Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,89

different continents have felt this cord close around their throats, crush their tracheas, cut off their oxygen. But that was then, during his time in the service. He hasn’t used it as a civilian. Tonight will be a first.

Now he just has to wait until two a.m.

89

I LEAVE my car at the Hoover Building and go with Books in his, rolling down the passenger-side window as we drive, letting the wind hit my face. I check my watch. It’s 1:45 a.m.

“You’re quiet,” says Books.

“I’m pissed. Frustrated is a better word.”

We need more, Amee Czernak, the prosecutor, told us. You’re close, but not close enough for search warrants. She shut us down.

“I don’t know what else to do,” I say. “We’ve spent the last five hours, since she sent us packing, trying to dig up everything we can.”

“You called your contact in Chicago, that cop,” he says.

“Yeah.” I asked Officer Ciomek to look at footage from POD cameras around the bombing site in Chicago, now that we have a specific vehicle—a Dodge Caravan—and a specific license plate. “But that could take days. And she said those POD cameras are pretty grainy.”

Books doesn’t respond, which means he’s thinking. I put my head against the cushion and close my eyes, my eyelids heavy as wet doormats…

“Let’s go there,” says Books. “Let’s go to Morningside Lane.”

I shake myself out of the steady drift toward slumber. “Go to—go visit Darwin?”

“Wagner.” Books smiles. “He has a name now.”

“Go visit Wagner?”

“Maybe,” he says. “We don’t need a warrant to do that. We can ask him to voluntarily consent to questioning. We can ask him to consent to a search of his house. He can say no, but we can ask.”

“So…we just drive over to Morningside Lane, knock on the door, and say, ‘Hi, Lieutenant Wagner, got some time to talk? Mind if we look around your town house?’ Just like that?”

“Pretty much,” he says.

“Just…drive over there right now and knock on his door?”

“Well, not right now.” He glances at the clock on his dashboard. “It’s nearly two in the morning. If he woke up at all, he’d likely refuse to consent. And then we’d alert him, and we’d give him the rest of the night to dispose of anything incriminating.”

“But he might say yes.”

“Yeah, he might, but a judge would likely throw out the search. You don’t shake someone awake in the dead of night and ask for their permission to search. It’s too heavy-handed. Too coercive. If the search is invalid, we can’t use anything we find. It’s too big a risk, Em. First thing in the morning. Dawn.”

Books takes the exit for Alexandria.

“We’re not going to my apartment?” I ask.

“We are, but I want to stop by the bookstore first. My Maglite’s there. I’m not doing a search without my Maglite.”

Fifteen minutes later, Books pulls around to the alley behind his bookstore, where he gets his deliveries.

“The back entrance?”

“Back’s easier, just a key. The front, I have to unlock the chains. Come on.”

“I’ll stay here.”

“No,” he says.

“You’re just popping in to get your flashlight.”

“I’m not leaving you alone out here, Em.”

“For five minutes? What, you think Darwin’s going to come wheeling into the alley and kill me in the next five minutes?”

Books gives me a hard look, the kind, I imagine, he used to train on suspects or reluctant witnesses. “I think that Wagner has proven himself to be quite effective,” he says. “And I think you, my dear, have a target painted on your back. So, yes, you’re coming with me.”

So I get out with him, the security camera trained on us. Books pops the lock and pulls open the thick, heavy door.

“Be quiet,” he whispers. “Petty’s probably asleep.”

We tiptoe through the large storage room, piled high with books and posters and displays and a bunch of chairs, along with a large safe for the days that Books doesn’t run the cash to the bank. The room is black as pitch, no windows, no outside light whatsoever.

“It’s behind the counter, I think,” he whispers.

He heads into the main room. I hear him rummaging around. My phone buzzes. It’s a text message from Natalie Ciomek, the Chicago cop: No luck so far. Somebody better be paying me overtime for this. Followed by an emoji of a smirk and a wink.

It’s 2:07 a.m. in Virginia, so it’s an hour earlier in Chicago. Still an ungodly hour. God bless her, pulling out all the stops to search through the POD camera footage in Chicago. I type, I