The 6th Target by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro Page A

construction workers, EMS, and a couple of Park Service cops.
    I asked them to rope off the area.
    I turned my eyes back to the dark lump down on the rocks below the seawall, a white hand and foot trailing in the foam-flecked water that streamed toward the ocean.
    “She wasn’t dumped here,” Conklin said. “Too much chance of being seen.”
    I squinted up at the silhouette of the bridge security officer patrolling the structure with his AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.
    “Yeah. Depending on the time and the tides, she could have been dropped off one of the piers. The perps must’ve thought she’d float out to sea.”
    “Here comes Dr. G.,” Conklin said.
    The ME was chipper this morning, his damp white hair still showing comb marks, his waders pulled up to midchest, his nose pink under the bridge of his glasses.
    He and one of his assistants took the lead, and we joined them, walking awkwardly across the jagged rocks that sloped at a forty-five-degree angle, fifteen feet down to the lip of the bay.
    “Hang on, there. Be careful,” Dr. Germaniuk said as we approached the body. “Don’t want anyone to fall and touch something.”
    We stood our ground as Dr. G. scrambled down the boulders, approached the body, put his scene kit down. Using his flashlight, he began his preliminary in situ assessment.
    I could see the body pretty well in his beam. The victim’s face was darkened and swollen.
    “Got some skin slippage here,” Dr. G. called up to me. “She’s been in the water a couple of days. Long enough to have become a floater.”
    “Does she have a gunshot wound to the head?”
    “Can’t tell. Looks like she’s been banged up on the rocks. I’ll give her a head-to-toe X-ray when we get her back to home base.”
    Dr. G. photographed the body twice from each angle, his flash popping every second or two.
    I took note of the girl’s clothing — the dark coat, the turtle-neck sweater, her short hair, similar to the distinctive bowl cut I’d seen in her driver’s license picture when I’d gone through her wallet two days before.
    “We both know that’s Paola Ricci,” Conklin said, staring down at the body.
    I nodded. Except that yesterday we’d blown it, broken the Tylers’ hearts by jumping to conclusions.
    “Right,” I said. “But I’ll believe it when we get a pos-itive ID.”
     
Chapter 48
     
    CLAIRE WAS SITTING UP IN BED when I walked through the door of her hospital room. She stretched out her arms, and I hugged her until she said, “Take it easy, sugar. I’ve got a hole in my chest, remember?”
    I pulled back, kissed her on both cheeks, and sat down beside her.
    “What’s the latest from your doctor?”
    “He said I’m a big, strong girl . . .” And then Claire started coughing. She held up the hand that wasn’t covering her mouth, managing to finally say, “It hurts only when I cough.”
    “You’re a big, strong girl and . . . what?” I pressed her.
    “And I’m going to be fine. Getting out of this joint Wednesday. Then some time at home in bed. After that I should be good to go.”
    “Thank God.”
    “I’ve been thanking God since that asshole shot me, whenever that was. You lose track of time when you don’t have an office job.”
    “It happened two weeks ago, Butterfly. Two weeks and two days.”
    Claire pushed a box of chocolates toward me, and I took the first one my hand fell on.
    “You been sleeping in the trunk of your car?” she asked me. “Or did you trade Joe in for an eighteen-year-old boyfriend?”
    I poured water for both of us, put a straw in Claire’s glass, handed it to her, said, “I didn’t trade him in. I just kinda let him go.”
    Claire’s eyebrows shot up. “No, you didn’t.”
    I explained what happened, aching as I talked. Claire watched me warily but kindly. She asked a few questions but mostly let me spill.
    I sipped some water. Then I cleared my throat and told Claire about my new rank with the SFPD.
    Shock registered in her eyes. Again.