10th Anniversary wmc-10 Read online

  10th Anniversary

  ( Women's Murder Club - 10 )

  James Patterson

  Maxine Paetro

  Detective Lindsay Boxer's long-awaited wedding celebration becomes a distant memory when she is called to investigate a horrendous crime: a badly injured teenage girl is left for dead, and her newborn baby is nowhere to be found. Lindsay discovers that not only is there no trace of the criminals - but that the victim may be keeping secrets.

  At the same time, Assistant District Attorney Yuki Castellano is prosecuting the biggest case of her life - a woman who has been accused of murdering her husband in front of her two young children. Yuki's career rests on a guilty verdict, so when Lindsay finds evidence that could save the defendant, she is forced to choose. Should she trust her best friend or follow her instinct?

  Lindsay's every move is watched by her new boss, Lieutenant Jackson Brady, and when the pressure to find the baby starts interfering with her new marriage to Joe, she wonders if she'll ever be able to start a family of her own.

  James Patterson

  10th Anniversary

  Women's Murder Club — 10

  For Isabelle Patterson

  and Madeline Paetro

  Acknowledgments

  Our thanks and gratitude to New York attorney Philip R. Hoffman, Captain Richard J. Conklin of the Stamford, Connecticut, Police Department, and Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk, Medical Examiner of Trumbull County, Ohio, for generously sharing their time and wealth of experience.

  Our thanks, too, to our excellent researchers, Ingrid Taylar, Ellie Shurtleff, Melissa Pevy, and Lynn Colomello. And to Mary Jordan, who, as always, manned the control tower.

  Prologue. WITH BELLS ON

  One

  THIS WAS THE DAY I was getting married.

  Our suite at the Ritz in Half Moon Bay was in chaos. My best friends and I had stripped down to our underwear, and our street clothes had been flung over the furniture. Sorbet-colored dresses hung from the moldings and door frames.

  The scene looked like a Degas painting of ballerinas before the curtain went up, or maybe a romanticized bordello in the Wild West. Jokes were cracked. Giddiness reigned — and then the door opened and my sister Catherine stepped in, wearing her brave face: a tight smile, pain visible at the corners of her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, Cat?” I asked.

  “He’s not here.”

  I blinked, tried to ignore the sharp pang of disappointment. I said sarcastically, “Well, there’s a shock.”

  Cat was talking about our father, Marty Boxer, who left home when we were kids and failed to show when my mom was dying. I’d seen him only twice in the past ten years and hadn’t missed him, but after he’d told Cat he’d come to my wedding, I’d had an expectation.

  “He said he would be here. He promised,” Cat said.

  I’m six years older than my sister and a century more jaded. I should have known better. I hugged her.

  “Forget it,” I said. “He can’t hurt us. He’s nobody to us.”

  Claire, my best bosom buddy, sat up in bed, swung her legs over, and put her bare feet on the floor. She’s a large black woman and funny — acidly so. If she weren’t a pathologist, she could do stand-up comedy.

  “I’ll give you away, Lindsay,” she said. “But I want you back.”

  Cindy and I cracked up, and Yuki piped up, “I know who can stand in for Marty, that jerk.” She stepped into her pink satin dress, pulled it up over her tiny little bones, and zipped it herself. She said, “Be right back.”

  Getting things done was Yuki’s specialty. Don’t get in her way when she’s in gear. Even if she’s in the wrong gear.

  “Yuki, wait,” I called as she rushed out the door. I turned to Claire, saw that she was holding up what used to be called a foundation garment. It was boned and forbidding-looking.

  “I don’t mind wearing a dress that makes me look like a cupcake, but how in hell am I supposed to get into this?”

  “I love my dress,” said Cindy, fingering the peach-colored silk organza. She was probably the first bridesmaid in the world to express that sentiment, but Cindy was terminally lovesick. She turned her pretty face toward me and said dreamily, “You should get ready.”

