15th Affair

CHAPTER 1

ALISON MULLER WASN’T classically beautiful, but she was striking, with swinging blonde hair and peekaboo bangs brushing the frames of her wraparound shades. Her black leather coat flared above the knees of her skinny jeans, and her purposeful stride was punctuated by the staccato clacking of her high-heeled boots.

That afternoon, as she cut through the golden-hued lobby of San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel, Ali checked out every man, woman, and child crossing the floor, on the queue at reception, slouched in chairs in front of the fireplace. She noted and labeled the tourists and businesspeople, deflecting the stares of the men who couldn’t look away, while on the phone with her husband and their younger daughter, Mitzi.

“I didn’t actually forget, Mitz,” Ali said to her five-year old. “More like I lost track.”

“You did forget,” her daughter insisted.

“Not completely. I thought your big day was tomorrow.”

“Everyone wanted to know where you were,” her daughter complained.

“I’ll make it up to you, sweetheart,” Ali said.

“When? With what?”

Ali’s thoughts ran ahead to the man waiting for her in a room on the fourteenth floor.

“Let me speak to Daddy,” Ali said.

She passed the stunning exhibition of modern art and reached the elevator bank at the northwest end of the lobby. She stood behind the couple in front of the doors. They were French, discussing their dinner plans, agreeing that they had enough time to shower and change.

Ali thumbed her phone, checked her e-mail and the Investors Business Daily headlines and the text from Michael asking if she’d gotten lost. Ali’s husband came back on the line.

“I did my best,” he said. “She’s inconsolable.”

“You can handle her, dear. I’m sure you can do it. I’ll order her something online when I get home.”

“Which will be when?” her husband asked.

God. The questions. The never-ending questions.

“After dinner,” Ali said. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t blow you off if it wasn’t important.”

The elevator doors opened.

“Gotta go.”

Her husband said, “Say good-bye to Mitzi.”

Shit.

She said, “Hang on a minute. I’m losing reception.”

Ali stepped into the elevator and stood with her back to the corner, her jacket parting to reveal the butt of a gun tucked into her waistband. The doors closed and the car rose swiftly and quietly upward.

When Ali got out at the fourteenth floor, she spoke to her daughter as she walked along the plush carpeted hallway.

“Miss Mitzi?”

She reached room 1420 and rapped on the door, and it opened.

Ali said into the phone, “Happy birthday. See you soon. Kiss, kiss. Bye-bye.”

She clicked off, stepped inside the room, and kicked the door closed behind her as she went into Michael’s arms.

“You’re late,” he said.

CHAPTER 2

MICHAEL CHAN TOOK off Ali’s glasses and sucked in his breath. He couldn’t get over this woman—and he had tried. She smiled at him and he put his hands on both sides of her face and kissed the smile right off her.

One kiss ignited a string of them: deep, telling, momentous. Michael lifted Ali and she hooked her legs around his hips and he walked her into the luxurious blue-and-bronze suite backlit by the watercolor sunset over San Francisco.

Chan didn’t notice the view. Ali smelled like orchids or some exotic musk, and she had her tongue at his ear.

“Too much,” he muttered. “You’re too damned much.”

She was panting as he lowered her to the bed.

“Wait,” she said.

“Of course. I’m a patient man,” he said. His blood was surging, narrowing his focus. He put his hands on his hips and watched to see what she would do.

She looked up at him, her warm gaze flicking over his body and his strong features as if she were memorizing him. They met infrequently, but when they did, they pretended they were strangers. It was a game.

“At least tell me your name,” she said.

“You first.”

He pulled off her boots, tossed them aside. She sat up, shrugged off her coat, and shoved it over the edge of the bed. He plucked the gun from her waistband, looked through the sight, smelled the muzzle, and put it on the nightstand.

“Interesting,” he said. “Hand-tooled.”

He sat on the bed next to her and told her to lie down, and he lay next to her. He moved her bangs away from her eyes.

“Your name.”

She reached down and ran her hand across the front of his pants. He grabbed her wrist.

She said, “Ummmm, I’m Renata.”

“Giovanni,” he said. “Prince of Gorgonzola.”

She laughed. It was a terrific laugh. “Finally, I meet the Prince of Cheese.”

Michael kept a straight face. “Correct. And you should never keep royalty waiting.”

He stroked her cheek, then dipped his fingers beneath the neckline of her blouse.

“I think I may have met you once before,” she said.

He freed the pearl buttons from their loops.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I would have remembered.”

He ran his hand over the tops of her breasts, then gathered up her hair, wrapped it around his left hand, and pulled her head back.

She moaned and said, “You paid me with three gold coins. I came to your room in the hotel overlooking”—she sighed—“the Trevi Fountain.”

“I’ve never stayed in Rome,” he said.

He turned her so that she faced away from him. He stroked the long side of her body down to her haunch and back. He enjoyed the soft sounds coming from her throat as she tried to twist away from him.

“Did you tell your husband?”

“Why would you ask me that?” she said.

“Because I want him to throw you out.”

He undid the closure at the waist of her jeans, pulled down the zipper, got to his feet, and removed her jeans and all of his clothes.

He didn’t hear the sound at the door.

This was unlike him. He had superior senses, but they were engaged. Ali was looking up at him with—what was that look in her eyes?

She said, “I heard a card in the lock.”

A voice called out, “Housekeeping.”

Chan said, “I didn’t lock the door. You?”

Ali said, “Hell no.”

Chan shouted, “Come back later,” but the door was already opening and the cart was bumping over the threshold. He grabbed his pants from the floor and, holding them in front of him, he went toward the foyer.

He shouted, “No! Wait!”

The three shots were muffled by a suppressor. If Michael Chan had known his killer, it didn’t matter now.

Lights out.

Game over.

Michael Chan was gone.

CHAPTER 3

IT HAD BEEN a rough week, and it was only Monday.

My partner, Rich Conklin, and I had just testified against Edward “Ted” Swanson, a cop who had, over time, left eighteen people dead before the shootout with a predatory drug lord called Kingfisher took Swanson out of the game.

All of the SFPD had known Swanson as a great cop. We had liked him. Respected him. So when my partner and I exposed him as a psychopath with a badge, we were stunned and outraged.

During Swanson’s lethal crime spree, he had stolen over five million in drugs and money from Kingfisher, and this drug boss with a murderous reputation up and down the West Coast hadn’t taken this loss as the cost of doing business.

After the shootout, while Swanson lay comatose in the ICU, Kingfisher figured that his best chance of getting his property back was to turn his death threats on the lead investigator on the case.

That investigator was me.

His phone calls were irrational, untraceable, and absolutely terrifying.

Then, about the time Swanson was released from the hospital and indicted on multiple charges of drug trafficking and murder, Kingfisher’s phone calls stopped. A week later, Mexican authorities turned up the King’s body in a shallow grave in Baja. Was it really over?

Sometimes terrifying events leave aftershocks when you realize how bad things could have become. Kingfisher’s threats had embedded themselves inside me on a visceral level, and now that I was free of them, something inside me unclenched.

On the other hand, events that seem innocuous at the time can flip you right over the edge into the dark side.

And that was the case with Swanson.

A dirty cop shakes up everything: friendships, public trust, and belief in your own ability to read people. I thought I had done a good job testifying against Swanson today. I hoped so. Richie had been terrific, for sure, and now the decision as to Swanson’s guilt or innocence was up to his jury.

My partner said, “We’re done with this, Lindsay. Time to move on.”

I was checking out of the Hall of Justice at just after six when my husband texted me to say that he would be home late, and that there was a roasted chicken in the fridge.

Damn.

I was disappointed not to see Joe, but as I stepped outside the gray granite building into a luminous summer evening, I formulated a new plan. Rather than chicken for three, I would have a quiet dinner with my baby daughter, followed by Dreamland in about three hours, tops.

I fired up my old Explorer and had just cleared the rush-hour snarl on Bryant when the boss called me.

Against my better judgment, I picked up.

“Boxer,” Brady said, “a bad scene just went down at the Four Seasons. I need you there.”

The only scene I wanted to see was my little girl in clean onesies, and me with a glass of Chardonnay in my hand. But Homicide was understaffed, my partner and I had a fresh gap in our caseload, and Brady was a good lieutenant.

I said, “Were you able to catch Conklin?”

“He’s on the way,” said Brady.

I made a U-turn on Geary, and twenty minutes later, I met up with my partner in the sumptuous lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel. Conklin was as tired as I was, but it looked good on him.

“Overtime pay, Lindsay.”

“Yahoo,” I said with an appropriate lack of enthusiasm. “What did Brady tell you?”

“To be smart, thorough, and quick.”

“Instead of what? Stupid, sloppy, and slow?”

Richie laughed. “He said the Four Seasons wants their hotel back.”

We took the elevator to the fourteenth floor, and when the doors opened, we saw that the hallway was cordoned off and law enforcement personnel were standing at the exit doors, leaning against walls, waiting for us.

Conklin and I ducked under the tape and nodded to uniforms we knew, finally pulling up to the open door marked 1420.

The cop at the door signed us into the log, and I asked him, “Who called it in?”

“Hotel’s head of security. He responded to complaints of gunshots.”

“How bad is it?”

“Bad enough,” he said.

“Let’s see,” I said.

