The 8th Confession - James Patterson [51]
I could see it now: Wallis was going for a dramatic Thelma & Louise exit, but his would be a solo flight. As the Camaro crashed through guardrails and left the road, I saw the frankly unbelievable: the driver’s- side door opened and Wallis jumped out.
But he’d mistimed his jump.
As the Camaro made its wobbly one-way passage off the cliff toward the gray water below, Wallis plummeted alongside his car, both vehicle and man dropping in slow-motion, as if in a dream.
Rich braked our car in front of the broken wall, and we peered over the promontory in time to see the Camaro explode in flames.
“There,” I said. “He’s there!”
Wallis’s body was fifty feet below us, a tangle of bloodied flesh. It was an impossible climb down, a straight 180 degrees over wet and jagged rocks. Conklin took my hand and I gripped his, stood hypnotized as the fire crackled and burned.
I heard Jackie Kam’s voice behind me, calling over the car radio, “Sergeant Boxer, what is your location? Lindsay? Lindsay, please answer me.”
Rich let go of my hand and leaned over the cliff, facing into the wind as he called down to Henry Wallis’s fresh corpse.
“Did you enjoy yourself, asshole? Get what you wanted?”
I used my cell phone to call Dispatch, but the cars were already screaming to a halt all around Point Lobos.
Jacobi jumped out of one of them before it came to a stop. He ran toward us, calling, “You okay? You okay?”
I was so shaken I couldn’t talk.
“Take it easy, Boxer,” Jacobi said, putting his hands on my shoulders. My good friend. “Try to breathe.”
Tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes, but I wasn’t sad. It was something else — surprise and relief that I was alive.
I breathed in the smoke-filled air and said, “I don’t get it, Warren. Wallis jumped out of his car! Was he trying to escape? Or was that how he wanted to die?”
“Whatever,” Conklin said beside me.
I nodded. Whatever. Henry Wallis, the man with the snake-and-skull tattoo on his shoulder, was dead.
Chapter 66
JACOBI TOOK ME and Conklin out to dinner at Restaurant LuLu, the place for homey Provençal cooking, rich casseroles and pizzas grilled in a hickory-wood oven. The sunken dining room was packed, conversation was humming all around us, and our waiter really knew the wine list, long considered one of the best in town.
I knew why Jacobi was celebrating.
The chief and the mayor had given him a big ol’ “attaboy.” TV newscasters were brimming with the drama: the chopper shots and the news that life was safe again for the rich and famous.
But I couldn’t stand this, and I had to say it. “Warren, is everyone crazy? You feel comfortable saying that Henry Wallis is the guy who killed our millionaires?”
Jacobi answered with a question: “Can’t you let something good into your life, Boxer?” And then another: “Can’t you just be happy for an hour?”
“I guess not,” I said, scowling at him. “What’s wrong with me? Or am I just too smart for this charade?”
Conklin nudged me under the table with his knee, and I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him either.
A man had died.
We’d almost followed him off a cliff.
We were lucky we weren’t looking up at Claire from her table or seeing a story on TV of dead children, their tearful parents threatening to sue the city for another fatal high-speed chase, the sad-faced anchorperson saying, “The funeral services for the little Beckwith children will be at Our Sisters of the Sacred Heart on Sunday.”
The waiter poured the wine, and Jacobi tasted it, pronounced it excellent, and, over the clamor of fat-walleted diners chatting happily all around us, raised his glass to me and Conklin.
“Thanks,” he said, “from the chief, the mayor, and especially from me. I love you guys.”
Jacobi smiled, something I’ve seen him do maybe twice in the last ten years, and he and Conklin tucked into their pan-roasted mussels and rotisserie duck.
I had no appetite.
The muscles in my face had gone rigid, but my mind was whirling around on its brain stem.
Was Henry Wallis really the high-society killer?