  Two yards of creamy satin slid out of the garment bag. I wriggled into the strapless Vera Wang confection, then stood with my sister in front of the long freestanding mirror: a pair of tall brown-eyed blondes, looking so much like our dad.

  “Grace Kelly never looked so good,” said Cat, her eyes welling up.

  “Dip your head, gorgeous,” said Cindy.

  She fastened her pearls around my neck.

  I did a little pirouette, and Claire caught my hand and twirled me under her arm. She said, “Do you believe it, Linds? I’m going to dance at your wedding.”

  She didn’t say “finally,” but she was right to think it, having lived through my roller-coaster, long-distance romance with Joe, punctuated by his moving to San Francisco to be with me, my house burning down, a couple of near-death experiences, and a huge diamond engagement ring that I’d kept in a drawer for most of a year.

  “Thanks for keeping the faith,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t call it faith, darling,” Claire cracked. “I never expected to see a miracle, let alone be part of one.”

  I gave her a playful jab on the arm. She ducked and feinted. The door opened and Yuki came in with my bouquet: a lavish bunch of peonies and roses tied with baby blue streamers.

  “This hankie belonged to my grandmother,” Cindy said, tucking a bit of lace into my cleavage, checking off the details. “Old, new, borrowed, blue. You’re good.”

  “I cued up the music, Linds,” said Yuki. “We’re on.”

  My God.

  Joe and I were really getting married.

  Two

  JACOBI MET ME in the hotel lobby, stuck out his elbow, and laughed out loud. Yuki had been right. Jacobi was the perfect stand-in Dad. I took his arm and he kissed my cheek.

  First time ever.

  “You look beautiful, Boxer. You know, more than usual.”

  Another first.

  Jacobi and I had spent so much time in a squad car together, we could almost read each other’s minds. But I didn’t have to be clairvoyant to read the love in his eyes.

  I grinned at him and said, “Thanks, Jacobi. Thanks a lot.”

  I squeezed his arm and we walked across an acre of marble, through tall French doors, and into my future.

  Jacobi had a limp and a wheeze, the remnants of a shooting a couple of years back in the Tenderloin. I’d thought we were both going to check out that night. But that was then.

  Now the warm, salty air embraced me. The great lawns flowed around the shining white gazebo and down to the bluff. The Pacific crashed against the cliff side, and the setting sun tinted the clouds a glowing whiskey pink that you could never capture on film. I’d never seen a more beautiful place.

  “Take it easy, now,” Jacobi said. “No sprinting down the aisle. Just keep step with the music.”

  “If you insist,” I said, laughing.

  Two blocks of chairs had been set up facing the gazebo, and the aisle had been cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. POLICE LINE. DO NOT CROSS.

  The tape had to have been Conklin’s idea. I was sure of it when he caught my eye and gave me a broad grin and a thumbs-up. Cat’s young daughters skipped down the grassy aisle tossing rose petals as the wedding march began. My best friends stepped out in time, and I followed behind them.

  Smiling faces turned to me. Charlie Clapper on the aisle, guys from the squad, and new and old friends were on the left. Five of Joe’s look-alike brothers and their families were on
my right. Joe’s parents turned to beam at me from the front row.

  Jacobi brought me up the gazebo steps to the altar and released my arm, and I looked up at my wonderful, handsome husband-to-be. Joe’s eyes connected with mine, and I knew without any doubt that the roller-coaster ride had been worth it. I knew this man so well. Our tested love was rich and deep and solid.

  Longtime family friend the Reverend Lynn Boyer put our hands together, Joe’s hand over mine, then whispered theatrically so that everyone could hear, “Enjoy this moment, Joseph. This is the last time you’ll have the upper hand with Lindsay.”

  Delighted laughter rang out and then hushed. With the sound of seagulls calling, Joe and I exchanged promises to love and cherish through good days and bad, through sickness and health, for as long as we both lived.

  Do you take this man to be your wedded husband?

