The 8th Confession

Chapter 24

PET GIRL SAT on the floor of the children’s former nursery, her back against the wall. She was wearing welder’s gloves and steel-tipped boots, had her precious Rama safe inside her bag. And she listened to the Baileys’ muted shouts through the plaster.

“Pig!”

“Slut!”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

The fools didn’t even know she was sitting ten feet away in the dark, that she’d been waiting for hours for them to come home and screw themselves to sleep.

She’d used the time well, ran the Grand Plan through her mind again. She was prepared. She knew their habits, the floor plan, the best way in, the quickest way out.

And she knew the code.

It was a good plan, but Pet Girl also had a Plan B – what to do if she got caught. And she had the nerve to do even that.

On the other side of the wall, Ethan Bailey accused his wife of screwing around, and Pet Girl didn’t doubt that she had. Isa had been a pretty competent flirt when they were in class together at Katherine Delmar Burke School.

And since then, Isa had truly mastered the art of casual seduction. Like Gwyneth Paltrow on a really good day.

But that wasn’t why Pet Girl despised Isa.

It was deeper than that, had to do with when her life had shattered to pieces – when Pet Girl was ten and her dad had died, and Isa had hugged her hard at the funeral and said, “I’m sooooo sorry. But don’t ever forget that I love you. We’re best friends forever.”

“Forever” had lasted a couple of weeks.

Once her dad’s fortune and protection shifted entirely to his real family, it was as if Pet Girl and her mother had never existed. No more private school or dance classes or birthday parties on Snob Hill for her. Pet Girl had plummeted through the delicate web of those who had it to the flat and dismal plains of “Who cares?” – where the bastard daughter of a married man belonged.

Isa, on the other hand, had graduated at eighteen and married Ethan Bailey in a hand-beaded Carolina Herrera gown at twenty-two, a wedding attended by the entire West Coast Social Register. And everything else followed: her two clever children, her charities, her place at the gleaming peak of high society.

Pet Girl’s mother had said, “Move, sweetheart. Start over.” But Pet Girl had her own roots in this city, deeper and more historic than even Isa’s midnight-blue bloodlines.

And so, this was Pet Girl’s life after the fall, working for the Baileys and their revolting ilk, walking their neurotic dogs, taking their disgusting furs into cold storage, addressing invitations to their snobby friends, people who called her “Pet Girl” and who talked about her when she was close enough to hear.

For so long, she thought that she was handling it.

But if she’d learned anything from McKenzie Oliver, it was that “handling it” was overrated.

Pet Girl stared around the room, filled now with racks of outrageous, never-worn clothes and mountains of unopened boxes of pricey purchases bought on a whim.

It was sickening. The decadence of the very rich. The twenty-four-karat-gold crap.

Inside the bedroom, the shouting stopped. Pet Girl pressed her ear to the wall, listened to the Baileys grunt and groan, Isa calling out, “Oh yes, that’s good, oh!” the two of them making what they called love, Isa’s voice giving Pet Girl even more reason to bring her down.

And then there was silence.

Pet Girl gripped the handle of her canvas bag.

It was time.

Chapter 25

PET GIRL OPENED the door to the Baileys’ bedroom, dropped to a crouch as the pugs, Wako and Waldo, ran over to her, all snuffling and wriggling. She shushed and rubbed them, watched them trot back to their baskets under the window, circle, and lie down again.

Pet Girl stood rock still, listening to the Baileys’ rhythmic breathing coming from their vast moonlit bed. At the windows, silk taffeta curtains billowed, the rustling covering her own excited breathing and the whooshing of traffic on the street below.

She could see that Isa was nude, lying on her stomach under the thousand-thread-count sheets and 100-percent goose down comforter, her long, dark hair fanned out over her shoulders. On her left, Ethan lay on his back, his snores scenting the air with alcohol.

Pet Girl walked to Isa’s side, homed in on her exposed shoulder. Her heart was thudding. She felt as high as if she’d jumped from a plane and was waiting to pull the rip cord.

She put down her canvas bag, opened it, and reached inside with her gloved hand. Just then, Isa stirred, half rose up in her bed, and, seeing Pet Girl’s stooped silhouette, called out, “Who’s there?” her voice slurry with drink and sleep.

Pet Girl croaked, “Isa, it’s just me.”

“What are you… doing here?”

Pet Girl’s feet had frozen to the floor. Had she been crazy? What if Isa turned on the lights? What if the dogs went nuts? What if Ethan woke up?

Plan B was satisfactory, but it was far from ideal.

“I picked up your prescription. I made a special trip,” Pet Girl whispered, vamping madly. Ethan stirred, rolled onto his side facing away from her. He pulled the comforter up under his arm. He was out.

“Put it on my nightstand and get the hell out, okay?”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Pet Girl said, sounding pissed off now, believably so. “Did you hear me? I made a special trip. And you’re welcome.”

Isa’s shoulder was only inches from Pet Girl’s hand. She struck softly, precisely.

“What was that?” Isa asked. “Did you pinch me?”

“Yeah, bitch. Because I hate you. I wish you’d die.”

Isa laughed. “Don’t hold back, darling.”

“No,” said Pet Girl, “not me.”

But a new idea was forming. Call it Plan C.

Willing her pulse to slow, Pet Girl walked to Ethan’s side of the bed, picked up a paperback off the floor, returned it to the night table, eyed his hairy arm lying across the top of the comforter.

“What are you doing now?” Isa asked.

“Tidying up,” Pet Girl said.

And she struck again.

Oh yes, it’s so good. Oh.

“Go to sleep,” Pet Girl said, snapping her bag closed. “I’ll be back in the morning for the dogs.”

“Don’t wake us up, chickadee.”

“Don’t worry. Sweet dreams,” she said, her voice rising giddily. With the handles of her canvas bag slung over her shoulder, Pet Girl ran quickly down two flights of stairs in the dark and punched Isa’s code into the keypad at the front door, disarming and then arming the alarm again.

Then she stepped outside as free as a chickadee. “Sweet dreams, darlings,” sang the voice in her head. “Sweet dreams.”

Chapter 26

IT WAS AROUND LUNCHTIME on Monday when Jacobi loomed over our desks, said to me and Conklin, “I need you both to get over to Broadway and Pierce before the bodies are moved. Boxer, relieve the swing shift and take over the case.”

“Take over the case?” I said dumbly.

I shot a look at Conklin. We’d just been talking about the Baileys, who’d been found dead a few hours ago in their bed. We’d been glad we hadn’t caught a case that was guaranteed to be surrounded by media high jinks all the time, live updates on the hour.

“The mayor is Ethan Bailey’s cousin,” said Jacobi.

“I know that.”

“He and the chief want you on this, Boxer. Asked for you by name.”

As flattering as that was meant to be, I nearly gagged. Rich and I were drowning in unsolved cases, and not only would a high-profile crime be micromanaged by the brass but our other twelve cases would not go away. They’d just get cold.

“No bitching,” Jacobi said to me. “Yours is to protect and serve.”

I stared at him, mouth closed so I wouldn’t say bad things.

But I saw that Conklin was having a whole different reaction. He cleared off a space on his desk, and Jacobi put his butt down, still talking.

“There’s a live-in housekeeping staff at the Bailey house, and they have their own wing. The head of housekeeping, Iraida Hernandez, found the bodies,” Jacobi said. “You’ll want to talk to her first.”

I had my notebook out. “What else?” I was in the frying pan, felt the flames lapping at the edges.

“The Baileys had dinner with a friend last night. Interior designer, name of Noble Blue, might be the last person to see them alive. After Hernandez called nine one one, she called Blue, and Blue phoned the mayor. That’s all we’ve got.”

Well, there would be more. Lots more.

The Bailey family history was common knowledge.

Isa Booth Bailey was a fourth-generation San Franciscan, descended from one of the railroad magnates who’d forged train lines over the prairies in the mid-1800s. Her family was in the billionaire league.

Ethan Bailey’s line also went back to 1800s San Francisco, but his family had been working-class. His great-grandfather was a miner, and from there his family worked their way up, notch by notch, through everyday commerce. Before Ethan Bailey died sometime in the dark hours, he’d owned “Bailey’s,” a chain of restaurants featuring all-you-can-eat buffets for $9.99.

Together and separately, they’d been the focus of San Francisco socialites and wannabes. There were rumors of Hollywood lovers, kinky combinations, and all the parties money could buy: red party, blue party, and party hearty.

I tuned back in to what Jacobi was saying. “This Noble Blue is some kind of fancy fruit. Said he can fill you in on the Baileys’ crowd from soup to nuts. And he’s not kidding about the nuts. Boxer, take anyone you need to work the case – Lemke, Samuels, McNeil. I want updates and I’ll be sticking my nose in.”

I gave him the evil eye but said, “Fine. You know what I’m praying for?” I took the file out of Jacobi’s hand, stood to put on my jacket.

Jacobi’s face flattened. “What’s that, Boxer?”

“That the Baileys left suicide notes.”

