The 8th Confession

Chapter 76

CINDY AND I were at Susie’s early in the evening, and even at six p.m., the Caribbean- style eatery was jammed.

Crazy jammed.

The steel band was in midset; Susie was drumming up a limbo competition; rowdies, sloshed on tequila, were falling all over the pool table; and Lorraine, who is usually prescient when it comes to timing, had lost her touch.

She took our drink order, came back to read us the specials, came back again to show us her engagement ring, then returned to ask if we had everything we needed.

That was in the first five minutes.

I glared at her until she recoiled and scurried away. Claire and Yuki would be arriving at any moment, and I still hadn’t had it out with Cindy.

“Stop beating around the bush, will you?” said Cindy, my dear friend. She put a little burn on it so that it sounded like a dare.

“Fine. Are you and Conklin dating?”

“He told you? Look, it didn’t start that way, but -”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“Excuse me, but who are you? Sister Mary Margaret of the Little Sisters of the Chastity Belt?”

“Yes, damn it. I am.”

“Why? What is your problem?”

I held up my empty beer mug so that Lorraine would bring me a refill.

“ Corona coming up.”

“ Lorraine,” I said, “listen to this. Cindy is sleeping with my partner, and she didn’t tell me.”

“ Uh-huh.”

“Well, don’t you think that as my friend, she should have told me?”

“Oh, no you don’t, Lindsay,” said Lorraine. “Don’t you drag me into this. I’m a very happy girl right now and I don’t want a beef with either one of you.”

“Fine,” I said. “Hit me again.”

“Be right back.”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you, Lindsay? You think I should’ve told you that I was going out with Rich when I knew all along you were going to make us both feel bad about it – and I don’t even know why!” Cindy sat back in her seat and did, in fact, look confused.

“You don’t know why?” I said. I was getting a swooping feeling in my stomach, telling me that I was wrong and she was right, that I had been uncool. And that whatever Cindy and Rich were doing together, it was their business.

Cindy didn’t know much about my history with Rich, and I wasn’t going to tell her – but maybe he would tell her.

Maybe he had.

Some hesitancy must have passed over my face because Cindy smelled blood. She leaned forward, stuck out her chin, and said, “I get it. Are you two doing it, Lindsay? Is that it? You tell me right now, because if you’re sleeping with him, I will kick that dog to the curb.”

“No. No. We’re not. Don’t want to and never have.”

“Good,” Cindy said. “That’s really great. So tell me again: what’s the problem?”

“It’s a chain-of-command thing, Cindy -”

“Are you ca-razy? I don’t work for you.”

“Conklin does! And he and I talk about stuff that you shouldn’t know – for all our sakes. And I would have liked a chance to remind him.”

“Even if that made sense – which it doesn’t – we don’t talk about you. We don’t talk about your cases. We just have great sex and watch movies in bed.”

My face heated up, and I dropped my eyes to the table. Cindy had just given me way too much information, and I’d completely brought it down on myself.

My beer was climbing into my throat when I heard, “Hey there, girlfriends.”

I looked up to see Claire clearing the aisles as she came toward our table. She had her baby in her arms, my goddaughter, Ruby Rose. And Yuki and Doc were bringing up the rear.

“I’m not finished talking yet,” I growled at Cindy.

“Fine,” Cindy said. “Don’t make me wait too long for your apology.”

Chapter 77

YUKI WAS ALMOST giddy with delight.

They were all jammed together in the booth at Susie’s, and her friends liked Doc. Correction. She could tell by their faces that all of them loved him. He was telling them about his day in the ER, saying, “A female patient comes in, says she’s been doing unaccountable stuff at night since she started taking sleep meds. Apparently she unwittingly went to her medicine chest and swallowed down a whole bottle of pills.

“She shows me the empty bottle,” Doc said.

Claire leaned forward, Yuki getting this great feeling that Claire was glad to have another doctor to talk to. She asked Doc what the pills were.

“Dramamine.”

“For seasickness?” Claire said. “Those can’t kill her.”

Doc grinned, said, “She wanted to have her stomach pumped, but I just told her it wasn’t necessary. I said, ‘Helen, you’re all set. Book a cruise!’ ”

Claire started laughing, and the baby reached out, knocked a bottle of beer into Cindy’s lap, and Lindsay broke up, laughing until tears came out of her eyes.

“I’m sorry for laughing,” Lindsay said to Cindy. “No, I mean it. It’s not funny.”

Claire handed the baby to Doc so she could wipe Cindy down, and the baby pulled on Doc’s nose and called him “Boog-ah.” And he laughed at her, and she gave him a gummy chortle.

And the evening just kept coming on that way, one laugh leading to another even bigger one, Yuki feeling like it was her birthday, maybe the best birthday she’d ever had.

She told her friends about the Stacey Glenn case being over, and Lindsay launched into the story of the “snake who would not die,” Claire expanding her arms to show how long the animal was, coming dangerously close to knocking a beer into Cindy’s lap again.

Doc had said, “But seriously, folks, it’s good to know what kind of snake it was. There’s an antivenin, you know.”

“Antivenom?” Cindy asked.

“Same thing, but ‘antivenin’ is the actual term,” Claire said. “Anyway, it’s not that easy to get, though my patients are past needing it, Doc. Came in handy that Sergeant Boxer can swing an ax.”

The beer kept coming for all but Doc, who inevitably had to go to the hospital. Then came the best part of all. As Yuki stood to say good-bye, he put his arms around her and kissed her, dipping her down until she cracked up and everyone cheered, everyone, even people who weren’t at their table.

“See you this weekend?” he said.

She nodded, thinking about what lingerie she would wear. And then he was gone.

Right after that, Cindy said she had a date and had to go home and change, and Claire left, too: “Got to get this baby girl into bed.” And Lindsay said, “Yuki, you’re not just the designated driver, you’re the only driver.”

Yuki didn’t want the night to end.

“What if I drive you to my place? Why don’t you spend the night?”

“Done,” said Lindsay, knocking back her beer.

Yuki grinned. Having Lindsay all to herself, getting a chance to relive the evening and talk about Doc – well, that just put the icing on the cake.

Chapter 78

I STARTED YAPPING as soon as I got in the car with Yuki.

“Doc is fantastic.”

“You really think so? I mean, thanks, and yeah, isn’t he great?”

“Amazingly great. And he really likes you.”

“How can you tell?”

“You just can. And then there was the Hollywood kiss in front of God and everyone.”

Yuki laughed. It’s one of Yuki’s most priceless gifts, a laugh that can make the sun come out at night. Meanwhile, my mind was on fast-forward, and I couldn’t wait any longer. Had Yuki known? Had everyone known but me?

As soon as the car was in gear and we were moving, I blurted, “Yuki, did you know about Rich and Cindy dating?”

“Noooo. Really? I can’t believe she didn’t tell me!”

“Exactly,” I said. “How’m I supposed to feel, my partner having sex with one of my best friends?”

“It’s kind of a good match, though,” Yuki was saying, taking a left, the car speeding downhill, causing my stomach contents to slosh.

“She’s always liked him,” Yuki said, “but who doesn’t? Wait a minute, Linds. Have I missed the obvious here?”

I rolled down the window, and the wind hit my face. Yuki was asking me, “Do you want me to pull over? Are you sick?”

“I’m fine,” I belched.

“Okay, so what’s this about? Your partner’s dating your friend. Why is that a problem?”

I rolled up the window, just left it cracked about an inch. “Rich and I. We’ve had a couple of moments,” I heard myself say.

Yuki’s mouth dropped open as she headed the car across a straightaway, stopping at a light, then swiveling her head so she could look at me.

“Define ‘moments.’ ”

Suddenly I was telling Yuki everything: about the near miss Conklin and I’d had when a case took us to Los Angeles. I told her how we’d stopped before things went too far, and how the chemistry just wouldn’t let up. That it had been sparking even when my apartment burned down, when I’d moved in with Joe. Even a week ago when Conklin had planted a steamy kiss on my lips by the car.

I was still talking when we pulled into the underground garage beneath Yuki’s apartment building. She shut off the engine and turned to face me.

“Are you in love with him?”

“In love? I don’t know what to call it, but we have something special…”

“So this isn’t about Cindy. This is about Conklin.”

I shrugged.

“You have something pretty special with Conklin that you have turned down repeatedly and have no intention of acting on, isn’t that right?”

I was drunk and I was being interrogated by my friend the prosecutor. I had no defense.

“We’ve talked about it,” I said. “It was my choice, and I’m glad that we’ve never done anything that would destroy Joe.”

“So how do you feel about Joe? Tell me the truth.”

“I love him.”

“Prove it to me, because right now, I don’t get it.”

I excused myself, got out of the car, walked over to the huge trash can by the elevator, and threw my guts up. Yuki was there with a Wet-Nap, an arm around my waist, a packet of gum.

But she didn’t let me off the hook.

We went back to the car and resumed our places, and she said, “Tell me the whole truth and nothing but.”

I told her that when I’d met Joe it had been that thunderbolt right between the eyes, and it had been mutual. And since that day, Joe had never let me down. That he’d changed his whole life to be with me. That he was not only my lover but my best friend, too, the person I could be real with. That the only fear I ever had about my love for Joe was taking the next step with him, because it would be for good.

“If we get married, I can never leave him,” I said.

“And that’s a bad thing?” Yuki asked me.

“It’s a scary thing.”

“I’m no expert, but isn’t ‘scary’ appropriate when you’ve been traumatized? When someone you love has died?”

I nodded. She was talking about Chris, my former partner and boyfriend who’d been gunned down on the job.

Yuki reached out, took my hand.

“Lindsay, it’s okay to have chemistry with Rich. You can’t help that. It’s fun, maybe, and cool to have someone with you all the time who has a big crush on you. You’ve already decided he’s not for you, but he’s your back door, your escape hatch, because you’re afraid to get married. Do I have that right?”

Tears were coming now. Yuki tightened her grip on my hand.

“Let him go,” she said. “Let yourself go.”

Yuki held out her arms and folded me in. She’s a tiny thing and I’m an Amazon, but somehow that awkward hug was just what I needed. I was crying in earnest and Yuki was stroking my hair.

“You know what I want with Doc?” she said. “Exactly what you have with Joe.”

Chapter 79

CINDY WAS AT her desk in the bull pen the next morning, scrolling through her notes in order to double-check her memory. Then she found it, the note she’d made of her impromptu interview with the girl who called herself Sammy, the strung out teen who’d mentioned that “people” had killed Rodney Booker, not one person but at least two.

Cindy had felt haunted by that word – “ people” – sorry that Sammy had bolted before she’d followed up on what might have been a significant lead to finding out who killed Rodney Booker.

Cindy called Lindsay again, this time leaving her a message thanking her for the sweetheart roses. Then she grabbed her handbag and left the Chronicle Building, taking the short walk to From the Heart.

A homeless guy about her age, name of Angel, flashed his gold-capped smile and opened the door to the soup kitchen while giving Cindy a sweeping bow.

“Hey there, Ms. Cindy Thomas. We named you the sweetheart of From the Heart. By popular vote.”

Cindy grinned, asked Angel if he knew a girl named Sammy, and Angel said, “Sure, I know Sammy. She’s inside now.”

Cindy searched the large room, finally seeing Sammy working behind the steam table, serving up lunch to the long line of street people. Sammy was wearing nice slacks, expensive layered tops in bright colors, her pale yellow hair neatly braided down her back.

And although Sammy’s pupils were large enough to see from across the room, the teenager was clearly a volunteer, not a client.

Cindy crossed to the steam table, said, “Hi, Sammy. Do you have any time for me?”

Sammy looked not just nervous but jumpy. “No,” she said. “I just can’t.”

“Please.”

“I can’t talk to you in here,” Sammy sputtered. “I’ll meet you at Moe’s in a half hour if you’ll leave now.”

Cindy waited for Sammy at Moe’s, and after an hour went by, she ordered a grilled cheese on rye. As soon as it came, Sammy dropped into the seat across from her.