  I do. I really do.

  There were nervous titters as I fumbled with Joe’s wedding band and it spun out of my hand. Joe and I both stooped, grabbed the ring at the same time, and held it between our fingers.

  “Steady, Blondie,” Joe said. “It only gets better from here.”

  I laughed, and when we resumed our positions, I got that gold band onto Joe’s finger. The Reverend Boyer told Joe he could kiss the bride, and my husband held my face between his hands.

  We kissed, and then again. And again. And again.

  There was wild applause and a surge of music.

  This was real. I was Mrs. Joseph Molinari. Joe took my hand and, grinning like little kids, we walked back up the aisle through a shower of rose petals.

  Book One. LITTLE BOY LOST

  Chapter 1

  A TEENAGE GIRL wearing a neon green plastic poncho, naked underneath, stumbled along a dark road. She was scared out of her mind and in pain, the cramps coming like repeated blows to her gut and getting worse. Blood had started coming out of her a while ago, and now it was running fast and hot down her legs.

  What had she done?

  People always told her she was a smart kid, but — and this was a fact — she’d made a horrible mistake, and if she didn’t get help soon, she was going to die.

  But where was she?

  She had the sense that she was walking in circles but getting nowhere. During the day, the area around Lake Merced was full of traffic — joggers, cyclists, a steady stream of cars on the road around the lake. But at night it was completely deserted. The darkness was bad enough, but now fog filled the basin. She couldn’t see farther than a few yards in front of her.

  And she was really scared.

  People had gone missing around here. There had been murders. Plenty of them.

  Her feet dragged. She really couldn’t lift them, and then she felt herself fading out, just leaving her body. She reached out to brace her fall, and her hand found the trunk of a tree. She gripped it with both hands and held on hard to the rough bark until she felt rooted in the black, moonless night.

  Oh my God. Where am I now?

  Two cars had already passed her without stopping, and now she thought of abandoning her plan to flag down a car and return to the house. They were gone. She could sleep. Maybe the blood would stop flowing if she could lie down — but she was so lost. She didn’t know which way to turn.

  The girl stumbled forward, looking for light, any light.

  Blood was running faster out of her body, dripping down her legs, and she felt so faint that her legs hardly held her up.

  As she pushed herself forward, she stubbed her toe on something hard and unforgiving, a root or a stone, and she pitched forward. She put out her hands, bracing for the fall.

  Her chin and knees and palms took the brunt of it, but she was all right. Panting from the pain, the girl got to her feet.

  She could make out the trees along the roadside, the eucalyptus and the pines looming overhead. Grasses scratched at her arms and legs as she staggered through them.

  She imagined a car stopping, or a house coming into view. She imagined how she would tell the story. Would she have a chance to do that? Please. She couldn’t die now. She was only fifteen years old.

  A dog barked in the distance and the girl changed course and headed toward that sound. A dog meant a house, a phone, a car, a hospital.

  She was thinking of her room, of being safe there. She saw her bed and her desk and the pictures on the wall and her phone — oh, man, if only she still had her phone — and that’s when her foot turned over, her ankle twisting, and she went down again, falling really hard, skinning half of her body.

  This was too much. Too much.

  She stayed down this time. Everything hurt so much. She made a pillow of her arms and just rested her head. Maybe if she took a little nap. Yeah, maybe some sleep was what she needed and then, in the morning … when the sun came up …

  It took a long moment to understand that the dull light growing brighter in the fog was a pair of headlights coming toward her.

  She put up her hand and there was a squeal of brakes.

  A woman’s voice said, “Oh my God. Are you hurt?”

  “Help me,” she said. “I need help.”

  “Stay with me,” said the woman’s voice. “Don’t go to sleep, young lady. I’m calling nine one one. Look at me. Keep your eyes open.”

  “I’ve lost my baby,” the girl said.

  And then she didn’t feel any more pain.

