4th of July - James Patterson [70]
Chapter 107
I DROVE ACROSS THE air bell on the apron of the Man in the Moon Garage and honked a little shave-and-a-haircut until Keith came out of his office. He lifted off his baseball cap, shook out his golden hair, stuck the cap back on, smiled my way, and sauntered on over.
“Well, well. Lookit who’s here. The Woman of the Year,” Keith said, putting his hand on Martha’s head.
“Oh, that’s me, all right,” I said, laughing. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
“Yeah, I totally get it. I saw that Sam Cabot on the news. He was so pitiful. I was really scared for you, Lindsay, but it’s water over the hill now. Congratulations are in order.”
I murmured my thanks for his interest and asked Keith to fill up the tank. Meanwhile, I took the squeegee from a bucket and cleaned the windshield.
“So, what’re you up to, Lindsay? Don’t you have to go back to work in the big city?”
“Not right away. You know, I’m just not ready yet. . . .”
As the words left my mouth, a red blur breezed across the intersection. The driver slowed and looked right at me before gunning the engine and tearing down Main.
I’d been in town for less than five minutes, and Dennis Agnew was back in my face.
“I left the Bonneville at my sister’s house,” I said as I observed the Porsche’s contrail. “And I have a little unfinished business here in town.”
Keith turned and saw that I was watching Agnew’s Porsche disappear down the street.
“I’ve never understood it,” he said, jacking the gas gun into my tank, shaking his head. A bell rang as the gas meter racked up the gallons. “He’s a really bad dude. I just don’t understand why women are so attracted to trouble.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said. “You think I’m interested in that guy?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Very. But not the way you mean. My interest in Dennis Agnew is purely professional.”
Chapter 108
AS WE HEADED TO Cat’s house, Martha jumped around from backseat to front, barking like a fool. And when I parked in the driveway, she leaped through the car’s open window and ran up to the front door, where she stood wagging her tail and singing in a high key.
“Be cool, Boo,” I said. “Show a little restraint.”
I jiggled the key in the lock and opened the front door; Martha trotted inside.
I called Joe and left him a message: “Hey, Molinari, I’m at Cat’s house. Call when you can.” Then I left a message for Carolee, telling her that she and Allison could stand down from pig-sitting detail.
I spent the day thinking about the Half Moon Bay murders while I cleaned up around the house. I cooked up some spaghetti and canned baby peas for dinner, making a mental note to do some grocery shopping in the morning.
Then I brought my laptop into my nieces’ room and set it up on their shelf of a desk. I noticed that the sweet potato vines had sent another couple inches across the windowsill, but the notes Joe and I had tacked up on the girls’ corkboard were unchanged.
Our little scribblings detailing the circumstances and the savagery done to the Whittakers, Daltrys, Sarduccis, and O’Malleys still led nowhere. And of course my lone John Doe remained pinned to the wall.
I booted up my laptop and went into the FBI’s VICAP database. The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was a national Web site with one purpose: to help law enforcement agents link up scattered bits of intel related to serial homicides. The site had a kick-ass search engine, and new information was always being plugged in by cops around the country.
Now I typed in key words that might make the tumblers spin, some answers fall into place.
I tried them all: whippings administered cum-mortem, couples killed in bed, and of course slashed throats, which sent up a storm of information. Too much.
Hours passed, and my vision started to blur, so I put the computer on “hibernate” and dropped down onto one of my nieces’ small beds to rest for a few minutes.
When I woke up, it was pitch-black outside. It felt as though something had awoken me. A slight noise that