10th Anniversary

Chapter 84

MY EYELIDS FLEW OPEN. I stared up at the information that Joe’s projection clock flashed onto the ceiling. It was October 11. Fifty-four degrees. 6:02 a.m.

I had been in midthought when I’d woken myself up, but what had I been thinking?

Joe stirred beside me and said, “Linds. You up?”

“Sorry to wake you, hon. I was dreaming. I think.”

He turned toward me and enfolded me in his arms. “You remember the dream?”

I tried to backtrack, but the dream was gone. What was worrying me? Joe was safe. The Richardson baby was at St. Francis, perfectly well. Then I had it.

Candace Martin.

I was thinking about her.

I started to tell Joe why Candace Martin was surfing my nocturnal brain waves, but he was already snoring softly against my shoulder. I disengaged myself and put my feet on the floor.

Joe murmured, “What?”

“I’ve got to go to work,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”

I kissed his cheek, ruffled his hair, and tucked the covers under his chin. I snapped my fingers and Martha jumped onto the bed. She circled a couple of times, then dropped into the hollow I’d left behind.

Less than an hour later, I blew into the Hall of Justice with two containers of coffee.

I took the back stairs two steps at a time, and elbowed open the stairwell door to the eighth floor. I negotiated the maze of corridors that led to the DA’s department.

Yuki was at her desk in a windowless office. Her glossy black hair, parted in the middle, fell forward as she stared down at her laptop. My shadow crossed her desk.

“Hey,” she said, looking up. “Lindsay. What’s wrong?”

“Something is. Okay for me to see the picture of Candace Martin in the car with that hit man Gregor Guzman?”

“Why?”

She stretched her arm across her desk and took a coffee container from my hand. “You don’t mind if I ask why you’re still messing around with my case, do you?”

“Could I just see it again, Yuki? Please. That photo is bothering me.”

Yuki glared at me, bent toward her laptop, and tapped a few keys. She swiveled the computer around so that I could see the screen.

“I could use a copy of that.”

Yuki shook her head no. But at the same time, the printer made a grinding sound, and a black-and-white photo chugged into the tray. Yuki handed it to me.

“I’d give you a harder time,” she said, “but the judge wants to see me in chambers. I’m in the bad-girl corner again. Don’t make trouble for me, Lindsay. I mean it.”

I wished her luck with LaVan and ran for the exit before Yuki could change her mind.

Chapter 85

MINUTES AFTER LEAVING Yuki’s office, I signed the visitor’s log at the entrance to the women’s jail on the seventh floor. It was loud in this wing. The clanging of metal doors and the angry clamor of prisoners rose up around us as an officer escorted me to one of the small, bare conference rooms.

Candace Martin soon appeared in the doorway. She made eye contact with me as the guard removed her cuffs, then took the chair across from me at the scarred metal table.

“This is an unexpected surprise,” she said.

Candace didn’t have any makeup on, hadn’t had her hair done professionally in a year, and was wearing a prison jumpsuit in a shade of orange that didn’t flatter blondes.

Still, Candace Martin had her dignity and her professional demeanor.

I said, “I’m here unofficially.”

“With good news, I hope.”

I pulled the printout of the photo from my pocket and placed it faceup on the table. “Please look at this picture and tell me why you’re inside this vehicle with this man.”

She said, “I’ve seen that picture. That’s not me.”

The overhead light cast three hundred watts of bright white fluorescence, lighting every part of the small room. The red eye of a security camera watched from a corner of the ceiling as the woman in orange slid the photo closer and picked it up.

“I don’t know either of these people,” she said. Then, as though she had been struck with an afterthought, she studied the photo intently again and asked me, “What do you see in this woman’s hand?”

She pushed the grainy black-and-white printout back across the table. The woman in the picture had her head tipped forward, her blond hair covering half her face, and she seemed to be clutching a chain that was fastened around her neck. I saw the glint of a pendant dangling from her clasped fingers.

“Maybe some kind of charm,” I said.

“Could it be a cross?” Candace Martin asked me.

“I suppose.”

“I don’t wear thin gold chains with charms or crosses,” Candace Martin said to me. “But you know Ellen Lafferty, don’t you? Ellen always wears a cross. I’ve got to say, I wonder what it means to her.”

Chapter 86

CANDACE MARTIN was due back in court in an hour, and if my belief in her innocence was warranted, I couldn’t “mess around” with Yuki’s case fast enough. Every day that Candace was on trial, she was a day closer to being convicted of murder in the first degree.

As hard as it would be to convince the court that the wrong person was on trial, it would be a snap compared with getting a murder conviction overturned.

I jogged down the Hall’s back stairs to the lobby, thumbed a number into my cell phone, and waited for private investigator Joseph Podesta to pick up. His voice was thick with sleep, but he said, “Aw-right,” to my request to see him in twenty minutes.

I crossed the Bay Bridge, drove to Lafayette, and found Podesta’s yellow suburban ranch on Hamlin Road, a street lined with a mix of trees and similar ranch-style houses. I parked my car in his driveway, then walked up some stone steps through a rock garden and rang the bell.

Podesta came to the door barefoot, wearing a sweat suit with a sprinkling of bread crumbs on the front. I showed him my badge and he opened the door wide and led me to his home office at the back of the house.

I looked around at the warehouse of spy equipment Podesta had stored on his metal bookshelves. He wheeled his chair up to his computer, lifted an old tabby cat down from his desk, and put her on his lap.

“If my client wasn’t dead,” he said, palming the mouse, “I wouldn’t show these to you without a warrant.”

“I appreciate your help,” I said.

Podesta clicked on the folder containing the digital photos he’d taken of Candace Martin in a car with someone who had been tentatively identified as Gregor Guzman, a contract killer who was wanted by cops in several states and a few foreign countries as well.

The first photo Podesta pulled up on his screen was the one Yuki had offered into evidence.

“I know these photos suck eggs,” he said. “But I couldn’t use the flash, you know? I can’t swear that’s Guzman, but that woman is Candace Martin. I followed her that night from her house on Monterey Boulevard right to the I–280 on-ramp north. She got off on Cesar Chavez, took a right on Third and then onto Davidson. I was on her tail the whole time.

“It’s a very dodgy place. I’m sure you know it, Sergeant. I had to watch out for myself. It’s a trash heap. A junkyard. I could have gotten mugged, and she could have, too.

“I watched her get out of her Lincoln and get into this guy’s SUV. Ten minutes later, she got out.”

“Can you burn those pictures onto a disc for me?”

“Why not, under the circumstances?” he said.

The computer whirred.

The cat purred.

And pretty soon I had a disc with a lot of grainy pictures taken a couple of weeks before Dennis Martin was killed.

Chapter 87

AT NINE-FIFTEEN I was back at the Hall of Justice, Southern Station, Homicide Division, my home away from home.

I hung my jacket on the back of my chair, then found Conklin in the break room. He was eating a doughnut over the sink, his yellow tie flipped over his shoulder.

“Yo,” he said. “I saved you one.”

“I’m not hungry. But I do have something to show you.”

“You’re being awfully mysterious.”

“It’s better to show than tell.”

Chi was working at his desk, his computer humming, his coffee mug on a napkin, and about thirty pens lined up with the top edge of his mouse pad.

I handed Chi the disc Joe Podesta had given me and said, “You mind, Paul? I want you to see these, too.”

The three of us focused on one frame at a time as the dozen digital shots PI Joseph Podesta had taken of a blond woman in profile, sitting with a possible hit man in his SUV, came up on the screen.

Conklin asked Chi to enlarge the best of them and to push in on the female subject’s fist to see if she could be holding on tight to a gold cross. But the more Chi blew up the picture, the fuzzier it became.

“That’s the best I can do,” Chi said, staring at the abstract arrangement of gray dots. “What are your thoughts?”

“Run it through the face ID program,” Conklin said to Chi.

“Face ID, coming up.”

Chi opened the program, and two windows came up on his monitor, comparing Candace Martin’s mug shot with the grainy shot of the blond woman in the car.

Chi turned to look at me and Conklin, a spark of excitement sailing briefly across his face like a shooting star. “It’s not her,” said Chi. “Whoever the woman is in this picture — it’s not Candace Martin.”

Chi then compared the grainy-pictured blonde against a database of tens of thousands of photos at blur speed.

And just as I was beginning to lose hope, we got a match.

Chapter 88

CONKLIN AND I got into an unmarked car and were soon speeding up the James Lick Freeway. As Conklin drove, I ticked off on my fingers the reasons I liked Ellen Lafferty for Dennis Martin’s murder.

“One, she was in love with him. Two, she was frustrated by him. Three, she had access to his gun. She knew where he would be and where Candace would be at the end of the day.

“That’s four and five. And six, if she didn’t do it, she could have ordered the hit.”

“All that,” Conklin said, “and she’s smart enough to frame Candace.”

“She must be a frickin’ evil genius,” I said.

Fifteen minutes later, Conklin parked the car in front of a pale yellow marina-style apartment building. Built in the ’20s, it was a tidy-looking place with bowed windows facing Ulloa Street. It was about a mile from the Martins’ house.

I pressed the buzzer and Lafferty called out, “Who is it?” And then she opened the door.

Conklin said “SFPD,” flashed his shield, and introduced us to the twenty-something nanny, who hesitated a couple of beats before she let us in.

I had watched Lafferty’s testimony from the back of the courtroom a few days ago. She’d looked quite mature in a suit and heels. Today, wearing jeans and a white turtleneck, her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked like a teenager.

Conklin said yes to Lafferty’s offer of coffee, but I lingered behind in the living room as the Martins’ former nanny walked Conklin to the kitchen.

In one visual sweep, I counted five pictures of Dennis Martin in that small room, some of them with Lafferty. Martin was handsome from every angle.

I raised my eyes as Ellen Lafferty returned to the living area with Conklin. She looked happier to see me than she could possibly be. She took a seat in an armchair and said, “I thought the investigation was closed.”

I said, “There are a few stubborn loose ends. Well, one loose end.”

I pulled the photo from my inside jacket pocket and put it down on the coffee table.

Ellen reached over to pick it up and said, “What is this?”

“That man may be a contract killer by the name of Gregor Guzman. The woman in this picture looks like Candace Martin,” I said. “She’s got the same blond hair, same cut as Candace — but it’s not actually her, is it, Ellen?”

“It’s hard to tell. I don’t know,” she said.

“You know how we know it isn’t Candace?” Conklin said. “Because when we ran that photo through forensic software, it matched your picture from the DMV. The woman in this picture is you.”

Conklin went to the mantel and picked up a gold-framed photo of Ellen and Dennis Martin on a sailboat out in the Bay.

“No,” she said, getting up to snatch the picture out of Conklin’s hand. “You can’t have that.”

I said to her, “I think Judge LaVan will give us a search warrant to go through everything in your house. Meanwhile, we need to continue this talk at the police station.”

I pulled out my phone and was calling for a patrol car, but Ellen said, “Wait. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

I closed my phone and gave her my full attention.

Chapter 89

IF ELLEN LAFFERTY didn’t try to hire a killer, why was she in that car with Gregor Guzman? I couldn’t wait to hear her explanation.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, certainly nothing criminal,” Lafferty said. She reached into the neck of her sweater and pulled out a small gold cross on a thin chain. She kept yanking it from side to side, a nervous habit — and a telling one.

“Dennis sent me to meet this ‘Mr. G.’ in the parking lot of Vons,” she said. “He gave me an envelope of money to give to this Mr. G., but when he opened it, he handed it back to me and said, ‘Tell Mr. Martin thanks but no thanks.’”

“This Mr. G. gave back the money,” Rich said.

Ellen nodded.

“So, you’re saying you met with a man you didn’t know because Dennis told you to do it. You gave him money — which he gave back to you, and you didn’t know why you were there. Is that your story?”

