Women's Murder Club [03] 3rd Degree Page 3

  They were standing there, chewing on their grin like two oversize teenagers. “It didn’t,” I said. “Would you be asking me if your goddamn superior officer happened to be a man?”

  “Damn right, I’d be askin’,” Cappy said. “And might I add, for my goddamn superior officer”—the big detective threw his bald head back—“you’re looking mighty fine here in those tights. That Fratelli brother, he must be quite a fool.”

  “Noted.” I smiled. It had taken me a long time to feel in charge of these guys. Both of them had double my time on the force. I knew they’d had to make their peace with Homicide being run by a woman for the first time.

  “Something you want to add to that, Warren?” I asked.

  “Nope.” He rocked on his heels. “Only, we doin’ suits and ties tomorrow, or can I wear my tennis shorts and Nikes?”

  I brushed past him, shaking my head. Then I heard my name one more time. “Lieutenant?”

  I turned, piqued. “Warren?”

  “You did good today.” He nodded. “The ones who matter know.”

  Chapter 14

  IT WAS ONLY a ten-minute drive out to Potrero, where I live in a two-bedroom walk-up. As I went through my door, Martha wagged up to me. One of the patrolmen at the scene had taken her home for me.

  The message light was flashing. Jill’s voice: “Lindsay, I tried to call you at the office. I just heard….” Fratelli:

  “Listen, Lindsay, if you’re free today…” I deleted it without even hearing what he had to say for himself.

  I went into the bedroom and peeled off my tights and sweats. I didn’t want to talk to anyone tonight. I flicked on a CD. The Reverend Al Green. I stepped into the shower and took a swig of a beer I’d brought with me. I leaned back under the warming spray, the grit and soot and smell of ash chipping off my body, swirling at my feet. Something made me feel like crying.

  I felt so alone.

  I could’ve died today.

  I wished I had someone’s arms to slide into.

  Claire had Edmund to soothe her on a night like tonight, after she pieced three charred bodies together. Jill had Steve, whatever… Even Martha had someone—me!

  I felt my thoughts drift to Chris for the first time in a while. It would be nice if he were here tonight. It had been eighteen months since he died. I was ready to put it behind me, to open myself to someone, if someone happened to be on the scene. No drumroll. No “Ladies and gentlemen, the envelope, please….” Just this little voice in my heart, my voice, telling me it was time.

  Then I drifted back to the scene at the Marina. I saw myself on the street, holding Martha. The beautiful, calm morning; the stucco town house. The redheaded kid spinning his Razor. The flash of orange light.

  Over and over I ran the reel, and it kept ending at the same point.

  There’s something you’re not seeing. Something I had edited out.

  The woman turning the corner just before the flash. I had seen only a glimpse of her back. Blond, ponytail. Something in her arms. But that wasn’t what was bothering me.

  It was that she never came back.

  I hadn’t thought about it until now. After the blast… The kid with the Razor was there. Lots of others. But the blond woman wasn’t among them. No one interviewed her. She never came back… Why?

  Because the son of a bitch was running away.

  That moment flashed over and over in my mind. Something in her arms. She was running away.

  It was the au pair.

  And the bundle in her arms?

  That was the Lightowers’ baby!

  Chapter 15

  HER HAIR FELL in thick, blond clumps onto the bathroom floor. She took the scissors and cut again. Everything had to start over now. Wendy was gone forever. A new face began to emerge in the mirror. She said good-bye to the au pair she had been for the past five months.

  Cut away the past. Wendy was a name for Peter Pan, not the real world.

  The baby was screaming in the bedroom. “Hush, Caitlin. Please, honey.”

  She had to figure it out—what to do with her. All she knew was that she couldn’t let the baby die. She had listened to the news reports all afternoon. The whole world was looking for her. They were calling her a cold-blooded killer. A monster. But she couldn’t be such a monster, could she? Not if she had saved the baby.

  “You don’t think I’m such a monster, do you, Caitlin?” she called to the bawling child.

