by Hy Conrad
“Mrs. Willmott? Are you all right?” She didn’t answer.
Instead, she attacked.
I was within ten feet of her when this middle-aged mom with a red welt across her throat found the strength to push herself into a half crouch and ram right into me. The attack was wordless, with just an angry grunt of effort from her and a startled cry of pain as I lost balance and tumbled back on my keister, a straight, unbroken fall.
Before anyone could react, Olivia had turned and was focused on her next target. By now Lieutenant A.J. had brought Colin into a secure armlock and was just reaching for the handcuffs snapped into the leather loop on the back of his belt. A second later, Olivia was on him, all desperate determination.
“Run,” she screamed. “Colin, run.”
For probably the first time in a decade, Colin Willmott listened to his mother. So did Marshal. Both boys turned and began to run, swerving through the rows of parked cars. The rest of us picked ourselves up and gave chase. The captain’s Buick beeped twice as Marshal, car keys in hand, followed the sound and flash, like a beacon to freedom. Every half second we could see a shaved head bob up above a car roof, Colin or Marshal. Impossible to tell. My worst fear was that a departing civilian—a wedding guest, a kid from the bar mitzvah—might get caught in the cross fire.
The lieutenant, his own sidearm now drawn, rounded the last bend. It was a straight shot to the Buick and an even straighter shot to Colin’s back. For the first time in I don’t know how long, the young officer raised his weapon and used it in the line of duty.
A single gunshot echoed across the field of cars and the nine-millimeter slug shattered an Audi taillight just inches from Colin’s leg. The young man stopped, scared and undecided. The car was still twenty yards away. “The next one’s in your back,” shouted A.J.
There are departmental regulations against shooting an unarmed suspect in the back. I knew that. A.J. knew that. But, lucky for everyone, Colin didn’t. He hesitated just enough to let Lieutenant Thurman catch up.
“It’s over, kid,” he said breathlessly.
Meanwhile the captain, one arm in his sling, one arm with his Beretta, was one row over, grunting with every stride as he gained ground on Marshal, who was almost into the car.
“Let my son go,” screamed Olivia. She was on top of the lieutenant now, hitting him in the back and giving Colin the chance he needed to run again toward his cousin and the getaway car. From my spot one row farther away, I could hear the Buick’s door slam shut. The engine turned over.
And then the explosion, deafening and percussive.
A yellow-and-red fireball engulfed the captain’s car and threw everyone else back and to the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Mr. Monk Can’t Listen
We were lucky, all things considered. Everyone except Marshal.
Monk and I did not have to be hospitalized. We were examined in one of the emergency response vehicles that came whizzing down the 101 and were released with nothing worse than hearing loss—temporary, they assured us—and a persistent ringing in the ears. It seemed illogical to have both hearing loss and ringing in the ears, but that’s how it was, believe me. I was prescribed a Xanax to help with the anxiety and the ringing, but Monk refused. He thought it might turn him into a pill-popping drug addict, reduced to selling himself on street corners for another fix. He might have actually said those words, but luckily I couldn’t hear.
My only permanent loss was the PBS tote, which I’d left on the captain’s front seat.
Next on the lucky spectrum was A.J. Thurman. He’d been one row and a few vehicles closer. He had our hearing loss plus a laceration on the upper left leg, his good leg, from a piece of flying Buick. It might leave a scar, the doctor advised, which A.J. would probably be bragging about for the next twenty years sitting on a stool in his favorite cop bar.
Olivia Willmott had a similar shrapnel wound to her left arm. The main damage she suffered would be the wounds that no one could see and that might never heal.
Colin Willmott was in the lockdown ward 7D/7L at San Francisco General. He had received two broken ribs and a punctured lung. Recovery time was estimated at eight weeks, but he would be indicted well before then, as soon as the DA could figure out the precise charges. This time a full regiment of Willmott family lawyers would probably be playing defense.