Chapter 27

CONKLIN TOOK THE WHEEL of our unmarked Chevy, and we pulled out heading north on Bryant. We bucked through stop-and-go traffic until I said, “This is nuts,” and flipped on the siren. Fifteen minutes later, we were parked across from the Baileys’ home.

The fire department was there, as well as an assortment of marked and unmarked police cars and the CSI mobile that was blocking the front walk.

There aren’t many Hollywood types in San Francisco, but if we had a star map, the Baileys’ house would be on it. A three-story buff stucco giant with white crossbeams and trim, it was planted on the corner of Broadway and Pierce, running a half block to both the south and the east.

It looked more like a museum than a house to me, but it had a glamorous history going back to Prohibition, and it was the best that fifteen million bucks could buy: thirty thousand square feet of the city’s most prime real estate.

I greeted the first officer at the door, Pat Noonan, a kid with stuck-out red ears and a growing reputation for immaculate police work. Samuels and Lemke came up the path, and I put them back on the street to canvass the neighborhood.

“Forced entry?” I asked Noonan.

“No, ma’am. Anyone entering the house had to have an alarm code and a key. Those five people over there? That’s the live-in staff. They were all here last night, didn’t hear or see anything.”

I muttered, “Now there’s a shock.” Then Noonan introduced us to the head housekeeper, Iraida Hernandez.

Hernandez was a wiry woman, immaculately dressed, late fifties. Her eyes were red from weeping, and her English was better than mine. I took her aside so we could speak privately.

“This was no suicide,” Hernandez announced defiantly. “I was Isa’s nursemaid. I’m raising her kids. I know this whole family from conception on, and I tell you that Isa and Ethan were happy.”

“Where are their children now?”

“Thank God, they spent the night with their grandparents. I want to be sick. What if they had found their parents instead of me? Or what if they’d been home – no, no. I can’t even think.”

I asked Hernandez where she’d been all night (“In bed, watching a Plastic Surgery: Before and After marathon”), what she saw when she opened the Baileys’ door (“They were dead. Still warm!”), and if she knew anyone who might have wanted to hurt the Baileys (“Lots of people were jealous of them, but to kill them? I think there’s been some kind of horrible accident”).

Hernandez looked up at me as if she were hoping I could make the bad dream go away, but I was already thinking over the puzzle, wondering if I’d actually taken on some kind of English-style drawing-room whodunit.

I told Hernandez that she and the staff would be getting rides to the station so that we could take exclusionary prints and DNA. And then I called Jacobi.

“This wasn’t a break-in,” I told him. “Whatever was going on in this house, the staff probably know about it. All five had unrestricted access, so -”

“So chances are good that if the Baileys were murdered, one of them did it.”

“There you go. Reading my mind.”

I told Jacobi that I thought he and Chi should do the interviews themselves, and Jacobi agreed. Then Conklin and I ducked under the barrier tape and logged in with a rookie in the foyer who directed us to the Baileys’ bedroom.

The interior of the house was a wonderland of tinted plaster walls, elaborate moldings and copings, fine old European paintings and antiques in every room, each chamber opening into an even grander one, a breathtaking series of surprises.

When we got to the third floor, I heard voices and the static of radios coming from halfway down the carpeted hallway.

A buff young cop from the night tour, Sergeant Bob Nardone, walked into the hall, called out to me as we came toward him.

I said, “Sorry about having to take over, Bob. I have orders.”

For some reason, I expected a fight.

“You’re joking, right, Boxer? Take my case, please!”

Chapter 28

CHARLIE CLAPPER, head of our crime lab, was standing beside the Baileys’ bed. Clapper is in his midfifties, and having spent half his life in law enforcement, he’s as good as they come. Maybe better. Charlie is no showboater. He’s nitpickingly thorough. Then he says his piece and gets out of the way.

Clapper had been at the scene for about two hours, and there were no markers or flags on the carpet, meaning no blood, no trace. As techs dusted the furniture for prints, I took in the astonishing tableau in front of me.

The Baileys lay in their bed, as still and as unblemished as if they were made of wax.

Both bodies were nude, sheets and a comforter were draped over their lower trunks. A black lace demibra hung over the massive carved-mahogany headboard. Other clothing, both outer- and underwear, was scattered around the floor as though it had been tossed there in haste.

“Everything is as we found it except for an opened bottle of Moët and two champagne flutes, which are headed back to the lab,” Clapper told Conklin and me. “Mr. Bailey took Cafergot for migraines, Prevacid for acid reflux. His wife took clonazepam. That’s for anxiety.”

“That’s some kind of Valium, right?” Conklin asked.

“Similar. The directions on the bottle were for one tablet to be used for sleep at bedtime. That’s minimal.”

“How much was in the medicine bottle?” Conklin asked.

“It was nearly full.”

“Could clonazepam have a lethal interaction with champagne?”

“Put her to sleep is all.”

“So what are you thinking?” I asked Clapper.

“Well, I look at the positions of the bodies and hope that’ll tell me something. If they were holding hands, I’d be thinking suicide pact. Or maybe something a little more sinister.”

“Like the killer staged the scene after the victims were dead?”

Clapper nodded, said, “Exactly. Some kind of forethought or afterthought. But here are two apparently healthy people in their thirties lying in natural sleeping positions. There’s semen on the sheets but no blood, no other substances. And I don’t see any signs of struggle, no marks or wounds.”

“Please, Charlie, give us something,” I said.

“Well, here’s what it’s not: carbon monoxide. The fire department did a thorough sweep, and it was negative. Also, the Baileys’ dogs slept here,” Clapper said, pointing to the dog beds near the window, “and both are alive. According to the housekeeper, the dog walker came for them at eight, and when she brought them back, she told Hernandez that the dogs were fine.”

“Lovely,” I said. “Perfect, really.”

“I’ll get back to you on the prints and leave the rest to the ME when she gets here. But you’re right, Lindsay. This crime scene is too clean. If it is a crime scene.”

“And that’s all?”

Charlie winked. “That’s all. Clapper has spoken.”

Chapter 29

THE BAILEYS GOT the best of everything, even in death. We got search warrants without a grilling. First time ever. Then Deputy DA Leonard Parisi came by and asked for a tour of the so-called crime scene.

His presence told me that if this was homicide and there was a prosecutable suspect, Red Dog was going to try the case himself. I showed him the victims, and he stood silently, respectfully.

Then he said, “This is ugly. No matter what happened here, it’s grotesque.”

No sooner had Parisi left when Claire walked in with two assistants. I briefed her as she took photos of the Baileys: two shots from each angle before she touched the bodies.

“Any thoughts you can share?” I asked as she pulled down the bedsheets, took more pictures.

“Hang on, baby girl. I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking yet.”

She harrumphed a few times, asked for help in turning the bodies, said, “There’s no rigor. Lividity is blanching. They’re still warm to the touch. So I would certainly put time of death at twelve hours or under.”

“Could it be six?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. They’re rich, thin, beautiful, and dead.”

Claire then gave me the usual disclaimer: she wouldn’t say anything official until she’d done the posts.

“But here’s what’s unusual,” Claire told my partner and me. “Two dead folks, the rigor is pretty much the same, the lividity is pretty much the same. Something got these people at the same time, Lindsay.

“Look at them. No visible trauma, no bullet wounds, no bruising, no defensive wounds. I’m starting to think of poisoning, you know?”

“Poisoning, huh? Like maybe two homicides? Or a homicide-suicide? I’m just thinking out loud.”

Claire shot me a grin. “I’ll do the autopsies today. I’ll send out the blood. I’ll let you know what the labs come back with. I’ll tell you what I know as soon as I know it.”

Conklin and I worked the top floor of the Baileys’ museum of a house while Clapper’s team did the kitchen and baths. We looked for signs of disturbance and we looked for notes and journals, found none. We confiscated three laptops: Isa’s, Ethan’s, and the one belonging to Christopher Bailey, age nine, for good measure.

We methodically tossed the closets and looked under the beds, then searched the servants’ quarters so the staff could return to their rooms when they got back from the Hall.

I checked in with Claire as the deceased were being zipped into body bags, and she looked at my frown, said, “I’m not worried, Linds, so relax yourself. The tox screens will give us a clue.”

Chapter 30

“HERE WE GO,” said Conklin, nodding in the direction of the fortyish, sandy-haired man in shorts and a hot-pink T-shirt waving to us from a tiki hut, one of several similar cabanas grouped around an oval-shaped pool.

If there was ever a place where Conklin and I stood out as cops, this was it. The Bambuddha Lounge had been the epicenter for hipster-richies since Sean Penn had held a party here after wrapping his Nixon film. As we crossed the patio, eyes shifted away, joints were snuffed out. I half expected someone to shout, “Cheese it, the fuzz.”

“I’m Noble Blue,” said the man in pink.

We introduced ourselves. I ordered mineral water to Noble Blue’s mai tai, and when we were all comfortable, I said, “I understand you had dinner with the Baileys last night.”

