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  “For God’s sake. Are we done?”

  “Lindsay, please keep in mind that whatever the press writes is worldwide and forever. Oh, hi, Rich,” Bec said to Conklin. “I’ll call you,” she said to me.

  Conklin sat down and said, “What’s this about? Don’t tell Cindy anything?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  Cindy Thomas is an honest, dedicated, and talented writer, and she has helped me solve crimes. That’s how good she is. The kind of bureaucratic bull Bec Rollins had brought into the squad room like a lame pony is exactly why I’d eventually said “No, thanks” to the corner office.

  I’d committed to being a career homicide detective. I had to be better than good. I had to be excellent.

  Chapter 27

  Conklin and I sat in the observation room, our hands cupped around containers of cold coffee, as Lieutenant Lawrence Meile and Captain Jonah Penny, from Vice and Narcotics, respectively, interviewed each of the three Narcotics cops whose names we’d tagged four hours before.

  It was uncomfortable, yeah, and painful to see men I’d known for years being grilled about their whereabouts at the time Chaz Smith had been shot. In fact, no one was happy in that interrogation room, not the men asking the questions and especially not Sergeant Roddy Jenkins.

  Jenkins kept his voice even, but I thought he was a picture of contained fury as Meile asked him to produce an alibi for Chaz Smith’s time of death — and he didn’t have one.

  “I was just driving around. That’s what I like to do when I’m off duty.”

  Meile said, “Come on, Roddy. It was two days ago. Where were you in the afternoon?”

  “I was screwing your wife, Meile. Ask her. It was pretty good.”

  Meile boiled out of his chair and went for him. Penny pulled Meile off Jenkins, and Conklin got into the room in time to stop Jenkins from throwing a punch.

  “Roddy. Roddy. Settle down.”

  Jenkins acted like Conklin wasn’t there. He shouted at Meile, “I said I was driving around. What? Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You accusing me of taking out that douche bag? I’m not saying another fuckin’ word until my fuckin’ lawyer is sitting next to me.”

  Roddy’s name was still on the short list when he threw down his badge and gun and stormed out of the interview room shouting, “Fuck you. Fuck all a’ you.”

  Conklin returned to the observation room, said, “That could’ve gone better.”

  I said, “I don’t mind seeing his temper. He’s organized. He’s got a lot of years on the force. He’s smart enough to have waited in the bathroom for Smith, and if he was mad, I don’t doubt he would have pulled the trigger. And get two shots dead center too.”

  “He’s worked in the department long enough to get a hate-on for dealers.”

  “Yeah.”

  I crumpled my coffee container, dunked it into the trash, answered my ringing phone.

  I hoped the call was from Joe; it wasn’t, but it was almost as good. Claire was calling.

  “Got a couple of minutes for me, girlfriend?”

  Chapter 28

  I said to Conklin, “Claire wants to see me. If she had nothing on the heads, she would’ve said so on the phone, right?”

  “We’ve got an interview in a few minutes, Linds.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I jogged down the stairs to the lobby, stiff-armed the back door, and trotted along the breezeway to the ME’s office.

  I found my BFF in the chill of the morgue. Her lab coat with the butterfly applique on the breast pocket was buttoned up to her neck and she was wearing sweatpants under that.

  “Summertime” was playing loudly on the radio, the San Francisco Symphony’s version. Claire’s husband, Edmund, plays cello in the orchestra.

  “Dr. Perlmutter just sent me a status report,” Claire shouted. She turned down the volume.

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh, what’d she say?”

  “Here’s what you want to know,” Claire said. “None of those skulls belonged to Cecily Chandler.”

  “Not that I’m doubting you, but what did she say exactly?”

  “Cecily Chandler had A-one perfect teeth,” Claire told me. “And not all of them were homegrown. Her dental records do not match the dentistry in any of the skulls.”

  I felt let down.

