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

  “Has she been raped? Is she chained to a bed in a basement? Is she hungry and cold? Is she hurt? Is she terrified? Is she calling out for us? Does she wonder why we don’t come for her? Or is she past all that now and is safe in God’s hands?

  “This is all we think about, Officers.

  “We have to know what has happened to our daughter. You have to do more than you ever thought you could do,” Elizabeth Tyler told me. “You must bring Madison home.”

  Chapter 97

  A PLASTIC BAG WITH THE KIDNAPPER’S NOTE INSIDE was positioned on my desk so that Conklin and I could both read it.

  IF YOU CALL LAW ENFORCEMENT, SHE DIES.

  IF WE FEEL ANY HEAT, SHE DIES.

  We were still rocked by those words, unable to shake the sickening feeling that by actually working the Ricci/Tyler case, we might have brought about Madison’s death.

  When Dave Stanford arrived at noon, we turned the kidnapper’s note over to the FBI. Jacobi ordered a pie from Presto Pizza. Conklin pulled up a chair for Stanford, and we opened our files to him.

  An hour later, it still all came down to one lead: the Whittens in Boston and the Tylers in Pacific Heights had the Westwood Registry in common.

  We divvied up the client names that Mary Jordan had copied from the Register and started making phone calls. By the time the square box was in the round file, we were ready to go.

  Conklin and Macklin went in Stanford’s car. And Jacobi and I paired up, partners again for the day.

  It was good seeing Jacobi’s homely mug beside me, his expanding heft in the driver’s seat.

  “Pardon me for noticing, but you look like you’ve been keelhauled,” he said.

  “This goddamned case is making me sick. But since you mention it, Jacobi, I’m wondering about something. Did it ever occur to you to lie to me when I look like hell?”

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  “I guess that’s one of the things I love about you.”

  “Ah, don’t get mushy on me now.” He grinned, took a hard right onto Lombard, and parked the car.

  Over the next five hours, we tracked down and interviewed four Westwood Registry clients and their nannies. By the time the sun was lighting up a swath of pink cotton-candy clouds across the western sky, we had joined Macklin and the others back at the Hall.

  It was a short meeting because our combined twenty-five man-hours had yielded nothing but praise for the Westwood Registry and their imported five-star nannies.

  At around seven p.m. we told one another we’d pick it up again in the morning. I crossed Bryant, got my car out of the lot, and headed toward Potrero Hill.

  Streetlights were winking on all across the city as I parked outside my home sweet home.

  My hand was on the car-door handle when something eclipsed the light coming in from the passenger-side window, throwing me into shadow.

  My heart hammered as I swung my head around and a dark figure came into view. It took a few seconds for my brain to put it all together. Even then, I doubted my eyes.

  It was Joe.

  Chapter 98

  IT WAS JOE. It was Joe.

  There was no one in the world I wanted to see more.

  “How many times have I told you . . .” I said, heart racing, getting out of my car on the street side, slamming the door.

  “Don’t sneak up on an armed police officer?”

  “Right. You’ve got something against telephones? Some kind of phobia?”

  Joe grinned sheepishly at me from where he stood on the sidewalk. “Not even a hello? You’re tough, Blondie.”

  “Ya think?”

  I didn’t feel tough, though. I felt depleted, vulnerable, close to tears, but I was determined not to show any of that. I scowled as I drummed my fingers on the hood of my car, but I couldn’t help noticing how great Joe looked.

  “I’m sorry. I took a chance,” he said, his smile absolutely winning. “I just hoped to see you. So anyway, how have you been?”

  “Never better,” I lied. “You know. Busy.”

  “Sure, I know. You’re all over the newspapers, Wonder Woman.”

  “More like, wonder if I’m ever going to solve a case,” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “And you?” I said, warming up to Joe through and through. I stopped drumming my fingers and leaned a little bit toward him. “How’s it going with you?”

  “I’ve been busy, too.”

