Chandler said, “You actually think of me as a suspect, Sergeant?”
“You haven’t been excluded.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”
I said sharply, “Stay anchored. If I were you, I wouldn’t draw attention to myself by leaving town.”
Chapter 24
JASON BLAYNEY MOVED PURPOSEFULLY through the large open space with the supersize bar and the high ceiling, the main room of the yacht club.
The reporter was twenty-seven years old, an average-to-nice-looking guy, and, along with his more intellectual talents, he had a trick left arm. When he was a kid, he had learned how to pop his shoulder so that it looked deformed, and this little sleight of arm gave him an edge in certain situations.
Right now, for instance, the arm made the security guy decide not to confront him. Blayney said, “How ya doing? I’m with the O’Briens. Mind if I use the bathroom?”
Guard said, “Sure,” and pointed the way.
Blayney went to the men’s room, washed his hands, finger-combed his hair, and straightened the camera hanging from his neck.
Then he left the club through the back door that opened onto the wide deck fronting the marina. He was imagining the smoking interview he was about to have with Harry Chandler.
Blayney had grown up in Chicago, and after graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, he had gotten off to a fast start at the LA bureau of the New York Times. Six months ago, he got the offer from the San Francisco Post to aggressively report on crime, and he’d moved up the coast and into a job that fit him like the cover of darkness.
Now he had a prominent platform to do whatever it took to crush the Chronicle’s dominance in crime reportage and establish himself as a player on the national stage.
Today, Blayney was as stoked as he’d ever been in his life. Yesterday’s ruckus at the Chandler house was the start of a monster story that had legs up to the moon. He’d flattered a traffic cop and gotten a tip, and as far as he knew, he was the first journalist to learn that several heads had been dug up at the Ellsworth compound.
By itself, this information was tremendous on every level, and he was just getting started.
A half hour ago, Blayney had followed Lindsay Boxer from the Ellsworth compound. As soon as she got into her car, he’d been sure that she was going to the yacht club to interview Harry Chandler.
He took his time, and as he headed into the marina, Blayney saw Boxer leaving the slip where Chandler’s boat was docked. Her head was down, her blond hair hanging in front of her eyes as she talked on her phone. Blayney thought of Lindsay Boxer as a character in his story; she was a good cop, but what really got him going was that she was emotional. If he dogged her, she would react and probably lead him into the heart of the story. She could be the heroine or the screwup on both of her active cases. He really didn’t care which.
Either way, Lindsay Boxer had taken him to Harry Chandler.
He took a couple of pictures, but she didn’t notice him.
“Nice one, Sergeant,” he said quietly. “I think you made the front page.”
Chapter 25
BLAYNEY IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZED the man heading up the gangway to his yacht wearing denim and walking with a swagger. It was a thrill to actually put his eyes on the actor in real time, real size, the man whose face had been ubiquitous on Court TV for almost two years, a guy who possibly had killed his wife and gotten away with it.
Blayney wanted an interview with Chandler as much as he had ever wanted anything in his life. He pointed his camera and took another couple of shots, then called out, “Mr. Chandler.”
Chandler turned to face him, taking a solid stance on the dock. His hands were curled into fists.
“Yes?”
Blayney opened the unlocked metal gate, said, “Mr. Chandler, I’m Jason Blayney, with the San Francisco Post. I’d like to talk to you.”
“You’re a reporter?”
“How do you do, sir? Mr. Chandler, I’m wondering if you can tell me what’s going on at your house on Vallejo? I’d like to be your advocate, Mr. Chandler. Help you get your side of the story out —”
“Get off this dock. This is private property.”
Chandler pulled his phone out of his hip pocket, called a number, and said, “This is Harry Chandler. I need security.”
“What I’ve heard is that a number of human skulls have been exhumed from your backyard, Mr. Chandler. Would you care to make a comment?”
Chandler said, “Don’t point that camera at me. I have no comment on or off the record, you get me?”
Blayney moved closer to show that he wasn’t backing down. “Did you kill your wife ten years ago, Mr. Chandler? Did you bury her in your garden? Are any of your past girlfriends buried there too, sir?”
Chandler reached out and grabbed Blayney by the front of his shirt and back-walked him to the edge of the dock. Holding the reporter, Chandler almost pushed Blayney off, then jerked him back to safety, looked down at the collapsed shoulder, and said, “Don’t ever come here again.”
“You’re acting like you have something to hide, Mr. Chandler,” Blayney said, stumbling and pressing forward at the same time.
Chandler said, “Wow, are you stupid.”
The actor shoved the reporter toward the edge again, still holding on to the front of his shirt.
“Don’t do it, Mr. Chandler. My camera. It cost me two thousand dollars.”
Chandler snatched the camera off Blayney’s neck, then pushed the reporter into the water.
The water was shocking, but Blayney was loving this encounter. He spat water, then started laughing. He popped his shoulder back in, then swam to one of the davits and wrapped both arms around it. A life preserver splashed into the water and Blayney grabbed it.
He was still laughing when he called out, “I like how you express yourself, Mr. Chandler. Illegal actions are better than a quote.”