“I didn’t know he was an assassin until after the trial started and I read about him online. I was just a messenger. This is one hundred percent true.”

“You’re not in any trouble,” Conklin said. “We’re trying to piece some facts together.”

“So, tell us about the blond hair,” I said.

“It was a wig,” Ellen blurted out. “It belonged to Candace when she was having chemo. She threw it out and I took it. Dennis liked me to wear it sometimes. Do you want to see it?”

Ellen Lafferty headed down a hallway toward the bedroom.

“You really think this girl hired a hit man?” Conklin asked me.

“I don’t know. I know less now than I did when I woke up this morning.”

I picked up the sunset-lit, highly romantic photo of Ellen and Dennis Martin and ran it all through my mind again.

Had Ellen hired Guzman to kill Dennis? Was Ellen the intruder, and had she killed Dennis herself? Did Dennis set up the meet between Ellen and Guzman so that his private eye could document a Candace look-alike meeting with a hit man?

If so, had Candace killed her husband before he could kill her?

As I was turning over the possibilities yet again, Ellen came back into the room holding a black satin bag. She opened the drawstrings and shook out a blond wig.

“Mostly I just wore this when we made love,” she said.

I couldn’t hold back.

“Help me to understand you, Ellen,” I said. “Your lover liked you to wear his wife’s wig in bed? Didn’t you find that sick?”

Tears jumped to her eyes.

I muttered, “Crap,” under my breath. Was I ever going to learn to be the good cop? Conklin took the bag and said to Lafferty, “We need you to come to the station, okay, Ellen?”

“But — you’re not arresting me, right?”

Conklin said. “We want your signed statement to what you just told us.”

I hung back as Conklin walked Ellen out to the street. I called Yuki but got her voice mail.

I waited out the beeps, then said, “Yuki, I need a search warrant for Ellen Lafferty’s premises. Yes, we’ve got probable cause. Call me back ASAP. Uh — I think you’re going to thank me for this.”

I hoped I was right.

Chapter 90

YUKI SAT BESIDE PHIL, the two of them in matching leather chairs across from Judge LaVan’s leather-topped desk. The room had been decorated in fox hunt-style: old prints of people in red coats on bay horses, and heavy wooden furniture against forest-green walls.

The judge’s eyes were red behind his glasses, and he explained in the fewest possible words why he had been out for three days.

“My mother had lung cancer,” he said. “She died. Badly.”

He nodded his head as the two attorneys said that they were sorry for his loss. Then he cleared his throat and went on.

“I don’t want any more of the crap that’s been going on in this trial. Ms. Castellano, you know how to ask a question without turning it into a summation. Mr. Hoffman, you know how to rein in your witnesses, so for God’s sake, just do it.”

Yuki wanted to object, but the judge was leaving no doubt about his intentions. He wanted the trial streamlined, and he wanted it over.

“Here are the new rules on objections,” he said, as if he were reading her mind.

“If you have an objection, stand up. I’m a smart guy and I was a trial lawyer for twenty years. If I can’t figure out why you are objecting, I will not acknowledge you. In that case — sit down.

“If I know why you are objecting, I will tell opposing counsel to knock it off. I don’t expect to have to do that.”

“Your Honor,” Yuki and Hoffman said in unison.

“No theatrics. No drama. No stupid lawyer tricks. I will levy fines. I will find either or both of you in contempt. Do you understand me?”

Neither Phil nor Yuki answered.

“Good. I’ll see you in court,” said LaVan.

“This is a joke,” Hoffman said to Yuki as they left Judge LaVan’s chambers and walked down the hall toward the courtroom. “He can’t tell us not to object.”

“Apparently he can today,” said Yuki.

Hoffman smiled at her and then said, “I’ve got a meeting. See you inside.”

Chapter 91

PHIL HOFFMAN got to his well-shod feet, straightened his shoulders, and said, “The defense calls Caitlin Martin.”

At that, Candace Martin leapt up and screamed in his face, “No! Don’t you dare put my daughter on the stand! You have no right!”

LaVan slammed down his gavel and shouted, “Bailiff, please remove the defendant from the courtroom.”

“Candace. Sit down,” Hoffman said. “Your Honor, give me a word with my client, please.”

“Mr. Hoffman, I’m fining you eight hundred dollars. If you’d prepared your client, this could have been avoided. Bailiff!”

After Candace Martin had been escorted from the room, the judge called for order, and when the room had quieted into an expectant hush, he asked the jury to ignore the interruption.

He reminded the jurors that they were charged with weighing the evidence, not the commotion, and that they were to draw no conclusions based on his decision to remove the defendant.

Then he said, “Mr. Hoffman, present your witness.”

Hoffman’s expression was neutral as the eleven-year-old daughter of Candace and Dennis Martin stood by the stand, was sworn in by the clerk, and took the chair inside the witness box. She had to struggle to get into it, and her feet didn’t quite touch the floor.

The judge turned toward the dark-haired girl in the flowered dress and blue cardigan, holding a matching handbag on her lap. He asked, “Ms. Martin, do you know the difference between a lie and the truth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I said that I’m the president of the United States, would that be a lie or the truth?”

“It would be a lie, of course.”

“Do you believe in God?”

Caitlin nodded.

“You have to say either yes or no. The clerk is typing what you say.”

“Yes. I do. Believe in God.”

“Okay. You understand that you have promised on God’s word to tell the truth?”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

“Good. Thank you. Mr. Hoffman, please proceed.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Caitlin — okay if I call you Caitlin?”

“Sure, Mr. Hoffman.”

Hoffman smiled. He had a nice smile. Nothing bad about it.

“Caitlin, I have to ask you some questions about the night your father was killed, okay?”

“Okay. Yes.”

“Were you in the house when your father was shot?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who shot him?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell the judge and the jury what you know.”

“I did it,” Caitlin Martin said. Her eyes darted to the judge and then back to her mother’s attorney. “I killed my father. I had no choice.”

Chapter 92

THE GALLERY EXPLODED in an uproar.

Jurors leaned forward, making remarks to one another, while reporters reached for their PDAs. Hoffman stood in the center of the well, his expression frozen, as if he’d just fired a gun himself.

Yuki wanted to rewind the last ten seconds and turn up the volume. Had Caitlin Martin just said that she killed her father?

It just couldn’t be true.

Yuki shot to her feet, clutched her hands into fists, and kept her jaws so tightly clenched, they might as well have been wired shut. She’d been warned not to object, but she was screaming in her mind, I object to this witness. I object to this — stagecraft. I object, I object, I object.

“Counsel, approach. Both of you,” LaVan snapped.

As the two attorneys came toward him, the judge swiveled his chair ninety degrees so that he would face the emergency exit rather than the witness and the jury.

Yuki and Hoffman stood at an angle to the bench and looked up at the judge.

LaVan said to Hoffman in a low voice that was thrumming with anger. “I take it that neither your client nor the prosecution knew that you were calling this child to the stand.”

“I got a call from the young lady’s maternal grandmother last night saying that Caitlin wanted to talk to me this morning. I met with Caitlin in the lobby of this building, Your Honor, right after our meeting with you. I knew nothing about her testimony until fifteen minutes ago.”

“Your Honor,” Yuki said, “this is an obvious ploy by the defense. Caitlin has either been coached, or she came up with this idea on her own. Either way, she is trying to save her mother’s butt. And either way, she has created reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury.”

LaVan said, “I’m calling a recess. I want to see Caitlin in chambers. Don’t either of you disappear. After I’ve talked to the child, I’ll speak to the jurors.

“And after that, we can discuss the future of this trial.”

Chapter 93

YUKI WAS in Len Parisi’s office when her phone buzzed.

“Here we go,” she said to her boss. She read the text out loud: “‘Judge LaVan is ready for you in chambers.’ What’s your bottom-line advice, Len?”

Parisi hauled his bulk out of his chair, then opened the blinds on the Bryant Street side of the building. The light was translucent. Yuki couldn’t see anything through the fog.

“You want to cross-examine the witness,” Red Dog said. “It’s the best and only thing you can do.”

“What if she’s telling the truth?”

“Is she telling the truth? What do you really think?”

“I think she’s throwing herself under the bus. She’s eleven. It’s heroic, like in the movies. But it’s a lie. I can shake her on the stand, but I don’t know if I can do that and keep the jury on our side.”

“It will be like walking a tightrope with diarrhea. But I have faith that you can do it.”

Yuki walked out of Parisi’s office and down the hall on autopilot. Phil Hoffman stood when she entered the judge’s chambers, and after she took the seat she’d occupied only a couple of hours ago, he sat down.

LaVan had removed his robes and his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves and was standing behind his desk. Yuki thought he was going to pace, but instead he reached down, picked up the metal trash can at his feet, two feet tall and eighteen inches in diameter. He raised it over his head and hurled it toward the far wall.

The trash can ricocheted against the edge of the liquor cabinet before taking out a framed picture of the judge with the governor.

After the explosion of glass and the echo of the racket died down, LaVan threw open the liquor cabinet doors and said, “Who wants a drink? I’m buying.”

Hoffman said, “Scotch works for me.”

“I’m fine,” Yuki said, but she was not fine. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for a case that slid sideways every twenty minutes. Was she winning or losing? She had no idea.

The judge poured shots for himself and Hoffman, then retook his seat behind his desk.

“Phil, do you know the difference between a lie and the truth?”

“Yes, Your Honor. You are not the president of the United States.”

“Did you have anything to do with shaping Caitlin Martin’s testimony?”

“No. As I said, she talked to me at eight-forty-five this morning. She told me what happened. I bumped another witness I’d prepared who was suddenly irrelevant and decided I had to put Caitlin on the stand.”

“I want to cross-examine her,” Yuki said. “I have to discredit her testimony.”

The judge said, “Hang on, Yuki. Let me tell you what Caitlin said in the half hour I just spent with her. This is for your benefit.”

“Your Honor?”

“Caitlin told me that her father had been molesting her. She was explicit. And I mean convincingly so. She knew where the gun was hidden. She saw an opportunity and she shot him.”

“You believe her?” Yuki asked.

“I couldn’t trip her up — and I tried. According to Caitlin, her mother heard the shots, found the girl holding the gun, and told her to wash up, go to her room, and never tell anyone what happened. Then, still according to Caitlin, her mother fired the gun outside the front door and called the police.”

“Huh. Good story,” said Yuki. “So, what made Caitlin decide to talk?”

“She said she wanted to tell the truth.”

Hoffman leaned forward in his chair.

“Byron. Your Honor,” he said. “We have an admission exonerating my client,” he said. “I move to dismiss.”

Chapter 94

YUKI STARED THROUGH the judge, her thoughts swirling in something that was pretty close to panic.

She didn’t want a dismissal, not after all that she’d been through on this case, not when she believed she had the killer on trial. Dammit. If the judge dismissed the case, what then?

Was she going to go after the little girl? Would she really try to prosecute an eleven-year-old who was claiming incest and rape?

If so, based on what?

The only evidence against Caitlin was her testimony. No one had seen her shoot the gun. And even if Candace Martin did say that Caitlin was the shooter, the case was so fraught with reasonable doubt, the grand jury might not indict.

On the other hand, Yuki thought, if the judge didn’t dismiss, Yuki would have to do that high-wire act Len had talked about. Turn that abused child into a liar. The jury would hate her for it, and if they believed Caitlin’s story, Candace could walk free.

“Yuki. You want to say something?”

Yuki said, “Yes, I do, Your Honor. I certainly do. There is not a single shred of evidence to support Caitlin’s testimony, and if her story is true, why is it coming out only now?”

Phil turned toward her and said, “Let’s be logical, Yuki. There is more than enough reasonable doubt. We both know if the trial goes on, there’s an excellent chance Candace will walk.”

