By: James Patterson, Maxine Paetro

Paperback

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The instant #1 "New York Times" bestseller featuring The Women's Murder Club--now in special oversized paperback edition! "Patterson's characteristic brutal murders and elusive killings . . . keep the stakes high."--"Booklist"

After losing one of its own, Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club make a courageous return for their fourth and most chilling case ever--one that could easily be their last. A young girl is killed in crossfire after a routine arrest goes terribly wrong, and Lt. Lindsay Boxer has to defend herself against a charge of police brutality. In a landmark trial that transfixes the nation, Lindsay fights to save her career and her sanity.

While awaiting trial, Lindsay escapes to the beautiful town of Half Moon Bay, but the peaceful community there is reeling from a string of unspeakable murders. Working with her friends in the Women's Murder Club, Lindsay finds a link between these killings and a case she worked on years before-an unsolved murder that has haunted her ever since. As summer comes into full swing, Lindsay battles for her life on two fronts: before a judge and jury as her trial comes to a climax, and facing unknown adversaries who will do anything to keep her from the truth about the killings--including killing again. It all comes to a head before the big annual 4th of July celebration on the waterfront at Half Moon Bay. Patterson fine-tunes the tension like never before in this heart-racing new novel in the bestselling detective series to debut in years.

About The Author

JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past decade - the Alex Cross, Women's Murder Club and Detective Michael Bennett novels - and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers. He lives in Florida with his wife and son. James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books specifically for young readers. James has formed a partnership with the National Literacy Trust, an independent, UK-based charity that changes lives through literacy.

In The Press

Home in Half Moon Bay while facing a charge of police brutality, Lt. Lindsay Boxer joins up with her Women's Murder Club friends to investigate a spate of killings. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
-- Library Journal

Mega-bestseller Patterson teams up with journalist/novelist Paetro for a rousing fourth installment of the Women's Murder Club series. This time, bright, tough SFPD Lt. Lindsay Boxer is battling police brutality charges while chasing down a clan of murderers. When a botched police arrest of two gun-toting minors expands from a shaky preliminary hearing to what promises to be a nerve-rattling jury trial of Lindsay, she flees the pre-trial media frenzy for the serene haven of sister Cat's house in Half Moon Bay. But instead of finding relaxation and romance with her Homeland Security beau, Lindsay becomes embroiled in the ruthless crimes of a troika of killers who've been slashing and flogging victims all over town. With surprisingly little aid from the Murder Club, Lindsay performs her detective handiwork (and steps on the toes of Half Moon's police chief). As more bodies surface, sketchy suspects like a smitten grease monkey and a slimy porn star emerge, then the murderous threesome set their sights on Lindsay. Back in San Francisco, Lindsay is acquitted; she then rushes back to Half Moon Bay to apprehend the elusive villains and put to rest her unresolved first homicide case as well. Heroic super-sleuthing, a steadily gripping plot line and 146 snappy chapters add up to suspense fiction euphoria for Patterson's legion of fans. (One-day laydown May 2) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
-- Publishers Weekly

Part One: Nobody Cares

Chapter 1

IT WAS JUST BEFORE 4:00 a.m. on a weekday. My mind was racing even before Jacobi nosed our car up in front of the Lorenzo, a grungy rent-by-the-hour 'tourist hotel' on a block in San Francisco's Tenderloin District that's so forbidding even the sun won't cross the street.

Three black-and-whites were at the curb, and Conklin, the first officer at the scene, was taping off the area. So was another officer, Les Arou.

'What have we got?' I asked Conklin and Arou.

'White male, Lieutenant. Late teens, bug-eyed and done to a turn,' Conklin told me. 'Room twenty-one. No signs of forced entry. Vic's in the bathtub, just like the last one.'

The stink of piss and vomit washed over us as Jacobi and I entered the hotel. No bellhops in this place. No elevators or room service, either. Night people faded back into the shadows, except for one gray-skinned young prostitute who pulled Jacobi aside.

'Give me twenty dollars,' I heard her say. 'I got a license plate.'

Jacobi peeled off a ten in exchange for a slip of paper, then turned to the desk clerk and asked him about the victim: Did he have a roommate, a credit card, a habit?

I stepped around a junkie in the stairwell and climbed to the second floor. The door to room 21 was open, and a rookie was standing guard at the doorway.

'Evening, Lieutenant Boxer.'

'It's morning, Keresty.'

'Yes, ma'am,' he said, logging me in, turning his clipboard to collect my signature.

