James Patterson - Cradle and All

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CRADLE and ALL

JAMES PATTERSON

For Charles and Isabelle Patterson

Special thanks to Maxine Paetro, who helped me to remodel and to restore this scary

old beach cottage of a story.

Prologue

THE WOMEN’S MEDICAL CENTER

Chapter 1

SUNDOWN HAD BLOODIED THE HORIZON over the uneven rooftops of South

Boston. Birds were perched on every roof and seemed to be watching the girl walking

slowly below

Kathleen Beavier made her way down a shadowy side street that was as alien to her as

the faraway surface of the moon. Actually, she was here in Southie because it was so

frozen, so obscure to her. She had on a fatigue jacket, long patterned skirt, and black

combat-style boots — the urban streetwear look. The boots rubbed raw circles into

her heels, but she welcomed the pain. It was a distraction from the unthinkable thing

she had come to do.

This is so spooky, so unreal, so impossible, she thought.

The sixteen-year-old girl paused to catch her breath at the sparsely trafficked

intersection of Dorchester and Broadway. She didn’t look as if she belonged here. She

was too preppy, maybe too pretty. That was her plan, though. She’d never bump into

anyone she knew in South Boston.

With badly shaking hands, she pushed her gold wirerimmed glasses back into her

blond hair. She’d washed it earlier with Aveda shampoo and rinsed it with

conditioner. It seemed so absurd and ridiculous to have worried about how her damn

hair would look.

She squeezed her eyes shut and uttered a long, hopeless cry of confusion and despair.

Kathleen finally forced open her eyes. She blinked into the slashing red rays of the

setting sun. Then she scanned her Rolex Lady Datejust wristwatch for the millionth

time in the past hour.

God, no. It was already past six. She was late for her doctor’s appointment.

She pushed forward into the ruins of Southie. Ahern’s funeral parlor loomed in her

peripheral vision, then slipped away. She hurried past the crumbling St. Augustine’s

parish church, past hole-in-the-wall bars, a boarded-up strip of two-storied row

houses, a street person peeing against a wall covered with graffiti. She thought of an

old rock song, “Aqualung,” by Jethro Tull.

She whipped herself forward, as she often did to protect herself against the New

England cold. Tears ran from her eyes and dribbled down over her chin.

Hurry, hurry. You have to do this terrible thing. You’ve come this far

It was already twenty after the hour when she finally turned the corner onto West

Broadway. She instantly recognized the gray brick building wedged in between a

twenty-four-hour Laundromat and a pawnshop.

This is the place. This. . . hellhole.

The walls were smeared with lipstick-red and black graffiti:

Abortion = Murder Abortion is the Unforgivable Sin. There was a glass door and

beside it a tarnished brass plaque: WOMEN’S MEDICAL CENTER, it read.

Sorrow washed over her and she felt faint. She didn’t want to

go through with it. She wasn’t sure that she could. It was all terribly, horribly unfair.

Kathleen pressed her hand to the doorplate. The door opened into a reassuring

reception room. Pastel-colored plastic chairs ringed the perimeter. Posters of sweet-

faced mothers and chubby babies hung on the walls. Best of all, no one was here at

this late hour.

Kathleen took a clipboard left out on a countertop. A sign instructed her to fill out the

form as best she could.

Ensconced in a baby blue chair, she printed her medical history in block letters. Her

hands were shaking harder now. Her foot, trapped in her trendy combat boot,

wouldn’t stop tapping.

Kathleen probed her memory for something, anything, that would make sense of this.

Nothing did! This can’t be happening to me! I shouldn’t be in the Women’s Medical

Center

She had made out with boys, but damn it, damn it, damn it, she knew the difference

between kissing and. . . fucking.

She’d never gone all the way with anyone. Never even wanted to. She was too old-

fashioned about sex — or maybe just a prude, or maybe just a good girl — but she

hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d never been touched down there by a boy.

Wouldn’t she know it if she had? Of course she would.

So how could she be pregnant?

She couldn’t. It wasn’t physically possible. She was a good kid, the best. Everybody’s

friend at school.

Kathleen Beavier was a virgin. She’d never had sexual intercourse.

But she was pregnant.

Chapter 2

A SUDDEN WAVE OF NAUSEA came over Kathleen and nearly knocked her to the

floor. She felt dizzy and thought she might throw up in the waiting room.