  Michelle lowered her head into the sink and dumped a bottle of L’Oréal Red Sunset dye all over her, massaging it into her cropped hair.

  Wendy, the au pair, disappeared.

  Any moment now, Malcolm would come by. They had agreed not to meet until they were sure she hadn’t been followed. But she needed him. Now that she’d proved what she was made of.

  She heard the sound of the front door being rattled. Michelle’s heart jumped.

  What if she’d been careless? What if someone had seen her coming back with the kid? What if they were kicking the door down now!

  Then Malcolm stepped into the room. “You were expecting cops, weren’t you? I told you they’re stupid!” he said. Michelle ran over to him and jumped into his arms.

  “Oh, Mal, we did it. We did it.” She kissed his face about a hundred times. “I did the right thing, didn’t I?” Michelle asked. “I mean, the TV is saying that whoever did this was a monster.”

  “I told you, you have to be strong, Michelle.” Mal stroked her hair. “The TV, they’re bought and paid for, just like the rest. But look at you…. You look so different.”

  Suddenly, there was a cry from the bedroom. Mal took a gun from his belt. “What the fuck was that?”

  She was behind him as he ran into the bedroom. He stared, horrified, at Caitlin.

  “Mal, we can keep her, just for a little while. I’ll care for her. She’s done nothing wrong.”

  “You dumb twit,” he said, pushing her onto the bed. “Every cop in the city will be looking for this kid.”

  She felt herself wheezing now. The way she always did when Mal’s voice got hard. She fumbled around her purse for her inhaler. It was always there. She never went anywhere without it. She’d had it just last night. Where the hell was it now?

  “I cared for her, Malcolm,” Michelle said again. “I thought you’d understand….”

  Malcolm pushed her face in front of the child. “Yeah, well understand this…. That kid is gone, tomorrow. You make it stop crying. Stick your tits in its mouth, put a fucking pillow over its head. In the morning, the baby’s gone.”

  Chapter 16

  CHARLES DANKO didn’t believe in taking unnecessary chances; he also resolutely believed that all soldiers were expendable, even himself. He had always preached the gospel: there’s always another soldier.

  So he made the call from a pay phone in the Mission District. If the call was interrupted, if the call was discovered, well, so be it.

  The phone rang several times before someone picked up at the apartment. He recognized the voice of Michelle, the wonderfully coldhearted au pair. What a performance she’d put on.

  “I’m proud of you, Michelle. Please don’t say anything. Just put Malcolm on. You are a hero, though.”

  Michelle put the phone down, and Danko had to choke back a laugh at how they obeyed his orders.

  It was priceless and it said so much about the human condition. Hell, it might even explain Hitler at Munich.

  These were very smart people, most of them with graduate degrees, but they rarely questioned anything he told them.

  “Yeah. It’s me.”

  He heard Malcolm’s cheerless voice. This boy was brilliant, but he was truly a killer, probably a psychopath; he even scared Danko sometimes.

  “Listen to me. I don’t want to stay on too long. I just wanted to give you an update—everything is working beautifully. It couldn’t be better.”

  Danko paused for a couple of seconds. “Do it again,” he finally said.

  Chapter 17r />
  A MAMMOTH LOGO in the shape of an interlocking X and L stood atop the brick-and-glass building on a promontory jutting into the bay. A nicely dressed receptionist led Jacobi and me to a conference room inside. On the paneled walls, articles and magazine covers featuring Morton Lightower’s glowing face ran the length of the room. One Forbes cover asked, CAN ANYONE IN SILICON VALLEY STOP THIS MAN?

  “Just what does this company do?” I asked Jacobi.

  “High-speed switches or something. They move data over the Internet. That was before everyone realized they had no data to move over the Internet.”

  The door to the conference room opened and two men stepped in. One had salt-and-pepper hair and a ruddy complexion, a well-cut suit. Lawyer. The other, heavy and balding, with an open plaid shirt. Tech.

  “Chuck Zinn,” the suit introduced himself, offering a card to Jacobi. “I’m X/L’s CLO. You’re Lieutenant Boxer?”

