Women's Murder Club [03] 3rd Degree Page 12

  I blinked, then rolled over to the night table and fumbled for my phone. “Claire. What’s wrong?”

  “Thank God you’re home.” Her voice was tense, unusual for Claire. “It’s Jill. I’m at her house, Lindsay. She’s not here.”

  “She had a trial. Did you try the office? She’s probably working late.”

  “Of course I tried the office,” Claire shot back. “Jill never showed up today.”

  Chapter 62

  I BOLTED UP, confused but also afraid. It didn’t make sense. “She said she had a trial, Claire. I’m sure of it.”

  “She did have a trial, Lindsay. She just didn’t show. They’ve been looking for her all day.”

  I pressed my back against the headboard. When I thought about the possibility of Jill bagging work, not calling in, it didn’t fly.

  “That’s not Jill,” I said.

  “No,” Claire answered, “that’s not Jill at all.”

  Suddenly I was worried. “Claire, do you know what’s going on? What happened with Steve?”

  Claire answered, “No. What are you saying?”

  “Stay where you are,” I said.

  I hung up the phone and sat there for a second. “I’m sorry, Joe, I gotta go.”

  A few minutes later I was driving at full speed down Twenty-third over to Castro. I ran through the possibilities: Jill was depressed. She needed some space. She’d gone to her parents’. Any of them could be true. But Jill would never—never—not show up for court.

  I finally pulled up in front of her town house on Buena Vista Park. The first thing I noticed was Jill’s sapphire blue 535 still in the driveway.

  Claire was waiting on the landing and we hugged. “She doesn’t answer,” she said. “I rang the bell, banged on the door.”

  I looked around, didn’t see anyone. “I hate to do this.” Then I broke a pane in the front door and reached inside. I was thinking that Steve could have gotten inside, too—easily.

  Immediately, the alarm sounded. I knew the code, 63442, Jill’s state employee number. I punched it in, trying to make up my mind if the alarm being armed was a good sign.

  I flicked on a light. I called, “Jill?”

  Then I heard Otis barking. The brown lab ran from inside the kitchen.

  “Hey, boy.” I patted his back. He seemed happy to see a familiar face. “Where’s Mommy?” I asked. I knew one thing. Jill would never leave him. Steve maybe, but not Otis.

  “Jill… Steve?” I called around the house. “It’s Lindsay. And Claire.”

  Jill had just re-done the place in the past year. Patterned couches, melon-colored walls, a tufted leather ottoman for a coffee table. The house was dark and silent. We checked around the familiar rooms. No reply. No Jill.

  Claire exhaled and said, “This is really starting to give me the creeps.”

  I nodded and squeezed her shoulder. “Me too.

  “C’mon,” I said to Claire, “I’m going up to check upstairs. We’re going to check.”

  Climbing the stairs, I couldn’t put aside the thought of a crazed Steve charging out of some room like in some teenage horror movie. “Jill… Steve?” I called out again. I tugged at my gun just in case.

  Still no answer. The master bedroom lights were off. The big four-poster bed was made. Jill’s toiletries and makeup in the bathroom.

  When I last spoke with her she was going to bed. I was about to go back into the hallway when I saw it.

  Jill’s briefcase.

  Jill didn’t go anywhere without her “traveling office.” It was a running joke. She didn’t go to the beach without her goddamn work.

  I took a cloth and held it by the strap, loosely. I met Claire back in the hallway. She’d checked the other rooms. “Nothing…”

  “I don’t like this, Claire. Her car’s in the driveway.” My eyes drifted to her case. “This… She slept here, Claire. But she never left for work.”

  Chapter 63

  I HAD NO IDEA how to get in touch with Steve.

  It was late—who the hell knew where he was staying. And Jill had only been missing for the day. She could show up and be pissed over all the attention. There was nothing to do but wait and worry ourselves sick and, in my case, feel guilty.

  I called Cindy and she was there in fifteen minutes. Claire called Edmund and said she was going to stay for a while, maybe the night.

