12th of Never Read online

  Lily’s gaze wandered again as she took in the rows of law books, the many-paned windows, the heavy furnishings, and the landscape paintings. Yuki would have given a million bucks to know what she was thinking.

  “Who else lived in this house?”

  “Marcia and Alan.”

  “Do you know their last names?”

  “Nopey-nope-nope.”

  “Are you related to them? Are they family members?”

  “No way!”

  “So help me out, Lily. Tell me all about these people and how you came to be living with them. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Yuki, Kinsela, and Judge Nussbaum waited for the little girl to elaborate on her one-word answer. Finally, she stopped swinging her legs and began to speak as if she were reading or playing a part.

  “They had masks. Different ones on different days. Like devil masks. Like pig masks. They told me their names but I never saw their faces. I had my own room and a bathroom and I had a computer for games. I had three meals a day and a snack before bedtime.”

  “Could you use a phone?”

  “Nopey-nope-nope.”

  “You were kidnapped,” the judge said.

  Lily shrugged. “They didn’t hurt me.” Then, “I miss Pokey.”

  “Did your father have anything to do with this, Lily? For instance, was he keeping you safe? Is that what he told you?”

  “My daddy didn’t know where I was or he would have come to get me. He loves me. He would have given Marcia and Alan a beating.”

  “Did Marcia and Alan take you home this morning, Lily?”

  “When can I see my mommy?”

  Chapter 54

  I PARKED THE Explorer three feet away from the curb on Lake Street, but I was so dirty-dog-tired that I didn’t have the strength to park it again.

  I opened the apartment door, and when Martha didn’t throw herself at me, I tiptoed around the entranceway to the living room. Joe was in his big leather recliner, Julie in his arms with her head on his shoulder, both of them sound asleep. Martha lifted her head, flapped her tail, then put her face back down on Joe’s slipper.

  I couldn’t imagine a warmer welcome.

  I ditched my gun, phone, jacket, and shoes—just dropped all of it on a chair. Then I hit the soft leather sofa with the puffy cushions, drew up the chenille throw, and settled in.

  I was dreaming about Julie wearing a big-girl party dress and blowing out birthday candles when I heard Joe speaking. I opened my eyes a crack, saw that lamps were lit, and that it was dark outside. I must have gotten about four hours of sleep.

  Joe was saying into the phone, “Okay. Tomorrow morning, nine a.m. We’ll be there.”

  He hung up looking grim and walked with the baby to the kitchen, where he heated up a bottle in the microwave. When the oven beeped, he tested the milk, then started back across the room with the baby.

  “Honey, who was that on the phone?” I asked.

  “Hey, you were really out. Do you feel better?”

  “Was that Dr. Gordon?”

  “Uh-huh. We have an appointment tomorrow morning.”

  “Did she get the tests back?”

  “I think so. But she would have told me if anything was wrong. The baby is warm,” he said.

  “How warm?”

  “She keeps fluctuating between normal and a hundred and three. She goes up. She goes down. Our roller-coaster baby.”

  “Joe. This can’t be right. I’m really getting scared. Actually, I’m way past scared. I’m terrified.”

  I rolled Julie’s crib into our bedroom, next to my side of the bed. It was another night when supposedly nothing was really wrong with Julie, but I didn’t believe it. I’d been told that babies get fevers, that all new mothers worry this way, but I felt alarmed every time I touched her skin.

  I was hovering uselessly over Julie’s crib when my phone rang. I didn’t answer, and then I didn’t answer it when it rang again. It had been a long time since a phone call had brought me good news.

  If I didn’t pick up the phone, maybe the caller would go away.

  Chapter 55

  AFTER THE PHONE had rung three times in five minutes, I gave in and dug it out from under the pile of clothes on the chair. I looked at the caller ID.

  “For God’s sake. Whose life is this, anyway?”

  Joe said, “Who is it?”

  “The bad news bear.”

  I said, “Boxer,” into the mouthpiece and he said, “You’re not going to believe this.”

