by Meg Gardiner
The photographer finished shooting. Dr. Azir stepped to the nearest figure on the floor. Delicately, he lifted the white sheet.
Caitlin first saw the faded jeans and the bra strap showing where the woman’s shirt had slipped from her shoulder. She saw hands that looked like they’d worked with the soil and kneaded bread. She saw the dangling red earrings. The ME went still for a discernible beat. He said absolutely nothing. He stepped around to the second draped form and pulled that sheet back as well.
Caitlin saw the black T-shirt, twisted over a middle-aged belly. It read, I’M JUST A POE BOY FROM A POE FAMILY. She saw the buzz-cut salt-and-pepper hair. She saw all of it, and her brain rebelled, trying to put it together, to make it fit. Nausea hit her like a breaking wave. Don’t lock your knees.
The ME looked at Guthrie. His face was gray.
The victims both lay on their backs. But their necks had been twisted so hard that their skulls faced the floor.
A high-pitched hum rose in Caitlin’s head. It sounded like the buzzer she’d heard over the radio call-in show when the Prophet said, Time’s up.
She squeezed her eyes shut, hard, and opened them again. She had to fight down the fear and the rolling noise in her head. She breathed. Her vision cleared. The ME and the techs and even Guthrie were holding still, maybe in shock.
The ME finally spoke. “Dislocation of the skull at C1. Both victims.” He stared. “Though dislocation doesn’t really cover it.”
Guthrie took a long time to speak. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
Azir shook his head. He crouched again beside the body of the woman with the gray buzz cut. “Evidence of head trauma. It looks like a depressed skull fracture.”
He stood and stepped around to the other body. Bruises ringed the woman’s neck. Her skin was grotesquely swollen where it met her skull.
“Rigor hasn’t set in,” Azir said. “Death probably occurred less than twelve hours ago.”
Guthrie’s piano-wire posture tightened further.
Caitlin said, “He killed them live on the air.”
“No way to know that from what I see here,” the ME said.
“Can you establish time of death and determine that?”
“Not with the degree of specificity you’re asking for.”
She wanted him to tell her that she and Sean could not possibly have saved them. That the victims had already been murdered by the time she and Sean took off for the fake coordinates in Berkeley. That if they’d reached the stadium before the buzzer, it wouldn’t have mattered. But Azir couldn’t do that.
She looked at Guthrie. “Where’d he set up the camera? How’d he stream it to the stadium? A hack, or a splice into the wiring? We have to find out.”
He gave her a sharp look: Lower the temperature. She clenched and unclenched her fists. Unspoken was the torturing thought that somehow, somebody could have saved these women.
That she could have.
The ME motioned to the photographer, who neared with body language that seemed to want to flee. She photographed the bodies from several angles. When she was done, the ME got a thermometer and took liver temperatures for both victims. He read the results.
“Preliminarily—they likely died less than two hours ago.” He called to the forensic tech. “Let’s turn them over.”
Azir and the tech knelt and gently turned the crew-cut woman onto her stomach.
Caitlin’s vision swam. “Holy Christ.”
The ME stepped back abruptly. He signaled the tech and, quickly this time, they rolled the second body.
“Goddammit,” the photographer said.
The ME raised his arms. “Out. Everybody clear the scene.”
On the concrete, the two women lay grotesquely twisted on their stomachs, faces turned to the ceiling. Their eye sockets were stuffed with CFL spiral lightbulbs.
Azir barked, “Out of the building.”
Guthrie stepped back. “What?”
Caitlin backed up but couldn’t stop staring at the women’s faces. Eyes gone, giant spiral bulbs protruding. Two of the bulbs were shattered.
The techs scrambled to close their kits and hurry with the photographer for the exits. Caitlin and Guthrie followed.
“CFL bulbs contain mercury. When they break they release toxic vapor.” The ME hustled them out. “Call the fire department. I’m declaring this a hazmat site.”
31
When Alameda County Fire’s Hazardous Material Response team arrived, they scoured everybody’s clothes, shoes, and belongings for traces of mercury. They took the photographer’s camera bag for decontamination. And, though Dr. Azir had worn paper booties over his shoes, they took his oxfords and his socks, leaving the medical examiner standing barefoot in the morning air. Jet engines roared in the background. Outside the construction site, a paramedic unit and an ambulance waited to transport the victims’ bodies to the morgue.
A firefighter gave Caitlin the all clear. A news van rolled up as she headed to her car. A TV crew hopped out. She studiously avoided looking at them. The wind poured off the bay, chapping her face.
Then she saw that the van had parked behind a brown beater. Bart Fletcher was already there.
As soon as she got within shouting distance, he jumped from the car. “Detective Hendrix.”
“Not now.”
“What’s in that construction site? The missing women? Are they dead?”
She kept walking.
“Caitlin.”
Oh, no, you don’t. She turned her head. “Why didn’t you ever print what Kelly Smolenski told you?”
“Whoa.” Fletcher’s eyes lit up like a pinball machine. “Where’s this coming from?”
She angled toward him. “You sat on evidence for twenty years. Why?”
The TV news crew eyed them, curious. Fletcher smiled. It looked cold.
