4th of July

Chapter 48

OCEAN COLONY ROAD WAS lined with patrol cars on both sides of the street. The insignias on the car doors told me that the local cops were finally getting the help they badly needed. They’d called in the state police.

As I drove past, I saw that a uniformed officer was guarding the front door of the house and another cop was interviewing the UPS man.

Detectives and crime scene techs entered and left the house at irregular intervals. A media tent had been set up on a neighbor’s lawn, and a local reporter was going live from Half Moon Bay.

I parked my car down the block and walked toward the house, blending in with a clump of bystanders who were watching the police process the scene from the sidewalk across the street. It was a good enough vantage point, and as I stood there, I sifted through my impressions, hoping for a nugget of insight.

To start with, the houses of the victims were as different as chalk and cheese. Crescent Heights was a blue-collar community with Highway 1 whizzing between the unpretentious homes and their view of the bay. Ocean Colony backed up onto a private golf course. The O’Malley house and the others around it fairly glistened with all of the nicest things money could buy. What did the two homes and the people who’d lived in them have in common?

I studied the O’Malleys’ spiffy colonial, with its slate roof and boxwood topiaries in pots by the door, and once again I ran through the preliminary questions. What had drawn a killer here? Was it a personal hit or a random killing of opportunity?

I turned my eyes up to the blue-shuttered windows on the second floor, where Lorelei O’Malley had been stabbed to death in her bedroom.

Had she been whipped, too?

I was concentrating so intently, I must have attracted attention to myself. A young uniformed cop with a florid face and an excitable manner was headed toward me.

“Miss? Miss? I’d like to ask you some questions.”

Damn. If I had to show my badge, this cop would run me through the database. Pass the news along: Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer, SFPD, was at the scene of the crime. In twenty minutes the media would be ringing the doorbell and camping out on Cat’s lawn.

I assumed my most innocent expression.

“Just passing through, Officer. I’m leaving now.”

I flipped a little wave, turned around, and walked quickly to the Explorer.

Nuts. I saw him do it.

That cop wrote down my plate number as I drove past.