“PATTERSON JOINS THE ELITE COMPANY OF THOMAS HARRIS AND JOHN SANFORD.”
—San Francisco Examiner
“PATTERSON KNOWS HOW TO SELL THRILLS AND SUSPENSE IN CLEAR, UNWAVERING PROSE.”
—People
“THE THOMAS BERRYMAN NUMBER IS SURE-FIRE!”
—New York Times
“WRITTEN SIMPLY, POWERFULLY, WITH SHIFTING POINTS OF VIEW. The book will satisfy mystery and thriller fans, as well as students of the human condition.”
—Washington Post Book World
“BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN!”
—Library Journal
“JAMES PATTERSON IS TO SUSPENSE WHAT DANIELLE STEEL IS TO ROMANCE.”
—New York Daily News
“PATTERSON’S SKILL AT BUILDING SUSPENSE IS ENVIABLE!”
—Kansas City Star
“PATTERSON DEVELOPS CHARACTERS WITH BROAD STROKES AND FINE LINES. Even the villains are multilayered and believable.”
—Nashville Banner
“HURRAY! ONCE YOU READ PAGE ONE YOU WILL NOT STOP UNTIL YOU HAVE FINISHED.”
—Robin Moore, author of The French Connection
“HE CREATES A MULTILAYERED, CONVOLUTED PLOT THAT KEEPS READERS OFF-BALANCE, JOLTING THEM AROUND NARRATIVE HAIRPIN TURNS WHILE TRANSFIXING THEM WITH AN EXTRAORDINARY SUSTAINED TENSION.”
—Buffalo News
“PATTERSON KNOWS HOW TO KEEP THE POT BOILING.”
—Publishers Weekly
“MR. PATTERSON IS A SKILLFUL PLOTTER, and… has constructed an elaborate thriller full of twists and false starts.”
—Baltimore Morning Sun
“A WILD RIDE, FROM THE IVIED HALLS OF SOUTHERN ACADEMIA TO THE CRASHING BIG SUR SURF.”
—Denver Post
“THIS NOVEL IS HARD TO SET ASIDE. PATTERSON’S COMPLEX TALE CHILLS, ENTHRALLS, AND ENTERTAINS THE READER IN A DAZZLING AND UNFORGETTABLE READING EXPERIENCE.”
—Toronto Star
“Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, and Evan Hunter’s 87th Precinct detectives… IT’S TIME TO GET OUT THE PARTY HATS, WELCOME JAMES PATTERSON TO THE CLUB.”
—Grand Rapids Press
“A TENSE, COMPLEX PLOT OF ABDUCTION AND MURDER THAT IS HARD TO PUT DOWN. THE READER IS HOOKED FROM PAGE ONE…This is a crime story so scary it will hold the reader’s attention and leave a lingering horror at the back of the mind for days.”
—Baton Rouge Magazine
“AN ENJOYABLE READ, WRITTEN IN CONCISE, PITHY LANGUAGE THAT MOVES AS GRACEFULLY AS IF WE WERE WATCHING IT ON WIDE SCREEN AT THE LOCAL THEATER.”
—West Coast Review of Books
“EXPECT NONSTOP, MUSCLE-JANGLING THRILLS… DON’T READ IT ALONE, OR ON A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.”
—Woman’s Own Magazine
“DESERVES TO BE THIS SEASON’S #1 BESTSELLER AND SHOULD INSTANTLY MAKE JAMES PATTERSON A HOUSHOLD NAME.”
—Nelson DeMille
“A FIRST-RATE THRILLER—FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS AND KEEP THE LIGHTS ON!”
—Sidney Sheldon
“PATTERSON BRILLIANTLY EXPLORES DARK CREVICES OF THE ABERRANT MIND…[AND] LETS US SOAR AND DIP WITH ROLLER-COASTER THRILLS.”
—Ann Rule
“PATTERSON IS AN EXCELLENT WRITER.”
—Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
“A TALE WITH THE POLISH OF A MASTER…It’s the sort of tale that keeps your hands gripping the book and your heart pounding at any unusual noise in the house.”
—Oakland Press
“PATTERSON HAS CREATED A FAST-MOVING, CHARACTER-DRIVEN ROLLER COASTER OF A THRILLER.”