  Julie set up a wail from her crib. Her voice was pitched at extra loud. I could hardly hear Brady’s voice.

  “I’m a little busy right now, boss,” I said.

  “Remember Randolph Fish?”

  “Did he die?”

  “No, he woke up.”

  Randolph Fish was a brutal, clever, truly diabolical killer who had been linked to nine dead or missing college girls over a three-year span, all on the West Coast.

  The remains of five of the young women had been found in wooded areas and remote industrial locations. The victims had been tortured and mutilated, each dying by different means. Bludgeoning. Strangulation. Stabbing.

  The other three girls had never been found or heard from again, but they matched the killer’s type—petite, dark-haired, and very trusting. Because of the different locations and manners of death, it had taken years to connect the dead and missing girls to one killer.

  And then the killer made a mistake.

  A fingerprint found on a car belonging to one of the dead girls matched that of Randolph Fish, an itinerant bartender who had been arrested in San Francisco a month before for assault and then released.

  After victim number nine, Sandra Brody, was abducted from the campus of the University of San Francisco three years ago and taken to whereabouts unknown, Jacobi and I were asked to work with the FBI. Jacobi and I joined the stakeout in the Mission.

  It was about nine at night, windy and cold. We were watching two bars and a movie theater on 16th when Fish came out of the theater.

  He saw an FBI vehicle and, like a praying mantis nabbing a bug, Fish snatched a woman at random who was also leaving the theater. He held a knife under her throat and shouted to the agents in the black SUV, “I’ll kill her. Believe me, I will.”

  I was on the theater side of the street, crouched between two cars, and I had a clear shot at the back of Randolph Fish’s head. I couldn’t see the hostage’s face, only the line of her throat and the blade pressing against it.

  I stood up, held my gun with both hands, and shouted, “Fish! Let her go or I’ll blow your brains to the moon.”

  I hoped like hell that he would obey because I didn’t know if my aim was good enough to take him out before he killed his hostage. Luckily, I didn’t have to find out.

  The human shield broke free. Fish bolted into the street toward oncoming traffic. I ran, too, yelling, “Stop or I’ll shoot.”

  He must’ve heard the conviction in my voice.

  He stopped running, and when I told him to drop to the ground and interlace his hands behind his neck, he did it. He laughed at me when I kicked the knife into the gutter. When Jacobi cuffed him, Fish told Jacobi he was so fat he was headed for a heart attack.

  Frankly, I couldn’t believe what Fish looked like in person. I had to shake my head and reorder my thoughts. But never mind his appearance—he was down. The FBI took him into custody and we were all jubilant.

  It was frigid and I was shaking from the cold. It was one of the best moments of my life.

  Chapter 56

  THE NIGHT WE captured Randolph Fish, Ronald Parker, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco field office, said that Fish would be more responsive to a female interviewer than to the men working the case.

  “He’s all about control,” Parker said. “He’s like a drug addict, and his drug of choice is dominating women. He’ll try to get under your skin, Lindsay. If there’s any chance of getting Sandra Brody back
, you’ll have to get under his.”

  I interrogated Randolph Fish for fifteen hours on each of three consecutive days. I used every interview technique I knew. I threatened him. I negotiated with him. When these methods failed, I shut off the camera and I threw the man to the floor. I kicked him nine times, once for each of his victims.

  Fish laughed and told me what a cute piece I was when I was mad. He had gotten under my skin after all, and he never told me or anyone else what happened to Sandra Brody.

  Fish was tried, convicted on five counts of homicide in the first degree, and sent to the federal prison at Atwater, where he was locked in a nice private cell.

  A year later, he was on the way to the infirmary for shooting pains in his chest when a riot broke out and a guard was shot. Fish made a break for an exit—and was clubbed across the back of the head.

  He slipped into a persistent coma and was handcuffed to a bed in the prison wing of a nearby hospital, where he had been for the last two years.