“You’re too much, Cindy,” the girl said, shaking her head. “I warned you to watch out, but you just can’t leave things alone.”

“I can keep a secret,” Cindy said, “but I can’t just drop this story.”

“No? Well, my father has me under house arrest. He doesn’t want me talking to anyone, especially you.” The girl crunched Life Savers, ordered a Coke. “Classic,” she said to the waitress.

“Why not me?”

“Because you are looking to get yourself killed.”

Cindy stirred her coffee, said, “See, this has me confused, Sammy. Why am I in danger? What’s so special about Rodney Booker that makes writing about him life-threatening?”

“Because his killers aren’t street people, Cindy. His killers don’t want to be exposed, arrested, charged with murder.”

Cindy said, “I need your help.”

Sammy sat back in her seat, her eyes wide with fear. She said, “I need your help, too. I want to get away from here. Move out of town. But I have no money. I’ll make you a deal. Can you get me some kind of advance on that reward? Like ten grand?”

“No way,” Cindy said. “That money is there until Bagman’s killers are convicted. I can get you a couple hundred bucks if that’ll help.”

“Forget it. Thanks, but no thanks. I said I needed help, and by the way, screw you,” said Sammy.

As soon as Sammy left the diner, Cindy paid the check and walked back to work. Sammy had finally gotten to her. The teenager’s fear could be druggie paranoia to the max, but Cindy was getting a different feeling – that Rodney Booker’s murder was tied to something bigger, something organized.

Which meant that she was out of her league.

She called a number she knew by heart. “Rich,” she said, “we’ve got to talk.”

Chapter 80

CONKLIN FOUND SKIP WILKINSON at MacBain’s, one hand in a bowl of peanuts, the other around a mug of freshly drawn brew. Wilkinson was a skinny kid with a buzz cut, went to the academy with Conklin. He was now in Narcotics and Vice, or as he called it, “Drugs and Whores.”

“So you want to talk about Bagman?” Wilkinson said.

“Anything you can tell me. He’s a homicide that’s going cold.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t tell you too much. We had a few brushes with him. He was strictly a small-time drug dealer.”

“What kind of drugs?”

“Crack. I brought you his file.”

Wilkinson lifted a dog- eared folder out of his battered briefcase, passed it to Conklin. “We never had enough probable cause to arrest him. Sickening, what he was doing.”

“What was that?” Conklin asked. There was no arrest sheet, no mug shot, just handwritten notes stapled to the back of the folder marked BAGMAN JESUS. They hadn’t known his name.

“He was turning teenage girls into pushers. He had a network of them. Sent them out on the street to sell. I’m not sure he wasn’t having sex with them all.

“This is all from street talk, not reliable sources. So we planted a couple of female cops on the street, waited for him to take the bait, but he didn’t do it.”

“And you gave up? Look, I’m not being critical. We haven’t had time to work his murder more than a handful of hours -”

“We didn’t quit,” Wilkinson said. “But as I said, Conklin, he was small-time. Crack is bad, but we’re being overrun by meth, which is far worse. Kids were making it in their basements. It was easy and cheap, but since the crackdown on ephedrine, meth has become big business.

“It’s huge, going out of control. Organized crime is getting involved. The stuff is streaming in from Mexico. I don’t mean to chew your ear off, but it’s getting away from us. And it’s killing good kids. One hit, and they don’t stand a chance.”

Conklin said, “So Rodney Booker was a crack dealer. We didn’t have that.”

“We would’ve landed Bagman eventually, but we had bigger dogs to worry about. And then someone got to that bastard first. And I say great. Glad they took that fucker down and made sure he was down for good.”

Chapter 81

AT JUST BEFORE EIGHT on a gray morning, Cindy stood between me and Conklin, pointing her finger in the direction of a young woman striding up Fifth Street.

“That’s her. Red shirt, blond braid. That’s Sammy.”

Sammy heard her name, turned her head, saw Conklin sprinting toward her, and took off like she had jets on the heels of her shoes. She flew off the sidewalk and into the street, ducked in front of a fish truck that was accelerating as the light turned green.

I thought the truck might have clipped her – but the gears ground into third and the truck sped up as Conklin rounded the tailgate. I was running, too, slipping through openings in the clogged street and sidewalks, barking out, “Police! Step aside!” as I ran.

I could hear Conklin huffing, that’s how close I was, when a crack in the sidewalk grabbed the toe of my shoe and I went down. My breath left me.

I staggered to my feet, and then a citizen pointed the way. By the time I caught up with them, Conklin had boxed Sammy into an alcove between two buildings, was yelling to the wide-eyed and panting kid, “Stop running and listen.”

A cluster of homeless people rose up from the sidewalk outside the soup kitchen, some sidling away, others circling around Conklin and Sammy. It was a menacing crew, and there were a lot of them. I flashed my badge, and the grumbling crowd backed off, gave us room.

“We want to talk to you at the station,” Conklin was saying to the girl. “You’ll come in, be a good citizen. Understand? Cooperate, and we won’t book you.”

“No. I don’t understand. I haven’t done anything.”

“See, I want to believe you,” said Inspector Conklin of the melting brown eyes. “But I don’t.”

Chapter 82

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Sammy, last name still unknown, sat across from us in Interview Room Number One, the video camera peering from its spider perch in the corner of the ceiling.

Sammy had no ID, but she admitted to being eighteen. She was legal, and we could question her. I’d done my best to befriend her, tell her I understood why she was frightened and offer her assurances, but the kid wasn’t buying it.

Her answers were evasive, and Sammy’s crappy attitude told me that she was hiding something big. And as pissed off as I was, I had a growing sense that whatever she knew could help us clear the Bagman Jesus case – maybe today.

The sullen teenager had dark circles under her eyes and the hollow cheeks of a meth addict going through withdrawal. She tore open a roll of Life Savers and ground the candy between her molars. I smelled Wild Cherry, and for the first time, I could swear I smelled her fear.

Was Sammy afraid that Bagman’s killer would come after her if she talked? Or was she implicated in his death?

I tried again, nicely. “Sammy, what’s bothering you?”

“Being here.”

“Look, we’re not trying to scare you. We’re trying to find out who killed Bagman. Help us, and we’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

“Oh, like that’s the problem.”

“Help me understand. What is the problem?”

The tough-girl mask dropped.

Sammy shouted, “I’m just a kid! I’m just a kid!”

That got to me and made me want to back off.

Instead, I bore down. I took off my jacket so that Sammy could see my gun.

I said, “Cut the crap. Tell me what you know, or you’ll be spending the best years of your life in prison as an accessory after the fact in Rodney Booker’s murder.”

Conklin went along. He deferred to me, called me “Sergeant,” made his eyes hard whenever Sammy looked to him for help.

We never gave the kid in her a chance.

Chapter 83

CONKLIN HAD TOLD ME that Bagman had a network of girl crack dealers, but I hadn’t envisioned a girl like Sammy: still pretty, well-dressed, a white girl who spoke as though she’d had a family-values upbringing and a good education.

How had Bagman gotten his hooks into her?

When I leaned on Sammy, she teared up, so Conklin pushed a box of tissues across the table. Sammy dried her eyes, blew her nose, gulped some air.

And then she started to talk.

“We sold crack, okay? Bagman paid us with crystal, and we used it with him. Spent days and days blowing clouds, not eating or sleeping, just having out-of-control sex!” she shouted into my face. “These outrageous orgasms, ten, twenty times, one on top of the other -”

“Sounds great,” I said.

“Yeah,” Sammy said, missing the sarcasm. “Unreal. Then he’d drive us to work, and when we’d made our numbers, we’d come home to Bagman Jesus.”

“How many girls are ‘we’?”

Sammy shrugged. “Three or four. No more than five living in the house at any one time.”

“Write down their names,” Conklin said, bringing the girl a pad and pen. Sammy came back to earth, gave Conklin a look meaning Are you crazy?

I asked her, “What do you mean, ‘drive us to work’? Drive what?”

“Bagman had a van, of course.”

Sammy’s voice was starting to crack. Conklin went out of the room, returned with a high-octane cola, and handed it to the girl, who drained the can in one long swallow.

I thought about Rodney Booker, the handsome man who’d gone to Stanford and joined the peace corps, then taken a hard turn into the drug business, giving it an original and especially cruel twist.

Sammy had described the horror, seemingly without understanding what was making me sick. Booker had kept a willing harem of teenage crack dealers, and he’d addicted them to a drug that delivered mind-blowing sex – until they burned out and died.

Booker was a modern-day devil.

Of course someone had killed him.

I asked Sammy where Booker’s van was, and she shrugged again. “I have no idea. Have I done my civic duty? May I go, please?”

Conklin pushed on. “So let me get this straight. Booker was cooking meth in his house?”

“He was for a while, but it was dangerous.”

Sammy sighed long and loud, remained silent for a few seconds, then resumed.

“My whole life dried up when Bagman died. Now my freaking parents are ‘cleaning me up.’ You know what it’s like to drop down a well? That’s my life. I’m going out of my mind.”

“ Uh-huh,” Conklin said. I admired his tenacity. “You told Cindy Thomas that you know who killed Bagman -”

“I never said that.”

“Sergeant?” Conklin said.

“We have enough,” I said, standing up, putting on my jacket.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Conklin said to Sammy. “Anything you say can and will be used against you -”

“You’re arresting me?”

Sammy stiffened as Conklin got her to her feet, clamped the cuffs around her wrists.

“I want my phone call,” she said. “I want my father.”

Chapter 84

SAMMY’S FULL NAME was Samantha Pincus, as we found out when her father blew into the squad room like a winter squall.

Neil Pincus was a lawyer who worked pro bono for the down-and-out habitués of the Mission District, where he and his brother had a two-man law practice in the same building that housed From the Heart.

I sized Pincus up as he stood over me at my desk and demanded to see his daughter. He was five ten, a taut 160, late forties, balding, and his scalp was sweating from the steam that was shooting out of his ears.

“You’re holding my daughter for something she said without counsel present? I’m going to sue you each individually and I’m going to sue the city, do you understand? You didn’t read her her rights until she indicted herself.”

“True,” I said. “But this wasn’t a custodial interrogation, Mr. Pincus. Her rights weren’t violated.”

“Sam didn’t know that. You terrified her. What you did was tantamount to torture. I’m a heck of a victims’ rights lawyer, and I’m going to send the two of you to hell.”

Jacobi was watching from behind the glass walls of his office, and twelve other pairs of eyes in the squad room were cast down, sneaking peeks.

I rose to my full five-foot-ten, plus two inches for my shoes, and said, “Take it down a few notches, Mr. Pincus. Right now this is just between the four of us. Help your daughter. Get her to cooperate, and we won’t book her.”

Pincus grunted in disgust, nodded, then followed us to the interrogation room where his daughter was waiting, hands cuffed in front of her. Her father squeezed her shoulder, then wrenched a chair out from the table and sat down.

“I’m listening.”

“Mr. Pincus, by her own admission, your daughter is a junkie and a dealer,” I said. “She was involved with Rodney Booker, also known as Bagman Jesus, now violently deceased. Samantha was not only selling crank for Booker but she told a very credible source that she knows who killed him. She’s a material witness, that’s why we’re holding her, and we need her to tell us who Booker’s killer is.”

“I’m not admitting she was dealing,” Pincus told us, “but if she was, she’s not doing it now and she’s not using either.”

“Well, everything’s fine, then,” I snapped.

“Listen, her mother and I are on her. Early curfew. No cell phone. No computer. She volunteers in a soup kitchen so she can see how bad life can get – and she works underneath my office.”

Pincus lifted his daughter’s cuffed wrists so I could see her watch. “It’s a GPS. She can’t go anywhere without me knowing. Sam has become a model of sobriety. I give you my word.”

“Is that all, Mr. Pincus?”

Samantha wailed.