The judge said, “Let me make it easy for both of you. It comes down to this: Major new evidence has come in. I’ve decided to dismiss.”

If LaVan dismissed, it was all over — forever. Candace couldn’t even be tried again because it would be double jeopardy. Yuki suddenly saw an opening, a slim sliver of hope.

“I respectfully suggest that you not dismiss, Your Honor, but instead suspend the trial.”

LaVan swiveled in his chair, pulling at his lower lip. The moment lasted for so long, Yuki thought she might scream.

“Okay,” LaVan said. “I’ll suspend the trial for sixty days. During that time, the defendant is free on bail. Yuki, go back to the DA and discuss this … mess. Really look at the downside of going forward. If you want to cross-examine Caitlin Martin, I’ll go along with you.

“Otherwise, based on Caitlin’s testimony, I’m going to call a mistrial. Okay? That should work for all parties. The ball’s in your court until December tenth.”

“Okay, Your Honor,” Yuki said. “Thank you.”

“You’ve got a lot to think about.”

“I know.”

LaVan pressed down the intercom button.

“Denise, bring my calendar. And call the clerk. I want to see the jurors again.”

Chapter 95

I TRACKED YUKI DOWN and found her in her office, just where I’d seen her this morning, but she seemed smaller and paler now, like the air had been sucked out of her.

“Did you get my message?” I asked her.

“I just got out of the judge’s chambers,” she said. “I’m waiting for Red Dog to get back from lunch. How do I look?”

“You need some lipstick,” I said.

She rummaged in her handbag.

“I went to see Ellen Lafferty,” I said, and I waited for the explosion of anger that didn’t come. Yuki found a tube of lip gloss and a mirror in her purse. I ventured on.

“Ellen Lafferty said she went to see Guzman. That’s her in the picture. She admitted it. And we also matched the picture to her photo at the DMV.”

“She bleached her hair?” Yuki asked. Her hand was shaking as she applied the gloss.

“Candace Martin had a wig from when she was undergoing chemotherapy. Hey, Yuki, are you okay?”

“Go ahead,” she said. She ran a brush through her hair. Sparks crackled.

“Dennis sent Ellen disguised as Candace to meet with the hit man and set it up so his private eye took pictures of her. He was probably going to use those pictures to force his wife’s hand in the divorce — or maybe he was really going to set up a hit. We may never know. Look, I know you’re mad at me, so just say it, okay? I can take it,” I said.

Yuki said, “Caitlin Martin confessed to killing her father, and now either we take our chances with this jury or LaVan is calling a mistrial.”

“Caitlin? Caitlin said she did it?”

Len Parisi came down the hallway and stuck his large head into Yuki’s office.

“Hi, Lindsay. Yuki, I’ve got five minutes. Right now.”

“Be right there,” Yuki said.

She got to her feet and straightened her jacket. When she turned her eyes back on me, I saw that the fierce Yuki was back.

“Candace Martin killed her husband,” she said to me. “Not Ellen Lafferty. Not Caitlin Martin. I know you don’t think Candace did it, but I do, and I’m never going to have an opportunity to prove it. She’s going to get away with it.”

Was Yuki right?

Had I been chasing a flipping red herring?

I opened my mouth, but no words came out, and then Yuki was gone.

Chapter 96

AFTER WHAT WAS undeniably one of the worst days she had ever had as a prosecutor, Yuki left the Hall to go home. She had nearly reached the sidewalk when she heard Brady call out to her.

God. Not Brady. Not now.

Yuki turned and saw him coming down the steps toward her, his hair flying loose from that ponytail of his.

Very attractive man.

Yuki thought of what Lindsay had told her, that Brady was married, and dammit, she didn’t want to go through another doomed relationship with another unavailable guy. She wanted stability, a home life …

“Yuki, I’m glad I caught you,” Brady said, pulling up alongside her. “Have dinner with me?”

“Okay,” she said.

Now they were at Town Hall in SoMa, the former Marine Electric Building, one of the best places around for casual dining with a sophisticated twist.

The interior was dark, with exposed brick, hardwood floors, and subdued lighting. Jackson Brady’s hair seemed to draw light from the overhead starburst fixtures that had once hung in the ceiling of a theater in Spanish Harlem.

Yuki was having a margarita, a drink that she loved and that took her out of her misery — and, if she had more than one, out of her mind as well. If she’d ever earned a margarita, today was the day.

“A suspension of the case isn’t the worst thing,” Brady was saying. He was working on the Cajun shrimp appetizer along with his beer.

“No, it’s not the worst thing,” Yuki agreed, “but it’s still a disaster. You know how many hours I put into that case?”

“Seven thousand?”

Yuki laughed. “Not seven thousand, but a whole hell of a lot, and now it looks like that bitch is going to go free.”

“Unless you find more evidence.”

“Yeah. If we find more evidence, we can still try her with a new jury, but you know, the world turns, the files stack up, some other heinous piece of crap is caught, and we mount another case.”

“I’ll keep the Candace Martin file on my desk.”

“Thanks, Jackson. Even if you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it.”

“Now, tell me you don’t lie, why don’t you?”

“I lie sometimes.”

Yuki laughed again. “Well, don’t lie to me.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious. I’ve been told that you’re married. What’s the story?”

“I’m still married.”

“Fuck,” Yuki said. “Waiter.”

Brady took her arm out of the air. “I’m still married. But I hope not for long.”

Yuki took a slug of her margarita, set the glass down, and as the waiter came by, said to him, “Could you take this drink away? Thanks.” Then she said to Brady, “Tell me the whole story. I’m listening.”

“You remember that shooting incident I told you about?” Brady asked her.

Yuki said, “You shot the guy who came up out of the crack between the bed and the wall holding a semiautomatic.”

“Yeah. So Liz and I were already heading our separate ways, and that deal that went down — almost getting whacked, killing the guy, the IAB, the media on our lawn — all that tore it. Whatever thin connection we had left.”

“Because you’re a cop?”

“Yep. Because I’m a cop,” he said. “She wouldn’t be the first woman who said, ‘I didn’t sign up for this.’ So after a year, we separated and I moved to San Fran. Alone. Divorce is pending. Pending on how much she can make me beg for it.”

“You have kids?”

“Nope.”

“Want any?”

“Maybe. I’m forty. But I’m not there yet. How about you?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“We don’t have to decide tonight,” Brady said.

“Okay,” Yuki said, laughing. This guy was funny. She liked him. A lot.

The waiter brought the buttermilk-fried chicken, a side of sautéed greens, and creamy-looking yams, and Yuki felt herself on the verge of coming back to life. She hadn’t eaten all day.

Brady picked up his fork, paused with it in the air, and said, “I was going to tell you about Liz.”

“I know.”

“I was. And I want to ask you something.”

Yuki had a forkful of chicken in her mouth. She was getting high from the chicken. She turned her eyes on Brady.

“Mmm-hmm?”

“Will you come home with me tonight?” Brady said.

Chapter 97

RAIN WAS IN THE FORECAST, but it came down only when Cindy was leaving her office for the day. She stood at the curb under her red umbrella, cold rain blowing up the skirt of her raincoat and soaking her new shoes.

She pulled a wad of tissues out of her pocket and caught the long, high-pitched, trumpeting ahh-chooooooooo-ahh, a sneeze that just about took off the top of her head.

It looked like every damn cab in the city was taken or off duty. Cindy phoned All-City, the cab company she used regularly, and after listening to background music and ads, she was told, “Sorry, please call back later.”

Cindy sneezed again, damm it. Not only was she fighting a cold, she was also half starving and now late for dinner at Susie’s. She visualized the back room at Susie’s, that haven of warmth — and the name Quick Express leapt into her mind.

She pictured the cab company she’d visited earlier in the week when she was working on the drug-and-rape story. Since then, there had been no reports of the serial rapist, and the story had taken a dive off the front page.

That was the good news and the bad.

Good that she’d scared off that psycho by turning the brights on him with her three-part, above-the-fold story.

Bad because he’d gone underground — and that meant he might never be caught.

Meanwhile, she had a connection in the taxi business. It was just before six. With luck, the dispatcher she’d met, Al Wysocki, would still be on duty. Maybe he’d do her a favor.

Cindy pulled the number up from her phone list and pressed call. The phone rang and a voice she recognized answered, “Quick Express Taxi and Limo.”

“Al Wysocki?”

“This is Al.”

“Al, it’s Cindy Thomas from the Chronicle. I met you a few days ago while I was working on my story.”

“Yep, I remember you. Blonde.”

“That’s me, Al, and I’ve got a problem. Could you send a cab to the Chronicle? I’m soaked to my skin and I’m late for dinner.”

“No problem, Ms. Cindy. I’ll have someone there in five.”

Chapter 98

CINDY WAS DELIGHTED with herself. She described her raincoat and umbrella to Wysocki, folded her phone, put it in her pocket, and ducked back into the building, where she could see the traffic through the glass doors.

In five minutes, almost on the nose, a yellow Crown Vic pulled up and the window rolled down. She ran out to the street and immediately recognized the round face of the driver.

“Lady,” he said with a grin. “You called a cab?”

“Al, I didn’t mean you should come yourself, but thanks a ton. You’re too nice.”

Cindy closed her umbrella, reached for the door handle, and opened the back door.

“I was going off duty,” Wysocki said as Cindy settled into the backseat. “Happy to help you out. Hey. I gotta share this with someone who isn’t going to get jealous. Where are we going?”

Cindy gave Al Susie’s address, Jackson and Sansome, and leaned her umbrella against the door so the water would drip onto the mat.

“Share what?” Cindy asked, grabbing tissues from her pocket and blowing her nose.

“This is my lucky day,” Al told her, stopping at the red light on 2nd. “I won the lottery.”

“What?”

“Yeah, five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Come onnnn. You’re kidding me!”

“Seriously, I just kept playing my lucky numbers, and yahoo! — I won. I’m quitting tomorrow morning when I see the boss. This is Al Wysocki’s last fare. I got a bottle of schnapps,” he said. “Share a toast with me to my new life?”

“I don’t know how that’ll mix with Sudafed.”

“Hey, just a sip. It’ll do your cold good.”

“Okay, then. Hit me,” Cindy said. “You must be mind-boggled. Five hundred grand! So what are your plans?”

Wysocki opened the twist-off cap on the flask of high-octane spirits, poured Cindy a few ounces into a small plastic cup, and handed it to her through the partition.

“I’m going to buy a sailboat,” he said. He clinked the bottle against her plastic cup.

“To your new life,” she said.

“Thank you, Ms. Cindy. Yeah, I’ve been going to the boat shows for about eleven years. I know just the one I want.”

Cindy smiled and said “What … kind of … boat?”

“I want to get a sailing yacht. Small one, handmade, wooden hull,” Al said, looking at Cindy in the rearview mirror as the light turned green. He said, “You okay, back there?”

“No …,” she said slowly, casting her eyes toward Wysocki’s mirrored reflection. What was wrong with her? She was having trouble focusing. “I … feel …”

Wysocki grinned.

“You should feel great,” he said. “You were looking for me, missy. And now you’ve found me.”

Chapter 99

CLAIRE AND I were at Susie’s, all by ourselves, alone. First Yuki had blown us off, and now Cindy was a no-show; no show, no call, no nothing. Getting stood up by both of them had never happened before.

Claire said of Yuki, “Stop worrying yourself. That girl needs to get naked with a man every now and then. You know that, Lindsay. It’s good for her.”

“I don’t have to like her getting naked with Jackson Brady, do I? I mean, come on. Of all the men in all the world, why him?”

Claire laughed. “A lot of girls would be clicking their heels to get naked with Brady.”

“It messes with the chain of command.”

“Anybody sleeps with anyone you know, it messes with the chain of command.”

I wadded up a paper napkin and threw it at her. “Shut up,” I said.