  I hadn’t been as certain as the supermarket tabloids were that Harry Chandler murdered his wife, but if Cecily Chandler’s head had been discovered in Chandler’s garden, I would have been more convinced that he was our killer.

  I said to Claire, “Well, it only means that Chandler didn’t bury his wife’s head in the garden. Doesn’t mean he’s off the hook for the others, right? Any other news from the doctor?”

  “There was no trauma to any of the skulls.”

  “So you still don’t know causes of death.”

  “That’s correct.”

  My best friend held up a finger and said, “So, I’ve been working on the head of our Jane Doe in the cooler. I made a maggot milk shake.”

  “Wonderful. I hope you’ll give me your recipe.”

  “Maggots, like all animals, are what they eat. If Jane here was poisoned or drugged, the tox screen on the milk shake would reveal that. So I put some squirmers into the blender and sent that out to the lab. Hoping for something, Linds. I was hoping for arsenic. Instead, we found benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine.”

  “So you’re saying Jane Doe was a drug user.”

  “Yep, but there wasn’t so much that it would’ve been fatal, so — ”

  “So all we know is that Jane Doe did drugs.”

  “We’re not done yet. Dr. Perlmutter is working up those skulls for facial identification. We’ll have something soon.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “Good. Because right now we have nada, nothing, goose egg,” I said. “I need help.”

  Chapter 29

  I was thinking about the seven unidentified heads as I retraced my steps back upstairs to the squad room. I came through the gate, saw Conklin at his desk with a thin, lank-haired man of about forty sitting in a side chair talking to him.

  Conklin introduced me to Richard Beadle, the headmaster of the Morton Academy. I shook his damp hand, took my desk chair, and joined the interview already in progress.

  “I gave out my home number,” Beadle said. “I felt that I should do that, but now my phone rings constantly and at all hours. Parents are distraught. Kids are having nightmares, and I don’t know how to comfort them.

  “Here’s the latest,” Beadle went on. “This is the prizewinner. Chaz Smith’s family is speaking to the school through lawyers. They’re suing us. Please tell me you’ve got something on that killer. Anything will do, anything I can tell the board and the parents.”

  “We’re working this case hard,” Conklin said. “It’s our number one priority. Let’s look at pictures, okay?”

  Beadle had printed out sixteen photos that had been taken at the spring recital. Most of them were impromptu family portraits that had been shot in the school lobby before the fire alarm had rung.

  I scrutinized each shot, and as I looked at cute kids and proud folks, I asked myself if I could be wrong about an angry cop called Roddy Jenkins. Could he really have taken a stolen. 22 to the Morton Academy and put two rounds into Chaz Smith’s forehead?

  I didn’t see it. And I didn’t see Jenkins. Not in the foreground and not in the background, and I didn’t see anyone who looked out of place.

  The headmaster put a name to every man, woman, and child in each picture. We tagged partial sleeves and collars and hairlines to the identified pictures, and every piece of clothing matched to a known person.

  Except for one.

  I stared at an unfocused picture of the back of a blue suit jacket worn by someone we couldn’t identify, and my throat tightened.

  Was I looking at the only recorded image of the shooter?

  I was pawing through photos in search
of that blue jacket when Brady’s shadow crossed my desk. We all looked up.

  Brady was menacing even when he wasn’t trying to be, like a linebacker primed to unload.

  The lieutenant said hello to Beadle, then banged six photographs down in front of him, every one of them a picture of a cop who worked for the SFPD.

  I knew all six of those men. Knew them well.

  “Give them all a thorough inspection, Mr. Beadle,” Brady said, looking like he was going to shake the guy until he picked out the shooter.

  What if, in his panic, Beadle picked someone out?

  What if he fingered a good and innocent cop?

  Beadle’s eyes bored in on each of the six photographs; he took Brady’s advice and didn’t rush.

  “I don’t recognize anyone,” Beadle said, finally. “Is one of these men the killer?”

  Brady’s relief was apparent.

  “No,” he said. “You did fine.”