“Can you imagine?” Blue said. “They were having their last meal. In a million years, I would never have guessed. We were at the opera before dinner. Don Giovanni,” he told us. “It was terrific.”

The word “terrific” got caught in his throat, and tears spilled down his tanned cheeks. He grabbed a tissue and wiped them away. “Sorry,” Blue said. “It’s just that Isa and Ethan saw so many of their friends there. It’s almost as if they’d had a big night out because they knew…”

“Could they have known?” Conklin asked. “How did they seem to you?”

Blue told us that they were “a hundred-percent normal.” Isa had flirted at dinner with a man at a nearby table, and, as usual, that made Ethan wild.

“How wild?” I asked.

Blue smiled, said, “I don’t mean violent, Sergeant. It was part of their foreplay.”

Conklin asked, “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted them dead?”

“No. I mean, not in my wildest. But people felt snubbed just as a matter of fact. Everyone wanted to be around the Baileys, and it just wasn’t possible.”

Blue brought up committees that Isa chaired and people who were slighted by that. He spoke of other big-name couples and the not-so-friendly competition among them to see who could be mentioned most often in the Chronicle’s lifestyle pages.

And he went into a kind of rhapsody as he described Isa’s thirtieth-birthday party in Paris, what she had worn, the fact that Barbra Streisand had performed and that their three hundred guests had been treated to a week of exorbitant luxury.

Conklin had been taking notes, but the three-hundred-name guest list stopped him.

“There’s a list of the guests somewhere?”

“Surely there is. I think it was published. You could Google it?” Blue said helpfully. He blew his nose, sipped his drink, and added thoughtfully, “Sure, people hated them. Ethan and Isa attracted envy. Their money. Their fame. And they were both so hot, they perspired pearls.”

I nodded, but after Noble Blue’s hour-long virtual tour of the Baileys’ lifestyle, I was exhausted by so much information that had yielded so little.

At the same time, Noble Blue had managed to hook me. I found that I cared about these two people who’d seemed lucky and blessed until their lives were canceled – as if someone had thrown a switch and simply shut them down.

I thanked Blue, unfolded my cramped legs, and stepped down from the tiki hut in the center of the Tenderloin.

“I know less now than when Jacobi lobbed this hot potato to us,” I said to Conklin as we walked out to Eddy Street.

“You,” Conklin said, unlocking the car.

“Me, what?”

He gave me his lady-killer grin, the one that could make me forget my own name. “You,” my partner said again. “Jacobi lobbed this hot potato to you.”

Chapter 31

THE COPS on the Bailey investigation were loosely arranged around the grungy twenty- by-thirty-foot squad room we often think of as home.

Jacobi sat behind my desk, saying into the phone, “They just got here. Okay. As soon as you can.”

He hung up, told us, “Clapper says there were no suspicious prints in the bedroom or bath. There was nothing interesting in the glasses or the pills or the bottle of champagne.

“Claire’s on her way. Paul, why don’t you start?”

Paul Chi is lithe, upbeat, resourceful, and a first-class interrogator. He and Jacobi had interviewed the Baileys’ live-in staff, and Chi gave his report from his seat.

“First up, the gardener. Pedro Vasquez, forty-year-old Hispanic. Seemed twitchy. He volunteered that he had some porn on his laptop,” Chi said. “But it turned out to be legal-age porn. I spent an hour with him, don’t see a motive, not yet, anyway. His prints were not found in the Baileys’ bedroom. Vasquez told me he’d never been above the ground floor, and at this point, we’ve got no reason to think that’s a lie.

“Two: Iraida Hernandez,” Chi said, flipping the page in his notebook. “Hernandez is a nice lady.”

“Your professional opinion, Chi?” Lemke asked mildly.

“Yes,” said Chi, “it is. Hernandez is a naturalized citizen, Mexican, fifty-eight, employed for more than thirty years by Isa Booth’s family and by the Baileys. As expected, her prints are all over the Baileys’ bedroom.

“She’s got no record, but as for motive? It’s a maybe.”

“Really?” I said.

Chi nodded. “She says she’s probably in the Baileys’ will, so you never know, but my Grift-O-Meter didn’t go off. Iraida Hernandez does things by the book. She’s loyal. She didn’t have a bad thing to say about anyone, so as I said, ‘Nice lady.’ ”

“What about the cook?” Cappy McNeil called out. Cappy’s a big guy, two hundred fifty, and if the doughnuts and the stairs don’t get him, he could get promoted out of here to a good lieutenant’s job in a small town down the line. That’s what he’s shooting for. Calls it “going coastal.”

“As I was about to say,” Chi said to his partner, “number three: the cook is Miller, Marilyn, white, forty-seven years old. Moved here from somewhere in flyover country.” Chi looked at his notes. “ Ohio. Only been working for the Baileys for a year. Has a clean record. No prints upstairs. All I got off her was ‘What’s going to happen to me now?’ I see no motive. What’s she got to gain? But like the rest of the staff, access to the Baileys was a given. And if we’re thinking poison…”

Chi shrugged as if to say, She’s the cook.

Jacobi said, “I told Miller not to leave the city, and I got two teams from the Special Investigation Division. They’ll be on her at all times.”

Chi was finishing up his report on the remaining two of the Baileys’ live-in staff, a second housekeeper and the mechanic, both as clean as cat whiskers, when Claire stomped into the squad room in her sneakers and scrubs.

She looked around and said, “Are you all thinking, Now that Claire’s here, the party can begin? Think again.”

Chapter 32

CHI WHEELED A CHAIR over for Claire. She sat down, propped her feet up on a desk, said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Baileys’ bodies were so pristine, I expected them to start breathing. No pills in their stomachs, no abrasions, contusions, or lacerations. Negative for carbon monoxide. And since I never let skin stand between me and my diagnosis, I did a layerwise dissection on both necks, and the backs of their necks as well.

“In sum, I looked at everything but their dreams. The autopsies were completely negative.”

Everyone groaned. Even me.

“I spoke with Ethan Bailey’s physician,” Claire continued. “I spoke with Isa’s gynecologist. Both doctors had complete and recent medical histories of their patients, and the Baileys passed their physicals with five stars each, ten stars total. Those kids knew how to take care of their bodies.

“So as I hung up the phone after talking to you ten minutes ago,” she said to Jacobi, “the rushed toxicology report walked in the door.

“I was ready to opine that if there was poison involved, one of the Baileys whacked the other and then took poison him- or herself, so we’d have homicide-suicide or double suicide. But I got surprised – and not in a good way.”

Claire had us by the eyeballs.

No one spoke. Maybe no one breathed.

Claire waved a computer printout, said, “Toxicology was negative. No poison, no opiates, no narcotics, no nothing. Cause of death? No idea. Manner of death? No idea. Something stinks, and I don’t know what,” she told us, “but the likelihood of these two individuals, with completely negative autopsies and completely negative toxicologies, expiring at the same time is statistically astronomical.”

“Oh, man,” I muttered. “So much for ‘The tox screens will give us a clue.’ ”

“Okay, okay, I was wrong about that, Lindsay. Since there’s no such thing as ‘sudden adult death syndrome,’ we’re thinking homicide. Until we’ve got something to go on, I’m giving Ethan and Isa Bailey Chinese death certificates.”

Chi spoke up, said, “Claire, my darling, that’s a new one for me. What’s a Chinese death certificate?”

“Pen Ding,” she cracked. “Case open. Any other questions?”

“Yep,” said Jacobi. “What now?”

Claire took her feet off the desk, stood up, and said, “I’m going home. Going to kiss my baby. Then I’m going to eat an entire turkey potpie followed by a bowl of chocolate pudding with whipped cream, and no one better try to stop me.”

She gazed around the room at our faces, slack from the long day and gray from the overhead fluorescent lights. I was pretty sure we looked like the living dead.

Jacobi in particular looked awful. He would be the one telling the family and the press and the chief and the mayor that at the end of the day, we were clueless.

“I know you’re just getting started, and so am I,” said Claire, her smile beaming a small ray of hope into our collective gloom. “I sent the samples back to the lab. Let the night crew take a crack at this,” she said. “I’m asking them to run the tests again, this time instructing them to look for the weird, the strange, and the bizarre.”

Chapter 33

CONKLIN AND I spent seven full hours interviewing Isa and Ethan Bailey’s friends, family, and the short list of their non-live-in personal employees: Isa’s secretary; the dog walker, who was also a gal Friday; and the children’s tutor.

Nothing popped. We filled our notebooks and moved on.

While the rest of my team went back to the neighborhood canvass, Conklin and I went to see Yancey and Rita Booth, Isa’s indescribably wealthy parents, who tearfully invited us into their magnificent Nob Hill home.

We spent hours with the Booths, mostly listening and taking notes. The Booths were in their sixties, devastated by Isa’s death, and needed to talk their way through the shock by telling us about the Booth and Bailey family histories.

According to Yancey Booth, there was a hundred-year-old dispute between the Booths and the Baileys, ongoing to this day, that had started with a plot of land with ambiguous boundary lines.

