4th of July - James Patterson [8]
“Holy shit. Is this true?” Jacobi wheezed.
“On my mother’s head. The kid told a nurse that he and his sis were playing a game with those runaways. They called it ‘a bullet or a bath.’”
“The nurse will testify?” I asked.
“Yes, indeed. Swore to me herself.”
“‘A bullet or a bath.’ Those little fuckers.” Jacobi snorted. “A game.”
“Yeah, well, that game’s over. We even found notebooks and collections of crime stories in the girl’s bedroom at home. She was obsessed with homicides. Listen, you two get well, okay? Don’t worry about nothin’.
“Oh. This is from the squad,” he said, handing me the Ghirardelli chocolates and a “get well” card with a lot of signatures. “We’re proud a ya both.”
We talked for another minute or so, passing along thanks to our friends at the Hall of Justice. When he was gone, I reached out and took Jacobi’s hand. Having almost died together had forged an intimacy between us that was deeper than friendship.
“Well, the kids were dirty,” I said.
“Yeah. Break out the champagne.”
I couldn’t argue with him. That the Cabot kids were murderers didn’t change the horror of the shooting. And it didn’t change the notion I’d been harboring for days.
“I’ll tell you something, Jacobi. I’m thinking of giving it up. Quitting the job.”
“C’mon. You’re talking to me.”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re not going to quit, Boxer.”
I straightened a fold in his blanket, then pushed the call button so a nurse would come and roll me back to my room.
“Sleep tight, partner.”
“I know, ‘Don’t worry about nothin’.’”
I leaned over and kissed his stubbly cheek for the first time ever. I know it hurt to do it, but Jacobi actually smiled.
Chapter 12
IT WAS A DAY that had been ripped from the pages of a child’s coloring book. Bright yellow sun. Birds tweeting and the flowery smell of summer everywhere. Even the pollarded trees on the hospital green had sprouted flamboyant hands of leaves since I’d last been outside, three weeks before.
A lovely day, for sure, but somehow I couldn’t reconcile life as usual with my creeping feeling that all was not well. Was it paranoia—or was another shoe about to drop?
Cat’s green Subaru Forester cruised around the elliptical driveway at the hospital entrance, and I could see my nieces waving their hands and bouncing up and down in the backseat. Once I strapped into the passenger seat, my mood lifted. I even started singing, “What a day for a daydream —”
“Aunt Lindsay, I didn’t know you could sing,” six-year-old Brigid piped up from the backseat.
“Sure I can. I played my guitar and sang my way through college, didn’t I, Cat?”
“We used to call her Top Forty,” said my sister. “She was like a human jukebox.”
“What’s a joooot box?” asked Meredith, age two and a half.
We laughed and I explained, “It’s like a giant CD player that plays records,” and then I explained what records were, too.
I rolled down the window and let the breeze blow back my long yellow hair as we drove east on Twenty-second Street toward the rows of pretty pastel two- and three-story Victorian houses that stair-stepped up and across the ridgeline of Potrero Hill.
Cat asked me about my plans, and I gave her a big wide-open shrug. I told her I was benched pending the IAB investigation of the shooting and that I had a whole pile of “injured on duty” time I might put to good use. Clean out my closets. Sort out those shoe boxes full of old photos.
“Here’s a better idea. Stay at our house and recuperate,” Cat said. “We’re off to Aspen in another week. Use the house, please! Penelope would love your company.”
“Who’s Penelope?”
The little girls giggled behind me.
“Whooooooo’s Penelope?”
“She’s our friend,” they chorused.
“Let me think about it,” I said to my sister as we turned left onto Mississippi and pulled up to the blue Victorian apartment house I called home.
Cat was helping me out of the car when Cindy loped down the front steps with Sweet Martha running in front of her.
My euphoric doggy almost knocked me over, licking