Cradle and All Page 22

  In her eighteen years, Noelle had never seen anything as horrible as the crash at the usually quiet Vandemeer Avenue intersection. It shocked and saddened her, forcing tears into her eyes. It made her feel vulnerable, feel mortal and afraid.

  And suddenly, Noelle experienced tremendous doubt, even anger, about the cross-purposes of God. Her eyes went back to the obscene, twisted wreckage.

  The yellow Volvo station wagon had struck a chestnut tree. The unyielding tree had split open the vehicle, passing through the engine block, through the front and back seats.

  The driver and his young wife died instantly. Three small children appeared to be dead. It was so needless, so tragic.

  A fourth child, an adorable little girl in slipper-feet pajamas, had been thrown free of the car. She was lying, badly injured, on someone’s lawn.

  The girl was crying softly, being attended to by men and women from the neighborhood who had rushed to the accident scene.

  Noelle could stand the terrible suffering no longer. It made her so angry that these people had died. She turned away from the unbearable sadness, the earsplitting wails of approaching police cars and ambulances.

  She had never been affected like this before. Her head ached. She couldn’t bear it. She had to do something to help the family.

  She prayed with all her heart — to make the family whole again. She didn’t know if she could do it. She saw them alive and well in her mind.

  She looked at the girl on the lawn — and nothing had happened.

  Let this family live. They deserve a second chance. Let them have it, she prayed. Come back to life. Come to life, little children. Come back to life, mother and father.

  She heard cries coming from near the car. “They’re alive. All of them. They’re alive.”

  She had brought the family back to life, just as Jesus raised Lazarus out of love and compassion. It was the first of Noelle’s miracles, and as she watched the children, the mother and father, her heart leapt with joy and purpose.

  Noelle hurried away so as not to be noticed. She had no way of knowing that she was being watched.

  The eyes hungrily followed Noelle up the pretty oak-lined street. All the way to her home. They were the fathomless eyes of a boy who’d been washed up cold and hungry on a beach nineteen years before. A boy who’d been thrown from the cold Irish Sea and survived.

  There was a faint red mark on the young man’s forehead, a cross made with the fingernail of a man of God.

  The mark always burned, and it kept his hatred focused.

  He’d waited all these years. He had been patient. But now, as he watched Noelle and her family, he meant to take what was rightfully his.

  He watched her — with thousands of vengeful, bestial eyes.

  Prologue

  INSPECTOR LINDSAY BOXER

  It is an unusually warm night in August, but I’m shivering badly as I stand on the substantial gray stone terrace outside my apartment. I’m looking out over glorious San Francisco and I have my service revolver pressed against the side of my temple.

  Goddamn you, God! I whisper. Quite a sentiment, but appropriate and just, I think to myself.

  I hear Sweet Martha whimpering. I turn and see she is watching me through the glass doors that lead to the terrace. She knows that something is wrong. “It’s okay,” I call to her through the door. “I’m okay. Go lie down, girl.”

  Martha won’t leave, though, won’t look away. She’s a good, loyal friend who’s been nuzzling me good night every single night for the past six years.

  As I stare into the Border collie’s eyes, I think that maybe I should go inside and call the girls. Claire, Cindy, and Jill would be here almost before I hung up the phone. They would hold me, hug me, say all the right things. You’re special, Lindsay. Everybody loves you, Lindsay.

  Only I’m pretty sure that I’d be back out here tomorrow night, or the night after. I just don’t see a way out of this mess. I have thought it all through a hundred times. I can be as logical as hell but I am also highly emotional, obviously. That was my strength as an inspector with the San Francisco Police Department. It is a rare combination, and I think it is why I was more successful than any of the males in Homicide. Of course, none of them are up here getting ready to blow their brains out with their own guns.

  I lightly brush the barrel of the revolver down my cheek and then up to my temple again. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. I am reminded of soft hands, of Chris, and that starts me crying.

  Lots of images are coming way too fast for me to handle.