  I’d long hoped that Randolph Fish would wake up with his memory intact. There were four families who wanted to know where their daughters were buried, and nine families who wanted to watch Randolph Fish die in the chair.

  Now I gripped the phone and said to Brady, “What’s his condition?”

  “He spoke in full sentences,” Brady said. “He told the warden he’ll take the feds to the missing bodies if he gets a deal, and if he gets to talk to you. Do you want in on this, Boxer? Ron Parker asked for your assistance.”

  I didn’t want to say no to Ron Parker.

  “I’ll do it,” I told Brady, “but I can’t make it tomorrow. I just can’t.”

  “Fish could go back into a coma. It happens, you know. Parker’s not going to wait,” he said.

  “That’s okay.”

  “Are you all right, Lindsay?”

  “I’m absolutely terrific. Joe and I were just saying that these are the best days of our lives.”

  “Uh-huh. Go feed your baby. I’ll ask Jacobi to call Parker. See what he can do.”

  Chapter 57

  JOE, JULIE, AND I were in Dr. Gordon’s office promptly at nine the next morning. I looked down into my baby’s sweet face, hoping for a smile, some little sign that would make me say, “She’s fine.”

  “I’m not so happy with the results of the blood test,” Dr. Gordon said.

  I tried to read her inscrutable face. I realized that Dr. Gordon was younger than I am. And for the first time, that really worried me. Did she have enough experience to help Julie? Was she the best doctor in the world?

  “What about her blood tests? What’s wrong?”

  “Her white blood cells are abnormal in shape.”

  Abnormal? I grabbed the desk with both hands, as if to stop myself from lifting off and rocketing away from the planet. I had never heard more terrifying words in my life.

  “What do you mean by ‘abnormal’?” I said.

  Joe shielded the baby from me and from what the doctor was saying. He said, softly, “What’s the worst-case scenario?”

  Dr. Gordon said, “Let’s not go to worst cases. We’re not at that point, not even close. I want to check Julie into the hospital and get a full clinical workup,” the doctor said. “I think she may have an infection, but I want a second opinion.”

  “An infection like the flu? Is that what you mean?” I said, my grip on the desk relaxing a tad.

  “I think so, but I want other doctors to look at her. Look, Lindsay, she’s not gaining weight. She’s running intermittent fevers. It could be just how Julie is, or maybe she picked up something from one of the firemen who delivered her. But I’m guessing.

  “I want to test for everything, aggressively. We should do X-rays, biopsies, the works.”

  I shouted, “Oh, my God. You don’t think she has the flu. What is this? What do you think she has?”

  Joe shushed me and put his hand on Julie’s head.

  Dr. Gordon said, “I’m going to make sure that next time you ask me what’s wrong, I can give you an unqualified answer. California Women’s has a wonderful pediatric facility. I’d like you to bring her over—now.”

  I had been worried for weeks, and now I thought those weeks had been wasted, that we should have pushed harder for answers.

  I blamed myself for not overriding Joe and taking Julie to the hospital the first time she had a fever. I should have followed my instincts. I should have done it.

  “I’ll meet you at admitting,” Dr. Gordon said.

  I held the baby as Joe drove. He looked drained. Gray. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, Linds. We won’t have to wonder anymore, and Julie will get better.”

  Yeah? And how did Joe know that?

  We found a spot in the outpatient parking, carried the baby through the pale stone lobby, and took the elevator to pediatrics.

  We got through the check-in procedure without either one of us blowing up or going crazy. We met the radiologist, who handed Julie to a nurse, who snapped a bracelet around her tiny wrist—and took her away.

  Dr. Gordon said, “She’s in very good hands. I’ll call you as soon as I have something to tell you.”

  “We’ll be right here, in the waiting room,” I said.

  “This will take a couple of days,” Dr. Gordon told us. “Please go home. There’s nothing you can do for your daughter by waiting here when you live ten blocks away. You can look in on her tonight.”

  I had a good hard cry in the hospital lobby. Joe held me tight, and then he drove us home.

