Run for Your Life - James Patterson [34]
“Point taken,” I said, looking straight at Chief McGinnis. “Still, I’m not completely convinced yet that he’s a garden-variety serial. Shouldn’t he have contacted the press by now?”
“So you’re saying maybe he’s just acting like he’s nuts?” Beth said to me.
“If he’s just acting,” Detective Lavery joined in from across the table, “I’d like to be the first to nominate him for an Academy Award.”
“What I’m saying is, if this guy’s got a program, maybe that gives us something to go on,” I said. “Otherwise, what’s our alternative? Just blanket Manhattan with cops, and cross our fingers that one’s around when he goes off again?”
Then McGinnis himself stood up, glaring back at me.
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do, Bennett. It’s called being proactive. Please explain your plan, Agent Lamb.”
I sat back down as the FBI agent recommended that beefed-up patrols, and especially the Counter-Terror Unit, should be stationed at certain affluent areas—Rockefeller Center, the Harvard Club, the New York Athletic Club, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and Tiffany’s.
Tiffany’s, I thought. Like they needed more security! And what about MoMA and half the restaurants in the Zagat guide? This was New York. There weren’t enough cops on the force to play goalie at every high-end institution.
“And let me remind everyone that this is confidential information,” McGinnis finished. His hard stare returned to my face and stayed there.
I rolled my eyes, thinking again about defending myself, but decided the hell with it. Instead, I got another cup of coffee, took a hot, sour sip, and stared out the conference room window at headquarters’ breathtaking view of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Maybe the killer would do me a personal favor and go terrorize one of the other boroughs today.
Chapter 30
BEHIND HIS DIESEL SUNGLASSES, the Teacher squinted into the bright sunlight that hit him as he cornered the sidewalk off Eighth Avenue and onto 42nd Street.
He was into his next chameleon act, now wearing a Piero Tucci lambskin jacket over a distressed graffiti T, Morphine jeans, and Lucchese stingray-skin boots—an outfit that looked casual, but people with eyes for that sort of thing would know it cost more than a lot of monthly paychecks. He hadn’t shaved, and his fashionable stubble gave him the look of a rock or film star.
He felt like bursting into laughter as he marched toward Times Square with the mass of clueless rat-racers. The fact that he was doing all this in broad daylight was so crazy, so bold. It was like being high on the greatest drug he could possibly imagine.
-Finally—being able to unload a lifetime of pent-up venom! Ever since he was little, people had tried to sell him the big lie. How great everything was, the holy privilege of being alive. Worst of all was his god-awful, annoying mother. The world is a gift from God, life is precious, count your blessings, she’d always say. He’d loved her, of course, but Christ, sometimes he’d thought her gums would never stop flapping.
She’d been gone three years now, along with her witless philosophy degree from the University of Hallmark. Near the end, at her deathbed, he’d had to restrain himself from pushing aside the IV cords that entangled her like vines in a plastic rain forest, and asking her, If life was such a precious gift, then why the hell was He such a frigging Indian giver?
He hadn’t, of course. Despite her faults, she was his mother. She’d sacrificed for him. The least he could do was to let her die as deluded as she’d lived.
But now he no longer had to play charades. Let’s face it, he thought—in this insanely decadent modern mess called society, being negative and antisocial was downright proper. He wanted no part of the pointless mistake that humanity had become.
Take today, for example. Wednesday—matinee day for the Broadway musicals. All around