Hide & Seek - James Patterson [7]
“School was fun. I made another new friend named Julie Goodyear. She's real funny. Mrs. Crolius said I'm smart.”
“You are smart. You're also pretty, and you're a very nice person. You're awfully short though.”
“I'm going to be bigger than you, don't you think so?”
“Yes, I think so. I think you'll be around seven foot or so.”
On and on and on like that.
The motormouths.
Best friends.
We were both doing pretty well actually; getting used to New York—kind of; getting over Phillip as well as we could.
To hell with Barry Kahn.
You blew it, Mr. Big Shot!
It was as dark as Phillip's heart by the time Jennie and I got home. All my feelings of defiance had evaporated, and I looked at the front of our run-down brownstone with complete dismay.
Shit, shit, shit. I guess we'll have to live here a while longer. Like maybe the rest of our lives.
I opened the front door, and it yawned as it always did. Typical New York reaction.
Damn, damn, damn! The lights had gone out in the hall and on the first-floor landing.
All I could see was a pattern of light edging its way through the first-floor window from the lamppost in front of the house.
“Spooky,” Jennie whispered. “Scary and spooky.”
“No,” I said. “This isn't spooky. This is fun in the Big Apple.” I took her hand and we started up the “fun” stairs.
I stopped moving. My body tensed, and I tucked Jennie behind me to protect her.
Somebody was sitting in the shadows on the landing. The person was silent, unmoving. It was somebody tall and well built.
This wasn't good. This was scary and spooky.
I moved toward the figure cautiously. “Hello. Who is it? Hello up there,” I called out, thinking of the horror stories I had heard about New York—and about the horrors I had recently endured in West Point.
The person seemed to be wearing something on his head. A strange top hat? Something weird as hell.
Phillip! I thought the unthinkable. I knew better, but the flashback came anyway.
Phillip loved to frighten me, jumping out from behind a bush, from behind a closet door, knowing he could scare me and thinking it funny when he did. Once, on Halloween, he wore an Indian headdress and came at me with a tomahawk. It was the worst of the scares. At the end, of course, it was I who had jumped out at him, had leaped at him with the gun in my hand, firing … firing …
But Phillip was dead, I told myself, and there were no such things as ghosts, not even in New York.
I inched closer. Still, the figure did not move. I neared the landing. “Hello!” I called again. “This isn't funny. Please talk to me. Just say hi.”
The sound of our stealthy footsteps on the stairs reminded me of Phillip's steps, the way he stalked around the house.
Becoming a little hysterical, consumed by ancient fear, I forced myself to reach the landing.
Behind me, Jennie whispered, picking up my fear. “Who is it, Mommy?”
Not twice, I thought. You won't hurt us twice. No damn way!
I lunged at the threatening figure, striking out at it with my heavy case. I hit the bastard hard.
He toppled unresistingly, and I realized what I had done.
“Oh my God! I can't believe it!” I started to laugh, relief not entirely wiping out the dread. “Hooo boy.”
Jennie hurried up the final stairs, laughing with me. “Phillip” was a mammoth basket of what had to be a few hundred dollars' worth of long-stemmed roses.
I opened the note that came with them.
TO MAGGIE BRADFORD.
HERE'S TO THE FIRST DAY OF YOUR RETURN TO GRACE. IF YOU REALLY WANT THE JOB, YOU'RE CRAZY, BUT YOU'RE HIRED. YOU MADE MY ‘PRECIOUS TIME’ PASS LIKE IT WAS NOTHING TODAY. TRUST ME ON THAT.
BARRY
A kind of funny story, in retrospect anyway. A happy ending for sure. But as I write it now, the question comes again, and it's not so funny anymore. Not to me.
When I'm in trouble, is my first impulse always to kill?
Have I murdered, not once, but twice?
A lot of people think so. One of them happens to be a prosecuting attorney for the southern district of New York.
First, there was Phillip Bradford.