We learned that Ethan Bailey had three brothers, none of them successful, and that little fact opened a door to a new branch of the investigation.

We looked at the Booth family photos going back to the gold-rush days, and we met the grandkids, or rather they met us, demanding to be let in to see the police.

At five in the afternoon we turned down an offer to stay for dinner. We left our cards and assurances that Isa Booth Bailey was our number one priority – and then we got the hell out of there.

As we walked down the front steps, I grumbled to Conklin, “We’re going to be working this case until we retire.”

We got into the car and sat there, talking over what we knew about the lives of Isa and Ethan, wondering if this case would ever come together.

I said to Conklin, “Her parents are never going to get over this.”

“They sure loved her,” he said.

“When Mrs. Booth broke down -”

“Heartbreaking. I mean, I think she could really die of this.”

“And those little boys.”

“Just old enough to understand. When the smaller one, Peter, said, ‘Please tell me why anyone would do this to Mommy and Daddy…’ ” Conklin sighed. “See? Isa and Ethan couldn’t have done it. I don’t see one killing the other. Not with kids like that.”

“I know.”

I told Conklin about my sister’s kids, Brigid and Meredith, who are about the same age as the Bailey boys. “I’m going to call my sister tonight. I just want to hear the little girls’ happy voices.”

“Good idea,” Conklin said.

“We were supposed to visit them. Me and Joe. He had to go on a business trip.”

“That’s too bad. But you can see Cat when he gets back.”

“That’s what he said.”

“You like kids, Lindsay,” Conklin said after a moment. “You should have some.”

I turned away, looked out the window as all those forbidden thoughts tumbled over one another, how close Rich and I had become, the taboo words and deeds, the smell of his hair, what it had felt like to kiss him, the part of me that regretted saying no because now I would never know how we would have fit together.

“Lindsay? You okay?”

I turned to him, said, “I’m just thinking,” and when I looked into his eyes, there was that hit, that arc of electricity going from me to him to me.

A phone rang in the distance.

On the third ring, I grabbed my cell off my belt, feeling mad, sad, and glad – in that order. It was Jacobi calling, but I wouldn’t have cared if it had been a wrong number.

I’d been saved by the bell.

Because in another moment, I might have suggested doing with Conklin what I was thinking – and all that would accomplish would be to make me feel worse.

Chapter 34

CLAIRE STOOD IN the center of the squad room again, but this time she looked weird, like she’d taken a punch.

“For those of you who haven’t heard my lecture, there are two types of cases – one type is circumstance-dependent and the other is autopsy-dependent.”

She was pacing now, talking as much to herself as she was to the ten of us, who were waiting to hear about the second tox run.

“That homeless guy, you know the one, Bagman Jesus. He had trauma all over him, six gunshot wounds to the head and neck, plus a postmortem beat- down. His body was found in a neighborhood frequented by drug dealers – but I don’t even need to know the circumstances.

“Six gunshot wounds. That’s a homicide.

“Now we’ve got two dead people found in their beds. Got a completely negative autopsy, completely negative environment…”

She stopped speaking. Swallowed.

“The tox run for the weird, the strange, and the bizarre,” I said, trying to give her a little push.

“Negative. Completely negative, so thanks, girlfriend, I almost forgot what I was saying. But now I remember: the Bailey case is circumstance-dependent.

“And a circumstance-dependent case means we need police work. You all know what I’m getting at. What were their finances like? Anyone having an affair here? Anyone leading a double life? You gotta help me out, give me a direction, because I’m twisting in the wind.”

So that was it. Claire was stumped. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her stumped before. Ever.

“This is the press release I’ve got to give in the morning,” Claire said. She took a piece of paper out of the pocket of her scrubs and began to read from it.

“The Bailey case is under active investigation by the medical examiner’s office. Since these deaths are suspicious, we are treating them as homicides. I’m not going to comment because I don’t want to undermine the overall investigation.”

Claire stopped reading and looked up.

“And then the press is going to beat the hell out of me.”

“You’re not saying you’re finished, are you?” Jacobi said.

I felt worried for Claire. She looked pained and scared.

“I’m gonna get a consult. I’ve got calls in to two very knowledgeable board-certified forensic pathologists, asking them to come in and take a look,” said Claire. “You have to tell the families, Jacobi. Tell them that they can’t have their children’s bodies yet, because we’re not done.”

Chapter 35

YUKI WAS STARING into his blue-gray eyes again, this time across a small table in the hospital cafeteria, Dr. John Chesney working on his vegetarian chili, saying, “Finally having lunch, fourteen hours into my day.”

Yuki thought he was adorable, felt giddy just looking at him, knowing full well that adorability didn’t mean he was good or honest or anything. She even flashed back on a couple of handsome rats she’d dated in her life, not to mention more than a few gorgeous killers she’d faced in court – but never mind!

Not only was John Chesney adorable but he was damned nice, too.

She could almost feel her mother’s breath on the back of her neck, her mom whispering, “Yuki-eh, this doctah John, he good man for hus-band.”

Mom, we know nothing about him.

Chesney sipped his Coke, said, “I’m not sure I’ve met San Francisco yet. I’ve been here for four months and my schedule is get off work, jog home, fall asleep in the shower.”

Yuki laughed. Imagined him naked, ash-blond hair plastered to his head, water sluicing down his compact, muscular body…

“When I wake up, I’m here again. It’s like Groundhog Day in a war zone, but I’m not complaining. This is the job I’ve always wanted. What about you? You’re a lawyer, right?”

“Yep. I am.”

Yuki told John that she was currently waiting for a verdict on a pretty high-profile case, maybe he’d heard about it.

“Former beauty queen kills her father with a crowbar, tries to do the same to her mother -”

“That’s your case? We’ve all talked about the mother surviving five solid blows to her head. Jeez, a caved-in cranial vault, broken orbital socket, and smashed jaw. Man, she wanted to live.”

“Yeah. It was a real kick in the pants when she recanted what we call her ‘dying declaration’…” Yuki started thinking about Rose Glenn, ran her hand over her new buzz cut, looked up to see Chesney smiling, turning those eyes on her approvingly.

“That’s a great look on you, Yuki.”

“Ya think?”

“You know I had to do it, don’t you?”

“Well, good intentions are no defense, Doctor. You started this with your clippers, did you not? Used them like a lawn mower. Gave me the worst haircut I’ve ever had in my life, isn’t that so, Doctor?”

Chesney laughed, said, “Guilty of inciting a bad haircut. But I gave you very neat stitches.”

Yuki laughed with him, then said, “John, I called because I want to apologize. I’m sorry I was such a crazy bitch when I was here.”

“Ha! You were the best mad patient I’ve ever had.”

“Come on!” She laughed again.

“Really. You didn’t threaten me, didn’t hit me or stick me with a needle. I’ve got a guy in the ER right now with three broken ribs and a concussion, and he won’t give up his cell phone. ‘I’m working,’ he says. Took three of us to wrench his phone out of his hand.”

And just then, Chesney’s beeper went off. He looked at it, said, “Damn. I’ve got to get back. Um, Yuki, would you want to do this again sometime?”

“Sure,” said Yuki. “I’m only a taxi ride away.”

“Maybe we could go somewhere else. Maybe you could show me the city.”

Yuki gave him a coy smile, said, “So I guess I’m forgiven.”

John put his hand over hers. “I’ll let you know.”

She laughed and so did he, and their eyes locked until he took his hand away – and then he was gone.

Yuki was already waiting for his call.

Chapter 36

CINDY TOOK A right turn out of her apartment building, cell phone pressed to her ear, listening to Lindsay say, “I wish I could do something, but we’re drowning in the Bailey case. Drowning.”

“My editor is holding page one of the Metro section for my story. I’ve got a deadline. You’re saying you’ve got nothing at all?”

“You want the truth? Conklin and I were kicked off Bagman Jesus on day one. We tried to work it on our own time -”

“Thanks anyway, Linds. No, really,” Cindy said, snapping her phone closed. Enough said. No one was working the case.

Cindy walked up Townsend Street to the corridor between her apartment and the spot where Bagman Jesus had been murdered. She stopped at the humble shrine outside the train yard, blood still staining the sidewalk, newly wilted flowers and handwritten notes woven into the chain-link fence.

She stood for a while reading the messages from friends telling Bagman Jesus that he’d be missed and remembered. These notes were heartbreaking. A good man had been killed, and the police were too busy to find his killer. So who was fighting in Bagman’s corner?

She was.

Cindy moved on, keeping pace with pedestrians exiting the train station. She turned onto Fifth Street and made her way toward the brick building in the middle of the block that housed the soup kitchen called From the Heart.

On one side of the soup kitchen was a hole-in-the-wall liquor store. On the other side was a fast-food Chinese restaurant that looked really low, like it served tree squirrel sautéed with brown sauce and peanuts.

In between the restaurant and the soup kitchen was a black door. Cindy had a date behind that door. She hoisted her computer bag higher up on her shoulder, turned the knob, and gave the door a shove with her hip. It opened at the foot of a dark and sour-smelling stairway.