  We wrapped up the interview and I said good night to the office. Or I tried to.

  Reporters were waiting for me outside the Hall, a bunch of them surging up from Bryant Street, stampeding toward me as I stood on the top of the Hall’s front steps.

  Now that I knew what Jason Blayney looked like, it was easy to pick him out of the crowd.

  Chapter 30

  Blayney was at the leading edge of the pack of reporters, some of whom I’d known for years. Others had to be out-of-towners who’d just blown into the Bay Area for a big, banging story that would be making headlines indefinitely: murder at the Ellsworth compound.

  The reporters were on the move, sticking elbows into ribs, treading on toes, jostling video equipment as they angled for position on the Hall’s front steps.

  Microphones advanced.

  Cameras fired in a 180-degree arc around my face.

  I’d been mobbed by the press hundreds of times before, but today, I’d been told to keep my mouth shut and let Brady do the talking.

  Jason Blayney called out to me, “Sergeant Boxer. What does Harry Chandler have to do with the bodies at his house? Is he a suspect?”

  Overlapping questions came at me like flights of arrows: How many bodies had been found? Had the victims been identified? Had the SFPD arrested anyone?

  “Is Harry Chandler a suspect, Sergeant?”

  “Lindsay, please give us something, okay?”

  I looked for a way out, but the crowd was dense and shifting, too thick to bull through. I reminded myself to adopt the wise and cool mind-set Bec Rollins had advised.

  Suddenly, that seemed like a good idea.

  I took a breath, said, “Sorry, everyone. You know the drill. I have nothing to tell you at this point. I have to protect the integrity of the investigation. That’s all I’ve got, so if you’ll please excuse me, I’ll see you some other time.”

  The reporters weren’t taking no way for an answer. I looked around for anyone leaving the Hall of Justice who could step in and take the cameras off me. I was hoping to see the DA or Jackson Brady.

  But that wasn’t happening, and Jason Blayney was still in my face.

  “Sergeant Boxer, the public has a right to know something. If there’s a murderer on the loose — ”

  “Mr. Blayney? We can’t give out information about an ongoing investigation. You know that, or you should know that. You want a statement, contact Media Relations in the morning. Thank you.”

  I ignored the renewed flight of questions and parted the throng by lowering my head and making gravity my friend. I’d gotten down the steps and across Bryant, all the way to my car in the lot, when I heard footsteps, someone running up behind me. It was Jason Blayney, damn it, and he was calling my name.

  I kept my back to him, got into the Explorer, had the door half closed behind me when Blayney put his hand on the door handle and pulled.

  Was he kidding? This was over the freaking top.

  I whipped around and faced him down.

  “Blayney, are you crazy? The answer is no. No statement. No nothing. Now back the hell off.”

  Grinning, he took my picture, then shut off his tape recorder and said, “Thanks for your nothing statement, Sergeant.”

  I knew I was going to see my picture on the Post ’s front page and that I was going to look insane.

  So much for wise and cool.

  I was steaming as I drove out of the lot. Blayney was a cockroach, but frankly, he and I both had the same questions.

  Who were the victims?

  Why had heads been dug up at Harry Chandler’s mansion?

  And why didn’t we have a single bloody clue?

  Chapter 31

  Cindy not only dubbed our gang of four the Women’s Murder Club but also branded Susie’s Cafe our clubhouse. It was a small miracle to have this big hug of a hangout where we could get lost in a cheerful crowd and one another’s company.

  I was checking my rearview mirror to see if that a-hole Jason Blayney was following me, and at the same time I was looking for a parking spot on Jackson.

  I was about to go around the block again when a car pulled out from the curb, leaving me a space right outside Susie’s front door.

  I got out of the Explorer, my legs wobbling with exhaustion, and then I was inside Susie’s, enveloped by calypso music, laughing people, golden-yellow sponge-painted walls, and the smells of coconut shrimp and curried chicken.

  Cindy was at the bar in the front room. She was wearing pink with a sparkling barrette in her hair and was putting down a cold one.

