11th hour wmc-11 Page 14

Brady and Conklin got out of the unmarked and Conklin got into the Explorer beside me.

  Brady stooped down by the window, said, “We’ve had a team on him all day. He came in about an hour ago. Lights went on. He’s probably in for the night.”

  “I take it you didn’t catch him killing anyone?”

  Brady ignored my tone. “You and Conklin do four hours. Narcotics will spell you at eleven. If he leaves the house, call me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I watched Brady get into his car, then I pulled out my phone, saw three messages from Joe, and ignored them. I arranged dog-sitting for Martha, then leaned back.

  I must have sighed. “So you ready to tell me what’s going on, Linds? I’m not going to leave you alone until you spill.”

  My mind was still in high gear, boosted by my surging hormones and the whole crappy day.

  “Have you cheated on Cindy?” I asked him.

  His mouth fell open and he stared at me, a look of shock and disappointment on his face I hadn’t seen in all the years I’d known him.

  “Why would you ask me that? Is that what she thinks? Did Cindy say that to you?”

  “No. So, have you, Rich?”

  “No. Hell no. Seriously, is this what you’ve been thinking? Is this what’s got you all jammed up?”

  Conklin’s gaze left me, went past me and through my window, but his shocked expression didn’t change. I heard a hard rapping on the glass.

  I swung my head, saw Jacobi’s face right there. He was scowling. He knew that we weren’t parked on his street by accident.

  He signaled to me to roll down my window, and I did it.

  All I could get out of my mouth was “Jacobi” before he lit into me, lit into us both.

  “How nice of you to visit. You are visiting, right, Boxer? You too, Conklin. My old friends, stopping by to see how I’m getting along?”

  “It’s a stakeout,” I said miserably.

  “You’re tailing me.”

  I dropped my head. I was ashamed and mortified. Jacobi gripped the window frame and shook it as if he were rattling bars on a cage.

  “You think I’m that Revenge shooter? Is that it, Boxer? I don’t hear from you for weeks, months, then, suddenly, ‘Can you help me with my cases, Warren?’

  “I don’t know how many thousands of hours I worked with both of you,” he spat. “Put my life in your hands and vice versa.” He looked at me, then at Conklin, then turned his hooded eyes back to me.

  “You turn my stomach, both of you.”

  “Jacobi, I’m sorry. Wait!”

  “That’s Chief. Chief Jacobi.” He turned away, stalked off with his wooden gait. The silence in the car rang like a bell.

  Conklin said, “I’m going after him.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I called Brady.

  “Is Jacobi leaving the house?” he asked me.

  “Brady, he made us. He made us and he called us out.”

  Chapter 73

  Conklin came home to the apartment he shared with Cindy. It was completely dark except for the light in the kitchen. That meant that Cindy had been working for hours and hadn’t gotten up to turn on the rest of the lights.

  He put his keys in the dish on the hall table, called out, “Honey, I’m home.” Heard a faint “Hey” in response.

  He hung up his coat and gun, went into the kitchen, saw Cindy at the table exactly as he’d pictured her.

  Her head was bent over her laptop, eyes obscured by the blond curls falling across her face, fingers dancing over the keys. She paused, turned, lifted her face for a kiss, and, after getting a peck, said, “Everything okay?”

  “Had a completely terrible day is all.” Cindy said, “Did anyone die?”

  “No.”

  “Shots fired?”

  He laughed. “Has to be a shooting for it to be a bad day?”

  “Then — can you tell me about it later, Richie, because I’ve got to get this done.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll see you in bed.”

  Conklin opened the fridge, got out a couple of frozen dinners, put them in the microwave. While the microwave turned the turkey dinners into something resembling hot meals, he went into the bathroom and got in the shower.

  Nothing like hydrotherapy at the end of the day. He thought about Jacobi saying if Rich didn’t walk away from his front door, he was going to throw some shots through it.

  That scene was followed by Brady chewing him out, chewing Lindsay out too, saying that they had royally screwed the pooch and were off the surveillance detail.

