“Of course I was listening, darling.”
“As I was saying,” the girl said in the funny grown-up way she had, “when I play Beethoven’s Bagatelle, the first notes are an ascending scale, and they look like a blue ladder —”
She trilled the notes.
“Then, the next part, when I play C-D-C, the notes are pink-green-pink!” she exclaimed.
“So you imagine that those notes have colors?”
“No, Paola,” the little girl said comically, patiently. “The notes are those colors. Don’t you see colors when you sing?”
“Nope. I guess I’m a ninny,” Paola said. “A ninny-nanny.”
“I don’t know what a ninny-nanny is,” Madison said, her dazzling smile setting off sparks in her big brown eyes. “But it sounds very funny.”
The two laughed hard, Madison grabbing Paola around the waist, burying her face in the young woman’s coat as they passed the exclusive Waldorf School, only a block and a half from where Madison lived with her parents.
“It’s Saturday,” Madison whispered to Paola. “I don’t have to even look at school on Saturday.”
Now the park was only a block away, and seeing the stone walls surrounding it, Madison got more excited and changed subjects.
“Mommy says I can have a red Lakeland terrier when I get a little older,” Madison confided as they crossed Divisadero. “I’m going to name him ‘Wolfgang.’ ”
“What a serious name for a little dog,” Paola said, intent on crossing the street safely. She barely glanced at the black minivan idling outside the park’s fence. Expensive black minivans were as common as crows in Pacific Heights.
Paola swung Madison’s arm, and the child jumped up onto the curb, then stopped suddenly as someone got out of the vehicle and came quickly toward them.
Madison said to her nanny, “Paola, who is that?”
“What’s wrong?” Paola called to the man stepping out of the van.
“Trouble at home. You’ve both got to come with us right now. Madison, your mom took a fall down the stairs.”
Madison stepped out from behind her nanny’s back, shouting, “My daddy told me never to ride with strangers! And believe me, you’re strange.”
The man picked up the child like a bag of birdseed, and as she shouted, “Help! Put me down,” he tossed her into the backseat of the van.
“Get in,” the man said to Paola. He was pointing a handgun at her chest.
“Either get in or kiss this kid good-bye.”
Chapter 29
RICH CONKLIN AND I had just returned to the squad room after a grim morning of investigating a brutal drive-by shooting when Jacobi waved us into his office.
We crossed the gray linoleum floor to the glass box and took our seats, Conklin perched on the edge of the credenza where Jacobi used to sit, me in the side chair next to Jacobi’s desk, watching him get comfortable in the chair that was once mine.
I was still trying to get used to this turn of events. I looked around at the mess Jacobi had made of the place in just under two weeks: newspapers piled on the floor and windowsill, food odors coming out of the trash can.
“You’re a pig, Jacobi,” I said. “And I mean that in the barnyard sense.”
Jacobi laughed, a thing he’d done more in the last few days than he’d done in the last two years, and despite the chop to my ego, I was glad that he wasn’t huffing up hills anymore. He was a great cop, good at managing the unmanageable, and I was working myself around to loving him again.
Jacobi coughed a few times, said, “We’ve got a kidnapping.”
“And we’re catching it?” Conklin asked.
“Major Crimes has been on it for a few hours, but a witness came forward and now it looks like there could be a murder,” said Jacobi. “We’ll be coordinating with Lieutenant Macklin.”
A humming sound came from the computer as Jacobi booted up, a thing he’d never done before getting his new badge. He pulled a CD off the pile of crap on his desk and clumsily slid it into the CD/DVD tray of his computer.
He said, “Little girl, age five, was going to the park with her nanny at nine this morning when they were snatched. The nanny is Paola Ricci, here on a work visa from Cremona, Italy. The child is Madison Tyler.”
“Of the Chronicle Tylers?” I asked.
“Yep. Henry Tyler is the little girl’s father.”
“Did you say there’s a witness to the kidnapping?”
