11th hour wmc-11

by James Patterson

  Waterson indicated where we should sit, and as we did, he said, “Just to cut to the chase, I haven’t seen or spoken with my father in five years.”

  “Where were you last weekend?” I asked him.

  “That’s what you want to know?” Waterson asked. “What am I — some kind of suspect? That’s really funny.”

  “I thought you wanted to cut to the chase,” I said, not laughing.

  “I was out and about. I spent all my nights here.”

  “Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts?”

  “Wait a minute. Before I give you names and numbers, what are you getting at and what does it have to do with me?”

  “Seven heads were disinterred from your father’s back garden.”

  “So I’ve heard. I haven’t set foot in that place in five years. Not since I had my final fight with my father.”

  “You mind if I ask about that fight?”

  “I sure do.”

  Conklin took the baton. Conklin wasn’t pregnant. He hadn’t just told his spouse to vacate the premises. He wasn’t even mad.

  I sat back and let him drive the interview.

  “We’re checking out your father,” Conklin said.

  “Okay.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s narcissistic. He’s a womanizer. He can be cruel.”

  “You say he’s a womanizer. All the heads in the garden belonged to females.”

  “Is that right? So you’re asking could my father, the man I just described as cruel, be responsible for those heads?”

  “That’s right,” Conklin said.

  Rich had on his good-natured good-cop smile. You had to love Conklin, and in a way, I did. He said to Waterson, “Do you think your father is capable of murder? He’s been accused of it before.”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. He’s capable of a cutting put-down. He’d like to fuck every woman in the world to death, but that’s all I know. I stay away from him. But now I’m repeating myself.”

  “Okay,” Conklin said. “And where were you last weekend?”

  Todd Waterson started to laugh.

  “Let me get my book.”

  Waterson got out of the chair and went to his desk. I stared out the window at Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve, a swath of green that cut through the city. I was thinking about Joe. Thinking about what he had done. How would I ever forgive him, and if I couldn’t, how could I raise our child alone?

  How sad for our baby.

  Todd Waterson returned to his seat, opened his iPad, tapped it, said to Conklin, “What’s your e-mail address?”

  Conklin gave it to him.

  Waterson tapped his iPad a few more times, then shut it down. “That’s a list of where I was and who I was with. Anything else?”

  Conklin said, “And why don’t you have any contact with your father?”

  “He’s a homophobe,” said Waterson. “He disapproves of my lifestyle. That’s where the cruelty comes in. Are we done?”

  We thanked the guy for his cooperation and left his house.

  “Okay,” said Conklin. “So, theorizing here, Todd Waterson is what? A gay guy who hates his father, so he decides to kill women. He becomes a serial killer and corpse mutilator who sneaks into his father’s backyard and buries the heads of his victims with some of their doodads. Later, he digs them up and decorates them with numbers and fluffy flowers.”

  It was my turn to look at him as if he had a fish on his head.

  He said, “Makes no sense to me either.”

  I gave him the car keys and we drove back to the Hall in silence.

  Chapter 68

  I’d like to say that the day improved, but that would be a lie. I had nothing in my tank but vapors and I tried to put in a day’s work on that.

  Joe called a number of times, but I let the calls go to voicemail and I didn’t call him back.

  Conklin and I cleared Todd Waterson by noon and I called Claire three times in six hours asking if she had facial-reconstruction results on the heads from the Ellsworth compound.

  I even paid her a personal visit, talking to her over the shot-up dead body of a gangbanger.

  “Lindsay, it takes time. Dr. Perlmutter is giving us every minute she has, but she gets called in on other jobs. And the DNA cannot be rushed.”

  “I can’t get any traction on the case.”

  “It’s been five days. You’re acting like it’s been five months.”

  I got coffee out of the vending machine in the breezeway, climbed the back stairs, and settled in for the duration.

  Conklin and I worked the tip line until nine that night. Sad to say, nothing of consequence washed up, just useless flotsam from people who had nothing better to do than screw with the police or indulge their paranoid delusions.

  I shared a pizza with Conklin, went back to work, finally quit at ten. Half an hour later, I opened my door to a dark apartment and a note from Karen saying she had walked and fed Martha.

  I listened to Joe’s voicemails. I took a long shower. I drank warm milk. I put on some soft music. I didn’t sleep that night.

  I mean, I really didn’t sleep. I lay in the big bed, stayed on my side of it, and listened to Martha’s gentle snoring from her puffy bed on the floor.

  At about two, I turned on the TV.

  I watched infomercials — Jewelry TV, then the Coin Vault — learned a few things about numismatic proof coins in original packaging, just what to leave my grandchildren. I switched to the Zumba body, the Shark vacuum cleaner, and then the world’s best bra ever!

  I turned off the box, but my eyes stayed wide open and I replayed Joe’s messages in my mind.

  The first several times he’d called me, he’d been mad. He’d shouted, said that he’d told me the truth, that June had lied, and that my believing her showed I had a profound lack of faith in him. That it was insulting.

  He said that he loved me and that I should pick up the phone. “Call me, Lindsay. I’m your husband.”

