The Quickie - James Patterson [32]
Now he needed me to be there for him.
I took a breath and stepped over and lay down beside him. Paul switched off the light. I reached out in the dark until I found Paul’s hand, then I held it tight.
“Well, I’m glad you made it home to me,” I finally said. “Even if your clothes didn’t.”
Chapter 47
THE NEXT MORNING, I got dressed quickly after Paul left for work. I’d been waiting for him to leave, actually. More accurate: I couldn’t wait for Paul to go.
As I was about to dump my handbag into my Mini, I suddenly very distinctly remembered what ADA Jeff Buslik had said about the gun used to kill Scott. How it was absolutely critical to proving the case.
I moved away from the car and hurried toward the work shed, a single question racing through my brain.
Which river was I going to dump the gun in — the Hudson, the East, or the Harlem?
But I swallowed hard as soon as I unlocked the shed’s door. I hadn’t been expecting this. Not in my wildest dreams.
There was an empty space where the bag of evidence had been! There was just air.
I looked behind the rakes, the bags of fertilizer, the watering can. No gun. No bloody paper towels. No nothing.
What now?
I stared at the spot, wondering what Paul might have done with the murder gun. Had he dumped it when he went to return the car? If so, where?
That worried me. A lot. The murder weapon still around someplace, probably with Paul’s prints on it.
I was standing there, stomach churning, when I noticed the shovel. The tip of its blade was dark. I touched it. It was wet with mud. I took it out of the shed with me and jogged toward the backyard.
Where would I bury a murder weapon if I were Paul? I thought.
I’d want to hide it someplace close, I decided. Someplace where I could glance out my window and see if the area had been disturbed.
I scanned my backyard. It got only afternoon sun, so it was still shaded. I paced its entire length, staring at the cool, shadowed ground for twenty minutes, but there were no obvious disturbances. Not in the plant beds, not beneath the hedges or azaleas.
About ten minutes later, next to the grill, beside a stack of garden bricks we’d bought at Home Depot a year before, I noticed something a little curious. To the right of the pile, I could see faint indentations of bricks in the dirt.
The bricks had been moved slightly over to the left, I realized.
I began removing the top row of bricks and placing them back in their original formation. Under the last row, the earth was loose.
I dug with the shovel until it squished into something. My breath caught and my heart pumped with relief. It was a plastic Stop & Shop bag. I opened it and saw the .38 sitting on top of the bloody towels.
I put the gun in my purse and tied the shopping bag and put it in the trunk of my Impala, the cop car I usually drove to work in. Then I went back, filled the hole, and painstakingly put the bricks back the way I’d found them.
I was sweating, placing the last brick back down, when I heard something at the corner of the house.
I turned.
And my heart stopped.
It was my partner, Mike.
Mike? Here at my house? Now?
Behind him were Scott’s DETF group members Jeff Trahan and Roy Khuong. All three were wearing full ballistic armor.
I could feel my sweat glands open like a drain. This was it — endgame!
They’d been surveilling me, I thought. They knew exactly what had happened. Probably from the get-go.
Now it was over.
My mouth opened wordlessly as I stared at them from where I was, on my knees.
“What’s up, Lauren? Don’t you answer your phone?” Mike said, pulling me up. “We just got word from a confidential informant that the Ordonez boys are at their club right now. We decided to just come by and pick you up. Marut and Price are waiting in the van.”
He slapped the dirt from my hands as if I were a naughty child he’d caught playing in the mud.
“You can plant your perennials later, Martha Stewart,” my fired-up partner said with a grin. “It’s time for us to bag some cop killers.”
Chapter 48
RIDING IN THE BACK