“That’s right, Boxer. A woman walking her schnauzer before going to work saw a figure in a gray coat exit a black minivan outside Alta Plaza Park on Scott Street.”
“What do you mean, ‘figure’?” Conklin asked.
“All she could say was a person in a gray coat, didn’t know if it was a man or a woman because said person was turned away from her and she only looked up for a second. Likewise, she couldn’t identify the make of the vehicle. Said it happened too fast.”
“And what makes this a possible homicide?” I asked.
“The witness said that as soon as the car rounded Divisadero, she heard a pop. Then she saw blood explode against the back window of the van.”
Chapter 30
JACOBI CLICKED HIS MOUSE a few times, then swung the laptop around so Conklin and I could see the video that was playing on the screen.
“This is Madison Tyler,” he said.
The camera was focused on a small blond-haired child who came out from behind curtains onto a stage. She was wearing a simple navy-blue velvet dress with a lace collar, socks, and shiny red Mary Janes.
She was absolutely the prettiest little girl I’d ever seen, with a look of intelligence in her eyes that canceled any notion that she was a baby pageant queen.
Applause filled Jacobi’s office as the little girl climbed onto a piano seat in front of a Steinway grand.
The clapping died away, and she began to play a piece of classical music I didn’t recognize, but it was complicated and the child didn’t seem to make any mistakes.
She finished the piece with a flourish, stretching her arms as far as they could go down the keyboard, releasing the last notes to loud bravos and rousing applause.
Madison turned and said to the audience, “I’ll be able to do much better when my arms grow.”
Fond laughter bubbled over the speakers, and a boy of about nine came out from the wings and gave her a bouquet.
“Have the parents gotten a call?” I asked, tearing my eyes from the video of Madison Tyler.
“It’s still early, but no, they haven’t heard anything from anyone,” said Jacobi. “Not a single word. Nothing about a ransom so far.”
Chapter 31
CINDY THOMAS WAS WORKING from the home office she’d set up in the small second bedroom of her new apartment. CNN was providing ambient sound as she typed, immersed in the story she was writing about Alfred Brinkley’s upcoming trial. She thought of not answering the phone when it rang next to her elbow.
Then she glanced at the caller ID — and grabbed the phone off the hook.
“Mr. Tyler?” she said.
Henry Tyler’s voice was eerily hollow, nearly unrecognizable. She almost thought he was playing a joke, but that wasn’t his style.
Listening hard, gasping and saying, “No . . . oh, no,” she tried hard to understand the man who was crying, losing his thoughts, and having to ask Cindy what he’d been saying.
“She was wearing a blue coat,” Cindy prompted.
“That’s right. A dark-blue coat, red sweater, blue pants, red shoes.”
“You’ll have copy in an hour,” Cindy said, “and by then you’ll have heard from those bastards saying how much you have to pay to get Maddy back. You will get her back.”
Cindy said good-bye to the Chronicle’s associate publisher, put down the receiver, and sat still for a moment, gripping the armrests, reeling from a sickening feeling of fear. She’d covered enough kidnappings to know that if the child wasn’t found today, the chances of finding her alive dropped by ab
out half. It would drop by half again if she wasn’t found tomorrow.
She thought back to the last time she’d seen Madison, at the beginning of the summer when the little girl had come to the office with her father.
For about twenty minutes Madison had twirled around in the chair across from Cindy’s desk, scribbling on a steno pad, pretending that she was a reporter who was interviewing Cindy about her job.
“Why is it called a ‘deadline’? Do you ever get afraid when you’re writing about bad guys? What’s the dumbest story you ever wrote?”
Maddy was a delightful kid, funny and unspoiled, and Cindy had felt aggrieved when Tyler’s secretary had returned, saying, “Come on, Madison. Miss Thomas has work to do.”
Cindy had impetuously kissed the child on the cheek, saying, “You’re as cute as ten buttons, you know that?”
And Madison had flung her arms around her neck and returned the kiss.
“See you in the funny papers,” Cindy had called after her, and Madison Tyler had spun around, grinning. “That’s where I’ll be!”
