Lion & Lamb

by James Patterson, Duane Swierczynski

Genres: Private Investigators; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

Veena Lion and Cooper Lamb are rival PIs in Philadelphia in this “fun ride…the romance between Cooper and Veena is artfully handled...endearing characters including Cooper’s two preternaturally clever kids and his Rhodesian ridgeback puppy.” –Publishers Weekly

​“Great storytelling…a spectacular murder case.” –Kirkus, starred review

The city is in a state of shock over the fate of two hometown heroes: Eagles starting quarterback Archie Hughes, and his even more famous wife, Grammy-winning singer Francine Hughes.
 
One spouse is murdered. The other is suspect #1.
 
Even before the case hits the courtroom, it’s the hottest ticket in town. 
 
For the defense: Cooper Lamb, private investigator to the stars.
 
For the prosecution: Veena Lion, a sleuth so bright she’s got to wear shades.
 
Between them, they know every secret in Philadelphia. Together, they prove how two wrongs can make a right. They are Lion & Lamb.

Please note: Based on listener feedback, we have updated the audio of this edition. For the most up to date files, please re-download.

Release date: August 14, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 400

Sample

One

12:20 a.m.

THE NIGHT Philadelphia lost its mind, police officer Deborah Parks was patrolling the Ninth with her rookie, Rob Sheplavy.

He was a nice enough kid, maybe a little overeager. They’d been together since just after New Year’s Day, when the red-and-gold holiday decorations were quickly replaced by Eagles-green banners to celebrate the team clawing its way to the NFC playoffs.

Now it was just after midnight on a freezing Sunday in late January, when Philly was at its darkest and coldest. The Birds were facing off against the Giants, and aside from a few rowdy drunks with their faces painted green, the residents of the city had apparently decided to take a collective breather before tonight’s kickoff.

As they went around the Museum of Art toward Eakins Oval, Sheplavy’s face lit up. “Check out that sweet Maserati.”

Parks followed his sight line to the sports car, which had been detailed with a laser-blue holographic wrap. The thing literally glowed in the street, where it appeared to have paused at a stoplight at the far end of the traffic circle. Only problem: The traffic circle had no light. But still, the Maserati had come to a dead stop, nose slightly out of its lane.

“What is up with this guy?” Parks said. “Look, we’re going to pull up a little closer and I’ll check it out. You stay here.”

“Wait—can’t I come with you?”

“I need you to hang back. And don’t touch the radio!”

Parks hated being rough with the new kid. But he had a tendency to go rogue, and she knew something was off about this even before she climbed out of the car.

As Parks moved closer, she could see someone slumped behind the wheel of the glowing vehicle. Was the driver passed out drunk?

No. The body language was all wrong—his head was tilted at an unnatural angle, his shoulders were completely still, and there was no sign of breathing.

Parks glanced back to make sure the rookie was where he should be. “Stay in the car, Sheplavy!”

If the rookie heard, he didn’t respond.

Steeling herself, Parks moved to the driver’s side, hand near her service weapon just in case this guy turned out to be (a) alive and (b) drunk and pissed. But she knew that would be the best-case scenario.

Parks called out to him, trying to wake him up. The driver didn’t stir. She reached in and touched the side of his neck with two fingers. The man’s skin was ice cold, and there was no pulse.

Parks had forgotten to put on gloves, and when she lifted her fingers away from the driver’s neck, she was surprised to find them tacky. She looked down at her hands and realized that the city’s new LED streetlights had made the body look as if it were covered in shadows.

But it was blood. So much blood…

Two

Audio transcript of police officer Deborah Parks’s body-cam footage

 

OFFICER DEBORAH PARKS: What are you doing with that radio in your hand?

OFFICER ROB SHEPLAVY: I called in the plate number. Figured I’d save us some time.

PARKS: Damn it, Shep, what’d I tell you about shutting up and staying off the radio?

SHEPLAVY: Why are you freaking out? We’re supposed to call this in, right?

PARKS: I told you to wait, and that’s all you needed to know. Now get out of the car and get the crime scene tape out of the trunk.

SHEPLAVY: What happened over there? Is that guy all right?

