Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,16

leaped, arms out. Swan-dived. He had no memory of how the evening had ended, but that morning as he dressed gingerly, stopping now and then to be sick, evidence of his fall was all around him. Glass smashed in the kitchen. Vomit in the sink. The fridge hanging open, beeping in protest. Disarray. Whitt didn’t do disarray. It was not him. Some other person had crept into his body after the second glass of wine and had refused to relinquish their hold.

Whitt gripped the handrail to pull himself up toward the front doors of the station.

Vada was at the doors waiting for him. He glared at her as he walked into the foyer.

“Je-sus.” She strained to see his face over the collar of his coat. “Looks like someone pulled up rough!”

“I didn’t pull up rough,” Whitt said. “I haven’t pulled up at all. I think I’m still drunk. Last night was…well, it was completely inappropriate, is what it was.”

They came to the entrance to the conference rooms. Vada juggled her folders of case files, rummaged in her handbag. Whitt waited, then searched his own bag and found his security card.

“You’re being too hard on yourself.” Vada put a hand on his shoulder as they walked the immaculate halls. “You saw two of your colleagues killed. You deserved to let off some steam.”

There it was again. That word. Deserved. Oh, the things Whitt could justify to himself with that single word. All he had to do was think about how tired he’d become since the Regan Banks case began, how stressed and afraid he was, and he’d leap happily back off the wagon again. The temptation for another drink now just to take the edge off his sickness was overwhelming. It would probably help him work better. Ease his stomach, his nerves, stave off the full force of the hangover at least until the afternoon.

They sat at a table. Whitt held his head in his hands as Vada took her notepad and pen from her bag, setting herself up for their first briefing. Whitt liked her meticulous placement of her pen by her paper, her mobile at her elbow, a chilled water bottle directly between them. She was organized, ambitious, direct. Maybe if she said what he’d done the night before was okay, then it was. Whitt reveled in the sensation of having a partner to reassure him. He wasn’t alone. She was going to be here for him.

Whitt spread out his own papers, a map with a winding river cutting through forest and suburbia.

“This was where we last saw him,” Whitt said, pointing at the map. “After Regan was wounded in a shooting beside the Georges River, we believe he swam ashore here at Sandy Point, on the opposite side of the bank. He made his way through the national park and stole a car from a service station here, on Heathcote Road. We don’t know the extent of Regan’s injuries, but the officer who winged him thinks he got him at least twice. And I think I can confirm that. I saw him shot.”

Vada was scrawling notes.

“Obviously the wounds were not life-threatening,” Whitt continued. “We lost him for a couple of days. He dumped the car in Baulkham Hills, and then five days later turned up in Lane Cove. He abducted Doctor Parish and her daughter Isobel. He forced them to drive to her plastic surgery clinic in Mosman, where she treated his wounds. Then he killed them both.”

“My God,” Vada said. She sat looking closely at the crime-scene photos of the Parish murders that Whitt had offered her.

“It was clever,” Whitt said. “Hitting a plastic surgeon. We had eyes on vets, hospitals, medical centers, doctors’ offices. We’d even put word out around the organized-crime community that he might try to use one of their underground doctors.”

“He’s an intelligent man.” Vada nodded.

“Since then, we’ve had facial recognition at train, bus, and ferry stations on the lookout for him. The airports, too. Regan’s face and description is circulating around police, security, and customs departments daily.”

“Did CCTV inside the command building confirm it was Regan who killed the officers yesterday? Karmichael and Fables?”

“There was no CCTV of the incident,” Whitt said. “But I’m sure it was him. Ballistics will have to see what they can do with the bullets removed from the officers.” Whitt squeezed his eyes shut. A vision of Karmichael’s face had appeared before him, blood gushing from the hole in the young man’s throat. Karmichael had been pushing