CHAPTER 4

THE FIRST OFFICER stepped aside, revealing a naked male body lying faceup, about fifteen feet inside the deluxe hotel suite. He had been shot once in the forehead, once through the right eye, and had taken another bullet to his chest for good measure.

I said to Conklin, “What do you think? Midthirties? Asian?”

Conklin nodded and said, “That’s an expensive watch. He’s wearing a wedding ring. We’re probably not looking at a robbery.”

Someone called my name.

Charlie Clapper, director of San Francisco’s forensic unit, came around a corner in the suite. “Boxer,” Clapper said. “Conklin. Welcome to the Four Seasons. How can we make your stay here more enjoyable?”

I said, “Tell me you’ve ID’d the victim and have the shooter in custody. And that by the way, the shooter confessed.”

Clapper is a former homicide cop, a pro who knows what he’s doing and never has to prove it. He laughed and said, “I guess miracles happen—but not here. Not today.”

I peered behind Clapper. Lights had been set up and CSIs were processing the expensively furnished suite, which had soundproof windows and a high city view. There was a lot of blood around and under the victim, but the room behind him looked spotless.

I took in the silvery-blue carpeting and upholstery, the lightly rumpled bed, bedspread still in place. I saw no wine bottles or remains of a room service meal, and the TV was off.

It looked like room 1420 had only been used for a short time before what happened here went down.

Conklin asked Clapper to run what he knew so far.

Clapper said, “To start with, it looks like our victim had company. We found fresh lipstick and a few long blonde hairs on a pillowcase. There’s no wallet, no suitcase, no papers, no clothes, no shoes.”

“Perfect score,” said Conklin.

Clapper went on. “This gentleman checked in under the name Gregory Wang. He used a credit card with that name and the charge went through, but there is no Gregory Wang at the address on the card or anywhere.

“Also notable, the room has been thoroughly wiped down. No prints old or new. Entry was by a key card that was traced to a Maria Silva in housekeeping. Ms. Silva is now off duty, not answering her phone. A patrol car has gone to her address.”

“What about his prints?” Conklin asked, indicating the victim.

“We ran the victim’s prints and came up with nothing. He’s not in the system, has never been in the military, or taught grade school, or been arrested. And wait. There’s more,” said Clapper. “There’s a whole other crime scene right next door. Can’t be a coincidence, but right now, I don’t see the connection.”

CHAPTER 5

DR. CLAIRE WASHBURN, chief medical examiner and my best friend, was waiting for the three of us in the room next door to the murder room. She held up her bloody gloves to show me why she wasn’t going to give me a hug.

“Take a good fast look,” she said. “I’m ready to remove these bodies.”

Bodies? Multiple?

This room was smaller but looked in every other way identical to the one we’d just left. Same color scheme, same made-up bed, and same view of the city.

But twice the number of victims.

There were two bodies lying on the pale blue carpet, a young black man and a young white woman; both looked to be in their twenties.

Both were clothed in what you might call middle-of-the-road casual. Girl wearing a pastel plaid cotton shirt and jeans, her red hair fanned out around her head, a look of surprise on her face. Boy wearing black cords and a T-shirt under a blue V-neck sweater. Running shoes.

It looked to me like the male victim had been sitting at the desk, the female in a chair near a coffee table. From the way their bodies had fallen, I thought they’d jumped up when they heard an intruder and had been gunned down, all the shots going into the trunks of their bodies and the chairs they’d been sitting in.

Their blood was spattered on the walls and furnishings, but I saw no spent brass.

I asked Claire, “How long ago did this happen?”

“An hour, maybe.”

“Any ID?”

“Nothing in this room but those kids and the clothes they’re wearing.”

Clapper said, “I ran their prints and got nothing. Their registration info is bogus. Same wiped-down surfaces. I’d venture to say this room is cleaner now than it has ever been.”

As Claire and her techs wrapped the two unidentified decedents in sheets and zipped them into body bags, I noticed cords and battery chargers on the floor behind the desk.

I said to my colleagues, “Look at that. These kids had laptops. As I understand it, high-end surveillance equipment is Web-connected. You can activate audio and video plants with an app.”

“You think the victims were PIs?” Conklin asked.

“If so, there should be microcameras in the murder room.”

Clapper said, “I’m on it.”

He left to check and returned a few minutes later with three small bugs: one he’d pulled from a light socket above the bathroom mirror, the second from the desk lamp, and the third from the air duct.

“And just to be totally consistent, no prints on them,” said Clapper.

I called Lieutenant Jackson Brady and brought him up to speed. Then I texted Joe, saying I might be pulling an all-nighter. After that, I called Mrs. Rose, a sweetheart of a grandma, who lives in the apartment across the hall from ours and had become our daughter’s nanny.

“Can you stay late?” I asked her. “I think dinner might be in the fridge.”

“I cooked that chicken for you,” she said, laughing.

“With spaetzle?”

“Of course.”

I promised Mrs. Rose that I’d give her a heads-up when I was on the way home. Then I called and texted Joe again. No answer, no return text.

Where was my husband? Why didn’t he call me?

Conklin said to me, “Security needs us, Linds. Urgently.”

CHAPTER 6

LIAM DUGAN WAS a stocky man in his fifties, a former sergeant with the LAPD and now the hotel’s head of security.

He said to me, “What a living, freaking, blood-curdling nightmare,” and walked us down the hall to the fourteenth-floor supply closet. He opened the door, and there, jammed behind the cleaning cart, was the body of housekeeper Maria Silva.

She had short dark hair and was wearing a blue and gold hotel uniform with soaking blood on the shoulder that I could see from where I stood.

Dugan said, “She was a nice woman. Has a husband, two kids. I’m sorry, but I was hoping she was alive. So I touched her. I probably touched the cart and a few other things so I could get in there. Anyway, she took a bullet to the back of her head. Her key card is gone. The girls keep them on cords around their necks.”

We taped off the new crime scene, and I met with the cops on the floor, telling them they were on duty until relieved by the night shift.

After that, Conklin and I huddled in room 1418, where the supposed PIs had been executed. We looked at the blood spatter at the otherwise tidy murder scene and tried on scenarios.

Every way we turned it, it came down to a professional job, all four hits connected. Mr. Wang had been the target and Maria Silva had probably been the first victim.

The woman who had left blonde hair on the pillow could be a witness, the killer, a coconspirator, or a victim. Or she’d walked out before things got sticky and still didn’t know what happened. It was possible.

Conklin and I went with Dugan to the hotel security offices and were given a file room with two desks and computers. We sat side by side and cued up the surveillance footage that had been shot over the previous four hours in six key locations.

Dugan said, “Here’s a hard copy of the floor plans. I’ll keep the footage coming and if there’s anything you need, just find me. Nothing’s off-limits.”

At eight, room service brought us roast beef sandwiches, pickles, chips, and coffee. At ten, I used the ladies’ room, washed my face, and looked at myself in the mirror.

My hair was all over the place, not in the sun-kissed beachy blonde tradition. More like my hair hated me. I reset my ponytail while staring deep into the reflection of my red-rimmed eyes. I needed a shower. I’ll just leave it there.

I returned to the security department, and as soon as I put my butt in the chair, Conklin pointed to an image on the screen of a man who looked like our male victim in 1420, who had checked in as Gregory Wang.

Wang came through the elevator entrance from Market Street to the hotel lobby, which is on the fifth floor, and crossed through toward reception. He was alone, wearing dark pants and a gray sports jacket, a ball cap shading his face, and he had a computer bag hanging from a strap over his right shoulder. He checked in at the desk, and then we lost him on that tape. Another camera picked him up at the elevator bank for the guest rooms upstairs.

The footage was high-quality. But apart from the spring in Wang’s step, there was nothing useful to be gleaned from what we’d just seen. I backed up the tape, watching Wang cross the lobby to the elevators again. Then I watched the lit numbers next to the elevator door rise, make several stops before landing on fourteen, then go back down.

I slid the disc that held the fourteenth-floor footage into the drawer. The time dating read 4:30 p.m. The camera, positioned across from the fourteenth-floor elevator, caught Wang getting out of the car and walking away from the camera, down the hallway. He swiped his key card and opened the door to 1420.

“He didn’t knock,” I said. “His guest hasn’t arrived yet.”

We fast-forwarded fourteenth-floor footage and watched people coming and going from their rooms, getting in and out of the elevators. No one raised suspicion. We paused the tape to check out the housekeeping cart; at 5 p.m., Maria Silva was still alive.

At 5:52, a blond-haired woman exited the elevator.

“Well, hello,” I said to the screen.

I stopped the video. She was on her phone. Between her haircut, her glasses, and her holding the phone close to her mouth, I couldn’t see much of her face. Her overall appearance was stylish, and she seemed self-assured. I started up the video and we watched the woman walk down the hallway and knock on the door of room 1420. The door opened and she went inside.

I kept the video rolling, looking for bad guys to appear, to put a gun to the housekeeper’s head, to go into the room next door and take out the PIs.

Then, when the time code read 6:23—something happened. The screen went gray. The picture was just—gone.

We ran the tape all the way to the end, hoping the video would resume, but there was nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

All we had were four dead people and no clue as to who had killed them, how they’d done it, or why.

I didn’t like this.

I didn’t like it at all.

CHAPTER 7

BY THE TIME I got home, it was three in the morning and I had a headache the size of a mushroom cloud.