  “I’m Lieutenant Boxer.” I stared at the card and sniffed. “What’s a CLO?”

  “Chief legal officer.” He bowed apologetically. “This is Gerry Cates, who helped found the company with Mort.

  “Needless to say, we’re horrified around here.” The two men took seats, as we did, around the conference table. “Most of us have known Mort since the beginning. Gerry went to Berkeley with him. I want to start by promising the full cooperation of the company.”

  “Are there any leads?” Cates inquired. “We’ve heard Caitlin is missing.”

  “We’re doing everything we can to follow up on the baby. We were told the family had an au pair—who’s missing. Any help you could give in finding her?”

  “Maybe Helene could help you out. Mort’s secretary.” Cates looked at the lawyer.

  “I think that’s doable.” Zinn scratched a note.

  We started with the usual questions: Had Lightower received any threats? Were they aware of anyone who’d want to do him harm?

  “No.” Gerry Cates shook his head and glanced at the lawyer. “Of course, Mort’s financial affairs were paraded all over the media,” he continued. “People are always popping off at shareholder meetings. Financial watch-dogs. Hell, you want to redo your kitchen, they’re crying you’re bleeding the company.”

  Jacobi sniffed. “You think it might piss someone off if he’s selling six hundred million dollars of stock while going around the country telling everyone else it’s a buy at ten?”

  “We can’t control our share price, Inspector,” Cates replied, clearly upset by the question.

  A tense silence settled over the room.

  “You’ll provide us a list of all your clients,” I said.

  “Doable.” The lawyer jotted down a note again.

  “And we’ll need access to his private computers, e-mail, and correspondence.” I lobbed a grenade at the CLO.

  The lawyer’s pen never touched the page. “Those files are private, Lieutenant. I think I’d better check our legal footing before I can agree to that.”

  “I thought you were the legal footing,” Jacobi said with a grin.

  “Your boss has been murdered, Mr. Zinn. I’m afraid they’re our matters now. There was a note at the bomb scene,” I said. I pushed across a copy of the photo. “It referred to Morton Lightower as an ‘enemy of the people.’ There’s a name at the bottom, August Spies. Mean anything to either of you?”

  Zinn blinked. Cates took a deep breath, his eyes suddenly blank.

  “I don’t need to remind you that this is a murder investigation,” I said. “If anyone’s holding something back, now would be the time…”

  “No one’s holding anything back,” Gerry Cates said stiffly.

  “You probably want to talk to Helene now.” The CLO straightened his pad, as if the meeting was over.

  “What I want is Lightower’s office sealed, now. And I want access to all correspondence. Computer files as well. And e-mail.”

  “I’m not sure that’s doable, Lieutenant.” Chuck Zinn arched back in his chair.

  “Let me tell you what’s doable, Mr. Zinn.” I fastened on his phony, compliant grin. “What’s doable is that we’re back here in two hours with a subpoena, and anything deleted from those files in the past twenty-four hours goes under the heading of impeding a murder investigation. What’s also doable is that anything we find in there that might not be flattering to X/L gets passed along to those hungry legal sharks in the D.A.’s office. Any of that sound doable, Mr. Zinn?”

  Gerry Cates leaned toward his lawyer. “Chuck, maybe we could work something out.”

  “Of course we can work something out.” Zinn nodded. “But I’m afraid that’s all we have time for today. And you must be busy as well. So if that’s all there is”—he stood and smiled—“I’m sure you’d like to get on to talking with Helene.”

  Chapter 18

  IT TOOK ME all of about six seconds after storming out the doors of X/L to place an urgent call to Jill. I took her through the frustrating meeting I’d just come out of.

  “You’re looking for a subpoena,” Jill cut me off, “to get into Lightower’s files?”

  “Duh, Jill, and fast, before they send in the Arthur Andersen boys to do a little office tidying.”

  “Any evidence there’s anything in Lightower’s computer to back that up?”

  “Call me suspicious, Jill, but when a guy I’m interviewing starts to twist around like a cod on a fishing line, those little police antennae behind my ears always go twang.”