Now Cindy turned her eyes to her blank computer screen, paralyzed with thoughts of Madison being held captive by people who didn’t love her, wondering if the girl was tied up inside a car trunk, if she’d been sexually molested, if she was already dead.
Cindy opened a new file on her computer and, after a few false starts, felt the story unspool under her fingers. “The five-year-old daughter of Chronicle associate publisher Henry Tyler was abducted this morning only blocks from her house. . . .”
She heard Henry Tyler in her head, his voice choked with misery: “Write the story, Cindy. And pray to God we’ll have Madison back before we run it.”
Chapter 32
YUKI CASTELLANO SAT three rows back in the gallery of Superior Court 22, waiting for the clerk to call the case number.
She’d been with the DA’s office only about a month, and although she’d worked as a defense attorney in a top law firm for several years, switching to the prosecution side was turning out to be dirtier, more urgent, and more real than defending white-collar clients in civil lawsuits.
It was exactly what she wanted.
Her former colleagues would never believe how much she was enjoying her new life “on the dark side.”
The purpose of today’s hearing was to set a trial date for Alfred Brinkley. There was an ADA in the office whose job it was to attend no-brainer proceedings like this one and keep the master calendar.
But Yuki didn’t want to delegate a moment of this case.
She’d been picked by senior ADA Leonard Parisi to be his second chair in a trial that mattered very much to Yuki. Alfred Brinkley had murdered four people. It was sheer luck that he hadn’t also killed Claire Washburn, one of her dearest friends.
She glanced down the row of seats, past the junkies and child abusers, their mothers and girlfriends, the public defenders in ad hoc conferences with their clients.
Finally she homed in on Public Defender Barbara Blanco, who was whispering to the ferry shooter. Blanco was a smart woman who, like herself, had drawn a hell of a card in Alfred Brinkley.
Blanco had pleaded Brinkley “not guilty” at his arraignment and was certainly going to try to get his confession tossed out before the trial. She would contend that Brinkley was bug-nuts during the crime and had been medicated ever since. And she’d work to get him kicked out of the penal system and into the mental-health system.
Let her try.
The clerk called the case number, and Yuki’s pulse quickened as she closed her laptop and walked to the bench.
Alfred Brinkley followed meekly behind his attorney, looking clean-cut and less agitated than he had at his arraignment — which was all to the good.
Yuki opened the wooden gate between the gallery and the court proper, and stood at the bench with Blanco and Brinkley, looking up into the slate-blue eyes of Judge Norman Moore.
Moore looked back at them fleetingly, then dropped his eyes to the docket.
“All right. What do you say we set this matter soon, say Monday, November seventeenth?”
Yuki said, “That’s good for the People, Your Honor.”
But Blanco had a different idea. “Your Honor, Mr. Brinkley has a long history of mental illness. He should be evaluated pursuant to 1368 to determine his competence to stand trial.”
Moore dropped his hands to his desktop, sighed, and said, “Okay, Ms. Blanco. Dr. Charlene Everedt is back from vacation. She told me this morning that she’s got some free time. She’ll do the psych on Mr. Brinkley.”
His eyes went to Yuki. “Ms. Castellano, is it?”
“Yes, Your Honor. This is a delaying tactic,” she said, her words coming out clipped and fast, her usual rat-a-tat style. “Defense counsel wants to get her client out of the public eye so that the media flap will die down. Ms. Blanco knows perfectly well that Mr. Brinkley is quite competent to stand trial. He shot and killed four people. He turned himself in. He confessed of his own volition.
“The People want and deserve a speedy trial —”
“I understand what the People want, Ms. Castellano,” said the judge, countering her verbal machine gun with a patient drawl. “But we’ll get a quick turnaround from Dr. Everedt. Shouldn’t take more than a few days. I think the People can wait that long, don’t you?”
Yuki said, “Yes, sir,” and as the judge said, “Next case,” to his clerk, Yuki left the courtroom through the vestibule and out the double courtroom doors.