She batted it back. “You are so crazy,” she said, still laughing.

I downed my Corona and said, “Let’s order. Cindy can just catch up.”

Claire agreed. Cindy had proven that she could start from behind, get down a half pitcher of beer and a steak, have dessert, and still be the first one across the finish line.

I signaled Lorraine to come over. She recited the specials, coconut shrimp and rum-sautéed chicken. We ordered the specials and more beer, and as soon as Lorraine left, Claire said, “You’re not going to believe this one, Linds. It’s right up there with my top ten most unbelievable cases. And it starts with a guy lying dead in the middle of the road.”

“Hit and run?”

“It sure looked like a car accident,” she said, “but there were no tire tracks, no bruising on the victim. A hat was lying a few yards from the body, a black baseball cap with an X on the back of it. And that’s all we had. No witnesses. No surveillance tapes. Nothing except a dead body and a random baseball cap.”

“Heart attack? Aneurysm?”

“Let me tell you, this guy was young, twenty-something. And he looked like he’d been laid out at a wake, only he was on the center line, stopping traffic,” Claire said.

“So now I’m doing the post, looking over this young dude’s perfect body. I do a full-body X-ray and find a twenty-two bullet behind his right eye. That gunshot wound was not visible, Lindsay.”

“I’m not believing in invisible bullets, butterfly.”

“It’s like this. The round goes into the corner of the eye,” Claire said, pointing to where one of her eyes met the bridge of her nose. “Eyeball moves away from the bullet, then closes up behind it so that you cannot see a sign of it.”

“Huh. Interesting. So now you’re saying it’s a homicide.”

“Yeah. Northern Station caught it, asked me to help.”

“Did ballistics get a hit on the round?” I asked.

“Before we could get the bullet to the lab, we got something better. At around the same time the roadkill dude took a slug to the eye, a liquor store owner was gunned down in an armed robbery.

“The liquor store surveillance tape shows the shooter is wearing tight black jeans and a black shirt and the exact same baseball cap as the one we found in the road. Black with an X,” Claire said.

“So local cops know the liquor store shooter and ID him. His street name is Crank, and he’s found at home, sleeping in his bed. Cops roust him and drag him into the station on the liquor store killing. Suddenly, Crank breaks down and then he starts to sing.”

“Oh, yeah? And what was the name of the tune?”

“Called it, ‘I shot the dude by accident, yo. I didn’t mean to do it, yo.’”

“Come on,” I said, laughing, digging into my chicken.

“I know, but this is true. Here’s what happened in the missing middle of the story,” Claire said. “There was a near-miss traffic accident.

“Crank is fleeing the liquor store homicide and cuts off this guy in a Honda Civic. Crank gets out to apologize to the Civic so the guy doesn’t call the cops, and Civic says to Crank, ‘You drive like a girl and you look like one, too.’ I guess it was the worst thing he can think to say.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, how’d he know he was going to hit a nerve? So Crank whips his gun out of the back of his jeans and says, ‘Well, this girl’s packin’,’ and he shoots the guy.”

“Oh, man.”

“Yeah. Somewhere in that shooting, his hat falls off, the one that was caught on tape in the robbery. If Crank hadn’t robbed that store, he would never have been caught for killing Civic.”

“He didn’t know his victim.”

“Bingo. Total stranger calls him a girly man. Bang.”

“And there you have an accidental shooting, yo.”

“And he blames the victim …”

Claire’s laugh cut off as she looked up at a spot right behind my shoulder. I turned, expecting to see Cindy. But it was Lorraine, coming to clear the table.

“You girls want coffee and dessert?” she asked.

“Hell, yes,” I said. “We’re eating for four.”

Lorraine laughed and read off the dessert menu. I picked chocolate mud pie, and Claire went for a spiced-apple tart.

I called Cindy while we were drinking our coffee and left her a snarky message. I left another one when we paid the check, and then my cell phone battery died.

I don’t know why, but I wasn’t worried about Cindy.

I should have been. But I never saw it coming.

Chapter 100

I GOT HOME at eight-something that evening, left my wet shoes on the doormat, and went inside. Martha came wiggling up to me, her fur still damp, and I bent to hug her and got my face washed for me.

I called out to Joe, “Hey, sweetie, thanks for walking Martha.”

I found him on the phone in the living room, teetering towers of papers stacked all around him. I heard him call the person on the phone “Bruno” and say something about containers, which meant he was talking to the director of Port of L. A. Security. This was Joe’s freelance job that was supposed to last a month but had been his steady paycheck for the better part of a year.

Joe waved at me, and I waved back and headed to the shower: a six-head, low-flow, spa-type contraption that made me feel like royalty. I took some time in what I liked to call the car wash, lathered my hair with a lavender shampoo I love, and let my mind drift in the steam.

I toweled off with a man-size bath sheet and threw on my favorite pj’s — blue flannel with clouds. Joe came in and hugged and kissed me and we got into it a little. Then Joe remembered and said, “Conklin called.”

“When was that?”

“Just before you came in.”

“Did he say what was up?”

“Nope. Just ‘tell Lindsay to call’ and ‘can you believe the Niners, that dumb play in the last quarter?’”

I said, “I’d better call him.”

Joe grabbed my ass and I smacked his. I wriggled out of his arms, saying, “Later, buddy.”

I called Conklin from the bedside phone.

He picked up on the first ring. “Cin?”

“It’s Lindsay,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I can’t reach her,” he said. “She’s not picking up, not returning my calls.”

I didn’t like the sound of his voice. He was scared, and that scared me.

“She didn’t show up to dinner, Rich. I called her a couple of times, left messages. Maybe her phone died. Did you try her at the office?”

“Yeah. I’ll try her there again.”

“Call me back.”

I was hunting for my softy spa socks when Conklin called again.

“I got her voice mail, Linds. This isn’t like Cindy. I called QT. I’m going over there.”

“What are you thinking?” I asked him.

“I’m thinking this is probably unfounded panic on my part and she’s going to be blistering mad. But what can I say? I love the girl.”

“I’ll see you at QT’s,” I said.

I took off my pj’s and hung them on a hook on the back of the bathroom door.

Chapter 101

I’D BEEN TO Quentin Tazio’s combination home and computer forensics lab many times, always when we were in a jam that required him to apply his skills in a strictly outside-the-box kind of a way.

His place is on Capp Street in the Mission, a former machine shop — squat, gray, two-story, and cement-faced with roll-up garage doors on the street level.

At nine-thirty at night, the streets were rockin’ with people going in and out of taquerias, galleries, restaurants, and bars. Traffic was clogged and impatient. A drunk peed against one of the young trees dotting the sidewalk.

As I parked my car parallel to Conklin’s, I told myself that Cindy was fine, that she’d just gotten involved in a story and lost track of the time. That said, Cindy pushed herself into ugly situations and always worked against her fear, a trait we shared. But there was a difference between us.

I was a trained cop with a gun and a badge and a department behind me. Cindy had a press pass and a BlackBerry.

I put an SFPD card on the dash, then went to the doorway and pressed the button next to Tazio’s name.

QT’s digitized voice came through the speaker, and a second later I was buzzed in.

I hooked a left at the end of a narrow hallway and stepped into a vast, cold space lit by the glow of plasma screens. Monitors hung edge-to-edge on the walls, a built-in desktop went around three sides of the space, and there was a staircase in the middle of the concrete floor that went up to QT’s living quarters.

Conklin called out to me and I crossed to the far side of the room, where he was standing behind QT.

“We’re getting somewhere,” Conklin said.

QT grinned up at me with his large, bright choppers. His bald head gleamed. His long white fingers spanned the curving keyboard. He was good-looking in a naked-mole-rat kind of way.

“Cindy has a GPS in her phone,” QT told me, “but it’s not sending a signal. It’s either turned off or underwater. I had to dump her phone logs to find her last ping.”

Dump her phone logs without a warrant, I thought. Whatever it took to find Cindy, to know that she was okay.

Peering over QT’s shoulder, I took in his computer screen, a map of San Francisco dotted with flags standing for cellular tower locations.

The best geek in the state of California clicked on an icon that stood for a tower in the Tenderloin. A circle appeared on the screen. He clicked on another tower, and then a third, and overlapping circles came up as he triangulated Cindy’s last cell phone signal. I saw one small irregular patch that was common to all three towers.

QT said, “I can get accuracy up to two hundred and fifty meters. The location of that last ping isn’t far from here. This is Turk,” QT said, pointing with the cursor.

“Turk and what?” Conklin asked, completely focused on the screen. “Turk and Jones?”

“Yeppers. You nailed it, Rich.”

“That’s where that cab company is.”

“What cab company?” I asked. “What’s this about?”

“Quick Express Taxi,” Quentin said, zooming in on the intersection, rolling his cursor over it.

“Her phone isn’t underwater,” Conklin said. “It’s underground.”

I didn’t understand any of this, but I read the urgency in my partner’s face.

“Let’s go,” he said to me.

Chapter 102

I’D GOTTEN INTO the passenger seat of Conklin’s unmarked car and barely closed the door when he jammed on the gas. The car leapt forward, slid sideways, then sent up a wake as we sped over the slick pavement.

Weaving around double-parked cars and inebriated pedestrians, Rich negotiated the six-minute drive through the traffic-choked streets toward an intersection in one of the roughest blocks in the Mission.

Conklin talked as he drove, telling me that Cindy had been poking around in taxi garages for a minivan cab with a movie ad on the side. So far, one vague sighting by one of the three rape victims was the slim and only clue to the identity of the rapist.

“She went to this hole-in-the-ground by herself on Monday,” Conklin said. “She talked to the day dispatcher. A guy name of Wysocki. If she came back today, it had to be to see him. What do you think, Lindsay? Has Cindy taken this investigative reporter crap too far? Am I wrong?”

I saw the blinking neon signs up ahead on Jones, QUICK EXPRESS TAXI and CORPORATE ACCOUNTS WELCOME. Conklin parked at the curb in front of the grimy storefront before I could answer him.

The dispatcher was in a glass booth, her cage separated from the street by a grill in the plate glass.

I showed her my badge and told her my name, and she said her name was Marilyn Burns. She was forty, white, and petite and dressed in a blue-checked shirt hanging out over her jeans. She wore a wedding band and had a smoker’s gravelly voice.

“I relieved Al right around six,” Burns told us through the grill. “He was in a hurry. Want me to call him? It’s not a problem.”

“Have you seen this woman today?” Conklin asked, pulling out a photo of Cindy from his wallet.

“No, I’ve never seen her.”

“Then, yes, call Al,” I told Burns.

Conklin and I heard her say, “Call me when you get this, Al. Police are looking for someone who might’ve come in on your shift. Girl with curly blond hair.”

The dispatcher put down the phone and said, “If you give me your number —”

“Okay if we take a look around?” Conklin said.

He didn’t phrase it as a question, and Burns didn’t take it as a request. She buzzed us into the grungy ground floor of Quick Express and said, “I’ll take you on the tour.”

Burns whistled up a cabbie to take over for her, and then the three of us walked between rows of parked cabs and past the ramp until we reached the stairs along the northern side of the building.

I asked Burns questions and answered a few of hers as Conklin flashed his light into cab interiors. She explained to me how the cab traffic worked inside the garage.

“Incoming cabs use their magnetic key card, enter the ramp on Turk,” she said. “Drivers leave their vehicles on one of the three floors, then walk up the stairs, hand me their logs and keys, and cash out.

“When they start a shift,” Burns went on, “it’s the other way around. They pick up their log sheets on main, go down the stairs, take a cab down the ramp to Turk, and use their card to get out. We have a freight elevator goes down to Turk, but it’s not working.”

“Can cabs come in and leave without you seeing them?”

“We’ve got security cameras,” she said. “They’re not NASA-grade, but they work.”