  She waggled her fingers and at the same time gave me the evil eye. She was unhappy with me. I knew why, and I didn’t blame her.

  I ordered a root beer and when the bottle was in my hand, I took a swallow, and then I tried to make peace with my friend.

  “I know you’re pissed at me.”

  “I’m pissed at Richie too, so go ahead, both of you can take it personally.”

  “I brought you something,” I said.

  I opened my bag, took out a printout, handed it to Cindy, and watched her expression change.

  “Oh. No. I mean. This is one of the Ellsworth house victims?” She was staring at the artist’s sketch of Jane Doe, the woman whose head was in Claire’s cooler.

  “We need the public’s help in identifying this woman.”

  “What else can I say?”

  “She may be the victim of a crime.”

  “And what about Ellsworth?”

  “I’ll tell you what I can, but don’t say that she was found at Ellsworth yet, okay? We’re not ready to officially open the story to the press.”

  “And what about unofficially? The Post has the damned story, Linds,” Cindy said. “Everyone does.”

  She was mad, but she was clutching the drawing and not letting it go.

  “I’ll tell you officially when I can. But we can go off the record now.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Seven heads were exhumed. All of them are female, buried over the course of a number of years. We can’t identify any of them. We don’t have a clue what happened to them, how they were killed. We don’t know anything.”

  “If I write that, I’m going to have to apply for a job at the post office.”

  I guess my frustration was showing, and maybe some panic too, because Cindy was saying, “Okay, okay, Linds. Calm down. Take it easy,” as Yuki and Claire came in together.

  Cindy settled the tab. About forty-two seconds later, the four of us were at our booth in the back room and had ordered jerked pork and pitchers of beer. Yuki was off to the races about how in love she was with Jackson Brady.

  And speak of the devil: Brady picked that minute to call me and tell me he needed my butt back at the Hall.

  Chapter 32

  That night, Revenge sat in his Hyundai SUV, engine running, under a shot-out streetlight on Sunnydale Avenue, an ugly and dangerous artery that wound through the decrepit heart of the Sunnydale Projects. All around him, packed tight and wall to wall for a square mile, were squa
lid housing units on streets dominated by two violent and warring bands of thugs, the DBG and Towerside gangs.

  A four-dimensional map of these badlands and its occupants was engraved on his mind — every unit and alley in the projects, every felon, juvenile offender, innocent citizen.

  Revenge was watching both vehicular and pedestrian traffic centered on the Little Village Market up ahead at the intersection of Sunnydale and Hahn, and he was also focused on a block of tan stucco housing units to his right: two stories high with bars on the lower windows and burned-out grass between the footings and the street.

  A shadow emerged from between two units.

  It was Traye, a slouching young man wearing a ball cap and baggy gangsta clothes that swallowed his slight build.

  Accompanied by the pulsing music pounding out of cars and windows, Traye made his way across the avenue, slipped into the passenger side of Revenge’s car, and slumped below the line of sight.

  He was nineteen and had burn scars on his neck and arms from a meth-lab explosion that had occurred inside his housing unit while he was playing outside, almost out of harm’s way.

  The boy had survived, but he had never had much of a chance until a year ago, when Revenge took him on as a confidential informant.

  Revenge said, “I spoke to the arresting officer. He’s not going to show up in court.”

  “You for sure?”

  “I said I’d get the charges dropped.”

  “You say so.”

  Revenge gave the boy a paper bag. Inside were three meat-loaf sandwiches his wife had made for Traye, a bottle of chocolate milk, a bag of Chips Ahoy, twenty dollars, and a pack of smokes.

  The boy opened the bag, unwrapped a sandwich with shaking hands, and said between bites, “I don’t got nothing for you.”

  “It’s okay. Take your time.”

  Revenge dialed up the volume on the radio. Car accident on Mansell. Domestic violence on Persia. Backup requested at the Stop ’n Save. It was a slow night.