Leland Stottlemeyer had been approximately forty feet from the explosion, and had been running toward it before he was blown back by the force. He wound up on his regular floor of SF General just down the hall from his previous two rooms, this time with a fracture to his tailbone, or coccyx, a word I had only previously known from playing Scrabble. It would keep him off his feet for some time, but the doctors were predicting a full recovery. Despite this, the captain was probably the luckiest of us all, since he’d managed to avoid being in his car when the bomb meant for him was detonated.
At the far end of the lucky spectrum was Marshal Willmott—who was dead.
My plans for that evening were low-key, as you might imagine. Monk and I stayed with the captain until Trudy Stottlemeyer made her way back from her sister’s place in Santa Cruz. We filled her in on the situation, trying to make it sound like no big deal.
“Who could possibly hate my husband this much?” she shouted over the deaf ringing in my ears.
“WE HAVE NO IDEA,” I shouted back. “I’M SORRY.”
“Someone tried to kill him three times. You’d think he’d at least have an idea.”
“WE DID HAVE AN IDEA. WE WERE WRONG.”
It’s hard to carry on a serious, sympathetic conversation when you’re shouting back and forth. I stayed a few more minutes, helping Trudy set up camp in yet another armchair beside yet another hospital bed. Then I called my daughter and yelled at her.
I’m not sure she understood much of it, other than I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU. I certainly didn’t hear much from her end, even with the phone’s volume turned up. Being a budding detective, she sensed something might be wrong and shouted that she would meet me back at my cozy house in my cozy neighborhood of Noe Valley.
Monk’s part-time babysitter, Luther Washington, met us by the emergency room doors and took Adrian off my hands. The last thing I saw before I crossed away to my old Subaru was Adrian using his skills in American Sign Language to communicate with Luther about his plans for the evening. Adrian had memorized the manual alphabet and a few hundred signs, just in case of an emergency like this. Unfortunately, Luther hadn’t.
As soon as I pulled into my driveway, Julie came running out. “MOM, ARE YOU OKAY?” she shouted, then took me by the arm and began to gently guide me toward the porch. “THIS WAY.”
“I CAN SEE FINE. IT’S MY HEARING.”
“WELL, I DIDN’T KNOW. WHAT HAPPENED?”
“WHAT?”
“WHAT HAPPENED?”
I know it doesn’t make sense that I was shouting. But it’s hard not to shout when you can barely hear your own voice, only the insanely loud ringing in your ears.
Randy must have heard the commotion, because he also came running and said a few things I couldn’t hear. He looked better than he had that morning, well on his way to recovery, although Julie and I still gave him and his germs a wide berth.
I don’t know about you, but witnessing a murder and narrowly escaping death gives me an appetite. Julie had anticipated this by picking up pizzas—a large with pepperoni and mushrooms, a small meat-lovers for Randy, and three side salads, which was our way of trying to eat healthier.
Dinner was quick and comparatively wordless. I could tell they were dying to hear the story. So, after we dumped the dishes in the sink, I brought my laptop out to the living room, they brought out their smartphones, and all of us sat around with glasses of Chardonnay and e-mailed back and forth in glowing, electronic silence.
I started by outlining the afternoon’s events, letting my fingers fly and ignoring anything like sentence structure. I also ignored the red squi
ggles that popped up under my endless misspellings. It took a few minutes, but I sent off my first e-mail and watched their expressions as they read it. Both of them looked suitably horrified and concerned.
“RU sure UR OK?” e-mailed Julie. “How about Adrian? OK?”
“I’m fine,” I mouthed from across the room. I still couldn’t speak without shouting and my voice had become hoarse from the effort. “Adrian’s fine.”
“Was it A.J.’s fault?” typed Randy.
While waiting in the ER, I had given this idea some thought. “I’d love to say yes, but I don’t think so. The captain left A.J. outside with no instructions except to stay in touch and watch for the cousins. The parking lot goes around the building with a dozen exits. He couldn’t be expected to keep an eye on everyone’s car.”
