21st Birthday by James Patterson (e book reader android .TXT) 📕

were having an affair? I wanted to shake her. I wanted to warn her. I wanted to say, ‘Get the hell away from him. Transfer to another school. Destroy your phone, drop out of social media, change your email and your name. Disappear until Lucas Burke is locked up for good.’

“But instead, I had the good sense to ask, ‘What do you think you should do?’”

My voice broke. Bunny Ellis put her arm around my waist, and my best friend looked at me with terrible sadness in her eyes. Misty had been alive, vibrant, grinning at me yesterday. Now she was lying on a stainless steel table, her half-open eyes clouded over, mouth slack, blood still sticky in her hair.

I struggled on.

“Misty said, ‘I should break up with him, right?’ and I agreed. So what’d she do? Looks like she makes a date to see him. I can hear her, crying ‘I can’t see you anymore,’ and him going, ‘Just a second, hon. I’ve got a surprise for you in the back seat.’”

Claire said, “Speculating.”

I snuffled, wrapped my arm around my face, then used the tissue Bunny tucked into my hand. After I’d mopped up and put the Kleenex in my pocket, Claire said, “Linds, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I understand, but she was a potential witness against him. You had to be neutral in that diner. And you didn’t get her killed. If you’d said, ‘Don’t see him, get out of town,’ would she have listened? She didn’t have to see him. She could have called him or texted him or just walked away. You’re not responsible.”

“I hear you. Anything else?”

“Okay. There are no bruises on her that I can see. We bagged her hands. I’ll go over every finger carefully. But I haven’t started an external exam, never mind internal. You’re about five or six hours ahead of me, girlfriend. Any questions before I sneak you out through the ambulance bay?”

I shook my head, whispered, “No. Not now. Thanks.”

“I’ll tell you this right now and for free,” Claire said, as she gently covered Misty’s face. “Assuming this same guy killed both women. Whoever he is, whatever his motive, he’s organized. Calculating. Manipulative. He kills with deliberation and precision and deceit.

“This dude doesn’t feel love. He doesn’t feel hate. He just likes to kill women.”

Chapter 39

Leaving Claire’s offices behind me, I went for a long walk under the overcast morning sky.

I took deep breaths, felt the pavement under my shoes and used the traffic on Bryant as a backdrop for my thoughts about Misty. I thought about being eighteen, falling in love with a seductive older man, a psychopath who specialized in English literature and teenage girls.

That made me think of Tara, who’d been even younger than Misty when she married Burke. The search for Tara seemed to have stalled, which only made the daily calls from Kathleen that much more fraught.

The Hall of Justice is cut on an angle at the corner of Bryant and Seventh. I climbed the granite steps to the glass and steel door, pulled it open, and went through security. Put my gun in the tray, my phone followed, and after clearing the metal detector I treated myself to an elevator ride to the fourth floor.

Brenda handed me some messages.

“Any bad news?”

“If so, I wouldn’t tell you,” she said. “This messenger hates getting shot.”

“Hah. I wouldn’t shoot you. I’d ask for a Kind bar.”

She opened her drawer and handed me one.

“Thanks, Brenda.”

I flipped through the tip line calls she’d fielded as I went to the back of the squad room. Looking into Brady’s office, I saw that his elbows were on his desk and his phone was hard against his ear. I pressed my hand to his wall and he looked up, signaled me to come in.

My morning coffee was still on my desk—cold, but I didn’t care. I brought it with me and sat down across from Brady and propped my feet up against the side of his desk. I unwrapped my Kind bar as Brady was saying, “Okay, Hallows, thanks.”

Brady hung up. “Hallows. Letting me know they’re processing the car. Have all of Misty’s things. Bag. Clothes. Phone. Surveillance video from the parking lot.”

“Misty told me she had a date with Burke in that car last Sunday night. More than once, I’m sure.”

I told him about Misty’s body, what the killer had done to her, what Claire had told me.

“She’s sure it’s the same doer?”

“Not yet, but she says Wendy Franks and Misty Fogarty have the same MO. Exactly.”

“Ah, sheet,” he said. “So we’ve got a serial.”

Brady’s intercom buzzed.

He pressed the button hard with his thumb.

“What? Who?” He stood up so he could see to the front of the squad room. Then he said to Brenda, “Tell them I’ll be right out.”

He sat down and pressed speed dial 1.

“Chief,” he said, “Lucas Burke is in the house. Looks like he brought his alibi with him.”

Chapter 40

Lucas Burke stood in Brady’s doorway, shaking a newspaper at us, bellowing, “What in God’s name is this? Bait to get me here? If this is fake, I’m going to sue this city, and whoever planted this story is going to be very sorry. Am I clear?”

I said, “May I see that?”

Burke threw the late edition of the Chronicle onto Brady’s desk and I read the headline: “Slash-and-Gash Killer Takes Second Victim.”

Misty Fogarty’s picture was centered on the front page. The stark headline punched me right to my heart. I felt light-headed and had to grip the edge of the desk.

Steady, girl.

Brady pointed at Burke. “Stay right there,” he said, before picking up his phone.

“Brenda, are the interview rooms vacant?”

To me, Brady said, “Sit tight. Be right back.”

I sat tight as directed, but my brain was ranging.

Cindy had written this story with no help from me or Richie, but still she’d gotten out the details of the murder, possibly attracting the interest of a copycat. Probably contaminating a future jury. If there’d ever be one.

I heard