21st Birthday (Women's Murder Club) by James Patterson

21st Birthday (Women's Murder Club) by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson [Patterson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473580060
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2021-03-03T18:30:00+00:00


CHAPTER 62

RICH CONKLIN WAS working alone at his desk.

I dropped into the swivel chair that had molded itself to my weight and shape over the years. Then, I stuck out my arm and swept all of Sonia Alvarez’s things aside; sunglasses, thermos, stack of papers, glass paperweight, a number of pens. Then I folded my arms over the space I’d made for myself.

I looked up to see Conklin grinning.

“What?”

“I think you’d like her if you gave her a chance.”

“You’re talking crazy, Richie. I like her fine. She’s been here for what? A week? I’ll take her to lunch, okay? I just need room to spread out.”

“She’s so excited about our everyday —”

“Our everyday is about to get more intense.” I looked at my watch, then back to Richie. “Soon.”

“Tell me.”

I told him everything that Joe had told me, except the name of his source. I told him about Evan Burke changing his name and face, the warning from Joe’s CI that Burke was on the move, that we had nothing on him except Lucas Burke’s untested and self-serving theory that his father was a mass murderer.

I told him we were going to make a move.

Conklin wasn’t grinning anymore, and I wasn’t thinking about singing along with Sheryl Crow on my guitar, either.

I said, “Call Alvarez. Tell her we need her now. Is she ready for this … baptism by fire?”

“I have no doubt.”

By 8 p.m., the Burke task force met on the street in front of the Hall of Justice.

Brady briefed us under a streetlight, laying out our objective: to bring him in to get his comments on his son on the record. “We want to bring him in without a shot fired or a door kicked in. But if it goes that way, we’re ready.”

And then Brady got into a van with Cappy and Alvarez and two other cops with tac team experience.

Conklin and I were assigned an unmarked car with a dedicated channel, high-tech navigation, and vest mics. Conklin wanted the wheel, so I willingly agreed to navigate us to a place I’d never been. Captain Brevoort had assigned the Wendy Franks investigators to join our caravan while Chi stayed back at the Hall and used Brady’s office as command center.

As the mission clarified and became real, my emotions bounced between excitement and something resembling stark fear.

The task force was acting on my secondhand intel. If Berney was wrong, I’d hold myself responsible for sending this crew on a road trip to nowhere, and God forbid resulting injuries or death.

If Berney was right, we were about to confront a crafty killer without probable cause to arrest him. If Evan Burke, aka Jake Winslow, was that killer, he was remarkable for his cold-blooded brutality. He’d murdered his wife, daughter, his son’s wife, child, and lover as well as a few victims who matched his preferred victim profile. Lucas had thought there were more bodies than he knew.

If all of that was true, tonight might be our best chance of capturing a mass murderer of the psychopathic kind.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.