It was darker inside the twelve-by-twelve-foot room than it was in the hallway. The fuse had blown, and thin curtains hung like wraiths in front of the streetlit windows. I was working the puzzle, trying to figure out what was evidence, what was not, trying not to step on anything. There was too damned much of everything and too little light.

I flicked my flashlight beam over the crack vials on the floor, the mattress stained with old blood, the rank piles of garbage and clothing everywhere. There was a kitchenette of sorts in the corner, the hot plate still warm, drug paraphernalia in the sink.

The air in the bathroom was thick, almost soupy. I swept my light along the extension cord that snaked from the socket by the sink, past the clogged toilet bowl to the bathtub.

My guts clenched as I caught the dead boy in my beam. He was naked, a skinny blond with a hairless chest, half sitting up in the tub, eyes bulging, foam at his lips and nostrils. The electric cord ended at an old-fashioned two-slice toaster that glinted up through the bathwater.

'Shit,' I said as Jacobi entered the bathroom. 'Here we go again.'

'He's toast, all right,' said Jacobi.

As commanding officer of the Homicide detail, I wasn't supposed to do hands-on detective work anymore. But at times like this, I just couldn't stay away.

Another kid had been electrocuted, but why? Was he a random victim of violence or was it personal? In my mind's eye, I saw the boy flailing in pain as the juice shot through him and shut his heart down.

The standing water on the cracked tile floor was creeping up the legs of my trousers. I lifted a foot and toed the bathroom door closed, knowing full well what I was going to see. The door whined with the nasal squeal of hinges that had probably never been oiled.

Two words were spray-painted on the door. For the second time in a couple of weeks, I wondered what the hell they meant.

'NOBODY CARES.'



Chapter 2

IT LOOKED LIKE A particularly grisly suicide, except that the spray paint can was nowhere around. I heard Charlie Clapper and his CSU team arrive and begin to unpack forensic equipment in the outer room. I stood aside as the photographer took his shots of the victim, then I yanked the extension cord out of the wall.

Charlie changed the fuse. 'Thank you, Jesus,' he said as light flooded the god-awful place.

I was rifling through the victim's clothes, finding not a scrap of ID, when Claire Washburn, my closest friend and San Francisco's chief medical examiner, walked through the door.

'It's pretty nasty,' I told Claire as we went into the bathroom. Claire is a center of warmth in my life, more of a sister to me than my own. 'I've been having an impulse.'

'To do what?' Claire asked me mildly.

I swallowed hard, forcing down the gorge that kept rising in my throat. I'd gotten used to a lot of things, but I would never get used to the murder of children.

'I just want to reach in and pull out the stopper.'

The victim looked even more stricken in the bright light. Claire crouched beside the tub, squeezing her size-sixteen body into a size-six space.

'Pulmonary edema,' she said of the pink foam in the dead boy's nasal and oral orifices. She traced the faint bruising on the lips, around the eyes. 'He was tuned up a bit before they threw the switch on him.'

I pointed to the vertical gash on his cheekbone. 'What do you make of that?'

'My guess? It's going to match the push-down lever on the toaster. Looks like they clocked this child with that Sunbeam before they chucked it into the tub.'

The boy's hand was resting on the bathtub's rim. Claire lifted it tenderly, turned it over. 'No rigor. Body's still warm and lividity is blanching. He's been dead less than twelve hours, probably less than six. No visible track marks.' She ran her hands through the boy's matted hair, lifted his bruised top lip with her gloved fingers. 'He hadn't seen a dentist in a while. Could be a runaway.'

'Yeah,' I said. Then I must've gotten quiet for a minute or so.

'Whatcha thinking, honey?'

'That I've got another John Doe on my hands.'

I was remembering another teenage John Doe, a homeless kid who'd been murdered in a place like this when I was just getting started in homicide. It was one of my worst cases ever, and ten years later the death still gnawed at me.

'I'll know more when I get this young man on my table,' Claire was saying when Jacobi stuck his head through the doorway again.

'The informant says that partial plate number was taken off a Mercedes,' he said. 'A black one.'

A black Mercedes had been seen at the other electrocution murder. I grinned as I felt a surge of hope. Yes, I was making it personal. I was going to find the bastard who had killed these kids and I was going to put him away before he could do it again.

ISBN: 9780446613361
ISBN-10: 0446613363
Series: Women's Murder Club
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 435
Published: 1st June 2006
Dimensions (cm): 19.152 x 10.465  x 2.946
Weight (kg): 0.272