Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,66

his wheelchair.

But that’s not what he’s doing. His hand isn’t gripping the fender. His arm isn’t tensed. It looks like he’s…

“Is he putting something under the bumper?” I ask.

“Seems like it,” says Robert Crescenzo. “I can think of only two things it could be. One is some kind of explosive. But he didn’t blow up her car, did he?”

The wheelchair man motors on, continuing in the same direction he was headed, maddeningly away from the camera. When he turns his wheelchair to the right, giving us the first chance to see his profile, he’s much too far away for these rudimentary cameras to pick up any details. Eventually, he disappears out of range.

“He didn’t have a car parked in the lot,” I say.

“And he never entered the store either. I checked the video for the entire day and never saw him. He must have come up to the store from the side and angled his way toward the row of cars where she was parked. He knew where the cameras were, Emmy. He kept his face out of sight. He ran a little half-loop through that parking lot and disappeared.”

I rewind to the point where we first see the wheelchair guy. Robert is right; as he comes into focus near the front of the store, he has already turned mostly away from the camera, and his head is tucked low enough that all you can really see are the sunglasses and baseball cap.

“That guy had no reason whatsoever to take a detour through that parking lot. He had no reason to be there at all.”

“Except to stop at Nora Connolley’s car,” I say.

“Right. Nora Connolley left that store a little after six o’clock. She drove to her bank to make a deposit at the ATM. Then she stopped and bought a few things at a hardware store. I’ve got video footage of her at that parking lot too. But no sign of the wheelchair guy. He didn’t follow her.”

“He didn’t need to,” I say. “Because he knew where she lived. And he planted a GPS device under her bumper so he would know exactly when she was arriving home.”

“Right.”

“My guess?” I say. “He couldn’t lie in wait and ambush her, not in a wheelchair. He set up near her house, probably in the alley, and put himself in a position that she’d stop and help a guy in a wheelchair. Then he attacked her and managed to get her and her car home. His legs must work well enough to drive a car a short distance, at least.”

“And once he got her in that garage and private backyard,” says Crescenzo, “he could set up things at her home however he wanted and stage it as an accident.”

“Sounds like a good working theory, Detective.”

“It’s hard to believe and even harder to prove, Agent Dockery. But my gut tells me that’s what happened.”

“Call me Emmy. I’m not an agent.”

“Well, maybe you should be,” he says. “Because I believe you now. I’m opening a homicide investigation into Nora Connolley’s death.”

“That’s great, Robert. But remember what we talked about.”

“I do, I do. I’ll keep it under the radar. No public statements. No press.”

“Good,” I say.

The last detective I convinced to open a homicide case had made it public, and that got him killed.

64

“A WHEELCHAIR,” says Bonita Sexton. “Darwin’s in a wheelchair?”

“It was right there for me to see,” I say. “I don’t know how I missed it.”

She looks back at the computer screen, which is paused on the video from the parking lot. “His victims all have single-story homes…yeah. Holy shit.”

“I mean, for God’s sake, Rabbit, I even had in my notes that the subject doesn’t seem to like stairs. And my amateur profile on him was that he might be self-loathing.”

“He’s killing people just like himself,” she says. “Or the people who help them.”

“He lures them in somehow. It wouldn’t be hard. If you’re an advocate for the homeless or the sick, and a guy in a wheelchair approaches you, you’re not going to see him as a threat.”

“And then he injects them with something and subdues them.”

I nod. “Once subdued, they’re at his mercy, even if he’s wheelchair-bound.” I click on the video again and watch the man move his wheelchair farther and farther from the camera’s view. “It’s motorized. So he can move pretty well. I’m not sure how he does it, but once he subdues the victims, he gets them back in the house. And he stages a scene that