16th Seduction Read online

  Conklin talked to Grant some more. Asked some of the questions over again, looking for discrepancies, locking his story in. He prodded and probed in his disarming way, but there was nothing to learn. The mad science teacher hadn’t seen his assailants. They hadn’t spoken to him, they hadn’t smelled like anything, and they hadn’t poked him with a gun.

  He said, “For some reason I’m still alive. I think I’m going to be released tomorrow.”

  Conklin said, “Feel better,” and I added, “Please, Mr. Grant. Check into a hotel.”

  We left a pair of cops at Grant’s hospital door and were heading back to the Hall to brief Brady on our “No news, no leads, not much of anything to report, Lieu” kind of day when we reached the elevator bank and the doors opened.

  Elise Antonelli stepped out.

  “Visiting my client?” she asked.

  “It was a professional call,” I said.

  Antonelli said, “I think he’s going to be all right. We’ve been talking about you, Sergeant.”

  “Only saying nice things, I guess.”

  Antonelli laughed. “You’ll be hearing from me soon,” she said, then she lifted her hand in a wave and headed toward Grant’s room.

  “What the hell was that?” Conklin asked. He jabbed the elevator button repeatedly and hard until the doors finally opened. We got inside.

  “Any idea?” my partner asked.

  “I don’t know what she was talking about,” I said. “And I don’t like the way she said it.”

  CHAPTER 64

  IT WAS AFTER lights-out time at the Loony Bin.

  Inside the ward, Neddie was in his favorite sleeping position when Mikey said from the next bed, “I can’t sleep.”

  Neddie was so charged up with recent memories, he couldn’t sleep, either.

  “Tell me the story,” said Mikey.

  “You want me to start at the castle?”

  “Okay … no,” Mike said. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Scooch over,” said Neddie Lambo.

  Mike shouted, “Scooch,” and pushed his bed up to Neddie’s and got back under the covers. The traffic outside on Hyde Street splashed the walls with soft streaks of light. Around Mike and Neddie, the other patients in Ward Six were in various stages of sleep.

  “Go on,” said Mike. “I’m ready, Neddie.”

  Neddie had told Mikey the story of his life maybe a hundred times. His bunky thought it was a scary fairy tale, because Neddie told it that way.

  “Once back in the day, I had a sister,” said Neddie.

  Mike said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Victoria.” He sighed deeply and rolled onto his side, facing Neddie.

  Neddie remembered his baby sister very well. He had been seven and Vicky four when they were living with their widowed mom on a quiet block in Glen Park. Vicky was very cute and funny, with perfect features and softly dimpled hands.

  Their mother called Vicky her “perfect little girl,” and that stung Neddie bad because he knew how relieved Mommy was to have a pretty child, with a normal brain, who wasn’t doomed to a stunted life that was “too much for any parent to bear.”

  Neddie said to Mike, “Vicky was twenty kinds of trouble.”

  “Tell me the kinds.”

  Neddie listed three, “Noisy, nosy, bossy,” and, wanting to move past this part of the story quickly, he said, “She didn’t suffer. After she stopped breathing, I had to mess her up a little so that everyone could see that it was her fault for making me so mad.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Mikey. “You cut off her hair. And her fingers. And you stuffed her fingers into all of her bodily cabbities.”

  Neddie’s lawyer, Mr. Paul, had asked Neddie questions in such a way that Neddie knew how to tell the judge that he hadn’t known what he’d done to Vicky was wrong. That meant he wasn’t mentally competent to stand trial.

  “Your Honor. He’s only seven,” the lawyer had said.

  Neddie hadn’t gone to jail. This had been his first real-life lesson on the value of being a dummy.

  Mikey loved to hear about Neddie’s Next Stop, Johnston Youth Correctional for the Criminally Insane, which, even at seven years old, Neddie knew was completely hellish and totally wrong.

  Mikey said, “Now tell me about the Castle, Neddie.”

  The prison was an old redbrick building, each floor successively smaller than the lower floor.

  “It was big, Mikey. Like a giant red chocolate cake with candles and flags and a dungeon, of course. Mmmmmwah-hah-hah.”