  “Well, I guess we’re both keeping out of trouble.” I locked the car, but I still didn’t take a step toward him. I liked having that big hunk of metal between us. My Explorer as chaperone. Giving me a chance to think through what to do with Joe.

  Joe grinned, said, “Yeah, sure, but what I meant was I’ve been busy trying to get a new life.”

  What was that? What had he just said?

  My heart lurched and my knees started to give. I had a flash of insight — Joe looked and sounded great because he’d fallen in love with someone else. He’d dropped by because he couldn’t tell me the news on the phone.

  “I haven’t wanted to call you until it was final,” he said, his words dragging me back to the moment, “but I can’t move the damned request through the system fast enough.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I put in for a transfer to San Francisco, Lindsay.”

  Relief overwhelmed me. Tears filled my eyes to the brim as I stared at Joe. Images flashed, nothing I could help or stop, snatches of our months of high-flying romance, but it wasn’t the romantic part that I remembered most. It was those homey moments, with Joe singing in the shower, me sneaking a peek in the mirror at his receding hairline when he didn’t know I was looking. And the way he crouched over his cereal bowl as if someone might take it from him because he’d grown up in a house with six brothers and sisters, and none of them had the exclusive rights to anything. I thought about how Joe was the only person in my life who would just let me talk myself out and didn’t expect me to be the strong one all the time. And okay, yeah, I flashed on the way he handled my body when we made love, making me seem small and weightless, and how safe I used to feel when I fell asleep in his arms.

  “I’ve been given assurances but nothing definite . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared at me. “God, Lindsay,” he said, “you have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

  The wind coming off the bay blew the tears off my cheeks, and I was filled with gratitude for the unexpected gift of his visit and the night ahead. I still had an unopened bottle of Courvoisier in the liquor cabinet. And massage oil in the nightstand. . . . I thought about the delicious coolness of the air and how much heat Joe and I could turn up just lying together, before even reaching out our hands to touch.

  “Why don’t you come upstairs?” I finally said. “We don’t have to talk on the street.”

  Something dark crossed his features as he came toward me and gently, deliberately, encircled my shoulders with his large hands.

  “I want to come in,” he said, “but I’ll miss my flight. I just had to tell you, don’t give up on me. Please.”

  Joe put his arms around me and pulled me to him. Instinctively, I stiffened, folded my arms over my chest, dropped my chin.

  I didn’t want to look up into his face. Didn’t want to be charmed or swayed, because inside of three minutes, I’d ridden the entire Joe Molinari roller coaster.

  Just over a week ago I’d steeled myself to break away from him because of this damned magic trick of his — now he’s here, now he’s not.

  Nothing had changed!

  I was furious. And I couldn’t let Joe open me up only to let me down again. I looked at his face for the last time, and I pushed away from him.

  “I’m sorry. Really. For a moment I thought you were someone else. You’d better go now,” I sputtered. “Have a safe flight.”

  He was calling my name as I ran as fast as I could up the front steps of my building. I put my key in the lock and turned the knob in one movement. Then I slammed the do
or behind me and continued to run up the stairs. When I walked into my apartment, I had to go to the window, though.

  I parted the curtain — just in time to see Joe’s car drive away.

  Chapter 99

  MY PHONE STARTED RINGING before I dropped the curtain back across the glass. I knew Joe was calling from the car, and I had nothing to say to him.

  I showered for a good long time, fifteen or twenty minutes under the spray. When I got out of the shower, the phone was still ringing. I ignored this call, too. Ditto the furiously blinking light on my answering machine and the tinny chime of my cell phone paging me from my jacket pocket.

  I tossed my dinner in the microwave. I opened the Courvoisier and had poured out a tumblerful when my cell phone started up its damned ringing again.

  I grabbed it out of my jacket pocket, growled, “Boxer,” fully prepared to say, “Joe, leave me alone, okay?” I felt an inexplicable letdown when the voice in my ear was my partner’s.

