Instinct (Previously Published as Murder Games) by James Patterson & Howard Roughan

Author:James Patterson & Howard Roughan [Patterson, James & Roughan, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Police Procedural, Thrillers, Suspense, Crime, Urban, Mystery, Thriller
ISBN: 9780316553476
Google: K8AxDQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01M0CDHMG
Barnesnoble: B01M0CDHMG
Goodreads: 30621294
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Published: 2017-06-26T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 59

WE WERE heading back to Harlem. Fast.

The “we” was everybody. Me, Elizabeth, the mayor, his entire detail, and key staff members, including Livingston. It was a speeding caravan of black Ford Explorers and sedans, lights flashing, as the traffic moving north along Madison Avenue parted like the Red Sea.

“Crazy, right?” said Elizabeth from behind the wheel. She and I were bringing up the rear, the whole spectacle playing out in front of us.

“That’s one word for it,” I said. “Leave it to Livingston to turn dead bodies into a photo op for his boss.”

As crass and calculated as it was, I knew what the guy was thinking. The Dealer had changed things up with this one. Broad daylight, out in the open—and an open invitation to the entire neighborhood, as well as the media, to come have a look. If they all were going to be there, the mayor needed to be there, too.

Boy, were they ever all there.

The intersection of Madison Avenue and 112th Street, in East Harlem, looked like a block party, albeit one that was being covered by every single news outlet in the city. Satellite trucks lined one curb, police cruisers another. A few ambulances were scattered in between. And everywhere you looked, people. Lots and lots of people.

Murder really knows how to make a place come alive.

“C’mon, let’s go,” said Elizabeth. She’d parked and bolted from the car so fast that I wasn’t sure she’d even turned off the engine.

I fell in line behind her as we wove through the crowd, catching up to Deacon and Livingston, who were being greeted by the top cop himself, the police commissioner.

I couldn’t remember his name, but I knew his face from TV, along with that “shoot ’em” thing he did during press conferences. When calling on reporters, the commissioner wouldn’t simply point at them. Instead he made a gun gesture with his thumb and forefinger, then flicked his thumb as if pulling the trigger. It was like he was acting out some revenge fantasy on the media.

Now here he was, live and in person.

“Who are you?” he immediately asked me.

Livingston did the honors. “Hank, this is Dr. Reinhart, the professor who—”

“Yeah, the book. Lucky you,” he said, shaking my hand. “Hank Saxon.”

Shoot-’em-Up Hank quickly briefed the mayor and the rest of us on what was known. There were four dead, all members of the same gang and all shot multiple times while walking along 112th Street.

“Where’s the card?” asked the mayor.

The commissioner glanced knowingly outside our circle. We were set apart from the crowd, thanks to a few barricades, but you could feel the countless eyes upon us—or, more specifically, on the mayor.

“It’s in my pocket,” answered Saxon. The subtext being that he wanted to keep it there and not on display.

“Of course,” said Deacon, nodding. “Fuck if I need to see it anyway. A joker, huh?”

“Yeah, a joker…jammed into the mouth of one of the victims,” said Saxon. “I’ve already had someone check, too. It’s the joker from the same Bicycle deck he’s been using—linen stock with a black core layer.

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