Blayney found a rung of a rope ladder and hauled himself out of the bay, thinking, Oh man, how great is this? Harry Chandler had assaulted him.
He would have given a year’s salary for a picture or a witness. But anyway, the entire incident confirmed the monster quotient of this story.
He picked his camera up off the dock, snapped off some shots of Harry Chandler’s back. Life was good.
Chapter 26
BEC ROLLINS, A PR biggie from the mayor’s office, was waiting for me when I got back to the Hall. She was sitting in Conklin’s chair.
Bec was intense, fierce, and she didn’t waste time.
“Hi, Bec, what the hell is wrong? And don’t say everything, because that’s my line.”
She gave me a fleeting grin, said, “Sit down, Lindsay. I think you want to see this.”
She showed me her iPad, and I saw a picture of me on the dock walking away from the camera.
“Wait. Where did that come from? This was taken today.”
Rollins scrolled down, showed me the headline on Jason Blayney’s article: “Heads Unearthed at Harry Chandler’s Pad; Boxer Investigates.”
I said, “What?” and began to read. My case was all over the Web. “Bec, Blayney knows what I know. Heads unearthed. Chandler’s house. Chandler’s boat. Someone leaked. But it wasn’t me.”
“I know, I know,” Rollins said. She took back her gizmo, said, “Here’s the thing, Lindsay. Blayney is a juvenile viper. He’s got a license to harass and nothing to lose. I don’t need to tell you how he can spin this story, poison any potential jury pool. He can make things hard for sources to come forward.”
“I’m not cooperating with him, Bec. I didn’t see him.”
“Gotcha. But be aware of him. Here’s what he looks like.”
She showed me the picture of a man in his twenties, dark hair, narrow eyes, a lot of teeth. He looked like a wolverine.
“He’s going to confront you, count on it. When he does, you’ve got to be wise and cool and act as if you’re approachable — but don�
�t tell him anything unless Brady says okay first.”
“Brady has talked to Blayney. Did you know that?”
“Yes. I knew. Let Brady do the talking for you on both of your cases. And here’s the other thing. Your friend Cindy.”
At the mention of Cindy’s name, my partner left the break room and came toward our desks. Bec Rollins leaned in and finished what she was saying.
“Cindy Thomas is an investigative reporter.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Inevitably she’s going to want an inside track on this story.”
“For God’s sake. Are we done?”
“Lindsay, please keep in mind that whatever the press writes is worldwide and forever. Oh, hi, Rich,” Bec said to Conklin. “I’ll call you,” she said to me.
Conklin sat down and said, “What’s this about? Don’t tell Cindy anything?”
“Something like that,” I said.
Cindy Thomas is an honest, dedicated, and talented writer, and she has helped me solve crimes. That’s how good she is. The kind of bureaucratic bull Bec Rollins had brought into the squad room like a lame pony is exactly why I’d eventually said “No, thanks” to the corner office.
I’d committed to being a career homicide detective. I had to be better than good. I had to be excellent.
Chapter 27
CONKLIN AND I sat in the observation room, our hands cupped around containers of cold coffee, as Lieutenant Lawrence Meile and Captain Jonah Penny, from Vice and Narcotics, respectively, interviewed each of the three Narcotics cops whose names we’d tagged four hours before.
It was uncomfortable, yeah, and painful to see men I’d known for years being grilled about their whereabouts at the time Chaz Smith had been shot. In fact, no one was happy in that interrogation room, not the men asking the questions and especially not Sergeant Roddy Jenkins.
Jenkins kept his voice even, but I thought he was a picture of contained fury as Meile asked him to produce an alibi for Chaz Smith’s time of death — and he didn’t have one.
“I was just driving around. That’s what I like to do when I’m off duty.”
Meile said, “Come on, Roddy. It was two days ago. Where were you in the afternoon?”
“I was screwing your wife, Meile. Ask her. It was pretty good.”
Meile boiled out of his chair and went for him. Penny pulled Meile off Jenkins, and Conklin got into the room in time to stop Jenkins from throwing a punch.
“Roddy. Roddy. Settle down.”
Jenkins acted like Conklin wasn’t there. He shouted at Meile, “I said I was driving around. What? Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You accusing me of taking out that douche bag? I’m not saying another fuckin’ word until my fuckin’ lawyer is sitting next to me.”
Roddy’s name was still on the short list when he threw down his badge and gun and stormed out of the interview room shouting, “Fuck you. Fuck all a’ you.”
Conklin returned to the observation room, said, “That could’ve gone better.”
I said, “I don’t mind seeing his temper. He’s organized. He’s got a lot of years on the force. He’s smart enough to have waited in the bathroom for Smith, and if he was mad, I don’t doubt he would have pulled the trigger. And get two shots dead center too.”
“He’s worked in the department long enough to get a hate-on for dealers.”
“Yeah.”
I crumpled my coffee container, dunked it into the trash, answered my ringing phone.
I hoped the call was from Joe; it wasn’t, but it was almost as good. Claire was calling.
“Got a couple of minutes for me, girlfriend?”
Chapter 28
I SAID TO Conklin, “Claire wants to see me. If she had nothing on the heads, she would’ve said so on the phone, right?”
