All I’d had to do was shake his hand on it.
If I’d done that, I would have been driving to the Hall this morning, making a speech to the troops about going forward, diving into the mountain of paperwork on my desk, unsolved cases. I would’ve taken back my command.
But, although the chief had laid it on really thick, I’d turned him down.
“I still have some vacation time, Chief. I need to take it.”
He said he understood, but how could he? I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and I had a sense that I wouldn’t know until I’d gotten to the bottom of the killings in Half Moon Bay.
Those unsolved murders were a part of me now, too.
My gut told me that if I did what I was good at, if I persevered, I would find the SOB who had killed my John Doe and all those others.
Right now, that was all I really cared about.
I took 280 southbound and, once clear of the city, I rolled down the windows and changed the channel.
By 10:00 a.m., my hair was whipping across my face, and Sue Hall was spinning my favorite oldies on 99.7 FM.
“It’s not raining this morning,” she purred. “It’s the first of July, a beautiful gray San Francisco day—just floating in pearly fog. And isn’t the fog something that we love about San Francisco?”
Then, the perfect song poured through the speakers: “Fly Like an Eagle.”
I sang along in full voice, the tune pumping oxygen into my blood, sending my mood right through the ozone layer.
I was free.
The horrific trial was in my rearview mirror, and suddenly my future was as open as the highway ahead.
Eighteen miles out of the city, Martha needed a rest stop, so I pulled over into the parking lot of a Taco Bell in Pacifica. It was a wooden shack built in the sixties before the zoning commission knew what was happening. And now there stood one of the tackiest buildings in the world on one of the most beautiful spots on the coastline.
Unlike most of the highway, which streamed high above the ocean, the fast-food restaurant parking lot was at sea level. A row of rocks separated the asphalt from the beach, and beyond it the deep blue Pacific flowed over the rim of the horizon.
I bought an irresistible cinnamon-sugared churro and a container of black coffee and took a seat on the boulders. I watched tattooed, hard-bodied surfers riding the waves as Martha ran over the luminous gray sand until the sun had nearly burned off the fog.
When this great moment was sealed in my memory, I called Martha back to the car. Twenty minutes later, we entered the outskirts of Half Moon Bay.
Chapter 107
I DROVE ACROSS THE air bell on the apron of the Man in the Moon Garage and honked a little shave-and-a-haircut until Keith came out of his office. He lifted off his baseball cap, shook out his golden hair, stuck the cap back on, smiled my way, and sauntered on over.
“Well, well. Lookit who’s here. The Woman of the Year,” Keith said, putting his hand on Martha’s head.
“Oh, that’s me, all right,” I said, laughing. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
“Yeah, I totally get it. I saw that Sam Cabot on the news. He was so pitiful. I was really scared for you, Lindsay, but it’s water over the hill now. Congratulations are in order.”
I murmured my thanks for his interest and asked Keith to fill up the tank. Meanwhile, I took the squeegee from a bucket and cleaned the windshield.
“So, what’re you up to, Lindsay? Don’t you have to go back to work in the big city?”
“Not right away. You know, I’m just not ready yet. . . .”
As the words left my mouth, a red blur breezed across the intersection. The driver slowed and looked right at me before gunning the engine and tearing down Main.
I’d been in town for less than five minutes, and Dennis Agnew was back in my face.
“I left the Bonneville at my sister’s house,” I said as I observed the Porsche’s contrail. “And I have a little unfinished business here in town.”
Keith turned and saw that I was watching Agnew’s Porsche disappear down the street.
“I’ve never understood it,” he said, jacking the gas gun into my tank, shaking his head. A bell rang as the gas meter racked up the gallons. “He’s a really bad dude. I just don’t understand why women are so attracted to trouble.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said. “You think I’m interested in that guy?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Very. But not the way you mean. My interest in Dennis Agnew is purely professional.”
Chapter 108
AS WE HEADED TO Cat’s house, Martha jumped around from backseat to front, barking like a fool. And when I parked in the driveway, she leaped through the car’s open window and ran up to the front door, where she stood wagging her tail and singing in a high key.
“Be cool, Boo,” I said. “Show a little restraint.”
I jiggled the key in the lock and opened the front door; Martha trotted inside.
I called Joe and left him a message: “Hey, Molinari, I’m at Cat’s house. Call when you can.” Then I left a message for Carolee, telling her that she and Allison could stand down from pig-sitting detail.
I spent the day thinking about the Half Moon Bay murders while I cleaned up around the house. I cooked up some spaghetti and canned baby peas for dinner, making a mental note to do some grocery shopping in the morning.