—Mostly Murder
“AS ENGROSSING AS IT IS GRAPHIC…AN INCREDIBLY SUSPENSEFUL READ WITH A ONE-OF-A-KIND VILLAIN WHO IS AS TERRIFYING AS HE IS INTRIGUING.”
—Clive Cussler
“THIS IS HORROR THAT’LL HAVE READERS CHECKING THE WINDOW AND DOOR LOCKS, PULLING DOWN THE SHADES.”
—Hartford Courant
PROLOGUE
Down on the Farm (1962)
Claude, Texas, 1962
The year he and Ben Toy left Claude, Texas—1962—Thomas Berryman had been in the habit of wearing black cowboy boots with distinctive red stars on the ankles. He’d also been stuffing four twenty-dollar bills in each boot sole. By mid-July the money had begun to shred and smell like feet.
One otherwise unpromising afternoon there’d been a shiny Coupe de Ville out on Ranch Road #5. It was metallic blue. Throwing sun spirals and stars off the bumpers.
He and Ben Toy had watched its approach for six or eight miles of scruffy Panhandle desert. They were doing nothing. “Bored sick and dying fast on a fencerail,” Berryman had said earlier. Toy had only half-smiled.
“You heard about that greaseball Raymond Cone? I suppose you did,” the conversation was going now.
“I always said that was going to happen.” Berryman puffed thoughtfully on a non-filter cigarette. “The way he’s always talking about dry-humping Nadine in his old man’s Chevrolet, it had to.”
“You think he’ll marry her?”
“I know he’ll marry her. It’s been happening for about a hundred years straight around here. Then the old man gets him with Pepsi in Amarillo. Then she has the kid. Then he splits on both of them for Reno, Nevada, or California. I hate that, I really do.”
Toy took out a small, wrinkled roll of money and started counting five- and ten- and one-dollar bills. “He says he’ll put a 30-30 in his mouth. Before he marries Nadine.”
“Yeah, well … He’ll be haulassing soda cases pretty soon. That’ll dilute his ‘Frankie and Johnny’ philosophies.”
Thomas Berryman shaded his sunglasses so he could see the approaching car better. A finely made coil of brown dust followed it like a streamer. Buzzards crossed its path, heading east toward Wichita Falls.
When the Coupe was less than twenty-five yards away, Berryman flipped out his thumb. “Are you coming or not?” he said to Toy.
The big car, meanwhile, had clicked out of cruise-control and was easing to a stop.
The driver turned out to be the Bishop of Albuquerque. Padre Luis Gonsolo. Both young men left Claude, Texas, with him. They kept right on going until they were in New York City.
Thomas Berryman and Ben Toy rode into New York in high style too … in the 1962 metallic blue Coupe de Ville … without the Bishop.
PREFACE
Jones’ Thomas Berryman (1974)
My parents, Walter and Edna Linda Jones, didn’t want me to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or even successful; they just wanted me to be refined… I disappointed them badly, however; I went out and became a newspaperman.
SIGN OVER THE DESK OF OCHS JONES
Steve McQueen is a killeryou have to cheer on and root for. NEWSPAPER MOVIE REVIEW
Zebulon, Kentucky, 1974
In November of this year I came back to my hometown (Zebulon) in Poland County, Kentucky; I came home to write about the deaths of men named Bertram Poole, Lieutenant Martin Weesner, and especially my friend Jimmie Lee Horn of Nashville, Tennessee … but most of all I came home to write about something an editor at the Nashville Citizen-Reporter had named the Thomas Berryman Number.
This book is mostly for my nine-year-old daughter Cat, I think.
It’s a Sam Peckinpah kind of story: all in all there are six murders in it. It’s about a young Texas man who decided to become a professional killer at the age of eighteen. So far as I can make out, he decided by virtue of executing several beautiful pronghorn antelopes and one Mexican priest, a bishop actually.
Random observation: A story in a Houston paper reports that “Not less than five men in the United States are making over two hundred thousand dollars a year as independent (non-mob) assassins.” What the hell is the point of view over in Houston I wondered when I cut out the clipping and folded it for my wallet.
Random observation:Very few people have understood the character of men who do evil… Most people who’ve written about them just make everything too black for me. Either that, or they’re trying to make some sugar and spice “Bonnie & Clyde” movie … Anyway, movie stars withstanding, I don’t believe your bad man can be obtuse, and I don’t believe he’d necessarily be morose … In fact, Thomas Berryman was neither of these.