  We sat in Jill’s den, curled up on couches. There was always the chance she’d had a change of mind and gone to visit Steve, somewhere.

  Around eleven my cell phone rang. But it was only Jacobi, checking in, telling me no one in the Berkeley bars they’d checked admitted to recognizing Hardaway. Then we all sat around without speaking. I don’t even remember what time we dozed off.

  I woke a few times in the night, thought I heard something. “Jill?” But it wasn’t her.

  First thing in the morning, I went home. Joe had made the bed and left the apartment looking tidy. I showered and called in to the office to say I’d be late.

  An hour later I was down at Steve’s office in the Financial Center. I left the Explorer right there on the street. By the time I pushed through the office doors, I could barely control the panic I was feeling.

  Steve was right there, in reception. He was practically draped over the receptionist, sipping a coffee, his leg perched casually on a chair.

  “Where is she?” I said. I must’ve startled him because coffee splattered all over his pink Lacoste shirt.

  “What the hell, Lindsay…” Steve held up his hands.

  “Your office,” I said, glaring at him hard.

  “Mr. Bernhardt?” the receptionist said.

  “It’s okay, Stacy,” Steve said. “She’s a friend.” Yeah, right.

  As soon as we were down in his corner office I slammed the door. “Are you nuts, Lindsay?” Steve said.

  I pushed him into a chair. “I want to know now where she is, Steve.”

  “Jill?” He turned up his palms and actually seemed confused.

  “Cut the shit, you son of a bitch. Jill’s missing. She didn’t show up for work. I want to know where she is.”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea,” Steve said. “What do you mean, ‘missing’?”

  “She had a trial yesterday, Steve,” I said, losing control, “and she didn’t show up for it. Does that sound like Jill? She didn’t come home last night, either. Her car’s there. And her briefcase. Someone got inside the house.”

  “I think you’ve got your facts a little twisted, Lieutenant,” Steve said with a derisive laugh. “Jill tossed me out the other night. She changed the locks on Fortress Bernhardt.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Steve. I want to know what you’ve done. When was the last time you saw her?”

  “How about eleven o’clock the other night, through my own living-room window, as I was banging on the fucking door, trying to get back into my own house?”

  “She told me you were coming by yesterday morning to pick up your things.”

  Anger flashed in his eyes. “What the hell is this, an interrogation?”

  “I want to know where you spent Friday night”—I stared at him hard—“and everything you did Saturday morning before you came to work.”

  “What’s going on? Do I need a lawyer, Lindsay?”

  I didn’t answer his question, just turned away and walked out of there. I hoped to God Steve didn’t need a lawyer.

  Chapter 64

  ANGER WAS NO LONGER the word for what was tearing at me as I headed back to the Hall. It was deeper than anger. Every time I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of my own eyes, I kept thinking, I’ve seen those eyes before.

  On the job. On the faces of parents and wives when someone close to them is missing. The wordless panic when something horrible has taken place but just hasn’t played out yet. Stay calm, we tell them. Anything can happen. It’s still early.

  And that’s what I was telling myself as I drove back to the office. Stay calm, Lin
dsay. Jill could turn up anytime….

  But looking at myself in the rearview mirror, I couldn’t stop thinking, Same eyes.

  Back at the Hall, I put in a call to Ingrid Barros, who was Jill’s housekeeper, but she was at a meeting at her kid’s school. I sent Lorraine and Chin up and down Jill’s street on Buena Vista Park to see if anyone had noticed anything suspicious. I even ordered a trace on Jill’s cell phone calls.

  Someone must have called her. Someone must have seen her. It didn’t make sense that she had completely disappeared. Jill wasn’t the disappearing type.

  I did my best to focus on the picture we were getting on Stephen Hardaway as it started to drift in throughout the day. The FBI had been looking for Hardaway for a couple of years, and though he wasn’t on the Most Wanted, he was close enough to raise suspicions now.