  Rich said, “What’s it take to get you to answer the phone, Lindsay?” He was annoyed with me and I didn’t care.

  “I was in the shower,” I said. “As far as I know, that’s still allowed. What’s up?”

  “There was another attack at the Blakely Arms.”

  The air went out of me.

  “A homicide?”

  “I’ll let you know when I get there. I’m a couple of blocks away.”

  “Lock down the building. Every exit,” I said. “No one leaves.”

  “I’m on it, Sergeant.”

  That’s when I remembered the treadmill victim. How could I have forgotten about him?

  “Rich, we forgot to check on Ben Wyatt.”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “You called the hospital?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is Wyatt awake?”

  “He died two hours ago.”

  I told Rich I’d see him shortly and called Cindy — no answer. I snapped my phone closed, slapped it down on the kitchen counter so that I wouldn’t throw it through a window. The microwave binged five times, telling me that dinner was ready.

  “I’m going to lose my mind!” I shouted at the timer. “Going to fricking lose it.”

  Screw everything! I left the brandy untouched on the counter and my dinner in the microwave. I dressed quickly, buckled my shoulder holster, and threw on my blazer. I called Cindy and got her, told her what was happening.

  Then I headed out to Townsend and Third.

  By the time I strode into the lobby of the Blakely Arms, I was imagining my next conversation with Cindy. I wasn’t going to take any guff from her, either.

  She was going to move in with me until she had somewhere safe to live.

  Chapter 100

  CINDY WAS WAITING AT THE ENTRANCE to the Blakely Arms, her streaky blond curls blown every which way. Her lipstick looked chewed off.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Again? Is this really happening again?”

  “Cindy,” I said as we entered the lobby, “has there been any talk in the building? Any gossip? Any fingers pointed toward anyone?”

  “Only thing I’ve heard is the nasty sound of people’s nerves snapping.”

  We took the elevator together, and once again I was standing outside an apartment in the Freaky Arms that was bristling with uniformed cops.

  Conklin nodded to Cindy, then introduced me to Aiden Blaustein. He was a tall white kid, about twenty-two, wearing black-on-black-on-black — torn jeans, Myst T-shirt, vest, a patched leather jacket, and choppy black hair that was short in back, falling across panicky brown eyes.

  Conklin said, “Mr. Blaustein is the victim.”

  I heard Cindy say, “Cindy Thomas, the Chronicle. Would you spell your name for me?”

  I exhaled. The kid was alive and unhurt but obviously scared half out of his mind.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” I asked Blaustein.

  “Fuck if I know! I went out for a six-pack around five,” he said. “Ran into an old girlfriend and we got a bite. When I came home, my place had been totally trashed.”

  Conklin pushed open Blaustein’s front door, and I walked inside the studio apartment, Cindy trailing behind me.

  “Stay close —” I said.

  “And don’t touch anything,” she finished.

  The apartment looked like an electronics shop that had been trampled by a rhino on crack. I took a quick count of a desktop computer, three monitors, a stereo, and a forty-two-inch plasma-screen television that had been reduced to shards. Not stolen — destroyed! The desk was banged up, probably collateral damage.

  Blaustein said, “It took me years to get all this together just the way I like it.”

  “What kind of work do you do?” Cindy asked.

  “I design Web sites and games. This stuff cost probably twenty-five.”

  “Mr. Blaustein,” I said, “when you went out, did you leave your door open?”

  “I never leave my door open.”

  “Mr. Blaustein left the music on when he left the apartment,” Rich said. His voice was matter-of-fact, but he didn’t look at me.

  “Did anyone complain to you about the music?” I asked.

  “Today?”

  “Ever,” I said.

  “I’ve gotten nasty phone calls from one person,” Blaustein said.

  “And who was that?”