Taxis were parked on the perimeter and between the pillars on all three floors wrapping around the ramp in the center. We checked out minivan cabs and showed Cindy’s picture to a half dozen cabbies we met as we walked.

No one admitted to having seen Cindy.

I turned over various possibilities in my mind.

Had Cindy met someone here who had a story for her? Was she interviewing that someone in a coffee shop with her phone turned off? Or was she drugged in the backseat of a taxi, one of the thousands cruising the streets of San Francisco?

I was accustomed to Cindy getting between rocks and hard places and equally used to the idea that she could chop her way out. But a bad feeling was coming over me.

Cindy had been missing for more than three hours.

We kept saying, “If Cindy’s phone was turned off …”

But Cindy never turned off her phone. The last contact her phone GPS chip made was within two hundred and fifty meters of this building.

So where was she?

And if she wasn’t here, and her phone wasn’t turned off, where was she?

Where the hell had she gone?

Chapter 103

DISPATCHER MARILYN BURNS opened the stairwell door onto the lowest subterranean level, and Conklin and I were right behind her.

The windowless space was dark and dank and twenty-five feet underground. The fluorescent lighting was so dim, it didn’t illuminate the corners of the room.

I thought about the crap-quality surveillance cameras high up on the walls and pillars — they would record nothing but snow. I stood at the foot of the ramp and tried to get my bearings.

Beyond the ramp was a motion-sensor and the magnetic key card-operated garage door that opened onto Turk Street. Beside that exit was the industrial-size freight elevator with its door rolled down and a hand-lettered sign duct-taped to it reading, “Out of Service.”

To my right was the fire door to the stairwell we’d just come from. To my left was a door with another hand-lettered sign, this one marked “Storage.” It was faced with metal, and I could see a shiny new dead bolt from thirty feet away.

“What’s in that room?” I asked Burns.

“It’s empty now. We used to store parts in there,” she said, “but we moved the parts room to the main floor to cut down on thefts.”

I moved my flashlight beam across the door and under the surrounding taxis — and then I saw something that just about stopped my heart.

Under a cab, about fifteen feet from the storage room, was a collapsible umbrella. It was red with a bamboo handle. Cindy had an umbrella just like that.

My hands shook as I put on gloves and picked up the umbrella and handed it to Rich. “This had to have fallen out of a cab,” I said. “Doesn’t it look familiar?”

Conklin blinked at the umbrella, then said to Marilyn Burns, “You have the key to that storeroom?”

“Al keeps the keys. All of them. He manages this place.”

I opened my phone. The words “no signal” flashed. I told Rich and he said to Burns, “Go upstairs and call nine one one. Say officers need backup. Lots of it. Do it now.”

I held my light on the storage room door, and Conklin pulled his gun, aimed, and fired three shots into the lock.

The sounds of the three shots multiplied as the echoes ricocheted throughout the underground cavern. But we didn’t wait for the cracking booms to stop.

I took a stance behind Conklin. My gun was drawn as he pulled open the storage room door.

Chapter 104

IN THE SPLIT SECOND before my flashlight beam hit the room, pictures flashed through my mind of what I was afraid to find: Cindy lying dead on the floor, a man pointing a gun at my face.

I found the switch on the wall, and the lights went on.

The windowless room was a cube about twelve feet on all sides. Coils of ropes and tools hung from hooks on the walls. A dark-stained wooden worktable was in the center of the floor. Was this the rapist’s party room?

Was that blood staining the table?

I turned toward Rich, and that’s when I heard a muffled sneeze coming from outside the storage room.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

There was a second, more drawn-out sneeze, definitely female, followed by an unforgettable grinding of large gears and winches. That cacophony of midtwentieth-century machinery could only be coming from the out-of-service elevator — and it was on the move.

I ran to the elevator, mashed the button, but the car didn’t pause. Burns had told me that the only entrance to the freight elevator was right where we were standing and that the elevator emptied out onto Turk Street, three floors up.

Conklin beat on the elevator door with the butt of his gun, yelling, “SFPD! Stop the elevator!”

There was no answer.

I tried to make sense of what was happening.

No one could have gotten into that elevator since Conklin and I had come to Quick Express fifteen minutes before. Whoever was inside it had to have been inside it before we arrived.

Conklin and I stared at each other for a fraction of a second, then took off in tandem across the garage floor, heading toward the stairwell door.

I was right behind my partner as we raced up the stairs toward the light.

Chapter 105

THOSE SNEEZES had given me hope that Cindy was alive.

But Conklin and I had been unprepared for the elevator to start moving. If the car stopped between floors, if we got to the top floor and then the elevator descended, or if whoever was in the elevator beat us to the exit on Turk Street, we had very little chance of stopping him.

Conklin and I took the stairs two at a time, using the banisters to launch ourselves around corners. Conklin stiff-armed the NO EXIT fire door to Turk Street, and a piercing alarm went off.

I pounded behind him out onto the sidewalk, where I saw an assortment of law enforcement vehicles screaming onto Turk and Jones: fire trucks, cruisers, plainclothes detectives, and narcs pulling up in unmarked cars. Every law enforcement officer in the Mission had responded to the call.

I yelled out to two beat cops I knew.

“Noonan, Mackey, lock this garage down! No one comes in or goes out!”

Conklin was running up Turk toward the elevator exit, and I had to put on speed to catch up with him. He’d just reached the freight bay when the elevator door began to roll up.

A yellow cab was revealed by inches inside the mouth of the elevator. Conklin took a shooting stance square on the opening and was gripping his 9-millimeter with both hands when the cab rolled out of the elevator.

It was dark, but the driver and the backseat passenger were lit by headlights and streetlights. I could tell the passenger was Cindy from the light limning her curls.

The cab’s headlights were full-on.

There was no way the driver didn’t see Conklin.

Conklin yelled, “Police!” He shot out the left front tire, but the driver gunned the engine and the car leapt forward. Conklin was lit by the headlights, and yet the cab kept rolling, driving straight at him.

Conklin yelled, “Stop!” and then fired two shots high into the windshield. He jumped away in time to avoid being run down, but the cab kept moving, out of control now. It sideswiped a squad car on the far side of Turk, caromed off it, and plowed into a fire hydrant.

The cab rocked, then tipped, hanging on two wheels before settling down on all four. Water spewed. People screamed.

Conklin pulled at the passenger-side door, but he couldn’t get it open.

“I need help here!” he shouted.

The fire crew came with the Jaws of Life and wrenched open the back door. Cindy lay crumpled on the slanted floor of the cab, wedged between the backseat and the divider. Conklin leaned all the way in, calling her name.

“Rich, is she okay?” I yelled to him.

“She’s alive,” Conklin said. “Thank God. She’s alive.”

He hooked Cindy’s arms around his neck and pulled her out into the air. Cindy was fully dressed and I saw no blood. Conklin’s voice cracked as he said to her, “Cindy, it’s me. I’m right here.”

She opened her eyes halfway and said, “Heyyyyy.”

Conklin held her so tight, I thought he was going to crush the air right out of her.

And then her eyes closed and she started snoring softly, her cheek on his shoulder.

Chapter 106

MARILYN BURNS was screaming, “God, oh God, I can’t believe this. What happened?”

She peered between her fingers and identified the dead man with one neat hole in his forehead, another in his neck, as Albert Wysocki.

I joined Conklin as he helped the paramedics strap Cindy in and load the gurney into the ambulance. He was panting and he was pale, and I knew he wanted to go to the hospital with Cindy. But he’d shot a man. He had to follow protocol for a shooting that was witnessed by thirty law enforcement officers. Conklin would have to wait for the ME, the Crime Scene Unit, and Brady to arrive.

I touched his shoulder, and his eyes met mine. His expression was flat, drained of emotion.

I’ve done what he had done. I’ve felt the same adrenaline overload covering rage and fear and the emotional numbness of shock.

“Is Wysocki dead?” my partner asked me. “Did I kill him?”

“It was him or you, Richie. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“I’m glad I nailed the bastard.”

“Heeyyyy … Lindsayyyy,” Cindy called out to me from inside the ambulance.

“I’m right here, girlfriend,” I called back.

“You’ll go with Cindy to the hospital?” Conklin asked me.

I nodded and climbed up into the ambulance. I gripped Cindy’s hand and told her that I loved her and that everything was going to be okay.

“Did I get the story?” she asked me.

“You sure did.”

Conklin stood at the rear doors. He said, “Lindsay?”

“I’ll stay with her until you get to the hospital,” I said to him. “She’s going to be fine.”

Chapter 107

LIGHT FROM THE SUNRISE was streaking through the windows when I greeted Martha inside the front door. I stripped off my jacket, my holster, and my shoes, and tiptoed down the hall to the master bathroom. I stepped into the “car wash,” let it blast me pink, and then put on my cloudy blue pj’s that were on the hook behind the door where I’d left them what seemed like a year ago.

Déjà vu all over again.

When I edged under the covers, Joe woke up and opened his arms to me, and that was good, because I wanted to tell him everything that had happened since I’d called him from the hospital.

“Hey,” he said, kissing me. “How’s Cindy?”

“Honestly? It’s like it never even happened,” I told him. “She was asleep a minute after she got into the cab and woke up in a hospital bed five hours later.”

“Is she … all right?”

“He didn’t get around to raping her,” I said. “Thank God.”

I made myself comfortable under Joe’s arm, fitting my whole body tightly against him, my left leg over his, my left arm across his chest. “The doctor says she’ll be fine when the drugs wear off.”

“What did you find out about the bad guy?”

“He was some kind of lowlife freak, Joe. A friendless, unmarried, psychotic loner, fifty-five years old. He put in about eighteen hours a day in the Quick Express garage. Apparently he slept there in his car half the time.”

I told Joe that Wysocki had managed the place for some guy who lived in Michigan, so he had run of the place. Had the keys. Kept the log sheets. Ran the scheduling.

“No one questioned anything he did. And so he hangs an ‘Out of Service’ sign on the freight elevator, and that box becomes his own private real estate.”

“A big fish in a mud puddle,” said Joe.

“Exactly,” I said. “We found a date book in Wysocki’s jacket pocket. Actually had the words ‘Date Book’ inked on the cover. Inside, he’d written a list of his victims, six of them, and times, dates, places, what they were wearing.

“He had Cindy’s name in there,” I said. “Just made me sick to see her name written in that lineup.”

“He called it a date book?” Joe said. “So maybe he was acting like he was on a date.”

“That makes some kind of psycho sense, I suppose. He picks up a girl, drugs her. Drives her back to his little out-of-service boudoir. I’m guessing he waits until his victims are semiconscious, then rapes them before the drugs wear off. Oh, yeah. Always the gentleman, he drives them home — or to a nearby alley. Perfect evening for Al Wysocki. Doesn’t even have to send flowers the next day.”

“How’s Conklin doing?”

“Crazed. A wreck. He says to Cindy at the hospital, ‘Don’t you ever do that again.’ She says, ‘What? Catch a cab?’”

We both laughed.

My indomitable friend Cindy.

Joe turned onto his side and kissed me. I melted against him.

“I love you so much,” I said. “I think I loved you even before I met you.”

He laughed, but I saw that there were tears in his eyes.

Chapter 108

LOOKING INTO JOE’S EYES, I remembered the first time his baby blues locked on mine. We were working a case together. I was the lowest-ranking person there, and he was a top-of-the-heap Federal guy: Deputy Director of Homeland Security.

I liked his looks — his thick brown hair and solid build — and not only was he smart but he had an easy, confident manner, too.

He passed me his business card and touched my fingers, and we did a double take as electricity arced between us. It didn’t take long for us to get involved, but our sizzling new connection had been disrupted repeatedly and for months by missed planes and crossed schedules.

