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  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 table 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 ho
use 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.”

  His stare was chilling. It was as if he had put his hands around my neck and squeezed.

  Chapter 19

  A young woman burst into the room, the sound breaking her father’s double-fisted lock on my eyes.

  Janet Worley said, “Nicole, these people are from the police.” To me, she said, “I’ll be in the parlor,” and she left the room.

  Nicole Worley was midtwenties, pretty, with a heart-shaped face, dark hair, green eyes, flushed cheeks. She wore jeans and a green sweatshirt with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife logo on the front.

  Nicole asked her father, “What’s going on with you?”

  “Your mother. She drives me round the bend.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t fight.”

  “The way she goes on about that self-important prick — ”

  “Stop that.”

  “You women are crazy.”

  “All right. All right,” Nicole said to her father. To me, she said, “I’m Nicole. You wanted to see me?”

  Nigel started cleaning the burners on the stove, and Nicole joined us at the table.

  I said, “We need some basic information, Nicole. Where were you over the last few days?”

  “I was off on a rescue,” she said. “Pronghorn antelope get panicked at headlights, or at anything really. This one was hung up in a fence.”

  “And when did you leave for this rescue?”

  “Friday morning.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Yes. I drove up north to Mendocino County by myself. What is it that you want to know? Did I kill some people and then dig up their heads? Leave them on the back step to scare my parents?”

  “You tell me, Nicole. Did you have anything to do with the remains found here yesterday morning?”

  “Absolutely not, and I cannot imagine how something like this could ever have happened.”

  “Can you tell me how it’s possible that the three of you live in this house and are completely unaware of a series of crimes that happened over time outside the back door?”

  Behind us, Nigel Worley said angrily, “Bloody cheek, these questions.”

  “Dad, don’t you have something else you could be doing?” said Nicole.

  Nigel Worley was a big, angry man with large hands. I could picture him turning violent. But if he’d killed these seven people, his exhuming their heads made no logical sense. And putting a garland of chrysanthemum blossoms around them seemed a little dainty for him.

  I said, “Mr. Worley. Do you think Mr. Chandler could have been involved in what has happened here?”

  “Killing and digging would require actual labor, wouldn’t it? I don’t picture Mr. Chandler getting his hands dirty.”

  I didn’t know about Harry Chandler, but Nigel Worley looked like he got his hands dirty every day.

  Chapter 20

  Nigel Worley slammed around behind us, crashing the last of the iron trivets against the stove.

  When Nigel had left the room, Conklin put a picture of the recently decapitated woman’s head in front of Nicole. Her eyes widened at the sight of that decomposing face and she pushed back from the table.

  “Do you know this woman?” Conklin asked her.

  “I’ve never seen her in my life.”

  “This is one of the two heads your parents discovered yesterday morning,” I said.

  “It’s revolting. It’s horrible.”

  “She was walking around last week, Nicole. Then her head was cut off with a saw.”

  “I find this unfathomable.”

  “What is your relationship with Harry Chandler?”

  “I’m his caretakers’ daughter. That’s all. Do you want my opinion of him?”

  “Please.”

  “He’s been accused of horrible things before, but I know him to be a good man. He has been very kind to my family. We’ve been good to him too.”

  “Your father seems to dislike him.”

  “Oh, all that growling means nothing. He thinks my mother is starstruck and he hates that.”

  “You were sixteen when you came to live here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the reason you moved from London?”

  “My parents had a romantic notion about America. As soon as we arrived, I fell in love with this city and this house. I’m kind of an expert on the Ellsworth family. Harry lets me live in number two at no charge,” Nicole explained, “and so I give lectures about the house to the tourists in exchange for free rent.”

  I said, “So you know everything about this house, Nicole. Everything except that the backyard was basically a cemetery.”

  The young woman’s face colored.

  The direct approach wasn’t working, or maybe Nicole knew as little as she said she did.

  Before I could fire off another question, my phone rang.

  I glanced at the caller ID, got up, and took the call in the pantry.

  Claire said, “I spoke with Dr. Perlmutter. She said looks like all the skulls are female. We’ve got a little multicultural mix going on here. Two of the skulls plus the head of our Jane Doe makes three white women. We also have one female of African background, one Asian, and two undetermined.”

  “Their ages?”

  “Approximately twenties to forties.”

  “How long have the heads been in the ground?”

  “It’s hard to be precise, Lindsay. But yes, they could all have been buried in the last ten years.”

  Since Chandler bought the Ellsworth compound.

  I hung up and called out to Conklin, asked him to join me in the pantry.

  Conklin can read me like a map.

  He knew that I felt pressure from Brady to work on Revenge and that at the same time, I was committed to the Ellsworth case. I wanted to do both.

  I told him about my conversation with Claire.

  He said to me, “I’ll work on Nicole.”

  I nodded, said, “Good. While you do that, I’m going to use my famous charm on the movie star.”

  Chapter 21

  Conklin held the back door open for Nicole, then followed her out to the patio. They ducked into the tent and Conklin said hello to a tech who was labeling bags of dirt.

  “Got booties?” Conklin asked.

  The tech handed him a carton of disposable shoe covers and Conklin took two pairs, then handed one pair to Nicole.

  A brick path skirted the base of the wall, and once their feet were swaddled in plastic, Nicole and Conklin walked around the shadowy patch of garden.

  Conklin focused his attention on Nicole Worley, watched her body language as she told him that she was a bi
ologist and was hoping a teaching job would open in one of the schools within commuting distance of the Ellsworth place.

  “My parents are getting older, and it’s better for them if I’m around. I keep them from killing each other — oh, I didn’t mean that literally.”

  Conklin smiled, said, “I knew what you meant.”

  Nicole slipped into her tour-guide role, talked about Bryce Ellsworth, his five wives and fourteen children, how the house survived the great fire of 1906. She had anecdotes about Prohibition and about Billie Holiday, the famous chanteuse, who’d sung for the Ellsworth family in their own parlor.

  As Nicole and Conklin rounded the corner of the lot, Nicole indicated the four six-story houses beyond the wall.

  Nicole said, “These houses are high for this area, but Bryce Ellsworth wanted them to balance the height of the main house. He liked symmetry. Notice that there are no windows facing the back garden. This is one of the interesting things about this place. I can’t even see the garden from my flat in number two.”

  “What was the point of not having back-facing windows?”

  “The first Mrs. Ellsworth was very private. I think it was her idea to keep the help from spying on her when she walked in the garden.”

  Conklin looked up at the brick buildings, built at the same time as the Ellsworth house. As Nicole had said, the windows were false, brick outlines with no glass, which made the one real window in the next-to-last building stand out.

  “There’s a window on the top floor of number six.”

  “Number six has been boarded up for years,” Nicole told him. “I’m pretty sure that window opens onto a stairwell.”

  Conklin had gotten what he could from Nicole Worley’s running on about the history of the house and San Francisco. Now he wanted answers.

  “Who does the gardening?”

  “Ricky someone. I can find out.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Not currently. Not seriously. No one I’ve brought here.”