Martha, our border collie and best furry friend forever, greeted me at the door. She woke up Mrs. Rose, who was sleeping on the couch, but thankfully, Julie slept on. I hugged our lovely sitter, and after she’d gone home, I checked the caller ID log.

Still no call from Joe.

It wasn’t the first time I hadn’t heard from Joe over the course of a day. He had a consulting job with airport security. He could be in a series of meetings or lost in the details of keeping outbound planes secure.

It was a great job and he loved it—but it was after three. He hadn’t texted me a single line since noon.

Of course, I was worried. Was Joe OK?

I checked on our little Sleeping Beauty and threw a sigh that relaxed my whole body. I watched her breathe. I rested my hand on her back. I made sure there was no draft, that she was dry and sleeping soundly. I pulled up her blanket, then softly closed her door.

I took an Advil and followed it with the shower I’d been longing for. After putting on PJs and checking on Julie again, I got into bed and fell asleep, instantly.

Maybe an hour later, my eyes flashed open.

Joe still wasn’t home.

I patted the bed and Martha jumped up, circled, and plopped down beside me. I hugged her and thought about the victims at the hotel. I reviewed each of the crime scenes in my mind’s eye and hoped that while I slept, answers would come to me.

When I woke up, it was morning.

I had not solved the crimes in my sleep, but Joe was in bed, snoring beside me.

CHAPTER 8

I KISSED MY husband.

He opened his blue eyes and asked, “What day is it?”

I told him and he fell back asleep.

I woke him up.

“What day is it?” he asked. Again.

“Hey. It’s Tuesday, six forty-five a.m. Did you get any phone calls from me, like about six of them?”

“Oh, geez. I’m sorry,” he said. “My phone was off.”

“You’re in the doghouse, buddy.”

I swung my legs over the bed. Joe’s arm snaked out and he grabbed me and pulled me down next to him.

“Some people on the watch list came up on our passenger manifest,” he said. “And that’s all I can tell you.”

“Fine.”

I made another break for the side of the bed, but he didn’t let me get up.

“I’m sorry.”

“OK. But I worry when I don’t hear from you, Joe.”

“I know. Same here.”

We nuzzled and wrestled around and I relented a little. Then I relented a lot. I shut down the hideous pictures in my mind of dead people, and I even tried to keep from listening for Julie. Martha hung her muzzle on the edge of the bed, and Joe pushed her away without losing a beat.

It was glorious lovemaking. Not fancy, but good wholesome friskiness when I hadn’t even thought kisses were in order.

I collapsed with my arm over Joe’s chest and my head under his chin.

“That was nice,” I said.

“Nice? At my age? With no sleep? I’m wondering how I pulled that off at all.”

He got me laughing. I said, “It was the best ever, Joe. God. You’re amazing.”

“Want to go another round?”

“Save something for tonight,” I said, laughing again.

I dressed, took Martha for a run along Lake Street, stretched my legs, and watched sunrise and early-morning traffic and other people out for a run with their dogs.

When doggy and I returned, Julie was in her high chair and I smelled pancakes. I went to my sweet girl and kissed and squeezed her a little bit.

“You’re sooo cute,” I told her. “Did you tell Daddy thank you for the pancakes?”

“Nooooo,” she said, slapping her hands on the tray.

“Oh, you like that word too much,” I said. So she said it again, laughing and burbling at the same time.

“OK, I’ll tell him,” I said.

I put my arms around my husband’s waist and hugged him tight. “I love you so much,” I said. “And thank you for making breakfast.”

“Uh-huh. Please, sit yourself down.”

I pulled up a seat at the table, which was positioned to get a nice bright beam of morning light. Joe dished up the pancakes and crispy bacon, and between bites, I fed cereal to Julie.

It was idyllic. Picture-perfect and framed in gold. We didn’t have breakfast table perfection when I was growing up, so I cherished every bit of this. Gloried in it.

Joe said, “I checked my phone and you were phoning me at three this morning.”

“I’d just gotten home after working some terrible business at the Four Seasons. The fourteenth floor was like an abattoir.”

I told Joe the details, availing myself of his excellent crime-solving mind.

“Among the many mysteries was this woman we saw going into the dead man’s room,” Lindsay said. I described her in full. “She may have been his lover, or lover-by-the-hour, or even his wife. Or I don’t know, Joe. All we know is that she’s the only living person who can answer our questions.”

“The bangs down to her glasses,” Joe said. “Not a bad disguise. Even talking on the phone distorts the shape of the mouth. All of that will outwit facial recognition. More coffee?”

“No thanks, honey. I’m going to hit the shower.”

I stood under the water and thought about the blond woman with the wraparound shades and how finding her could kick the doors down on all of it.

But in lieu of that, the dead man in 1420 was the beginning of the story.

CHAPTER 9

I FOUND CLAIRE hard at work in her autopsy suite, gowned and gloved up and halfway through the internal exam of the unknown male killed in room 1420. His face had been reflected down over his chin and a Y incision had opened his body down to the pubic bone.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“You know how long I’ve been ME?” Claire asked me.

“Since I was this tall,” I said, putting my hand on top of my head. Actually, we’d been rookies together, back about a dozen years ago.

“And you know how many autopsies I do a year?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” I said.

She put a bloody liver on a scale. Bunny Ellis, one of Claire’s morgue techs, waggled her fingers hello at me and took Claire’s notes.

“One thousand, two hundred bodies more or less pass through these doors annually,” Claire said.

“I hear you.”

Claire was grumpy. Rare for her.

“What I hate the most—”

“Dead kids. I know.”

“And what I hate the second most? Healthy murder victims who could have had full and productive lives. Like Mr. Doe or Wang or whatever his real name is. He was perfect. All his organs are A-plus. He has bones and joints of steel. I don’t think this man even got heartburn,” she said.

“Tell me more,” I said, since this was why I had stopped by this morning.

Claire continued to cut and slice as she talked.

“He has a scar on his knee, probably from falling off a bike when he was six, and that’s it.”

“What about his stomach contents?”

“BLT on rye with mayo. Green tea.”

“You ran his blood?”

“It’s waiting to go out. With these.”

She showed me a stainless steel bowl with three slugs rattling inside.

“Medium-caliber, like nine-millimeter. Based on that squeaky-clean crime scene, keep your expectations in check,” said Claire. “I’ll bet you a burger and fries there won’t be a record of the murder weapon.”

I said, “Who’s up next?”

“I only have two hands, Lindsay. Two. I’m not finished with Mr. Wang.”

“I’ll get out of your way, Butterfly,” I said, calling her by her nickname.

As if she hadn’t barked at me, she said, “I’ll do young Ms. Doe next. That is a clean-looking girl, Lindsay. Skin like milk. She could just barely drive and vote. I’ll need backup to get this work done today. Meanwhile…”

“Meanwhile what?”

“Phone keeps ringing. The brass. The mayor. The press. Other bodies from other crimes. If you can break for lunch,” Claire said, “the girls want to get together at MacBain’s.”

By “the girls,” she meant herself and me, Cindy, and Yuki, the four of whom Cindy had collectively dubbed the Women’s Murder Club.

“I’ll try,” I said.

I left Claire and loped down the breezeway and through the back door of the Hall of Justice. I showed my badge to the guy at the metal detector, then took the stairs to the homicide squad on the fourth floor. The day shift was drifting in, but a lot of phones were ringing through to voice mail.

Brady was in his office, the ten-foot-square glass cubicle in the back corner of the room. He saw me coming, got up from behind his desk, and opened the door.

Brady is built like a wrestler, blond, taciturn, and as brave as they come. But he’s all business, all the time.

“Got anything?” he said.

“Just what I had last night, Lieu. Professional job from start to finish. One ID could blow it open,” I said. “We’re working on that now.”

Before he could say “Keep me in the loop,” all his phone lines rang at once.

CHAPTER 10

MACBAIN’S IS THE neighborhood hole-in-the-wall beer-and-burger joint frequented by cops, lawyers, and bail bondsmen who work along the 800 block of Bryant Street. Claire and I stood inside the open doorway and stared at the raucous scene. Customers had parked four deep at the bar, and the tables in front were all taken. Looked to me like a retirement party.

There was time to reverse course and pick another lunch spot, but Sydney, the front room waitress, pointed and mouthed, “They’re over here.”

Cindy Thomas stood up from behind a table near the jukebox and waved to get our attention. She was wearing her bloodhound clothes: a soft gray hoodie over a T-shirt and jeans. This was how Cindy dressed when she was working a story, and as a top crime reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, she wore bloodhound clothes most of the week.

Sometimes I felt bad for her.

Yes, she was adorable and well employed and happy in love, but her great buddy, me, and her fiancé, my partner, had to keep the red meat to ourselves. Cindy was the press. And historically, the press was not our friend.

Yuki Castellano, the legal arm of the Women’s Murder Club, sat wedged between Cindy and the wall with her back to the peanut barrel. She was wearing a knife-sharp black suit, her hair was twisted up, and she had chunky pearls at her neckline. She was dressed for court.

Claire and I waded into the crowd and I stuck close behind her, the pink sweater she’d thrown over her scrubs lighting the way. I wore my usual, rain or shine, at my desk or on the street: blue trousers, white shirt, blue blazer, hair in a ponytail, and my badge hanging from a ball chain around my neck.