Joe lived in Washington, DC and I lived in the City by the Bay, and both of us had taken recent blows to the heart.

He’d been recovering from a savage divorce, and I was still suffering from the loss of someone close who had been shot and killed on the job.

Neither of us was prepared for the frustrating up-and-down year of long-distance dating that was later complicated even more by an insane — and unconsummated — crush between Conklin and me.

Through all of it, Joe had been a rock, and I’d hung in like I was clinging to a cliff by my fingernails. I knew what was good for me. And I loved Joe. But I couldn’t give myself over to the permanence of the relationship.

Finally Joe got tired of it. He called me out on my ambivalence. Then he quit his job and moved to San Francisco. Somehow, while negotiating the zigs and zags, we’d found ourselves in each other.

“I just love you so much,” I said to Joe. I kissed the corners of his eyes. He put his hand on my cheek, and I kissed his palm.

He said, “I love you almost too much, Linds. I can’t stand it when you’re not here and I’m lying in the dark, thinking about bullets coming at you. It’s terrible to have thoughts like that.”

“I’m very careful,” I said. “So don’t think about bullets.”

I bent to kiss him, my hair making a curtain around our faces. That kiss went deep and it stirred me up. Stirred Joe up, too.

We smiled as we looked into each other’s eyes. There were no walls between us anymore.

I said, “I sure would like to make a baby with you, Joe.”

I’d said it before. In fact, I’d said it every month for a while now. But right this minute, it was more than a good idea. It was an overwhelming desire to express my love for my husband in a complete and permanent way.

“You think I can make a baby on demand, Blondie?” Joe said, unbuttoning my pajama top. “You think a guy in his late forties can ‘just do it’? Hmmm?” He unknotted the tie on my drawstring pants and pulled the string as I unsnapped his drawers.

“Because, I think you could be taking me for granted. Maybe even taking advantage of me.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess I am.”

Joe’s hands on my breasts made my skin hot and my blood burn. I shrugged out of my flannels and lowered myself onto him.

“Go ahead,” I sighed. “Try and stop me.”

Chapter 109

IT WAS EARLY DECEMBER, about 10 p.m. on a damned cold night in Pacific Heights. Conklin and I were in an SFPD SUV, miked up, wearing our Kevlar and ready to go.

Six unmarked cars were parked here and there along the intersecting roadways of Broadway and Buchanan. Civilian vehicles provided cover for those of us on the ground.

Above and around us, snipers hid on the rooftops surrounding the eight-story Art Deco apartment building with its white-granite facade.

I’d been staring at that building for so long that I had memorized the brass-etched door, the ornate motifs and appointments, and the topiary boxwood and hedges between the side of the building and the street. I knew every line in the face of the liveried doorman, who was, in fact, Major Case lieutenant Michael Hampton.

There was a NO PARKING ANYTIME, NO LOADING zone in front of the building, and we could see every pedestrian walking past the door or going into the building.

If Major Case’s confidential informant was telling the truth, all of our planning and manpower would culminate in the takedown of a legendary bad guy.

If the CI was wrong, if someone blew the whistle and called the game, there was no telling when, or if, we’d ever get this opportunity again.

I stretched out one leg, then the other, to get the kinks out. Conklin popped his knuckles. My breath fogged out in front of my face. I would have given up half my pension for a cup of coffee, the other half for a chocolate bar.

At half past eleven, just when I thought I’d never be able to walk again, a long Cadillac limo pulled up in front of the apartment building. Adrenaline fired through my bloodstream, chasing out the cramps and the lethargy.

The “doorman” left his post and opened the door for the passengers. They had come from the opera and were dressed accordingly.

Nunzio Rinaldi, the third-generation capo of an infamous mob family, stepped out of the limo, wearing a smart black suit and a silver tie. He offered a hand to his wife, Rita, who had platinum-white hair you could have seen in a blackout. There was a high shine on the limo, and Rita Rinaldi’s jewels sparkled in the night.

As the Rinaldis stepped away from the car and moved toward the lavish vestibule of their apartment building, a slight man in a dun-colored hooded raincoat, carrying a shopping bag and walking a small Jack Russell terrier, rounded the corner.

I saw him only out of the corner of my eye — he was one pedestrian out of many, and there were also cars speeding across my sight line to the doorman. But suddenly the little dog was running free and the man had dropped the shopping bag and pulled a gun from inside his coat.

It happened so fast, I doubted my eyes. Then I saw streetlight glint on the gun barrel.

The gun was pointed at the Rinaldis.

I inhaled and yelled, “GUN!” into my mic, blowing out eardrums all along Broadway.

Chapter 110

AS I YELLED, Lieutenant Hampton lunged for the gunman. Bringing down his arm, he yanked and twisted the would-be shooter around and fell on top of him.

Three bullets were discharged. Pedestrians screamed, but almost before the echoes died, it was all over. The shooter was disarmed and down.

Conklin and I charged across the street and were there before the bracelets snapped shut. I was panting, standing over the hooded gunman as Hampton leaned down and said, “Gotcha, you bastard. Thanks for making my day.”

A few feet away, Rita Rinaldi pressed her bejeweled hands to her cheeks and wailed. She had to be thinking that the men in black had come for her husband.

Nunzio Rinaldi put his arms around his wife and said to Conklin, “What the hell is this? Who is that man?”

Conklin said, “Sorry for the commotion, Mr. Rinaldi, but we had to save your life. We had no choice.”

But I had questions, and maybe I’d get some answers, too.

I ripped off the gunman’s hood, grabbed a thin tuft of silver-brown hair, and lifted his head clear off the pavement.

He looked at me, his gray eyes glinting with amusement, a smile on his lips.

“What’s your name?” I said, although I was sure I already knew. The face matched the fuzzy picture of the man sitting in an SUV with a Candace Martin look-alike.

He had to be Gregor Guzman. Had to be.

I’d read up on Guzman and learned that he was born in Cuba in 1950 to a Russian father and Cuban mother. He’d left home in a stolen fishing boat in the late ’60s, and after landing in Miami, he’d made himself useful to organized guys in the drug trade. Later on, he carved out a career for himself as an independent assassin for hire on three continents.

That grainy picture of Guzman, or someone who looked a lot like him, had launched a fresh search for him. His picture was at airport security checkpoints, on BOLO alerts, in FBI agendas, and on my desktop.

Did we have him?

Was this the man who had met with Ellen Lafferty a few weeks before Dennis Martin was killed? Had Caitlin Martin really killed her father? Or had this hired killer had a hand in Dennis Martin’s death?

“You tell me your name, and I’ll tell you mine,” Guzman said.

“Sergeant Boxer,” I said. “SFPD.”

“Nice to meet you, pretty lady,” the killer said.

Sure. He was going to tell me everything, right here on the street. Hardly. I released my grip on his hair and his head dropped to the sidewalk.

I stood by as Lieutenant Hampton arrested Guzman and read him his rights.

Chapter 111

GREGOR GUZMAN had been charged with the attempted murder of Nunzio Rinaldi, but even if convicted, it wasn’t enough to lock him up forever. That’s why law enforcement agents from Bryant Street to Rio de Janeiro were digging up charges to throw at him, hoping they had enough Krazy Glue to make something stick.

By just after two in the morning, Guzman had a lawyer and had been interrogated by Lieutenant Hampton. When he spoke, it was only to say, “You’ve got nothing on me,” even though he’d been caught with his loaded semiauto pointed at Nunzio Rinaldi.

Lieutenant Hampton wasn’t bothered by Guzman at all.

Hampton had a lot to show for his work. He’d used the intel, set the trap, and had physically taken the hit man down. It looked like a guaran-damn-teed indictment. And now that we had him, we had his fingerprints, his DNA, and the possibility of linking him to unsolved crimes going back thirty years.

But I was more concerned about a crime that had happened just over a year ago.

I knocked on the glass window of the interview room.

Hampton came out to the hallway, ran his hand across the stubble on his head, and said, “Okay, Lindsay, I’m done. I’ll stay with you if you like, and back you up.”

It had been a long month and a longer night, and Hampton was ready to go home to his wife, but he held the door, followed me into the interview room, and said, “Sergeant Boxer, you’ve met Mr. Guzman?”

I said, “Yep, it was a pleasure.”

“Pleasure was all mine,” Guzman said in his oily voice.

“This is Mr. Ernesto Santana. Attorney-at-law,” said Hampton.

I said hello to Guzman’s lawyer, pulled out a chair, and dropped a file folder down on the table. I opened the cover to the short stack of 8 x 10 photos I had brought over from the squad room.

“Who do you have to screw around here to get coffee?” Guzman asked. No one answered.

I said, “Mr. Guzman, we’re charging you with first-degree murder in the death of Dennis Martin.”

“Who?” Guzman said. “Who the hell is that?”

“Dennis Martin,” I said, showing him the ME’s shot of the dead man lying in the foyer of his multimillion-dollar house, blood forming a dark lake around his body.

“I’ve never seen that guy in my life,” Guzman said.

I took out another photo of Dennis Martin. In this shot, Martin was alive and well on a sailboat, his full head of hair blowing back from his handsome features. A pretty redhead by the name of Ellen Lafferty was under his arm.

“Maybe you recognize him alive,” I said.

I thought I saw recognition flicker in Guzman’s eyes. His irises contracted.

“I still don’t know him,” he said. “Look. Ernie. Do I have to sit here, or can I go to my cell?”

I noted the slight Spanish accent, the well-tended hands, the aggression he didn’t bother to hide.

Santana said, “Sergeant, this isn’t evidence. It’s nothing. So, what’s this about? I don’t get it.”

“See if you get it now,” I said. I took out one of Joseph Podesta’s surveillance photos of Ellen Lafferty in a blond wig, sitting in an SUV with Guzman.

The Cuban peered at the picture. Smiled. Said, “Coffee first.”

Hampton sighed. “How do you like it?”

“Con leche,” Guzman said. “No sugar. Served by a topless girl, preferably blond.”

Chapter 112

TEN LONG MINUTES went by. I sat staring across the table at a piece-of-garbage contract killer while the killer looked at me and smiled. Just as I was ready to get him his damned coffee myself, the door opened and a cop came in, put a paper cup of milky coffee in front of Guzman, adjusted the camera over the door frame, and left.

Guzman took a sip, then turned the photo I’d brought so that he could see it better.

“Very bad quality,” he said.

“Not so bad,” I said. “Our software matched it to your spanking-new mug shot.”

“Okay, I was sitting in a car with a lady. What the hell is that? You want to charge me with being heterosexual? I plead guilty as charged to liking girls. Ernie, do you believe this?”

“Let’s hear them out,” Santana said.

“The woman in this picture is Dr. Candace Martin,” I said. “And she paid you, Mr. Guzman, to kill her husband. I think she’ll be happy to identify you and cut a better deal for herself.”

Sure, I was lying, but that was strictly within the law. Guzman called me on it — as I hoped he would.

“That’s not Candace Martin,” he said.

“This is Dr. Martin, Guzman. The widow Martin. We both know who she is.”

Guzman drank down his coffee, crumpled the paper cup, and said to his lawyer, “I didn’t kill Dennis Martin. They’re screwing with me. I’ll tell them what I know about it if they drop the charges in this attempted rubout.”

“Drop the charges? Are you nuts?” I said. “We’ve got a witness to the shooting. We’ve got photographic evidence linking you to the woman who hired you to do the hit. And we’ve got a dead body. And since we’ve got you for the attempt on the life of Mr. Rinaldi, we’ve got time to fill in the blanks.”

“You should be an actress, lady. You’ve got nothing.”

I took back the pictures, closed the folder, and said, “Gregor Guzman, you’re under arrest for the murder of Dennis Martin. You have the right to remain silent, as your attorney will tell you.”

