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  I told Cindy and Yuki about the numbers 104 and 613, showed them a photocopy of the index cards we’d found with the first two heads. No numbers had been found with the other heads.

  “So, two numbers only. Maybe it’s a game,” said Yuki.

  “So you think the killer is into Sudoku?” I said.

  “You’re funny,” Yuki said, giving me a soft punch in the arm.

  “But you said there were no numbers with any of the other remains,” Claire said.

  “To me that means whoever dug up the heads left the numbers,” I said. “These are two distinct acts — burying and exhuming. They may have been done by different people.”

  Cindy had been tapping keys on her laptop.

  “I just ran the numbers through Google. Came up with a lot of stuff that doesn’t seem related to backyard burials. For instance, I’ve got numbers of committees on radiation, department numbers at European universities.”

  “Gotta be some kind of code,” Yuki said.

  “Maybe it’s an archive number,” I offered. “The head-and-flower tableau was set up almost like an exhibit.”

  “Let me run with this part of the puzzle,” Cindy said. “I’ll let you know what I find, and what do you say, Linds? I have first dibs on the story if I find out what the numbers mean?”

  “If you actually find something we can use.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll have to clear it before you run it.”

  “Of course. My usual penalty for being friends with you guys.”

  “Okay,” I said to Cindy. “The numbers are yours.”

  “Biggest issue for me,” Claire said, “is that we have no bodies. Without bodies, we may never be able to determine causes of death.”

  “Well, at least it’s seven bodies we need to find, not six hundred and thirteen,” Yuki said.

  “Not six hundred and thirteen so far,” said Claire. “There are many more backyards in Pacific Heights.”

  We groaned as one.

  It was raining when I ran out the back door of Claire’s office to my car. Reporters were in the parking lot waiting for me, calling my name.

  I got into my car, started up the engine, turned on the lights and the sirens, and pulled out onto Harriet Street.

  No bones, ladies and gentlemen of the press. I have no bones to throw you at all.

  Chapter 14

  I WAS STILL thinking about the six skulls in sealed paper bags and the young Jane Doe’s head in the cooler when I opened the door to our apartment on Lake Street. Martha, my border collie and pal of many years, whimpered and tore across the floor, then threw her full weight against me, almost knocking me down.

  “Yes, I do love you,” I said, bending to let her wash my chin, giving her a big hug.

  I called out, “Joe. Your elderly primigravida has arrived.”

  Claire had told me that elderly primigravida meant “a woman over thirty-five who is pregnant for the first time,” and it was a quaint and unflattering term that I usually found just hilarious.

  Joe called back, and when I rounded the corner, I saw him standing between piles of books and papers, wearing pajama bottoms, a phone pressed to his ear.

  He dialed down the volume on the eleven o’clock news and gave me a one-armed hug, then said into the phone, “Sorry. I’m here. Okay, sure. Tomorrow works for me.”

  He clicked off, kissed me, asked, “Did you eat dinner?”

  “Not really.”

  “Come to the kitchen. I’m going to heat up some soup for my baby. And for my old lady too.”

  “Har-har. Who were you talking to on the phone?”

  “Old boys’ network. Top secret,” he said melodramatically. “I have to fly to DC tomorrow for a few days. Cash flow for the Molinari family.”

  “Okayyy. Yay for cash flow. What kind of soup?”

  It was tortellini en brodo with baby peas served up in a heavy white bowl. I went to work on the soup and after a minute, I held up the bowl and said, “More, please.”

  Between bites, I told my husband about the house of heads, which was what the Ellsworth compound would inevitably be called from that day forward.

  “It was indescribable, Joe. Heads, two of them set up on the back patio. A display of some sort, like an art installation, but no bodies. There was no sign of mayhem. No disturbance in the garden except for the two holes the heads had been in. Then CSU exhumed five more heads, just clean skulls. Honestly, I don’t know what the hell we’re looking at.”

  I told Joe about the numbers 104 and 613 handwritten on a pair of index cards.