  Next few messages, he said was sorry for yelling. He realized why I was angry and said he wasn’t mad anymore. He wanted to talk to me and he would tell me about every moment he’d spent with June in the last two years.

  “There were not very many moments, Lindsay, and none of them were naked. None.”

  The last time he called, he sounded empty. He left me the name of the hotel where he was staying, said to call him if I wanted to talk or if I wanted to listen.

  I didn’t want to do either.

  It was almost seven o’clock when I got up to make myself a cup of tea. When the phone rang, I picked it up, said, “Hello?”

  But it wasn’t Joe.

  It was Conklin.

  “A body washed up in Big Sur an hour ago,” Conklin said. “A surfer, apparently.”

  “Marilyn Varick was a surfer.”

  “Yeah. This DB is a man. And he’s got a head.”

  “So how does this have anything to do with our case?” I asked.

  “The guy who called the police said there was a card lying in the sand next to the body. On it was the number six thirteen.”

  I stood flat-footed in my kitchen then adjusted my thinking about the remains at the house of heads. I guess I’d thought the killings were over.

  “Richie, about Chandler and his boat. We always thought that body dumps were a possibility.”

  “Could he really be so dumb as to dump a body with all this attention on him?”

  “Let’s ask him.”

  Chapter 69

  Conklin and I were in Interview 2, the smaller of Homicide’s two no-frills interrogation rooms, sitting across the table from Harry Chandler and his lawyer, Donna Hewett.

  Hewett was a good general counsel, known for her work on estates and trusts, and was reportedly a pretty good tax attorney too. But Hewett was not a criminal defense lawyer and that told me that Chandler didn’t expect to get charged.

  Was he bluffing?

  Was Harry Chandler so bold or so crazy
that he would kill while under the laser focus of national news coverage?

  Or was Chandler’s conscience clean?

  Donna Hewett patted her hair, put her briefcase on the floor, and asked, “Is my client under arrest?”

  “Not at all,” Conklin said. “Our investigation is ongoing and as new information surfaces, we follow up. We just have a couple of questions, Mr. Chandler. Where were you yesterday?”

  Chandler smiled.

  He was wearing a blue cashmere sweater, sleeves pushed up. I saw no cuts or bruises on his hands.

  He said, “I’ve started taking notes so I can have seamless alibis in case you two pop up without warning.”

  He took his phone out of his pants pocket and tapped the face, then started listing where he’d been and at what times.

  “Kaye and I left the Cecily at around eight yesterday morning, went to breakfast at the Just for You Cafe in Dogpatch. I had waffles. She had eggs Benedict. Our waitress was Shirley Gurley.”

  Pause for a movie-star smile.

  “What were her parents thinking? After that, Kaye and I went shopping at the farmers’ market and loaded up on produce because we were about to take a little cruise.”

  “And where did you go?” Conklin asked.

  I thought about the dead surfer, seventeen years old, lying in the medical examiner’s lab fifty miles up the coast, time of death still undetermined.

  Hewett said, “What are you fishing for, Inspector?”

  I took out the morgue shots of the unidentified teen on the autopsy table. I said, “This boy washed up in Big Sur very early this morning. He was linked to the bodies at the Ellsworth compound.”

  Chandler lifted his eyes, met my gaze. “I don’t know this boy. I have never seen him before, alive or dead.”

  Against his lawyer’s advice, Chandler gave us the names of shops he and Kaye had visited. He produced time-stamped digital photos of them together, and just for good measure, he said there was surveillance video at the yacht club showing that he’d taken the boat out at four in the morning and returned at nine at night.

  I asked him when he’d last seen his son, Todd.

  “Years and years ago,” Chandler said. “And no, I don’t think he killed anyone. But you should ask him yourself.”

  I said, “We’ve obtained a search warrant for your boat.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “The Crime Scene Unit is there right now.”

  “They’re inside my boat?”

  I guess we finally pissed off Harry Chandler. He stood abruptly and said to his attorney, “I don’t have to answer any more questions, do I?” And he stormed out of the interrogation room.

  Charlie Clapper called me at the end of the day, said he’d found no incriminating evidence on the Cecily; no blood, no trace, no bleach, no nothing.

  I had just hung up the phone with Clapper when it rang again. Claire calling to say, “That surfer boy who washed up on Big Sur?”

  “Yes?”

  “The ME in Monterey County said cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the head. The wound matched to his surfboard that also washed up. Witnesses saw him going out into the surf on that board.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Right, Lindsay. Accidental death.”

  That card with the number 613 on it that some insane tipster said he’d found — it was pure fiction.

  Chapter 70

  I was in desperate need of a laugh or, even better, a boxcar full of them.

  I called an impromptu meeting of the Women’s Murder Club, and because it was only two blocks from the Hall, I convinced everyone to meet at MacBain’s Beers o’ the World Saloon.

  An hour after sending up the flare, I climbed the wooden back steps to the small room with two tables and one window where Captain MacBain used to count out the day’s cash. Cindy and Claire had already made good progress on the first pitcher of beer, and Yuki had only about an inch left of her margarita.

  I could have put down a pitcher of beer all by myself, but the little bundle I was carrying under my jacket had the majority vote and that vote was no to booze.