  Mikey said, “Mmmmwah-hah-hah,” then begged for more.

  Neddie described the rambling facility in morbidly fleshed-out detail, returning repeatedly to the dark, tiny cells just big enough for a collie. The inmates received random and often experimental medical care, and every once in a while they were hosed down with a power washer. The food was blended mush baked into a “nutrition loaf.” The windows were small, high up, and barred. The toilets were execrable. The all-day, all-night screaming was intolerable, and when the two hundred prisoners weren’t caged, chained, or isolated in the dungeon, there were bloody fights and suicides. For Neddie, Johnston Correctional was a crash course in survival.

  That didn’t mean he had to be passive.

  Neddie told Mikey, again, that after “someone” had broken a nurse’s neck because “she refused to give him a glass of milk,” Johnston Youth Correctional for the Criminally Insane had been shut down.

  He had no regrets. Nursey had reminded him of his mother, who had been both afraid of and revolted by her son, and as soon as he had been locked up at Johnston, she had moved far away, leaving no forwarding address.

  Neddie had never heard from her again.

  When Johnston was closed, the “youthful offenders” were parceled out to other facilities around the state, and Neddie was bused to Hyde Street Psychiatric. He was twelve by then, and the Hyde and Seek Loony Bin seemed like some kind of heaven in comparison to Johnston.

  The food groups were identifiable and often tasty. There were real shrinks and doctors, and they were interested in him, even though they never agreed on what exactly was wrong with Neddie.

  Neddie knew. He was a genius. A rare type of genius.

  And thirty years ago, when he turned eighteen, he’d gotten privileges.

  Neddie told Mikey, “Whoever killed Nursey was an unsung hero. You know what that means, Mike? He never got credit. No one ever knew who killed that horrible old woman.”

  Silence from the next bed.

  Neddie tucked sleeping Mikey’s blankets around him and settled himself down. Old show tunes came from the computer in the nurses’ station just outside the door. Within this cocoon of safety and comfort, Neddie thought fondly about his life at the Bin.

  He was loved and trusted here. Maybe someday Neddie Lambo would get the respect he deserved. Not maybe. He was certain of it.

  Because he had definitely earned it.

  CHAPTER 65

  MY PHONE ALARM buzzed, and for a long moment I didn’t have the will to get out of bed.

  But the choice was taken out of my hands. Martha gave me a sloppy facial, Julie cranked up the first notes of her fullthroated cry, and if I didn’t move fast, I was going to be late for work.

  I sprang from my cocoon and went straight for Julie’s room. Once I had her in my arms, Mrs. Rose arrived, and together we launched the morning routine of food for little girl, dog walk, and caffeine with plenty of sugar for me. As Mrs. Rose ran the dishwasher, I checked the TV news.

  Elise Antonelli, Connor Grant’s attorney, was giving a press conference outside San Francisco General, and her client, who was bruised, bandaged, and deadpan, was standing beside her.

  Antonelli was saying, “On behalf of my client, we are filing a complaint against Sergeant Lindsay Boxer with the Internal Affairs Bureau of the San Francisco Police Department. IAB is charged with investigating crimes against citizens or other police officers.

  “In the case of Sergeant Boxer, we are claiming unlawfu
l violation of personal liberty, which means false imprisonment.

  “We are further claiming that she lied about my client, resulting in his criminal prosecution for twenty-five murders. My client was tried and found not guilty on all counts by his jury, but the publicity generated by this trial resulted in several near-fatal attacks on Mr. Grant’s life.”

  Elise Antonelli put up a hand to block reporters’ questions.

  “In a conversation with the mayor this morning, we have been assured that Sergeant Boxer will be thoroughly investigated, and if found in the wrong, she will be separated from—that is, fired by—the SFPD.”

  The press could no longer be constrained. Questions were fired from all sides, but I’d stopped listening. Antonelli’s public statement that I was being investigated was too damned real and sent me into some kind of shock. I stared at the tube, openmouthed, fingers tingling, specks floating in front of my eyes.