“You finally ready for your interview, Detective? To go on record?” he said.
She walked at him. “No. I’m asking the questions.”
Fletcher’s smile widened but didn’t reach his eyes. “What happened in the construction site? Did you see the results of the Prophet’s scavenger hunt? The victims—those women were together for fifteen years. Gaia Hill was a veteran. J. T. Wilcox has a son. What do you have to say to their families?” He waved his notepad. “Why’d you lose it at the stadium in Berkeley?”
She felt her jaw tighten and a burst of words rush toward her lips. Then Guthrie swept in, put a hand on her back, and urged her to keep walking.
“The sheriff’s office will have a statement for the press soon.” He leaned close to her ear. “Go.”
* * *
She screeched out of the airport, vision pulsing, hands cold on the wheel. She was angry at herself for letting Fletcher get under her skin. She was aghast that the news chopper had broadcast her loss of emotional control at the stadium.
She saw the women on the scoreboard screen again. I love you.
Screw it all.
She sped along the road and called Sean. Across the bay, the skyscrapers that included the ATF’s San Francisco Field Division flashed in and out of view.
“It was a mind job,” she said.
“This is beyond that,” he said, voice low. “This is . . .”
“I know.”
She gripped the wheel. She understood how it felt to deal personally with the Prophet for the first time. It was a hot knife through the center of your head.
“This cocksucker,” he said.
She frowned. Sean didn’t swear like that around the carpeted halls of the ATF’s city headquarters. Not usually. Not anywhere in front of other people. Rarely in front of her.
She drove, and his silence stretched. “Let it go,” she said. “It’s not your case.”
“You’re not going to let it go.”
/> “It is my case.”
Again he paused. “I don’t like that sound in your voice.”
“There’s no sound in my voice.”
“Like you’re grabbing on to a runaway train, thinking you have to stop it singlehandedly.”
Her face heated. She headed for the freeway. Traffic slewed past in a blur.
Sean’s voice softened. “Sorry. It’s been a miserable morning.” He seemed to take a breath. “This is your introduction to Homicide, and it’s a monster. Don’t let it have you.”
Sunlight flashed off the hood of the car.
“Cat?”
“I’m here.” Her throat was tight. “You’re right.” Though he couldn’t see her, she shook her head. “You’re right, Rawlins. Bastard.”
The tension unwound. He laughed. It sounded melancholy but relieved.
“We’ll do something when this is over,” he said. “Wash this out of our systems.”
“Yeah. That needlepoint class? Or hunt Bigfoot?”
“I’ll think of something good.”
You’re something good. “Surprise me.”
“On it.”
When she reached the station, she headed to the women’s locker room. She stripped off her shirt. It was wet and clinging, from the coffee that had spilled on it in Sean’s truck. She dampened a gym towel and washed her chest. Her bra was wet but she didn’t have a spare. She sponged it as best she could, pulled on a spare navy-blue T, and slammed her locker.
In the war room, the other detectives were gathered near the wall. Guthrie was pinning up photos from the airport building site.
Martinez said, “Holy mother.”
Caitlin sat at her desk and tried to get her head back in the game. She moved pencils around and straightened a stack of papers and brought up her computer screen and wanted to upend the whole thing and kick it into splinters.
Her desk phone rang. She picked up. “Hendrix.”
“Detective, there’s a delivery for you at the front counter,” the desk clerk said.
Caitlin spun, phone to her ear. “What is it?”
The other detectives turned. She set the phone in its cradle and strode across the station to the front desk through air that felt bright with trepidation.
Paige swiveled on her chair, smiling. She gestured at a long, narrow cardboard box on the counter like a game-show hostess revealing a prize. The box had a blue bow around it and a sticker that read, SWEETNESS & LIGHT FLORAL.
Paige clasped her hands under her chin in anticipation. “Who’s it from?”
Caitlin’s question exactly. She untied the bow and lifted the lid.
She inhaled. After a stark moment, still staring into the box, she said, “Who delivered this?”
“Florist shop guy. I signed for it.” Paige leaned over the box. “Whoa.”
“Where’d he go?”
Paige pointed out the door. “He just left.”
Caitlin bolted through the door into the lobby and out onto the front walk. A van detailed with roses was about to pull onto the street. She whistled and ran up to the driver’s window. The young man inside looked at her with surprise.
“Park and come inside with me,” she said.
“Is something wrong?”
Understatement of the morning.
She jogged back inside. At the desk, Paige looked half afraid, half eager to be part of whatever action had sprung up.
“Call Guthrie.” Caitlin got a pair of latex gloves.
Guthrie came to the desk just as Caitlin lifted an envelope from the box. The flap was unsealed. She pulled out the note inside, computer printed on high-quality stationery.
All your hunger to bring me down
will come to nothing.
Inside the box, wrapped in cellophane, was a bouquet of a dozen flowers. Black lilies.
Howl away. Your desperation only
visits grief upon multitudes
and your savagery is repaid threefold.
Day upon day upon day.
Guthrie said, “Who delivered—”
“Him.” Paige pointed at the front windows.