Anger crossed Guzman’s face. He looked like he was going to spring across the table, all one hundred and forty pounds of him. I imagined the punch I’d throw if I had the chance.

“Don’t say anything else, Gregor,” said the attorney, putting a hand on his client’s arm.

“Don’t worry about it, Ernie. This is all crap.”

“So straighten me out,” I said. I clasped my hands on top of the folder.

“I can straighten you out, Sergeant Boxer, but I’m not doing it to hear the sound of my voice. I want this crappy murder charge dropped.”

“We’ll consider doing that if you point us to Dennis Martin’s killer,” I said, “and we can prove who did it.”

“Look. I didn’t kill Martin. You’ll never connect me to that killing, and I’m not going to do your job for you, lady. I’m willing to trade information so that I don’t get wrongfully convicted by an unsympathetic jury. That’s it. That’s what I’m willing to do.”

“Okay. Done,” I said to Guzman. “Tell me what you’ve got, and if I like your story, I won’t charge you.”

Santana said, “Sergeant, no offense. If you want Mr. Guzman to give you information leading to the arrest of this man’s killer, we want an agreement in writing. From the DA.”

“It’s two-thirty in the morning,” I said.

“Take your time,” said the lawyer. “We can wait.”

My dad used to say you have to “strike while the iron is hot.” Well, my iron was sizzling.

“I’m here and you’re here,” I said. “I’ll rouse someone from the DA’s Office.”

Chapter 113

YUKI ANSWERED HER PHONE on the first ring.

“He’s primed and the grill is hot,” I said. “You’re going to want to hear this.”

“Just marinate him a little. I’m bringing my appetite,” she said.

An hour later, I brought ADA Yuki Castellano into the interview room on the third floor of the Hall.

Ernesto Santana stood and shook her hand, and Lieutenant Hampton did the same. Guzman groused to Yuki, “You seriously work for the DA? How old are you? Twelve?”

“Old enough to have been certified in spotting bull,” she said. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

I took the photos out of the folder again, and Guzman said, “This girl — I don’t remember her name — she’s the one who tried to hire me. She’s connected back east. She contacted me through channels. I said I’d meet her.

“She was wearing a blond wig,” he went on. “I know because I saw long red hair coming out the back of that thing. She brought an envelope of small bills, tens and twenties. About a thousand bucks. She wanted me to take out the doctor. Candace Martin.”

“You’re saying she ordered a hit?”

“Yeah. She brought money and a picture.”

I found Guzman more believable than I’d found Ellen Lafferty, who’d insisted she’d been doing an errand for Dennis Martin. That she didn’t know who Guzman was. That she didn’t know what was in the envelope.

“Go on,” I said.

“I said to this chick, ‘Thanks, but you’re crazy. I don’t know where you got my name from, but this is not exactly my line of work.’”

“Okay, Mr. Guzman. We’ll check out your story.”

“Check it out?” he said. “Check out what? You think that bitch is going to admit to wanting to have the doctor whacked? Candace Martin is alive, right? What more proof do you need?”

“Ms. Castellano,” I said. “Have you got enough to charge Ellen Lafferty with solicitation of first-degree murder?”

“I do, indeed,” she said. “And I’ll be following up on that in the morning. Mr. Santana, I’ll shelve the murder charge against your client for now. Sleep tight, Mr. Guzman.”

Chapter 114

YUKI AND I left the Hall together in silence. We briefly clasped hands in the elevator, then walked out to Yuki’s Acura parked outside the ME’s office. We got into her car and sat staring out at the dim streetlight in the parking lot.

I was thinking that I’d gone way over the line. That Brady was going to nail my hide to the squad room door if this plan of mine didn’t pay off, and maybe even if it did. I’d gone above, around, and behind my superior in investigating the Martin case, and saying “I was working on my own time” sounded lame, even to me.

Yuki was lost in her own thoughts.

I was about to break the silence and ask her to talk to me, when a car door slammed on the far side of the lot. I looked over my shoulder.

“Okay, she’s here,” I said.

A minute later, the back door opened and Cindy slipped into the backseat.

“I can’t believe Richie let you out at four in the morning,” Yuki said.

“Let me? Very funny. What have we got?”

I filled Cindy in on the fake charge we’d dropped on Guzman for the murder of Dennis Martin, and I told her what he’d told us: that Ellen Lafferty tried to hire him to kill Candace Martin and that he’d kicked young Ms. Lafferty to the curb.

“He was credible?”

“He was motivated to be credible.”

“Nice work, Linds,” Cindy said. “But what do we have to show for it?”

“I think we can eliminate Guzman as a suspect in Dennis Martin’s death.”

“Agreed.”

I said, “Ellen lies as easily as she breathes. If she knew that Caitlin was being molested, what did she do to stop it?”

“Do you seriously think Ellen killed Dennis?” Yuki asked.

“She had the means, the motive, and the opportunity,” I said. “And she’s smart in a vicious, clueless, stupid kind of way.”

Cindy said, “She didn’t have the opportunity to kill Dennis. Her alibi checks out for the time of the murder. Rich and I went to see her last night.

“Ellen told us that she left the Martin house at six p.m. — exactly what she’s maintained since the murder. She texted her friend Veronica from six until she met up with her at six-fifteen. She showed us a record of text messages that fill her window of opportunity.”

Cindy went on, “Ellen’s friend Veronica verifies that they met for dinner at Dow’s at six-fifteen, and the waiter remembers the time, because their table wasn’t ready. And he remembers the two of them because they were hot and flirting with two guys who were sitting next to them at the bar.

“Ellen picked up the bar tab at six-thirty-two,” Cindy said, “and he has her signature on the credit-card receipt.”

“Okay, so moving past Ellen Lafferty, what about Caitlin?” I asked Yuki. “Did she take her father’s gun and shoot him?”

“I’m talking to her court-appointed shrink in, uh, five hours. I’ll let you know what he says.”

I said to Cindy, “I don’t need to say, ‘Sit on this until we say go,’ do I?”

“I haven’t got a story yet anyhow.”

“You sure don’t.” I grinned, slapping her a high five.

Yuki leaned forward and started the engine. Cindy and I reached for our door handles.

Yuki said, “Linds. I’ve been so sure Candace killed Dennis. If Caitlin hadn’t confessed in open court to shooting her father, I think I would have gotten the doctor convicted. It scares me. What if I’ve been wrong?”

Chapter 115

OVERRIDING THE PROTEST from the director of security at Metropolitan Hospital, Conklin and I took the two empty seats at the back of an amphitheater above an operating room.

The room was packed with interns and specialists. Two monitors showed close-ups of the operating table fifteen feet below, and cameras exported streaming video to medical people all over the country who wanted to see Candace Martin perform heart surgery on Leon Antin, a legendary seventy-five-year-old violinist with the San Francisco Symphony.

The patient was draped in blue, his rib cage separated and his heart open to the bright lights. Candace Martin was accompanied by other doctors, nurses, and an anesthesiologist operating the cardiac-bypass machine.

A young intern sat to my right, Dr. Ryan Pitt, according to the ID tag pinned to his pocket, and he was currently bringing me up to speed.

According to Pitt, this was a complex operation under any circumstances, but even more so because of the patient’s age.

Pitt said, “The surgery is not going to improve his longevity by much — he’s an ASA class four. That’s high-risk. But the patient wanted his chance now that Dr. Martin was available. He just wanted his friend to do the surgery. Only her.”

Pitt explained that in the previous three hours, two of Antin’s veins had been harvested from his thighs and three of four grafts had been implanted into the coronary arteries. Dr. Martin was stitching in the last implant now.

I was staring at the screen above my head when I saw the medical personnel suddenly become highly agitated. Green lines jumped on the monitors below, and Candace Martin began shouting at the anesthesiologist while massaging Antin’s heart with her hands.

I said to the intern, “What is this? What’s going on?”

Pitt spoke pure medicalese, but I got the drift. The patient’s heart was beat-up and worn out, and it refused to work anymore. Dr. Martin was spraying curses all around the operating room, but she wasn’t giving up.

Needles went into IVs. Paddles were applied to Antin’s exposed heart, and then, once again, Candace Martin massaged the heart with her hands, begging her friend to stay with her. Demanding it.

After it was clear, even to me, that the patient wasn’t coming back, a nurse pulled Candace away, and a doctor pronounced the time of the patient’s death.

Candace ripped off her mask and made a rapid and direct line for the door. The video cameras blinked off.

I heard my name, turned toward the exit, and saw the security director beckoning to Conklin and me.

Security said, “Can I see that warrant again, please?”

Conklin took it out of his inside jacket pocket. The security chief read it and said, “Dr. Martin is in the locker room. Please follow me.”

We found Candace Martin still in her bloody scrubs, sitting on a bench, staring at a wall of lockers. I asked her to stand up, and she looked at me as though she didn’t recognize me. Conklin showed her the warrant and told her we were taking her into custody for the murder of her husband.

All the fight seemed to have gone out of her.

Chapter 116

YUKI AND I sat across a small metal table from Candace Martin and Phil Hoffman. Hoffman looked as he always did: contained, dressed for a press conference at a moment’s notice. Candace Martin looked like she’d been dragged by her hair through hell.

I was angry, feeling the calm before an emotional storm, pissed off at myself for the first time since Hoffman buffaloed me into getting involved in this case. But I’d done it, believed Candace Martin’s lies, and if I didn’t want to be patrolling the Mission in a squad car for the next year, I had to make this mess turn out right.

Yuki said, “Dr. Martin, it’s over. We’ve spoken with Caitlin’s shrink. She has recanted her testimony. She said she didn’t kill her father. She said that her father forced himself on her, yes. But she said you did the shooting.

“The People are ready to proceed with your trial, or you can tell us what really happened.”

Hoffman said, “I need to consult with my client. And she needs a little time to get her wits together. She’s suffering a grave personal loss.”

I was almost lit up with fury, the fighting-mad kind that you can control but just don’t want to. I said, “Phil, you have lied to me, your client has lied to me, and she tried to get us to look at an innocent person for murder.

“Ask me how much I care about her personal loss. Not. At. All. This woman killed her husband. She’s cooked, and this is her only chance to make a deal.”

Candace was shaking her head, her face contorted in pain. “You don’t understand.”

I was unmoved.

Yuki said, “Phil. The judge gave us sixty days to determine whether or not the People wish to try your client. This is day fifty-seven. On Monday, we either tell Judge LaVan that the defendant pleads guilty or we go back to trial.

“The children will not be in court, but Caitlin’s shrink will be standing by, and if you so much as hint that Caitlin killed her father, Dr. Rosenblatt will play the tape of Caitlin’s recantation for the jury.

“So, Dr. Martin,” Yuki said, “it’s us or the jury. Take your pick. Honestly, I think your odds are better with us.”

“Candace,” Hoffman said, “it’s your decision.”

“I’m tired, Phil,” she said. And then she was sobbing.

Phil nodded and handed her a tissue.

Candace dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose, and said, “Phil, I’m sorry I lied to you. I did it to protect my children. They don’t have anyone but me.”

“Let’s hear it,” Yuki said.

Chapter 117

CANDACE MARTIN SAID, “You want me to say I shot Dennis? I did. After years of torture, that bastard finally pushed me over the edge.”

“What edge is that?” I asked her.

The doctor’s eyes were flaming red. Her fingers shook and her voice wavered. The composed surgeon I’d met in this room back in October had been swapped out for a woman who still looked like her but was emotionally broken and ready to tell the truth.

“On the night in question, I was in my home office,” she said. “Ellen had left for the evening and a little while later, I heard a muffled shout. It could only be Caitlin. I got up from my desk and ran down the hallway in time to see Dennis coming out of her bedroom.

“He didn’t look right,” Candace said. “He jumped when he noticed me. Then he screamed at me, ‘Don’t sneak up on me like that.’”