Cindy began the steep climb, the stairs wrapping around a small landing, rising again to a floor with three doors, the signage identifying them as a nail salon, a massage parlor, and, toward the front of the building, PINCUS AND PINCUS, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW.

Cindy pressed the intercom button on the panel beside the door, gave her name, and was buzzed in. She took a seat in the reception area, an alcove filled wall-to-wall with a cracked leather sofa and a coffee table. She leafed through an old copy of Us Weekly, looking up as someone called her name.

The man introduced himself as Neil Pincus. He was dressed in gray slacks, a white button- down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, no tie. He had a receding hairline and a pleasant, unremarkable face, and he was wearing a gold wedding band. He put out his right hand and so did she.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Pincus.”

“Neil. Come on in the back. I can give you only a few minutes, but they’re all yours.”

Chapter 37

CINDY SAT ACROSS from the attorney’s desk, her back to the dirty window. She glanced at a grouping of framed photos on the credenza to her right: the Pincus brothers with their good-looking wives and teenage daughters. Neil Pincus stabbed a button on his telephone console, said to his brother, “Al, please take my calls. I’ll be just a few minutes.”

Then he said to Cindy, “How can I help you?”

“You’ve got a heck of a reputation in this neighborhood.”

“Thanks. We do what we can,” Pincus said. “People get arrested and either get a public defender or they ask us.”

“Nice of you to do this work for free.”

“It’s pretty rewarding, actually, and we’re not alone. We work with a group of businesspeople around here who kick in money for legal costs and special needs. We have a needle-exchange program. We run a literacy program -”

The phone rang. Neil Pincus peered at the caller ID, turned his eyes back to Cindy, and talked over the ring tone. “I’m sorry. But I think you should tell me why you’re here before the phone drives us both crazy.”

“I’m doing a five-part piece about Bagman Jesus, the homeless man recently found dead.”

“I read your story.”

“Okay. Good. So this is it,” Cindy said. “I can’t get the police interested in his death. They don’t think his murder is solvable.”

Pincus sighed, said, “Well, that’s typical.”

“I need Bagman’s real name in order to get a fingerhold on his past and work forward from there. I’m hoping he may have been a client of yours. If not, maybe you could lead me to someone who knew him.”

“Ah. If I’d known what you wanted, I could have saved you a trip. I’ve seen him on the street, sure, but Bagman Jesus never came here, and if he had, I probably wouldn’t tell you.”

“Lawyer-client privilege?”

“Not exactly. Look, Cindy, I don’t know you, so I shouldn’t be telling you what to do. But I will anyway.

“The homeless aren’t stray puppies. They’re homeless for a reason. Most of them are drug addicts. Or they’re psychotic. Some are violent. I’m sure you’re well- meaning, but this fellow was murdered.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? You’re a pretty girl in pretty clothes, walking around the Tenderloin alone asking who killed Bagman Jesus. Just suppose for a minute that you find his killer – and he turns on you?”

Chapter 38

WHEN CINDY LEFT Neil Pincus, she was irritated and just as determined as before. The lawyer had called her a girl. Like she was one of his kids. He’d underestimated her tenacity, and he didn’t get that she was a working journalist who covered crime.

She was careful. She was experienced. She was a pro.

And what she hated most? He’d gotten to her.

She shook off a wave of anxiety, opened the door to From the Heart, looked around at the hundred ragged people going through the food line, others hunched over their plates, protecting their bacon and eggs. Three men in dirty clothes rapped in the corner.

For the first time, she wondered if someone in this place had killed Bagman Jesus.

She looked for but didn’t see the day supervisor, Luvie Jump, so Cindy made a bullhorn of her cupped hands and shouted for attention.

“I’m Cindy Thomas from the Chronicle,” she said. “I’m writing a story about Bagman Jesus. I’m going to be sitting right outside,” she said, pointing through the window to two plastic chairs on the sidewalk. “If anyone can help me, I’d be grateful.”

Voices rose and echoed around the large room.

Cindy went out the door and took a seat in the more stable of the two chairs. She opened her laptop and a line formed, and from the first interview, Cindy learned something: “I’d be grateful” was code for “I’ll pay for information.”

An hour after making her announcement, Cindy had collected thirty stories of personal contact with Bagman Jesus, scraps of barely intelligible and frankly meaningless conversations, nothing solid, useful, or even interesting.

The price for this crazy pastiche of information had added up to seventy-five bucks, including all the change at the bottom of her handbag, plus a lipstick, a penlight, the barrette in her hair, a tin of Altoids, and three gel-ink pens.

It would make a hilarious expense report, but her story hadn’t advanced even an inch.

Cindy looked up as the last person, a black woman in a red stocking cap and purple-framed eyeglasses, took the chair opposite hers.

“I’m out of cash, but I’ve got a BART card,” Cindy said.

“Cindy? You taking up permanent residence here? Because that’s not allowed.”

“Luvie! I’m still working this darned story. Still getting nothing, not even Bagman’s real name.”

“Tell me who you talked to.”

“Cindy scrolled to the top of her computer screen. “Noise Machine. Miss Patty. Salzamander. Razor, Twink T, Little Bit -”

“Let me stop you there, honey. You see, your problem is also your answer. Street people use their aliases. You know. ‘Also known as.’ Some of them got records. Or don’t want their families to find them. They want to be lost. That could be why Bagman Jesus doesn’t have a real name.”

Cindy sighed, thinking how she’d been hustled all morning by the nameless, homeless, and hopeless, feeling remorse for snapping at Lindsay, who was right to till more fertile ground.

Mentally kissing her deadline good-bye, Cindy thanked Luvie, packed up her computer, and walked toward Mission, thinking that Bagman Jesus had disconnected from his past by his own design. His death was the end of his story.

Or was it?

An idea bloomed.

Cindy phoned her editor, said, “Therese, can you give me some time in about five minutes? I want to run something by you. Something with legs.”

Chapter 39

AFTERNOON SUN FILTERED through the skylight and haloed Sara Needleman’s head as she gave Pet Girl holy hell.

“What were you thinking when you left the Baileys’ place cards on the table?”

“I wasn’t in charge of the place cards, Sara.”

“You were. I specifically asked you to check the place cards against the guest list. Are Isa and Ethan on the guest list?”

“No, of course not.”

“I could kill you, I really could. Those two empty seats at table four. Everyone is thinking about the Baileys as it is.”

“I’m sorry, Sara,” Pet Girl said, but she was decidedly not sorry. In fact, elation was rising in her like champagne bubbles. She had to stifle a laugh.

Place cards! Like place cards were important!

Pet Girl and two other gal Fridays sat behind the reception table in the magnificent Loggia of the Asian Art Museum, welcoming the guests to an engagement dinner for Sara Needleman’s niece, Frieda.

The guests were the cream of San Francisco society: senators and doctors of medicine and science, publishers and movie stars. They came up the grand staircase in their tuxedos and custom-made gowns, found their seat assignments at the reception table, and were directed to Samsung Hall.

From there, they could enter the galleries to view the priceless works of art from Japan and China and Korea before sitting down to a table dressed with raw silk and calla lilies. Then they’d be served a seven-course dinner prepared by the eminent chef Yoji Futomato.

But that would be later. Right now Sara Needleman wound up her tirade with a final flourish. “You can leave now,” she snapped. “Only a few people have yet to arrive.”

“Thanks, Sara.” Pet Girl smiled. “Still want me to walk the dogs in the morning?”

“Yes, yes, please do. I’ll be sleeping in.”

“Don’t worry,” Pet Girl said. “I won’t wake you.”

Pet Girl said good-bye to the other gals. She took her annotated copy of the guest list and stashed it in her handbag, already mulling over the two hundred people she’d greeted this evening – who had acknowledged her, who had not, how many points each had scored.

And she thought ahead to her evening alone.

She’d make a little pasta. Drink a little wine. Spend a couple of pleasant hours going over the guest list.

Sort out her notes.

Make some plans.

Chapter 40

CLAIRE HAD PLANTED her hands on her hips and said, “We need police work” – and we’d done it. Conklin and I had strip-searched the Baileys’ house for the fourth time that week, looking for God only knew what.

We’d been through all thirty thousand square feet: the ballroom; the two poolrooms, one with a pool table and one with a pool; the bedroom suites; the kitchens; the pantries; the sitting rooms; the playrooms; the dining rooms and living rooms. We’d opened closets, boxes, and safes; dumped drawers; and flipped through every book in the whole flippin’ library.

“I forgot what we’re looking for,” I groused to Conklin.

“That’s because whatever killed them isn’t here,” said Rich. “Not only am I out of good ideas but I don’t have any bad ones either.”

“Yes, and haven’t we done a fine job of trashing the place?” I said, staring around the main salon.

Every doorknob and flat surface and objet d’art was smudged with black powder. Every mirror, every painting, had been taken down from the walls.

Even the benign and wise Charlie Clapper was disgusted: “The Baileys had a lot of friends and a lot of parties. We’ve got enough prints and trace to short out the crime lab. For a year.”