  “Cindy is running the numbers. So far we know that six-one-three is an area code in Ottawa. Lots of radio stations start with one hundred and four. Put the two numbers together and you get a real estate listing for a three-bedroom house in Colorado. What a lead, hmmm?”

  “Ten-four,” he said. “Radio call signal meaning ‘I acknowledge you. Copy that.’”

  “Hmmm. And six-thirteen?”

  “June thirteenth?”

  “Uh-huh. The ides of June. Very helpful.”

  Joe brought a big bowl of pralines and ice cream to the counter. We faced off with clashing spoons, then had a race to the bottom. I captured the last bite, put down my spoon, held up my arms in victory, and said, “Yessss.”

  “I let you win, big mama.”

  “Sure you did.”

  I winked at him, took the bowl and the spoons to the sink, and asked Joe, “So, what’s your gut take on my case?”

  “Apart from the obvious conclusion that a psycho did it,” said my blue-eyed, dark-haired husband, “here are my top three questions: What’s the connection between the skulls and the Ellsworth place? What do the victims have in common? And does Harry Chandler have anything to do with those heads?”

  “And the numbers? A tally? A scorecard?”

  “It’s a mystery to me.”

  “One of our Jane Does is relatively fresh. If we can ID her, maybe the numbers won’t matter.”

  Four hours later, I woke up in bed next to Joe with the remains of a nightmare in my mind, something Wes Craven could have created. There had been a pyramid of skulls heaped up in a dark garden, hundreds of them, and they were surrounded by a garland of flowers.

  What did it mean?

  I still didn’t have a clue.

  Chapter 15

  BY SEVEN, I was awake for good, this time with a mug of milky coffee and my open laptop. I zipped through my e-mail fast but stopped deleting junk when I saw two Google alerts for SFPD.

  The alerts were linked to the San Francisco Post, and the front-page story was headlined “Revenge vs. the SFPD.”

  My stomach clenched when I saw the byline.

  Writer Jason Blayney was the Post’s crime desk pit bull, well known for his snarky rhetoric and his hate-on for cops. The Post didn’t mind if Blayney stretched the facts into a lie — and often, he did.

  I started reading Blayney’s account of Chaz Smith’s murder.

  Chaz Smith, a known top-tier drug dealer, was assassinated Sunday afternoon in the men’s room at the Morton Academy of Music during their annual spring recital. The academy, located on California Street, was packed with parents and students during the shooting.

  Smith has been under investigation by the SFPD for the past three years but because of the closing of the city’s corrupt drug lab, he has never gone on trial. According to a source who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity, Chaz Smith’s assassin “demonstrated professional skills in the killing of this drug dealer. It was a very slick hit.”

  Smith is the fourth high-level drug dealer who has been executed in this manner. In the opinion of this reporter, a professional do-good hit man is cleaning up the mess that the SFPD can’t rub out. That’s why I call this killer Revenge — and given the size of the mess that needs to be cleaned, he could just be getting started …

  He’d said it himself: “In the opinion of this reporter.” It was a phrase that meant “I’m not actua
lly reporting. I’m telling a story.”

  And his “story” was a slam against the SFPD.

  The Delete button was right under my index finger, but instead of sending the article to the recycle bin, I opened the link to the second story, headlined “Death at the Ellsworth Compound?”

  Right under the headline was a photo showing Conklin and me going in through the compound’s tall front gate.

  My heart rate kicked up as I read Blayney’s report; he said that Homicide had been called to a disturbance at the famous Ellsworth compound, owned by Harry Chandler.

  Blayney gave the context of the story by telling his readers about the SFPD’s dismal rate of unsolved homicides.

  Then my name jumped out at me.

  Our sources tell us that the Southern Division’s Sergeant Lindsay Boxer is lead investigator on the Ellsworth case. Boxer, rumored to have lost her edge since stepping down from the Homicide squad lieutenant’s job several years ago …

  It was an unfair jab and I wasn’t prepared for it. I felt a shock of anger, and then tears welled up. This guy was knocking a decorated elderly primigravida with a dozen years on the force and a pretty decent record of solved crimes.

