by Meg Gardiner
The browser history loaded. Jo saw an entire page of hits for news stories.
Maki, Lover Dead.
Burning Boat Tragedy: Fashion World Mourns.
Noted Physician David Yoshida Dead at 52.
Heart Attack Fells Cardiac Surgeon.
On and on. Nothing but Yoshida and Maki. She paused at the next headline.
"Broken Heart" Over Son's Death Kills UCSF Doctor?
She heard an inarticulate cry. She looked up and saw Harding punch the bookshelf with the flat of his hand. He fought a sob, mouth open. He was staring at the framed photo.
He swung an arm at the bookshelf and swept a row of books to the floor. She put her hands flat on the desk. He spun and hurled the photo across the room.
Jo ducked. It flew straight past her head and thwacked the wall like an ax.
"Hey," she said.
Harding swooped across the room and pulled the keyboard away from her. "Get out."
"Mr. Harding—"
"Now." He was coming around the desk.
She jumped to her feet before he could grab the chair or touch her. "Close enough."
He brought himself up short, a foot from her. A vein was throbbing in his temple.
"Please step back," she said.
He held still. She saw the photo on the floor. Behind the cracked glass was a picture of Callie and Harding together. She met his eyes. They were red and wet.
He backed up, giving her space, but was still standing between her and the door.
"If you don't mind," she said.
He held still for two seconds, and three, and five. Quietly, as if extreme quiet was the only way to control his voice, he said, "She was perfect. And now she's dust. What am I going to do?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Harding. Now I'd like to go."
He raised his hands. "Forget it. Just write your report, say whatever you want." He grabbed the notebooks from the desk. "Take it all. Read them, interpret them, x-ray them, whatever. You won't find anything."
He shoved them into her hands and waved her out of the office. She headed straight out the front door, slamming it behind her.
Dammit.
A hundred yards from the town house, Jo looked back. How had that turned so nasty?
Holding your ground, that she'd learned when facing drugged-up, bipolar gang members in therapy, and angry psychotics who ranted about the prophet Elijah, and before that, shoving back against boys who said she couldn't skateboard or ride BMX. She'd learned it way back on the playground as a kid.
Get right back in their face, and fast. It had become muscle memory. You can talk your way out of things, but not if you're flat on the deck.
But having a venture capitalist physically intimidate her over psychological autopsy questions? She hadn't seen it coming.
Dammit.
The sidewalk was clear behind her. There was no sign of Gregory Harding, just dappled sunlight and a lawn sprinkler lazily tossing water in an arc. Her heart was thumping. She slowed her breathing. Don't get angry.
She got angry. How dare he? Jerk. Prick.
Back in the truck, she locked the doors and took two minutes to scribble notes while the encounter was still bright in her mind. Jackass. Dick. Was he aggressive, or simply grief-stricken and subject to poor impulse control? Was he hiding something? She wrote down what he'd said about Callie. Sharp. Judgmental. Punished people. Have their balls for breakfast.
She lifted her pen from the page. Can you say castrating woman?
Harding didn't act like he'd lost a decent friend. He acted like he'd lost a woman he still loved and loathed. And he seemed bereft.
Her fatigue, temporarily suppressed by caffeine and adrenaline, now broke again like a wave. She rubbed her eyes. She couldn't let this get to her.
Leaning her head back, she thought about the long list of articles Callie had been reading about David Yoshida and, especially, about Maki burning to death on his sailboat.
She was only ten miles from Moffett Field. She got on the phone and called the headquarters of the 129th Air Rescue Wing.
As the phone rang, she looked at Callie's notebooks on the passenger seat. She flipped one open. A bunch of papers slid out. She grabbed them before they fell to the floor.
She stopped still in the golden sunlight. Under her hand was a sheet of high-quality stationery. It was an invitation, and it had Callie's neat handwriting on it. In faultless script, at the center of the page, was a single line.
You've been very bad. Welcome to the Dirty Secrets Club.
