Women's Murder Club [06] The 6th Target Read online

  It was okay to have these feelings, I told myself. I was only human, and so was he, and both of us were having a completely natural response to being alone together — .

  A tapping at the door startled me.

  My heart jumped as the knock came again.

  Chapter 85

  I CINCHED THE SASH OF MY ROBE and padded barefoot to the door. I saw Rich Conklin through the peephole. He was wearing a flimsy clear-plastic shower cap on his head!

  I was laughing as I undid the bolt, my hand shaking as I pulled open the door. Conklin was wearing his trousers, his blue cotton shirt unbuttoned to about his third rib. And he was gripping a Marriott toothbrush with the stem in his fist, like it was a small white flag.

  “I was wondering if you have any mouthwash, Lindsay. I got a lot of moisturizer in the complimentary toiletry basket, but no mouthwash.”

  His serious expression, combined with the wacky request and the shower cap, cracked me up. I swung the door open wide, said, “I didn’t get mouthwash either, but I think I have something in my handbag.”

  The door closed behind me, and as I stooped for the handbag I’d dropped on the floor, I stumbled over one of my shoes.

  Rich grabbed my elbow to steady me, and there we were. Eye-to-eye. Woozy. Alone in LA in a hotel room. I reached up and pulled off the shower cap. His forelock of light-brown hair fell across his gorgeous face, and he dropped the toothbrush onto the floor. Then Rich put both arms around my waist and pulled me to him.

  “I have only one problem with this working arrangement,” he said. “And it’s a big one.”

  Rich bent to kiss me, and I wanted him to. My arms went around his neck again, and his mouth found mine. Our first kiss set off a chemical explosion.

  I clung to Rich as he lowered me to the bed in the dimly lit room. I remember lying beneath him, our fingers interlaced, his hands pressing my hands against the bed, saying my name softly, oh so gently.

  “I’ve wanted to be with you like this, Lindsay, before you even knew my name.”

  “I’ve always known your name.”

  I ached for him, and I had a right to give myself over to this. But when my young, handsome partner opened my robe and put his lips to my breast, a bolt of pure reasoned panic pulled the emergency brake in my brain.

  This had been a bad idea. Really bad.

  I heard myself whisper, “Richie, no.”

  I clasped the edges of my robe together as Rich rolled onto his side, panting and flushed, looking into my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No, don’t be.” I took his hand and held it to my cheek, covered his hand with mine. “I want this as much as you do. But we’re partners, Rich. We have to take care of each other. Just . . . not in this way.”

  He groaned as I said, “We can never do this again.”

  Chapter 86

  I DROPPED THE KNOCKER ON THE DOOR of the Westwood Registry that sunless morning after our return from LA. Conklin stood beside me as a round-faced man cracked the door open. He was in his fifties, with blond-going-gray hair and clear gray eyes that peered at me through frameless lenses perched over a sharp beak of a nose.

  Did he have something to do with Madison Tyler’s abduction?

  Did he know where she was?

  I showed him my badge, introduced my partner and myself.

  “Yes, I’m Paul Renfrew,” said the man at the door. “You’re the detectives who were here a few days ago?”

  I told him that we were, that we had some questions about Paola Ricci.

  Renfrew invited us inside, and we followed the natty man down the narrow hallway, through the green door that had been padlocked when we’d last seen it.

  “Please. Please sit,” Renfrew said, so Conklin and I each sat on one of the small sofas at right angles in a corner of the cozy office as Renfrew pulled up a chair.

  “I suppose you want to know where I was when Paola was abducted,” Renfrew said to us.

  “That’d be a start,” Conklin said. He looked tired. I suppose we both did.

  Renfrew took a narrow notebook from his breast pocket, a thin daybook of the type that preceded handheld computers. Without prompting, he gave us a short verbal report of his meetings north of San Francisco in the days before, during, and after Paola’s death, along with the names of the potential clients he’d met with.

  “I can make you a photocopy of this,” he offered. On a one-to-ten scale, ten being a three-alarm fire, the gauge in my gut was calling out a seven. Renfrew seemed too prepared and well rehearsed.

