Four Blind Mice - James Patterson [0]
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Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
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First eBook Edition: November 2007
ISBN: 978-0-446-40934-6
The Little, Brown and Company name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Contents
Copyright
Prologue: The “Bluelady” Murders
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part One: The Last Case
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part Two: Jamilla
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Part Three: The Foot Soldier
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Part Four: Exit Wounds
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Part Five: Four Blind Mice
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Epilogue: The Garter
Chapter 115
About the Author
Also by James Patterson:
The Thomas Berryman Number
Season of the Machete
See How They Run
The Midnight Club
Along Came a Spider
Kiss the Girls
Hide & Seek
Jack & Jill
Miracle on the 17th Green (with Peter de Jonge)
Cat & Mouse
When the Wind Blows
Pop Goes the Weasel
Black Friday
Cradle and All
Roses Are Red
1st to Die
Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas
Violets Are Blue
2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross)
The Beach House (with Peter de Jonge)
Here’s to Manhattan College on her sesquicentennial anniversary. Go Jaspers!
This one is also for Mary Jordan, who holds everything together, and I mean everything.
Did you ever see
such a sight in your life . . .
Prologue
THE “BLUELADY” MURDERS
Chapter 1
THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY for Cumberland County, North Carolina, Marc Sherman, pushed the old wooden captain’s chair away from the prosecution table, and it made a harsh, scraping eeek in the nearly silent courtroom.
Then Sherman rose and slowly approached the jury box, where nine women and three men — six white, six African American — waited with anticipation to hear what he had to say. They liked Sherman. He knew that, even expected it. He also knew that he had already won this dramatic murder case, even without the stirring summation he was about to give.
But he was going to give this closing anyway. He felt the need to see Sergeant Ellis Cooper held accountable for his crimes. The soldier had committed the most heinous and cowardly murders in the history of Cumberland County, North Carolina. The so-called Bluelady Murders. The people in this county expected Sherman to punish Ellis Cooper, who happened to be a black man, and he wouldn’t disappoint them.
The district attorney began: “I have been doing this for a while — seventeen years, to be exact. In all that time, I have never encountered murders such as those committed in December last,