  “You mean, did he tell me his name? He didn’t even say hello. His opening line was ‘If you don’t turn off that shit, I’m gonna kill you.’ That was the first time. We’ve had these shouting matches a couple of times a week for a while now. All the time, cursing me. Cursing my children.”

  “You have kids?” I asked, unable to imagine it.

  “No. He cursed any future children I might have.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Me? I know swearwords this dude never heard before. Thing is, I would’ve recognized the guy’s voice if I’d heard it before. My ears are, like, good enough to be insured by Lloyd’s of London. But I don’t know him. And I know everyone who lives here. I even know her,” he said, pointing to Cindy. “Third floor, right?”

  “And you’re saying no one else in the building complained about your sound system?”

  “No, because A, I only work during the day, and B, we’re allowed to play music until eleven p.m. Besides which, C, I don’t play the music loud.”

  I sighed, unclipped my cell phone, and called the crime lab. I got the night-shift supervisor on the line and told him we needed him.

  “You have someone you can stay with tonight?” Rich was asking Blaustein.

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, you can’t stay here. Your apartment’s a crime scene for a while.”

  Blaustein looked around the wreck of his apartment, his young face sagging as he cataloged the destruction. “I wouldn’t stay here tonight if you paid me.”

  Chapter 101

  CINDY, RICH, AND I CONNECTED THE DOTS during the elevator ride down to the lobby.

  “The dogs, the piano, the treadmill . . .” Rich was saying.

  “The Web-meister’s apartment . . .” Cindy added.

  “It’s all the same thing,” I said. “It’s the noise.”

  “Yep,” Rich agreed. “Whoever this maniac is, noise makes him a little bit violent.”

  I said, “Rich, I’m sorry I snapped at you before. I had a bad day.”

  “Forget it, Lindsay. We close this case, we’ll both feel better.”

  The elevator doors slid open, and we stepped out again into the lobby. At the moment, the space was packed with about two hundred freaked-out tenants, standing room only.

  Cindy had her notepad out and moved toward the board president as Conklin used his body as a plow. I drafted behind him until we reached the reception desk.

  Someone yelled, “Quiet!” and when the rumble died, I said, “I’m Sergeant Boxer. I don’t have to tell you that there have been a series of disturbing incidents in this building —”

&nbs
p; I waited out the heckling about the police not doing their jobs, then pushed on, saying that we were going to reinterview everyone and that no one was permitted to leave until we said it was okay.

  A gray-haired man in his late sixties raised his hand, introducing himself as Andy Durbridge.

  “Sergeant, I may have some useful information. I saw a man in the laundry room this afternoon whom I’d never seen before. He had what looked like a dog’s bite marks on his arms.”

  “Can you describe this man?” I asked. I felt a new kind of tension in my gut. The good kind.

  “He was about five six, muscular, brown hair going bald, in his thirties, I think. I looked around already, and I don’t see him here.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Durbridge,” I said. “Can anyone here pin a name on that description?”

  A petite young woman with caramel-colored bedspring curls waded through the crowd until she reached me.

  Her eyes were huge, and her skin was unnaturally pale — something was frightening her half to death.

  “I’m Portia Fox,” she said, her voice quavering. “Sergeant, may I speak with you privately?”

  Chapter 102

  I STEPPED OUTSIDE the Blakely Arms with Portia Fox.

  “I think I know that man that Mr. Durbridge was referring to,” Ms. Fox told me. “He sounds like the guy who lives in my apartment during the daytime.”

  “Your roommate?”

  “Not officially,” the woman said, casting her eyes around. “He rents my dining room. I work during the day. He works at night. We’re like ships crossing, you know?”

  “It’s your apartment, and this man is a sublet, is that what you’re saying?”

  She bobbed her head.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Garry, two Rs, Tenning. That’s what’s printed on his checks.”

  “And where is Mr. Tenning now?” I asked.

  “He’s at his job with a construction company.”

  “He works in construction — at night?” I asked. “You have a cell phone number for him?”