Conklin said, “How about it, Sarge?”

“Okay. We’re done.”

We turned out the lights as we worked our way to the front hall, bumped into each other in the dark as Conklin locked the front door behind us. Then he walked me to my car.

He held the door open, and as I stepped up to my Explorer’s running board, my foot slipped, throwing me off balance. Rich caught me, his hands gripping my shoulders, and there was a fraction of a moment when I could see the danger.

I closed my eyes.

And as if we’d planned it, his mouth was on mine and my arms were around his neck, and I felt like I was falling off the face of the earth.

I held on tight, the heat burning me up, my hair blowing around our faces as cars streamed past us. I heard a driver calling out his window, “Get a room!”

And with that, gravity dropped me back to earth with a jolt.

What the hell are we doing?

Before Rich could say, “That man has the right idea,” I panted, “Damn, Richie. I don’t know who’s crazier, you or me.”

His hands were at the small of my back, pulling me tight against his body.

I gently disengaged from his arms. His face was all twisted up from our kisses, and he looked… stung.

I said, “I’m sorry, Rich. I should’ve…”

“Should’ve what?”

“I should’ve watched my step. Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah. Just have another thing to pretend never happened.”

My lips were still tingling, and I felt ashamed. I couldn’t look at his hurt face any longer, so I turned away, placed my shaky foot firmly on the running board, and hauled my stupid ass into the driver’s seat.

“See you tomorrow,” I said. “Okay?”

“Sure. Yes, Lindsay, yes.”

I closed the door and put the car in gear, and as I backed out, Rich motioned for me to roll down my window. I did.

“You. Since you asked, you’re crazier,” he said, putting both hands on the window frame. “Between you and me, it’s you.”

I leaned out the window, put my arm around Rich’s neck, and drew him to me so that our cheeks touched. His face was warm and damp, and when he put his hand in my hair, I almost melted from his sweetness. I said, “Richie, forgive me.”

I pulled back, tried to smile. I waved and then headed out to the empty apartment I shared with Joe.

I wanted to cry.

For all the reasons being with Rich was wrong before, it was still wrong. I was still about ten years older, we were still partners – and I still loved Joe.

Sowhy, I asked myself, driving away from Rich – speeding away, as a matter of fact – does doing the right thing feel so bad?

Chapter 41

YUKI AND PHIL HOFFMAN sat in easy chairs in Judge Duffy’s chambers. The court stenographer was sitting behind her machine near the judge’s desk, and Yuki was thinking, What now? What the hell is it now?

Judge Duffy looked frazzled, as though he’d misplaced his hallmark nonchalance. He tapped an audiocassette on its side, called out edgily, “Corinne? Got that player ready?”

The clerk came into the wood-paneled office and placed the cassette player in front of the judge, who thanked her and then pressed the tape into the box.

Duffy said to Yuki and Hoffman, “This is a tape of a phone call made from a monitored pay phone at the women’s jail to juror number two. It’s crackly but audible.”

Yuki looked at Hoffman, who shrugged as the judge pressed the play button.

A young woman said, “Can you hear me okay?” A second woman, recognizable by her nasal twang as juror number two, the retired postal worker Carly Phelan, said, “Lallie, I can’t talk long. I’m supposed to be in the little girls’ room.”

The judge pressed the stop button, said, “Lallie is the juror’s daughter.”

Hoffman said, “The juror has a daughter in detention at the women’s jail?”

“So it seems,” said Duffy.

The judge pressed the start button, and the tape played again. There was some back- and-forth conversation between the two women: how Lallie’s defense was going, how her mother liked the hotel accommodations, what was happening with Lallie’s son now that both mother and grandmother weren’t home.

Duffy said, “It’s coming now. Listen to this.”

Yuki strained to make out the words under the static.

“I saw your defendant in the shower this morning,” said Lallie. “That Stacey Glenn?”

“Crap,” Hoffman said.

Duffy hit rewind, played it again.

“I saw your defendant in the shower this morning. That Stacey Glenn? She’s talking to the matron, saying if she had done that murder, she wouldn’t have done it with no crowbar when she’s got a perfectly good handgun at home.”

Yuki felt light-headed and a little sick.

First, Carly Phelan had lied by omission during voir dire. If she’d said she had a daughter in jail, she would have been excused because one could logically infer that she’d be prejudiced against the prosecution.

The DA’s office was trying to put her daughter away!

Second, and worse, Lallie Phelan was carrying news about the defendant to her mother. If Carly Phelan gossiped to anyone on the panel, the whole jury would be tainted.

“You’re declaring a mistrial?” Hoffman asked.

“No. I’m not.”

“Then I move for a mistrial, Your Honor. I have to preserve my client’s rights,” Hoffman countered, singing a different tune from the week before.

Duffy waved his hand dismissively. “I’m going to dump juror number two and substitute an alternate.”

“I have to object, Your Honor,” Hoffman said. “This conversation took place last night. Phelan could have poisoned the whole jury by now. Her daughter told her that my client has a handgun.”

“Your Honor, I’m with you,” said Yuki. “The sooner you get Phelan off the jury, the better. The alternates are ready to go.”

“So noted. All right,” said Duffy. “Let’s get on with it.”

Chapter 42

HOFFMAN AND YUKI walked out of the judge’s chamber and down the buff-painted hallway toward the courtroom, Yuki stepping double time to keep up with the lanky opposing counsel.

Hoffman raked his hair back with his fingers, said, “The jury is going to spit blood when they hear this.”

Yuki looked up at Hoffman, wondering if he thought she was green or stupid or both.

The jury would be pissed, all right. A new juror meant that they had to put aside all their earlier deliberations and start fresh, comb through the evidence all over again, beginning at day one as if it were all new.

Yuki’s fantastic closing argument would be lost in the mists of time, and all that the jurors would be thinking about was how to vote so they could get out of that hotel.

Yuki knew that Hoffman was laughing inside.

He’d had a secret weapon all along in Carly Phelan and hadn’t even known it. If Phelan had tainted the jury, it would have been in favor of the defense.

“Give me a break, Phil.”

“Yuki, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Like hell.”

What they both knew was that if the jury voted to convict, Hoffman would appeal. Just the fact that Carly Phelan had lied during voir dire was enough to get the conviction reversed.

On the other hand, if the jury hung again, and it very well could, the judge would have to declare a mistrial.

Judge Duffy didn’t want a mistrial. He wanted this case over and done with.

He needn’t worry, Yuki thought. It would take a year or two to mount a second trial, and by then the DA would weigh the cost and likely say, “Drop it. We’re done with Glenn.”

Of course, the jury could always vote to acquit. Either way, young Stacey would be just as free.

Yuki thought, My damned losing streak is still going strong. Win, lose, or draw, odds were that Stacey Glenn, that heinous frickin’ father-killer, was about to walk.

Chapter 43

CINDY STOOD in front of the chain-link fence outside the Caltrain yard the next morning, put the hot new Metro section down on the sidewalk, weighted it with a couple of candles.

The headline over her story was big and bold: $25,000 REWARD.

Underneath the headline, the lead paragraph read, “The San Francisco Chronicle is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever killed the man known as ‘Bagman Jesus.’ ”

There was a tug on Cindy’s arm. She pulled back, spun around, was a whisper away from a woman of about thirty with stringy hair, a blotchy complexion, a short black coat, and clothes reeking faintly of urine.

“I knew Bagman. You don’t have to look at me like that. I may be strung out, but I know what I’m talking about.”

“That’s great,” Cindy said. “I’m Cindy Thomas.”

“Flora Gold.”

“Hi, Flora. You have some information for me?”

The woman looked both ways at the stream of foot traffic, commuters coming from the white-bread suburbs to their offices in big software companies, Ms. Gold seeming by contrast like a troll who’d crawled up out of a manhole.

She turned her jittery gaze back to Cindy.

“I just wanted to say that he was a good person. He took care of me.”

“How do you mean, ‘took care of me’?”

“In every way. And he gave me this.”

The woman opened her coat, dragged down the neckline of her sweater, showed Cindy a tattoo above her breast. It was done in black ink, the lettering having an Asian cast. Looked to Cindy like it had been etched by an amateur, but the message was clear.

SAVED BY JESUS amp; I LOVED IT!

“He’s the only one who ever gave a crap about me,” said Flora. “He looked out for me after I left home last year.”

Cindy tried not to show her shock: Flora had been living at home until last year?

“Yeah. I’m seventeen,” said Flora. “Don’t look at me that way. I’m doing what I want with my life.”

“You’re using meth, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. It’s like heaven. Sex on ‘ice’ gives you orgasms that take your head off and last for a week. You can’t imagine. No, you should try it.”

“It’s going to kill you!”

“Not your problem,” Flora said, snapping her coat closed. “I just wanted to speak up for Bagman.”

Flora turned away from Cindy and started a fast, loping walk up Townsend.

Cindy ran after her, called her name until Flora stopped, turned around, and said, “What?”

“How can I find you again?”

“You want my pager?” the teenager sneered. “Maybe I should give you my e-mail address?”