  I accepted Renfrew’s photocopy of his schedule and asked him about his wife’s whereabouts during the same period.

  “She’s taking a slow tour through Germany and France,” Renfrew told me. “I don’t have a precise itinerary because she makes it up as she goes along, but I do expect her home next week.”

  I asked, “Do you have any thoughts about anyone who would have wanted to hurt Paola or Madison?”

  “None at all,” Renfrew told us. “Every time I turn on the television, I see another news story about a kidnapping. It’s a virtual epidemic,” he said. “Paola was a lovely girl, and I’m deeply distressed that she’s dead. Everyone loved her.

  “I met Madison only once,” Renfrew continued. “Why would anyone do anything to such a precious child? I just don’t know. Her death is a terrible, terrible tragedy.”

  “What makes you think Madison is dead?” I snapped at Renfrew.

  “She’s not? I just assumed . . . I’m sorry, I misspoke. I certainly hope you find her alive.”

  We were leaving the Westwood Registry when Renfrew’s administrator, Mary Jordan, left her desk and followed us to the door.

  Once outside in the dank morning air that was saturated with the smell of fish coming from the nearby market, Jordan put her hand on my arm.

  “Please,” she said urgently, “take me somewhere we can talk. I have something to tell you.”

  Chapter 87

  WE WERE BACK AT THE HALL fifteen minutes later. Conklin and I sat with Mary Jordan in our cramped and grungy lunchroom. She clutched her container of coffee without sipping from it.

  “After you left a few days ago, before Mr. Renfrew got back from his trip, I decided to poke around. And I found this,” she told us, taking a photocopy of a lined ledger sheet out of her handbag. “It’s from the Register. That’s what they call it.”

  “Where did you find this, Mary?” Conklin asked.

  “I found the key to the Renfrews’ private office. They keep the Register in there.”

  I phoned the DA’s office, got ADA Kathy Valoy on the phone. I filled her in, and she said she’d be down in a minute.

  Valoy was one of those people who actually meant it when she said “a minute.” She came into the lunchroom, and I introduced her to Mary Jordan.

  “Did Sergeant Boxer or Officer Conklin ask you to retrieve these materials?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “If you were asked by anyone to provide these materials,” Valoy said, “that makes you an agent of the police, and we have to exclude the book this came from as evidence if there’s a trial in the future.”

  “I did this all on my own,” Jordan told the ADA. “So help me, God.”

  Valoy smiled, said, “Lindsay, we have to have lunch sometime.” She waggled her fingers and left the lunchroom.

  I asked Mary if I could see the paper, and she handed over a spreadsheet with headings across the top line — PLACEMENTS, CLIENTS, FEES — all entries dated this current calendar year.

  The list of placements was made up of female names, most of them foreign. The clients’ names, for the most part, had a “Mr. and Mrs.” prefix, and the fees ran into the low five figures.

  “All these girls were placed with these families this year?” I said.

  Mary nodded, said, “Remember, I told you that a girl named Helga, one of the registry’s nannies, disappeared about eight months ago when the registry was in Boston?”<
br />
  “I remember.”

  “Well, I looked her up in the Register. Here she is,” she said, stabbing at the page with a forefinger. “Helga Schmidt. And the people she was working for are here, too. Penelope and William Whitten.”

  “Go on,” Conklin said.

  “The records show that the Whittens have a child named Erica. She’s a math prodigy, solving grade-school problems at only four. I looked up the Whittens on the Internet, and I found this interview in the Boston Globe.”

  Another piece of paper came out of Mary Jordan’s handbag. She put a printout of a newspaper article on the table, turned it so we could read it, then summarized it for us as we read.

  “This story appeared in the Lifestyle section last May. Mr. Whitten is a wine critic, and he and his wife were interviewed at home. Right here,” Jordan said, pointing out a paragraph toward the end of the article, “is where Mr. and Mrs. Whitten told the reporter that their daughter Erica had gone to live with Mrs. Whitten’s sister in England. That she was being privately schooled.