  And he thought about Lindsay being a bitch and accusing him of cheating on Cindy, which was the last thing he’d ever do in his life.

  Yes, it had been a crap day. All the way around.

  Conklin got out of the shower, put on a pair of shorts, and went to the kitchen, where Cindy was still absorbed in whatever she was doing that left almost no time for him.

  He pulled the plastic film off the dinners, asked, “What are you working on?”

  “The Chron website. They gave me a blog.”

  “A blog, huh?”

  “Tons of mail coming in on Revenge. Do you have anything I can use?”

  “Negative,” said Conklin. “Whatever is less than negative.”

  “Okay,” Cindy said, tapping at the keys.

  “Jeez, don’t quote me, Cindy. I’m off duty.”

  “I wasn’t quoting you.”

  “Good.”

  Conklin sat down at the table, cleaned his plate, guzzled half a liter of Pepsi, and then finished off a half-full container of double chocolate ice cream, scraping the bottom with his spoon.

  He watched Cindy as he ate. Her attention never broke. Bomb could go off across the street, and unless there was a story in it, she wouldn’t move.

  He stood up, tousled her hair.

  “I’m almost done,” she said.

  Conklin went to bed. He was dozing when Cindy finally came into the bedroom and took off her clothes in the dark. She slid under the sheets without touching him.

  Her breathing slowed and then deepened.

  “Cindy?”

  “Mmmm-hmmm.” She sighed.

  Chapter 74

  Cindy’s phone call woke me up out of a deep sleep.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I know it’s early, but I wanted to catch you before you left the house. Can you have coffee with Richie and me?”

  I said, “Sure,” agreed to the time and place. I lay in bed with Martha for twenty more minutes, first savagely missing Joe, then being flooded by thoughts of all the relationships I’d trashed in the previous twenty-four hours.

  I supposed my asking Rich if he had cheated on Cindy had prompted Cindy’s call and the breakfast meeting. I owed apologies to them both.

  I met Rich and Cindy at Old Jerusalem Cafe, a coffeehouse on Irving and Fourteenth that had a wide assortment of coffees and teas and delicious Mediterranean pastries. I found Mr. Conklin and the future Mrs. Conklin sitting at a table waiting for me.

  I said, “Hi,” slid into the seat across from them, ordered Turkish coffee, and braced myself for a confrontation. I hoped I could handle it without snapping.

  Rich brushed his hair out of his eyes with his fingers and said, “Cindy told me. About Joe.”

  I nodded miserably, looked down.

  “You’ll work it out,” he said. “You will.”

  “I’m sorry about what I said, Rich.”

  “Yeah. It’s okay. Cindy’s got something for us.”

  I glanced up, wondering what he meant.

  “Lookit,” Cindy said.

  She took her iPad out of her handbag, began to type. My coffee came and I sugared it heavily and then followed up the sugar with a triple dose of cream.

  Cindy turned the tablet toward me. “It’s numerology,” she said. She showed me this equation.

  1 0 4 = 5

  “In numerology, you add the numbers together. One plus zero is one. One
plus four equals five.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now,” Cindy said, “let’s look at six one three.”

  She typed:

  6 1 3 = 10 = 1

  “I get it,” I said. “Six and one is seven, and three makes ten.”

  “Right. Then you reduce the ten by adding one and zero together. That equals one.”

  “Got it.”

  Cindy was typing numbers. She said, “Now add the two reduced numbers together.”

  5 + 1 = 6

  I waited for drums to roll. Cymbals to clash.

  “What does six mean?”

  “It means number six. As in number six Ellsworth Place.”

  I sucked in a breath. Cindy was referring to one of the four brick buildings adjacent to the main Ellsworth house, the detached houses that backed onto the garden.

  “We didn’t have a warrant to search number six,” I said.

  “Cindy spoke to Yuki,” Rich said. “Yuki thinks she can make a case that the original warrant should have included those buildings. That the compound is all one property.”

