The 6th Target by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro Read Free Book Online

“Facedown, with your fingers entwined on top of your head where I can see them.”
    He swayed on his feet. I shouted, “
Get down — do it now
!” and he dropped to the sidewalk and placed his hands on his head.
    With my gun pressed to the back of his skull, I ran my hands over the suspect’s body, checking for weapons, images from Rooney’s video flickering through my mind the whole time.
    I pulled a gun from his jacket pocket, stuck it into the back of my waistband, and searched for more weapons. There were none.
    I holstered my Glock and yanked the cuffs from my belt.
    “What’s your name?” I asked, dragging back each stick-thin arm until the cuffs snapped around his wrists. Then I picked the envelope up from the sidewalk and stuffed it into my front pocket.
    “Fred Brinkley,” he said, his voice filling with agitation. “You know me. You said to come in, remember? ‘We
will
find whoever did this terrible thing.’ I wrote it all down.”
    The pictures from the Rooney video looped in my head. I saw this man shoot five people.
I saw him shoot Claire
.
    I took his wallet from his hip pocket with a shaking hand, flipped it open, saw his driver’s license by the dim light of the streetlamp across the road.
    It
was
Alfred Brinkley.
    I had him.
    I read Brinkley his rights and he waived them, saying again, “I did it. I’m the ferry shooter.”
    “How did you find me?” I asked.
    “Your address is on the Internet. At the library,” Brinkley told me. “Lock me up, okay? I think I could do it again.”
    Jacobi’s car pulled up just then, brakes squealing. He bolted out of the driver’s seat with his gun in hand.
    “You couldn’t wait for me, Boxer?”
    “Mr. Brinkley is cooperating, Jacobi. Everything is under control.”
    But seeing Jacobi, knowing that the danger was over, sent waves of relief through me, making me want to laugh and cry and shout
woo-hoooo
all at the same time.
    “Nice work,” I heard Jacobi say. I felt his hand on my shoulder. I gulped air, trying to calm myself as Jacobi and I got Brinkley to his feet.
    As we folded him into the backseat of Jacobi’s car, Brinkley turned toward me.
    “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said, his crazy eyes still darting, his face crumpling as he broke into tears. “I knew you would help me.”
     
Chapter 21
     
    JACOBI FOLLOWED ME into my office, our nerves strung so tight we could have played them like guitars. As we waited for Brinkley to be processed, we hunched over my desk, drinking coffee, talking over what we needed to do next.
    Brinkley had confessed to being the ferry shooter, and he’d refused counsel. But the written statement he’d given me was a rambling screed of nonsense about white light, and rat people, and a gun named “Bucky.”
    We had to get Brinkley’s confession on the record, show that while Alfred Brinkley might be mentally disturbed, he was rational
now
.
    After I called Tracchio, I phoned Cindy, who was not only my good friend but top dog on the
Chronicle
’s crime desk, to give her a heads-up on Brinkley’s capture. Then I paced around the squad room, watching the hands of the clock crawl around the dial as we waited for Tracchio to arrive.
    By 9:15 Alfred Brinkley had been printed and photographed, his clothes swapped out for a prison jumpsuit so that his garments could be tested for blood spatter and gunshot residue.
    I asked Brinkley to let a medical tech take his blood, and I told him why: “I want to make sure you’re not under the influence of alcohol or drugs when we take your confession.”
    “I’m clean,” Brinkley told me, rolling up his sleeve.
    Now Brinkley waited for us in Interview Room Number Two, the box with the overhead video camera that worked most of the time.
    Jacobi and I joined Brinkley in the gray-tiled room, pulling out the chairs around the scratched metal table, taking our seats across from the killer.
    My skin still crawled when I looked at his pale and scruffy face.
    Remembered what