Jo drove through the gate at Moffett Field. Her mind was
elsewhere.
The Dirty Secrets Club. Was it a joke? Was it the source of the game Geli Meyer wanted to play?
Did it have anything to do with Callie Harding's death?
She thought about David Yoshida, Maki, Callie—and Geli Meyer begging stop it. She felt a crawling certainty that somebody else was in line to get hurt, and soon.
The smell of aviation fuel brought her back harshly.
Moffett Field is a massive installation beside San Francisco Bay. Originally a naval air station, today the airfield hosts Onizuka Air Force Station and NASA's Ames Research Center. It's where NASA monitors satellite and shuttle launches. It looked like a college campus, with green lawns and Spanish-style buildings cloistered around a quad. But out near the runway, on the sharp end of the business, was the 129th Air Rescue Wing.
Jo pulled up in front of the Wing's utilitarian headquarters building. A giant Hercules aircraft and a couple of Pave Hawk helicopters were parked nearby. As part of the California Air National Guard, the wing did double duty. Its peacetime mission was SAR—search and rescue, on land and at sea, often in the most dangerous circumstances. Its military mission was CSAR. Combat search and rescue. In wartime it became an arm of the air force's pararescue service. The people who served here were tough and dedicated. The PJs, para-
rescuemen, were the elite of the service, medics who would rappel, skydive, or leap into boiling seas in the middle of a firefight to evacuate casualties. Its motto was painted on the doors of the hangar, six feet high: that others may live.
This was the unit that had been called out to the rough ocean west of the Golden Gate the night Maki Prichingo's boat caught fire.
Jo parked the truck and sat for a moment, staring at the headquarters building. Just stay even. Walk through that door and do your job. Does this have to be hard?
"As if you didn't know," she said, and got out.
A salt breeze was blowing off the bay. It was cold, and carried the greasy punk of jet exhaust. She slammed the door, locked the truck, and saw Gabriel Quintana walk out of the building toward her.
He was wearing civvies—jeans, hiking boots, a white thermal under a black work shirt—and his stride was relaxed. He had to be heading off duty. His eyes were hidden behind cool-dude shades, and told her nothing of what he was thinking.
He smiled. "Dr. Beckett."
It was an unguarded smile, welcoming and warm. He looked lean and athletic, but then PJs were supposed to be inhumanly fit. The way he walked was effortless to the point of grace. His brown hair was short but riding the outer limits of air force regulation.
She strolled toward him. "Looking a little shaggy, Sergeant."
The smile broadened. "I'm all about rebellion. So go wild, call me Mister."
That was a surprise. "You mustered out?"
"Completed my tour. Staying on as a civilian."
He stopped three feet from her, the smile lingering on his face. His tranquillity was electric.
"You're looking well," he said.
"You too." He seemed taller than she recalled. "I need to talk to you. It's about the burning boat."
The smile faded. He took his time answering. "There's a place across the freeway in Mountain View. Enchiladas verdes; I'm starved. I haven't eaten since last night."
She looked at her watch, flustered.
"I can talk if I eat," he said. "My treat
."
Behind her, an aircraft started its engines. She stared at him, debating. The plane's propellers cycled up to a loud drone. It seemed to be right at her back, and felt as though a blade was spinning over her neck.
"It's on me," she said.
He didn't move, didn't comment on how long it had been, on the circumstances under which they had last seen each other. But she sensed that he knew she hated the sound of aircraft engines, and that she felt lost standing there on that tarmac. He pulled his keys from his jeans pocket.
"I'll follow you," she said.
His smile returned, as if he knew that was unlikely to happen.
The Mexican place was a taqueria in an old section of Mountain View. The decor consisted of picnic tables under a corrugated metal awning. Mariachi music blared from a transistor radio. On the plus side, it boasted a view of the train tracks. The Caltrain plowed by, loud and huge. Quintana leaned on the counter, waiting for their food.
Jo raised her voice to be heard over the thunder of the locomotive. "Maki Prichingo. Tell me about what happened that night."