“Get yourself together,” she muttered softly. You’re not the first one to go through

this kind of thing. You won’t be the last, kiddo.

She glanced at the clock over the reception desk with no receptionist. It was nearly

six-thirty. Where was the receptionist? More important, where was the doctor?

Kathleen wanted to run out of the women’s clinic, but she fought off the powerful

instinct. She couldn’t sit here any longer! She couldn’t stand the waiting. Where was

everybody?

“Let’s do this,” she said between clenched teeth. “No time like the present.”

She stood and walked to a pinewood door directly behind the reception desk.

Kathleen took a deep breath, possibly the deepest of her life. She turned the metal

handle, and the door opened.

She heard a soft, mellow voice coming from down the hail. Thank God someone is

here after all.

She followed the sound.

“Hello,” Kathleen called out tentatively. “Hello? Anybody? I’m a patient. I’m

Kathleen Beavier. Hello?”

The door at the far end of the hall was partially open, and Kathleen heard the pleasing

voice inside. She slowly pushed the door open all the way.

“Hello?”

Something was wrong. It didn’t feel right to Kathleen. She felt she should leave, but it

had taken her so much courage to come here in the first place.

The air was thick, almost viscous. There was a smell of alcohol. But something else,

too? Kathleen put her hand to her mouth.

It took her a few seconds to take in the full, horrifying effect of what she saw.

A young, dark-haired woman was hanging from a hook high up on the wall. She wore

a white medical coat. Her name tag read DR. HIGGINS. A cord was slipknotted

crudely around her neck, which seemed stretched to at least twice its normal length.

The neck and face were congested a brutal dark red. There was petechial

hemorrhaging in the eyes, which were frozen in fear. The woman’s brown hair

cascaded over her shoulders.

Trembling, Kathleen reached out and touched the woman’s hand. It was still warm,,

and damp. Dr Higgins. Her doctor.

This woman had just died!

In a panic, Kathleen jerked her hand away. She wanted to

but some force held her there. Something so powerful. So awful.

She saw a stethoscope coiled beside a pad of paper. On the pad was written

Kathleen’s name.

“Oh, nooooooo!” she screamed. There was a gathering in her stomach as fear and

guilt and shame overpowered her in one sickening, wrenching movement.

At that instant, she realized she couldn’t stand being in this world anymore. The

thought was so strange, so overwhelming, it was almost as if it weren’t her own.

A tray of instruments glittered near the pad of paper. Kathleen took up a sharp blade.

It was ice-cold and menacing in her hand.

She heard a voice — but no one was there. The Voice was deep, commanding. You

know what you have to do, Kathleen. We’ve talked about it. Go ahead, now. It’s the

right thing.

In the space between the pink cuff of her Ralph Lauren oxford cloth shirt and the

crease of her left wrist, she sliced. The skin parted.

See how easy it is, Kathleen? It’s nothing, really. Just the natural order of things.

Then blood welled up and fell in large drops onto the floor. Tears flowed from her

eyes and intermixed with the blood.

One more cut. Just to be sure.

The second cut was harder for her to do. The wristband of her watch covered the best

place on her vein, and her left hand was already weak.

She sliced into the vein again.

She sank to her knees, as if in prayer.

Kathleen managed a third slash before everything jumped to black.

She fell unconscious beneath the feet of the hanging doctor, whose mouth now

seemed frozen in a knowing smile.

Book One

THE INVESTIGATORS

Chapter 3

GIVEN EVERYTHING THAT HAS HAPPENED, it isn’t too much of a stretch to

say that this is one of the most incredible stories ever, and the strangest I’ve ever

encountered. The weirdest thing of all is that I am part of it. A big part.

I remember how my involvement began, remember every detail as if it happened just

moments ago.

I was in my small, hopelessly cluttered, but comfortable office in the Back Bay

section of Boston. I was staring off in the general direction of the Hancock and

Prudential towers.

The door opened without so much as a tap, and an elderly

man stepped inside. He was wearing a gray pinstriped suit, a

white-on-white shirt, and a dark blue silk tie. He looked like a

successful Beacon Hill lawyer or a businessman.

I knew that he was neither; he was Cardinal John Rooney of the Archdiocese of

Boston, one of the most important religious leaders in the world, and a friend of mine.

“Hello, Annie,” he said, “nice to see you, even under the circumstances.”

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