“Where’s your decency?” Pincus spat. “Booker was scum. He was dealing to kids who sold to kids. Not just to my daughter but to other girls. Many good girls. We reported him.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” I demanded.

“The Fifth Street Association. Look it up. I filed a complaint on behalf of the association in February, and again in March. Again in April. The cops did nothing. We were told, ‘If you don’t have proof, fill out a form.’ ”

“You own a gun, Mr. Pincus?”

“No. And I’m asking you for a break. Release Samantha into my custody. Jail, even for a night, could destroy this child.”

We agreed to let the girl go, gave Pincus a warning not to let her leave town.

As soon as the two had left the squad room, Conklin and I went to our desks and called up Pincus’s name in the database. He didn’t have a sheet, but Conklin found something else.

“Neil Pincus has a license to carry, and he’s got a registered Rohm twenty-two,” Conklin said over the top of his monitor. “A cheap dirty little pistol for a cheap dirty little lawyer. That son of a bitch lied.”

Chapter 85

CONKLIN AND I were at the door to Pincus and Pincus, Attorneys- at-Law, by noon, and we had four other cops with us. When the door opened, we pushed past the reception area, and I handed Neil Pincus a warrant.

I said, “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Pincus blinked stupidly. “What?”

“Did you think we wouldn’t find out about the gun?”

“That… thing was stolen,” Pincus said. “I reported it.” The lawyer pushed back his chair, said, “I kept it in here.”

I opened a desk drawer, bottom right, saw the metal gun box. I lifted the lid, stared at a cardboard box for a Rohm.22. The box was empty.

“You kept this gun box locked?”

“No.”

“Where’d you keep the ammo?”

“Same drawer. Look. I know that’s a violation, but if I was going to need the gun, I was going to need it fast. Sergeant, I rarely opened the box,” said Pincus. “It could have been stolen any time in the last six months. You turn your back for a second around here, take a phone call or take a piss -”

I stepped in front of Pincus, jerked open the rest of his desk drawers as Conklin did the same to brother Al’s matching desk in the next room.

Then the six of us jacked open the file cabinets, tossed the supply room, looked under the cushions on the cracked leather sofa. After a short while, the Pincus brothers settled down, talked over us to their clients, acted normally and entirely as though we weren’t there.

When we came up empty, Conklin and I visited both of the Pincus homes, one in Forest Hill and the other on Monterey Boulevard. Good neighborhoods, places where bad kids didn’t happen. We met the two nice wives, Claudia and Reva, both of whom had been asked by their husbands to cooperate.

We acquainted ourselves with the insides of the Pincus family closets, cupboards, hope chests, and tool chests, and the Pincus wives voluntarily let us search their cars.

Their places were as brilliantly clean as white sheets hanging from the line on a sunshiny day.

Executing those warrants had been physically and emotionally draining. I was wrung out and depressed, and we had nothing to show for our work.

Had Neil Pincus’s gun been used to kill Bagman?

I still didn’t know, but if I had to guess where that gun was now, I’d say the shooter had dropped it off the bridge sometime after Rodney Booker’s execution. And at present it was being buried by the shifting sands at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.

Chapter 86

CONKLIN AND I got into the squad car we’d parked outside Alan Pincus’s house.

I owed Jacobi a call and an explanation, and knew he’d go bug-nuts when I told him we’d spent our day chasing Bagman’s hit man when a psycho was dropping the mayor’s friends with a poisonous reptile.

I was about to say so to Conklin, but now that we were alone, the elephant in the car could not be ignored.

Conklin turned down the radio, jumbled the car keys in his hand for a moment, and said, “Cindy talked to you about… uh… us.”

“Yep. It was quite a surprise,” I said, holding his gaze until he looked away.

“She said you were upset.”

I shrugged.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Linds -”

“Hey. I’m fine. Fine,” I lied. “Once I thought about it, I realized you two are a natural.”

“It’s only been, like, a week.”

“Whatever. As Jacobi says, ‘I love you guys.’ ”

Conklin laughed, and that laugh told all. He was having a wonderful time with my bodacious, cheeky, bighearted friend, and he didn’t want to stop.

The guy who’d kissed me last week – that guy was gone. Sure, I’d rejected him, and sure, I didn’t own him. But even so, it hurt. I missed the Richie who’d mooned over me.

I wondered if his sleeping with Cindy was a roundabout way of sleeping with me. It was a crummy thought, hardly worthy of me, but – ha! – I thought it anyway.

And I remembered Yuki’s advice: “Let him go. Let yourself go.”

Conklin was watching my face for a sign, perhaps my blessing, so I was glad when knuckles rapped on my window. It was Alan Pincus, home early from work.

He was bigger than his older brother, had more hair. Otherwise, they were clones.

I buzzed down the glass.

“Sergeant Boxer? Are you people done? Because I want to get my family life back to normal.”

“We’re done for now, but we’re not going away.”

“I understand.”

“Anything comes up we should know about, call us.”

“Boy Scout honor.”

Pincus held up three fingers, then turned and marched up the walk to his front door. Was he sticking it to us? I couldn’t tell. When he was inside, I said to Conklin, “Let’s call Cindy.”

Chapter 87

LATER THAT DAY, Conklin, Cindy, and I had MacBain’s Beers O’ the World Pub practically to ourselves. We had a table in the back, a bowl of freeze-dried peanuts, and diet colas all around.

Cindy’s face was flushed, and it had nothing to do with her proximity to my partner.

“You let them go? You didn’t hold them, squeeze them -”

“Sounds like a pop song,” Conklin cracked, and he was so high on Cindy, he actually sang a few lines: “Hold me, squeeze me, never let me go…” But Cindy was not in the mood.

“How can you make fun of me?”

Conklin’s smile dropped. “Cin, we would’ve if we could’ve – but we can’t make an indictable charge. Not yet.”

“But you’re working the case? Swear to God?”

Conklin and I both nodded, Conklin adding, “We are seriously working the case.”

Cindy dropped her head into her hands and groaned. “I put this guy on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. ‘Bagman Jesus, Street Saint.’ And he’s what? Turning teens into drug dealers? And you think that’s why someone killed him? God Almighty. What do I do now?”

“Do what you always do,” I said to my friend. “Run with the truth. And hey, Cindy, this is a better story, right?”

Her eyes got bigger as she saw the size of the headline in her mind. “I can cite reliable sources close to the SFPD?”

“Yes. Sure.”

Conklin paid the tab, and we three left the bar together. Cindy headed back to the Chronicle and an emergency meeting with her boss, and Conklin and I walked over to the Hall.

Back in the gloom of the bull pen, Conklin booted up his Dell. I sorted through the messages that had come in while we were out, found one from St. Jude that Brenda had marked URGENT. I had punched in half of McCorkle’s number when Conklin said, “Unbelievable.”

I stopped dialing. “Whatcha got?”

“Rodney Booker’s van is in impound, Lindsay. The day after he was killed, it was towed from a no-parking zone.”

I called impound, located the car, and put in a rush order to have it brought to the crime lab.

Our dead end had sprung wide open.

And that’s what I shouted over my shoulder to Jacobi, who was advancing on us, breathing fire, as Conklin and I fled the squad room.

Chapter 88

BY SEVEN THAT NIGHT, CSIs were making the most of our warrant to search Booker’s van. The brainiac Brett Feller and his muscular cohort, Ray Bates, had disassembled the blue van into piles of assorted parts. And they’d found Bagman’s bag strapped to the underside of a backseat with a bungee cord.

The two young men weren’t done yet. They unscrewed nuts and bolts and tire rims, hoping for a hidden dope cache or a weapon, but when Conklin and I opened the brown leather mailbag-style pouch and looked inside, I said, “Stand down, guys. This is it.”

I lifted items out of the bag. Conklin laid them out on the light table, and Feller, an intense twenty-four-year-old with a touch of obsessive- compulsive disorder and an eye toward being the next Gil Grissom – for real – lined everything up squarely and took photographs.

My heart was banging ta-dum, ta-dum throughout this process, and frankly I was surprised at my own excitement.

In the past weeks, I had gone in and out of caring about Bagman Jesus. At first I’d written him off as one of the dozens of street people who were killed every year in a dispute over a choice sleeping location or a finger of booze.

By the time Cindy said, “Nobody gives a damn,” I did.

When Bagman Jesus turned out to be a drug dealer, I lost interest again. Now he’d morphed into a predator without conscience, and I was going through Bagman Jesus whiplash.

Who capped this guy?

What will we learn from his stuff?

Opening Bagman’s bag felt like waking up on Christmas morning to find that Santa had left his entire carryall under the tree.

I took out my notebook, kept track of our findings.

Items one through fourteen were miscellany: a moldy sandwich in a Ziploc bag, several bundles of bills rubber-banded according to denomination – looked to be no more than two thousand dollars.

There was a worn Bible inscribed with Rodney Booker’s name in the flyleaf, and what seemed to be the biggest score: a half dozen bags of sparkling white powder – maybe six ounces of crystal meth.

But of real interest was item number fifteen: a leather folder about five inches by eight inches, what travelers use to hold their plane tickets and passports.

Conklin opened the folder, removed the contents, and unfolded the papers, handling them as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls. As my partner put papers down on the table, Feller took photos and I named the documents out loud.

“Service record for the van. Oil change and lube, one hundred seventy-two thousand, three hundred thirty-four miles. Looks like a winning lottery ticket, five out of eight numbers, dated the day before Booker’s body was found.”

I noted some deposit slips, a little more than three thousand in cash over a three-day period, and there were receipts from fast-food restaurants.

But when CSI Bates found Bagman’s wallet deep inside a door panel, the contents nearly blew down the walls of the crime lab.

Chapter 89

THE WALLET WAS SLIM, a good-quality goatskin with the initials RB stamped in gold on the corner. I took out Booker’s driver’s license and found a sheet of yellow paper in the bill compartment.

I unfolded it, my eyes taking in the data, my brain, a few beats behind, trying to make sense of it.

I said, “This is a bill of sale. Rodney Booker bought a bus from a used-car lot in Tijuana on May second, just days before he died.

“It was an old school bus, says here, nineteen eighty- three.”

I stared at the yellow paper, but my inner eye was on Market and Fourth right after an old school bus had blown up, filling the air with bloody mist, littering the street with body parts.

Ten innocent people had died.

Others had been injured, scarred for life.

I remembered hunkering down on shattered glass, talking with the arson investigator Chuck Hanni as he pointed out the broken parts and melted pieces in what was left of the rear of the bus, showing me that the vehicle had been a mobile meth lab.

The owner of the bus had never been identified.

“What did Sammy say?” I asked my partner. “Bagman used to cook meth in the house – but it was too dangerous?”

“Right.”

I took a second piece of paper from the wallet. It was plain white, six by four inches with a glue-strip edge, obviously torn from a notepad, folded in half. Handwritten on the paper was a tally converting pesos to dollars. A scribbled word jumped out at me: “ephedrine,” the main ingredient in methamphetamine.

Conklin was breathing over my shoulder. “That’s a signature, isn’t it? J something Gomez.”

“Juan.”

The name Juan Gomez was as common as John Smith. That might not mean much, but it was the name on the ID of the meth cook who’d been blown across the intersection at Fourth and Market, dead from the blast before his head had been bashed in against a lamppost.

I could hardly believe the treasure I held in my hands.

Rodney Booker had been branching out from small-time crack sales to big-time meth. He’d bought the ingredients, hired a cook, bought a bus, and turned it into a meth lab.

And on its first drug run, Booker’s lab had sent ten people to God. Bagman’s motto had never seemed as ironic to me as it did right now: Jesus Saves.

Chapter 90

YUKI WAS WORKING OUT with her video trainer when the intercom buzzed and her doorman’s voice crackled over the box on the wall, saying, “Dr. Chesney is here to see you.”

Elation shot through her.

Doc was early! The doorbell rang, and Yuki opened the door wide – and Doc kissed her. And Yuki made the most of it, putting her hands all through Doc’s blond Ricky Schroder hair, wriggling and moaning in the doorway.