I grabbed a seat across from Yuki, Claire sat next to me, and all of our hands shot up at the same time. When Syd arrived, Claire said, “We can order everything right now.”

Syd wrote down four burgers—one each of bloody, rare, medium-rare, and charred—with fries all around. Three of us asked for tea and fizzy water, but Yuki ordered rum and Coke, heavy on the rum.

“You’re drinking when you’re in court?” I asked her.

“Trial was canceled due to circumstances beyond my control,” she said.

At that, customers behind us broke into a rowdy drinking song. Folks applauded and stamped in time. So Yuki had to shout her bad story about her college girl client who’d been charged as an accessory to an armed robbery. As Yuki told it, Sandra had been waiting in her boyfriend’s car while he went into a store to buy a bottle of booze. Or so he told her. But he’d had a gun, and when the owner set off the alarm, the boyfriend fired his .22 into the owner’s chest.

Yuki’s eighteen-year-old client had been charged as an accessory and was looking at fifteen to twenty years if the liquor store owner lived. Her bail was set absurdly high and her family couldn’t raise a tenth of it.

“I saw Sandra yesterday,” Yuki said. “Once again, I told her that I was very connected in the DA’s office and that if she’d testify against her gutless boyfriend, I could probably get her sentence reduced—significantly.”

“She wouldn’t go for it,” Cindy guessed.

Yuki shook her head. “Just before court this morning, she ripped up her bedsheet and hanged herself on the bars. Why? Why did she do that? Why wouldn’t she listen to me? And even if she didn’t flip on that rat, there was hope for her. And what about her poor family? God. I am so sick about this.”

She covered her eyes with her hands, and we tried to console her. When her drink came, she downed half of it in one gulp. Yuki overestimates her ability to hold her liquor, and I was pretty sure she’d be staggering after lunch.

About then, Claire, already in an uproar, vented about the fresh young bodies piling up in her morgue—without mentioning names and details. Cindy pricked up her ears like a dog who’s been asked, “Want to go for a ride in the car?”

“Tell me something,” she said to Claire. “I heard there was a shooting at the Four Seasons. Just give me something I can own and work into a story.”

I was thinking maybe Cindy could help us. If we couldn’t identify the Four Seasons victims, Cindy could run their pictures in the Chron. But I wasn’t there yet.

I looked around the table and thought how my three girlfriends were all seething with a tension that was only intensified by their having to shout over the retirement festivities around us.

So much was going on, I didn’t have to speak.

I was glad. If asked, I would have to say that my life was pretty damned good right now. My little family was healthy, Joe and I were both working, money was coming in, and even staring at a computer screen for the last four hours hadn’t stolen the afterglow from my morning romp with my husband.

It didn’t occur to me to think how fast things can change.

Just like that.

CHAPTER 11

I RETURNED FROM lunch to find Conklin dumping the remains of his Chinese take-out into the wastebasket.

He said, “The security chief sent over lobby footage from before and after the set we’ve already screened. Maybe those dead kids in fourteen-eighteen came in around lunchtime.”

I asked Inspectors Lemke and Samuels to view the eight-thirty-p.m.-to-midnight footage and gave them printouts of the mystery blonde. Then I reset my ponytail, cracked my knuckles, and sat down next to my partner.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

The video flashed onto my screen.

At time stamp 12:30 p.m., the elegant lobby was humming with guests as well as local businesspeople heading for the entrance to MKT, the hotel’s restaurant. Conklin and I sat shoulder-to-shoulder for the next three hours, looking for dead people walking, occasionally shaking out our legs, using the facilities.

By the time the day shift started punching out, my eyes were gritty and my temples were pounding. But I was still watching the video when the time stamp read 3:27 p.m. I hit Pause.

There was a girl hanging around the front desk in jeans and a quilted jacket, a mile of bulky scarf around her neck. Was she one of the private investigator kids who’d been shot in room 1418? I was about to say “Look at her,” when she turned toward the elevator and I saw her face. Damn it. She was not the girl in 1418. Not by a mile.

At that precise moment, Conklin was pointing at a different part of the screen.

“I think I saw this guy on the later footage,” he said.

He circled the cursor around a big man who was facing away from the camera, wearing a bulky coat and a knit cap. His body and features were almost entirely obscured—yet he was somehow familiar.

“He reminds me of Dugan,” I said, referring to the security chief.

Conklin said, “That’s not Dugan. Dugan stoops.”

We watched the big man walk away from the cameras, slipping seamlessly between groups of people so that we never had more than a second’s glimpse of him.

We reversed the footage, paused, zoomed in, but there was not even a partial view of his face.

“He knows where the cameras are,” said Conklin.

“Like he’s some kind of pro,” I said. “Let’s look for him on the later tape.”

I booted up the disc we’d already seen a few dozen times, but now we had a new focus. Only a few minutes in, I saw the shadowy male who maneuvered around the surveillance cameras with the dexterity of a rodeo quarter horse. He disappeared into a crowd, reappearing a frame or two later as a charcoal-gray smudge on the move. Then we lost him again, this time for good.

The time stamp read 4:20 when Mr. “Wang” entered the lobby. An hour and twenty-five minutes later, at 5:45, the glamorous blonde made her dramatic entrance.

I knew this part of the footage by heart.

I made screen shots of Wang, the blonde, and the partial angle on the mystery man’s back and printed them out. I was thanking Samuels and Lemke for their help when my desk phone rang. It was Brady.

“Valet parking came up with the murdered man’s car,” said the boss.

“No kidding.”

“Subaru Outback registered to a Michael M. Chan. The DMV photo matches his height, weight, eye color. He didn’t have a record. He was thirty-two, lived in Palo Alto with his wife, Shirley, and two young kids. Both teach at Stanford. He taught Chinese history. She teaches Mandarin. That’s all I’ve got. I’m texting you the coordinates.”

I thanked Brady and told my partner we had a lead. The solid kind.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Richie.

CHAPTER 12

THE SOFT AFTERNOON sun was lighting the beautiful old homes in the Professorville section of Palo Alto. We took a left turn off University Avenue, and a couple of blocks later, we were on Waverley Street, a lush, tree-lined block in this picture-perfect town.

The Chan residence was on the south side of the street, middle of the block: a sage-green two-story Craftsman home, with a wide shed dormer facing the street and a flower garden bracketing the front walk.

Our well-worn surveillance vehicle, disguised as a suburban minivan with stick-family decals and a GO GIANTS bumper sticker, was positioned directly across the street.

We parked the squad car in the Chans’ driveway behind a new Chevy wagon and I called Brady, letting him know we were on the scene. Then Conklin and I took the garden path and the brick steps up to the front door. I rang the bell, and it was opened by an early-thirtyish Asian woman wearing gray sweat pants, a pink Life Is Good T-shirt, a gold cross on a chain around her neck, and designer glasses with purple frames.

I flapped open my jacket to show her my badge and introduced my partner and myself, asking if she was Shirley Chan and if we could come in to speak with her. Fear sparked in her eyes like small black flames. She already knew we weren’t selling raffle tickets for the PBA.

“Is this about Michael?” she asked, her hand going to her collarbones. “Is he all right? Please tell me he’s all right.”

Neither Conklin nor I answered, and in that brief silence, Mrs. Chan switched her focus to Conklin’s eyes, back to mine, and back to Conklin.

My partner has magnetic good looks and the nicest way with women of all kinds: meth heads, serial killers, party girls, old ladies lost in parking garages, and in this case, a woman about to learn that her husband had been killed after private time with an attractive, still unidentified bombshell.

Mrs. Chan stepped back into her house, leaving the door open.

We followed her through the foyer and into the many-windowed living room furnished in washed pine and khaki-upholstered love seats, presided over by a fifty-two-inch TV above a fireplace.

Two young children, who looked to be about seven and five, stared up at us. They instantly saw the distress on their mother’s face. The little girl clambered up from the floor and, asking, “What’s wrong, Mommy?” grabbed her mother around the waist. Mrs. Chan’s hands shook and her voice faltered when she told the kids to go to their rooms. They wailed and argued with her until she screamed, “Haley. Brett. Do what I say.”

They fled.

We three stood in the homey room, Shirley Chan with her hand over her mouth, refusing to sit down. I pulled out the DMV photo of Michael Chan and showed it to her.

“Is this your husband?” I asked her.

“Oh, my God. Was there a car accident?”

Conklin asked her kindly, “When was the last time you saw Michael, Mrs. Chan?”

“Yesterday morning. He called me in the afternoon But he didn’t come home last night. That’s not like him at all. Where is he? Where is Michael? What happened to him?”

My partner said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, ma’am. Your husband has been shot. He was killed.”

CHAPTER 13

CONKLIN WAS AT the wheel of the squad car as we headed back to the city in the dark. Mrs. Chan was crumpled up in the backseat, talking on the phone to her sister in Seattle. Brady called to say that the mayor had threatened to bring in the FBI if we didn’t crack the case pronto. The press had gotten tipped and had whipped the story into a frenzy, spraying the stink of fear onto all the hotels in San Francisco. “Tourism dollars are at stake.” That was what he told me.

I snapped, “How long is pronto, Brady? Because there are only twenty-four hours in the day, and you know what? We’re working twenty-five of them. By ourselves.”

“I’ll get you some help,” he said.

After I hung up, Conklin said to me, “We’re going to get our break when Mrs. Chan sees the videotape.”