Random observation: The other day, I showed Cat something Berryman’s girlfriend had given me: it was a Crossman air pistol. To demonstrate how it could put someone to sleep, I callously (stupidly) wounded Mrs. Mullhouse’s calico. It was too much for the old kitty, however, and she died.
Random observation: Even Doc Fiddler’s Paradise Lounge, one of the top redneck gin mills in the state of Tennessee, has a fresh print of Jimmie Horn over the liquor these days. Horn’s strictly moral drama now, and people are partial to moral drama, no matter what.
One last observation: In 1962, Thomas John Berryman graduated from Plains High School with one of the highest grade point averages ever recorded in Potter County, Texas. Some teachers said he had a photographic memory, and he had a measured I.Q. of one hundred sixty-six.
A little more digging revealed that he was known as the “Pleasure King,” and nicknamed “Pleasure.”
The women who’d been his girlfriends would only say that he made them feel inferior. Even the ones who’d liked him best never felt totally comfortable with him.
Most people around Clyde, Texas, thought he was a successful lawyer in the East now. At first I’d thought someone in the Berryman family started the rumor; later on, I’d learned it had been Berryman himself.
Berryman’s father was a retired circuit judge. Three weeks after he learned what his son had done in Tennessee, he died of a cerebrovascular accident.
Thomas Berryman is 6’1”, one hundred ninety-five pounds. He has black hair, hazel eyes. And extremely good concentration for a young man. He’s also charming. In fact, he just about says it all for American charm.
Background: Four months ago, the thirty-seven-year-old mayor of our city, Jimmie Horn, was shot down under the saddest and most bizarre circumstances I can imagine.
Because of that, the Nashville Citizen-Reporters of last July 4th, 5th, and 6th are the three largest-selling editions the paper has ever had.
Maybe it’s because people are naturally curious when public figures are shot. They know casual facts out of their lives, and they regard these men almost as acquaintances. They want to know how, and where, and what time, and why it happened.
I believe it’s usually the same: madman Bert Poole shoots Mayor Jimmie Horn, late in the day for no good reason.
That’s what I wrote, but only in pencil on foolscap. In the Citizen, I wrote a long filler about the state trooper who’d subsequently shot Poole.
It was real shit, and also crass … It was also incorrect.
Three days after the shooting, a story in the Washington Post reported that the man who’d shot Bert Poole hadn’t been a Tennessee state trooper as my story, and our other feature stories, had reported several times.
The man was an expensive professional killer from Philadelphia. His name was Joe Cubbah. Cubbah had been spotted in photographs of the Horn shooting; then he’d been picked up in Philadelphia.
The real Tennessee trooper, Martin Weesner, was finally found in the trunk of his own squad car. The car had been in a trooper barracks parking lot since July 3rd. Cubbah was called “an imaginative gunman” by the Memphis Times-Scimitar.
Needless to say, this matter of a professional killer shooting down an assassin confused the hell out of everybody. It also depressed a good number of people, myself included. And it scared a lot of families into locking their doors at night.
Coincidentally, during the wake of the Washington Post story, the Citizen-Reporter received an hour-long phone call from a resident psychiatrist working at a Long Island, N.Y., hospital. The doctor explained to one of our editors how a patient of his had been talking about the Jimmie Horn shooting nearly a week before it happened. He gave out the patient’s name as Ben Toy, and he said it was fine if we wanted to send someone around to talk with him.
We wanted to send me, and that’s how I fit into the story.
As a consequence of that decision, I’m now sequestered away in a Victorian farmhouse outside of Zebulon, in Poland County. It’s November now as I mentioned.
I’d thought that I would enjoy hunting down the murderer of a friend—delicious revenge, they say—but I was wrong.
From 4 A.M. until around eleven each day I try to collate, then make sense out of the over two thousand pages of notes, scraps, and interview transcripts that recreate the days leading up to the Horn shooting this past July.
I’ve already made an indecent amount of money from advances, magazine sales, and newspaper serials on Thomas Berryman stories. This is the book.
PART I
The First Trip North
West Hampton, July 9
In nineteen sixty-nine I won a George Polk prize for some life-style articles about black Mayor Jimmie Lee Horn of Nashville. The series was called “A Walker’s Guide to Shantytown,” but it ran in the Citizen-Reporter as “Black Lives.”