  “I’m coming with you to the compound,” said Cindy.

  Rich and I turned to her and in unison said, “No.”

  “Yes,” she said. “The numbers are mine. Lindsay, you gave them to me and asked me to solve them, and I think I did it. If you want me to ever talk to you again, either of you, I’m coming with you. The answer is yes.”

  Chapter 75

  Yuki and I were in her cubicle at the DA’s offices in room 325, third floor of the Hall of Justice. I sat in a side chair, my white-knuckled hands clasped on her desk.

  Yuki hooked her glossy black hair behind her ears, dialed the phone, and spoke to several people before she got Judge Stephen Rubenstein on the line.

  Yuki explained to the judge precisely and urgently that a credible tip had come in referring to a suspicious location adjoining the Ellsworth house. She told Rubenstein that this location had not been included in the original search warrant because the authorities hadn’t realized that the two properties were connected.

  Yuki stopped talking and listened. She spoke, apologized for interrupting, and listened some more.

  She signaled to me to bring my chair closer, which I did, then Yuki held out her phone so that I could hear the judge.

  “Let me get this straight. You want me to expand the search warrant because you got an anonymous tip that there’s some evidence — you can’t even tell me exactly what. And based on that, you want to go rummaging around in this other house, which isn’t even the crime scene?”

  “Yes, Your Honor, but a person of interest owns the entire property. Number six is in close proximity to the crime scene, almost touching it.”

  “Oh, that’s supposed to make a difference? Ms. Castellano, go Google the Fourth Amendment and brush up on it. Highlight the part about unreasonable search. No warrants shall be issued without a probable cause.”

  “Okay, Your Honor. Thanks anyway.”

  Yuki put down the phone and said to me, “So maybe if I’d told him about the numerology, it would’ve helped us,” she said.

  “You never know.”

  Yuki laughed. “I’m sorry, Linds.”

  If I wanted to get into 6 Ellsworth Place, and I did, I had to call Harry Chandler and ask permission.

  I used Yuki’s phone and got him on the first try. I stopped short of begging, but I was extra nice. At first.

  Chandler said, “Why should I let you track your gum-shoes through my property again?”

  “Mr. Chandler, it’s no accident that those heads were buried in your backyard. Someone wants you to be tried for murder again. But until we find that someone, you’re our primary suspect. Do you understand?”

  Chapter 76

  The fog frizzed my hair as Conklin, Cindy, and I huddled together on Ellsworth Place. The street was short and narrow, kind of romantic, and unusual in that it met up with Pierce at one end, Green on the other, forming a right triangle.

  The west side of Ellsworth was lined with newer houses in various styles. The houses across the street, the ones that were part of the Ellsworth compound, were all no-frills brick, built as servants’ quarters in the late 1890s at the same time the main house was constructed. I could almost hear the sound of horses pulling buggies up the street.

  While I gazed around, Conklin tightened the straps on Cindy’s Kevlar vest, helped her into an SFPD windbreaker.

  I waited until Cindy was cinched up, then gave her a summary of Harry Chandler’s minor houses.

  “Nicole Worley, the caretakers’ daughter, lives in number two. She’s in her midtwenties, works in animal rescue. Stays here to keep an eye on her folks. Harry’s driver, T. Lawrence Oliver, lives in number four, rent free. It’s an employment perk. Numbers six and eight had tenants at one time but are empty now.”

  Conklin added, “Three of these houses don’t have any windows facing the garden in back; one of them has a single window facing it. Number six. When I was in the garden the first time, I noticed that window. Nicole Worley told me that the building was boarded up. If someone is squatting there, he could be our perp.”

  As we talked, the fine mist turned to rain.

  We discussed who was going to do what. Conklin asked Cindy to get back into the car until we could clear the scene. She reluctantly agreed, then Conklin and I went up the steps to the front door.

  I knocked, Conklin called out, and then I rapped on the door with the tarnished brass knocker. When no one answered, Conklin tried turning the knob, but it was frozen solid, the door possibly bolted from the inside.

