Kill Me if You Can - James Patterson [82]
At four in the afternoon, I had my first visitors. Detectives Steve Garber and Nathan Watt, NYPD.
“We’re trying to piece together what happened last night,” Watt said. “Do you mind if I ask you both a few questions?”
“It’s all a blur,” I said. “This crazy man attacked me and my girlfriend. I tried to fend him off, but the New York subway finished the fight.”
Katherine nodded in total agreement.
“Did either of you know this guy?” Watt said.
“No.”
Watt smiled. “Vadim Chukov. He had a record on two continents. Smuggling, arson, robbery, murder—the list goes on—but this is the first time he ever tried to pick a fight with an innocent young couple waiting for the subway. Are you sure you didn’t know him?”
“I don’t know anyone like that,” I said. “I’m just a struggling art student.”
“A struggling art student and a war-hero Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Garber said.
“My Marine days are over,” I said.
“Were you aware that Chukov and five of his men launched some kind of terrorist attack in Grand Central Terminal earlier last night?” Garber asked.
“It was in the paper this morning,” Katherine said.
“Was anybody hurt?” I asked.
“Counting Chukov, there are six dead. All bad guys. It seems like somebody knew they were coming and cleaned up the mess without any help from the cops.”
“Good Samaritans, I guess,” I said.
“But you weren’t there,” Watt said.
“No,” I said.
“It’s easy enough to check,” Watt said. “They have the whole incident on video.”
Katherine’s eyes opened wide, and she squeezed my hand.
“Oh, crap, I just remembered,” Garber said. “The terminal is not our jurisdiction. That’s MTA—the state cops.”
“Then I guess there’s no sense in looking at the tapes,” Watt said. “We’re just here to ask questions about the incident down in the subway. Does either of you have anything else to add?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“Then I think we’ve got it all,” Watt said. “Detective Garber, why don’t we let this young war hero and his girlfriend get some rest.”
They headed to the door. Watt stopped and turned around.
“Mr. Bannon, I have to take issue with just one thing you told us.”
“What’s that?”
“You said your Marine days were over,” Watt said.
“Yes, sir.”
“They’re never over. My partner and I both served in Desert Storm.” He grinned. “Semper fi, bro.”
He threw me a wink and a salute, and the two of them walked out the door and never came back.
Chapter 98
WE FLEW TO Paris and rented a funky studio on the fourth floor of an art deco building in the Quartier Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The mattress was too soft and the toilet was temperamental, but the northern light that streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows made it an artist’s dream. My broken nose healed. My cracked ribs healed. And three months after that night in the subway tunnel, my relationship with Katherine was also mending rather nicely. She had told me she loved me in the heat of the moment, but I wanted to make sure that she could forgive me for the life I had led and for dragging her into it.
It was a Sunday morning in September. I woke to the aroma of fresh-brewed french roast, the sounds of Coldplay on the stereo, and the sight of Katherine in jeans and a paint-spattered tank top, sitting on the sofa. There was sunlight on her bare shoulders, and my cat, Hopper, was curled on her lap, purring gratefully.
“Hold that pose,” I said. “I’ll get some coffee and a paintbrush.”
“You don’t do portraits,” she said.
“I do nudes,” I said with a smile. “You know where I can find one?”
“I just happen to have one under here,” she said. Then she peeled off the tank top. She scrambled out of her jeans. Lord, she was good at undressing.
“The coffee can wait,” I said.
Morning sex for us was usually fast, urgent—kind of like an asteroid is heading for the planet and we only have a few minutes left fast.
That morning we took the better part of an hour.
“I hate to be practical, especially at a time like this, but we should shower and get dressed,” Katherine finally said.
We were lying