He grinned at her, said, “Glad to see me?”

She nodded, smiled, said, “Uh- huh,” and they kissed again, Doc kicking the door shut behind him.

This was the thing that was priceless: how these kisses were even theirs.

Only she and Doc kissed this way.

“Hi, honey. How was your day?” Yuki said, coming up for air, laughing at the idea of making a “couple” joke.

When was the last time she’d done that?

Ever?

“Not too bad, sweetie,” Doc said, scooping her up and walking her backward to the couch, where he dropped her gently into the overstuffed cushions, but she said “oof” anyway, and he settled down beside her.

“Bee sting, broken collarbone, and a baby halfway delivered in the waiting area,” Doc said, touching her hair, stroking the half-inch- high stand-up buzz cut that he’d started with his clippers weeks ago and liked so much.

She was starting to like it, too.

“Any day I don’t get stabbed by a syringe from an HIV-positive patient is a good day for me,” he said.

“I second that,” said Yuki. “So are you gassed up, packed up, ready to go?”

Because she was. As soon as she zipped up her bag, they’d be off for their Memorial Day weekend in Napa, the long, romantic drive, the beautiful hotel, the huge bed with a view.

“I am. But there’s something I have to tell you first.”

Yuki searched his eyes. Thinking back a couple of minutes, she remembered that Doc had looked a little jittery when she’d first opened the door, and since she’d been feeling a little nervy herself, she’d chalked it up to their upcoming big weekend. That soon they’d be making love for the first time.

Now his smile was tentative, and that alarmed her.

Was their weekend going to be cut short?

Or was it worse than that?

“John, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Depends on how you look at it,” he said. “This is going to be rough, Yuki.” He was holding her hand, but he kept lowering his eyes.

“The problem is, you tell someone too soon, and it’s presumptuous. You tell them too late, and you’ve messed with their minds. In our case it’s both: too early and too late -”

“You’re scaring me, John. Spit it out.”

“A few days ago when you said that you hadn’t had sex in a couple of years -”

“That was stupid of me. It’s true, but I was nervous. My brain… just overflowed.”

Doc fixed his slate-blue eyes on her. “I haven’t had sex in a couple of years either.”

“You? Come on. I don’t believe you.”

Yuki’s brain was on rewind, thinking how she’d gone to the hospital to see Doc after the car accident. She’d agreed to show him the city. After their first soft kiss, she’d dived in for a longer, sexier one – like she’d done just now.

She’d been driving the whole fantasy.

He’d been following her lead.

Yuki was mortified. Why hadn’t she listened to her mother?

“Be like swan, Yuki- eh. Hold head high. Swim strong and silent.” She had no patience. Instead she’d taken after her father. The tank driver.

“Please, just say it,” Yuki said.

And then he did tell her, his voice halting, the story coming out in bits and pieces on a jagged time line. And although Yuki could hardly grasp what he was saying, her vision narrowed. There was a loud humming in her head.

And then everything went black.

Chapter 91

I SAT IN a wobbly chair across from Yuki and Cindy at Casa Loco, a Mexican joint near Cindy’s apartment specializing in two- star chicken fajitas. It was dark outside, and the windows reflected our colorless images, making us look like ghosts.

Especially Yuki.

Cindy was both propping Yuki up and pumping her for more information when Claire arrived, dropped down in the chair next to me.

“You were right not to go away with him,” Cindy was saying to Yuki. “You can’t make decisions when your head’s been through a blender.”

The teenage waitress removed our plates, and Claire ordered coffee all around. Yuki said, “I keep thinking maybe I should have toughed it out. Just gotten into the car -”

“And if you hadn’t felt better?” Cindy asked her. “What a bloody awful weekend this would’ve been if you’d been stranded in Napa with someone who might have repulsed you.”

“I hate it when you sugarcoat things, Cindy.”

“Well, I’m not wrong, am I?”

“So let me get this straight,” Claire said, bringing herself up to date since talking to Yuki on the phone. “Doc was born with ambiguous genitalia? The doctors didn’t know for sure if he was a boy or a girl?”

Yuki nodded, used a forefinger to wick the tears out from under her eyes.

“They told his parents that if they conditioned him as a girl, he’d never know.”

“They got that wrong,” I said.

Claire said, “It’s a damned tragedy, Yuki. I’m sure the parents were under a lot of pressure to tell people the baby’s sex. Anyway, it was a theory based on practicality. Even if the chromosomes read XY, if the parts looked messed up, they did the surgery. ‘Easier to make a hole than a pole,’ they used to say. Then, they’d advise, treat the kid like a girl. Give her estrogen at adolescence, and by God, she’ll be a girl.”

“They named him Flora Jean,” Yuki sputtered. “Like you said, Claire, they took a baby boy and made him a girl! But he never felt like one, ever – because he wasn’t a girl. Oh my God. It’s so sick!”

“So he reversed the process when he was how old?” Claire asked.

“Started when he was twenty-six. After that, he went through about four or five years of hell.”

“Oh man. That poor guy,” I said.

Yuki lifted her teary eyes to mine. “I’m crazy about Doc, Lindsay. He’s sweet. He’s funny. He’s seen me as a real bitch and as a total wimp. He gets me – but how am I going to stop thinking of him as a guy who used to be a girl?”

“Aw, Yuki. Where did you leave things with him?”

“He said he’d call me over the weekend. That we’d go out to dinner next week and talk.”

“Doc cares about you,” I said. “He’s showing you how much he cares by telling you what happened. Giving you time.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Yuki choked out.

Cindy held Yuki and let her cry until Claire reached across the table and took Yuki’s hand.

“Sugar, take it easy on yourself. It seems complicated, but maybe it’s not. And nothing has to be decided right now.”

Yuki nodded, and then she started to cry again.

Chapter 92

I GOT TO the squad room before eight on Monday morning and found a thick padded envelope on my desk. The routing slip showed that St. Jude had messengered it over from the Cold Case Division and had stamped the envelope URGENT, URGENT, URGENT.

I remembered now – McCorkle had called me, and I hadn’t called him back. I ripped open the envelope, dumped out a tattered detective’s notebook, found a note from McCorkle clipped to the front cover.

“ Boxer – check this out. This subject knew the last of the nineteen eighty-two snake victims and a few of the new ones. She’s expecting your call.”

I hoped “she” was a hot lead that hadn’t gone cold over the weekend, because right now, all we had on the “snake killer” was ugly press coverage and five dead bodies twiddling their thumbs in their graves.

Conklin wasn’t in, so I killed a few minutes in the coffee room, putting milk and sugar in the last inch of coffee sludge left over from the night shift.

When I returned to my desk, my partner was still absent, and I couldn’t wait for him any longer.

I opened the notebook to where a neon-green Post-it Note stuck between the pages pointed to a twenty-three-year-old interview with a socialite, Ginny Howsam Friedman.

I knew a few things about Ginny Friedman.

She was once married to a deputy mayor in the ’80s, now deceased, and was currently married to a top cardiologist. She was a patron of the arts and a gifted painter in her own right.

I scanned the cop’s scribbled notes and saw where McCorkle had underscored her phone number, which I dialed.

Friedman answered on the third ring and surprised me by saying, “I’m free if you come over now.”

I left a note on Conklin’s chair, then took my Explorer for a spin out to Friedman’s address in Pacific Heights.

Ginny Friedman’s pretty blue-and-white gingerbread- decked house was on Franklin Street, one of the blocks of fully restored Victorian houses that make San Francisco a visual wonder.

I walked up the steps and pressed the bell, and a lovely-looking gray-haired woman in her early seventies opened the door.

“Come in, Sergeant,” she said. “I’m so glad to meet you. What can I get you? Coffee or tea?”

Chapter 93

MRS. FRIEDMAN AND I settled into a pair of wicker chairs on her back porch, and she began to tell me about the snake killings that had terrorized San Francisco ’s high society in 1982.

Friedman stirred her coffee, said, “There’s got to be a connection between those old killings and the recent ones.”

“We think so, too.”

“I hope I can help you,” Friedman said. “I told Lieutenant McCorkle that it was stinking horrible when those prominent people kept dying in eighty-two. Scary as hell. Keep in mind, we didn’t know why they died until Christopher Ross was found with that snake coiled up in his armpit.”

“And you knew Christopher Ross?”

“Very well. My first husband and I went out with him and his wife often. He was a very handsome guy. A thrill-seeker with an outgoing personality, and he was wealthy, of course. His gobs of money had gobs of money. Chris Ross had it all. And then he died.

“Some said it was poetic justice,” Friedman told me. “That he was a snake who was killed with one – but I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“Take your time,” I said. “I want to hear it all.”

Friedman nodded, said, “In nineteen eighty-two, I was teaching fifth-grade girls at the Katherine Delmar Burke School in Sea Cliff. You know it, I’m sure.”

I did. Sea Cliff was an A+ oceanside community, uncommonly beautiful, populated by the uncommonly wealthy.

“The young girls wore green plaid uniforms and did a maypole dance every year. Streamers and all.

“Sara Needleman and Isa Booth were both in my class in eighty-two. I still can’t believe that they’re dead! They had charmed lives. And when I knew them, they were both darling children. Look at this.”

Friedman handed me a small leather book with glassine pages filled with snapshots. She turned to the back page and pointed to stepped rows of ten- year-old girls in a class photo.

“There’s Isa. This is Sara. And this girl, poor thing, with the sad eyes. She was always the odd girl out,” Friedman said of a young girl with shoulder-length dark hair. The child looked familiar, but although my mind was on search, I couldn’t place her.

Friedman said, “She was Christopher Ross’s illegitimate daughter. Her mother was the Ross’s housekeeper, and Ross paid for his daughter’s schooling at Burke’s. I helped to get her admitted.

“The other girls all knew her circumstances, of course, and some of them were unkind. I said to her once, ‘Honey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ and she seemed to take courage from that.

“And then Chris died, and his wife, Becky – who had previously looked the other way – fired Norma’s mother, cut her and the child off without a penny. Chris must’ve thought he’d live forever, and he hadn’t provided for them in his will. Anyway, poor Norma was dropped from the school.

“And you know, I was right. It didn’t kill her, and I think it did make her stronger.”

I stared at the picture of the sad-eyed little girl – and suddenly the pieces locked into place with such force I could almost hear them clang. When I met Norma Johnson, her hair was caramel-blond and she was thirty-three years old.

Friedman said, “Last time I spoke with Norma was about ten years ago. She had created a little gofer business for herself, used her old contacts to get work.

“She let down her hair with me over a nice lunch in Fort Mason, and I’ll tell you, Sergeant, and it gives me no pleasure to say it, Norma was very bitter.

“You know what those rich girls called their old school chum? They called her ‘Pet Girl.’ ”

Chapter 94

CONKLIN TOOK A CHAIR in Jacobi’s office, but I was so revved up, I couldn’t sit. I was also freaking out. We’d interviewed Norma Johnson twice, written her off as a suspect both times and kicked her.

“Am I missing the obvious?” Jacobi asked me. “Or are you?” His meaty hands were clasped together on his trash heap of a desktop.

“Maybe it’s me. What’s the obvious?”

“Did you consider that Ginny Friedman might be the doer? She not only admits to knowing one of the original victims, she knew half the current ones, too.”

“She has a solid alibi, Jacobi. Didn’t I say that?”

“You said she had an alibi, Boxer. I’m asking for details.”

There were times when reporting to Jacobi was like having bamboo slivers pushed under my fingernails. Had he forgotten we’d worked together for more than ten years?

Had he forgotten he used to report to me?

“When the killings happened, Ginny Friedman was cruising the Mediterranean on a sailing ship,” I told him. “She learned about the killings when the ship docked last week in Cannes. France.”

“I know where Cannes is,” Jacobi said, pronouncing it in the plural.

