Unsolved (Invisible #2) - James Patterson Page 0,91

hand, but the pain disappears, replaced by a consuming feeling of euphoria, of power, coursing through him more rapidly than blood, pumping through him like fresh oxygen. No, it doesn’t matter if the target is a mother of three or a father of four or even if it’s someone you know—someone he knows—someone I know…no, that makes it more satisfying still. I have conversed with you, I have argued with you, I have watched you, and you have never known who I am or what I can do, but now you do, now I am showing you, now you are watching me take your life, now you see that I am more powerful than you and I have conquered you­—

He opens both hands and the nylon cord drops to each side. He takes a huge breath. He got carried away. That was sloppy. There could have been blood, even a partial decapitation. That would have ruined everything.

He steps off the bed and onto the carpet, wipes away sweat with his sleeve.

The bedside clock says 2:32 a.m.

So much more to do before he’s done tonight.

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NOW IT’S time for a hasty exit, time to leave the past behind.

He throws open drawers, grabs underwear and socks and T-shirts, whatever he can cram into two medium-size moving boxes. He pulls shirts and pants out of the closet and places them in a heap on the floor. From large plastic boxes in the back of the closet, he pulls out some military records, some medical records.

Underneath the bed, there’s a long box filled with memorabilia and some personal items—birth certificate, stray photos from childhood and from the time in the service, an insurance policy, a high-school yearbook. Bringing that whole box.

Everything on the walls will stay except for a framed photograph of a former president of the United States with an inscription in black marker: TO LT. WAGNER—I HONOR YOUR SERVICE. That will come along with him.

He stops and listens. Slinks over to the window and carefully parts the blinds to look out. Nobody there. Not yet. So far, so good. He checks his watch, monitoring the time closely.

Now, time to haul this stuff away. Three trips to the garage carrying boxes, clothes, documents. He dumps them in the rear of the Dodge Caravan.

There’s plenty of room in the van’s rear compartment, even with the corpse, zipped up good and tight in a body bag he stole from an Arizona morgue a year ago.

He goes back inside the apartment, stops, and listens to the ringing sound of silence. Looks through the blinds again. Checks his watch again.

He takes one last glance around the bedroom, at the drawers pulled open, the stray hangers everywhere. No time or reason to clean up.

He pats his pocket and remembers what’s inside. He almost forgot.

In the kitchen, he lifts the lid on the garbage can, a white plastic job, and pulls out the small trash bag half full of food and dirty paper towels and rubbish, the scent of orange peels, of soy sauce, of old yogurt.

He reaches into his left pocket—no small feat while wearing rubber gloves—and removes a Garfield the Cat watch, the same kind he used for the timer on the bomb in Chicago. He drops it into the trash and then lifts the bag and shakes it gently, allowing the red watch to settle deep inside.

He pulls the bag’s drawstrings tight and ties them. He stops and listens for any sound. He gently opens the rear door, peeks out into the darkness to ensure he has no company. Then he walks down the ramp and over to the garbage can by the door, which is beige with the house’s street number, 407, scrawled on the side in black Magic Marker. He opens the lid and drops the trash bag in on top of two other bags, a tight fit.

Garbage pickup is today. They usually come early to midmorning.

He goes to the garage and gets in the disability van; the wheelchair’s already in place, secured, in front of the steering column. He turns the rearview mirror toward him and takes one last look at himself: long gray hair pulled back, his eyes dull, the crescent-moon scar by his eye a bit shinier by contrast. He moves the mirror back and places his thumb against the garage-door opener affixed to the visor.

He imagines what he will see when the garage door lifts up—unmarked cars blocking the driveway, bubble lights on their dashboards, a SWAT team with weapons aimed