Sure, it was possible. If Mrs. Chan recognized someone who knew her husband walking through the hotel lobby, that might pry open the lid of this big bloody box of I don’t know what.

As Conklin took the 101 on-ramp from University Avenue, I listened to the radio: dispatch calling for cars to a drive-by shooting out by the zoo, a bar fight in the Haight, a domestic stabbing in Diamond Heights, all straight-up, call-911 incidents—unlike this.

And then my phone buzzed. It was Joe.

He said, “Hon, I’m stuck out at the airport. I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Wait. Joe, I’m stuck, too. This is not good.”

“I know, Linds. In twenty years, Julie’s going to tell her shrink how we neglected her—”

I wasn’t amused. I cut him off.

“Did you call Mrs. Rose?”

“Yes. She’s already at our place. Fringe marathon tonight. She likes our TV.”

“Well, that’s all right then,” I snapped before clicking off.

I was mad at Brady for passing on the mayor’s threat and mad at Joe for saying he didn’t know when he would be home. I turned to look at Michael Chan’s widow. She was leaning against the backseat, staring out the side window at the black of nothing, apparently drowning in the loss of her husband, and the probable devastation of her world.

I was ashamed of myself for snapping at Joe, really ashamed.

I would’ve called him back to apologize, but Mrs. Chan swung her sad eyes toward me and locked in.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Then she asked me a lot of questions. Good ones.

How had I identified her husband’s body? Was he alone when he was found? What was he wearing? Had we recovered Michael’s phone? Had he suffered before he died? Did we have any idea who had killed him? Did we have any idea why?

I answered as well as I could, but none of my answers were comforting. I reached for her hand, but it was awkward, and soon she was staring out the window again.

A half hour later, Shirley Chan was sitting in a metal chair in Interview 2, sandwiched between Conklin and me, a laptop computer open in front of us.

I said, “Let us know if you recognize anyone.”

I pressed Play and the video began showing an overhead view of the Four Seasons’ lobby with yesterday’s date and the time, 4:10 p.m.

Ten minutes into the tape, Mrs. Chan’s eyes got big as she watched her husband enter the hotel, cross the marble floors as if he was on a mission, and head toward the reception desk.

Mrs. Chan shouted, “There he is. That’s him. Michael, what are you doing there?”

Conklin and I looked at each other over Mrs. Chan’s head as the image of Mr. Chan went toward the elevators. I fast-forwarded the lobby footage until a blonde-haired woman with wraparound shades and a swingy leather coat entered the scene.

I hit Pause and turned to the grieving woman beside me.

“Mrs. Chan, do you recognize this woman?”

Her eyes were fixed on the blonde.

“Who is she?” Mrs. Chan asked. Her voice was cold. Resigned.

“We don’t know,” I said. “But she may have been the last person to see your husband alive.”

CHAPTER 14

WE ALL STARED at the image of the blonde-haired woman I had stopped in midstride by pressing a key.

We didn’t know her name or her occupation, if she was Chan’s date-by-the-hour, manicurist, longtime lover, drug dealer, financial planner, or personal banker. We didn’t know if she was dead or alive, if she had killed Michael Chan, had set up the hit, or had gotten out before he was shot and didn’t know he was dead. She was unknown subject zero.

Conklin’s prediction that when Mrs. Chan saw the video we would have answers seemed unlikely to come true.

I said to Mrs. Chan, “I’ll show you another view of her.”

I shuffled the discs, found the footage from the camera on the fourteenth floor, and booted it up. I let the footage run as the blond woman stepped out of the elevator and walked away from the camera, down the hall to Chan’s room.

I hit Pause after she had knocked and Chan had opened the door. He wasn’t on camera. We only saw the frozen profile of the striking blonde and the long shadow in the doorway.

Mrs. Chan asked, “Michael was in that room?”

“Yes. He was.”

“Did she shoot him?”

“We don’t know.”

“I want to see what she looked like when she left there.”

I said, “We don’t have anything else. Not long after she entered the suite, the video was corrupted. All we have is two hours of static. If she left through the lobby, she was disguised. We didn’t see her again.”

“She couldn’t just disappear,” said Mrs. Chan.

“The hotel is on floors five through twenty-one of a forty-story building. She may have left through the fire exit. Here’s something else. The room may have been under surveillance.”

I showed Mrs. Chan morgue shots of the two young probable snoops who might have recorded Michael Chan’s last moments. Mrs. Chan didn’t recognize them.

“They might have been students,” I said.

She shook her head, and I made a mental note to screen student ID photos from the university, all four thousand of them. I asked Mrs. Chan for names of her husband’s close friends both on and off campus, and when Richie went for coffee, I asked her personal questions about her marriage.

She got angry.

“I trust Michael. He was faithful to me. Just because that woman looks like that, it doesn’t mean they were having an affair.”

“We’re only concerned with the nature of their connection. We have to find her. For all we know, she’s also a victim.”

I had plenty of questions, and I laid them on Shirley Chan one at a time. Why would Michael use a fake ID? Why did he lie about his whereabouts? Had he lied to her before? Had she ever been suspicious of his movements?

She answered “I don’t know” and “No, no, no,” and then she put her head down on the scarred gray table and cried. By the time Conklin returned with the coffee, Shirley Chan was no longer talking to us. The interview was done.

I called the desk sergeant and arranged a ride home for Mrs. Chan with a uniformed officer, and Conklin walked her out to the street. I wanted to compare notes with my partner before we both went home. So I used this brief alone time to download the surveillance video our van had shot today on Waverley Street.

I pulled it up and watched images of me and my partner going up the walk to the Chan house, Mrs. Chan answering the door. And then I watched the light traffic running between the van and the Chans’ sweet old house.

At time stamp 5:24, the Chans’ next-door neighbor backed a silver sedan out of his driveway, interrupting the progress of a black Mercedes that had been coming up the street. The Mercedes was forced to wait for the sedan to maneuver, and for a long moment the Mercedes was stationary and parallel with our cameras.

Even though the Mercedes’ windows were tinted and it was dark outside, I almost recognized the shape of the driver’s head, the angle of the chin. My heart took off at a gallop before my mind knew what was scaring me.

I watched intently as the driver of the Mercedes turned to look at the minivan. I paused the action and refined the image of the driver, who was looking directly into the camera.

My mind reeled, did cartwheels, and nearly stroked out.

My God. It was Joe. Joe was driving that car.

He’d been caught on tape driving past the home of a dead man named Michael Chan, thirty miles from San Francisco.

Even though my heart and brain had left me for dead, my fingers moved and my eyes took everything in. As I stared at the image of my dear husband, my baby’s daddy, my closest friend and lover, who would never go behind my back, I fought hard to find a believable explanation.

Had Joe been looking for me? Had Brady told him where I was? If so, why, when the neighbor’s car took off up the street, had Joe kept going? Why hadn’t he called me?

There had to be a good reason. But I couldn’t come up with a thing.

CHAPTER 15

I’VE NEVER THOUGHT of myself as a coward, but I could not show this footage of my husband driving past the Chan house to my partner until I spoke to Joe.

I texted Richie, said I was going home now and that I would see him in the morning. I took the stairs down to the lobby. I left by the back door, fled along the breezeway out to Harriet Street, and found my car standing alone in the lot under the overpass.

I drove home on autopilot. The inside of my head felt like a pileup on a Minnesota highway at the height of a blizzard. I didn’t know which way was up or down, or when I would get slammed again.

At just before 11 p.m., I stood outside my front door with my key in hand.

If Joe was home, I would have to confront him. If he wasn’t home, that would only prolong the agony until he arrived. He had told me he was at the airport.

He told me that. And that was a lie.

I pushed the key into the lock. Martha woofed, and as I opened the door, she tore around the corner from the living room into the foyer and hurled herself at me, nailing me in the solar plexus.

I bent down, gave my doggy a pat and a kiss, and then went into the living room, expecting my lying son-of-a-bitch husband to get up from his chair.

But the chair was occupied by our sweet, gray-haired neighbor with the big heart.

I’m sure my face was rigid, but I greeted her and apologized for being so late. I asked after Julie and if Mrs. Rose could hang in for another minute so I could walk Martha.

She said, “Of course. Are you hungry, Lindsay?”

I hadn’t thought of food for hours, but the idea that something warm could be waiting for me made my stomach growl. I walked Martha in a tight rectangle on Lake Street, down to Tenth, across the street, and back up to Twelfth, and after Martha did her business, we went home.

A plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes was waiting for me on the kitchen bar, along with a glass of wine. I thanked Mrs. Rose, hugged her, and asked about the Fringe marathon. I didn’t hear anything she said about her show. How could I? The whiteout whirled in my mind and the warm food went down without my tasting it.

I came back to the present when Mrs. Rose said she’d just changed Julie, the new box of diapers were in her room, and she’d see me in the morning.

We said good night and I went to my daughter’s room.

Julie has Joe’s dark hair and long lashes, and looking at her made me think of the Chan children, who wouldn’t be sleeping tight for years to come. I kissed my fingers and touched them to Julie’s cheek. My precious girl.

As I cleaned up the kitchen, I thought about Shirley Chan trying to make sense of her late husband’s behavior, wondering what he had done and why he had done it, and what would become of her family now.

I was having some of those feelings, but my husband was alive. He could speak to me. And he would.

