The 8th Confession Page 13

How many more would he kill before we stopped him?

  “Hang on, Linds,” Conklin said, wrenching the steering wheel hard. We squealed onto Haight Street, where the likelihood of mowing down punks, retired flower children, old people getting in or out of their cars, was close to 100 percent.

  “Haight dead-ends at Stanyan!” I shouted.

  We followed the fool in the Camaro, speeding a hundred feet in front of us, sparks coming off his right rear bumper, which now dragged in the street.

  Wallis still outran us because he simply didn’t care what he hit – and he refused to be boxed in. He made the right turn down Stanyan, drove nearly a block before pulling an illegal left across two lanes of traffic to go into Golden Gate Park.

  The imposing Conservatory of Flowers, a giant greenhouse originally from another century, rose up on our right. I envisioned a colossal spinout in my mind, a James Bond-worthy scene of that greenhouse exploding into a trillion shards.

  But Wallis skidded and avoided a crash.

  I yelled, “Rich, look out!”

  We followed the Camaro into a cacophony of horns and squealing tires, the bumper-car chase carrying us forward because we had no choice.

  In the heart-stopping minutes we’d been on the Camaro’s tail, I hadn’t seen another cop car, marked or otherwise. I could hear sirens in the distance, but we were alone, powering our Crown Vic at warp speed, Wallis’s junker a half block ahead of us as he took the park drive toward Ocean Beach.

  We drafted behind him as the terrain sloped sharply downward. Runners with dogs jumped out of the way. My God, I wanted to cover my eyes, but I couldn’t.

  The boat pond was on our right, filled with seniors and kids driving remote-control ships, and then our two cars screamed past soccer fields with high-school teams standing openmouthed as we passed.

  We were climbing again, the road heading straight up to Sutro Heights, almost to land’s end, when Wallis veered out of the park and onto Point Lobos Avenue, four fast-moving lanes.

  As I yelled our location into the mic, Wallis took a hard left over the median strip and pointed his car like a rocket up toward the Cliff House, a landmark restaurant perched on the western edge of the continent over a rocky cliff that plunged straight down to the Pacific.

  I could see it now: Wallis was going for a dramatic Thelma amp; Louise exit, but his would be a solo flight. As the Camaro crashed through guardrails and left the road, I saw the frankly unbelievable: the driver’s- side door opened and Wallis jumped out.

  But he’d mistimed his jump.

  As the Camaro made its wobbly one-way passage off the cliff toward the gray water below, Wallis plummeted alongside his car, both vehicle and man dropping in slow-motion, as if in a dream.

  Rich braked our car in front of the broken wall, and we peered over the promontory in time to see the Camaro explode in flames.

  “There,” I said. “He’s there!”

  Wallis’s body was fifty feet below us, a tangle of bloodied flesh. It was an impossible climb down, a straight 180 degrees over wet and jagged rocks. Conklin took my hand and I gripped his, stood hypnotized as the fire crackled and burned.

  I heard Jackie Kam’s voice behind me, calling over the car radio, “Sergeant Boxer, what is your location? Lindsay? Lindsay, please answer me.”

  Rich let go of my hand and leaned over the cliff, facing into the wind as he called down to Henry Wallis’s fresh corpse.

  “Did you enjoy yourself, asshole? Get what you wanted?”

  I used my cell phone to call Dispatch, but the cars were already screaming to a halt all around Point Lobos.

  Jacobi jumped out of one of them before it came to a stop. He ran toward us, calling, “You okay? You okay?”

  I was so shaken I couldn’t talk.

  “Take it easy, Boxer,” Jacobi said, putting his hands on my shoulders. My good friend. “Try to breathe.”

  Tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes, but I wasn’t sad. It was something else – surprise and relief that I was alive.

  I breathed in the smoke-filled air and said, “I don’t get it, Warren. Wallis jumped out of his car! Was he trying to escape? Or was that how he wanted to die?”

  “Whatever,” Conklin said beside me.

  I nodded. Whatever. Henry Wallis, the man with the snake-and-skull tattoo on his shoulder, was dead.