  Not 100 percent, but high!

  I sat on the kitchen stool long enough for my coffee to get cold and my hormones to give me a break.

  Blayney had attached himself to both of my cases, but so far he didn’t know that Chaz Smith was an undercover cop and that seven heads had been dug up at Harry Chandler’s house.

  We had no leads, no suspects for either crime.

  How long would it be before “anonymous sources” leaked that to Jason Blayney?

  Boxer, rumored to have lost her edge …

  The government was broke. Jobs were being eliminated. Blayney’s cutting remarks could color the top-floor bosses’ perception of me.

  For the first time in a dozen years, I worried about keeping my job.

  Chapter 16

  I DROVE MY husband to the airport through the maddening morning rush. Traffic was congested, gridlocked at the stoplights, and Joe’s flight would be leaving without him if we didn’t get clear roadway soon.

  Still, I was glad for the drive time with Joe’s sharp, former-FBI-agent brain.

  I buzzed up the car windows and beat the steering wheel for emphasis as I filled Joe in on the well-planned executions of four — yes, four — notorious drug dealers and told him that Narcotics was now asking Homicide for help.

  Joe asked, “And why is Brady sure that Revenge is a cop?”

  “The slugs that killed Chaz Smith match to a gun stolen from the property room, and all of the hits were so smoothly executed that the shooter had to know the dealers’ whereabouts. It’s like he had inside knowledge. Maybe it came from inside the Hall.”

  I told Joe that all of the executed drug dealers were big-time and that Chaz Smith’s death had been a blow to the top floor of the SFPD.

  “Smith’s real identity had been a very well-guarded secret, Joe. He headed up a large undercover operation that can’t be blown. Cops’ lives are on the line.”

  Joe said, “Lindsay, this is a nasty case, and dangerous. Did your shooter know Smith was a cop? Maybe he did.”

  It was a possibility, maybe a good one. I said, “Hang on,” then hit the departure ramp at fifty and pulled the car up to United Airlines’ curbside-check-in, no-waiting zone.

  I shut off the engine, looked at my husband, and said, “Don’t go.”

  “And you. Keep your head down. Don’t work more than one shift a day. Get some sleep tonight. Okay?”

  We both grinned at the impossible demands, then got out of the car. I gave Joe a full-body hug and sprinkled tears on his neck.

  We kissed, then Joe bent down and kissed my baby bump, making me giggle at the looks we got from two commuters and a luggage handler.

  “Goofball,” I said, loving that Joe was my goofball.

  “Don’t forget to eat. I already miss you.”

  I kissed him, waved good-bye, watched him disappear into the terminal. Then I drove to the Hall.

  Brady was waiting for me and Conklin inside his office. He closed the door, put the Post on his desk, and turned it so we could read Jason Blayney’s headline: “Revenge vs. the SFPD.”

  Conklin hadn’t yet seen the story. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and began reading as I started talking.

  “How does Blayney know so much about the Chaz Smith shooting?” I asked Brady. “Is a cop tipping him off?”

  “Absolutely,” Brady said.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Conklin. “My in-house crime reporter didn’t have either one of those stories. What does that tell you?”

  “I’m the unnamed source on this one,” Brady said. “It was me.”

  Conklin and I said, “What?” in unison.

  “Blayney waylaid me. I told him that Chaz Smith’s killer was a pro. That’s all I gave him, but I like it. It puts this Revenge guy on notice. Gives him something to worry about.”

  Chapter 17

  AFTER JASON BLAYNEY’S STORY about Chaz Smith’s murder appeared, the phone lines lit up with calls from tipsters, hoaxers, and reporters from all corners of the Inter-Web. People were afraid and they were also titillated. A professional shooter had killed a drug dealer inside a school.

  Whose side was the shooter on? Would he kill again?

  Was it safe to send your kid to school?

  While Brady fielded phone calls in his office, Conklin and I sat across from each other in the squad room, pecking at our keyboards.

