The 5th Horseman (30 page)
Authors: James Patterson
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense, #antique
My adrenaline flowed as Mendez, Jacobi, and a sharp team of young cops followed me up the stairs, the soles of our shoes ringing on metal as we climbed skyward.
I tapped on the aft door with my gun butt, and it slid open.
I signaled to the flight attendant to be quiet and to step aside. We entered the first-class cabin from the rear.
I saw the back of Dennis Garza’s head right away. He was in the third row, right side, aisle seat, an ugly red gash blazing through his hair.
A redheaded woman sat beside him at the window.
Maureen O’Mara.
And I saw a problem. A big one.
Two hundred pounds of beverage cart filled the aisle from one side to the other. That cart and two flight attendants stood between us and Garza.
Garza heard us approach, turned his head, and squinted at me.
“You,” he said.
O’Mara patted his hand, said, “Be cool, Dennis. Everything’s okay.”
“Dennis Garza. Maureen O’Mara,” I called out. “I have warrants to take you both into custody as material witnesses.”
“Like hell,” Garza shouted. He fumbled in his jacket pocket. Then he rose out of his seat, stepped into the aisle.
O’Mara yelled out, “Dennis. No!”
Moving with the sudden-strike swiftness of a snake, Garza grabbed the flight attendant closest to him, wrapping her streaked hair around his hand, pulling her head back hard so that it was only inches from his face.
I saw something glint in his hand. It was a syringe!
He had his thumb on the plunger, the needle already piercing the taut skin of the flight attendant’s neck.
The young woman screamed, the sound of her terror filling the cabin, reverberating off the walls.
“I want safe passage out of here. Or I’ll shoot her full of insulin. She’ll be dead before she hits the floor,” Garza threatened.
Garza’s once handsome face was almost unrecognizable. His features were bruised and twisted, his lips curled back, pupils huge, eyes darting.
He looked every bit the maniac I believed him to be.
“It’s up to you,” he said. “I don’t care if she lives or dies.”
I finally spoke back to Garza. “That much I already knew.”
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 132
I WENT COLD INSIDE, staring into Garza’s dark, thoroughly crazy eyes. Maureen O’Mara was kneeling on her seat, staring at Garza in horror, as if she didn’t know who he was, either.
Sweat beaded on my upper lip as panic drove shrieking passengers to push past the cops and clear the rear half of the cabin.
In front of me, the remaining first-class passengers hunched forward, covering their heads as sharpshooters formed a wall behind me, using the seat backs as gun rests.
Garza’s back was to the cockpit. He couldn’t move forward or back, but he could endanger everyone on the aircraft.
And he could kill the flight attendant on his way down.
Garza tightened his painful grip on the attendant’s hair. A drop of blood at the girl’s neck fell, spotting the collar of her starched white blouse. She whimpered, stretched up onto her toes.
I read her name stamped into the gold wings pinned to her vest. “It’s going to be okay, Krista,” I said, making eye contact, watching the tears slide out of her eyes.
“Let her go, Dennis. No one is putting away their guns,” I said in a steady voice. “And you’re not going to kill anyone. We’re all getting out of here alive.”
Just then, the cockpit door opened behind Garza with a sound like a vacuum seal breaking. A young flight officer stepped into the cabin, a baton cocked like a baseball bat over his shoulder.
Garza turned his head, only slightly loosening his hold on the flight attendant. She wriggled and tried to wrench herself free.
The split second I needed was there, in the grip of my hand. I aimed and squeezed the Taser gun trigger, sending fifty thousand volts into Garza’s shoulder. It was enough juice to stun a rhino.
Garza choked out a scream and dropped to the cabin floor, curling into a fetal position. I stood over him, Taser pointed at his head as Jacobi cuffed him.
“You’re under arrest for reckless endangerment,” I said as Garza groaned and writhed at my feet. “You have the right to remain silent, you son of a bitch. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.” And it most certainly will be.
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 133
IT WAS AFTER 9:00 P.M. when Jacobi and I brought Dennis Garza and Maureen O’Mara into the squad room, both of them in handcuffs.