The delivery guy came through the door, looking alarmed. Caitlin’s pulse throbbed in her ears. She read, trying to keep her vision from swimming.
You ran like dogs when I called,
but were as blind as those
wretched hags. Fortune-tellers, but
they couldn’t foresee this.
The son of a bitch. Her hand shook as she clutched the note.
Eventually they paid for their fraud.
Horrible that everyone else will
pay for your failure.
She turned the note over. In tiny, scratchy print was a postscript.
And, caitlin: How does it feel? All your fears are coming true. You’re losing everything. When this ends, you’ll be locked in the psych ward with your father. Electroshock . . . then you and mack can cut out paper dolls in the shape of Mercury. He’ll wipe the drool from your face—you’ll be daddy’s little girl again, forever.
* * *
The deliveryman answered questions for half an hour and left severely spooked. Craig Leffers had worked for Sweetness & Light for eighteen months. He had no criminal record. The delivery to Caitlin was one of a dozen on his morning run.
His boss, the owner of the florist shop, talked to Caitlin on the phone. The order for the black lilies had been called in yesterday. A man. No discernible accent, no speech impediments, no verbal quirks that the woman could recall. Didn’t sound young, didn’t sound old. Maybe a bit curt. To the point.
Caitlin knew now that the pitch of the Prophet’s voice would be an unreliable indicator. He had a voice changer.
The florist said the man who ordered the lilies paid by credit card. Was there a problem . . . ?
There damn well was. The name on the card was J. T. Wilcox. The Prophet had paid using his latest victim’s account.
But. But: the note.
That was the weird bit. The florist explained: The man who ordered the flowers didn’t dictate the note to her over the phone. Not like most people. You know—Happy Birthday, Mom. Instead, the man said his son was going to drop it by the shop. And a kid showed up, with the envelope, and left it at the counter.
The florist had not opened the note. She insisted on that. Hadn’t looked inside.
The kid was just a kid. Chinese, or Korean maybe. But American. Maybe twelve years old? No, she didn’t get his name. She didn’t see if he got in a car outside or talked to anybody after he left. The shop didn’t have a working surveillance camera, but the shopping center must—maybe, the florist said, Caitlin could talk to the security people and see if they had pictures of the kid. Though . . . he was just a kid. There were hundreds of kids around. Thousands. Lots of schools were out.
The florist was in San Jose. Thirty-five miles from the sheriff’s station. And yes, that was an uncommon distance to travel for delivery, but Sweetness & Light specialized in unique floral arrangements, things you couldn’t get most places. Deliveries to the East Bay weren’t that strange. And the order? She did think that was slightly out of the ordinary. Most orders for black lilies came in around Halloween. But the arrangement was pictured on their website. And they had plenty of fresh lilies in stock, this being Easter weekend. They just needed the time to dye them properly.
The call to the florist was traced to a phone that had connected via a cell tower near the Muni bus station at the Civic Center in San Francisco. That phone, of course, was now dead.
Martinez said, “Burner.”
Caitlin thought about the locations involved with this crime. “Berkeley, Oakland Airport, San Jose, San Francisco. The Prophet pissed everywhere on this one.”
The note had been sent to the criminalistics lab, with orders to expedite it. No fingerp
rints. No DNA on the flap—of course the Prophet had not licked the envelope. The stationery was a standard size, heavy bond, sold in a thousand locations in the Bay Area and everywhere online. The printed note was in a calligraphy font common to multiple word-processing programs.
Caitlin slouched in her desk chair.
When this ends, you’ll be locked in the psych ward with your father. Pressure built behind her eyes, a stinging sensation. You’ll be daddy’s little girl again, forever.
Her skin prickled, an adrenaline spike. She closed her eyes. That feeling, at her desk, was a ticket to rage and an ulcer.
But she couldn’t help it. She stared again at the note. This bastard, the Prophet, had destroyed her father. He knew he’d done it. Now he was digging the needle into her. And telling her that he wanted to destroy her too.
All your fears are coming true. You’re losing everything.
She couldn’t let him. Had to stop this. Had to . . . “What?”
She looked up. Martinez was waving at her. He looked like he might have been waving for a while.
“You were talking to yourself,” he said. “Anything interesting?”
Her cheeks went hot. She straightened. “The Prophet ordered the flowers yesterday.”
“He did.”
“How did he know I would attend the crime scene at the airport?”
“Maybe he didn’t. But he knows you’re working the case.”
“Martinez, he ordered the flowers from a pay phone in San Francisco during business hours. That was after he attacked Gaia Hill and J. T. Wilcox at the café in Berkeley.”
“He’s been a busy boy.”
She ran and reran the lines of the note through her head. “Even for him, this is splashy. The graffiti, the timer, the radio call-in, tormenting the entire freaking Bay Area with . . .”
The sound of the women’s cries rose in her head. Stop it.
“The staging of the victims’ bodies, and now this . . . this flourish, this coda, sending me the flowers and the note.”
“He’s worked up.”
“He’s putting on the Broadway show of shows.” And he wanted her to know it.
But he wouldn’t just want her to recognize his brilliance. He wanted to draw her along.