham grabs my arm.

“Need your help.”

I say, “You got it, Chief.”

Chapter 88

CUNNINGHAM AND I do a “walk and talk” as we go deeper into the concrete bowels of the LeMont Federal Building, and he gives me a debrief of the terrorists that were seized and arrested once the shooting stopped.

“Damnit, Rooney, the only thing they’ve got in common, is that they’ve got nothin’ in common!” he says as we clatter down a concrete and metal stairway.

He gives me the intel:

Five in custody. Two tractor drivers, three gunmen.

That’s five accomplices to terrorism.

Five potential cooperating witnesses.

Five possible leads on Billy.

All of the suspects are men. All were arrested carrying illegal weapons and wearing costumes speckled with UV-reflective paint.

“But that’s where it ends,” Cunningham complains. “There’s no connecting thread.”

They range in age from twenty-four to fifty-seven. Two are young and white. One is middle-aged and black. One is Pakistani American. One was born in Indonesia.

They have different income levels. Different education levels.

Different marital statuses. Different immigration statuses.

Some have criminal records a mile long. Others have never had a parking ticket.

One posts on white supremacist message boards. Another has ties to radical Islam. A third is a lapsed Buddhist.

“What are they saying?” I ask.

“Not a damn thing,” he says. “They just spar, laugh, and keep on wastin’ our time. Like they’ve been trained to string us along. But none of them have lawyered up. Can you figure that? Nobody.”

“So why do you need me?”

He opens a heavy metal door marked with black numbers and nothing else.

“One of them is a local,” he says. “Some guy who’s worked off and on in some kitchens in the city. I’m hoping that…”

“I can get him to talk.”

Cunningham nods as we enter a room looking into a small interrogation cell, via a two-way mirror. Inside the room is a table, and a middle-aged, beefy African-American male, who smiles and says, “How many times I gotta say it? I’m not talkin’ to y’all. No, sir.”

His FBI interrogator, a linebacker of a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a gruff New Jersey accent, looks like he’s about to jump over the table and wring his neck.

“How many times do I have to ask,