  Chapter 58

  AT SIX THIRTY the next morning, my former partner, chief of police Warren Jacobi, swooped down on Lake Street in his shiny black sedan. He pulled up to where I was waiting for him outside our apartment building, leaned across the seat, and opened the passenger-side door for me.

  He took a look at my face and said, “Good morning, sunshine.”

  “Don’t start with me, Jacobi. I haven’t slept.”

  “You worried about our meeting with Fish?”

  “I meant I haven’t slept since Julie was born.”

  “Well, you do look like hell.” He laughed. “On you, it looks good.”

  I pulled a face, got into the car, took a container out of the cup holder, and pried off the lid with my shaking hands. Jacobi was a worn-looking fifty-five, white-haired, jowly, and, to my eyes, beautiful.

  “Julie is in the hospital,” I said.

  “Shit. What for? What’s wrong with her?”

  The coffee was black, two sugars. Jacobi knew how I like it. I strapped in, then told my former partner everything I knew about what was wrong with Julie.

  I didn’t know much.

  Jacobi listened as we cruised up Lake Street, the nose of the car pointed east toward Modesto and then south to the U.S. penitentiary in Atwater.

  Jacobi said how sorry he was that the baby was sick, and he also told me that I always worry too much and that everything would be fine.

  “Of course, when you stop worrying, that’s when things really turn to shit.”

  “I’ve really missed you, Jacobi. Like a migraine.”

  He laughed and got me to do it, too.

  It was almost like old times.

  During the ten years I worked with Jacobi, we logged innumerable twenty-hour days in a squad car, arrested a few dozen killers and unrepentant dirtbags, and we both took bullets one bad night in an unlit alley in the Tenderloin.

  We could have died and almost did.

  A year later, Jacobi stood in for my dead father and gave me away to Joe Molinari. I tripped down the petal-strewn path, fumbled the wedding ring, and Jacobi laughed out loud on the best day of my life. We’ve had hilarious times and horrific ones, but we’ve never doubted that we’re friends forever.

  As Jacobi drove, I told him, “I’ve never been so scared, and I mean never. You don’t know what love is until you have a sick baby.”

  Joe had insisted that I go to work and he’d promised he’d sit at the hospital all day
, all night, never leave Julie alone. I’d left the house only a half hour before, but I called Joe anyway.

  “Just—call me if you learn anything, anything at all.” “I will, sweetie. You know I will.”

  After I hung up, Jacobi and I talked about the Faye Farmer case and the ugly shootings foreseen by the so-called clairvoyant professor.

  And we talked about Randy Fish.

  Jacobi said, “I’m glad that sack of crap is alive and can still use his shit for brains. Doubly glad he’s back in maximum security.”

  In another couple of hours, we were going to be talking to that sack of crap. I hoped that, having almost died, Randy Fish would feel some compassion for the parents of the missing girls. He was on death row. He had nothing to lose by telling us where he’d disposed of their bodies.

  Chapter 59

  THE LANDSCAPE SURROUNDING the penitentiary is remarkable for its emptiness. If you stand in one spot and turn a full 360 degrees, you’ll see the stark prison buildings, a few distant farmhouses, and dusty flatlands out to the horizon.

  We met Ron Parker at the front gate. He told us that Fish would speak only with me and there was a condition. I had to apologize for the way I treated him.

  “Really? He comes out of a coma after two years and that’s what he wants?”

  “That’s what he said, Lindsay. He wants to make a deal, but you know, he’s a manipulative prick. I think you should apologize, see if you can get some kind of rapport going. This might be our best and only chance to find out where he put those girls.”

  One hour and many checkpoints later, I entered a small room with one glass wall. On the other side of the glass was a maximum-security hospital room. Randy Fish was wearing a hospital gown, sitting up in bed, reading a book.

  I felt like Clarice Starling meeting Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.

  But Randolph Fish was no Anthony Hopkins. He wasn’t a David Berkowitz or a Ted Bundy, either. At close to thirty years old, Randolph Fish looked like a teenage movie star.