Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,114
the Payton?
Michelle Fontaine? He doesn’t know much about her, only that she happened to quit her job at the same time Lieutenant Wagner either left town or was murdered.
Maybe Lieutenant Wagner? Whatever Emmy thinks, there’s no way to be certain that Wagner was framed—set up as the patsy and murdered. Nothing is certain right now.
Wait—what if it is Wagner? Wagner’s in a wheelchair. He wouldn’t be walking up the steps.
“Shit.” Books breaks from his spot and jogs over to the intersection. There it is—the wheelchair-accessible entrance, on the east side of the building. He’d forgotten about that. So now Books has to cover both the front entrance and the side entrance? He’s standing right on the corner, not exactly hidden.
Did he already miss Wagner, or someone else, leaving from the wheelchair-accessible exit?
“Damn it,” he whispers. Did he make another mistake? First being jumped, then failing to cover what, in hindsight, should have been obvious—
Books freezes as the front door of the Payton Club opens and a man comes out and goes bounding down the stairs. Into a waiting town car.
No. No way.
Books remembers to breathe, his mind buzzing now. As the town car pulls away, Books hustles to his own car, jumps in, and follows.
He learned today, a lesson from Petty, that he’s rusty when it comes to vehicular surveillance. But it doesn’t matter. Not this time.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he whispers.
After the two vehicles break free of the traffic and head out onto an open road toward the interstate, Books draws his car up behind the town car. No use in pretending. Nobody’s pretending anymore.
The town car pulls over to the side of the road. Books does the same.
One of the back doors of the town car opens. An invitation.
Books kills the engine and gets out of the car. Walks over to the town car and gets in the back seat. There are two men in the front seat, only one in the back.
“Life can be complicated, Books, wouldn’t you agree?” says FBI director William Moriarty.
116
“COMPLICATED?” BOOKS ASKS. “It doesn’t have to be. Not that complicated, Bill.”
“But it is,” says Director Moriarty. “For example, a man can love his wife. He can be devoted to her. But he can still acknowledge that he has certain…needs.”
“So Betsy has a stroke and is confined to a wheelchair, and that gives you an excuse to acknowledge your needs? Which I assume means ‘fuck one of my agents.’”
“I didn’t say an excuse. I didn’t say that. And I’ll remind you to be cautious both in your judgments and in your tone.”
“My tone? I don’t work for you anymore, Bill. I came to help out on this investigation at your request. You asked me.”
Books draws back, letting his own words sink in.
“Okay, I get it now,” he continues. “I always thought it was a little odd that you’d have me investigate the leak when you thought the prime suspect was Emmy. I took it as the ultimate compliment that you had so much faith in my integrity that you thought I’d even bust my own fiancée if I believed she was the leaker.”
“That’s true. It’s completely—”
“Bullshit,” Books snaps. “You wanted an outsider, an outsider you could trust to keep your secrets. You knew I’d have to investigate everyone. You knew that might end up including Elizabeth. And you knew that if I looked into her, I’d see that she seemed to have an awful lot of cash on hand. Which would certainly make her look suspicious. If someone was going to find that out, you wanted it to be someone who doesn’t work at the Bureau. Someone you could trust to protect you. Someone who looked up to you as a mentor.”
“You’re…twisting this, Books.”
“You could have told me this straight off, Bill. You could have said, ‘Look, this is embarrassing, but I’m sleeping with Elizabeth, and I don’t want my wife seeing the credit card bills for hotel rooms and dinners and whatever else—but I’m too much of an old-school guy to let her pay, so I’m giving her cash while she puts all the expenses on her credit cards.’ Yeah, that would have been helpful information for me to have, Mr. Director.”
“I owe you an apology for not telling you,” says Moriarty. “You’re exactly right about that. I hoped it would never come to you investigating Elizabeth. I was certain—we were certain—Emmy was the leaker. Are you telling me she’s not?”
Books drops his head into his hands. Until about fifteen minutes ago,