Judge & Jury - James Patterson [76]
I found you, Remlikov. I found you, you bastard!
The Audi pulled out onto Yehudi Street and drove away.
I remained there for a few minutes, making notes about the house. Today, I didn’t want to follow. I had promised Andie. I got back in the car and drove away.
As I went by the house, I paused for a second in front of the mailbox. I pulled the latch. Quickly, I filtered through and grabbed the most innocuous-looking junk mail I could find. They had junk mail here, too, in Israel.
Back at the hotel, I opened the door to find Andie on the bed taking a nap. She stirred. “What’d you find?”
“I found the house. It’s nearby. I’ll take you there tomorrow.”
Andie sat up. She nodded, a little tentatively.
“And this,” I said, tossing the piece of junk mail, a solicitation from a local rug cleaner, on the bed. “Souvenir. His name isn’t Remlikov or Kollich.
“It’s Richard Nordeshenko.”
Chapter 94
“LOOK!” NICK POINTED toward the modern, glass-ringed house a hundred feet below. “That’s him! That’s Remlikov.”
Andie focused the binoculars. She spied the man—thin, dark, not so large, not so scary. A surge of anger tightened her chest.
She hadn’t known how she would feel when she saw the man who killed her son. And now that it was happening, now that he was only a few yards away, she knew it wasn’t what she wanted. It made her stomach cramp.
“I see him.” Andie’s fingers gripped the binoculars even more tightly. Behind her, Nick squeezed her arm.
“Does he look familiar?”
“No.” She wished he did. She wanted to feel deep hatred for him. Revulsion. Something. So this was the killer? The man who took her whole world away? She shook her head again. “No. I’ve never seen him before.”
“He lives with his wife and son.”
“He has a boy?” That, Andie hadn’t expected. Did his family know? The terrible things he’d done? When they were sitting at their meals or kicking a ball between them or whatever the hell they did? How could someone with a child do these horrible things?
“He goes out every day around this time,” Nick said, gazing through his own binoculars. “At four, he drives his son.”
“Nick.” Andie put down the glasses and looked at him, teary-eyed. “I don’t think I can do this. I know I’m supposed to hate this man. Look what he did to me. I know what we need from him. I know what we have to do. It’s just that. . . . You sonovabitch,” she spat toward the house. She turned her eyes away.
“Just do what you have to do,” she said angrily. “You were right. You are right.”
Suddenly the garage doors started to open again. Nick glanced at his watch. “There he goes.”
The man who had killed her son stepped out of a door from inside the garage. He was wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt, tan slacks, and sunglasses. He looked around for a second, then climbed in the Audi and started the car.
“Every day. Same time. There’s the boy.”
Andie turned and brought the glasses up again. The boy couldn’t have been much more than eleven or twelve. A little older than Jarrod. He was innocent, she told herself, of whatever the father had done. “Where are they going?”
“I don’t know. I want to follow them. Are you okay with that?”
Andie nodded. This scum. This bastard. How could he play the loving father when he knew what he had done?
The boy stepped out of the house and met the car, which was backing around in the driveway.
Andie focused closer. He was carrying a book and what looked like a portable computer. The cover of the book came into view. She didn’t know why she was even interested.
Chess.
The boy climbed into the Audi.
“Come on,” Nick said. He tossed his binoculars into the backseat. “Let’s go. I don’t want to fall too far behind.”
Andie nodded, about to put down the lens, taking one more sweep of the car backing up to the front of the house.
Then, as if she’d been plunged into an icy pool of water, she exclaimed, “Oh my God, Nick!”
The shock of what she had just