  “And that seems sooooo weird to me,” Jordan told us. “Like, unbelievable. The Whittens hired a nanny. The nanny left suddenly, and the Whittens sent their daughter to Europe? Erica is only four! The Whittens can afford any kind of tutors and governesses right here. Why would they send their little girl away?”

  Rich and I exchanged looks as Jordan continued.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if it hadn’t been for Paola’s murder and Maddy having been kidnapped,” Jordan said. “I just don’t believe Erica Whitten is living in England. You think I’m crazy?”

  “You know what I think, Mary?” I said. “You have the instincts of a good cop.”

  Chapter 88

  JACOBI COUGHED SPASMODICALLY BESIDE ME. The air was blue with smoke from Tracchio’s vile cigar, and the speakerphone crackled on his desk.

  The line was open to the Whittens’ home in Boston, and FBI agent Dave Stanford came back on the line.

  “The Whittens are clearly rattled,” he said, “but I got the story out of them. Their youngest daughter, Erica, was kidnapped along with her nanny, Helga Schmidt, eight months ago.”

  Was this it? Finally, a string that connected to the Ricci/Tyler case?

  But if Erica had been kidnapped eight months ago, why in hell hadn’t the Whittens reported it to the police?

  “No one saw the kidnapping,” Stanford continued, “but the Whittens found a note under their door about an hour after the time Erica and Helga were expected home from Erica’s school. A half-dozen photos came along with the note.”

  “It was a ransom note?” Macklin asked, his voice a muted explosion.

  “Not exactly. You got a fax machine over there?”

  Tracchio gave Stanford the fax number. Voices inside the Whitten house could be heard in the background — a man and a woman quarreling softly but urgently. The woman’s voice said, “Go on, Bill. Tell them.”

  Stanford said, “Everyone, this is Bill Whitten.”

  Bill Whitten said hello, and Tracchio introduced himself and the rest of us in a general way. Whitten’s fear and anger had tightened his throat so that his voice was a strangled croak.

  “You have to understand what you’re doing to us,” he said. “They said if we called the police, they’d kill our little girl. Our house could be bugged! They could be watching us now. Do you understand?”

  The fax machine behind Tracchio’s desk burped, and a sheet of paper clattered into the tray.

  “Hang on a second,” Tracchio said, lifting the fax out of the machine. He put the paper on his desk for us to read.

  WE HAVE ERICA. CALL LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND SHE DIES.

  IF WE FEEL ANY HEAT, SHE DIES.

  AND THEN WE’LL TAKE RYAN.

  OR KAYLA. OR PATTY.

  KEEP QUIET, AND ERICA WILL STAY HEALTHY. YOU WILL RECEIVE A NEW PICTURE OF HER EVERY YEAR. YOU MAY EVEN GET A PHONE CALL. SHE MAY EVEN COME HOME.

  BE SMART. BE QUIET.

  ALL YOUR CHILDREN WILL LIVE TO THANK YOU.

  The note was eight months old, but the cruel language made the horror jump off the page. It felt as fresh as if the crime had just happened.

  All the faces around the desk registered shock, but it was Macklin who grabbed the paper, gripping it as if he could wring the kidnapper’s throat by proxy.

  Tracchio retrieved a second page from the fax machine.

  “I can’t make out the pictures,” Tracchio said to Stanford.

  “Erica was photographed against a blank white background in the clothes she was wearing when she was taken. The other photos are snapshots of the Whittens’ older kids at school. And there’s one of Kayla shot through her bedroom window. We’ll have the whole package analyzed.”

  I was thinking, Sure, they’ll try to collect prints and traces from the envelope and its contents, but what Stanford isn’t saying in front of the Whittens is that every dead Jane Doe in the country will be compared to the stats and DNA of both Helga Schmidt and Erica Whitten.

  There was no doubt in my mind that the letter and the photos were a ruse to buy time.

  Erica Whitten and Helga Schmidt were both dead.

  But what had the kidnappers gained?

  What did they want?

