The 6th Target - James Patterson [95]
“I hate you,” she said. “I wish they’d killed you.” Then she struck him hard across the face.
“Wow. What a shock,” he said slyly to me.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you,” I continued.
“Who are you kidding?” Brinkley shouted at me, seeming oblivious to the roomful of pumped-up law enforcement officers who’d love nothing more than to kick the crap out of him.
“All you can do is take me back to Atascadero,” Brinkley said. “Nothing you charge me with is going to stick.”
“Shut up, asshole,” I said. “Be glad we aren’t zipping you into a body bag.”
“No, you shut up!” Brinkley said, shouting me down, spit flying, a hellish brightness lighting his face. “I’m not guilty of anything. You know that. I’m legally insane.”
And suddenly I heard Elena Brinkley scream, “No!” — as the dishwasher started its run.
Epilogue
THE 6TH ROUND
Chapter 134
I DIDN’T KNOW THE POOR MAN laid out in his birthday suit on Claire’s table, only that his death might have been related to the Del Norte tragedy. Claire had peeled and folded the patient’s scalp down over his face like the cuff of a sock, sawed off the top of his skull, and removed his brain.
She now held a shard of a bullet in the grip of her thumb and forefinger.
“It passed through something first, sugar,” Claire told me. “Piece of wood, maybe. Whatever it was, it reduced the velocity and the impact but finally killed this guy anyway.”
I called Jacobi, who said, “You know what to do, Boxer. Tell him your story, but keep it simple.”
Then he patched me through to the chief.
I told Tracchio the cut-to-the-chase version — that Wei Fong, a thirty-two-year-old construction worker, had just died that morning. That he’d been in a persistent vegetative state for months at Laguna Honda Hospital long term care because of an inoperable gunshot wound to the head. That he’d taken that bullet the day Alfred Brinkley shot up the passengers on the Del Norte.
“Brinkley’s sixth round went wild,” I said. “And it finally killed Wei Fong.”
“You’ve got my cell phone number?” Tracchio asked.
Claire’s normally steady hands shook as she put the fragment into a glassine envelope. Then we both signed the paperwork, and I called the crime lab.
I heard Claire say to the dead man on her table, “Mr. Fong, honey, I know you can’t hear me, but I want to say thank you.”
Claire’s Pathfinder was just outside the ambulance bay. I moved her dry cleaning from the passenger seat and strapped myself in.
“Kind of like in the Manson killings,” I said as we pulled out onto Harriet Street. “Two sets of murders — Tate and LaBianca. Two sets of cops working side by side for weeks before they realized that the same perps did the killings. And now this. Macklin’s crew working Wei Fong’s case, coming up with nothing.”
“Until he died. You’ve got everything?” Claire asked.
“Yep. I do.”
The bullet fragment was resting within my breast pocket. The gun was inside a sealed paper bag between my feet. We took the 280 to Cesar Chavez, and from there went to Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, where the crime lab was housed inside a blue-and-gray concrete building.
Claire parked in a spot under one of the three Phoenix palms standing sentry in the parking lot.
I was out of the car an instant before Claire set the hand brake.
Chapter 135
THE CRIME LAB’S DIRECTOR, Jim Mudge, was waiting inside his office. He greeted us, took the paper bag from me, and then removed Alfred Brinkley’s lethal friend “Bucky.”
We followed Mudge down the hall, second door to the right, and into the indoor range, where he handed the gun to the firearms inspector, who fired the Smith & Wesson Model 10 handgun into a long water-filled chamber. He retrieved the .38 slug and handed it back to me.
“Here you are, Sarge. Good luck with it. Bring that bastard down.”
Mudge escorted Claire and me down to a room at the end of the hallway. It had a horseshoe arrangement of tables and workstations, and a long wall of comparison microscopes.
A young woman greeted us, saying, “I’m Petra. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
I handed