Cindy watched Flora Gold stride away until she dissolved into the distance. Flora Gold. She got it now. It was the name of a product used to keep flowers fresh longer.

And what about that tattoo?

SAVED BY JESUS amp; I LOVED IT!

Cindy tried to make sense of it. How had Bagman saved Flora? She was a meth head. An addict. She was going to die.

Flora had said that Bagman Jesus had given her the tattoo, yet the wording was strange, sexual. It almost seemed like a brand claiming ownership.

What kind of saint branded a devotee?

Chapter 44

A SECURITY GUARD knocked on the conference room door. Cindy looked up, as did everyone else in the editorial meeting.

“Miss Thomas, there’s a vagrant standing outside. A lady. Says she has to talk to you and won’t leave. Causing a real scene down there.”

“Well, this was bound to happen,” said Cindy’s editor, Therese Stanford. “Post a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward…”

“Can you just take her name or something?”

The guard said, “Says her name is Flora and that you want to talk to her.”

Cindy told the group that she’d be back in five minutes and took the elevator down to the lobby, then walked through the revolving door and out to the street.

“I’ve been thinking,” Flora Gold said without preamble.

“About the reward?”

“Yeah. What does it mean, ‘leading to the arrest and conviction’?”

“If you tell me something that the police can use to arrest Bagman’s killer, and if the killer goes to court and is found guilty, then you get the reward.”

Flora pulled at her tangled hair, thinking.

Cindy asked, “Do you know who killed him, Flora?”

The young woman shook her head no. “But I do know something. Maybe it’s worth a hundred dollars.”

“Tell me,” Cindy said. “I’ll be fair, I promise.”

“Bagman Jesus loved me. And I know his name.”

Flora handed Cindy a metal tag with a name stamped in raised letters. Cindy stared. Thinking about Flora Gold’s pseudonym and yesterday’s street-person hustle, she asked, “Is this true?”

“As the sky is blue.”

Cindy pulled her checkbook out of her handbag.

“I don’t have a bank account.”

“Oh. Okay. No problem.”

Cindy walked with Flora to the ATM on the corner, withdrew a hundred dollars, and gave fifty to Flora.

“You get the other fifty if this lead pans out.”

Cindy watched Flora count the bills, then roll them up and tuck them in the top of her boot.

Cindy said, “Give me a couple of days and then find me, okay? Like you did today.”

Gold nodded, gave Cindy a tight smile, mouth open just enough for Cindy to see that her front teeth were gone. Then the reporter headed back to the Chronicle Building.

Editorial meeting forgotten, Cindy went directly to her office and wheeled her chair up close to her desk. She called up Google and typed, “Rodney Booker.”

Less than a second later, information rolled up on the screen. Cindy sat back in her chair, watching her story crack wide open. It was a miracle. A miracle she’d earned.

Bagman Jesus had been decoded.

He had a name. He had a past.

And he had a family living in Santa Rosa.

Chapter 45

CINDY SAT IN the comfortable sunroom of a million-dollar Craftsman-style house in Santa Rosa, feeling anything but comfortable. Had she been rash? Yes.

Intrusive? Absolutely.

Thoughtless? She ought to get an award for blinding insensitivity.

What had she been thinking? Of course, that was the problem. She’d been thinking about her story, not about real people, so she’d launched herself into the Bookers’ lives like a live hand grenade.

And the moment Lee-Ann Booker opened her front door, her sweet, momsy face shining with anticipation, Cindy realized it was too late to unpull the pin.

They were all in the sunroom now.

Lee-Ann Booker, a fair Clairol blonde in her midsixties, clutched a charm necklace of crosses and semiprecious stones and Mexican good-luck charms. She sat beside Cindy on the rattan sofa, sobbing into tissues, hiccuping and sobbing again.

Her husband, Billy Booker, brought Cindy a mug of coffee.

“You sure you don’t want something stronger?” he asked. It sounded like a threat.

Booker was black, also in his sixties, with a military bearing and the lean body of a dedicated runner.

“No thanks, I’m good,” Cindy said.

But she wasn’t.

She couldn’t remember any time in her life when she’d caused anyone so much pain. And she was also very afraid.

Booker took the chair opposite the sofa, leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and scowled at Cindy.

“What makes you think that this ‘Bagman Jesus’ is our son?”

“A woman saying she was his close friend gave me this,” Cindy said. She dug in her purse, pulled out the tin ID tag stamped RODNEY BOOKER on one side, PEACE CORPS on the other. She handed it to Booker, saw a spasm of fear cross his face.

“Is this supposed to prove something? Mother and I want to see his body.”

“No one claimed him, Mr. Booker. He’s at the ME’s office. Uh, they don’t show bodies there, but I can make a call -”

Booker sprang out of his chair and kicked a rattan footstool across the room, spun back around to face Cindy.

“He’s in a freezer like a dead fish, that’s what you’re saying? Who tried to find us? No one. If Rodney was white, we would have been notified.”

“To be fair, Mr. Booker, this man’s face was beaten beyond recognition. He had no ID. I’ve been working hard to learn his identity.”

“Good for you, Miss Thomas. Good for you. His face was busted up and he had no ID, so I’m asking again, how do you know that dead man was our son?”

Cindy said, “If I could have a good, clear photo of Rodney, I think I could clear this up fast. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Lee-Ann Booker eased a photo out from the clinging plastic leaves of an album and passed it to Cindy, saying, “This was taken about five years ago.”

In the picture, Rodney Booker was sitting on the same rattan love seat Cindy sat on now. He was handsome, light-skinned, broad-shouldered, had close-cropped hair and a beautiful smile.

Cindy strained to find a resemblance to Bagman Jesus in Rodney’s build and skin color, but when she’d seen Bagman’s remains, he’d barely looked human.

“You’ve been to Rodney’s house?” Billy Booker asked.

“Rodney has a house?”

“Well, damn it, girl. My son could be home right now watching a ball game while you’re out here scaring us to death.”

Lee-Ann Booker wailed, and Cindy’s mind scrambled again. House? Bagman Jesus was homeless, wasn’t he? How could he have a house? What if Rodney Booker was alive and well – and she was totally wrong?

Billy Booker snatched a pen and notepad from the coffee table, scratched his son’s cell phone number and address on the top sheet, ripped it off and handed it to Cindy.

“I get his voice mail when I call. Maybe you’ll do better. So what’s your plan, Miss Thomas? Tell me that. Then I’ll know what I’m going to do.”

Cindy left the Bookers’ house, sure that her well-intentioned pop-in visit had not only blown up but shown all the signs of becoming a scandal.

Chapter 46

AS SHE DROVE BACK from Santa Rosa to San Francisco, Cindy obsessed. She’d promised the Bookers she’d let them know tomorrow whether or not Bagman Jesus was their son.

How was she going to do that? How? And yet she would have to do it or die trying.

She stirred the contents of her purse with her right hand, found her cell phone, and speed-dialed Lindsay’s office number. A man’s voice answered, “Conklin.”

“Rich, it’s Cindy. Is Lindsay there?”

“She’s out, but I’ll tell her -”

“Wait, Rich. I’ve got a solid lead on Bagman Jesus. I think his name is Rodney Booker.”

“You doing police work now, Cindy?”

“Someone has to.”

“Okay, okay. Take it easy.”

“Take it easy? I just walked in on this unsuspecting old couple, told them their son was dead -”

“You did what?”

“I had his name, Rich, or thought I did, so I went to interview Bagman’s parents, logical if you think about it -”

“Oh man. How’d that go over?”

“Like a bomb, like a freaking bomb. Billy Booker, the father? He’s a Vietnam vet, former sergeant major in the marines. He’s saying the police are racist, that’s why they didn’t work the case.”

“Bagman Jesus was black?”

“Booker has Al Sharpton’s home number and he’s threatening to use it. What I’m saying is, I’ve got to get ahead of this story before I become the story. Before we become the story.”

“We, huh?”

“Yeah. The SFPD and me. And I’m the one who feels the moral obligation. Rich, listen. Rodney Booker has a house.”

“You’re losing me, Cindy. Wasn’t Bagman homeless?”

“Look him up. Please.”

“Entering ‘Rodney Booker.’ Here ya go. Huh. Cole Street. That’s off Haight. Nice neighborhood.”

It wasn’t.

It was the badlands, the turf of small-time drug dealers.

And that made sense.

If Bagman Jesus wasn’t lying when he told Flora Gold that his real name was Rodney Booker, and if Flora wasn’t lying to Cindy, then the house on Cole could turn out to be where Rodney Booker, aka Bagman Jesus, had hung his bag.

Cindy said to Conklin, “Can you check it out, Rich? Because if you won’t, I’ve got to.”

“Stand down, Cindy. My shift is over in twenty minutes. I’ll run over and take a look.”

“I’ll meet you there,” said Cindy. “Wait for me.”

“No, Cindy. I’m the cop. You wait for me.”