  The terrible, indelible honeymoon murders that have terrified our city mixed with close-ups of my mom and even a few flashes of my father. My best girls—Claire, Cindy, and Jill—our crazy club. I can even see myself, the way I used to be, anyway. Nobody ever, ever thought that I looked like an inspector, the only woman homicide inspector in the entire SFPD. My friends always said I was more like Helen Hunt married to Paul Reiser in Mad About You. I was married once. I was no Helen Hunt, he was sure no Paul Reiser.

  This is so hard, so bad, so wrong. It’s so unlike me. I keep seeing David and Melanie Brandt, the first couple, who were killed in the Mandarin Suite of the Grand Hyatt. I see that horrifying hotel room where they died senselessly and needlessly.

  That was the beginning.

  Book One

  DAVID AND MELANIE

  Chapter One

  Beautiful long-stemmed red roses filled the hotel suite—the perfect gifts, really. Everything was perfect.

  There might be a luckier man somewhere on the planet, David Brandt thought, as he wrapped his arms around Melanie, his new bride. Somewhere in Yemen, maybe—some Allah-praising farmer with a second goat. But certainly not in all of San Francisco.

  The couple looked out from the living room of the Grand Hyatt’s Mandarin Suite. They could see the lights of Berkeley off in the distance, Alcatraz, the graceful outline of the lit-up Golden Gate Bridge

  “It’s incredible.” Melanie beamed. “I wouldn’t change a single thing about today.”

  “Me, either,” he whispered. “Well, maybe I wouldn’t have invited my parents.” They both laughed.

  Only moments before, they had bid farewell to the last of the three hundred guests in the hotel’s ballroom. The wedding was finally over. The toasts, the dancing, the schmoozing, the photographed kisses over the cake. Now it was just the two of them. Both were twenty-nine years old and had the rest of their lives ahead of them.

  David reached for a pair of filled champagne glasses he had set on a lacquered table. “A toast,” he declared, “to the second luckiest man alive.”

  “The second?” she said, and smiled in pretended shock. “Who’s the first?”

  They looped arms and took a long, luxurious sip from the refreshing crystal. “This farmer with two goats. I’ll tell you later.”

  “I have something for you,” David suddenly remembered. He had already given her the perfect five-carat diamond for her finger, which he knew she wore only to please his folks. He went to his tuxedo jacket, which was draped over a high-backed chair in the living room, and returned with a jewelry box from Bulgari.

  “No, David,” Melanie protested. “You’re my gift.”

  “Open it, anyway,” he said to her. “This, you’ll like.”

  She lifted the top. Inside a suede pouch was a set of earrings, large silver rings around a pair of whimsical moons made from diamonds.

  “They’re how I think of you,” he said.

  Melanie held the moons against the lobes of her ears. They were perfect, and so was she.

  “It’s you who pulls my tides,” David whispered.

  They kissed, and he unfastened the zipper of her dress, letting the neckline fall just below her shoulders. He kissed her neck. Then the top of her breasts.

  There was a knock of the door of the suite.

  “Champagne,” called a voice from outside.

  For a moment, David thought of just yelling, “Leave it there!” A
ll evening, he had longed to peel away the dress from his wife’s soft, white shoulders.

  “Oh, go get it,” Melanie whispered, dangling the earrings in front of his eyes. “I’ll put these on.”

  She wiggled out of his grasp, backing toward the Emperor’s Master Bathroom, a smile in her liquid brown eyes. God he loved those eyes.

  As he went to the door, David was thinking he wouldn’t trade places with anybody in the world.

  Not even for a second goat.

  Chapter Two

  Philip Campbell had imagined this moment, this exquisite scene, so many times in his head. He knew it would be the groom who opened the door. He stepped into the room.

  “Congratulations,” Campbell muttered, handing over the champagne. He stared at the man in the open tuxedo shirt with a black tie dangling around his neck.

  David Brandt barely looked at him as he inspected the brightly ribboned box. Krug. Clos du Meynil. 1989.

  What is the worst thing anyone has ever done? Campbell murmured to himself. Am I capable of doing it? Do I have what it takes?