“We’ve got an interview in a few minutes, Linds.”
“I’ll be right back.”
I jogged down the stairs to the lobby, stiff-armed the back door, and trotted along the breezeway to the ME’s office.
I found my BFF in the chill of the morgue. Her lab coat with the butterfly appliqué on the breast pocket was buttoned up to her neck and she was wearing sweatpants under that.
“Summertime” was playing loudly on the radio, the San Francisco Symphony’s version. Claire’s husband, Edmund, plays cello in the orchestra.
“Dr. Perlmutter just sent me a status report,” Claire shouted. She turned down the volume.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh, what’d she say?”
“Here’s what you want to know,” Claire said. “None of those skulls belonged to Cecily Chandler.”
“Not that I’m doubting you, but what did she say exactly?”
“Cecily Chandler had A-one perfect teeth,” Claire told me. “And not all of them were homegrown. Her dental records do not match the dentistry in any of the skulls.”
I felt let down.
I hadn’t been as certain as the supermarket tabloids were that Harry Chandler murdered his wife, but if Cecily Chandler’s head had been discovered in Chandler’s garden, I would have been more convinced that he was our killer.
I said to Claire, “Well, it only means that Chandler didn’t bury his wife’s head in the garden. Doesn’t mean he’s off the hook for the others, right? Any other news from the doctor?”
“There was no trauma to any of the skulls.”
“So you still don’t know causes of death.”
“That’s correct.”
My best friend held up a finger and said, “So, I’ve been working on the head of our Jane Doe in the cooler. I made a maggot milk shake.”
“Wonderful. I hope you’ll give me your recipe.”
“Maggots, like all animals, are what they eat. If Jane here was poisoned or drugged, the tox screen on the milk shake would reveal that. So I put some squirmers into the blender and sent that out to the lab. Hoping for something, Linds. I was hoping for arsenic. Instead, we found benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine.”
“So you’re saying Jane Doe was a drug user.”
“Yep, but there wasn’t so much that it would’ve been fatal, so —”
“So all we know is that Jane Doe did drugs.”
“We’re not done yet. Dr. Perlmutter is working up those skulls for facial identification. We’ll have something soon.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Good. Because right now we have nada, nothing, goose egg,” I said. “I need help.”
Chapter 29
I WAS THINKING about the seven unidentified heads as I retraced my steps back upstairs to the squad room. I came through the gate, saw Conklin at his desk with a thin, lank-haired man of about forty sitting in a side chair talking to him.
Conklin introduced me to Richard Beadle, the headmaster of the Morton Academy. I shook his damp hand, took my desk chair, and joined the interview already in progress.
“I gave out my home number,” Beadle said. “I felt that I should do that, but now my phone rings constantly and at all hours. Parents are distraught. Kids are having nightmares, and I don’t know how to comfort them.
“Here’s the latest,” Beadle went on. “This is the prizewinner. Chaz Smith’s family is speaking to the school through lawyers. They’re suing us. Please tell me you’ve got something on that killer. Anything will do, anything I can tell the board and the parents.”
“We’re working this case hard,” Conklin said. “It’s our number one priority. Let’s look at pictures, okay?”
Beadle had printed out sixteen photos that had been taken at the spring recital. Most of them were impromptu family portraits that had been shot in the school lobby before the fire alarm had rung.
I scrutinized each shot, and as I looked at cute kids and proud folks, I asked myself if I could be wrong about an angry cop called Roddy Jenkins. Could he really have taken a stolen .22 to the Morton Academy and put two rounds into Chaz Smith’s forehead?
I didn’t see it. And I didn’t see Jenkins
. Not in the foreground and not in the background, and I didn’t see anyone who looked out of place.
The headmaster put a name to every man, woman, and child in each picture. We tagged partial sleeves and collars and hairlines to the identified pictures, and every piece of clothing matched to a known person.
Except for one.
I stared at an unfocused picture of the back of a blue suit jacket worn by someone we couldn’t identify, and my throat tightened.
Was I looking at the only recorded image of the shooter?
I was pawing through photos in search of that blue jacket when Brady’s shadow crossed my desk. We all looked up.
Brady was menacing even when he wasn’t trying to be, like a linebacker primed to unload.
The lieutenant said hello to Beadle, then banged six photographs down in front of him, every one of them a picture of a cop who worked for the SFPD.
I knew all six of those men. Knew them well.
“Give them all a thorough inspection, Mr. Beadle,” Brady said, looking like he was going to shake the guy until he picked out the shooter.
What if, in his panic, Beadle picked someone out?
What if he fingered a good and innocent cop?
Beadle’s eyes bored in on each of the six photographs; he took Brady’s advice and didn’t rush.
“I don’t recognize anyone,” Beadle said, finally. “Is one of these men the killer?”
Brady’s relief was apparent.
“No,” he said. “You did fine.”
We wrapped up the interview and I said good night to the office. Or I tried to.
Reporters were waiting for me outside the Hall, a bunch of them surging up from Bryant Street, stampeding toward me as I stood on the top of the Hall’s front steps.
Now that I knew what Jason Blayney looked like, it was easy to pick him out of the crowd.
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