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  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 buil
dings, 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.

  I pulled out the straight-backed chair and Fish looked up, recognized me, and gave me an endearing smile.

  I said, “Hello, Randy.”

  “Well look at you, Lindsay,” he said. “You’ve put on, I’m going to say, twenty-two pounds since I saw you last. You look healthy.”

  At five five, Randy Fish might have weighed 135 pounds when I’d kicked him around three years ago, but he weighed less now. His brown hair was clean. He had large brown eyes and bow-shaped lips. He looked unbelievably sweet and vulnerable and frail.

  It was easy to see how women had fallen for him, done what he’d asked of them, without having the slightest sense that he was a sexually deviant psychopath with an insatiable desire to maim and kill.

  “How’re you feeling?” I asked him.

  “Rested,” he said, smiling again.

  “I’m glad to see that you’re okay,” I said truthfully. “I still have some questions for you.”

  “Don’t you have something to tell me?” asked the killer.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  “The Poet by Michael Connelly. I’m not going to beg you, Lindsay. You know what I want.”

  I felt literally sick. I’d seen the morgue pictures of the five women we knew Fish had killed. One had had her fingers and toes cut off while she was alive. Another had hundreds of knife slits all over her body. All of them had been brutally raped, bitten, hanged. I knew too much about what this psycho had done and I didn’t want to give him anything.

  But if I wanted to find Sandra Brody’s body and those of the three other missing young women, I was going to have to give in.

  I quashed my gag reflex, but I still tasted bile at the back of my throat when I said, “I’m sorry I had to be so rough with you, Randy. But you know, you had threatened to kill a hostage. And Sandra Brody was still missing.”

  “You call that an apology?”

  “You remember Sandra,” I said. “She’s a pretty girl, brunette, size four, has a bit of an overbite. She was a biology major. I might be able to help you if you tell me where she is.”

  “I don’t remember a Sandra Brody,” he said. “In fact, I can’t even remember why I was locked up. But I do remember you, Lindsay Boxer. I wish we’d met under different circumstances. You’re very dear to me.”

  He showed me the book he’d been reading and said, “This is pretty good. Have you read it? Do you read?”

  He was back into his book, turning the pages, seemingly absorbed. As far as Randy Fish was concerned, the interview was over.

  I had apologized.

  He’d given me nothing in return. And I was absolutely sure he was messing with me. If I had gotten down on my knees and given him an unconditional apology, he would still have messed with me.

  He liked the game. He loved it.

  I tapped on the glass.

  Fish looked up.

  I smiled and said, “Go to hell, okay?”

  He shouted as I left the room, “I’m crazy about you, Lindsay Boxer. I really am.”

  Chapter 60

  YUKI HAD JUST about gotten a grip on the astounding fact of Lily Herman’s reappearance when John Kinsela called his first witness.

  “The defense calls Gary Goodfriend.”

  Yuki said, “What?” just loud enough for Nicky to hear. Her associate shrugged and looked at her with big eyes, as surprised as she was that their witness had been called by the opposition.

  Yuki watched as the gun dealer who had sold Keith Herman a gun passed her chair on his way to the witness stand. He was wearing the same fringed buckskin jacket he’d worn when he was a witness for the prosecution, but the swagger was gone now that he’d gone over to the other side.

  Goodfriend swore on the Bible and took his seat. Yuki looked directly at him, but he avoided her eyes.

  Kinsela jingled coins in his pocket as he asked his witness, “Mr. Goodfriend, did you call my office yesterday afternoon?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “And why did you call me?”

  “Because I was having a whatchamacallit—guilty conscience.”

  “Will you please tell the court what you told me?”

  “I told you that I don’t really remember if it was Keith Herman who made that comment about having a rug rat problem, or if it was some other customer.”

  “But you testified that it was Keith Herman.”

  “I misremembered,” Goodfriend said now. “I definitely sold Keith Herman a gun. I’ve got the yellow copy of the sales slip. But like I said, I sold thirty guns that weekend. There was a lot of talking all around. It was noisy. It was a trade show, you know. And, what I’m thinking now is that I got confused.”

