11th hour

Chapter 11

I spent the day working both cases.

I’d ransacked the missing-persons databases for a match to our long-haired Jane Doe. After that, Brady and I checked names of cops who had access to the property-room floor and compared those cops’ time sheets with the times drug dealers had been killed with one of our vouchered-and-stolen. 22s.

The list of cops was very long and Brady was still working on the project when I left him.

I got back to the Ellsworth compound as the sun was setting, flying pink flags over the bay. TV satellite vans were double-parked along Vallejo, their engines running and their lights on. Talking heads were using the compound as a backdrop for their on-air reports.

Reporters shouted my name as I went through a gap in the barricade. A lot of our local media knew me. One of them was my close friend Cindy Thomas, who called me on my phone.

I didn’t pick up. I couldn’t talk to Cindy right now.

Conklin came toward me, then walked me back through the front gate.

“It’s been crazy,” he said. “I’ve become the go-to person. The press is barking and I don’t have a bone to throw them. Brian Williams called me. How’d he get my number?”

“No kidding. NBC Nightly News Brian Williams? What did you tell him?”

“Ongoing case. No comment at this time. Call Media Relations.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, and ‘I love your work.’”

I laughed.

Conklin said, “But seriously, Lindsay, if we don’t give Cindy something newsworthy, my home life is going to suck. She was on the scene before we were, you know?”

“Hey, here’s news: Brady gave us the green light. This is officially our case now.”

The Ellsworth garden had been transformed while I was out. An evidence tent had been set up just off the patio, rolls of brown paper had been unfurled over pathways, and a grid of crime scene tape had been stretched across the garden.

I saw several new holes. Soil had been piled on tarps, and halogen lights were on. But even with the halogens, there wouldn’t be enough light to work the scene once the sun had set; the forensics team would have to quit for the night so that evidence didn’t get lost or trampled.

God help us if it rained.