She turned right, down the dingy marble hall toward her office, hoping that the court-appointed shrink would see what she and Lindsay knew to be true.
Alfred Brinkley might be crazy, but he wasn’t legally insane.
He was a premeditated killer four times over. Soon enough, if all went well, the prosecution would get their chance to prove it.
Chapter 33
I TOSSED THE KEYS TO CONKLIN and got into the passenger-side door of the squad car.
Conklin whistled nervously through his teeth as we pulled onto Bryant, headed north on Sixth Street for a few blocks, then went across Market Street and north toward Pacific Heights.
“If there was ever a thing that would make you not want to have kids, this is it,” he said.
“Otherwise?”
“I’d want a whole tribe.”
We theorized about the kidnapping — whether or not there really had been a murder and if the nanny could have played a part in the abduction.
“She was inside,” I said. “She would’ve known everything that went on in the household. How much money they had, their patterns and movements. If Madison trusted her, the abduction would have been a piece of cake.”
“So why pop the nanny?” said Conklin.
“Well, maybe she outlived her usefulness.”
“One less person to cut in on the ransom. Still, to shoot her in front of the little girl.”
“Was it the nanny?” I asked. “Or did they shoot the child?”
We lapsed into silence as we turned onto Washington, one of the prettiest streets in Pacific Heights.
The Tyler house stood in the middle of the tree-lined block, a stately Victorian, pale yellow with gingerbread under the eaves and plants cascading over the sides of the flower boxes. It was a dream house, the kind of place you never imagined being visited by terror.
Conklin parked at the curb, and we took the Napa stone path six steps up to the front-door landing.
I lifted the brass knocker and let it fall against the striker plate on the old oak door, knowing that inside this beautiful house were two people absolutely steeped in fear and grief.
Chapter 34
HENRY TYLER OPENED THE FRONT DOOR, paling as he seemed to recognize my face. I held up my badge.
“I’m Sergeant Boxer and this is Inspector Conklin —”
“I know who you are,” he said to me. “You’re Cindy Thomas’s friend. From homicide.”
“That’s right, Mr. Tyler, but please . . .
we don’t have any news about your daughter.”
“Some other inspectors were here earlier,” he said, showing us down a carpeted hallway to a sumptuous living room furnished authentically in 1800s style — antiques and Persian rugs and paintings of people and their dogs from an earlier time. A piano was angled toward the windows and a zillion-dollar panoramic view of the bay.
Tyler invited us to sit, taking a seat across from us on a velvet camelback sofa.
“We’re here because a witness to the kidnapping heard a gunshot,” I said.
“A gunshot?”
“We have no reason to think Madison has been harmed, Mr. Tyler, but we need to know more about your daughter and Paola Ricci.”
Elizabeth Tyler entered the room, dressed in beige silk and fine wool, her eyes puffy and red from crying. She sat down beside her husband and clasped his hand.
“The sergeant just told me that the woman who saw Madison kidnapped heard a gunshot!”
“Oh, my God,” said Elizabeth Tyler, collapsing against her husband.
I explained the situation again, doing my best to calm Madison’s parents, saying we knew only that a gun had been fired. I left out any mention of blood against glass.
After Mrs. Tyler had composed herself, Conklin asked if they’d noticed anyone who seemed out of place hanging around the neighborhood.
“I never saw a thing out of the ordinary,” Tyler said.
“We watch out for one another in this neighborhood,” said Elizabeth. “We’re unabashed snoops. If any of us had seen anything suspicious, we would have called the police.”
We asked the Tylers about their movements over the past days and about their habits — when they left the house, when they went to bed at night.
“Tell me about your daughter,” I said. “Don’t leave anything out.”
Mrs. Tyler brightened for a moment. “She’s a very happy little girl. Loves dogs. And she’s a musical genius, you know.”
“I saw a video. She was playing the piano,” I said.
“Do you know she has synesthesia?” Elizabeth Tyler asked me.
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