While the dishwasher did the dirty work, I booted up my laptop and downloaded the camera van’s street view to my PC. I had to see Joe staring into the camera’s eye again.

And there he was.

Big, handsome, looking into the lens like he was a movie star and this was his close-up. After he moved on, I sped through the rest of the footage and saw nothing out of the ordinary. No one slunk through the bushes. Apart from Joe’s Mercedes, no one slowed down in front of the Chan house or sped past it. Not even a stray cat raced across the road.

I calmed myself, and then I called Joe. I imagined his voice nearly drowned out by the sounds of an airliner taking off behind him, and my tremendous relief that I’d been wrong.

But no. I got a digital voice saying that Joe’s mailbox was full, good-bye.

I took a therapeutic shower, toweled off hard, and slipped into a nightgown. I went to Julie’s room. Her diaper was dry and she was sleeping soundly, so I sat in the rocker and stared out the window onto Lake Street.

When I next saw Joe, I would just ask him, Why were you in Palo Alto? Why did you lie to me?

I went to bed, and when Julie’s cries woke me, it was 6:15. I turned my head, absolutely sure that Joe would be sleeping next to me.

But the spot on my left was empty and cold.

I touched that empty place anyway and felt my resolve shatter and tears leap out of my eyes.

Where was Joe?

Why wasn’t he home?

CHAPTER 16

MRS. ROSE ARRIVED at 7 a.m., cheerful and rosy.

While I made breakfast for Julie and fed her, Mrs. Rose scrambled some eggs for me. She talked about her grandchildren in North Carolina while I combed Julie’s hair and played patty-cake with her, and once the baby was laughing, I handed her off, strapped on my gun, pulled on my Windbreaker, and said good-bye.

As I made my twenty-minute drive to work, I was in the grip of ugly feelings. My lying liar of a husband had lied. And yet, as furious as I was, I was even more terrified, because he hadn’t called me and hadn’t come home. Was he hurt? Was he dead?

I didn’t even know the names of the people Joe worked for, that’s how wrapped up I’d been in the Job over the last crazy months.

And that made me mad at myself.

Roaring mad.

By the time I parked my car, I was more of a mess than I wanted anyone to see. I entered the Hall from the rear and immediately ran into Jacobi in the lobby. My old partner, friend, and now chief of police knew the workings of my mind almost better than I knew them myself.

“What is it, Boxer? What’s eating you?”

“Just deep in thought. The Four Seasons case.” That was the half of the story I was willing to tell him.

Jacobi said he was assigning a couple of teams to work with me on the hotel murders.

I said thanks, gave him a weak wave, then headed up the stairs to Homicide.

Conklin was at his desk.

When he looked up, I said, “I screened the video from our van on the street.”

“And?”

“I hope you’re going to tell me I’m crazy.”

He looked at me like he was already of that opinion. I’ve tried, but I just cannot hide my feelings from people I know. I sat down behind my computer and Conklin stood behind me as I downloaded the surveillance tape from Waverley Street.

I ran the footage, halting it a few seconds before the heart-stopping incident.

“Look at this,” I said. “Tell me what you see.”

Conklin watched intently, and when we got to the part where Joe turned to the camera, I hit Pause.

My partner said, “Is that Joe? What’s he doing driving by the Chans’ house?”

“That’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question, and I have no answer. As far as I know, we’re looking at Joe’s last known whereabouts.”

“No way.”

“Right.”

“No,” he said. “I mean, that’s why he looks familiar.”

“I’m not following you.”

Conklin said, “The guy in the hotel,” he said. “The one with the bulky jacket who eluded the cameras. Look, Lindsay.” He went over to his desk, moved some papers around, and came up with the screen shots we’d taken of the stealthy man crossing the hotel lobby on the day of the shootings.

“Lindsay, don’t you see it?” Conklin asked me, shoving the photocopy under my nose. “The man in the lobby is Joe.”

CHAPTER 17

I TOLD CINDY I had to see her, and she met me on the front steps of the Hall fifteen minutes later.

“What have you got for me?” she said.

She was wearing a different T-shirt and steel-tipped work boots. The boots signified something. My guess was that she wanted to kick butt. She was in serious bulldog mode.

“We need to identify these people,” I said.

I showed her the pictures on my phone of the three unknown subjects: the mystery blonde and the morgue shots of the two PI kids, slightly ’shopped so that they looked less dead.

“Send them to me,” she said.

I did and she asked, “Are they wanted for questioning in the hotel murders? What can you tell me?”

“Let’s just start with you putting them out under a headline, ‘Do you know these people?’ and see how it goes.”

“OK, OK, OK,” said Cindy. “You’re not giving this to anyone else, right?”

“You’ve got a twenty-four-hour exclusive; then the FBI is going to move in and do it their way.”

Cindy said, “I’ll get this up on the site, front page, as soon as I clear it with Tyler. These photos will be on the Web today and in the paper tomorrow.”

“OK.”

“I’m going to say ‘Contact Cindy Thomas.’”

“You’ve got twenty-four hours.”

“Gotcha.”

My phone buzzed. Brady, of course.

“Boxer, got some people here from the FBI.”

“I’m downstairs. I’ll be up in a second.”

I hung up and turned back to Cindy.

“I don’t know how long your twenty-four-hour window is going to stay open. There’s a cab,” I said, pointing to one at the light. “See if you can grab it.”

She thanked me and told me I wouldn’t be sorry. We hugged, and I went upstairs.

Conklin, Brady, and I all got into the elevator and rode it up to Jacobi’s office. There we met three serious men in gray suits, and over the next two hours, we told them everything we knew. Everything but the one thing I wasn’t ready to give up, and I knew Richie had my back.

I didn’t say a word about Joe.

CHAPTER 18

WHEN CINDY CALLED me at 10:30 p.m., I was bordering on despair. I still hadn’t heard from Joe, the baby was crying, and although I had done everything I knew to calm her, nothing worked. She was frantic and I didn’t know why. I had thrown on a robe and was going across the hall to get Mrs. Rose when the phone rang.

Cindy didn’t wait for me to say hello.

“I got a hit,” she said.

“I have to call you back.”

“Really?”

Julie let out a freshly minted over-the-top howl. Why?

“Really,” I said, and then, “I’ll call you back.”

I felt the baby’s forehead and checked her diaper, and both were fine. I carried her to the kitchen, patting her back while I warmed up a bottle. Was she sick? Or was she simply channeling my anxiety?

I took her back to her room, sat down in the rocker, fed her, and tried to soothe myself. Julie took the bottle, and of course she couldn’t cry and suck at the same time. Mercifully.

When she fell asleep in my arms, I put her into her bed as gently as possible. She barely stirred, but I stood over her watching until her breathing deepened and I was sure she was in a nice solid sleep.

I nuked a cup of milk for myself, stirred in some Green & Black’s powdered chocolate, and set it on the end table next to the big sofa, giving myself permission to just sit quietly and calm the hell down.

I had dozed off when the phone rang.

Joe.

I found the phone where I’d dropped it on the floor near the sofa and caught it on the fifth ring.

“Christ, Lindsay,” Cindy said. “What the hell is wrong with you? I said I have a hit on one of your suspects.”

“The baby,” I said. “She was having a tantrum.”

“Everything OK?”

“I think so.”

“OK,” Cindy said, moving on. “The blond-haired woman from the hotel. Someone wrote in saying he knows her. Are you free now? Or should I just tell Richie?”

“Put me on speaker and tell us both,” I said into the phone.

Richie grunted, “I’m here.”

“Good. Cindy, who is the blonde? Who the hell is she?”

CHAPTER 19

CINDY’S ANONYMOUS TIP could blow open the whole case. If it was good. If it was true.

I took my laptop to the big sofa in the living room, and, leaving Julie’s door open, I got to work. I typed the name Alison Muller into one law enforcement database after another, and when she didn’t come up, I Googled her.

At 11 p.m., I called Brady.

He cleared the sleep from his throat, and after he said his name, I said, “Cindy got an anonymous tip on the mystery blonde from the hotel. We should keep it to ourselves until Conklin and I can chase it down.”

Every cop knows that the FBI doesn’t like to share. Once they’re involved, they take over the case and cut you out of it. You’re lucky to read about it in the papers.

I said so and Brady grunted without committing himself. Then he asked, “What did you find out?”

“According to Cindy’s source, her name is Alison Muller. She’s thirty-five, an executive at Aptec, a software company in Silicon Valley. The tipster told Cindy that he knows her, that his family and the Mullers live on the same street in Monterey.”

“You’ve got an address?”

“I do.”

I heard Yuki in the background saying, “Brady, who’s calling this late?”

Brady said to her, “It’s Lindsay. We’ll be off soon.”

I said, “I found info on Muller on Aptec’s website. She’s married to Khalid Khan, the composer. They have two children, five and thirteen years old. She’s a graduate of Stanford with a PhD in mathematics from MIT and she’s fluent in Spanish and Chinese. Speculating, but she and Chan may have met at Stanford.”

There was a pause as Brady thought things over.

He said, “OK. I’ll call Monterey PD and have them sit on Muller’s house until morning. You and Conklin bring her in first thing.”

I called my partner and filled him in. Then I tried Joe’s phone again.

As before, his mailbox was full. Good-bye.

I dragged my churning mind to bed with me and closed my eyes, but sleep stayed on the other side of the room. It was just as well. An hour after I’d spoken with Brady, he called me back.