  Claire pulled out a chair and patted the seat and I dropped into it.

  Yuki flashed me a grin, said, “I was telling everyone about Brian McInerny.”

  “The comedian? Go ahead, Yuki.”

  “Okay, so he’s suing a transit worker for taking a punch at him. He deserved the punch, but anyway, I’m deposing him,” Yuki said. “McInerny wants to give answers as both himself and his alter ego.”

  “I’ve seen his act,” Cindy said. “He has an imaginary twin.”

  “Right,” Yuki said. “And it’s easier to let him do it than stop him. I’m asking him questions and he’s answering as himself and as his character. So crazy. We have it all on tape.”

  I gave my order to the waitress, and Yuki continued her story.

  “And you know, during a deposition, when someone needs a break, the videographer says, ‘All right, it’s eleven twenty-three and we’re going off the record.’ And then when you’re coming back on, the videographer says, ‘It’s eleven thirty-five and now we are back on the record.’

  “So McInerny needs a lot of breaks. He doesn’t like the deli food we served, so he has to order lunch from his favorite restaurant. Then he has to have a conference with his imaginary twin. As if that weren’t enough to make us all crazy, now he’s got a new shtick.

  “When we restart the camera, McInerny pretends that he’s in the middle of a conversation. The camera goes on and McInerny says to me, ‘That’s the filthiest joke I’ve ever heard in my life.’”

  Yuki demonstrated the shocked look she got on her face; it was hysterical and we all laughed. Yuki said, “The second time we come back he looks directly at the videographer and says to her, ‘Are you hitting on me? Are you coming on to me?’

  “Then, of course, we had to take a five-minute break because she was laughing so hard she was crying.”

  One minute I was laughing at the story, but the next my mind must have wandered off, because I suddenly realized that the girls were staring at me.

  Yuki in particular gave me an appraising eye.

  “Something’s wrong, Lindsay. What is it?”

  “I’m fine. It’s been a really long day, but I’m okay.”

  “I know what you look like when you’re tired, Lindsay,” Yuki said. “This is different. You look like you’ve been running laps in hell.”

  Cindy said, “Yuki’s right. Are you feeling sick? Are you coming down with something?”

  The waitress brought over another pitcher of tap along with a bottle of Australian root beer and a frosty mug of ice, both of which she put down in front of me.

  When her footsteps faded I said to my friends, “Joe is having an affair.”

  Chapter 71

  I poured root beer into my mug with a shaking hand. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the hiss and crackle of the soda hitting the ice. Then everyone spoke at once.

  Claire shouted — actually, she insisted — “No. No. Joe would never cheat on you.”

  Cindy cut in. “This just can’t be true.”

  But Yuki believed me.

  She was back in her role of human nail gun, pinning me with her eyes, firing questions, bam-bam-bam.

  “Who is the woman?”

  “June Freundorfer. An old partner of Joe’s in DC.”

  “How old?”

  “My age.”

  “How did you find out, Lindsay?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Did Joe tell you about the affair?”

  “No. She did,” I said.

  “She called you?” Yuki pulled back, her face flattened in surprise.

  “She called Joe. I picked up his phone.”

  Claire got up from her chair, wrapped her arms around me, squeezed the tears right out of my eyes.

  Yuki went on as if I weren’t crying, as if Claire weren’t beaming stop signs at her
with her eyes.

  “Did you ask Joe about this?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He admitted it?”

  I shook my head no.

  Cindy reached across the table and clutched my hands.

  Yuki said, “So, just to make sure I’ve got this right, Joe denies the affair.”

  “He’s lying about it, yes. So I kicked him out of the house.”

  Claire said, “Honey, what did this woman say?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t talk anymore.

  Cindy let go of my hands and gave me a wad of paper napkins stamped with MacBain’s logo: the planet Earth whirling through a sudsy amber sky.

  I sobbed into the napkins. It was disgraceful. It was pathetic. I couldn’t stop crying. Yuki shook my arm like she was a terrier and my arm was a sock doll.

  “Lindsay, do you think it’s serious? Maybe it just happened and he can get you to forgive him.”

  By then Cindy had typed Freundorfer into her iPad and pulled up the benefit story. She held up the candid photo of Joe with his mistress looking adoringly into his face.

  “Oh my God,” Yuki said. “Oh, Lindsay. I’m going to be sick.”

  I loosed some fresh tears and then all of us were crying. It seemed a little less pathetic when we were all wet together, but still: Joe was having an affair, my baby and I were alone, and I wanted to die. Before I could drown myself in root beer, my blinking phone rang.

  Was it Joe?

  No. It was Brady. He was with Conklin.

  I hugged and kissed my friends, then fled down the stairs.

  Chapter 72

  I parked the Explorer behind Brady’s unmarked sedan on the north side of Ivy, a one-way residential street in Hayes Valley dotted with trees and lined with ordinary single and multifamily houses built so close together there was no space between them.

  Jacobi’s brown, shingled house was at the far end of the block, and although he had a garage that took up the ground floor, his black Hyundai SUV was parked on the street.

  Jacobi had a black SUV — like half the law enforcement officers in California.