  Kinsela said, “So to be clear, you’re retracting your earlier testimony. You no longer believe that Mr. Herman wanted to kill his daughter.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Thank you for coming forward, Mr. Goodfriend. That was an act of good citizenry.”

  The judge said to Yuki, “You’ve got some questions, Ms. Castellano?”

  “Just a few, Your Honor.” Yuki struggled for composure. No good to let Kinsela see that he’d rattled her. She relaxed her face and smiled.

  “Mr. Goodfriend, I want to understand the timeline of your memory reversal.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  “Last week you swore on the Bible that Mr. Herman had made a comment that you took to mean that he wanted to shoot his child.”

  “Uh-huh. But that was then.”

  “You realize that either that statement or the one you just made is a lie. Do you know that perjury is a felony?”

  “I wasn’t intentionally telling a lie. I just remembered it one way and then, yesterday, I remembered it a different way.”

  Yuki sighed. “You also stated that you believe that Mr. Herman is a violent person. Have you been threatened?”

  “Mr. Herman is in jail.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Goodfriend. Did anyone put pressure on you to retract your testimony?”

  “The only one that put pressure on me is you.”

  “Me?”

  Yuki was dumbfounded. What was this guy saying? She hadn’t been sure of him when he contacted her, but he had checked out as a legitimate gun dealer, with no record of any kind. His testimony had been good for her case because he had described the defendant’s violent personality for the jury.

  Goodfriend said now, “When I came to you and said I thought the defendant had made a threat, you said, ‘Are you sure?’”

  “Yes, and you said you were.”

  “Well, I wanted to be sure because of you putting pressure on me to get it right. I thought I was sure. Now I’m not sure anymore.”

  “So maybe your original memory was wrong. Or maybe your original memory was correct?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your Honor, I’m done with this witness. I reserve the right to charge him with perjury once I determine if he has even the mos
t basic grasp of the truth.”

  Kinsela snorted from across the room.

  The judge said to Yuki, “Duly noted,” and told Gary Good-friend that he could step down.

  Nussbaum looked at the big white-faced clock over the exit door, then said, “Seems like an appropriate place to adjourn for the weekend.”

  Chapter 61

  IT WAS 7:40 on Monday morning when Claire saw Rich Conklin’s truck parked off by itself in the open lot on Harriet Street. When she got closer, she saw that Richie’s head was tipped back and his mouth was open. Looked like he’d passed out.

  She called out to him a couple of times and when he didn’t come to, she rapped on the window, said, “Richie. Yoo-hoo. Wakey-wakey.”

  He sat up, said, “Huh?” and then, “Oh, hi, Claire. Am I late?” He ran his hands through his hair, tucked his shirt into his pants.

  Claire went around to the passenger side and climbed up into the truck. The cab smelled of beer. There was a crumpled hamburger bag in the foot well, dirty laundry lying loose on the backseat. Richie hadn’t shaved.

  She said, “Actually, you’re early, my friend. How long you been sleeping here?”

  Rich leaned across her, opened the glove compartment, and took out his cell phone. He checked it for messages, then put it in his shirt pocket.

  Since he hadn’t answered her question, Claire had a few more for him.

  “What’s up, Richie? I suppose you’ve got a good reason to be camping out in the parking lot. When was the last time you took a shower?”

  He laughed, then said, “Hold on, Claire. That was a good idea. May I use your shower?”

  Claire had a private shower at the morgue. Problem was, it wasn’t exactly hers at the moment. Her stand-in, Dr. Herbert Morse, would be arriving in a few minutes, if he wasn’t already there in her office, boning up on how to be a medical examiner.

  “Honestly, if it was mine to give you, I’d tell you to shave, shower, and take your time on the potty. But I’m on the sidelines, as you know. Working out of a cubicle.”

  “Ah, I’m sorry, Claire. Well. I’ll think of something.”