21st Birthday by Patterson, James (ebook reader screen .TXT) 📕

his good hand until a sedative kicked in and he had to stop.

Lanning was going to have to find a way to manage his client or Evan Burke would be dead in the water.

CHAPTER 113

I’D OVERSLEPT FOR ONCE and the squad room was fairly quiet when I got there.

I wanted to talk with Conklin, Alvarez, Brady, but they were all out on a new case, a hostage situation involving a tender age child.

A new idea sparked.

Finding the last cardboard tray in the break room, I stuck three coffee containers into the holes, poured the java, and capped the cups. I then, gathered up some fixings and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. I stared up at the lights behind the numbers and used the time to gather myself for what I hoped would be a useful meeting with Lucas Burke.

Sergeant Bubbleen Waters was behind the duty desk. I handed her a coffee.

“Oooh. Irish cream. Thanks, Lindsay.”

I smiled. From our very first shared shift at the station, we’d liked each other instantly.

“I’m not above bribing a pal,” I said. “Think I could have a few minutes with Lucas Burke?”

“Cheer him up, will ya? I can give you the cage until a lawyer wants it.”

Five minutes later, Burke and I were in the attorney-lawyer meeting room. I tried to gauge his mood. He didn’t look like the same man I’d met at Sunset Park Prep so many months ago. I offered him fresh-brewed black coffee with an array of packets and little cream cups.

He drank it black and kept drinking until he had made it clear that I was going to have to speak first.

“I saw your father a couple days ago.”

“Spare me. I’m going to be sentenced to life in prison and will do my best to forget I ever knew him. I’m going to invent a fictional family and he’s not in it. Or maybe just bash my head against the cinder blocks. One clean hit should do it.”

I moved past that image.

I said, “You know what happened with him? He was in a basement hotel room with a girl who was screaming for help. I kicked in the door and he shot his date through the back of her head.”

“Interesting,” he said, but he wasn’t interested at all.

“I put a couple of shots in your father’s shoulder.”

“That was the best you could do?”

“Under the circumstances.”

“So why tell me?”

He had gulped down the coffee. Getting some pleasure, I guess. I pushed mine over to him.

I said, “This has a lot of sugar. I drink it sweet.”

“Fine. I’ll take it. Did he tell you why he killed my wife, child, and girlfriend?”

“Nope. He’s still saying that you did it.”

Lucas got up and grabbed the bars of the cage with his cuffed hands.

“Guard! Guard!”

Still holding the bars, he turned to me, and said, “It wasn’t me. I don’t care what you believe. I was found guilty. I’m going to be sentenced in a week or so. I’ll be put in protective housing for the next fifty years. At this point, I don’t care what happens to me. I didn’t kill anyone.”

The guard arrived.

“Take me back to my cell.”

Lucas Burke didn’t say good-bye. He just walked out of the cage between the guards, the shackles around his ankles clanking as he rounded the bend.

I cleaned up the coffee remnants and tried to get a grip on my own feelings. I hadn’t liked Lucas Burke, and I’d believed I had good reason not to. But I’d been haunted by questions since I’d come into contact with his father.

I’d had low expectations that he would confess to killing his wife and child, the girl he said he loved, but after meeting with him alone, hearing his voice, feeling his depression at losing everyone, I was surer than ever that he hadn’t done it.

True to Berney’s word, the FBI had made known its claim on the Evan Burke case. DA Masci was fully up to speed on the names of his family members both alive and dead, and that Burke had been on the agency’s most wanted list. Which was why Burke had changed his name, his address, and his face. But he couldn’t change the charges now stacked against him.

CHAPTER 114

RANDALL LANNING HAD CALLED Joseph Masci and told him that his client, Evan Burke, wanted to meet with him.

Lanning had expected a flat “I’ll see him in court,” but instead Masci said, “What does he want? I have a half hour free at three to hear from your client, who claims to be an unindicted serial psycho.”

“He says he has something you’re going to like, and you know, Joe, he wants to make a deal.”

Lanning had conveyed the meeting time back to his client, who was still in the hospital. He added, “See if someone will give you a shave and a haircut.”

“You ask them. I’m lucky to get a bedpan.”

Lanning continued.

“I repeat, Evan. Negotiating with Joseph Masci is not a good idea. He’s like a copperhead snake. He’s venomous. And he’s quick. If you insist on trying your luck, don’t pop off. Think. Then, speak.”

At three, Joe Masci was in his office when Randall Lanning trundled Evan Burke in.

Masci’s assistant made everyone comfortable, and asked the boss, “Hold your calls?”

“I’ll take emergency calls, but you decide, George. We won’t be long.”

Masci wasn’t big, but he was muscular. He shook Evan Burke’s left hand, gave it a good squeeze.

“I have ten minutes,” he said, “and they’re all yours. How can I help you?”

Burke said, “Thanks for your time. I don’t know what you know about me, Mr. Masci. I’m a great man, an important man, and there’s never been a killer on my scale. I kid you not. Hypothetically, I’m willing to do something that pains me. To admit that I killed Lucas’s wife and child and