“Here’s the thing, Boxer.”

“I’m listening.”

“This Alison Muller. She’s been reported missing. Monterey PD has a BOLO out for her. Her husband hasn’t seen her in a couple of days.”

“No. Really?”

“Khalid Khan spoke with her late Monday afternoon. She missed her daughter’s birthday party. Said she was working and would be home soon. She never showed.”

“Late Monday afternoon. That’s when the shootings went down,” I said.

Brady said, “Right.” He and I talked it over. Where was Alison Muller? Had she been abducted at gunpoint? Was she dead? What, if anything, did she have to do with the death of Michael Chan, and the other victims of that purge?

I asked him, “Anything else? Did Muller’s husband get a ransom call?”

“No. And Khan has been unable to reach his wife on the phone. Total blackout. Monterey PD pinged her phone. Last time it was used was Monday, six fifty-seven, from the Market Street area.”

The Four Seasons Hotel was on Market.

I no longer expected to find Muller and question her. She had disappeared, and I had no idea where to look for her, no idea at all. Another thought sprang at me with bared fangs. Joe Molinari, my husband, was also missing.

What was he doing? Was he involved in all of this? I felt cold, like I was out there on that deadly, frozen highway in Minnesota again. Only this time, I was naked, alone, and without a car.

Julie whimpered. I shot a look in the direction of her room as I said to Brady, “I take back what I said before.”

“Which is what?”

“We need the FBI. We need their resources.”

Brady said, “See you in the morning.”

We hung up, and the full weight of what I had done crashed in on me. I had withheld important, possibly critical information from Brady, and in doing so, I’d involved my partner.

I had to tell Brady about Joe.

He could fire me. And he’d be right to do it.

I hoped that by morning, I would have a theory that explained how Joe innocently fit into this case—a theory that didn’t sound like total bullshit.

Maybe he’d come home so that I could ask him tonight.

I dared to hope.

CHAPTER 20

I HATED THIS.

It made me sick to have to show anyone that questionable footage of Joe in places where logic said he didn’t belong. I wanted to ask him about it. He was my husband. And I trusted him. Right? But whatever he’d done, he’d covered it up. He’d lied. He’d put me in a jam.

I had to do the right thing. So I put on my game face and sailed through the entrance to our squad room.

The man known as Lieutenant Badass was in his glass-walled cube. Brady is brave. He’s fair. And he doesn’t play patty-cake.

When I had his job, I didn’t like being restricted to a desk and all that that entails. Now I report to him. Once in a while, I’ve taken liberties with police procedures and Brady has given me hell—with a warning.

I didn’t think I would get a warning today.

I cleared the obstacle course of gray metal desks and hardened homicide cops and knocked on Brady’s door, and he waved me in. He was working at his laptop and didn’t look at me.

“I’m busy, Boxer. Can this wait?”

When I didn’t speak, Brady jerked his head up and nailed me with his double-barreled, blue-eyed stare.

“I have a meeting with Jacobi in five, so make it quick.”

“Brady. Something I have to tell you. I haven’t heard from Joe in thirty-six hours. Then, yesterday, while Conklin and I were in Palo Alto notifying Chan’s widow, our surveillance team recorded Joe driving by the Chan house.”

“I don’t get you,” he said tersely. “What are you saying?”

Brenda, the department assistant, came through the doorway, dropped some papers on Brady’s desk, and said, “Sergeant Chi needs to speak to you, Lieu, and your ex-wife called.”

Brady said to her, “Hold everything until after my meeting.”

“We can talk about this later,” I said to Brady, getting half out of my chair.

“Sit,” he said.

I did it.

“Make me understand,” he said. “Use short, clear sentences.”

I swallowed hard and pushed through my own wall of resistance. I gave Brady the short sentences he’d asked for, covering the Palo Alto footage, Joe’s drive-by at 5:24, and the hotel security video from the day of the shootings.

“We saw a man on the hotel tape who looked like Joe.”

Brady said, “Joe was in the hotel around the time those people were taken out?”

“Looks like him—which is far from a positive ID.”

Brady said, “You’re saying Joe was in the hotel and also on the block where Chan lived. What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t—”

“Could he be involved in the shootings?”

“Absolutely not,” I said with conviction, but honest to God, I had no idea what Joe was capable of. Not anymore.

“Jesus, Lindsay. You shoulda told me yesterday.”

Brady was furious. As I would have been in his place. I waited for him to ask for my badge and my gun and send me home.

I said, “I wanted to talk to Joe first.”

I was looking at Brady’s face, waiting for the shit-storm that didn’t come. Maybe he was holding back because outside of the Job, Brady and Yuki are married. Joe and I hang out with them. We’re friends.

“The meeting with Jacobi is an FBI briefing,” Brady said. “You’re going to have to tell this Joe story again. Get the video, Boxer. Meet me upstairs.”

CHAPTER 21

WORLDWIDE AIRLINES FLIGHT #888 from Beijing was in its final approach to San Francisco International Airport into a foggy sun-lit morning.

At 9 a.m., Michael Chan was seated in the center row of business class on the main deck. The seats were narrow and uncomfortable and configured in blocks of two rows of four seats facing another row of four seats, so that eight passengers were sitting knee-to-knee.

Chan had been trying not to look at the untidy American couple sitting directly across from him for the last twelve hours. They were sloppy eaters. They took off their shoes. They had littered bags of chips and newspapers on the narrow space in front of their feet.

He had done his best to avoid eye contact, but they hadn’t done the same. The long plane ride had been pure hell. But it was almost over.

The pilot took the plane into another series of descending turns toward the airport. The FASTEN SEAT BELT signs were on and the flight attendants had put away the serving carts and strapped in.

But Michael Chan had his eyes on the restroom at the front of the cabin on his left. When he had washed his hands in that restroom earlier, his wedding band had loosened and dropped into the sink. He had fished it out, but just then, the plane had lurched. He’d been thrown off balance and needed both hands to catch himself, and the ring had spun away from his grasp, into a dark, germ-ridden place somewhere between the commode and the console. And that was when the “return to your seat” announcement had come on.

The flight attendant had rapped on the door, and after a brief, fruitless search for the ring, Chan had left the restroom, deciding he could retrieve his ring once the plane landed. Now, as the huge airliner made its descent, he knew he’d made a mistake.

Chan turned to the man on his left, another cramped, overtired traveler, and said he needed to get up.

The neighboring passenger reeked of sweat and bad temper. Muttering, he swung his knees toward the aisle. Chan said thanks and made the awkward climb over his neighbor’s legs, bumping the knees of the woman across from him, apologizing for that.

He was steps away from the WC when the flight attendant, the red-haired one with the bright pink lipstick, unclipped her harness and blocked his path.

She said, “Mr. Chan, you have to return to your seat.”

Chan said, “I’ll be very quick.”

He thought of the wheels touching down and the passengers from the first-class deck and all the others behind him, blocking the aisle, stampeding for the exit. He would have to wait for the aisle to clear, and for the plane to empty, and then all four hundred passengers from this flight would get ahead of him in the endless rope-lined queue to go through customs. His delay would irritate the men who would be waiting for him. It was just unacceptable.

He said, “Sorry, sorry,” and pushed past the flight attendant. He had his hand on the door latch when there was an explosion directly under the plane’s right wing.

Chan saw a flash and felt the simultaneous concussive boom. He was slammed off his feet, and at the same moment, a metal fragment pierced the fuselage and sheared through his left thigh. A question formed in Chan’s mind, but before he could process the thought, his brain and body were separated by an inexplicable destructive force.

Two seconds passed between the catastrophic explosion and the rain of bodies and objects hitting the ground.

CHAPTER 22

I WAS COLLECTING the footage of Joe for Brady’s meeting when Brady blew through the door to the squad room.

“Everyone, listen up!” he shouted.

He grabbed the remote from Brenda’s desk and flicked on the TV that was suspended from the ceiling. A reporter was yelling into her microphone that Worldwide Airlines Flight 888 from Beijing had been landing at SFO when the Boeing Triple 7 had crashed somewhere west of 101.

The reporter was set up with her back to the highway. At some distance behind her was a screen of fire capped by a thick, coiling column of smoke. Her voice was nearly overwhelmed by the sirens of the emergency vehicles that were streaming out to the downed aircraft.

There were eleven of us in the squad room, and we all stared up at the images as one, cursing, gasping, stunned by what we saw.

Brady muted the sound and said, “Here’s what I know. Ten minutes ago that plane crashed and likely killed everyone on board. The point of impact was the athletic fields at Mills High along Millbrae Avenue. The kids were inside, thank God, but the buildings were hit with debris and whatever. There may be injuries. Gotta be.”

As we watched the silent TV, Brady continued, saying that the airport was closed, a no-fly zone had been imposed, and the governor had declared a state of emergency. NTSB was on the scene and the National Guard was on the way.

Brady paused for breath and shook his head, and then he was talking again.

“We don’t know what happened to this plane. We don’t have a passenger list, and Worldwide is just stalling until they can say this was not their fault. Best guess is that there were more than four hundred people on that flight.

“This whole deal is under investigation by the NTSB, and beyond that, just about every government agency is en route. All cops are being drafted to help.