  Mrs. Rose called in from the kitchen, “What did she say?”

  I shut off the TV and brought Mrs. Rose into the loop on the beating of Connor Grant and how I wasn’t surprised that he wanted to hurt somebody.

  “He’s an opportunist, and that’s the very kindest thing I can say about him,” I told her. “I’ll be okay. I’ll be fine.”

  She gave me a look that was both hard and questioning. She knew me well. She knew that I was worried sick.

  A half hour later, wearing my imaginary cloak of invisibility, I entered the Hall through the back door and ran up the stairs. Brenda, our squad assistant, snagged me the moment I stepped into the bull pen. “You’re very popular,” she said, handing me a list of one-on-one meetings she’d scheduled for me with Brady, Jacobi, Nash, who is our new head of PR, and Len Parisi. There was also a note from Parisi reading, “Don’t speak with anyone but your union rep and the people on the list.”

  My rep?

  I was scared. I had done nothing wrong. But what if I was somehow found responsible for violating Grant’s rights? What then? My resources were finite. Joe wasn’t working. And after a dismissal for cause, I might never be able to work as a cop again.

  I dropped into my desk chair, and I didn’t care that he wasn’t on Parisi’s approved list, I told Conklin all about it. After that I went to my meetings with the brass and I called Joe. We talked for over an hour from my seat in the fire stairs.

  By the time Claire called to ask if I was free for dinner with Cindy and Yuki, I was ripping mad.

  I said to Claire, “God, yes to dinner. Connor Grant killed twenty-five people and he’s going after me? I want to see all of you, really bad.”

  CHAPTER 66

  AFTER WORK I drove to Susie’s Café, our longtime Women’s Murder Club HQ. I arrived first, commandeered “our” booth in the back room, and ordered a pitcher of brew.

  Yuki and Cindy arrived next, slid into the seat across from me. Cindy said, “Oh, my God, Lindsay, what is the story with Grant filing a complaint against you?”

  Yuki poured Cindy a beer, saying, “You’re a touch wired, Cin. Not another word until you drink this down.”

  “Oh, no. You’re going to torture me with beer?”

  Yuki laughed, which lifted my mood and had a similar effect on of the six or seven people within range of her melodious chortle. Cindy looked pleased to get such a big laugh on her small joke, and I refilled my glass. I wasn’t yet laughing. I wasn’t sure beer could help me.

  About then Claire arrived like a stiff breeze, knocking silverware to the floor as she edged between other tables and ours. She apologized, bent to retrieve a spoon, and knocked into another table, scattering more silverware. Our waitress skidded to a halt, balancing full dishes of pulled pork as Yuki scrambled to help Claire in that narrow aisle. Oh, man, everyone was laughing at our clumsy gang.

  “We’re going to make it easy on you,” Claire said to Lorraine.

  She ordered the Tuesday Night Special, seven-dollar-aplate spicy shrimp dinner, all around. And then Claire asked me to tell what I knew about the complaint.

  But I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone, right?

  “No, I’m under orders from Parisi to keep quiet, so you go ahead,” I told Claire.

  “You sure?”

  “Start talking, Claire, or someone’s going to beat you to it.”

  “Okay, then,” she said. “Get this. One of the EMTs who picked up Sarah Nugent outside the Admiral Dewey Hotel remembered something that didn’t register at the time.”

  Claire had our full attention. Forks paused in midair.

  “What did he remember?” I asked.

  Claire said, “He saw a medical vial in the gutter. So now he and his partner drive over to the hotel and find this empty vial. It’s labeled ‘succinylcholine.’”

  Cindy asked, “What’s that?”

  “Sux is a colorless, odorless muscle relaxant, a shortterm paralytic used primarily for intubation,” said Claire. “It can be administered intravenously. It can also be injected intramuscularly.”

  I said, “I see where you’re going. You think the victims were injected with that?”

  “It makes sense,” said Claire. “If used intravenously, sux works within a minute or two. If you’re not on a respirator, you will stop breathing and you will die. Intramuscularly, it takes longer for the paralysis to hit, so you buy another minute or so, but it’s the same issue. Without going on a respirator PDQ, you will die.”