“What do U think?” wrote Julie on her phone. “Killer followed captain from home? Had bomb? Planted bomb?”
Yes. I nodded half apologetically from across the room. Then I typed. “Big mistake for the captain to leave his house. At least we know it wasn’t the Willmott skinheads.”
Randy frowned. “RU sure it’s not them?”
“Sure I’m sure. You think the boys knew we were tailing them and rigged the car and proceeded to blow themselves up?”
Randy shrugged. “Suicide by exploding cop car. I’ve heard of that.”
“You have not heard of that, Randy. No one’s heard of that.” I actually said those words aloud. Without shouting. I must have been getting better. Perhaps it was the combination of the pepperoni and the Chardonnay and the leftover Xanax in my system.
“Can you hear me now?” asked Julie at a normal-ish volume.
“It’s better,” I said, again not shouting.
We all turned away from our screens and gathered around the coffee table, with Randy still keeping a germ’s throw away. Julie hugged me tightly and I hugged back. “Much better,” I said.
“When you called and started shouting, I got so worried.” If I looked at her mouth when she spoke, it was easier.
“I know, honey. I’m sorry. But now you know how I feel. If you came to work with Monk and me, I don’t think I could take it.”
“No, it’s just the opposite. If I was working with you, knowing what’s going on and having your back, it would be so much better.”
“For you, maybe.”
“Yes, for me. Is that wrong?”
I didn’t have a good answer for that. And I respected my daughter enough not to give her a bad one. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“Fine.”
An awkward silence fell over the room. It was finally broken by a fake, exaggerated yawn. “Awwwh!” Randy Disher vocalized, stretching his arms wide for emphasis. “Time for me to get back to bed.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Don’t worry about me. You gals can talk as long and as loud as you want. It won’t bother me. Not that I’m going to be listening. I’m going to be sleeping, that’s what I meant.”
“Good night, Randy,” I said. And I blew him a kiss.
Julie and I sat up for another hour, until the aches and exhaustion of the day caught up with me. Julie asked if she could spend the night. I said yes and resisted offering her the other half of my queen-sized bed, just to keep her close. Instead, I helped her pull out the couch and grab the sheets from the linen closet.
I thought sleep would come instantly that night, but it didn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking about Olivia. As much as she’d wanted to abandon her once-golden son to his own choices, she couldn’t. What mother could? And yet the result of her meddling had been so much worse. From the moment she’d walked in and allowed herself to be taken hostage, things escalated. Now she had the memory of her son holding the point of a knife to her throat. Plus the sight of her nephew being blown up in a fireball. And the nightmare for her wasn’t over. Lawyers and publicity and family grief all lurked on the horizon.
I broke down and took another Xanax. When finally I drifted off, I think I dreamed about Julie, about trying so hard to protect her from something. A monster? And what made it harder was that she was trying to protect me from the same monster. I woke up the next morning with no clear memory. Only a feeling of frustration that was impossible to shake.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Mr. Monk Finally Listens
One nice thing about nearly being blown to bits on a Saturday afternoon is that you can take all day Sunday to recover.
Just getting out of bed helped me shake off the dream. I washed my face, made sure I had a nightgown on, and followed my nose out to the kitchen. Julie and Randy were putting the final touches on my favorite pancakes, with perfectly curled strips of bacon for the smiles and slices of strawberries for the eyes. From the crusty mouth to the bloodred eyes, it seemed a remarkable portrait of my current state.
“HOW ARE YOU?” asked Randy.
“Hungry,” I whispered back.
“CAN YOU HEAR ME? NOD IF YOU CAN HEAR ME.”
“Yes, I can hear you. It’s much better.”
“YOU’RE NOT NODDING.”
“Sorry.” I nodded, thanked them for the breakfast, and poured myself some coffee. A half hour and three grinning pancakes later, I was almost ready to face the day.
“You going to be okay by yourself?” asked Julie. Just hearing her say that made me feel a hundred percent better. I assured her I was fine and that I would be staying close to home, a promise made easy since my car was still in the parking lot at Tuscany Pines.
