11th hour

Chapter 82

While Conklin brought Connie Kerr to booking, I invited Frank Cisco to the break room for leftover cookies and stale coffee. He accepted.

We were alone for the moment, sitting across from each other at an old table, and what had started as a consultation suddenly felt like a therapy session. I guess that’s because after Jacobi and I got shot on Larkin Street, I’d had to see Frank for a couple of months or lose my job.

I’d been furious that the department sent me to a shrink to determine my mental fitness, but even though I was insulted, I had gotten a lot from my sessions with Frank. Actually, he was a great therapist.

Now he asked me, “What’s going on with you, Lindsay?”

“I’m pregnant,” I said.

“Heyyy. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

I dipped my head. I didn’t want to tell him that Joe had cheated on me, that I had thrown him out, that working non-stop meant I didn’t have to concentrate on how I was going to provide for my baby without my husband.

“Oh, man. If you could see your face. I gotta ask again. What’s going on, Lindsay?”

Frickin’ mind reader.

“This case,” I said, “is a bear. We’ve got seven victims, their heads buried on the property of a big movie star, and we can’t find the bodies. Were they murdered? Or is this a very creepy art installation? We don’t know.

“And here’s what else is strange, Frank. With all the publicity this case has generated, no one is banging at our door asking, Is my daughter one of those victims?”

“That is remarkable,” Frank said.

“We’re going to close this case. We’re determined to do it. But the real pressure inside the SFPD is about the shooter cop.”

Frank sighed, ran his hands through his hair, said again, “Oh, man.”

I wasn’t deterred. I brought him up to date on the shooter cop’s activities.

“The shooter killed three drug dealers on a back road — ”

“And torched their car.”

“Right. Two days after that, he killed a dealer in a shopping-center parking lot.”

“I read that. You’re sure it was the same shooter?”

“The ballistics matched to another of our stolen guns.

What you didn’t read is that Jackson Brady thinks Jacobi is the shooter.”

“Come on. Brady believes that? ”

“Conklin and I were assigned to tail Jacobi, and he caught us sitting outside his house. Now Jacobi hates me. And we’re no closer to finding a killer who has probably worked himself up and is ready to kill again.”

Frank told me not to put too much pressure on myself, said that stress wasn’t good for the baby.

“Maybe you should take yourself off the case.”

“I can’t, Frank. I just can’t.”

He nodded, told me that I could call him day or night if I needed him. I thanked him, and then he asked if we could go to my desk so he could use my computer.

“I’m expecting a big document by e-mail,” he told me. “It’s waiting for me in the cloud. Do you know what that is?”

I smiled, said, “It’s a public server. Do you have an access code?”

“I wrote it on the inside of my eyeglass case.”

“Come with me,” I said.

I gave my chair to Frank and made fresh coffee as he did his work. When he’d put his reading glasses back in his jacket pocket, I walked him out and thanked him for his help with Constance Kerr.

“Any time. Take care, Lindsay. I mean it.”

I returned to my computer and went to open what I expected to be an avalanche of mail that had come in over the last few hours.

When I touched the mouse, the screen lit up, and instead of my usual desktop screen, a document I’d never seen before appeared. It took me a moment to figure out that it was the personnel file of a cop, William Randall. I knew his name, but I didn’t know much about him.

Frank Cisco, either accidentally or on purpose, had left this document for me to read. Or maybe Dr. Freud had made him do it.

I saved Sergeant William Randall’s file to my computer and went looking for Conklin.