“I have Friedman’s round-trip airplane receipts and her travel documents from the Royal Clipper on my desk. The ship left port before the Baileys were killed, and it didn’t return until Brian Caine and Jordan Priestly were dead.”

“You’re sure?”

“I examined her passport,” I said. “The photo was current, and the book was properly stamped. She wasn’t in San Francisco over the last month, Jacobi, no chance. But McCorkle is checking her out anyway.”

Jacobi picked up the receiver on his phone, punched all five of his lines so no calls could come through. Then he fastened his eyes on me.

“Tell me more about this Pet Girl.”

I told Jacobi that Johnson’s father, Christopher Ross, wasn’t married to Norma’s mother, that the mother just changed the bed linens and vacuumed the floors in his Nob Hill manse.

“Ross was so rich, he was beyond scandal,” I said, “at least, while he was alive. After he died, Norma’s mother was canned and little Norma was officially an outcast.

“Her daddy left her nothing. Her friends treated her like dirt. And then she started working for them.”

“She had keys to their houses,” Conklin added, “and passwords to their security systems. She also had plenty of opportunity. What did she say, Lindsay? That nobody even knew she’d been there. That her clients liked it that way.”

“She was just ten when her father was killed?” Jacobi asked.

“Right. She couldn’t have killed those highfliers from the eighties. But the fact that her father was a victim might have inspired her.”

“Copycat,” said Jacobi.

“So we think,” I said.

Jacobi slapped his desk, and dust flew up.

“Pick her up,” he said. “Go get her.”

Chapter 95

I SAT BESIDE Conklin at the table in the interrogation room, ready to jump in if needed, but he had the interview under control. Norma Johnson liked him, and Conklin was showing her what a good person he was, a guy you could trust – even if you were a freaking psycho.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell us that your father had been killed by a snake, Norma,” Conklin said.

“Yeah. Well, I would have told you if you’d asked me, but you know, I didn’t connect my father’s death to any of this until you said that the Baileys and Sara had been killed by a snake.”

“Brian Caine and Jordan Priestly? Did you know them?”

“Not well. I work for Molly Caldwell-Davis occasionally, and I’ve met Brian at her place once or twice. Jordan was there all the time, but we weren’t friends.”

“Did you work for Molly on the night of May twenty- fourth?”

“I’d have to look at my book, but no, wait. Didn’t Molly have a party on the twenty-fourth? Because I was invited. I dropped by, didn’t know anyone, so I said ‘hey’ to Molly and left after about ten minutes. She didn’t need me to walk Mischa.”

“And so your relationship with Molly was what? How would you describe it?”

“Um, business-casual. I met her through an ex-boyfriend of mine. You may have heard of him. McKenzie Oliver?”

“The rock star who died from a drug overdose?”

Norma Johnson played with the ends of her hair. “Yeah, that’s the one. We weren’t dating at the time.”

Conklin made a note in his book, asked, “Do you have any thoughts on this, Norma? Anybody jump into your mind who could’ve killed your dad and then, like, twenty-three years later, maybe killed a bunch of people you know?”

Johnson said, “No, but this is a very small town, Inspector. Everyone knows everyone. Grudges can last for generations, but even so, I don’t know any killers. I’m pretty sure of that.”

Johnson’s demeanor was low-key, bordering on snotty – and that was crazy. For the third time, she was in a small room with cops. She had to know she was a suspect. She had reason to be nervous, even if she was innocent.

She should have been asking if she needed a lawyer. Instead she was flipping her hair around and flirting with Conklin.

I made a mental note: Tell Claire to review McKenzie Oliver’s autopsy report.

And another: Find out if Norma Johnson had access to or owned a poisonous snake.

I excused myself, stepped outside the interview room, and stood with Jacobi behind the glass. Together we watched and listened as Norma Johnson told Conklin about her pedigree.

“I don’t know if you know this, but my father was the great-great-great-grandson of John C. Frémont.”

“The Pathfinder? The explorer who mapped out the route to California just ahead of the gold rush?”

“That’s the one. My bloodline is royal blue, Inspector. I’ve got nothing against the wannabes I work for, in case that’s what you’re thinking. John C. Frémont went down in history – and he started out life just like me. He was a bastard. Literally.”

“I’m very impressed, Norma. So please, help me out here. You know San Francisco like nobody else. Upstairs, downstairs, every way, and I’m on the outside. I wasn’t even born here.”

“You want to know who killed all those people? I already told you. I have no idea.”

Conklin smiled, showed his dimples. “Actually, I was going to ask you who you think might be the snake killer’s next victim.”

Johnson sat back in her chair, then cocked her head and smiled at Conklin. “The next to die? You know, my circle is getting kind of small. I’m thinking the next victim could be me.”

“Holy crap,” I said to Jacobi. “I don’t like the sound of that. What’s she planning to do?”

“Pin a tail on that donkey,” Jacobi said. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”

Chapter 96

WE LOST PET GIRL literally right out of the box. Whether she’d gotten swept up in the foot traffic on Bryant or jumped into a cab, I didn’t know, but Conklin and I stood stupidly out on the street, blinking in the sunlight, looking for a honey-blonde in black – and seeing everything but.

“Try her phone,” I said to Conklin. “Tell her you have another question. Make a date to meet her.”

“I get it,” Conklin said. “Find out where she is.”

I grunted, “Sorry,” for my Jacobi-like behavior and watched Conklin dial and listen to Johnson’s outgoing message.

“Hi, Norma. It’s Inspector Conklin. Give me a call, okay? Got a quick question for you.”

He left his number and hung up.

“Let’s -”

“Check out her house,” he said.

I muttered, “Wiseass,” and he laughed, and we made for the car. Thirty minutes of traffic later, we parked close to the Twenty-fifth Avenue gate to the Presidio.

The Presidio has a long history, first as a Spanish fort right on San Francisco Bay, then as army housing when it was seized by the U.S. military in 1846. Nearly a hundred fifty years later, it went private, becoming a mixed-use assortment of business and residential buildings.

The renovation produced some beautiful Mission Revival-style redbrick buildings with white porches. Other housing was condemned and was gradually crumbling into the bay.

Pet Girl’s address indicated that her apartment was in the picturesque and cheapest part of the former barracks, a long walk from where we stood. And what got to me instantly was that Norma Johnson’s home was within viewing distance of Sea Cliff, where she’d gone to the Burke School – and where she’d been disgraced.

I’d thought status was important to her. So why had she put herself on that particular burner and turned up the jets?

Conklin and I walked quickly through the parklike Presidio surrounds, crowded on that workday with windsurfers changing in the parking lot, enjoying the breeze coming off Baker Beach.

And then Norma’s apartment was in sight, one of two attached units with a small yard in front. The trim needed a paint job, and there was a bike lying on the long grass in front of Norma’s door as though it had been dropped there in a hurry.

I knocked, called Norma’s name, knocked again, harder – and still no answer. I thought of Pet Girl saying to Conklin, “The next victim could be me.”

“Exigent circumstances, Rich. She could have hurt herself. She could be dying.”

I told him to kick the door in, but Conklin put his hand on the knob and turned it, and the door swung open. My gun was in my hand when we stepped inside Pet Girl’s apartment. It was clean and small, with what looked like cast-off furnishings, except for a picture of Christopher Ross in an elaborate frame over the console table in the hallway.

I heard muffled footsteps and a rumbling sound but couldn’t identify the noise or the direction it was coming from.

Conklin was behind me as I moved toward the back of the small duplex apartment, calling out, “Norma, it’s Sergeant Boxer. Your door was open. Could you please come out? We have to talk.”

All was silent.

I indicated to Conklin that he should stay on the ground floor, and I took the stairs. The upstairs rooms were so small, I could see into every corner, but still I turned over beds, tossed closets, looked for loose wall panels, the works.

Where the hell was Pet Girl?

I went through both small rooms, the bathroom, and the closets once more, but Norma Johnson wasn’t there.

The invisible Pet Girl had gone invisible again.

Chapter 97

I WAS STARTLED by the sharp crash of heavy objects falling to the floor below, and then I heard that rumble again, a sound like muted thunder, maybe a heavy rolling door – and I heard voices.

Conklin is talking to Norma Johnson.

By the time he called out to me, I was halfway down the stairs.

My partner was in the kitchen, staring into an opening between a counter and the fridge through a doorway I’d thought too narrow to lead to anything but a broom closet. Apparently a pocket door had been rolled into an opening in the wall – and there was a room behind it, looked like a pantry.

“Lindsay,” Conklin said in a measured tone, “Norma has a weapon.”

I edged into the eight-by-ten kitchen until I could see Johnson. Her back was to the pantry. Conklin was standing only four feet in front of her, barring her exit.

I did a double take when I realized that Norma Johnson’s weapon was the snake she gripped in her right hand. It was slim, banded, gray and white, a deadly krait, its tail lashing, its head swaying only inches from Johnson’s neck.

“Get out of my way, Inspector Conklin,” Johnson hissed. “I’m leaving by the front door, and you’re going to let me go. And I’m going to lock the door behind me. The snakes won’t bother you as long as you are very quiet and move very slowly.”

As Johnson inched toward Conklin, I could see behind her to the pantry. Metal shelving along the wall held a number of twenty-gallon aquariums, and the floor of the room was covered with broken glass.

My hands went ice cold as I understood the crashing sound. Pet Girl had pulled some of the snake tanks over, and they had smashed on the floor. Snakes were loose in the apartment, looking for hidey-holes, probably winding around corners into the small kitchen where Conklin and I were standing.

“I want you to open the oven and put that snake inside!” I shouted to Pet Girl. “Do it now, or I’m going to shoot.”

Pet Girl laughed.

“Nope, not going to do that,” she said, showing me a pretty smile I’d not seen on her face before. “So what’s it going to be, Sergeant? Let me go? Because if not, it doesn’t matter to me if Kali bites me or if you shoot me. There’s no difference to me at all.”

A clock ticked on the wall above the stove. I heard Norma Johnson’s breath quicken, and I saw that Conklin’s face was blanched. He was afraid of snakes, deathly afraid, but he stood like a rock within striking distance of Pet Girl’s lunatic idea of a pet. I couldn’t get a clean shot.

“Move aside, Inspector,” Johnson said to Conklin. “Save yourself and let me go.”

“I can’t do that,” said Conklin. And then he snapped out his hand like he was grabbing a fly from the air. He was going for her wrist, but before he could grab her, she launched the snake at Conklin.

Conklin jumped back, but the snake was airborne. My partner raised his hand as it came toward him, wriggling sinuously, batting against his palm. It clung to his hand for an instant, hanging over his wrist – until Conklin shook it off and it fell to the floor.

He stepped back, holding his wrist, then turned his ashen face to me.

“I’ve been bitten,” he said, standing stock-still. “The bastard got me.”

Chapter 98

NORMA JOHNSON BOLTED.

She tried to bulldoze her way past me, but I came out of my horrified trance, grabbed her arm, and wrenched her around.

Her shoulder popped and she screamed, but the pain didn’t stop her. She picked up a coffee mug with her free hand and, gripping it as if it were a rock, hauled back and aimed a ceramic punch to my jaw.

I ducked, kicked at her knee with all I had. She screamed again and dropped to the floor. I rolled the yowling woman onto her stomach and bent her arms back, cuffed her as I yelled to Conklin, “Rich! Lie down on the couch. Lower your arm to the floor so that it’s below your heart. Do it now.”

Conklin walked unsteadily into the next room as if he were already dying. I noted the time, grabbed my cell phone, and called Dispatch, told Kam that Conklin was down.

“We need an ambulance forthwith,” I said, giving the address. “Call the hospital, say that the victim has been bitten by a snake. It’s a krait. K-R-A-I-T. We need antivenin now.”

“Antivenom?”

“Yes. No. It’s called antivenin. And send uniforms to take our collar into custody.”

I walked over to Johnson, who was writhing, squeaking out little yelping cries.

I stooped down and said, “Do you have any antivenin here?”