  Chapter 2

  RAIN WAS BATTERING the hood and sheeting down the windshield as I pulled my ancient Explorer into the lot next to the Medical Examiner’s Office on Harriet Street, right behind the Hall of Justice. I had some anxiety about returning to work after taking time off to get married.

  In a few minutes, I was going to have some catching up to do, and then there was a new fact I would have to deal with.

  I would be reporting to a new lieutenant.

  I was prepared for that — as much as I could be.

  I pulled up the collar of my well-used blue blazer and made a wild, wet dash for the back entrance of the Hall, the gray granite building that housed the Justice Department, criminal court, two jails, and the Southern Station of the SFPD.

  I badged Kevin at the back door, then took the stairs at a jog. When I got to the third floor, I opened the stairwell door to the Homicide Division and pushed through the double-hinged gate to the squad room.

  It was a zoo.

  I said, “Hey, there,” to Brenda, who stood up and gave me a hug and a paper towel.

  “I wish you so much happiness,” she said.

  I thanked Brenda, promised wedding pictures, and then mopped my face and hair. I took a visual inventory of who was on the job at 7:45 a.m.

  The bullpen was packed.

  The night shift was straightening up, sinking refuse into trash baskets, and a half-dozen day-shift cops were waiting for their desks. Last time I was here, Jacobi still occupied what we laughingly call the corner office: a ten-foot-square glass cubicle overlooking the James Lick Freeway.

  Since then, Jacobi had been bumped upstairs to chief of police, and the new guy, Jackson Brady, had scored the lieutenant’s job.

  I had a little history with Brady. He had transferred to San Francisco from Miami PD only a month before, and in his first weeks as a floater, he had shown heroism in the field. I worked with him on the explosive multiple homicide case that put him on the short list for Jacobi’s old job.

  I’d been offered the job, too, thanks very much, but I’d turned it down. I’d already held down the corner office for a few years, until I got sick of the administrative overload: the budgets, payrolls, meetings with everyone, and layers of bureaucratic bull.

  Brady could have the job with my blessing.

  I just hoped he’d let me do mine.

  I saw Brady through the walls of his cube. His white-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he wore a shoulder holster over a starched blue cotton shirt that stretched across his massive chest.

  He looked up and signaled for
me to come to his office. When I got there, he hung up the phone. Reaching across the desk that was once mine, he shook my hand and congratulated me.

  “Are you using Boxer or Molinari?” he asked me.

  “Boxer.”

  “Well, have a seat, Sergeant Boxer,” he said, waving me toward the chair across from his desk. “I got a call from Major Case Division about ten minutes ago. They’re short on manpower and asked for help. I want you and Conklin to check it out.”

  “The case is a homicide?” I asked.

  “Could be. Or maybe not. Right now it’s an open case. Your open case.”

  What kind of bull was this?

  Step out of line for a couple of weeks, and the only open case was a spillover from another unit? Or was Brady testing me — alpha-dog management style?

  “Conklin has the case file,” Brady said. “Keep me in the loop. And welcome back, Boxer.”

  Welcome back, indeed.

  I showed myself out, feeling like all eyes in the squad were on me as I crossed the room to find my partner.

  Chapter 3

  DR. ARI RIFKIN was intense and busy, judging from the incessant buzz of her pager. Still, she seemed eager to brief me and my partner, Richard Conklin, aka Inspector Hottie. Conklin scribbled in his notebook as Dr. Rifkin talked.

  “Her name is Avis Richardson, age fifteen. She was hemorrhaging when she was brought into the ER last night,” the doctor said, wiping her wire-rimmed specs with her coattail.

  “From the looks of her, she delivered a baby within the past thirty-six hours. She got herself into grave trouble by running and falling down — too much activity too soon after giving birth.”

  “How’d she get here?” Conklin asked.

  “A couple — uh, here’s their names — John and Sarah McCann, found Avis lying in the street. Thought she’d been hit by a car. They told the police that they don’t know her at all.”