  After a few words with Cindy through the car window, we headed for the backyard and bushwhacked through the waist-high weeds and thistles that had grown thickly between numbers 4 and 6.

  The rear aspect of the brick houses was forbidding. Each blind, windowless wall had a back door and a set of steps descending from it, and only a few feet in front of those steps was the looming ten-foot-high brick wall that blocked the view of the garden.

  The back doors of 6 and 8 were boarded up, but as I neared number 6, I noticed that weeds had been pulled from around the steps and thrown off to the side. I poked around a little more, saw that the sheet of plywood at the door wasn’t nailed to the frame. It was simply leaning against it.

  “Someone’s been in and out of here recently,” I said.

  Conklin went up the steps and pulled the plywood away from the door, then banged on the door with his fist.

  “Police. Open up,” Conklin said. “Or we’re coming in.”

  Chapter 77

  No sooner had Conklin opened the door than I heard someone coming through the weeds behind me. I whipped around to see Cindy, her chin stuck out, rain streaming off her face.

  “I need to be here. I can’t cover this story from the car.”

  “This story could be nothing,” I hissed to my bulldog friend. “Despite your breaking the da Vinci code, this could be an empty house and a dead end — ”

  “I know.”

  “- or it could be dangerous,” I said.

  “I’ll watch my step.”

  “Could be a gang of crackheads living in here.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gone into a crack house. Anyway, you’re both armed.”

  It was futile, but I looked at my partner and said, “Please tell her, Rich.”

  He put up his hands. “Not me.”

  “If anything happens to you,” I said to Cindy, “Rich and I are going to be fired. Me first, of course. And then we’re both going to hate ourselves forever.”

  Cindy laughed. “Give me a break.”

  This was Cindy: no gun, no training, no official status, and yet the only way to stop her was to get a circus elephant to sit on her chest.

  I wasn’t kidding about the consequences of letting Cindy into the house, but I was done arguing. Conklin pulled his gun and went in through the doorway. I let Cindy follow him and I brought up the rear.

>   The hallway was lit by the dull light coming in through the open back door. There was a narrow wooden staircase just ahead of us, and the floor above us was dark.

  Conklin and I turned on our flashlights and began to climb. The stairwell was clean, odor-free, and I didn’t see graffiti, rags, needles, or any sign of squatters or druggies. In fact, it looked as though it had recently been swept.

  We kept moving onward and upward, and when we got to the third-floor landing, I heard the faintest of sounds.

  “What’s that?” I whispered.

  “Beethoven,” said Cindy. “Sixth Symphony.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Sixth. Get it? Another six. And this particular symphony — I think it’s about gardens. Don’t you hate it when I’m right?” she said, grinning.

  I said, “Shhh. Keep your eyes open.”

  We rounded the next flight, and the next, the music getting louder as we climbed. We came to the sixth-floor landing and faced the three doors on that level.

  One was marked F, for front, I assumed. One was marked WASHROOM, and the third door had a note taped under the letter R, for rear.

  Conklin shone his light on the door and I moved in so that I could read the handwritten notice: Genius at Work. Do Not Disturb.

  Chapter 78

  I’m not superstitious, but seriously, there were too many sixes in this deal. Number 6 Ellsworth, Beethoven’s Sixth, and now the trail of sixes that ended on the sixth floor.

  Six-six-six was an unlucky number, right? So what kind of nightmare was this “genius at work”?

  I put Cindy behind me as Conklin knocked on the door and said, “Open up. This is the police.”

  The music was turned off, then heavy footsteps came toward the threshold. A dark eye stared through the peephole.

  A chain rattled and the doorknob turned, and then, standing in the doorway, actually filling it, was a very tall white woman, maybe six two, apparently unarmed. She was wearing a long and well-worn black velvet skirt and a knit gray top with batwing sleeves. Her gray-blond hair was twisted up in a topknot. She smiled broadly.