  Chapter 66

  JACOBI TOOK ME and Conklin out to dinner at Restaurant LuLu, the place for homey Provençal cooking, rich casseroles and pizzas grilled in a hickory-wood oven. The sunken dining room was packed, conversation was humming all around us, and our waiter really knew the wine list, long considered one of the best in town.

  I knew why Jacobi was celebrating.

  The chief and the mayor had given him a big ol’ “attaboy.” TV newscasters were brimming with the drama: the chopper shots and the news that life was safe again for the rich and famous.

  But I couldn’t stand this, and I had to say it. “ Warren, is everyone crazy? You feel comfortable saying that Henry Wallis is the guy who killed our millionaires?”

  Jacobi answered with a question: “Can’t you let something good into your life, Boxer?” And then another: “Can’t you just be happy for an hour?”

  “I guess not,” I said, scowling at him. “What’s wrong with me? Or am I just too smart for this charade?”

  Conklin nudged me under the table with his knee, and I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him either.

  A man had died.

  We’d almost followed him off a cliff.

  We were lucky we weren’t looking up at Claire from her table or seeing a story on TV of dead children, their tearful parents threatening to sue the city for another fatal high-speed chase, the sad-faced anchorperson saying, “The funeral services for the little Beckwith children will be at Our Sisters of the Sacred Heart on Sunday.”

  The waiter poured the wine, and Jacobi tasted it, pronounced it excellent, and, over the clamor of fat-walleted diners chatting happily all around us, raised his glass to me and Conklin.

  “Thanks,” he said, “from the chief, the mayor, and especially from me. I love you guys.”

  Jacobi smiled, something I’ve seen him do maybe twice in the last ten years, and he and Conklin tucked into their pan-roasted mussels and rotisserie duck.

  I had no appetite.

  The muscles in my face had gone rigid, but my mind was whirling around on its brain stem.

  Was Henry Wallis really the high-society killer?

  Or was he just some loser of an ex-con with something to hide – so he’d freaked out and ended his life?

  Did anyone care but me?

  Chapter 67

  AGAINST EVERYONE’S GOOD JUDGMENT, I found an ADA in her office at nine that night, the indefatigable Kathy Valoy. She called a judge and got us a search warrant for Henry Wallis’s apartment, and now, at midnight, Conklin and I were there.

  Wallis had lived in a three-story walk-up on Dolores Street, a few blocks from the Torchlight Bar.

  We rang the buzzer until we woke up the building’s owner, a squat man by the name of Maury Silver. He was balding, with loose dentures, bad breath, and a stained work shirt hanging long over his boxers.

  Silver looked at our warrant through the cracked door, read every page back and front, and then let us enter the building.

  “What happened to Henry?” he asked. “Oh no. You telling me he’s the one who drove off the cliff? Henry’s a killer?”

  Wallis’s apartment was on the ground floor, rear.

  We flicked on the ceiling lights, closed the door on Mr. Silver, and simply tossed the place. Didn’t take long.

  Like a lot of ex-cons, Henry Wallis kept his furniture minimal and his few possessions neat.

  Conklin took the bedroom and bath while I searched the small living room and kitchen. We called out to each other from time to time: when Conklin found the plastic-wrapped bricks of pot in the kitty-litter box and when I found a book on tattoos, corners folde
d down on the pages featuring snakes.

  But that was it.

  No old newspaper clippings, no new newspaper clippings, no shrines to himself, no trophies from rich people. And most of all no snakes.

  No snake figurines, no snake artifacts, no books on snakes.

  “No reptiles other than these,” I said, showing Conklin the tattoo book.

  He said, “Take a look at this.”

  I followed him into the bedroom and checked out his find: a drawerful of XL women’s underwear.

  “Unless he had a big girlfriend, and I don’t see any pictures, cosmetics, anything that would indicate that,” Conklin said, “Henry Wallis was a cross-dresser.”

  “A cross-dressing drug dealer. Kudos to Sara Needleman for dumping him. Let’s lock this joint up,” I said.

  “I live only a few blocks from here,” said Rich as we closed and padlocked the door. “Come have a drink. Talk all this out.”

  I said, “Thanks anyway. This has been the longest day of my life, Rich. I need to go home. Get naked. Go to bed.”