“I didn’t even have a chance to answer before Caitlin ran out of her bedroom and into my arms. She was naked. She was flushed and crying and the insides of her thighs were wet. She cried, ‘Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,’ the most savagely sad cries I’ve ever heard.

“She’d been raped,” Candace said, her face radiating horror. “My husband had done this to my little girl.”

Neither Yuki nor I moved or said a word, and then Candace continued.

“I held her and told her that I loved her and always would. I told her to shower and get dressed, that I’d be right back. And then I ran back down the hallway to the bedroom I shared with Dennis — and he was there, stuffing cash into his wallet, and he said, ‘Don’t believe what she tells you. Caitlin lies.’

“Dennis picked up his car keys and left the bedroom,” Candace said. “He had cheated on me for years, but whenever I tried to leave him, he said he would take the children and prove that I was an unfit mother. I knew that he would try. Even though he was never home, even though he was a horrible parent. I knew he would find a way to take them, just to make sure I didn’t get them.

“He must not have heard me come home that evening. He was raping her while I was actually in the house. How could he have done that?

“I hated myself for missing the signs. But I hated Dennis more. I couldn’t let him get away with what he’d done. I ran back to my office and grabbed my gun.”

Candace’s voice ran out and she just sat there, hands propping up her head, staring hard at the table, silent.

Phil went to the door of the interview room and opened it. I heard him ask someone to bring water.

As we waited, I went back over the pictures Candace had painted in my mind. I could see everything as if I’d been there myself and witnessed the horror.

It all rang true, but I still had questions.

Chapter 118

PHIL BROUGHT BOTTLES of water into the room and set them down on the table. Candace’s hand shook violently as she drank down half of one of the bottles. After that, she told Phil that she was all right and wanted to go on. She continued her story of betrayal in the first degree.

“Dennis was heading toward the front door and I was right behind him, screaming at him to stop, calling him names, but he just lowered his head and kept going.

“I had no plan to kill him. You have to believe that. I only wanted to stop him. All I could think about was that he had raped my child, his own daughter. And I didn’t want him to ever do it again.”

“What happened next, Candace?” I asked.

Candace had fallen down a tunnel of memory. I repeated my question and she returned to her story.

“I was charging after Dennis, but as I passed Caitlin’s room, she ran out to me and grabbed me by the waist again.

“I comforted her, but Dennis kept taunting me. He turned to me in the foyer and said that Caitlin was lying, that her hysteria was make-believe. I knew what he’d done. I knew full well what he had done to my little girl.

“He saw the gun in my hand, and I remembered that I was holding it. I said, ‘Stay where you are. I’m calling the police.’

“He laughed at me. I lifted the muzzle and aimed the gun at him, and for the first time since I’d met Dennis, I saw fear in his face — but only for a second. I shot him twice, once while he was standing, once when he was down.

“Caitlin was holding on to me, screaming and crying, and then Duncan was there, too. He saw his father lying dead on the floor. I put Caitlin aside and swept Duncan up, carried him to the foot of the stairs, and told him to run up to Cyndi’s room and stay there.”

Candace came back to the present and she spoke directly to me.

“Sergeant, it had all become quite clear to me — I had to protect those children. If not me, then who?

“I went to the foyer and picked up the gun. After that, I called nine one one. When the police came, I said that an intruder had broken into the house and had killed my husband. They tested my hands for gunpowder. I told them I had opened the front door and fired after him. They brought me here. You know the rest.

“I’m sorry that it happened this way, but in that moment, I acted on pure instinct. I couldn’t let Dennis live in the same world with Caitlin.”

Chapter 119

YUKI AND I walked Candace back to the beginning of her story, and she filled in the sickening gaps. She said that Dennis Martin was a degenerate womanizer and a stalker with a well-honed gift for emotional abuse but that he had a good reputation in the community and was well spoken. Candace said she was convinced that in a divorce trial she wouldn’t have gotten custody of the kids.

Dr. Martin said, “Had I known that he was abusing Caitlin before that moment, I would have taken her and Duncan and called the police. I would not have let my children see him die.”

After Candace was locked up and Phil was on his way home to Oakland, Yuki and I gathered our notes and collected the videotapes. And then we were alone.

I said, “That was the worst.”

“Awful. If the jury had heard it, even if they thought she was guilty, they might have let her off so she could be there for her kids.”

“Caitlin told her shrink that Dennis had been raping her?”

“Yes. I didn’t see any point in telling Candace that it had been going on for quite a while.”

“What are you going to recommend?”

“Damned if I know,” Yuki said.

She hurried upstairs to confer with Red Dog and I went down four flights to see Jacobi, my former partner, my longtime friend, and now the chief of police.

Jacobi cracked open a couple of Coke cans, and after I brought him up to the minute on Candace Martin, he said, “What’s Yuki thinking?”

“She and Parisi are chewing it over right now. Brady is going to bust me back to the beat,” I said. “I couldn’t let this case go.”

“You want me to talk to him?”

“Yeah. Would you?”

Jacobi nodded his head and began tapping on the desk. He kept it up until under my prompting to just spit out whatever he was thinking, he said, “Lindsay, a message was forwarded to me this morning. It’s not good news.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s about your father.”

“My father?”

“He died back in August. The pension people just got the word. I’m sorry, Linds.”

I said, “No,” and stood up, surprised that I felt light-headed, that my legs didn’t want to hold me up. I grabbed the back of the chair for support. I thought about how Marty Boxer was hardly a father. In fact, I wasn’t sure that he had even loved me. Had I loved him?

The next thing I knew, Jacobi had come around his desk and put his arms around me, and I was getting tears on his jacket.

“I wanted to be the one to tell you. He didn’t ditch you at your wedding, my friend. He had a heart attack. He was already gone.”

Chapter 120

CLAIRE’S HOME in Mill Valley is a dream of a house: wood-paneled inside with trusses and beams in the cathedral ceiling, stone floors throughout the open space, and a two-story fireplace. The bedrooms all have mountain vistas, and the patio has a multimillion-dollar view of a great, green, tree-studded lawn.

Edmund Washburn, a big teddy bear of a man, had fired up the barbecue, and Joe, Brady, and Conklin were horsing around with a football on the grass.

Yuki, Cindy, Claire, and I reclined on teak lounge chairs under woolly blankets, and baby Ruby slept in her rocking seat at Claire’s elbow.

A Mozart symphony was pouring out of the Bose, and Yuki was staring at the guys on the field, at Brady in particular, and she finally said, “I’m a goner. I just thought you ladies would like to know. I’m a very moony lady. Over my head for Jackson Brady.”

We laughed out loud — couldn’t help ourselves. Yuki wanted to be in a relationship and it looked like she was in one with my lieutenant.

Brady saw her watching him, tossed the football aside, and ran toward us. He grabbed Yuki out of the chair, hoisted her over his shoulder, and made a run for the space between the two saplings that marked the goal line.

Yuki shrieked and kicked melodramatically as Brady did the happy dance around the trees, then put Yuki on her feet and kissed her. With their arms around each other, they came back to the patio, laughing.

Man. They were disgustingly happy.

But I didn’t begrudge Yuki a bit of it. Between Yuki and Jacobi, Brady had let my end run fade without so much as a wrist slap.

Damn. It was good to have friends.

Joe called my name. He had the ball, so I stood, ran out, and waved my hands in the air until he tossed it to me. Cindy threw off her blanket and went for a pass, doing some little moves with her hips that had never before been seen in football.

I threw the ball to her, a surprisingly tight spiral, if I do say so, and she whooped and yelled as she caught it. Conklin came off the sidelines and chased and tackled her, and then, even though I didn’t have the ball, Joe tackled me. He tucked me under his body and rolled with me so that I landed on top of him, never even touching the ground.

We were all acting like a bunch of kids. And you know what? We needed to be kids. It was wonderful to just laugh our heads off. That’s what I was thinking when a minute later Brady came over to me at the barbecue and pulled me aside. He leaned toward me, close enough to whisper in my ear.

He said, “For insubordination, Boxer, you’re on night shift for the next six weeks.”

It sucked, but I knew he was right. I had broken the rules.

What could I say? “Okay, Lieutenant, I understand.”

Chapter 121

WE ATE like we never expected to eat again.

When Joe’s secret-sauced ribs had been picked clean, the salad had been reduced to a film of olive oil in the bowl, and all that remained of the baked potatoes was a pile of foil in the recycle bin, we went inside the house.

Claire busted out the cake while Edmund popped the top on the Krug. It was one of the best champagnes, at least a hundred bucks a bottle.

“Introducing my original white-chocolate cheesecake with cream cheese and orange slices between the layers,” Claire said, putting it down on the dining room table. “Baked sour cream frosting, and Grand Marnier in a graham cracker crust. Voilà! I hope you like it.”

The applause was spontaneous and rousing, and I was pushed forward so that I could be next to my best friend. There were ten candles on the cake, standing for the tenth anniversary of the first time Claire and I met.

It had been a memorable occasion: It was my first week in Homicide, and Claire was the low woman on the totem pole in the ME’s Office. We’d been called to the men’s jail. A skinhead was down, three hundred pounds of swastika tattoos and muscle, wedged under his bunk and handcuffed. Not breathing.

The guard outside was in a high panic. He had cuffed the inmate and put him in his cell because the inmate was out of control, and now he was dead.

“He couldn’t find the keys to the cuffs,” Claire said. “And we couldn’t turn the body over.”

Claire was laughing as I told about her locking her kit outside the cell, then dropping her camera so hard she cracked the lens.

“And so Claire bends down for her camera, and I back into the guy’s toilet, which sends me down,” I said. “I reach out to grab on to something — anything — and end up grabbing his still under the sink. And the hooch sloshes all over me. I mean all over.”

Edmund has this big laugh: “Hah-hah-hah.”

He was pouring champagne into the good crystal glasses. I started to lift my flute of bubbly, but put the glass down.

Claire was snickering now, and Yuki’s trilling laugh was sounding the high notes.

“We get back to the morgue,” Claire continued, “stinking of hooch.”

“Disgusting,” I said. “But it was a no-brainer what killed him.”

“No-brainer?” said Claire. “No-brainer for you. I’m the one stuck with doing the post while you go home and change your clothes.”

“He OD’d?” Brady asked.

“Didn’t take much,” Claire said. “If you’re distilling hooch in tin cans — and he was — it turns to methanol. Three ounces’ll kill you dead.”

“I can’t hear that story too many times,” Cindy said, laughing.

She plucked the candles out of the cake one at a time and licked the bottoms clean, making Conklin shake his head and laugh.

Yuki brought out the plates and forks, and Edmund handed me my sleeping goddaughter, Ruby Rose Washburn, a child as cute as ten buttons.

Claire hugged me tight, the baby between us.

“Happy anniversary, Linds,” said my best friend.

I had a lot of thoughts, and images came to me of a lot of murders and late nights working with Claire to solve them. It had been trial by fire every single time.

“And many more years together, girlfriend,” I said.

We were still laughing an hour later, and then it was time to go. After I’d hugged and kissed all my buds good night — and yes, even my fine lieutenant — Joe and I headed back to town.

It was wonderfully peaceful inside that car.

I said to Joe, “It was hard not to tell anyone.”

“I know. But let’s keep it to ourselves for now, Blondie.”

My handsome husband shot me a smile. Patted my thigh.

“Six weeks on night duty, huh?” he said.

“I dissed the lieutenant. I deserve it. Still, I did the right thing.”

“I’m going to have the whole bed to myself for forty-two nights. And here I am, married at last.”

“We can fool around when I get in at eight-thirty a.m.,” I said.

I leaned over and kissed Joe’s cheek as we took a turn onto Lake Street. Centrifugal force and a whole lot of love glued us together.

“Whoaaaaaa!” I squealed.

Damn, I was happy.