Chapter 47

THE HOUSE ON COLE was painted roadkill gray, one in a block of distressed Victorian homes, this particular residence having boarded-up bay windows, trash-littered front steps, and an air of melancholy that had not lifted since the end of the ’60s.

“It’s condemned,” Conklin said to Cindy, tilting his chin toward the notice nailed to the door.

“The lot alone is worth some dough. If this house belonged to Bagman, what made him homeless?”

“That’s rhetorical, right?”

“Yeah,” Cindy said. “I’m thinking out loud.”

Cindy stood behind Conklin as he knocked on the door, touched the butt of his gun, then knocked again, this time louder and with meaning.

Cindy’s hands were shaking as she cupped them and peered through a sidelight. Then, before Conklin could stop her, she pushed in the door.

A startled cry came from inside, and piles of rags rose up from the floor, ran toward the back of the house. A door slammed.

“This is a crash pad,” Conklin said. “Those were squatters, crackheads. It’s not safe, Cindy. We’re not going in.”

Cindy rushed past and headed for the staircase, ignoring Conklin, who was yelling her name.

She’d made a promise.

The air was damp and cold, smelling of mildew and smoke and rotting garbage. Cindy ran up the stairs, calling, “Rodney Booker? Are you here?”

No one stirred, not even a mouse.

The top floor was brighter and more open than the floors below. The windows were bare, and sunlight lit up the one large bedroom.

A brass bed was centered on one wall, the mattress covered with dark-blue sheets. Books were scattered everywhere. A crack pipe was on the top of a scarred dresser.

“Cindy, I don’t have a search warrant. Do you understand?” Conklin said, coming up behind her. “Nothing we find here can be used as evidence.” He gripped her shoulders, gave her a little shake. “Hey, do you hear me?”

“I think Bagman Jesus lived here until he died.”

“Really. Based on what?”

Cindy pointed to the mural behind the bed. It was crudely drawn in black and white on plaster, images of writhing people, their hands reaching upward, fire and smoke swirling around them.

“Read that,” Cindy said.

Here was the proof Cindy had been looking for, that Rodney Booker and Bagman Jesus were one and the same.

Written within the hellish scene were two words in the same primitive lettering Cindy recognized from Flora Gold’s tattoo.

The letters spelled out JESUS SAVES.

Chapter 48

CONKLIN AND I were working the phones at half past six p.m. when Jacobi stopped by our desks, took a twenty out of his wallet, put it on my desk with a stack of take-out menus, and said, “I’ll check in with you later.”

“Thanks, Boss.”

It was discouraging work.

We still didn’t know if the Baileys’ deaths were an accident, a homicide-suicide, or a double homicide – only that Claire’s consultants had come up with nothing and the public was having a collective heart attack.

So Conklin and I did all we could do. We worked our way down the Baileys’ endless list of friends and associates and asked the questions: When did you last see the Baileys? How were their moods? How did they get along? Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to harm Isa or Ethan Bailey?

Do you know of anyone who would have wanted them dead?

I was dialing a number when I heard my name, looked up to see Cindy breeze through the wooden gate in front of our assistant, Brenda Fregosi, Brenda calling out, “No,” stabbing the intercom button, her voice blatting over the speaker on my desk.

“Cindy’s here.”

Waving a newspaper, Cindy floated around the day crew, who were putting on their coats as the night crew punched in. She plopped down in the side chair next to my desk, angling it so she could look at Conklin, too.

Hate to admit it, but she brought light into the gloom.

“Want to see what tomorrow’s paper will look like?” she asked me.

“No.”

“I’m a rock star, Richie. Look,” she said, slapping the paper down on my desk. Conklin tried to stifle a laugh and failed.

I said to Cindy, “You’ve heard the expression ‘misery loves company’?”

“You’re miserable and I’m company. What’s your point?”

“Misery loves miserable company.”

Conklin snorted and Cindy har-de-har-harred and I couldn’t keep stone-faced for another second.

Cindy gloated, “Don’t you just hate it when I’m right?”

She lovingly smoothed out the newspaper so I could see the picture on the front page of the Metro section, the photo of Rodney Booker, aka Bagman Jesus, under the headline $25,000 REWARD. DO YOU KNOW WHO KILLED THIS MAN?

So there it was: Rodney Booker was Bagman Jesus.

Rodney Booker had been identified by his father from the morgue photos, which showed three raised lines on Rodney’s shoulder, a crude slash-and-rub-with-ashes tattoo he’d gotten while in Africa.

Rodney Booker’s death was a homicide. And my name was associated with his case file. All I needed to do was find out who killed him, and while I didn’t have the time to do that, Cindy Thomas was both high on success and hot on the trail.

“I’ve been thinking,” Cindy said. “I can just keep working the case, turn over anything I find out to you. What, Lindsay?”

“Cindy, you can’t work a homicide, okay? Rich, tell her.”

“I don’t need your permission at all,” Cindy said. Then, eyes brightening, “Here’s an idea. Let’s go to Susie’s and map out a plan we can all live with -”

I rolled my eyes, but Conklin was shaking his head and grinning at Cindy. He liked her!

I was ready to call Jacobi, let him straighten her out, when Claire blew through the gate, stomped toward us with a bad look in her eyes.

“Dr. Washburn is on her way back,” Brenda’s electronic voice cawed from my intercom.

Claire was busy. She didn’t like to pay house calls to Homicide. Cindy, oblivious, called out, “Claire! We’re off to Susie’s. Come with us.”

Claire fixed her eyes on me.

“I can’t go to Susie’s,” she said, “and neither can you. Another one just came in. Killed just like the Baileys.”

Chapter 49

THE DRAPED BODY on the autopsy table was female, thirty-three, her skin as white as my mom’s bone china. Her hair was a shimmering shoulder-length cut in four shades of blond. Her finger- and toenails had been lacquered recently, oxblood red, no chips.

She looked like the sleeping princess in the fairy tale waiting for the prince to chop through the briars and kiss her awake.

I read her toe tag. “Sara Needleman.”

“Positively ID’d by her personal assistant,” said Claire.

I knew Sara Needleman by her photographs in Vogue and W. She was a big-name clothing designer who made custom gowns for those who had thirty grand to throw down for a dress. I’d read in the Gazette that Needleman often did gangs of bridesmaids’ dresses, each gown related in color but distinctly different in style, and that during the debutante season, Needleman’s shop was in overdrive, designing for both the moms and the debs.

Surely Sara Needleman knew the Baileys.

Claire picked up her clipboard, said, “Here’s what I’ve got. Ms. Needleman called her personal assistant, Toni Reynolds, at eight this morning complaining of abdominal cramps. Ms. Reynolds says she told Sara to call her doctor and that she’d check in on her when she got to work.

“Sara did call her doctor, Robert Dweck, internist, and was told she could come in at noon.”

“She didn’t make the appointment,” Conklin said.

“No flies on you,” Claire said to Conklin. “Sara Needleman called nine one one at ten-oh-eight. EMS got there at ten fifteen, found Sara dead in her bedroom.”

“She died of stomach cramps? Something she ate?” I asked.

Claire continued, “To be determined, girlfriend. To be determined. Stomach contents and blood are at the lab.

“Meanwhile, I spoke with the medics who brought Sara in. There was no vomit or excrement in the house.”

“Why do you think her death is like the Baileys’?”

“At first I didn’t. There was a lull when she came in, so I got to her quick, thinking I knew what to look for.”

Three of Claire’s assistants tried to look busy, but they were hanging close enough to hear her report. I could already see the words “Breaking News” under a glamour shot of Sara Needleman interrupting our regularly scheduled programming. I could feel the public linking Needleman’s death to the Baileys’, the barometric pressure falling.

Big storm coming in.

Claire ticked off the possible causes of Sara Needleman’s death.

“Leaving poison aside for now, stomach cramps are often caused by a perforated ulcer or an ectopic pregnancy gone bust.”

“But not this time,” Conklin guessed.

“Correct, Mr. Man. So the cramps could’ve been unrelated to her death. I checked for aneurysms, stroke, heart attack – found nothing. I examined all her organs. You could gift wrap them, tie ’em with a bow. Show ’em to med students to let them know what normal organs look like.”

“Huh.”

“No marks on her body, no bruises of any kind. Nothing wrong with Sara Needleman except that she’s dead.”

Conklin said, “She was on my list of names. I hadn’t gotten to her yet.”

“Too late now,” I muttered.

Claire said, “So now I’m thinking we’ve got the Baileys and Needleman. Same social circle. Could be same cause of death. So when I sent out Sara’s blood, I ordered the works. I’ve got sections holding at minus seventy for testing by someone who’s going to be looking for something other than the usual herbs and spices,” Claire said glumly. “What am I going to say now, compadres?”

Conklin said it. “More police work.”

“Bingo, Ricardo. Someone’s got to figure this out, because I’ve hit the wall.”

Claire turned to Sara Needleman’s body, put her hand on the woman’s sheeted torso, and said, “I hear hoofbeats coming down the road, Sara darlin’, I’m thinking ‘horse.’ You are a definite zebra.”