From behind his sunglasses he watched the cooks in the kitchen. "The call came in Saturday at nineteen hundred hours. An oil tanker spotted a boat on fire west of the Golden Gate. They tried to raise it via radio. Got no joy, so they alerted the authorities."
"How'd you get the call?"
He smiled thinly. "We didn't. The coast guard got the call."
The coast guard and the 129th sometimes scrapped for turf. The rivalry was fed by pride, adrenaline, and the desire to help. Doctors were no different.
"But the coasties' birds were tied up with a rescue in the bay. We sortied at nineteen twenty. Single Pave Hawk with two PJs aboard, one of them being me."
The cook set their food on the counter. Quintana's order could have served a family of five. He piled it onto his forearm and both hands like a waiter, and carried it to their table. Jo observed, amused. It seemed impossible that one human being could consume it, especially a man with 3 percent body fat.
He unloaded it. "What?"
"Who's all that food for? Sasquatch? And Sasquatch's rugby team?"
"Night training last night. Mountain SAR."
Jo sat down. Her two taquitos looked like a dollhouse meal next to his banquet. Quintana dug in, downing an enchilada in four bites.
"Weather was good, and we had a fix on the sailboat's location. The pilots were flying with night-vision goggles, but didn't need them. We saw the fire from miles away."
"The boat was still burning?"
"The fire had died down, but clearly the boat had been fully involved. The pilot couldn't raise anybody aboard by radio. We descended to the water on a fast rope and swam over. Aren't you going to eat?"
Absentmindedly she nodded. "Then what?"
"There was a fixed ladder on the port side, and we climbed aboard."
"With the boat on fire."
He propped his sunglasses on top of his head. "We're not the fire department. We weren't there to extinguish the blaze."
His eyes were darker than brown, almost black. Weather and wear had deepened the laugh lines in his bronze skin. He looked completely intense and completely calm. She imagined he had looked exactly the same as he climbed onto Maki's blazing boat. She'd known he was cool under pressure from the moment she met him.
"It was a calculated risk, but honestly, not everything explodes the way it does in Hollywood movies. It was a sailboat. And if the vessel began to sink, well, I do know how to swim."
He spread his hands, a think about it gesture.
To qualify as pararescuemen, recruits had to swim eighteen hundred meters, part of it while fighting off instructors who were trying to drown them.
In spite of herself, she smiled. "Sorry. You were saying?"
"The fire had almost burned itself out. The heat was intense, but that was a big mother of a boat, and the ladder was barely warm to the touch."
He drank his iced tea and ate half of another enchilada. His face clouded. "We found the victims next to each other in the main cabin."
For the first time, he hesitated.
"Just tell me what you saw. Anything and everything," she said.
He took his time, as though only reluctantly moving his mind back to the scene. "One man, his face was still recognizable. Eyes open, mouth open, soot under his nose."
So he'd been breathing smoke before he died. "And the other?"
He glanced at nearby tables. None of the other customers was listening, but he lowered his voice.
"Burned beyond recognition. His body was half buried under debris, still smoking."
"Pugilistic position?" she said.
"Yes."
Burnt corpses often curl into a boxer's pose, with arms and fists tucked under the chin. It doesn't mean the victim had retreated in pain to a fetal position. The heat of the fire dehydrates the body's muscles and causes them to contract, often after death.
Quintana looked at the train tracks, and then at her. He had stopped looking at his food.
"I've seen choppers that were downed by enemy fire. They'd burned, the crew was injured or dead from blast wounds and shrapnel—" His voice stayed steady, but he seemed to be growing ever more still. "I know what various catastrophic wounds look like."
PJs were trained paramedics, experienced at performing triage and minor surgery in the field. She let him talk his way to the issue. A man at the next table eyed him.
"But it didn't take a medic to see what had happened on the boat. The fire didn't kill either of them."
"Smoke inhalation?"
"Smoke exhalation, maybe."
