4th of July - James Patterson [45]
This was bad.
Cursing under his breath, the Watcher checked the time—12:14 a.m.—and set out toward the house where Lindsay was staying.
Now that his zoom lens was useless, he would have to get closer, and on foot.
The Watcher stepped over the guardrail at the end of the field and stood square on the sidewalk with a streetlight blazing down on his head.
Two houses in from the end of the road, Cat Boxer’s house glowed with lamplight.
He ducked into shadows and approached the house obliquely by cutting through side yards, crouching at last in the lee of the privet hedge bordering the Boxer living room.
With heart pounding, he stood and peered through the picture window.
The gang was all there: Lindsay in her SFPD T-shirt and tights; Claire, the black ME from the city, in a gold caftan; and Cindy, her blond hair bunched on top of her head, a chenille robe covering all but the legs of her pink pajamas and her feet.
The women were talking intensely, sometimes laughing loudly, then getting serious again. If only he could make out what the hell they were saying.
The Watcher ran through the facts, recent events, the circumstances. The chair in the kid’s room. It didn’t connect any of them to anything, but it was a mistake that he’d made.
Was it safe to go forward?
There was so much more to do.
The Watcher felt the accumulating effects of stress on his body. His hands were shaking, and his chest burned with acid. He couldn’t stay here any longer, he just could not.
He looked around, making sure no one was walking a dog or taking out the garbage, then he stepped from behind the hedge and briefly into the streetlight. He jumped the guardrail and started along the darkened path to the beach.
A decision had to be made about Lindsay Boxer.
A tough one.
The woman was a cop.
Chapter 72
I WOKE EARLY IN the morning with a thought that surfaced in my mind like a porpoise breaking from beneath the waves.
I let Martha out back, put coffee on to perk, and booted up my laptop.
I remembered that Bob Hinton had said that two other people had been killed in Half Moon Bay two years before: Ray and Molly Whittaker. They were summer people, Hinton had said. Ray was a photographer, Molly a bit player, an extra, in Hollywood.
I went online to the NCIC database and looked them up. I was still in shock when I went into the bedrooms to rouse the girls.
When they were dressed and had coffee and scones in front of them, I told them what I’d learned about Ray and Molly Whittaker.
“They were pornographers, both of them. Ray was behind the camera, and Molly performed with kids. Boys, girls, it didn’t seem to matter,” I said. “They were busted for it and acquitted. Their lawyer? It was Brancusi, again.”
The girls knew me too well. They got on my case, warning me to be careful, reminding me that for all intents and purposes I was a civilian and that even though it seemed logical to check out a possible connection between the Whittakers and Dennis Agnew, I was out of my territory, no one had my back, and I was heading for big trouble.
I must have said “I know, I know” a half dozen times, and as we said good-bye in the driveway I made a lot of promises to be a good girl.
“You should think about coming home, Lindsay,” said Claire finally, holding my face in her hands.
“Right,” I said. “I’ll definitely think about it.”
They both hugged me as though they would never see me again, and frankly, that got to me. As Claire’s car backed down the driveway, Cindy leaned out the window.
“I’ll call you tonight. Think about what we said. Think, Lindsay.”
I blew kisses and went inside the house. I found my handbag hanging from a doorknob and rooted around inside it until I felt my phone, my badge, and my gun.
A minute later I started up the Explorer.
It was a short drive into town, with my mind churning right up to the second I pulled my car into a parking spot outside the police barracks.
I found the chief in his office, staring