  He’d been raised in Lansing, Michigan. After high school, he came west and went to Reed College in Portland. That’s when he began turning up in the system. Oregon records showed an arrest for aggravated assault at an anti-WTO demonstration at the University of Oregon. He was a suspect in bank robberies in Eugene and Seattle. Then in ’99, he was caught in Arizona trying to buy blasting caps from a gang member who turned out to be local ATF. And that was when Stephen Hardaway disappeared. He’d jumped bail. He was rumored to be involved in a string of armed robberies in Washington and Oregon. So we knew he was armed, dangerous, and had a desire to blow things up.

  Not a word on him for the past two years.

  About five, Claire knocked at my office. “I’m going crazy, Lindsay. C’mon, get a cup of coffee with me.”

  “I’m going crazy, too,” I said, and grabbed my purse. “Maybe we should call Cindy over,” I said.

  “Don’t bother,” she said, and pointed down the hall. “She’s already here.”

  The three of us went down to a cafeteria on the second floor. At first we just sat around stirring our drinks, the silence as thick as June fog.

  Finally I just sucked in a breath. “I think we all agree, Jill’s not out there, pining away on some rock. Something’s happened. The sooner we admit that, the sooner we can find out what it is.”

  “I keep thinking there has to be some explanation,” Claire said. “I mean, I know Steve. We all do. He wouldn’t be my ideal partner, but I can’t believe he’s capable of anything like this.”

  “Well, keep believing,” Cindy said, frowning, “it’s been two days.”

  Claire looked at me. “You remember that time Jill had to go through Salt Lake City on her way back from Atlanta, and while they were just waiting there at the gate, she took one look at all the snow in the mountains and said, ‘Screw it, I’m outta here!’ She hopped off the plane, rented a car, and skied Snowbird for the day.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said, the thought bringing a smile to my face. “Steve had some client thing he wanted to drag her to, the office was trying to locate her, and where was Jill? Up at eleven thousand feet, in a rented suit and skis, in powder heaven. Having the best day of her life.”

  The image brought a smile to all our faces, a tearful one.

  “So that’s what I think.” Claire took a napkin and dabbed her eyes. “I think she’s skiing powder. I have to believe she’s skiing powder, Lindsay.”

  Chapter 65

  CINDY STAYED AT HER DESK late that night, when only a handful of Metro stringers trolling the police wires were still around. The truth was, where else could she go?

  This thing with Jill was killing her; it was killing all of them.

  Word had leaked out. A missing A.D.A. was news. Her city editor asked if she wanted to write it. He knew they were friends. “It’s not news yet,” she had snapped. Writing it made it news. Made it real.

  This time it wasn’t happening to someone else.

  She stared at a photo of them she kept taped to her cubicle. The four of them, in their old haunt, Susie’s, their corner booth, after they solved the bride and groom case. A few margaritas had left their brains leaking like a wetlands preserve. Jill had seemed so invincible. The power job, the power husband. Never once had she let on….

  “C’mon, Jill,” Cindy whispered, feeling her eyes glistening over. Come through this. Walk through that door. Show your pretty face, smiling. I’m praying, Jill. Walk through that fucking door.

  It was after eleven. Nothing was happening here. It was just her way of keeping the vigil, keeping up hope. Go home, Cindy. Call it a night. Nothing you can do now.

  A maintenance man vacuuming the stall winked at her. “Working late, Ms. Thomas?”

  “Yeah,” she sighed, “burning the midnight oil.”

  She finally threw a few things in her purse and checked her computer one last time before she logged off. Maybe she’d call Lindsay. Just to talk.

  A new e-mail flashed on her screen.

  Cindy knew without even opening it who it was from. Toobad@hotmail.com.

  She knew the timing. She knew they warned her of a new victim every three days. It was Sunday. August Spies were due.

  “You were warned,” the message began. “But you were arrogant and didn’t listen.”

  Oh God. A tiny cry escaped from Cindy’s throat.

  She flashed down the screen, reading the terrifying message, the chilling signature at the end.

  August Spies had struck again.

