Break Point: BookShots by James Patterson

walking hand-in-hand towards Foster.
    ‘Thing is, Chris,’ Ruth Cullen said, ‘the burns were on her wrists.’

CHAPTER 14
    THE PLAYERS’ CORRIDOR would not have looked out of place in the city hospital, with white walls and halogen spotlights picking out occasional pictures designed to splash a little colour. The guy with the young girl had almost reached Foster, so he listened without speaking and pushed the phone a little harder against his ear, so that none of the ugliness Cullen was describing could escape into the air around him. There was a stairwell opposite and Foster pushed into it. Once he was sure the girl was out of earshot, he said, ‘So you’re telling me somebody killed Rosario and set it up to look like a suicide?’
    ‘It looks that way. They went to a fair bit of trouble, too. You ever tried lifting a dead weight?’
    Foster chose not to answer.
    ‘I would have shoved a handful of paracetamol down her throat,’ Cullen continued. ‘Saved my back, you know?’
    ‘So there’s no question that she was targeted?’ Foster reasoned.
    ‘No question in my book,’ Cullen said. ‘The department wants to investigate the
panicking burglar
scenario, just to tick it off, but I don’t buy that at all.’
    ‘Burglars who panic stab you,’ Foster said. ‘Or they strangle the life out of you. No burglar ties someone’s wrists and goes looking for a beam to hoist them up on, out of panic.’
    ‘What’s your theory, Sherlock?’ Cullen asked. ‘And what’s the deal with Keller?’
    ‘She’s been getting a lot of threats,’ Foster said. ‘Nothing precise. No accusations, no demands. Feels like it’s escalating, though.’
    ‘Killing her coach would be a hell of an escalation.’
    ‘True, but I’m not sure,’ Foster said. ‘Maria Rosario was pretty easy to dislike. She was all about tennis – nothing else mattered. No manners, no small talk. She was focused, demanding, aggressive. You get the picture? She could easily have enemies of her own.
    ‘Until now, all the threats have been focused on Keller. Nothing about Rosario.’
    There was silence on the line for a minute while Cullen and Foster were thinking.
    ‘I’ve been imagining a betting syndicate trying to scare Kirsten into the result they want,’ Foster said. ‘Or maybe a tennis rival or another coach playing with her mind, and the whole thing getting seriously out of hand.’
    ‘Which one’s your money on?’
    ‘I don’t know, Ruth. But none of them really sound like they’d have a good reason to kill Rosario. Not to me, anyway.’
    ‘Well, me neither,’ Cullen said, then sighed. ‘You know we’ll have to talk to Kirsten at some point? As a witness, obviously.’
    ‘Obviously.’
    Foster hung up and headed back to the locker room to break the news to Keller.

CHAPTER 15
    THE POLISHED WOODEN door of the locker room opened at the exact moment Foster arrived. Another player was on her way out, fresh from the shower and weighed down by an oversized racket bag.
    ‘Are you the guy with Kirsten Keller?’ She had a heavy Eastern European accent that Foster guessed was Polish or Slovakian. ‘You’d better go in. She’s a real mess.’
    Foster’s skin prickled and he headed past the player, calling Keller’s name. She didn’t reply, so he moved further into the lockers, and further into the steam, which was billowing from the showers the same as the last time. He raised his voice, quickened his step, his mind full of images of Kirsten slashed or stabbed, blood flowing across the shower-room floor. But she hadn’t made it as far as the shower. She hadn’t even made it out of her clothes.
    She was crumpled on the floor, but there was no blood. Instead she was surrounded by an explosion of black rose petals, tinged red at their edges and scattered around her collapsed frame. One fist clutched a thick bunch of smashed rose stalks, and her other hand was holding her head. Her hair was covering her face and she was breathing