  “How do they go, Lindsay?” Jill chuckled back.

  “Twang,” I said, more firmly. “C’mon, Jill, I’m not screwing around.”

  “Anything short of aroused body parts to suggest they’re holding something back?”

  The blood began to roil in my chest. “You’re not gonna do this for me, are you?”

  “I can’t do this for you, Lindsay. And if I did, whatever you found wouldn’t make it through arraignment. Look, I could try to cut a deal with them.”

  “Jill. I’ve got a multiple-murder investigation.”

  “Then if I were you, I’d try to apply some nonlegal pressure.”

  “You want to spell that out for me?”

  Jill snorted. “Last I checked, you still had a few friends in the news media….”

  “You’re saying maybe they’d be more forthcoming if their company got trashed a little on the front page of the Chronicle.”

  “Duh, Linds…” I heard Jill giggle.

  All of a sudden a beep sounded on my cell phone.

  Cappy Thomas at the office. “Lieutenant, I need you back at home base, posthaste. We got a line on the au pair.”

  Chapter 19

  TWO WOMEN WERE SITTING in Interrogation Room 1 when I got back. They owned a small placement service for nannies and au pairs, Cappy informed me. “A Nanny Is Love!”

  “We called in when we heard about what happened,” Linda Cliborne, in a pink cashmere sweater, explained to me. “We placed Wendy Raymore in that job.”

  “She seemed perfect for it,” her partner, Judith Hertan, jumped in. Judith took out a yellow file and pushed it across the table. Inside was a filled-out A Nanny Is Love! application form, a couple of letters of recommendation, a Cal-Berkeley student ID with a photo on it.

  “The Lightowers adored her,” Linda said.

  I stared at the small laminated photo of Wendy Raymore’s face. She was blond with high cheekbones, a wide, blossoming smile. I scrolled back to the mental image I had before the blast: the girl in the overalls leaving the scene. This could be her.

  “We carefully screen all of our girls. Wendy seemed like a gem. She was cheerful and attractive, a totally likable kid.”

  “And the Lightowers said their little baby had taken to her like honey,” her partner added. “We always check.”

  “These recommendations… you checked them, too?”

  Judith Hertan hesitated. “We may not have followed up on all of them. I did check with the school, made sure she was in good standing. We had her
college ID, of course.”

  I fixed on the address: 17 Pelican Drive. Across the bay in Berkeley.

  “I think she said she lived off-campus,” Linda Cliborne said. “We mailed her confirmation to a post office box.”

  I took Cappy and Jacobi outside the room. “I’ll alert the Berkeley PD. And Tracchio.”

  “How do you want to handle it?” Cappy looked at me. What he meant was, What kind of force should we use to pick her up?

  I stared at the photo.

  “Use everything,” I said.

  Chapter 20

  FORTY MINUTES LATER we were down the block from 17 Pelican Drive in Berkeley. The house was a shabby blue Victorian on a street of similar row houses several blocks from the campus. Two patrol cars had the street blocked off. A SWAT van pulled up alongside. I didn’t know what to expect, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  We all donned protective vests under our police jackets. It was 11:45. The Berkeley PD had the house under surveillance. They said no one had left, but a black girl carrying a Cal-Berkeley bag had gone in thirty minutes before.

  “Let’s go find a missing baby,” I said to the guys.

  Jacobi, Cappy, and I crept behind a line of parked cars close to the front of the house. No sign of activity inside. We knew the place could be booby-trapped.

  Two inspectors sidled up to the front porch. A SWAT team guy waited with a ram in case we needed to break in. The scene was eerily quiet.

  I gave the nod. Let’s go in.

  “Open up! San Francisco Police!” Cappy rapped heavily on the door.

  My eyes were peeled to the side windows for any sign of activity. They had already used a bomb. I was sure there’d be no hesitation to opening up with guns. But there was nothing.

  Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching from inside, the sound of a lock being turned. As the door swung open, we trained our guns on whoever was behind it.