Ellis - The Wrong Man

THE WRONG MAN

ALSO BY DAVID ELLIS

Breach of Trust

The Hidden Man

Eye of the Beholder

In the Company of Liars

Jury of One

Life Sentence

Line of Vision

A Jason Kolarich Novel

THE WRONG MAN

David Ellis

G. P. PUTNAMS SONS

New York

G. P. PUTNAMS SONS

Publishers Since 1838

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright 2012 by David Ellis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed
in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or
encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights.
Purchase only authorized editions.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ellis, David.

The wrong man / David Ellis.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-58494-1

I. Title.

PS3555.L59485W76 2012 2012013513

813.54dc23

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

BOOK DESIGN BY AMANDA DEWEY

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

To Jonathan Lincoln Ellis,
our little man

Something bad is going to happen to Kathy Rubinkowski tonight.

But at the moment she is preoccupied with the tight parallel-park job, navigating the tiny space available just a block from her apartment. She has no business fitting her Accord in the minute gap between the SUVs, but finding a spot within two blocks of her condo is as rare as a sighting of Halleys Comet, so the effortand the inevitable dings from the neighboring vehiclesis worth it.

She looks about her before she kills the engine. Gehringer Street, this far north, is populated by gated walk-up condo buildings and the occasional single-family dwelling, usually awaiting a remake from the next yuppie couple that moves in. At a few minutes before eleven P.M. , the street is empty and sleepy. The lighting is decent. A light fog clings to the streets, courtesy of the rising temperatures today. It is January in the Midwest, but this afternoon it peaked at forty-two degrees.

She exhales and stretches her limbs. She is bone tired. Eight hours of reviewing bills of lading and shipping invoices, followed by four hours of inorganic chemistry, listening to Professor Dylan drone on in that monotone about molecular orbital theory, has left Kathy a tired girl.

She grabs her backpack from the passenger seat and eases out of the car. She closes the door and beeps it locked. The temperatures have fallen over the last hour, like the city suddenly remembered that it was winter. Kathy does another quick scan of her surroundings. Everything seems fine. She goes around to the trunk and pops it open. She reaches in and grabs her gym bag. Shed given thought to working out in the school gym tonight, but she couldnt muster the energy. Maybe shell do twenty minutes on her treadmill tonight, though she doubts it.

She doubts it because she has something else to do. Not a work assignment. Not a school assignment. Not an assignment at all. Something nagging at her. Something that may be nothing, but the more she thinks about it

She closes the trunk. A soft, quick gasp escapes her and she stumbles backward against the grille of the SUV behind her. A moment ago there hadnt been anyone on the street. Now there is. She takes a breath.

Sorry, she says, aware of her frazzled reaction. You startled me.

In less than five seconds, a bullet enters her skull between her eyes. The bullet is a straight front-to-back, shattering the sphenoid and ethmoid bones and the orbital plates and lodging in her brain stem. It creates a shock wave that propagates through her brain, causing instantaneous loss of consciousness. Only a moment before she lacks any capacity to do so, Kathy remembers that tomorrow is her twenty-fourth birthday.

She collapses to the street in a dead fall. Blood pours from her nose and mouth, fueled by a heart that does not yet realize it should stop pumping. Her blackening eyes do not see the mans hands maneuvering her purse off her arm, removing the cell phone from her waist holder, yanking the necklace off her neck.

She does not hear the echo of the mans shoes on the pavement, scurrying away from her lifeless body.

Detective Frank Danilo watched through the one-way mirror. The offender was talking to himself, his lips in constant motion, his hands curled up but his fingers wiggling.

The prints taken at the booking had come back to a Thomas David Stoller. Age twenty-seven. Discharged from the Army Rangers twenty-three months ago. Domiciled officially on Van Hart Way, but from the looks of it, Stoller called Franzen Park his home.

He hasnt stopped talking. Detective Mona Gregus sipped her coffee. Couldnt make out a frickin word if my life depended on it.

Because hes mumbling or because hes incoherent?

Gregus shook her head. Maybe both.

Is he for real? Danilo asked. Because you see where this is gonna go.

Yeah, I do, Francis, but its not our problem. Lets get a statement and let the ACA take care of it.

Danilo nodded. He tapped her arm with the back of his hand. He picked up the evidence box, and they entered the interview room.

The smell hit them first, powerful body odor. Tom Stoller had matted dark hair that went in every direction. A heavy beard that had collected assorted debris. He was wearing two layers of clothes on top, a ratty undershirt, and a stained, ripped, long-sleeved shirt with lettering so faded it was indecipherable. Hed been found in these clothes. That was odd only because he lived and slept outside, and this amount of clothing was no match for the freezing temperatures.

Stoller had bags under his dark, unfocused eyes. His cheeks bore scars and an uneven complexion. He was unnaturally thin. Stollers shoulders curled in upon the detectives entry into the interview room, but otherwise he showed no signs of recognition.

Detective Danilo was in role now, but he couldnt help but pause a moment. An Iraqi war vet, now homeless. He wasnt officially the victim here, but that didnt mean he didnt have his own share of tragedy. That was always the worst part of the job for Danilo, when you felt just as bad for the offender as you did the vic.

Danilo flicked on the video camera and looked through the lens to make doubly sure it covered the chairs at the table. Of course it did, but stillthered been that incident eighteen months ago in Area Two, when the camera somehow got moved and the detective hadnt checked. Judge Mulroney hadnt been amused at seeing a camera filming a blank wall and hearing audio only; he kicked a perfectly good confession on a double homicide.