  Conklin laughed. “Is that an order, Sergeant?”

  I laughed along with him as I walked to my car, feeling just a little silly, thinking maybe Dr. Freud was having the real laugh.

  “Okay,” I said, one hand on my door, being very careful when I stepped up on the running board. “One drink only.”

  Chapter 68

  THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Conklin’s place and Henry Wallis’s dump was extreme. Conklin lived on a similar block, both streets lined with unremarkable two- and three-story houses from the ’50s made of cheap and ordinary materials, but once we were inside, Conklin’s place felt lived-in and warm.

  His living room was welcoming: good lighting, deep couches grouped around a fireplace, and the requisite bachelor must-have – a fifty-two-inch plasma- screen TV.

  Rich stooped down near the entertainment unit, flipped through a stack of CDs, said, “Van Morrison okay with you?”

  I said, “Sure,” and looked at the photos on the wall, black-and-white blowups of sailboats on the bay, their spinnakers full of summer wind, light spangling the waves, three different shots, all of them breathtaking.

  “You take these, Rich?”

  “ Uh-huh.”

  “They’re wonderful.”

  Van Morrison was singing “Brown Eyed Girl,” a tune that made me want to sing along. I smiled when Rich handed me a glass of wine, and I watched him sit down on the far end of the couch, put his feet up on a burnished hatch cover he’d turned into a coffee table.

  I sipped from the frosty glass of chardonnay, kicked off my shoes, and sat on the other side of the same oversize couch. The tension left my body as the wine slid down my throat, cold and dry and good.

  “See, what I’m wondering is, how could this be over?”

  Conklin nodded, encouraging me to go on.

  “A man is dead. There’s going to be fallout that Tracchio and Jacobi just don’t want to see. Wallis is going to have a family somewhere. There are going to be questions, and we both know, Rich, that Wallis didn’t do it. Here’s what I think happened: we just contributed to the death of a red herring.”

  Conklin laughed, said, “You paint a wonderful word picture.”

  I told him, “And you’ve got a great laugh, Rich. I love to hear you laugh.”

  He held my eyes until I blinked first.

  The only clock in the room was on the DVR, and I was too far from it to read the flashing digits, but I knew that it was late. Had to be somewhere around two in the morning, and I was feeling keyed up, starting to get some ideas about seeing the rest of Rich’s apartment. And maybe the rest of Rich.

  My mind and body were overheating, and I don’t think Rich meant to cool me down when he went to the kitchen to retrieve the chilled bottle. While he was gone, I undid a shirt button.

  And then another.

  In the process, I adjusted my position on the couch, felt something hard and sharp down between the cushions. I wrapped my fingers around the object, pulled it out, and saw a hair clip, a rhinestone barrette between my fingers.

  The shock of that two-inch sparkler chilled me to the core. Cindy’s barrette could have found its way to this couch only if Rich and Cindy had been grappling on it.

  I placed the barrette on the coffee table, looked up as Rich returned with the bottle. He saw the barrette, saw the look in my eyes. Opened his mouth to say something – but nothing came out.

  I averted my eyes, made sure he wouldn’t see my pain.

  I muttered that it was late and thanks for the wine. That I’d see him in the morning.

  I left with my shoes half tied and my heart half broken. I found my car on the street where I’d left it, and I talked to myself as I drove home.

  “What are you, jealous?” I shouted. “Because being jealous is stupid! Attention, brain cells: Rich plus Lindsay? That is really, really stupid!”

  Chapter 69

  BY THE TIME Pet Girl arrived at Molly Caldwell-Davis’s Twin Peaks house with its astounding city view, the party had been going on for hours. Pet Girl pressed the doorbell, banged the knocker until “Tyco” opened the door and the postdisco camp of the Scissor Sisters boomed out into the night.

  Tyco was wearing his party clothes: a feather boa around his slender shoulders, nipple rings, and a black satin thong. He handed Pet Girl a flute of champagne, kissed her on the lips, said, “Hi, sexy,” in a jokey way, so that Pet Girl laughed instead of saying thank you.