  If Revenge was a cop, the clues were in the paperwork. Conklin and I worked a page at a time, comparing hundreds of time sheets with the four drug dealers’ times of death, stamping our feet at square one.

  Up to a point, the premise was valid — separate out the cops who were off duty when all four shootings went down and check their alibis.

  But the flaw in the premise was obvious. A cop’s being off duty when a dealer was killed was not a smoking gun. We were using a very large-holed sieve. It was all we had.

  Conklin said, “This guy Jenkins fits the time frame.”

  “I know Roddy Jenkins,” I said.

  “He’s a crack shot.” “He’s a candidate.”

  By noon, Conklin and I had a list of a dozen cops whose time sheets showed that they were off duty when the four drug dealers were killed. Three of those cops had worked in Narcotics at one time in their careers. Stick a gold star on each of them.

  I forwarded our list of cops to Brady, who wrote back saying he would have their personnel jackets pulled. Just then, my intercom buzzed.

  It was Clapper, calling from the compound. I put his call on speakerphone.

  “What’s new, Charlie?”

  “We’re still sifting the dirt in the yard, but we’re done with the main house,” he told me. “We found nothing in there. No blood or decapitated bodies, no additional index cards. Prints are the Worleys’. I told Janet that they could go home.”

  “How’d she seem to you?”

  “Wired. Chatty,” Charlie said. “Her daughter is back from the wilderness. They’re going to do some housecleaning. And Janet is in a swivet about the mess we left. Another citizen complaint.”

  Chapter 18

  JANET WORLEY WAS FLUSTERED when she came to the door.

  “Yes? Oh. Right. Come in. I expect you want to speak with Nicole.”

  Conklin and I went with Janet through the front rooms to the kitchen, where Nigel Worley was cleaning fingerprint powder off the stove.

  Janet said, “I can tell you Nicole knows nothing. She wasn’t even here.”

  “We understand,” Conklin said. “We want her impressions and so forth.”

  “She’s in her flat. Nigel, ring her up, will you?”

  I said, “Mrs. Worley, what can you tell us about Harry Chandler?”

  “Would you like tea?”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  We took seats at a kitchen tab
le with a view of the evidence tent in the garden. Water from last night’s rain dripped from the canopy onto the bricks.

  Janet said stiffly, “What do you wish to know about Mr. Harry?”

  I told Janet Worley to tell me about his personality, his character, and she did. He was honest, she told me. He was rich, of course, but according to Janet, Harry Chandler was very normal for such a famous person.

  Normal?

  Harry Chandler was to the movies what O. J. Simpson was to football.

  Janet said, “After Mrs. Chandler disappeared, during the year and a half when Mr. Chandler was indisposed, we became almost like his family. We moved from our flat in number two into the main house so that the place wouldn’t go cold.

  “Mr. Chandler appreciated that. He has always been very generous,” Janet said. “He paid for Nicole’s education. He gave us things. Gave us a car one year, didn’t he, Nigel?”

  “His dead wife’s car.”

  “Yes. It was secondhand, but we still have it.”

  I asked, “When did you see Mr. Chandler last?”

  “Three months ago. Yes. He came for dinner on Christmas. I always find Mr. Chandler charming, although maybe a little distracted. Always rehearsing something in his mind, I expect.”

  Something crashed against the stove behind us.

  I turned. Nigel Worley’s face looked like a furrowed field.

  He said, “Rehearsing? Distracted? Yes, he was distracted. He’s a bloody womanizer,” Nigel Worley said. “Well, it was in all the papers, Jan. Don’t look at me like I drowned the baby in the bath.”

  “He was a ladies’ man,” Janet conceded.

  “Harry Chandler is what you might call an equal-opportunity ladies’ man. He liked all types,” Nigel went on. “Actresses mostly, but he fancied the odd waitress or even women of a certain age.”

  Janet’s stiff expression tightened.

  “I don’t think he ever met a woman he didn’t like,” said Nigel Worley, turning his eyes directly to me for the first time. “Harry Chandler would like you.”