  Chapter 66

  I GOT HOME THAT NIGHT at eleven, exhausted and empty-handed. For a few moments I stood thinking at the bottom of the outside stairs. In the morning, Jill would be officially listed as “missing.” I’d have to head up an investigation into the disappearance of one of my closest friends.

  “I thought you’d want to know”—I heard a voice above me, catching me by surprise—“I heard back from Portland.”

  I looked up and saw Molinari; he was sitting on the top step.

  “They found a secretary at Portland State who leaked Propp’s whereabouts to a boyfriend. They traced the gun to him. Local radical. But I suspect that’s not going to cheer you up much tonight.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be somebody important, Molinari,” I said, too empty and tired to show how glad I was to see him. “How come you always end up babysitting me?”

  He stood up. “I didn’t want you to feel you have to be alone.”

  Suddenly I just couldn’t hold back. The floodgates burst, and he came down and held me. Molinari drew me to him tightly as the tears carved their way down my cheeks. I felt ashamed to let him see me like this—I wanted so badly to appear strong—but I couldn’t get the tears to stop.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to catch myself.

  “No”—he stroked my hair—“you don’t have to pretend with me. You can let it out. There’s no shame.”

  Something’s happened to Jill! I wanted to scream, but I was afraid to lift my face.

  “I’m sorry, too.” He held me close. Then he squeezed me gently by the shoulders and looked into my swollen eyes. “I was with the Department of Justice,” he said, and brushed away a few tears, “when the Trade Towers fell. I knew guys who were killed. Some of the fire chiefs, John O’Neill in Trade Center Security. I was one of the heads of the emergency response team, but when all the names started coming in, people I’d worked with, I couldn’t take it anymore. I went into the men’s room. I knew everything was on the line. But I sat in a stall and cried. There’s no shame.”

  I unlocked the front door and we went inside. Molinari made me tea as I sat curled up on the couch, Martha’s chin on my thigh. I didn’t know what I would do if I was alone. He came over and poured it for me. I nestled into him, the tea warming me, his arms draped around my shoulders. And we just sat there for a long time. He was right, too—there’s no shame.

  “Thank you,” I sighed into his chest.

  “For what? Knowing how to make tea?”

  “Just thank you. For not being one of the assholes.” I closed my eyes. For a moment, everything bad was outside, far away from my living room.<
br />
  The telephone rang. I didn’t want to answer it. For a moment, I was feeling a million miles away and, selfish as it was, I liked it.

  Then I was thinking, What if it’s Jill?

  I grabbed the phone and Cindy’s voice came on. “Lindsay, thank God. Something bad’s happened.”

  My body clenched. I held on to Molinari. “Jill?”

  “No,” she answered, “August Spies.”

  Chapter 67

  I LISTENED with a sick, sinking feeling as Cindy read me the latest message. “‘You were warned,’ it says. ‘But you were arrogant and didn’t listen. We’re not surprised. You’ve never listened before. So we struck again.’ Lindsay, it’s signed August Spies.”

  “There’s been another killing,” I said, turning to Molinari. Then I finished up with Cindy.

  The full message said we’d find what we were looking for at 333 Harrison Street, down by the piers in Oakland. It had been exactly three days since Cindy received the first e-mail. August Spies were true to their threats.

  I hung up with Cindy and called the Emergency Task Force. I wanted our cops on the scene, and all traffic down to the Oakland port blocked off. I had no idea what type of incident we had or how many lives were involved, so I called Claire and told her to go there, too.

  Molinari already had his jacket on and was on the phone. It took me about a minute to get ready. “C’mon,” I said at the door, “you might as well drive with me.”

  We were barreling down Third Street toward the bridge with our siren wailing. That time of night there was almost no traffic. It was clear sailing over the Bay Bridge.

  Transmissions began to crackle on the radio. Oakland cops had picked up the 911. Molinari and I listened to hear what kind of scene we were dealing with: fire, explosion, multiple injuries?

  I shot off the bridge onto 880, getting off at the exit for the port. A police checkpoint had already been set up. Two patrol cars with flashing lights. We pulled up. I saw Cindy’s purple VW being held there. She was arguing with one of the officers.