PARKS: No, he’s pretty much the opposite of all right. Which is why I need you to go in the trunk and dig out some flares and crime scene tape.

SHEPLAVY: (Grumbles) Jesus…

PARKS: You got a problem, rookie?

SHEPLAVY: Whatever’s in that car, I can handle it. I’m not a toddler.

PARKS: Look, I’m sorry for snapping. But you just put out the license plate of a potential murder victim’s car over the radio. You know who listens to the police band? TV reporters. Not to mention people bored or twisted enough to come check out a crime scene.

SHEPLAVY: I’m sorry, I didn’t—

PARKS: Everybody’s excited about the first dead body until they actually see it.

SHEPLAVY: Oh, Christ. Look, I said I’m sorry…

PARKS: It’s fine. Just remember rule number one: Do not touch anything. You got me?

SHEPLAVY: I know. I promise, Parks, I’m good.

(The officers approach the Maserati. The vic is partially obscured by the wheel and the door of the Maserati. Sheplavy crouches down for a better look.)

SHEPLAVY: You’ve gotta be kidding me.

PARKS: What is it?

SHEPLAVY: It couldn’t be…I mean, tonight of all nights?

PARKS: Sheplavy, what? Hey, you okay? Take a deep breath. We need to secure the scene. I’m thinking this is a carjacking gone wrong, that’s all.

SHEPLAVY: I can’t believe…

PARKS: Look, we’re going to see this kind of thing from time to time. Are you…Sheplavy, are you crying?

SHEPLAVY: I can’t believe it’s actually him.

PARKS: Can’t believe it’s who?

SHEPLAVY: Look at his face!

Three

AS THE rookie was sobbing, a tall man in a dirty gray hoodie cut across Eakins Oval.

When he spied the two cops, he stopped in his tracks. He pulled his phone from his pocket and snapped a photo. Then he inched closer, a stunned expression on his face.

“Hey, back off!” Parks shouted. “Crime scene!”

Too late. The hoodie guy snapped another photo and ran away, thumbing something into his phone as he went.

“Hey! Stop!”

A photo of the vic was going to be online in a matter of seconds. Shit! But what was she supposed to do, chase after him and—what? Confiscate his phone? While leaving a rookie alone at his first murder scene?

It turned out that Parks had been right to worry; when the two images of the blood-covered man in the Maserati hit social media, it was over. The news traveled worldwide at breakneck speed. People enlarged the grainy photos until the victim’s face was pixelated but identifiable. The reaction everywhere: utter astonishment.

Some claimed the photos were photoshopped or deep-faked. But most who saw the images believed they were real. The powder-blue Maserati alone was confirmation of the victim’s identity.

Online there was collective grief and an instantaneous outpouring of tributes. There were also macabre jokes, as always. And even though it was well after midnight, locals began to gather at the scene, arriving from Center City and Spring Garden and Fairmount and West Philly. As the crowds got bigger, more images from the crime scene spread online. Some people took awkward selfies in an attempt to place themselves in this historic moment. Some simply stared in shock. Some wept inconsolably, held by their friends.

Fortunately Parks and Sheplavy had been joined by half a dozen other officers from the Ninth, and they’d established a wide perimeter around the car, so between that and the wall of bodies, the victim’s face was largely blocked from view.

Unless you were in a helicopter.

Parks had been right about local TV news always keeping an ear on police radio. An overnight staffer chained to the assignment desk at the local NBC affiliate heard the word Maserati and had a cop friend run the license plate on a whim—maybe some local CEO or sports figure had been involved in an embarrassing traffic accident.

But when the Maserati’s owner’s name popped up, the staffer knocked over his Diet Coke in his scramble to get to the assignment editor.

That station’s news chopper was kept at Penn’s Landing, which was thirty minutes from any location in the city. The art museum was so close, however, that the chopper was circling overhead within five minutes. A minute after it arrived, the station was interrupting the local broadcast to go live with footage from the air.

Until they had official word from the Philly police brass—that meant a captain or higher—the station couldn’t confirm exactly who was in the powder-blue Maserati.

But the word was already out, and distraught fans on the street knew the truth.

Philadelphia would never be the same.

Four

1:02 a.m.