“Effective immediately, everyone here is assigned to assist wherever we’re needed until y’all are relieved. I don’t know when that’s gonna be. Boxer, you’re point man for our squad until I can get to the scene.”

I was given contact info for the NTSB command post at the Millbrae Avenue exit off Route 101.

And then we were dismissed.

Conklin and I joined the flight to the stairs. Once we were in a car, I dialed up the news on my phone. The smoke-veiled visuals from SFPD’s eye-in-the-sky looked like nothing I’d ever seen before.

A half mile of highways, airport on- and off-ramps, the Burlingame Plaza Shopping Center, a couple of blocks of small business and light industry, and oh, my God, not one, but three schools were within range of the crash site.

Conklin had thrown on the siren, and as we sped through the traffic on Bryant, he said, “Let me see, Linds.”

I said, “Richie. Watch the road.”

My fight-flight reflexes were all on high alert; my heart pounded, sweat sheeted down my body, and my thoughts sparked along multiple neural pathways before coming up against an impenetrable fact: I had no experience that could prepare me for catastrophic, wholesale human destruction.

CHAPTER 23

A WHITE RV with blue lettering and the logo of the National Transportation Safety Board was parked in the right lane of Millbrae Avenue after the Millbrae exit from 101. A line of trailers from ATF, FBI, Homeland Security, and the Sheriff’s Department formed a roadblock, leaving a small break in the barricade to admit emergency vehicles.

Conklin parked our car behind the RV. We got out and stepped into the eerily silent roadway.

A man wearing an NTSB Windbreaker met us at the door to the RV. Captain Jan Vanderleest was in his midforties and had a heavily lined face and a strong handshake. We followed him into his command center, a small space with very little headroom that was banked with NTSB techs working crouched over their computers.

We stood behind them, and Vanderleest gave us the live-streaming virtual tour of the crash site and surrounding debris field. He put his big forefinger on a monitor, nailing the point of impact: the playing field at Mills High, only a hundred yards or so from the classrooms.

Vanderleest drew a circle around the inner perimeter, an area about a quarter of a mile across with the crash site at dead center. Then he circled the outer perimeter, a half mile in diameter across the bull’s-eye, which included the two elementary schools.

My mind reeled as I thought about the children: Had they seen fiery plane parts falling onto the playing fields right outside their schoolrooms? Had they seen any casualties? Vanderleest said, “We can’t let anyone into the school buildings. There’s every kind of hazard: fire, toxic fumes, falling objects.”

He ran his finger along the images of the congested roads, pausing at the car pileups, and I knew we were looking at an agonized crush of frantic parents trying to get to their kids.

“These roads have been closed, but One-Oh-One South is open and so is—maybe you know it—Mills-Peninsula. A health care facility just south of Trousdale.”

Vanderleest went on, “Highway Patrol will be shuttling the kids from the schools to this medical center. It’s close and it’s big. This is where you can help.”

Conklin asked, “Does anyone know what caused the crash?”

“All we know right now is that this flight from Beijing was coming in for a normal, on-schedule landing. The pilot was talking to the control tower, which had cleared them to land on runway Twenty-Eight L when the plane turned into a fireball at three thousand feet.

“As for what happened. I don’t know how, who, or why, and that goes for all of us. Right now, no one knows shit.”

CHAPTER 24

CONKLIN STARTED UP our car and we set course for the Mills-Peninsula Medical Center, a detour that would take us past ground zero, only a quarter of a mile away.

As soon as we cleared the barricade and rounded the turn onto the flat four-lane expanse of Millbrae Avenue, we could see the length and breadth of the disaster. I’ve driven along Millbrae Avenue any number of times, bought lunch, gased up, cashed checks on this broad stretch of suburban highway.

It was now completely unrecognizable.

Off to our left, the dry grass on the median of Rollins Road was blazing. Ahead, looking west toward the hills, a dense roiling bank of smoke nearly blocked out the sky.

The closer we got to the crash site, the more the smoke made us cough. Visibility became limited to about three car lengths on all sides. But what we could see was horrible.

Luggage was strewn loosely across the road, spilling clothing and personal articles: books, and a pink dress, as clean as if it had just been unpacked, hanging across the median strip.

Conklin jerked the wheel, cutting the car around a chunk of charred flesh, a decapitated passenger, his clothes torn off by the blast. I put my head between my knees, but it didn’t help.

“Linds. It’s OK. Hang on.”

He stopped the car and I opened the door and did what I never do. I barfed at a crime scene. Then we were rolling again.

Directly up ahead were red flashers, a lot of them. A half dozen fire trucks lined the street next to the Mills High School playing field. It was a sight out of a science-fiction movie crossed with a late-night horror film.

In place of kids jogging on the track and scrimmaging were several detached rows of seats with dead passengers still strapped in for landing. And in the center of this gruesome field were three misshapen sections of the airframe standing like grotesque sculptures, rising twenty feet into the murky air. NTSB agents in hazmat suits were taking pictures, putting down markers next to bodies and body parts.

Wind blew smoke across the field, sparking small fires and making my eyes water. Conklin crossed himself.

A team of airport cops came up to our car. We identified ourselves and reviewed the best and only route to the health care facility: straight ahead three blocks, left on Camino Real for three long blocks, then right on Trousdale.

“Mills-Peninsula. A big glass building,” the cop said.

“We know the place,” said Conklin.

“Drive safely.”

I was never going to forget seeing this. No matter how hard I tried.

CHAPTER 25

THE MILLS-PENINSULA Medical Center parking lot was jammed to a standstill with hundreds of cars driven here by the parents of the kids at the three crash-affected schools. They had left their cars and ganged up at the police line at the barricade en masse.

It was a big parking lot and we were still out on the street, but even from a hundred yards away, I could see and hear that the parents were freaking the hell out. And who could blame them? They wanted to get their children. They were getting roadblocks instead.

As Conklin and I watched, a school bus rounded Trousdale and entered the lot from the rear. The parents reversed their direction and stampeded toward the bus, coming to a stop at the blockade of police vehicles across the Trousdale entrance.

For the first time since Brady had yelled “Everyone, listen up!” I became furious at the horror, at the outrageous loss of life, at the trauma everyone in San Francisco would bear for the rest of their lives.

The same type of question I asked myself every day on the job came to me now.

What had happened to WW 888? Was the crash due to pilot error or a structural flaw? Or had some person or persons deliberately brought down this jet with four hundred passengers?

Was the downing of WW 888 an act of war?

The dispatcher’s voice came over the car radio.

“Boxer, Conklin, sit tight. San Mateo County Sheriff is going to escort you into the building.”

I copied that, and my partner got on his phone.

He waited out a ringing phone for a few seconds, then said, “Cin? Yeah, it’s me. I don’t know. It’s bad. Extremely, horribly bad. How are you?”

I watched the shifting mob in the parking lot and the caravan of school buses attempting to deliver young children safely to the health care facility. And I listened to my partner and my very dear friend Cindy sharing what they knew and consoling each other.

I checked my phone to see if Joe had called.

He had not.

CHAPTER 26

IT WAS RAINING softly when the taxi pulled up to the very romantic Hotel Andra in the center of the Belltown neighborhood in Seattle.

The doorman brought an umbrella out to the taxi and opened the door for the elegant woman in black who extended her stiletto-heeled shoes and stepped gracefully out onto the street. She slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder and pulled her soft knitted cap down to her eyebrows. She was on the phone as she entered the Scandinavian-style lobby.

She put away her phone when she reached the front desk, which was really a piece of art. It was a beautiful walnut-and-maple construction with glass below the granite counter and above the floor, giving it the appearance of floating.

The attractive woman loved this place.

She exchanged words with the concierge, showed him her government-issue photo ID as required, and he handed her a white #2 envelope. She thanked him, then crossed the colorful hand-knotted rugs, passed the blazing fireplace flanked with bookshelves, and stopped at the elevator.

When the lift arrived at the ground floor, a young couple got out holding hands, going out to dinner, no doubt. The guy was laughing at his own joke, the girl saying, “Funny. Yah. Good one, Brad.”

The woman smiled at young love, then got into the elevator alone. She was twenty minutes late, but if a thing was worth doing—and it was—it was worth waiting for. She checked out her reflection in the mirror on the back wall and adjusted her cap, playing with the ends of her newly brown-and-gold-streaked hair. Her brown contact lenses completed the look.

She liked it. She hoped he would.

The elevator bumped upward for several floors, then opened into a thickly carpeted hallway with watery light. There were only twelve rooms per floor, and she walked all the way to the end.

She scratched at the door with her nails, as if she were a cat; then she tore open the envelope she’d been given by the concierge and removed the key card.

She swiped the door lock with the card; the light turned green and the handle turned easily in her hand. She lingered in the open doorway for a moment, just watching him amid this lovely setting of woodsy colors and satisfying architectural lines. Then she closed the door.

He knew she was there, but he didn’t look up. He was sitting on a sofa in front of a coffee table, naked with a towel across his lap, and he was cleaning his gun.

Ali entered the room unbuttoning her swingy leather coat, dropping it on the half-moon-shaped ottoman at the foot of the bed. Then she took off everything else.

When she was wearing nothing but her heels, the man put the gun down. He stood up and took her into his arms.

He pulled her to him, swayed with her, kissed her neck, then took her by her shoulders and shook her.

“Why do you make me wait?” he said. “Why do you want me to worry?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll never do it again.”