It wasn’t a bad writing job, but it was more a case of being in the right place at the right time: I’d written life-affirming stories about a black man in Tennessee, just a year after Martin Luther King had died there.
It felt right to people who judged things somewhere. They said the series was “vital.”
So I was lucky in ’69.
I figured things were beginning to even out the day I drove into the William Pound Institute in West Hampton, Long Island. On account of my assignment there I wouldn’t be writing any of the article about Horn’s murder. The good Horn assignments had already gone elsewhere. Higher up.
I parked my rent-a-car in a crowded yard marked ALL HOSPITAL VISITORS ALL. Then, armed with tape recorder, suitcoat over my arm too, I made my way along a broken flagstone path tunneling through bent old oak trees.
I didn’t really notice a lot about the hospital at first. I was busy feeling sorry for myself.
Random Observation: The man looking most obviously lost and disturbed at the William Pound Institute—baggy white suit, torn panama hat, Monkey Ward dress shirt—must have been me.
Here was Ochs Jones, thirty-one-year-old cornpone savant, never before having been north of Washington D.C.
But the Brooks Brothers doctors, the nurses, the fire-haired patients walking around the hospital paid no attention.
Which isn’t easy—even at 9:30 on a drizzly, unfriendly morning.
Generally I’m noticed most places.
My blond hair is close-cropped, just a little seedy on the sides, already falling out on top—so that my head resembles a Franciscan monk’s. I’m slightly cross-eyed without my glasses (and because of the rain I had them off). Moreover, I’m 6’7”, and I stand out quite nicely without the aid of quirky clothes.
No one noticed, though. One doctory-looking woman said, “Hello, Michael.” “Ochs,” I told her. That was about it for introductions.
Less than 1% believing Ben Toy might have a story for me, I dutifully followed all the blue-arrowed signs marked BOWDITCH.
The grounds of the Pound Institute were clean and fresh-smelling and green as a state park. The hospital reminded me of an eastern university campus, someplace with a name like Ithaca, or Swarthmore, or Hobart.
It was nearly ten as I walked past huge red-brick houses along an equally red cobblestone road.
Occasionally a Cadillac or Mercedes crept by at the posted ten m.p.h. speed limit.
The federalist-style houses I passed were the different wards of the hospital.
One was for the elderly bedridden. Another was for the elderly who could still putter around—predominantly lobotomies.
One four-story building housed nothing but children aged over ten years. A little girl sat rocking in the window of one of the downstairs rooms. She reminded me of Anthony Perkins at the end of Psycho.
I jotted down a few observations and felt silly making them. I kept one wandering eye peeled for Ben Toy’s ward: Bowditch: male maximum security.
A curious thing happened to me in front of the ward for young girls.
A round-shouldered girl was sitting on the wet front lawn close to the road where I was walking. She was playing a blond-wood guitar and singing.
There’s something goin’ on, she just about talked the pop song.
But you don’t know what it is,
Do you, Mr. Jones?
I was Ochs Jones, thirty-one, father of two daughters … The only violent act I could recall in my life, was hearing—as a boy—that my great-uncle Ochs Jones had been hanged in Moon, Kentucky, as a horsethief … and no, I didn’t know what was going on.
As a matter of fact, I knew considerably less than I thought I did.
The last of the Federal-style houses was more rambling, less formal and kept-up than any of the others: It bordered on scrub pine woods with very green waist-high underbrush running through it. A high stockade fence had been built up as the ward’s backyard.
BOWDITCH a fancy gold plaque by the front door said.
The man who’d contacted the Citizen-Reporter, Dr. Alan Shulman, met me on the front porch. Right off, Shulman informed me that this was an unusual and delicate situation for him. The hospital, he said, had only divulged information about patients a few times before—and that invariably had to do with court cases. “But an assassination,” he said, “is somewhat extraordinary. We want to help.”
Shulman was very New Yorkerish, with curly, scraggly black hair. He wore the kind of black-frame eyeglasses with little silver arrows in the corners. He was probably in his mid-thirties, with some kind of Brooklyn or Queens accent that was odd to my ear.
Some men slouching inside behind steel-screened windows seemed to be finding us quite a curious combination to observe.
A stead. . .
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