HOMICIDE DETECTIVE Mickey Bernstein, forty-three, was the son of a Philly PD homicide legend, Arnold “Arnie” Bernstein.

Dad was famous for working the city’s most violent cases and resolving them with lightning speed, usually thanks to his hunches and gut feelings. He nailed gangsters (the guys who blew up Leo “Chicken Man” Caranchi) and serial killers (coed slayer Herman “the Guru” Bludhorn). Every administration since the early 1960s loved Arnie—he got results. Nobody questioned him. Ever.

Arnie’s only son operated in much the same way—except Mickey had a degree from UPenn under his belt and extensive forensic training to back up his hunches, so he got even more respect than his famous father.

What was not to love? He was a street-smart cop with an Ivy League degree who knew how to talk to TV and print journalists. Philadelphia magazine had run a fawning profile on him a few years back, and the cover still hung in his parents’ retirement home in Margate, Florida.

If you were doing a true-crime doc about something that happened in Philly and you didn’t check in with Mickey Bernstein, you were just not doing your job.

So when Mickey climbed out of his glossy black Audi A3, murmurs rippled through the crowd, and TV reporters started fighting their way to him. Mickey pushed past them and made a beeline for the crime scene.

The detective was easily identifiable—six foot three with the kind of handsome, chiseled face that you see on coins. The looks, people assumed, came from his mother, a statuesque Atlantic City showgirl back in the day. (Arnie was many things, but attractive wasn’t one of them.) In a city starved for celebrities, Mickey Bernstein would probably have been a star even if he weren’t police royalty.

Parks saw the detective approaching and hurried over to meet him. The sooner she could put this scene in Bernstein’s hands, the better.

“Well, this isn’t how I imagined spending my Sunday morning,” Bernstein said with a sly smile. “Are you the one who caught this?”

“Yeah, me and Sheplavy. He’s my partner.”

Bernstein assessed him in about two seconds. “Rookie?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You made the ID?”

“My partner recognized him right away.”

Bernstein raised an eyebrow. “And you didn’t?”

“Not really a sports fan.”

“Heresy, Officer Parks!” Bernstein exclaimed with fake outrage, clutching his chest. “How can you call yourself a Philadelphian?”

Ordinarily this kind of comment out of a detective’s mouth would have rubbed Parks the wrong way. And throughout the brief conversation, most of his attention was on the scene. But something about Bernstein’s delivery—that boyish smile and deadpan sarcasm—made it okay.

The detective crouched down by the corpse as if he were about to have a little chat with him. So what happened here, buddy? Looks like somebody punched your ticket real good. “Something’s missing, Parks.”

“What’s that, Detective?”

“Anyone else come near this crime scene after you arrived?” Only now did Mickey Bernstein give Parks his full attention. He studied her face for tells. His eyes were ice blue and didn’t miss a thing.

Parks felt guilty even though she’d done everything by the book. Damn, this guy was good. “No, Detective,” she assured him. “We kept everyone away.”

“How about the rookie?”

“No, he’s fine.”

Bernstein went back to examining the scene, a sour look on his face.

“What’s missing, Detective?” said Parks. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“A certain piece of jewelry.”

“All due respect, how could you possibly know that?”

“Do me a favor, Parks. Can you push those crowds back a bit more? I want to take a look in relative peace and quiet.”

“Of course.”

“And, oh—the missing piece of jewelry? It’s a Super Bowl ring.”

Five

FOR DECADES, the City of Philadelphia had been promising its hardworking police officers two things: sparkly new headquarters and a state-of-the-art computer system.

Neither had appeared yet. Mickey Bernstein was sitting in the same building, the concrete Roundhouse on Race Street, that his father had worked in years ago. Dad had used an electric typewriter to hunt-and-peck his murder reports, but Mickey didn’t have it much better. He was forced to use a nearly comatose PC with an operating system twenty years out of date.

Eh, screw the things you can’t change, Mickey thought. That was one of many twisted pieces of wisdom from Dad. Mickey cracked his knuckles and got to work.

Philadelphia Police Department / Homicide Division

Case No. 22-9-3275

Investigating Detective: Michael Bernstein

2445 Captain called with a report of a Black male found dead inside sports car in front of art museum.

2450 Notified my partner, Detective T. Mason, #4977, of the murder. She was at least thirty minutes out so I headed to the scene alone. I was already in Center City, just a few minutes away.