“How the mighty have fallen,” cracked Jacobi.
I was bone tired, scraping the bottom of my energy reserves, but elation kept me going. Dennis Garza was in custody, charged with reckless endangerment, possession of a deadly weapon, obstruction, and suspicion of murder.
He wasn’t killing people at Municipal Hospital.
And he wasn’t sunning himself on a beach in Rio.
O’Mara had been charged as an accessory after the fact, but we were bluffing and she knew it.
We had no evidence whatsoever that O’Mara had witnessed a crime or had even seen the blood in Garza’s house.
Twenty minutes after we brought them in, O’Mara was calmly reading a book in her cell, keeping her mouth shut, waiting for one of her law partners to bail her out of jail.
But we weren’t finished with her yet.
I still felt a little shaky and weak in the knees. I went to the bathroom, washed my hands and face in the old porcelain sink. Ran my damp hands through my hair.
I remembered the last time I’d eaten, the granola bar I’d bolted down after Noddie Wilkins called to tell me that Jamie Sweet had died.
All of that seemed like a week ago.
I rejoined Jacobi in my office and had just ordered a meatball pizza, extra large, when Sonja Engstrom returned my call.
She, too, was pulling a late night at her office in the hospital.
“We’re going through the dispensary computer’s history, byte by byte,” she said in her crisp, self-assured tone. “The hospital is completely invested in getting to the truth.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“If Dennis was screwing with the computer system, he’s a killer and he was acting alone. The police can have him,” she said. “We’re happy to help.”
We still had no proof that Garza had killed anyone at Municipal. I wished we could subpoena the hospital’s computer records ourselves, but I knew what the DA would tell me.
You want us to scrutinize three years of Municipal’s computer records? With what staff, Lieutenant? We don’t have the time, the money, or the manpower to go fishing.
But with the hospital backing her up, maybe Engstrom could pin a tail on our killer.
I said, “Sonja, for God’s sake don’t burn, shred, alter, or delete anything. Call me if you detect a pattern or find anything I can take to the DA. Please.”
I’d just wished her good luck when the next call came in. It was Conklin. His voice was triumphant, almost giddy.
“Lieutenant,” he said. “I’m looking at Garza’s car.”
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 134
I LEANED FORWARD in my seat, slapped the desk to get Jacobi’s attention. I put Conklin on the speakerphone.
“Garza’s Mercedes is in the Park ’n’ Fly lot,” Conklin told me. “We haven’t touched it.”
“Excellent. What do you see?”
“Car’s clean and empty, Lieutenant, except for a newspaper on the floor of the passenger side. The doors and trunk are locked.”
“Stay where you are. Don’t touch anything,” I said to Conklin. “We’re doing this a hundred percent by the book.”
I still had friends in the DA’s office, and I found one who was young, persuasive, and not afraid to call a judge after the dinner hour. Forty-five minutes later, I had a search warrant in my hand.
I called Conklin.
“Open up the trunk,” I told him. “I’ll hold while you do it.”
I heard Conklin talking to McNeil in the background, the metallic crack of a crowbar snapping the trunk lock, McNeil barking, “Oh, shit. Goddamn it.”
“Conklin? Conklin?” I was gripping the edge of my desk, white-knuckled by the time Rich got back on the line. He was breathing hard.
“There’s a frickin’ body in the trunk, Lou. Wrapped up in a quilt.”
I stared at Jacobi, not having to say what I was thinking because I knew he was thinking it, too. The missing body had turned up. But whose body was it?
“You checked for a pulse?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. He’s dead. White male. Brown hair. Looks to be in his thirties. He’s covered with blood, Lieutenant. Soaked with it.”
“Lock down the scene. Stay with that car until the ME and CSU arrive,” I said. “I want that car brought back to the lab. And, Richie, make sure it’s handled like a newborn baby.”
Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman
Chapter 135
IT WAS AFTER 11:00 P.M. on what was turning out to be one of the longest days of my life. Jacobi and I were in the box with Garza, the three of us stinking of sweat. The flat overhead light was making shadows dance dizzyingly against the gray tile walls.