Then I brought my laptop into my nieces’ room and set it up on their shelf of a desk. I noticed that the sweet potato vines had sent another couple inches across the windowsill, but the notes Joe and I had tacked up on the girls’ corkboard were unchanged.
Our little scribblings detailing the circumstances and the savagery done to the Whittakers, Daltrys, Sarduccis, and O’Malleys still led nowhere. And of course my lone John Doe remained pinned to the wall.
I booted up my laptop and went into the FBI’s VICAP database. The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was a national Web site with one purpose: to help law enforcement agents link up scattered bits of intel related to serial homicides. The site had a kick-ass search engine, and new information was always being plugged in by cops around the country.
Now I typed in key words that might make the tumblers spin, some answers fall into place.
I tried them all: whippings administered cum-mortem, couples killed in bed, and of course slashed throats, which sent up a storm of information. Too much.
Hours passed, and my vision started to blur, so I put the computer on “hibernate” and dropped down onto one of my nieces’ small beds to rest for a few minutes.
When I woke up, it was pitch-black outside. It felt as though something had awoken me. A slight noise that didn’t belong. According to the time flashing on the kids’ VCR, it was 2:17, and I had a prickly sense that I couldn’t nail down, as if I were being watched.
I blinked in the blackness and saw a red blur shoot across my vision. It was the afterimage of that red Porsche and it called up snatches of the disturbing scenes I’d had with Agnew. The set-to at the Cormorant and the one at Keith’s garage. The near collision on the road.
I was still thinking about Agnew. It was the only thing that explained the sensation of being watched.
I was about to get up and go to my room for what remained of the night when a series of hard pops and the sound of splintering glass shattered the still night air.
Shards of the window fell all around me.
Gun! Gun! Where the hell was my gun?
Chapter 109
MARTHA’S REFLEXES WERE QUICKER than mine. She dove off the bed and crawled under it. I was right behind her, rolling onto the floor while riffling through my shocked mind, trying to remember where I’d put my weapon.
Then I knew.
It was in my handbag in the living room, and the closest phone was there, too. How could I be so vulnerable? Was I going to die trapped in this room? My heart pounded so hard it hurt.
I lifted my head just inches off
the floor and by the faint green light of the VCR clock, I took inventory.
I focused on every surface and object in the room, looking for something, anything, I could use to protect myself.
The place was littered with big stuffed animals and a dozen dolls, but there wasn’t a single baseball bat or hockey stick, nothing I could use in a fight. I couldn’t even throw the TV, because it was bolted to the wall.
I pulled myself across the hardwood floor on my forearms, reached up, and locked the bedroom door.
Just then, another fusillade of shots rang out—automatic gunfire raking the front of the house, again striking the living room and the spare room at the end of the hall. Then the true intent of the assault finally sunk in.
I could have been—should have been—sleeping in that bedroom.
Inching forward on my stomach, I clasped the leg of a wooden chair, pushed at it, angled the chair onto its rear legs, and wedged its back under the doorknob. Then I picked up its twin and swung it against the dresser.
With a length of chair leg in my hand, I crouched with my back to the wall.
It was just pathetic. Forget the dog under the bed, my only line of defense was a chair leg.
If anyone came through the door aiming to kill me, I was dead.
Chapter 110
AS I LISTENED FOR the sound of feet on the floorboards outside the bedroom, I imagined the door being kicked open and me swinging at the intruder with my stick, hoping to God that I could somehow knock his brains out.
But as the VCR clock blinked away the minutes and the silence grew longer, my adrenaline ebbed.
And I started to get mad.
I stood, listened at the door, and when I heard nothing, I opened it and worked my way down the long hallway, using doorways and walls as barricades.
When I got to the living room, I grabbed my bag from where it leaned against the sofa.
I reached in and closed my hand around my gun.
Thank you, God.
As I called 911, I peeked through slits in the window blinds. The street looked empty, but I thought I saw something glinting on the front lawn. What was it?
I told the dispatcher my name, rank, and shield number, and that shots had been fired at 265 Sea View.
“Anyone hurt?”
“No, I’m fine, but call Chief Stark on this.”
“It’s already been called in, Lieutenant. The cavalry is on the way.”
Chapter 111
I HEARD SIRENS AND saw flashing lights approaching Sea View. As the first cruiser arrived, I opened the front door, and Martha bolted past me. She ran over to a snakelike object that was lying in the moonlight.
She gave it a sniff.
“Martha, what have you found? What is it, girl?”
I was hunkered down beside Martha when Chief Peter Stark got out of his squad car. He walked over with his flashlight and knelt down next to me.
“You okay?”
“Yep. I’m good.”
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.