0100 Arrived at scene. Briefed by Officer Parks, #6332, who was first at scene. Partner: Officer Sheplavy, #8841. Parks reported a man in a gray hoodie in area at the time of her arrival. Witness took photos with a phone and fled scene. Parks did not pursue. See statement, attached.

0130 Coroner investigator V. Waters arrived at scene. Rolled prints of victim identified as Archie Hughes, DOB 12/27/89. Crime lab tech Wolfinger completed photographs. Victim suffered GSW. No shell casings found at scene.

0200 Requested all surveillance video in immediate vicinity.

0241 Coroner took possession of body. Cleared scene.

0437 Made death notification to Hughes’s wife, Francine Hughes, 10XXX Country Club Drive, Radnor, PA.

Which brought Bernstein up to the present, 5:00 in the morning. This was going to be a crazy day, with zero chance of sleep in the foreseeable future. He hit the PRINT key and prayed it worked; Bernstein didn’t want to have to wait for some guy in IT to show up so he could begin the murder book that would define his career.

Small miracle—the pages printed without a hitch.

Bernstein saved the file and got up to find a gallon of coffee. Then he stopped. Sat back down. Cracked his knuckles again.

Better to pave the road now and save himself some grief later.

Seven

11:50 a.m.

WINTER LANDSCAPING on Philadelphia’s Main Line was mostly about preventive care. Which was why Mauricio Lopez, fifty-three, had winterized the sprinkler system way back in October and wrapped the young trees to protect them from frost. He’d also fertilized in advance of the first hard freeze. And he made sure to replenish the mulch as needed.

Mauricio insisted on using the leaves he raked up in the fall as mulch in the dead of winter, despite his employer’s wife telling him not to bother, that they could afford to buy a fresh supply. Mauricio told her it was not about the money; it was about the health of the roots beneath the freezing soil. The mulch acted as an insulating blanket. Nature supplied it for free. Why not use it?

Much of that work had been done, so Mauricio had little to do aside from occasionally pruning dead branches and brushing road salt away from the front-facing bushes. Otherwise, daily maintenance of the vast grounds was simply a matter of looking around for anything out of place.

And Mauricio saw something very out of place late Sunday morning.

Any foreign object on the ground almost always turned out to be an errant golf ball from the nearby country club. Sometimes the children in the neighborhood left a baseball or toy. Once Mauricio even found a hobbyist’s drone that had crash-landed near a birdbath. And occasionally, there were dead animals—birds, mostly. When Mauricio found them, he quickly disposed of the corpses. If the kids were around, they’d want to hold a funeral. Which was sweet, but it ate up a lot of his workday.

This morning, he noticed a foreign object that was mostly buried in a flower bed. The only reason Mauricio saw it was that the low winter sun glimmered off its surface.

A car, Mauricio thought. The older child had had an obsession with Matchbox sports cars last summer; this had to be one of them.

Mauricio knelt down, hearing his knee joints pop, and brushed away some of the frost and mulch covering the toy. But it wasn’t a little sports car buried in the flower bed.

Mauricio Lopez lived his life largely unplugged. He had a landline so Mrs. Hughes could reach him as needed, but he avoided “smart” devices. He did not own a computer, TV, or radio. He enjoyed reading books about ancient history. He liked to garden.

So when Mauricio arrived for work that morning, he had not heard the news about his employer. For all Mauricio knew, Mr. Hughes was preparing for this evening’s game. In fact, despite his closeness to the family, Mauricio Lopez might very well have been the only person in the tristate area who didn’t know Archie Hughes had been shot and killed in front of the art museum the night before.

But still, the sight of a gun caused him to tremble violently.

Chapter 1

7:32 a.m.

AFTER EXECUTING the most perfect display of parallel parking ever seen in the city of Philadelphia, Cooper Lamb realized not a single soul had witnessed it.

Not his ex. Not his children. Not a random passerby. Not even a meter maid, who normally would be on him like a heat-seeking missile. If no one saw this private eye’s incredible display of automotive prowess, did it actually happen? It was another bummer in a long string of them.

. . .