She gave him a quizzical look.
"From the shotgun," he said. "The one that blew their heads off."
10
" They were shot to death?" Jo said.
Quintana eyed her carefully, as though framing his words to protect her from them. Or to protect himself from the memory.
"Blood and brain matter was sprayed all over the cabin wall. The shotgun was propped on one guy's lap, with the barrel jammed under his chin."
"And the other man?"
"Side of the head, close range."
It sounded like a classic example of murder-suicide. "You're sure?"
"The shotgun was a twelve gauge. Ever seen Terminator 2?"
The man at the next table stood up. "That's it." He grabbed his plate. "What's wrong with you people? You have any idea about how to behave around folks who aren't body snatchers?"
He stalked off in disgust. Abashed, Jo gave Quintana an oops expression. He raised a hand, chagrined, and called, "Sorry." The man kept going.
Quintana put a hand to his chest and feigned hurt feelings. "I don't snatch bodies. I return them, almost always. And you only excavate their brains."
"And not even with a shovel," she said.
He smiled, but only briefly. She set down her fork. She wasn't hungry anymore.
The burning boat: two men, two blasts to the head. Paired deaths, Lieutenant Tang had called them.
Could it be anything besides murder-suicide? Double suicide, or perhaps double murder? Could the boat have been boarded by attackers? Had somebody else killed Maki and William Willets and staged it to look like a lovers' death pact?
She took out her notebook and a pen. "What did he look like—the man holding the shotgun on his lap?"
Quintana raised an eyebrow.
"Aside from dead," she said.
"Forties, East Asian. Shaved head, what was left of it."
Maki. That suggested the fashion designer had shot Willets, then himself.
"Did you see anything else onboard—anything that could help explain what happened?" she said.
"Saw it, smelled it, felt the heat."
"Of what?"
"Gasoline."
"From the fuel tank?"
"Everywhere. On the deck, in the cabin."
"Arson?" She wondered if Maki had shot Willets, set the boat on fire, and then ended his
own life. "You think the gasoline was used as an accelerant?"
"And more. I think somebody was playing a game."
"What?" she said.
"We got off the boat, and fast. We couldn't help the victims, and it was clearly a crime scene. We checked that nobody else was aboard, then swam clear and the Pave Hawk hauled us out."
His eyes were sharp, with the black gleam of arrowheads. "Smoke was billowing from the boat, but the downwash from our rotors blew it away and made the flames kick up again. I looked down and saw it. On the deck of the boat. A word had been written in gasoline and ignited."
She seemed to feel a sharp finger scrape down her spine. "What word?"
"Pray."
She felt clammy. Pray. It hit such a wrong note that she could practically hear it, low and nauseating. And then the sound turned real. It rolled under her thoughts and shifted the concrete beneath her feet.
Her drink hopped. The picnic table slid sideways.
"Gabe."
The table jerked back the other way. The corrugated roof began chattering.
She jumped to her feet. So did he. The roof flexed and bounced on the poles, keening as if in fright. She grabbed his arm and pulled him with her as she moved. Zero to outside, outside now, in two seconds. Into the sun, toward the parking lot, away from roofs, walls, power lines. The ground spasmed, back, forth.
"Jo. Whoa. Slow down."
His arm was around her shoulder. He pulled her to a stop in the parking lot. She felt her fingers digging into his forearm, but couldn't get them to let go.
"Ride it out," he said. "We're okay."
On the street, cars pulled to the curb. Telephone poles swayed. Phone lines and electrical cables swung back and forth as if playing a giant's game of double Dutch.
She planted her feet wide, ground-surfing. Under the sawblade moan of the corrugated roof, glass crashed to the concrete and shattered.
As quickly as it had started it faded away, until they were left standing tight against each other, holding their breath.
"Four pointer, max," she said.
The quake had been nothing but a baby. At the taqueria the other customers crawled out from under their tables. A young cook tentatively peeped over the counter.
"You don't go for duck and cover?" Gabe said.