  “Any card?” the groom said, fumbling in his pants pockets for a tip.

  “Only this, sir.”

  Campbell stepped forward and plunged a knife deeply into the groom’s chest, between the third and fourth vertebrae, the closest route to the heart.

  “For the man who has everything,” Campbell said. He pushed his way into the room and slammed the door shut with a swift kick. He shoved David Brandt against the door and powered the blade in deeper.

  The groom stiffened in a spasm of shock and pain. Guttural sounds escaped from his chest—tiny, gurgling, choking breaths. His eyes bulged in disbelief.

  This is amazing, Campbell thought. He could actually feel the groom’s strength leaking away. The man had just experienced one of the great moments of his life, and now, minutes later, he was dying.

  Campbell stepped back and the groom’s body crumpled to the floor. The room began to tilt like a listing boat. Then everything began to speed up and run together. He felt as if he were watching a flickering newsreel. Amazing. Nothing like he had expected.

  Campbell heard the wife’s voice and had the presence of mind to pull the blade out of David Brandt’s chest.

  He rushed to intercept her as she came from the bedroom, still in her long lacey gown.

  “David?” she said, with an expectant smile that turned to shock at the sight of Campbell. “Where’s David? Who are you?”

  Her eyes traveled over him, terror-ridden, fixing on his face, the knife blade, then to her husband’s body on the floor.

  “Oh, my God! David!” she screamed. “Oh, David, David!”

  Campbell wanted to remember her like this. The frozen, wide-eyed look. The promise and hope that just moments ago had shined so brightly were now shattered.

  The words poured from his mouth. “You want to know why? Well, so do I.”

  “What have you done?” Melanie screamed. She struggled to understand. Her terrified eyes darted back and forth, sweeping the room for a way out.

  She made a sudden dash for the living room door. Campbell grabbed her wrist and brought the bloody knife up to her throat.

  “Please,” she whimpered, her eyes frozen. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “The truth is, Melanie”—Campbell smiled into her quivering face as he stepped close—“I’m here to save you.”

  He lowered the blade and sliced into her. The slender body jolted up with a sudden cry. Her eyes flickered like a weak electric bulb. A deathly rattle shot through her. Why? her begging eyes pleaded. Why?

  It took a full minute for him to regain his breath. The smell of Melanie Brandt’s blood was deep in his nostrils. He almost couldn’t believe what he had done.

  He dragged the bride’s body back into the bedroom and placed her on the bed.

  She was beautiful. Delicate features. And so young. He remembered when he had first seen her and how he had been taken with her then. She had thought the whole world was in front of her.

  He rubbed his hand against the smooth surface of her cheek and cupped one of her earrings—a smiling moon.

  What is the worst thing anyone has ever done? Philip Campbell asked himself again, heart pounding in his chest.

  Was this it? Had he just done it?

  Not yet, a voice inside answered. Not quite yet.

  Slowly, he lifted the bride’s beautiful, white wedding dress.

  Chapter Three

  It was a little before eight-thirty on a Monday morning in June, one of those chilly, gray summer mornings San Francisco is famous for. I was starting the week off badly, flipping through old copies of the New Yorker while waiting for my GPE, Dr. Roy Orenthaler, to free up.

  I’d been seeing Dr. Roy, as I still sometimes called him, ever since I was a sociology major at San Francisco University, and I obligingly came in once a year for my checkup. That was last Tuesday. To my surprise, he called at the end of the week and asked me to stop in today before work.

  I had a busy day ahead of me: two open cases and a deposition to deliver at district court. I was hoping I could be at my desk by nine.

  “Ms. Boxer,” the receptionist finally called to me, “the doctor will see you now.”

  I followed her into the doctor’s office.

  Generally, Orenthaler greeted me with some well-intended stab at police humor, such as, “So if you’re here, who’s out on the street after them?” I was now thirty-four, and for the past two years, lead inspector on the homicide detail out of the Hall of Justice.

  But today, he rose stiffly and uttered a solemn, “Lindsay.” He motioned me to the chair across from his desk. Uh-oh.