She mewled, “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

I kicked her in the ribs, and she howled. I asked her again.

“No! I don’t have any.”

I didn’t believe her. I opened her refrigerator and took inventory. Three cups of yogurt, box of eggs. Six-pack of Coors. Wilted radishes. No vials that looked like something that could save Conklin’s life.

I can’t lie. It felt like dozens of eyes were staring at me. I was creeped-out to the ends of my hair, and even though I was terrified for my partner, I still had a little terror left over for myself.

I watched the floor as I made my way to the living room, where Conklin was lying on a blue plaid sofa, his arm lowered to keep the poison from traveling to his heart.

Only a minute or two had passed since he’d been bitten, but I had no idea how long it would take for that bite to paralyze his central nervous system. How long it would be until Conklin couldn’t breathe.

Was it already too late?

I whipped off Conklin’s belt and placed it just below his elbow as a constricting band. “I’ve got you, buddy. The ambulance is on the way.”

Panic welled up inside me like a tsunami, and the tears were working hard to bust down the dam. But I couldn’t let my partner see that. I just wanted to be 10 percent as brave as he was.

I forced my mind off the odds.

And I focused on the distance between us and the closest hospital. I thought about the Amazing Race-style run the paramedics would have to make carrying stretchers from the Twenty-fifth Avenue gate all the way out to the end.

And then there was the antivenin.

How would the hospital get antivenin in time?

The souls of every dead person I’d ever loved visited me as I held Richie’s good hand and listened for sirens: Jill and Chris and my mom – I couldn’t bear it if Conklin died.

I heard the sirens blare and stop.

To my overwhelming relief, twelve minutes after Conklin was bitten, paramedics bearing stretchers bombed through the door.

Chapter 99

I YELLED OUT to the paramedics and the cops. “Poisonous snakes are loose all over the freakin’ floor. They’re lethal.”

“You said a cop is down?” asked a uniform.

I knew him. Tim Hettrich. Twenty years on the force and one of our best. But he and Conklin had a feud going, started when Conklin moved up to Homicide. I thought maybe they hated each other.

“Poisonous snake bit Conklin.”

“A cop is down, Sergeant. We’re going in.”

As Conklin was strapped onto the gurney, I walked to where Norma Johnson lay cuffed on the floor. Her face was puffy and her nose was bleeding, but I had a sense that if a snake crawled out of the pantry and bit her, she’d be ecstatic.

Maybe she wanted to die as her father had died.

I halfway hoped she’d get her wish, but my more rational mind wanted to hear the story.

I wanted to know what Norma Johnson had done, to whom, and why. And then I wanted the State to try her, convict her, and kill her.

I stood over Norma Johnson, and I read her her rights.

“You have the right to remain silent, you disgusting coward,” I said. “Anything you say can and damned well will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, if you can find one slimy enough to defend you. If you can’t afford an attorney, the State of California will provide one for you. We do that even for scum like you. Do you understand your rights, Pet Girl?”

She smiled at me.

I grabbed her arms by the cuffs and jounced her, putting the strain on her popped shoulder, making her scream.

“I asked you, do you understand your rights?”

“Yes, yes!”

Hettrich said, “I’ve got her, Sergeant.” He brought her to her feet and hustled her out the door. I wanted to leave, too. But I had to see what was inside that pantry.

I had to know.

I walked over to the opening and stared at the metal shelves filling the narrow room. I could see the kraits slithering through the remnants of most of the tanks, every one of those snakes loaded with venom.

It was stunning to think what Norma Johnson’s intentions were in owning so many snakes. How many more people had she hoped to kill before she was caught?

What was in this sick woman’s mind?

I told a uniform to seal and lock the place, and then I left Pet Girl’s snake house. I ran toward the ambulance, got in just as the EMTs loaded my partner inside.

I sat next to Richie, took his good hand, and squeezed it.

“I’m not leaving you until you’re doing push-ups. Shooting hoops,” I said to my partner, my voice finally cracking into little pieces. “You’re going to be fine, Richie. You’re going to be perfect.”

“Okay,” he said, his voice just above a whisper. “But do me a favor, Linds. Pray for me anyway.”

Chapter 100

WHEN THE AMBULANCE DRIVER took a left, I knew we were going to a place I never wanted to see again.

Yuki’s mother had died at San Francisco Municipal Hospital.

I’d stalked those halls for days on end, hoping to trap a deranged “angel of death,” learning in the process that Municipal was geared toward high profits, not patient care.

I called up front to the driver, “General is closer than Municipal.”

“We’re busing the snakebite victim, aren’t we, Sergeant? Municipal’s got the antivenin coming in.”

I shut up and did what Conklin had asked. I prayed to God as I held his hand, and thought about what a fine person Richard Conklin was, how much we’d been through together, how lucky I’d been to have him as a friend and partner.

Traffic parted in front of us as the ambulance screamed up Pine, then jerked into the lot and jolted to a stop outside the emergency-room entrance.

Doors flew open and medics scrambled.

I ran beside Conklin’s gurney as he was rolled through the automatic doors. That awful hospital disinfectant smell smacked me in the face, and I felt a wave of panic.

Why here?

Of all places, why did we have to bring Richie here?

Then I saw Doc coming toward us.

“The medevac chopper is on the way,” he told me and Conklin. “Rich? How do you feel?”

“Scared out of my freakin’ mind,” my partner said. I thought he was slurring his speech. I put my hand over my mouth. I was so afraid of losing it. Of losing him.

“Any numbness?” Doc asked Conklin.

“Yeah. In my hand.”

“Try to relax,” Doc said. “It takes some time for the venom to have an effect. If you were in a jungle, that would be one thing. But we’ve got you, Rich. You’re going to be okay.”

I wanted to believe Doc, but I wouldn’t be comforted until Rich was back on his feet. As my partner was wheeled away, I told him that I’d be standing by in the waiting room, and I grabbed Doc’s sleeve.

“John, you’re sure the antivenin you got is the right stuff?”

“I’ve had the Aquarium of the Pacific on standby since Claire told me about the folks who died from krait bites. I figured there was a chance we could need antivenin.”

“Thanks, Doc,” I said, gratitude washing through me. “Thanks for being so damned smart.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said. Then, “I’m going to look in on Rich.”

I found a dark corner of the waiting room and called Cindy. I repeated to her what Doc had told me. And then I made a call to a hotel in Amman.

It was one in the morning there, but after a verbal tussle, the desk put me through. He sounded groggy with sleep, but he brightened when he heard my voice. It was some kind of miracle that I could find him when I needed him most.

“I was just dreaming about you,” he said.

“Good dream?”

“I think it was a circus dream.”

“What’s that?”

“Tightrope. I’m wearing this spandex thing. Bodysuit. With sparkles.”

“You?”

“Chest hair coming out the top.”

“Joe!” I laughed.

“I’m way up there on this platform, size of a dinar.”

“And that’s…?”

“A Jordanian coin. And you’re on the tightrope coming toward me.”

“What am I wearing?”

“You’re naked.”

“No!”

“Yeah! Carrying a lot of stuff in your arms, balancing on this rope. And I’m supposed to catch you when you get to my dinar.”

“What happens?”

“Phone rings.”

“Joe, I miss you, honey. When are you coming home?”

Chapter 101

NORMA JOHNSON’S SHOULDER had been popped back into place, and she was on a few hundred milligrams of Motrin. She sat across from me in the interrogation room, twiddling a business card, her “whatever” expression back on her face.

If Conklin had been here, he would have smooth-talked her. I wanted to backhand that smirk right off her face.

Pet Girl snapped the card down on the table, pushed it toward me so I could read, FENN AND TARBOX, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW.

George Fenn and Bill Tarbox were two triple A-rated criminal-defense attorneys who catered to the top 2 percent of the upper crust. Fenn was steady and thorough. Tarbox was volatile and charming. Together, they’d flipped more probable slam-dunk guilty verdicts into dismissals than I wanted to remember.

“Mrs. Friedman is paying,” Pet Girl said.

She was toying with me, making me wonder if she’d lawyer up, or more likely she just thought she was smarter than me.

“Call your lawyers,” I said, unhooking my Nextel from my belt, slapping it down on the table. “Use my phone. But since this is all new to you, let me explain how the system works.”

“Uh-huh. And I’m going to believe everything you say.”

“Shut up, stupid. Just listen. Once you ask for a lawyer, I can’t make a deal with you. This is how we see it on this side of the table: you assaulted a police officer with a deadly weapon. Conklin dies, you’re dead meat walking.

“Setting that aside, we’ve got you cold on five counts of murder. You had access to every one of the victims, and they were killed by the same rare, illegally imported snake you kept by the dozen in your apartment.

“A law-school intern could get you convicted.

“But we won’t be using a law-school intern. You’ll be going up against Leonard Parisi, our top gun, because you killed VIPs and because this is what’s known as a high-profile case.

“We can’t lose, and we won’t.”

“That must be some crystal ball you have, Sergeant.”

“Better believe it. ’Cause here’s what else I see in there: while your lawyers are getting great press on Mrs. Friedman’s dime, your old school chums are going to testify for the prosecution.

“They’re going to trash you in court, Norma. And then they’re going to tell the press all about you, how sick you make them, how pathetic you are.

“And after you’ve been exposed as the godless, heartless psychopath you are, the jury is going to convict you five times over. You understand? You’re going to be disgraced – and then you’re going to die.”

I saw a flash of panic in the woman’s eyes. Had I gotten to her? Was Norma Johnson actually afraid?

“So if it’s such a dead cert, why are you even talking to me?”

“Because the DA is willing to make you a deal.”

“Oh, this should be good. Like I haven’t seen this ploy a hundred times on Law and Order.”

“There’s a wrinkle, Norma. A smidgen of wiggle room on that death penalty. So listen up. The chief medical examiner reviewed your old boyfriend’s autopsy report, and she says it doesn’t pass the sniff test.”

“McKenzie Oliver? He died of a drug overdose.”

“His blood test was borderline for an OD. But he was in his thirties, otherwise healthy. So the ME who did his autopsy didn’t look any further.

“But this is a new day, Norma. We think you killed him because he dumped you. His coffin is being hoisted out of the ground this minute. And this time, the ME is going to be searching for fang marks.”

Johnson looked down at the business card Ginny Friedman had given her, looked at my phone, looked up at me.

“What’s the deal?”

“Tell me about the murders, all of them, including what you did to McKenzie Oliver, and we’ll spare you the humiliation of a trial and take the death penalty off the table. This offer expires when I get out of this chair.”

There was a long pause, a full two minutes.

Then Norma Johnson said, “That’s not good enough.”

“That’s all we’re offering.”

I gathered my papers and buttoned my jacket, pushed away from the table.

Pet Girl piped up, “What will you take off my sentence if I give you the person who killed those richies in nineteen eighty-two?”

I choked down my surprise – and my excitement.

I turned to the one-way mirror, and a second later, Jacobi opened the door, poked his head into the interrogation room.

“Hang on,” he said to me. “I’m getting Parisi on the phone.”

Chapter 102

THE INTERROGATION ROOM got smaller as the combined four hundred fifty pounds of Red Dog and Jacobi came in.

Parisi is six two, has coarse red hair, pockmarked skin, a size-50 waist, and a smoker’s baritone. He could be funny, but if he wanted to, he could scare his own mother into a heart attack.

Jacobi is another unique terror if you don’t know and love him as I do. His unreadable gray eyes are like drill bits. And his large hands are restless. Like he’s looking for a reason to ball them up and strike.

The two hulking men dragged up chairs, and I saw Pet Girl’s snotty demeanor waver.

“Now I think I should have a lawyer,” she said.

“That’s your right,” Parisi grumbled. He said to me, “Boxer, take her back to her cell.”

As I got to my feet, Norma Johnson shouted, “Wait!”

“I’m not here to entertain myself,” Parisi warned her. “So don’t waste my time.” He flapped open a file, fanned the morgue shots out on the table, asked Pet Girl, “Did you kill these people?”

