Run for Your Life - James Patterson [55]
“Brought my skeleton key,” he said, smiling around a chaw of tobacco. He actually seemed to be enjoying himself. I was glad he was on my side.
As the team geared up to start moving, I reached into my jacket and dropped another photograph onto the hood of the car. It was a picture of Tonya Griffith, the young woman transit cop Gladstone had murdered.
“Just a little reminder of why we all got out of bed this morning, gentlemen,” I said. “Let’s ring this scumbag’s bell.”
Gladstone’s house was three blocks away, on a wooded street called Lattingtown Ridge Court. Our vehicles pulled out of the parking lot and cruised there, lights and sirens off.
As we arrived, I gave the green light over the radio. Two Emergency Service diesel trucks suddenly swerved into the driveway and across the lawn. A half-dozen tactical cops spilled out from behind them. Within seconds, I heard two crisp explosions—the front door hinges being shotgunned off.
As the cops shouldered the door aside and piled through it, yelling and tossing flashbangs, I flung open my car door and rushed in with them. I took the stairs two by two, with my Glock drawn and my heart pulsing like a strobe light.
“Police!” I screamed, kicking open the first closed door I encountered. It was a bathroom. There was nothing inside. Nobody. Curtain rings jingled as I ripped down the shower curtain. Just a shower caddy filled with shampoo bottles.
Damn! I thought, rushing back out into the hall, swinging my pistol from side to side.
Where was Gladstone?
Chapter 56
THE FRAMED PHOTOGRAPHS of well-dressed, smiling people that lined the hallway rattled as I stormed along it.
“Police!” I yelled again. “We’re all over you, Gladstone. This is the police!”
At the far end was another door, this one slightly ajar. I tightened my grip on the Glock’s trigger and rammed the door with my shoulder.
It opened into a large, tray-ceilinged master bedroom suite. I cleared the corners first, scanned the bed, and . . .
My face jerked away in shock, as if I’d been punched. My gun almost slipped from my fingers before I managed to shove it back into its holster. Then I covered my nose and mouth with a hand as the vile coppery scent of blood and death washed over me.
We were too late.
This guy, I thought.
“Oh, my God,” a woman breathed from the hall behind me. It was Beth Peters, frozen with shock.
This guy.
I stepped out into the hall and got out my radio.
“Up here,” I said weakly. “Second floor.”
“Do you have him?” McGinnis yelled.
“No,” I said. “Not him.”
What we had was a bound, half-naked woman on the bed, drenched in a bloody sheet. Through the open doorway of the bathroom beyond I could see a woman’s foot hanging over the tub rim. Another young woman, a girl really, lay facedown in blood beside the toilet, hog-tied with lamp cord.
Shaking my head, I approached the bodies for a closer inspection. The two women in the bathroom were barely in their twenties. Both of them were completely naked. The woman in the bedroom was older—maybe their mother, Erica Gladstone. My gaze caught a wedding photo lying in a corner, its glass cracked from being knocked to the floor. I picked it up and held it beside her lifeless face. She was so battered, it took me a full minute to confirm it was a match.
I couldn’t believe it. Gladstone had shot and killed his wife and their two daughters. His own flesh and blood.
Other cops were coming into the room now. I could hear their exclamations of horror and disbelief behind me. I stayed where I was, staring at the blood-soaked carpet and sheets.
This was the worst crime of all, an atrocity, an outrage against humanity. God, I wanted to get my hands on this sick prick. Better yet, get him in the sights of my Glock.
Chapter 57
IT WAS ELEVEN THIRTY A.M. when the Teacher stopped in front of an electronics store at 51st and Seventh. All the TVs that he could see through the big plate-glass windows were tuned to the Fox News Channel.
“Spree Killer Update,” scrolled across the top and, “Live from Locust Valley, Long Island