Together, we looked at a man’s belt. It was about thirty-six inches long and a half-inch wide, narrow brown leather with a squared dull silver buckle. It was such an ordinary belt; probably half the people in the state had one like it in their closet somewhere.
But this particular belt seemed to have some brownish-red stains on the metalwork.
“Wouldn’t it be grand,” I said, refusing to dwell on the terror of the last few minutes—how those shots had surely been meant for me—“wouldn’t it be something,” I said to Chief Stark, “if this belt was evidence?”
Chapter 112
THREE SQUAD CARS HAD pulled up to the curb. Radios sputtered and crackled, and all along Sea View, lights went on in houses, and people came out onto their doorsteps wearing PJs and robes, T-shirts and shorts, hair standing up, fear overriding the lines in their sleep-creased faces.
Cat’s front yard was lit by headlights, and as the cops exited their cars, they conferred with the chief and spread out. A couple of uniforms started collecting shell casings, and a pair of detectives began to canvass the neighbors.
I took Stark into the house, and together we examined the shattered windows, the splintered furniture, and the bullet-pocked headboard in “my” bedroom.
“Any thoughts on who did this?” Stark asked me.
“None,” I said. “My car’s in the driveway where anyone can see it, but I didn’t let anyone know I’d be in town.”
“And why are you here, Lieutenant?”
I was considering the best way to answer that when I heard Allison and Carolee calling out my name. A young cop with ruddy, protruding ears came to the threshold and told Stark that I had visitors.
“They can’t come in here,” Stark said. “Jesus Christ, is someone roping off the street?”
The uniformed cop’s face colored completely as he shook his head no.
“Why the hell not? Number one: Stabilize the scene. Get on it.”
I followed the patrolman as far as the front doorstep, where Carolee and Allison grabbed me in a much-needed two-tier hug.
“One of my kids monitors the police band,” Carolee said. “I got over here as soon as I heard. Oh, my God, Lindsay. Your arms.”
I glanced down. Broken glass had made a few cuts in my forearms, and blood had streaked down and stained my shirt.
It looked a lot worse than it was.
“I’m fine,” I told Carolee. “Just a few scratches. I’m sure.”
“You don’t plan to stay here, do you, Lindsay? Because that’s crazy,” Carolee said, her face showing how mad she was and how scared. “I’ve got plenty of room for you at the house.”
“Good idea,” Stark said, coming up behind me. “Go with your nice friend. I’ve got calls in to the CSU techs, and they’re going to be prying slugs out of your walls and combing the place for the rest of the night.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be okay here,” I told him. “This is my sister’s house. I’m not going to leave.”
“All right. But don’t forget that this is our case, Lieutenant. You’re still out of your jurisdiction. Don’t go all cowgirl on us, okay?”
“Go all cowgirl? Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“Look. I’m sorry, but someone just tried to kill you.”
“Thanks. I got that.”
The chief patted down his hair out of habit. “I’ll keep a patrol car posted in the driveway tonight. Maybe longer.”
As I said good-night to Carolee and Allison, the chief went to his car and returned with a paper bag. He was using a ballpoint pen to lift the belt into the bag as I wrapped my dignity tightly around myself and closed the front door.
I went to bed, but of course I couldn’t sleep. Cops were coming and going through the house, slamming doors and laughing, and besides, my mind was spinning.
I stroked Martha’s head absently as she shivered beside me. Someone had shot up this house and left a calling card.
Was it a warning to stay away from Half Moon Bay?
Or had the shooter really tried to kill me?
What would happen when I turned up alive?
Chapter 113
A SUNBEAM SLIPPED THROUGH the window at an unaccustomed angle and pried my eyes open. I saw blue wallpaper, a picture of my mother over the dresser—and it all came together.
I was in Cat’s bed—because at 2:00 a.m. bullets had thudded through the house, plugging the headboard in the spare room inches above where my head would have been.
Martha pushed her wet nose at my hand until I swung my feet out of bed. I pulled on some of Cat’s clothes—a faded pair of jeans and a coral-colored blouse with a deep ruffled neckline. Not my color and definitely not my style.
I ran a comb through my hair, brushed my teeth, and stepped out into the living room.
The CSU techs were still digging bullets out of the walls, so I made coffee and toast for everyone and asked pointed questions that yielded the basic facts.
&nb
sp; Twelve 9mm shots had been fired, evenly distributed through the living room and spare bedroom, one through the kids’ small, high window. The bullets and spent cases had been bagged and tagged, the holes had been photographed, and the forensic team was wrapping up. In an hour, the whole kit and caboodle would be sent to the lab.
4th of July (2005) Page 19