  I was reeling with violent images featuring small girls and their equally helpless nannies when my cell phone rang. It was Inspector Paul Chi saying, “An emergency call just came in to the squad, Lindsay. Someone was attacked at the Blakely Arms.”

  Chapter 89

  CONKLIN AND I STEPPED OUT of the Blakely Arms elevator onto a carpeted hallway on the sixth floor and saw two cops halfway down the hall outside the door to apartment 6G. I recognized Officer Patrick Noonan, who was bucking to move into homicide.

  “What happened here, Noonan?”

  “A bloody mess, that’s what, Sergeant. The victim’s name is Ben Wyatt. He’s been living in the building for about a year.”

  Conklin held up the police tape and I ducked under it, Noonan still talking. “The assailant came through the door,” Noonan told me. “Either the door was open, the vic let him in, or the perp had a key.”

  “Who called it in?”

  “Woman next door. 6F. Virginia Howsam. H-o-w-s-a-m.”

  Conklin and I entered the victim’s sparely furnished apartment. A halo of blood pooled around the man’s head, a dark puddle on the polished oak floors.

  He was a black male, early thirties, fit, wearing shorts, a thin gray T-shirt, and running shoes. He was lying on his left side next to a treadmill.

  I bent to get a better look. His eyes were closed and his breathing was labored — but he was still alive.

  Paramedics clattered through the door, crowded around the victim, and on the count of three lifted him into a stretcher.

  The paramedic standing closest to me said, “He’s unconscious. We’re taking him to San Francisco General. Could you step aside, Sergeant? Thanks.”

  The sirens were wailing up Townsend as Charlie Clapper and a couple of his crime-scene investigators entered Wyatt’s living room, then crossed the floor to the treadmill.

  “The cord to this thing’s been cut,” Clapper said, showing me where the clean separation had been made, as if with a sharp knife. “You saw the victim?” he said to me.

  “Yes. He’s alive, Charlie. At least he is now. Looks like he was really clobbered from behind.”

  As with Irene Wolkowski, whatever instrument had been used to bash Ben Wyatt’s skull had been removed from the apartment. And also similar to the Wolkowski crime scene, very little else had been disturbed.

  No doubt there was a connection between the attacks that were making terror an almost daily thing at the Blakely Arms.

  What was that connection? What the hell was going on?

  Chapter 90

  BEN WYATT’S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR Virginia Howsam was a woman in her late twenties who worked nights at a club downtown. She told us that Wyatt was a day trader and a really ni
ce guy whom no one in his right mind would want to hurt.

  We thanked Ms. Howsam for her help and took to the fire stairs, thinking maybe the people under Wyatt’s apartment might have heard sounds that could help us pinpoint the time of the attack.

  Conklin was right behind me on the stairs when the phone at my hip rang. I reached for it, saw Dave Stanford’s name on the caller ID.

  “This is Boxer.”

  “I’ve got good news for you.”

  I signaled to Conklin to put his ear next to the phone so we could both hear.

  “You’ve got news on Erica Whitten?”

  “No, but I thought you’d like to know that Charlie Ray has had his hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and is now sleeping in his own bed.” Stanford chuckled.

  “Fantastic, Dave! What happened?”

  Stanford told me that the husband of a depressed woman had come forward. Their child had died of crib death weeks before.

  “This woman who took Charlie was strung out on grief,” Stanford said. “She was driving down the street, saw Charlie peeking over the fence. She stopped and grabbed him.”

  “She’s in custody?”

  “Yeah, but she’s not the person we’re looking for, Lindsay. She has nothing to do with Erica Whitten or Madison Tyler. She’s on antidepressants, under a doctor’s care, and yesterday was the first time she left home since her baby died.”

  I thanked Stanford and closed the cell phone. Conklin was right there. I was looking into his eyes, feeling the heat.

  “So we’ve got nothing,” Rich said.

  “We’ve got something,” I said, starting down the stairs again. “We’ve got a killer at large in this goddamned building. As for Madison Tyler, we’ve got another dead end.”