  Pet Girl pushed past Tyco and entered the main room with its dizzying decor: tables and sofas in stepped-Alice-in-Wonderland heights, black-painted walls, leopard-print carpeting, bodies entwined on the floor pillows, the whole place feeling more like a bordello than the home of a girl who worked in a tea shop and had an eight-digit trust fund.

  Pet Girl found the tanned and yoga-toned Molly on a low-slung sofa, crouched over a mirrored table, doing lines through a silver straw. Slouched beside her, swaying two beats behind the music, was the legendary fifty-year- old software billionaire Brian Caine.

  “Look. Who’s. Here,” Caine said, giving Pet Girl a look so nakedly sleazy, she wanted to poke out his eyes.

  “Molly,” Pet Girl said, holding out a sixty-eight-dollar bottle of Moët amp; Chandon, “this is chilled.”

  “Just put it anywhere,” Molly said, turning away from Pet Girl as Tyco brought over a stack of Polaroids. She shrieked with delight as she pawed through the sex snaps her houseboy had taken of guests frolicking in her bedroom.

  As suddenly as Molly’s attention had been pulled away from Pet Girl, it boomeranged back.

  “Don’t you smell that?” Molly asked her. “Something’s burning. Why are you just standing there?”

  Pet Girl blunted her expression.

  She went to the kitchen, removed the pan of bite-size mushroom quiche from the oven, dumped a tray of Kobe beef on toast – worth three hundred dollars a pound – into the dog’s bowl. Then she stomped back into the party.

  She called Molly’s name, finally catching her unfocused stare beneath her blank, Botoxed forehead.

  Pet Girl said, “I fed Mischa. Are you going to remember to walk him?”

  “Tyco will do it.”

  “All right then. Au revoir, babycakes.”

  “But you just got here.” Brian Caine pouted. The front of his black silk pajamas had fallen open, revealing his disgusting, hairy man-boobs. “Stay,” he implored Pet Girl. “I want to get to know you better.”

  “Yeah, right after I figure out how to block my gag reflex,” Pet Girl said. She turned on the gold flats she’d bought for this occasion and made her way through the oblivious throng. She stopped to retrieve the bottle of champagne she’d brought, then quickly walked out the door.

  Chapter 70

  IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT when Pet Girl got out of the cab and walked four blocks under the stars, the warm, moist air blowing off the ocean as she approached the run-down apartments at the farthest end of the Presidio
.

  She opened her front door, hung her backpack on a peg in the hallway, and went to the kitchen. There, she used a key to unlock the small pocket door, sliding it into its slot in the wall. Then she entered the long, narrow room that had once been a pantry and was now her private world.

  Pet Girl hit the switch, throwing light on the half dozen aquariums stacked on restaurant racks lining the back wall. She sensed her beauties uncoiling their sleek bodies even before she saw them slithering silently across the bark-and-leaf litter – alert, hungry, eager to feed.

  Pet Girl opened a cabinet and removed her tools: the tongs with the pistol grip, her steel-toed boots, and the welder’s gloves, which were made of deerskin, lined with Kevlar, and thick but flexible, with elbow-length cuffs.

  When she was dressed, she stepped over to Vasuki’s cage, admired the snake’s strong, muscular body, the intelligence in her eyes, feeling an almost telepathic communication with her favorite krait.

  She shifted the heavy lid capping Vasuki’s cage and captured the snake with her tongs, saying, “You can feed when we get back home, baby.”

  She dropped Vasuki carefully into a pillowcase, put the whole into a pet carrier, and snapped the locks closed.

  Then she removed one of the baby garter snakes from a breeder tank and dropped it into Vasuki’s cage so that her favorite pet’s reward would be waiting for her when they returned.

  Taking a last look around to make sure that all was well, Pet Girl exited her snake farm and locked the door.

  She reached into her blouse and pulled out the antique locket she wore on a solid-gold chain. It had been a gift from her father, and his picture was inside.

  Pet Girl raised the locket to her lips, kissed it, said, “Love you, Daddy,” then turned out the lights.

  Chapter 71

  THE SCENE IN Molly’s place had melted down since Pet Girl had been there two hours ago. Dozens of candles guttered in their holders, food trays were empty, and the party guests who’d passed out on the floor were snoring and twitching but were definitely out.