As Johnson’s eyes slowly panned the photos left to right and back again, I realized that she’d never seen her victims dead.

Was she repentant?

Or was she freaking impressed with herself?

Her eyes still on the photos, Johnson asked Parisi for his promise that she’d be exempt from the death penalty if she told him about her part in McKenzie Oliver’s death, and when he agreed, she let out a deep sigh.

“I killed them all,” she said, her voice breaking on her own self-pity, a couple of tears trickling down her cheeks. “But I caused them less pain in their deaths than they caused me in one day of my life.”

Didn’t Pet Girl know that tears were unnecessary? That all we cared about was her confession? That all we wanted were the words?

She wiped away her tears with the backs of her hands, and then she asked if the videotape was rolling. I told her it was, and she said she was glad.

“I want there to be a record of my statement,” she said. “I want people to understand my reasons.”

More than an hour passed as Norma Johnson fleshed out her motives, detailing the victims’ lives as only an obsessive voyeur could, describing their “unspeakably insulting behavior” toward her, none of which she deserved, and she told us how she’d painlessly put her victims down.

After she described stalking McKenzie Oliver, getting him into bed for a good-bye tryst, then stabbing him with the fangs of a krait, Parisi had what he wanted. No frills required.

He cut off her narcissistic rant midsentence, saying, “I have to be in court, Ms. Johnson. Tell me about the nineteen eighty-two murders if you want us to consider a reduction in your sentence.”

“What are you offering me?”

“Right now, you’re looking at six consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole,” he told her. “Give us the nineteen eighty-two society killer, and you’ll get to tell a parole board how sorry you are after you’ve served some time.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s hope. That’s a chance that maybe you’ll walk free before you die.”

Johnson covered her mouth. She was thinking long and hard, and as the silence did a few laps around the room, I couldn’t even guess what she would do.

Parisi looked at his watch and pushed back from the table, his chair legs screeching like the brakes of an 18-wheeler.

“I’ve had enough, Lieutenant,” Parisi said to Jacobi. “Wrap it up.”

“My father,” Norma said softly.

“Christopher Ross was one of the victims,” I said. “He knew the killer?”

“He was the killer,” said Pet Girl. “Daddy told me. He did them all.”

Chapter 103

PET GIRL HAD just ratted out her dead father as the 1982 high-society killer. If the story was true, then her father had been a serial killer.

She’d followed his example by becoming one, too.

Was that really the truth?

Or was it all a desperate fiction to help herself?

I wanted to hear her say it again – and then she did.

“He told me who he killed and why. Daddy hated those phonies who sucked up to him because he was rich. He loved my mother because she was real.”

Pet Girl reached into her blouse and pulled out a locket, opened it with shaking hands, and held it out to show Parisi the photo of Christopher Ross.

Parisi never shifted his eyes. He simply torched Johnson with his fearsome Red-Dog-will-rip-your-throat-out stare and said, “An allegation is worth nothing. You want the deal? I need proof.”

Pet Girl twisted her head toward me for the first time since Jacobi and Parisi entered the room.

“My keys are in my handbag,” she told me. “It’s red ostrich skin, and I think I left it on the console table in the foyer.”

I nodded, said, “Red bag. I’ll find it.”

“Look for a brass key with a round top, goes to a padlock on my storage unit,” she said. “Bay Storage, unit number twenty-two. I’ve got all of my father’s papers stored there. Inside one of the boxes is a file marked ‘Natajara.’ ”

“Is the box numbered? Labeled?”

“Should be right in front. I think second or third tier on the right-hand side -”

I was inside my head, thinking about how I would run upstairs to get a search warrant for Johnson’s apartment, when my cell phone rang – Brenda, our squad assistant, shouting into the mouthpiece, “Lindsay, two old guys -”

The interview-room door flew open, and two distinguished-looking gentlemen burst in.

Bill Tarbox was in blue seersucker and a red-and-white polka-dot bow tie, looking as if he’d left his Panama hat out in the Rolls. Fenn’s haircut was so sharp, you could cut yourself on his sideburns.

Fenn glared around the room, identified his client, and said, “Norma, stop talking. We’re your lawyers, and this interview is over.”

Chapter 104

I WAS WITH CONKLIN in his private hospital room with its view of the parking lot. He looked pale, his hair lying damp across his forehead, but his smile was strong and he was cracking jokes, all very good signs.

I angled the reclining chair toward his bed.

“You’re not mad, are you, Rich?”

“Why? Because you cracked Pet Girl while I lay here like a sack of sand? Why would that make me mad? I mean, come on, Lindsay,” he said, turning his brown eyes on me. “Nailing that psycho, even if I wasn’t there at the triumphal moment – that’s what’s important. Nurse! I need a cyanide drip, stat.”

I laughed. Rich had stood up to frickin’ Pet Girl’s snake attack, and for that alone, he was a hero. He was alive – and both our shields, McCorkle’s, too, had been buffed to gleaming for teeing up Norma Johnson for the DA.

This was what we liked to call “a great day to be a cop.”

A nurse’s aide brought in an early-bird blue plate special for Conklin, and as he moved the mush around his dish, I told him about my return to Pet Girl’s apartment.

“Animal Rescue said that the place was clean, but seriously, how did they know they’d gotten every last snake? I walked on tiptoes, Rich, and I’m not even sure my tiptoes touched the ground.”

He grinned, said, “Yer a brave lass, Lindsay.”

“I grabbed that handbag, slammed the door behind me, found the keys. Fifty of the sixty-two were brass with a round top.”

“Did one of them fit the lock?”

“You in a hurry?” I asked him.

“No, no. Take your time.”

I laughed again, glad that Conklin would be out of this house of horrors as soon as Doc gave him the thumbs-up.

“I met McCorkle at Pet Girl’s storage unit,” I said. “He brought this big kid along with him from the lab.

“So we get the door open, and we’re staring at maybe ten yards of cardboard cartons. Big Kid starts taking the boxes down, and McCorkle and I flip through files for five hours looking for ‘Natajara,’ ” I said.

“Turns out Natajara is the name of an Indian god, wears a cobra around his shoulders. Natajara Exports sells poisonous reptiles.”

“Lindsay, you rock.”

“Yes, I do. I found the correspondence between a Mr. Radhakrishnan of Natajara Exports and Christopher Ross, CEO of Pacific Cargo Lines. And I found an invoice for a crate of kraits. Dated January nineteen eighty-two.”

“Asshole kept a record of his snake buy? But how do you figure he was the killer and also a victim?”

“McCorkle thinks his death was an accident, possibly a suicide. We’ll never know, but this is for sure: Norma Johnson is going away for six consecutive lifetimes – and McCorkle has stamped his cold case closed.”

I was high-fiving my partner when a curly-haired blond tornado blew into Conklin’s room with a gift-wrapped box and a bouquet of helium balloons.

“Hey, you,” Conklin said, clearly delighted.

“Hey, you, too.”

Grinning, Cindy said hi to me, kissed Conklin, hugged him, put the box on his stomach, and demanded he open it. “It’s a bathrobe,” she said. “I don’t want anyone seeing your buns but me.”

Conklin laughed, his face coloring. As he worked on the ribbon, I said, “Sounds like my cue to leave. Hope to see you at the Hall tomorrow, bud.”

I kissed Conklin on the cheek and hugged my irrepressible friend Cindy, and as I left the room, I had a thought: Cindy and Rich are good together.

They really are.

Chapter 105

THAT NIGHT, just as Claire, Yuki, and I came through the door to Susie’s, the power went out, instantly plunging the place into a dusky giddiness. Strangers bumped into one another, ordering beer while it was still cold, and the steel drummer carried on without a microphone, ramping up his mellow voice and singing out, “Salt, tea, rice, smoked fish, are nice and the rum is fine any time of year…”

We three pressed on toward the back room, took our usual table, saving Cindy’s seat until she finished taking Conklin home with his new bathrobe.

“She is coming, though?” Yuki asked.

Claire and I shrugged dramatically in unison. Yuki laughed, and Lorraine put candles on the table. She brought us a pitcher of draft, a big basket of chips, and a bowl of salsa, saying, “This is dinner until the power goes back on.”

I hijacked Cindy’s time, used it to tell Claire and Yuki about Pet Girl’s confession and the wrap-up of McCorkle’s old cold case.

Claire jumped in to report on her newly revised autopsy of McKenzie Oliver’s body, purring, “The bite mark was just above his shoulder blade. No one would have found those pinpricks unless they were purely looking for them.”

Just then, Cindy breezed in and found our table. She was out of breath but glowing as she slid in beside Yuki. Lorraine brought over another sweating pitcher of beer, saying, “We’re closing up, ladies. This is the last, and it’s on Susie.”

I filled Cindy’s glass, and she lifted it to all of us.

“To you guys, for saving Richie’s life.”

“What?” Claire sputtered.

“You, Claire, for telling Doc about the kraits. Otherwise he wouldn’t have put the aquarium on standby. And you, Linds, for getting that belt around his arm, telling him what to do.”

“Are you planning to thank the Academy now? What I did for Conklin, he’d do for me. That’s what it means to be partners.”

“True, but you did it.”

“Don’t mind her. She’s full of L-U-V,” Claire told me.

“She’s full of something.”

“And you,” Cindy said to Yuki.

“I’m innocent. I had nothing to do with saving Conklin’s life.”

“You found Doc.”

“Well,” Claire said, “I guess we should all be thanking you, too, Cindy.”

“Come on.”

“Conklin’s been pining for Lindsay for so long, and since she didn’t tumble, I guess it’s good of you to give that boy something to live for.”

Cindy lowered her lashes, put a hilarious spin on it when she said, “The pleasure is all mine.”

We all laughed, even me, even Cindy. And when we’d wiped away our tears, Yuki said she had something to tell us.

“I’m going away for a couple of weeks. My uncle Jack invited me, and I have vacation coming.”

“You’re going to Kyoto?” I asked.

“It’ll do me good to get away.”

“Are you going to see Doc again?”

“We’re going to, you know, ‘play it by ear.’ But my heart’s not in it, Lindsay. Or more accurately, my head’s not in it.”

Claire said, “You can’t fake it, sweetheart.”

“Can’t, couldn’t, won’t,” said Yuki.

Chapter 106

MORNING CAME, and Conklin was at his desk when I got there. He was scrubbed and shaven and looked like he’d won a million dollars. The day crew gathered around our desks wanting to shake Conklin’s hand and tell him how great it was to have him back.

Brenda had baked and was saying, “Nobody doesn’t like peanut-butter-chocolate cake,” and she was right, but we hadn’t gotten more than two bites into it when Conklin took a call from Skip Wilkinson, one of his buddies in Narcotics and Vice.

After Conklin announced his name, all he said was “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah. We’ll be right there.”

He hung up, said to me, “Narcs busted a crack whore last night. She was carrying a twenty-two registered to Neil Pincus. They’re holding her for us.”

We drove to the nondescript station house, a former Roto- Rooter plant taking up a quarter of a block on Potrero at Eighteenth. We took the stairs to the third floor at a run.

Skip Wilkinson met us at the gate.

He walked us back to the observation room, where we could see the suspect through the one-way mirror. She was a young black female, bony, dressed in threadbare jeans and a filthy pink baby-doll top. Her blond weave was coming loose, and judging from her fidgety stare and her shakes, I figured she’d had a bad night in lockup and was in need of a fix.

Wilkinson said, “That’s Lawanda Lewis, age seventeen. Here’s her sheet.”

I read, “Two arrests for prostitution. This is her first drug arrest. You’re looking at her for homicide?”

Anything was possible, but I didn’t see it.

“Did you catch her address?” Wilkinson asked me, stabbing the rap sheet with his finger. “It’s on Cole Street. That’s Bagman’s house.

“She lived there. Maybe she still does. Anyway, she was one of his girls. She could be your doer. Take your shot,” said Wilkinson.