  Up until then, my philosophy on doctors was simple: When one of them gave you that deep, concerned look and told you to take a seat, three things could happen. Only one of them was bad. They were either asking you out, getting ready to lay on some bad news, or they’d just spent a fortune reupholstering the furniture.

  “I want to show you something,” Orenthaler began. He held an X-ray up against a light.

  He pointed to splotches of tiny ghostlike spheres in a current of smaller pellets. “This is a blowup of the blood smear we took from you. The larger globules are erythrocytes. Red blood cells.”

  “They seem happy,” I joked, nervously.

  “Those are, Lindsay,” the doctor said, without a trace of a smile. “Problem is, you don’t have many.”

  I fixed on his eyes, hoping they would relax, and that we’d move on to something trivial like you better start cutting down those long hours, Lindsay.

  “There’s a condition, Lindsay,” Orenthaler went on. “Negli’s aplastic anemia. It’s rare. Basically, the body no longer manufactures red blood cells.” He held up an X-ray photo. “This is what a normal blood workup looks like.”

  On this one, the dark background looked like the intersection of Market and Powell at 5:00 P.M., a virtual traffic jam of compressed, energetic spheres. Speedy messengers all carrying oxygen to parts of someone else’s body.

  In contrast, mine looked about as densely packed as a political headquarters two hours after the candidate has conceded.

  “This is treatable, right?” I asked him. More like, I was telling him.

  “It’s treatable, Lindsay,” Orenthaler said, after a pause. “But it’s serious.”

  A week ago, I had come in simply because my eyes were running and blotchy and I’d discovered some blood in my panties; and every day, by three, I was suddenly feeling like some iron-deficient gnome was inside me siphoning off my energy. Me, of the regular double shifts and fourteen-hour days. Six weeks accrued vacation.

  “How serious are we talking about?” I asked, my voice catching.

  “Red blood cells are vital to the body’s process of oxygenation,” Orenthaler began to explain. “Hemopoiesis, the formation of blood cells in the bone marrow.”

  “Dr. Roy, this isn’t a medical conference. How serious are we talking about?”
<
br />   “What is it you want to hear, Lindsay? Diagnosis or possibility?”

  “I want to hear the truth.”

  Orenthaler nodded. He got up and came around the desk and took my hand. “Then here’s the truth, Lindsay. What you have is life threatening.”

  “Life threatening?” My heart stopped. My throat was as dry as parchment paper.

  “Fatal, Lindsay.”

  Chapter Four

  The cold, blunt sound of the word hit me like a hollow-point shell between the eyes.

  Fatal.

  I waited for Dr. Roy to tell me this was all some kind of sick joke. That he had my X-ray mixed up with someone else’s.

  “I want to send you to a hematologist, Lindsay,” Orenthaler went on. “Like a lot of diseases, there are stages. Stage one is when there’s a mild depletion of cells. It can be treated with monthly transfusions. Stage two is when there’s a systemic shortage of red cells.

  Stage three would require hospitalization. A bone marrow transplant. Potentially, the removal of your spleen.”

  “So where am I?” I asked, sucking in a cramped lungful of air.

  “Your erythrocytic count is barely two hundred per cc of raw blood. That puts you on the cusp.”

  “The cusp?”

  “The cusp,” the doctor said, “between stages two and three.”

  There comes a point in everybody’s life when you realize the stakes have suddenly changed. The carefree ride of your life slams into a stone wall; all those years of merely bouncing along, life taking you where you want to go, abruptly ends. In my job, I see this moment forced on people all the time.

  Welcome to mine.

  “So what does this mean?” I asked, weakly. The room was spinning a little now.

  “What it means, Lindsay, is that you’re going to have to undergo a prolonged regimen of intensive treatment.”

  I shook my head. “What does it mean for my job?”

  I’d been in homicide for six years now, the past two as lead homicide inspector. With any luck, when my lieutenant was up for promotion, I’d be in line for his job. The department needed strong women. They could go far. Until that moment, I thought that I would go far.