12th of Never

Chapter 88

YUKI AND BRADY were back in Bolinas, a thirty-mile drive that took more than an hour because the roads were so twisting and narrow and difficult to navigate in the dark.

Yuki had a search warrant in her briefcase, the second one of the day. Some kind of record, she thought, but Judge Nussbaum had signed it quickly, no questions asked. He was as eager to right the disaster of Keith Herman’s trial as she was.

Yuki said, “I’m afraid to get my hopes up—”

“Don’t jinx it, darlin’.”

Yuki had one hand on Brady’s thigh, the other hand on the dash as Brady wrenched the wheel and turned the squad car up the Kohls’ driveway. Branches and brush slapped at the headlights as the car climbed the overgrown, rutted path. They passed the ramshackle house and kept climbing another three or four hundred yards until they reached the end of the drive.

Brady braked the car and looked up the hill. He could just make out a lean-to with a corrugated tin roof, camouflaged by weeds and overgrown with kudzu.

Brady said to Yuki, “You’re not going to be able to walk around here in those shoes.”

“Give me a second,” she said.

She opened the door, took off first one shoe and then the other, and beat them against the lower part of the door frame until the heels popped off.

She put on her newly flat shoes.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Brady reached over, pulled her toward him, kissed her. They looked at each other for a few moments, both of them smiling, then they set out, wading through the weeds.

The car was under the lean-to, covered with a tarp. Brady pulled on the cloth, let it drop to the ground.

Yuki said, “Oh, my God. Black is dark.”

It was the Lexus that Keith Herman’s neighbor Graham Durden had seen parked at the curb outside Herman’s house. Durden had witnessed Keith bringing Lily Herman’s lifeless body out of the house and putting her in the backseat.

Lily hadn’t been lifeless. She’d been drugged.

“It was Keith who brought Lily here,” Yuki said to Brady. “It’s going to be hard to call it kidnapping.”

“Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

Yuki walked around the car and was still peering into the windows when Brady came back. He had a Slim Jim in his gloved hand. He slid the tool down into the window of the driver’s-side door and unlocked it.

“Here we go,” he said to Yuki.

Brady opened the car door, reached down, tugged on the latch release, and the trunk popped open. Together, he and Yuki went around to the back of the car. Brady held the flashlight. They peered in.

“You see that?” Yuki said, pointing to the spare tire. She brought her light in close.

“Human hair,” he said. “Bloodstained carpeting. And right here?” He moved a section of plastic and felt from the side of the trunk. “This looks like a Beretta P×4 Storm.”