It was one of those can’t-believe-it moments.

That do-gooder attorney Neil Pincus lied when he said he didn’t own a gun. Then he said it was stolen. I thought that was a lie, too, but I never expected his gun to turn up.

I was wrong.

Chapter 107

CONKLIN AND I walked into the interrogation room, Conklin pulling out a chair for me, showing what a gentleman he was. I sat and so did he, and the girl tried to get small in her chair as Conklin told her our names.

“Lawanda,” he said nicely, “is this right? You used to sell drugs for Bagman?”

The girl stared down at the table, picked polish off her nails, didn’t look up at all.

Conklin said, “Look, we don’t care about the drugs. We know what kind of life you were living with him. We know how he used you.”

“Bagman treated me fine.”

“Is that right? So you had no reason to kill him?”

“Kill him? Me? I didn’t kill him. No, no, no. Not me.”

We had no proof that Lawanda Lewis had used the gun or even that Neil Pincus’s weapon had killed Rodney Booker.

The slugs lodged inside Bagman’s head were so soft and so fragmented, they could never be matched to anything. But I was sure Lawanda Lewis couldn’t know that.

“I have to tell you, Lawanda,” I said, “you’re in very serious trouble. Your gun was used to kill Bagman. Unless you give us reason to think otherwise, you’re going down for his murder.”

Lawanda Lewis sprang up from the chair, squatted against the wall in the corner of the room, and covered her head with her hands. She was in withdrawal to the max. In a minute, she’d be screaming, foaming at the mouth.

“I didn’t do it! I didn’t kill anyone!”

“That gun says different,” Conklin said.

“I need something. I’m dying.”

“Talk first, then we’ll get you fixed up.”

As Lawanda crouched in the corner, rocking and wailing, I was running the crime in my head, trying to put it together.

Say the girl had needed a fix. Booker had told her to go out and work. She had Pincus’s gun. So she followed Bagman and held him up on the street, and when he didn’t give her the drugs, she shot and robbed him. But how could she have also beaten him? She was small. Certainly no match for Booker.

“You’ll get me a fix?” she asked Conklin.

“We’ll get you help,” Conklin said.

Lawanda was scratching at her skin, ripping at her hair. I was sure we’d lost her, that she’d fallen down a black hole of misery and didn’t know we were still there.

But she hung on. Still rocking, still staring at the floor, she shouted as if possessed, “Sammy Pincus gave me the gun so I could protect myself on the street!”

I got out of my chair, walked over to Lawanda, stooped down so I could look in her eyes. I asked her, “How did Sammy Pincus get that gun?”

The girl stared at me as if I were as dumb as a brick. “She took it from her father. Mr. Neil? He’s the one who killed Bagman Jesus.”

Chapter 108

MY HEART WAS banging against my chest like a hammer on a steel drum. Conklin was behind me as we pounded up the narrow stairs leading to the law offices above the soup kitchen called From the Heart.

A gaggle of girls from the nail salon tried to pass us, saw the determination on our faces, and backed right up and flattened themselves against the wall at the landing, one of them saying loudly to the rest of them, “Those are cops!”

I banged on the door to “Pincus and Pincus,” and when a voice said, “Who is it?” I said, “Mr. Pincus, this is the police.”

Al Pincus, the bigger, younger brother, came to the door.

“How can I help you?” he asked, barring our entrance with his body.

“For starters, you can let us in,” I said.

He sighed, opened the door wide, called over his shoulder, “Neil, the police.”

Neil Pincus stepped out of his office. He was dressed as he was the last time I saw him: gray pants, white shirt, cuffs rolled up, no tie.

I took the warrant out of my inside jacket pocket and showed it to “Mr. Neil.”

“You’re under arrest.”

He snatched the warrant out of my hand, unfolded it, scanned it fast, said, “Are you crazy? I didn’t murder anyone.”

“We have your gun, Mr. Pincus. Showed up in the hands of a witness who will testify that you shot and killed Rodney Booker.”

“That’s nuts,” said Neil Pincus, wandering back toward his office. “I’m calling my lawyer.”

“Stop right where you are!” Conklin shouted. “Hands up where we can see them. Do it now.”

I hadn’t expected resistance, but I was prepared for it. As Conklin held his Glock on Neil Pincus, I shoved him to the wall and cuffed his hands behind his back.

“You have the right to remain silent,” I said as I frisked him.

“Hey!” Al Pincus shouted. “Let my brother go. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m the one who killed Rodney Booker.”

“Al, no! Listen,” Neil Pincus said to me, “Al had nothing to do with it. I did it. I killed the bastard because of what he did to my daughter.”

“It was me, and I’m not sorry,” Alan Pincus insisted. “Booker was an evil bastard. What he did to Sammy – that kid once had all the promise in the world.

“Neil wanted to get him legally, but Booker was too slick. So I took my brother’s gun. I found that shit on the street corner, and I shot him in the head over and over and over.”

“Thanks,” I said. “There were enough bullets in Booker and he took enough of a beating that both of you could have killed him. In fact, that’s my theory. You two took him down together.”

I read Alan Pincus his rights and Conklin cuffed him, but a niggle of worry was starting at the back of my brain.

Neil Pincus said he did it.

Al Pincus said he did it.

What kind of case could be made based on the hearsay testimony of Lawanda Lewis, a drugged-out crack whore who might be dead before any of this came to trial?

I answered my own question. If each of the Pincus brothers took credit for killing Bagman, if each said he did it alone, that could give a juror reasonable doubt. One juror was all it took for a mistrial – and I doubted the city would stomach more than one trial for a lawless freak like Rodney Booker.

And then I got it.

The Pincus brothers had planned it this way.

Conklin and I marched the two men down the stairs, my mind racing ahead to separating them, interrogating them, trying to get one to flip the other. But when we got to the bottom of the stairs, my train of thought was derailed.

A crowd was waiting at the open doorway – and that’s when things got really crazy.

Chapter 109

A MOB OF PEOPLE had poured out of From the Heart onto the street. There were homeless people and there were volunteers, and in the thickening crowd I saw people who didn’t look like they belonged: businessmen and women from the surrounding area.

I shouted, “Stand back! Let us through!” But instead the crowd tightened around us, jostling us, threatening to turn ugly. I fumbled for my phone, pressed numbers without looking, and somehow managed to get the desk sergeant on the line.

I gave him my badge number and location, said we needed crowd control. Forthwith.

A man wearing a good suit pushed toward us, calling out to me, “Sergeant, Sergeant, I’m Franklin Morris, a member of the Fifth Street Association. I can’t let you arrest these men because I shot Rodney Booker – and I can prove it. Neil tried to stop me from doing it, but I had to do what was right. Tell her, Neil.”

It was the beginning of a chain reaction, the likes of which I’d never seen before – and could have never imagined.

“I’m Luvie Jump,” said a black woman wearing purple frames and a dashiki over her tights, turning her thin body sideways, edging toward me as she talked. “Don’t listen to Mr. Morris, Sergeant. He’s Neil Pincus’s best friend. Listen to me.

“We called the police repeatedly, and they did nothing. Rodney Booker was a one-man plague. He sold drugs. He turned nice girls into druggies and whores. I shot him because he was the devil. Ask anyone. I did it with Neil Pincus’s dirty little gun and I’m ready to come in.”

I was getting dizzy and a little sick.

The car was only twenty yards away, but the crowd was so deep, I couldn’t see it. I listened for sirens, but I heard nothing save the uproar around me.

And yet another man confessed, grabbing at my sleeve, saying his name was Harry Bainbridge. He was black, with Rasta hair and gold teeth, looked homeless, said he beat Booker with a two-by-four after he blew the man’s brains out with Pincus’s Saturday night special.

“Those newspaper stories saying what a good man Bagman Jesus was? He was dog shit. Where was you people when we called you? Why I have to be the one to get blood on my hands? But I did it, lady cop. I stole Mr. Pincus’s gun, and I shot that mother. He was begging for his life, and I didn’t care because of what he did to my girl, Flora.”

A woman stepped forward, or maybe it was a man dressed as a woman, I couldn’t be sure. Said her name was Mercy.

“That bastard turned my little sister into a whore. He pumped her full of meth and she died on the street. Right over there. I had to kill that fucker, you see? I’m already certified as crazy – so I wasn’t worried about no jury.”

“Mercy! Shut up. Don’t admit to nothing. I did it,” said a man who looked like a young prizefighter.

His nose was smashed to one side, and he had the look of a person whose brain had been rattled against his skull too many times.

“I shot Bagman six times with the lawyer’s gun. Bam-bam, bam-bam, bam-bam, and when Bagman dropped, I kicked him. I hit him with these,” he said, shaking his fists. “I terminated that piece of crap for what he did to our neighborhood.”

A familiar blond-haired girl, gaunt-faced, pretty as a cheerleader on meth, came forward.

“My father, my uncle Al, they’re not guilty of anything but trying to save me,” said Sammy. “I said I loved Bagman, but that was a lie. After I killed him, we all lied so the police wouldn’t suspect any of us. But he was a tyrant. He enslaved me. That’s why I took my father’s gun -”

It was clear to me now, clear as glass. This chaos had been organized. Had the Pincus brothers planned this since the day they – or someone – killed Bagman Jesus?

Cruisers and police vans, all with sirens whooping, flew up Fifth Street and braked on the sidewalk, scattering the crowd. Cops jumped out, swinging their bats, shoving the crowd back.

“Take these two in,” I said to the cops standing closest to me. I handed the Pincus brothers over, and as they were escorted to the van, the crowd surged forward again.

Neil Pincus turned his head as the officer was folding him into the back of the van. He said, “One second, Officer. Sergeant Boxer?” he shouted. “Don’t you see? Either all of us did it or none of us did.

“And even if you get anyone to trial, you’ll never get a conviction. Rodney Booker’s killer is a frickin’ hero.”

Chapter 110

WITH THE HELP of the mob squad, Conklin and I flattened six people against the wall and frisked them. We made sure we had their names, then we had them loaded into cars and vans so they could come to the Hall for questioning.

I wanted to hear all eight of them tell us the story of killing Bagman, how they did it, and why.

I was behind the wheel, still sweating as Conklin and I drove back to the Hall of Justice. That mob scene had shot my heart rate into the stratosphere, and it was still well above my normal sixty-eight beats per minute. But I was happy. Make that exhilarated.

I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Franklin Morris and “Mercy” behind the grille at my back, chatting as if we were driving them to lunch.

Why should they worry?

The Pincus brothers might be disbarred for confessing to homicide, but someone else would step in to defend this group of conspirators, one or all of whom were guilty of Rodney Booker’s murder. But I thought Neil Pincus’s prediction was right.

If these people stuck to their stories, no jury would convict. Eight confessions were eight times worse than one, each contradicting the other, so reasonable doubt would rule. I wondered if there’d even be a trial.

I said to Conklin, “Cindy’s going to get a movie deal out of this one. ‘From folk hero to mass killer, a drug dealer is brought down by a conspiracy of street vigilantes.’ You should call her.”

“No, you do it. I don’t want to mess with the chain of command.”

I smiled, said, “Okay. After we take care of business, I’ll give her the exclusive.”

I was quiet after that.

As I turned the car onto Bryant Street, I thought about Bagman Jesus, a charming and handsome lowlife who’d sold crack to kids, turned girls into meth addicts, a man who had commissioned a mobile meth lab that had blown up, killing ten people, most of them ordinary citizens on their way to work.

I don’t condone street justice.

If we could nail Booker’s killer, we would. But maybe this time, law enforcement would bow to a different kind of law. Bagman Jesus, the street saint who wasn’t, had been taken out faster and smarter than we could have done it – and without giving him the possibility of parole.

It was indisputable that our city was better off now that he was gone.

“Whatcha thinking, Lindsay?” Conklin asked me.

I turned to look at him, saw that he, too, was feeling fine. I said, “I was thinking that in a funny way, this is a good day to be a cop.”