Randy had plans to visit the captain in the hospital, then spend time with the old garage band he’d played with on and off for the past twenty years.
“I miss jamming and being one of the guys,” he said, wiping away the last vestiges of his runny nose. “That’s one thing you don’t get when you’re chief of police. Hanging with your buds. Making jokes. Not being ridiculed month after month for arresting the mayor just once.”
“Randy!”
“I know, I know. I have to stick it out.”
Neither one volunteered to clean up the breakfast mess before leaving, but I didn’t mind. It was nice spending a day at home, with just the ringing in my ears for company. I read the paper, focusing on the comics and the horoscope and avoiding the front-page news about the car bomb. I watched two episodes of Game of Thrones. I Googled tinnitus, the medical name for ringing of the ears, and grew anxious over the possibility of it never going away. For some people it doesn’t.
After my afternoon nap, an old Subaru just like mine pulled up at the curb followed by a patrol car. Officer Joe Nazio came to the door and handed me the keys. I invited him in, but he couldn’t stay. “I’m assigned to the forensics bomb squad. We’re just cleaning up. Hope to get some of Sunday off.”
“Sure,” I said. “Do you have any leads? Size and placement of the bomb? Triggering mechanism?” I could see him eyeing his watch. “Joe, please. I was there.”
“You’re right,” he said.
Joe didn’t stay long, maybe five minutes, not that there was much to tell. The device had been magnetically attached under the chassis, not far from the gas tank. It had been equipped with a tilt fuse, which was activated by the vibration of the car starting up. “It depends on your luck,” said Joe. “Sometimes a tilt fuse will detonate when you slam the door, sometimes when you go over your first bump.”
“It doesn’t sound very sophisticated,” I said.
“It’s not. You can build one by going online. You just have to be careful not to set the fuse before the bomb’s in place.”
“So it was set in the parking lot.”
“Absolutely. Just bad luck he didn’t get seen.”
Joe promised to keep us in the loop. But, being consultants, we were already part of the loop. “Go home, Joe,” I said. “It’s Sunday. Hug your family.”
By the end of my afternoon, I had watched two more episodes of Game of Thrones and come to the conclusion that the show needed less female nudity and more dragons. The only other interruption was a call fr
om Daniela Grace. It was around six p.m., right as I was scouring the back of the freezer, trying to decide between two containers of frozen brown leftovers. I sighed. But I knew there would be no better time to take the call.
“Daniela, hi. Sorry to be calling so late on a Sunday.”
“You’re not calling me. I’m calling … Oh, I get it. Humor.”
“I should have tracked you down before leaving your office. My fault. No excuse. We interviewed everyone who had access to the IPO information and we came up blank, I’m afraid. But we’re still working. We haven’t given up.”
“Natalie, I’m not an idiot. I watch the news. It seems you two had plenty of time to attend a wedding reception.”
“Wedding? That was a murder case. We were almost blown up.”
“You don’t have to shout, dear.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just getting over temporary deafness—you know, from almost getting blown up.”
“Still shouting.”
“That was for emphasis. Daniela, I’ll talk with Adrian first thing tomorrow and give you a call. I promise. I know you’re on a deadline and there’s still a leak. We’ll do our best.” Somehow I managed to say good-bye and hang up.
That night I got to bed right after the news—not the eleven o’clock news, the six-thirty news. The next morning, I was almost back to normal, just a steady little tone in my ears that I could ignore if I hummed the opening notes to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” just the first four words, over and over. It seemed to be in the same key as my hum.
It was early, only a little after nine, when I pulled into the strip mall. I was surprised to see the lights on and a black Lincoln Town Car in my space. Adrian and Luther were there. As I parked beside the Lincoln, I realized that one of them was shouting. “YOU HAVE TO CLEAN BETWEEN THE CRACKS. OTHERWISE DUST WILL BUILD UP AND SPLIT THE WOOD. THAT’S JUST SCIENCE.”
