3rd Degree by James Patterson, Andrew Gross Read Free Book Online Page A

in the Explorer, bounding down Vermont on the way to Seventh, top hat flashing through the quiet night.
    Three black-and-whites along with a morgue van were crowded around the hotel's bright new entrance. The Clift was one of the city's great old hotels and had just undergone a fancy renovation. I badged my way past the cops at the front, gawking at the lavish ostrich-hide couch and bulls' horns on the wall, a few stunned hotel employees standing around, wondering what to do. I took the elevator up to the top floor, where Chin was waiting.
    “The vic's name is George Bengosian. Health-care bigwig,” Paul Chin explained as he led me into the penthouse suite. “Prepare yourself. I'm not kidding.”
    I looked at the body, propped upright against the leg of a conference table in the lavishly appointed room.
    The color of Bengosian's skin had turned a hypoxic green-yellow, the consistency of jelly. His eyes were wrenched open like mangled gear sockets. Mucus, or some sort of viscous orange fluid, ran out of his nose and had caked grotesquely on his chin.
    “What the hell did he do,” I muttered to the med tech leaning over him, “get into a life-sucking contest with an alien?”
    The tech looked totally mystified. “I don't have the slight-est idea.”
    “You're sure this is a homicide?” I turned to Chin.
    “Front desk got a call, two forty-five A.M.,” he said with a shrug, “from outside the hotel. Said there was some garbage that needed to be picked up in the penthouse.”
    “Works for me.” I sniffled.
    “That, and this,” Chin said, producing a balled-up piece of paper that he picked up with latex gloves. “Found it in his mouth.”
    It looked like some kind of crumpled business form.
    A white embossed logo: Hopewell Health Care.
    It was a statement of benefits. Some text filled in. As I started to read, my blood ran cold.
    We have declared war on the agents of greed and corruption in our society. No longer can we sit back and tolerate the powered class, whose only birthright is arrogance, as they enrich themselves on the oppressed, the weak, and the poor. The era of economic apartheid is over. We will find you, no matter how large your house or powerful your lawyers. We are inside your homes, your workplaces. We announce to you, your war is not beyond, but here. It is with us.
    Oh fuck. I looked at Chin. This wasn't a homicide. It was an execution. A declaration of war. And he was right, the Lightower bombing did just get a lot more complicated.
    The note was signed, August Spies.

Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree

Part Two

Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree

Chapter 26
    MY FIRST CALL was to Claire.
    We had about an hour. That was all we had before this grotesque, seemingly random murder became headlines around the world as the second killing in a vicious terror spree. I needed to know how Bengosian had died, and fast.
    The second call was to Tracchio. It was still before five
    A.M. The night duty officer patched me through. “It's Lindsay Boxer,” I said. “You said to make sure you knew the minute something went on.” “Yeah,” I heard him grunt, fumbling around with the phone. “I'm at the Clift Hotel. I think we just found the motive for the Lightower bombing.”
    I could visualize him bolting upright in his pajamas, knocking his glasses onto the floor. “One of those X/L part-ners finally come clean? It was money, wasn't it?”
    “No,” I said, shaking my head, “war.”
    After I hung up with the Chief, I looked around Bengo-sian's hotel room. No blood, no sign of a struggle. A half-filled champagne glass rested on the conference table. Another shattered, at Bengosian's feet. His suit jacket was thrown onto the couch. An open bottle of Roederer.
    “Get a description of who he came up with,” I told Lor-raine Stafford, one of my Homicide inspectors. “They might have security cameras in the lobby if we're lucky. And let's try and track down how Bengosian spent the early part of his