Truth or Die by James Patterson, Howard Roughan Read Free Book Online

the next room, and more importantly, the same door closing. That was my cue. As quietly as I could, I slipped back into the hallway. To hell with the elevator. The stairs were right there, and I didn’t have to wait for them. I was out of there, lickety-split. At least, I should’ve been.
    I couldn’t help myself, though. As I passed the door to room 1701, I stopped and listened. I could hear a guy’s voice. At first, I thought he was talking to someone else in the room, that he hadn’t come alone. Then he made it clear he had. He was talking on a phone or some kind of radio.
    “The kid’s still alive,” he said. “I repeat, the kid is still alive.”

CHAPTER 16
    I DIDN’T need any added incentive for what I planned to do next, but there she was anyway as I walked as casually as possible through the lobby of the Lucinda and out to the street.
    The same wary-eyed woman behind the front desk wearing a turquoise blazer watched me step by step. Still, she didn’t say a word. That would change, of course, once she learned of the dead body in the bathtub seventeen floors up. She’d have plenty to say then, a description of me sure to be included.
    “Did you notice anything or anyone out of the ordinary?” the crime scene detectives would ask her. With the help of Forensics, they would’ve already determined the time of death as during her shift, and quite possibly between the times I came and left.
    Safely down the block, I dialed my own crime scene detective. As they say in both PR and politics,
always get ahead of the story.
    “Wait, slow down,” said Detective Lamont from behind his desk. I could hear him through the phone shuffling papers, probably moving Claire’s file back in front of him.
    I apologized. I was getting
too
far ahead of the story, talking a million words a minute. My heartbeat, still racing, was acting like a metronome for my mouth.
    I stopped, took a deep breath, and began again to detail what had happened since I shook his hand on my way out of the Midtown North precinct house. “Talk to you soon,” Lamont had told me. He’d had no idea just how soon.
    I could tell now that I was trying his patience. The fact that Claire had left my apartment to go see a source did nothing to challenge what he knew—or, at least, thought he knew—to be true: that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time in the back of that taxi.
    And why
wouldn’t
he believe that? I certainly had. The incident was designed that way, caught on video for all to see.
    I told him about the phone call Claire had received, and how I’d figured out the address.
    Lamont interrupted me. “Where are you going with all this?” he asked, wanting me to move the story along.
    “To the Lucinda Hotel,” I answered.
    “Hurry up and get there.”
    I couldn’t blame the guy. It was late and he was tired. But I knew all would be forgiven with one sentence about room 1701.
    “The guy in the bathtub is the guy who killed Claire,” I said.
    I could literally hear him sit bolt upright in his chair.
    “Where are you right now?” he asked. No,
demanded.
    “Eighth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth.”
    “Don’t move, I’ll have it radioed right now. A cruiser will be there shortly,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the hotel.”
    “Hold on, there’s one more thing,” I said.
    I was back to talking a million words a minute as I tried to explain the guy with the magic pliers. The more I listened to myself, the more I realized how crazy it must sound to Lamont. If it did, though, he didn’t let on. Instead, he cut to the chase, the only thing that mattered at the moment.
    “Good guy or bad guy?” he asked.
    “Bad guy,” I said.
    He paused for a moment. “Aren’t they all?”
    Click
.

CHAPTER 17
    FROM THE moment I first got the call from Claire’s sister, Ellen, so much had changed, and then changed again. Still, in some ways, I couldn’t help thinking I was right back where I’d started. With more questions than