I figured that I felt like Garza looked.
And he looked like a gargoyle, a monstrous, murdering gargoyle. And like a gargoyle, he wasn’t talking.
I was this close to squeezing his purpled jaw between my fingers to make him scream. I hated the sight of him so much.
Instead, I gave him a Tylenol, a cup of water, and a bunch of ice cubes in a paper towel for his swollen jaw.
And he’d given me nothing back.
His arrogance was remarkable, stonewalling us even though we’d found a dead man inside his car.
“You should help yourself, you know, Dennis?” I was on a first-name basis with him because I knew he resented it.
“I should have an X-ray.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m pretty sure my jaw is fractured. I might have a concussion, too.”
“How’d that happen?” Jacobi asked, tapping the point of a pencil on the table. It was a faint, brittle sound. Irritating. And menacing. I thought if I left Jacobi alone with Garza he’d bounce him off the walls. Might even kill him. I pulled out a chair and sat down.
“I’m guessing this fellow came over to have a few words with you,” Jacobi went on. “What did he say? ‘You killed my son’? My little boy is dead because of you’? Maybe he clocked you with that vase. Is that what set you off?”
“I want a doctor,” Garza said thickly. “I’m in a lot of pain, and I demand to see a doctor right now.”
“Sure,” I said. “No problem. But you ought to know that we found blood on the soles of Maureen’s shoes,” I said, lying my face off.
“As soon as the DA gets here, Maureen is going to talk about what went down at your house this morning. She’s going to say how she walked in on you doing a murder. She’ll plead to accessory after the fact and testify for the prosecution, Dennis.
“She’ll get a year or two in minimum security, and you’ll get the needle. Is that what you want?
“Or do you want to tell us now how you acted in self-defense. Because if you talk to us now, you’re cooperating. And that’s your best chance to save your sorry life.”
“Is that right?” Garza croaked.
“Yeah. That’s right, asshole.”
I thought about Martin Sweet, that bereaved father crying out to me in agony, This is fucked-up! I want to kill someone, Lieutenant!
Dennis Garza had beaten him to it.
“’Scuse me,” Garza gurgled. He stood up and looked around.
I was about to grab him by his collar and drag him back to his chair, when he went down on his knees and barfed into the trash can.
Long, retching moments later, he lifted his gigantic head.
“I want my lawyer,” Garza said.
Jacobi and I exchanged disgusted looks.
The interrogation was over.
I stood up, shoving my chair away from the table. It snagged on the table leg, so I pulled at the chair, wrestling with it noisily, banging it until all four legs were on the ground.
I knew my anger was running away with me, because I didn’t care who was watching from behind the glass.
I leaned forward, hands on my knees, stuck my face right up to Garza’s stinking snout and gave him everything I had left.
“I knew that man you stabbed and slashed to death, you murdering piece of shit. We talked right after his little boy died of a broken arm.
“Did you see that child when he checked into the ER? A cute little guy. Weighed about fifty pounds. He was found dead with a pair of buttons on his eyes.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Garza said.
“He doesn’t know anything,” I said to Jacobi as Garza stood up, walked weakly to the chair, hands cuffed in front of him.
“He doesn’t know anything about the button murders. He doesn’t know anything about Martin Sweet’s body in his trunk. He certainly doesn’t know how tenacious we are.
“He doesn’t know us at all.”
“I’ll call an ambulance,” Jacobi said wearily.
I slapped my cell phone down on the table under Garza’s nose.
“Here. Phone your lawyer. Tell him that you’re under arrest for the murder of Martin Sweet. Tell him he can find you at Municipal Hospital’s emergency room, cuffed to a gurney under police guard. Tell him that we’ve got enough evidence to convict you a hundred times over.
“Tell him we’re taking you down.”
I was putting on my jacket as Garza fiddled with the tiny buttons on my Nextel, getting it wrong, trying again. I left him in the box with Jacobi.
But before the door swung shut, I heard Garza crying.
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