  Yuki asked her, “Why didn’t the tox screens pick it up?”

  Claire said, “Because sux metabolizes into succinate. That’s a naturally occurring substance we all have in our blood, so—very quickly—it’s undetectable. I think we’ve got our smoking gun, Linds. I’m sure of it. The bottle is on the way to the lab. Let’s pray that CSI finds prints on it, okay?”

  I said, “Sure.”

  Claire said, “You all think I’m kidding.”

  She folded her hands and closed her eyes. Right there in Susie’s raucous, curry-perfumed Caribbean eatery, with the sounds of steel drums and laughter in our ears, we followed Claire’s lead.

  We prayed for CSI to find fingerprints on a small bottle that might lead to a serial killer.

  We really prayed.

  CHAPTER 67

  CINDY CAME BACK to the table from the washroom and found that Lindsay had left.

  Yuki said, “She said sorry, but she had to get home.”

  “Oh, man, I wanted to talk to her,” Cindy said.

  “You might still be able to catch her if you run.”

  Cindy said, “Be right back,” and bolted out the door and down to Montgomery. She looked in both directions for Lindsay’s car and saw her Explorer coming back toward Susie’s in the opposite lane.

  Cindy waved to her. Lindsay slowed to a stop and said, “I’m racing, Cin. Mrs. Rose has a date with her daughter and has to leave any minute. Call you tomorrow?”

  “Okay,” Cindy said. “Talk soon.”

  Cindy had work to do before she slept. And that was putting her into a panic. She had wanted to let Lindsay know she was going to run a story on the sudden deaths that looked like heart attacks and probably weren’t. She didn’t need Lindsay’s permission. Nothing said at the table was off the record, and besides, she already had a good handle on the piece.

  Weeks ago Claire had put out a BOLO on the medical examiner’s network, seeking information about needle marks on people who appeared to have died suddenly, with no known cause. Other people had access to this network. The Chronicle subscribed to it, for instance, and so did the Daily News. Cindy had asked Rich for confirmation. Which he had given her.

  He hadn’t told her anything confidential, but she had known she was onto something when Sarah Nugent, only forty-one years old, died two days ago in front of her hotel—cause of death unknown.

  Lindsay was the primary investigator on the case.

  It was SOP to get a quote from her, but Cindy didn’t need it. What she needed to do was get the story out before another paper ran it. As for the empty v
ial marked “succinylcholine,” she could write that the tip had come from an anonymous source close to the investigation.

  But should she? Should she write the story without Lindsay saying, “Sure. Go for it”?

  Cindy went back to the restaurant and joined the girls for Key lime pie and tea. “Off the record” hardly applied, as she didn’t hear a thing her friends were saying. She was thinking of Lindsay.

  With or without Lindsay’s permission, she had to write the story. Journalism wasn’t a hobby. It was a job with a responsibility to the public to write the truth. Plus, it was her job.

  After the check had been paid, Cindy called Rich and let him know that she was on the way home. As she drove, she organized the story in her mind and thought she could have it in the publisher’s inbox before he got his morning coffee.

  When she was a block from home, she tried calling Lindsay, and when she didn’t pick up, she left a message.

  “Linds, call me, please. I want to run the Sarah Nugent story and talk about the formerly presumed heart attacks. I’m not going to mention Claire by name. But I could sure use a quote from you.”

  The story was writing itself inside her head. Cindy couldn’t wait to start putting the words down.

  CHAPTER 68

  I WAS MAKING breakfast for Julie, with the TV on in the background, when I heard reporter Susan Steinhardt of Channel 5 say, “This just in. A number of deaths in San Francisco originally attributed to heart failure appear, instead, to have been murders.”

  Say that again?

  I dialed down the stove and amped up the volume. Ms. Steinhardt was on set, dark hair perfectly waved, coolly delivering her report, which felt anything but cool to me.

  She said, “Senior crime writer Cindy Thomas of the San Francisco Chronicle broke this story only minutes ago. She writes that as many as five victims have died from injections of a paralytic drug called succinylcholine.