The 17th Suspect Page 7

  I made it home in less.

  I opened the front door, expecting Martha, my old doggy, to charge at me with her trademark welcome-home woofing. But instead Joe was waiting inside the doorway.

  He helped me out of my coat and holster.

  “You look like you need a drink,” he said.

  “Do I?”

  “Did you eat?”

  “I didn’t even think about food.”

  “You’re in luck, Blondie. Big bowl of beef stew is coming right up.”

  “Yummy,” I said with enthusiasm I didn’t feel. I wasn’t hungry at all. “Where is everybody?”

  He told me, “Julie is curled up with Martha, both of them snoring.”

  I threw myself down on the sofa and toed off my shoes. Joe headed to the kitchen, an open-space galley separated from the living room by an island. He talked about TV news while heating up my dinner.

  Then he said, “Come sit at the table and tell me all about what happened tonight.”

  I dropped into a chair and watched Joe taking care of me. He uncorked the wine and set down two glasses. The oven pinged and Joe brought my dinner to the table, sat across from me, and gave me that most wonderful of gifts: his undivided attention. I swear, it brought tears to my eyes.

  “Let’s hear it,” Joe said. “Start talking.”

  I told him the four-word headline.

  “Dirty, no-good cops.”

  CHAPTER 29

  IN THE LIVING room of their apartment on Telegraph Hill, Yuki was sitting at her desk, fully dressed in comfortable pants and a pullover. She was typing on her laptop, with cable news on in the background, while waiting to hear Brady’s key in the lock.

  When Brady finally came through the door at ten fifteen, he leaned over the back of her chair and kissed her cheek. He shed his jacket and gun belt and was heading toward the bathroom when Yuki called out, “I have an idea. Let’s go out.”

  He turned to look at her and said, “Now? I’m a dead man walking.”

  “I made a reservation at Renegade.”

  “You did?” He looked genuinely pained. “Jesus, Yuki, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you remind me that today was your birthday?”

  “They close at midnight,” she said. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  Yuki let Brady’s assumption that it was her birthday stand. It was a brazen lie of omission, but whatever it took to get her husband across a dinner table from her was worth the small stain on her conscience. She really couldn’t take the silence and the distance and the small talk in their marriage anymore. She had questions, and she was good at getting answers out of people.

  She hoped she could handle the truth.

  They were quiet in the car on the way to Renegade, a special place where she and Brady had made some history together. The police radio was blatting and squawking, and as usual Brady was tuned in to the job.

  Yuki looked out the window as they drove to SoMa. After Brady parked the car, she took his arm as he walked her to the restaurant.

  He said, “We had our first date here, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She loved this restaurant. In the entrance, behind the hostess, was a floor-to-ceiling copper wall with a sheet of water falling into a pool. The hall led into a dining room featuring a million-dollar view of the dazzling lights on the Bay Bridge.

  Yuki still remembered everything about that first date. Sitting in a booth close to Brady, a handsome stranger then; tamping down her desire to touch his shoulder-length white-blond hair, gawk at his impressive build, lock in on his lake-blue eyes.

  That night he’d charmed her without trying. First there was the Southern comfort of his voice and the offhanded way he described the everyday violence of working in the Miami PD. He told her about his first weeks with the SFPD and his take on the people she knew in his department. Then there was that moment when he stopped talking in midsentence to say, “You’re really somethin’ special, Yuki.”

  She had told him about her Italian-American father and Japanese mom, whose voice she could sometimes still hear. He hadn’t laughed at that. The conversation rolled on and the chemistry between them was immediate.

  Now, as they followed the hostess past the cascading copper waterfall through the near-empty restaurant, Yuki hoped that something good would come from hijacking her husband, hoped that they would feel that connection that had bonded them the night they met.

  CHAPTER 30

  WHEN YUKI AND Brady were seated in “their” booth, their drink orders in, Yuki put her hand on her husband’s arm.

  “Brady,” she said. “Full disclosure. My birthday is next week. I called an emergency dinner.”

  “You’re kiddin’ me. What, hon? What’s wrong?”

  She looked down at the table, her rehearsed speech feeling thick and stupid and stuck in her throat. She remembered what Claire had said: That man loves you to death.

  Maybe Brady didn’t realize the width of the gap that was opening between them.

  She felt the weight of the angel skin coral beads around her neck, Brady’s wedding gift to her before their honeymoon cruise. People had died on that ship. Brady had saved lives. He’d saved her life. She’d loved him then and had come to love him even more. What was he feeling?

  “Yuki? What is it?”

  “I miss you, Brady. We never talk anymore,” she said. “We need to talk.”

  Brady smiled, grabbed her hand, and said, “Aw. Thanks for the sneaky heads-up on your birthday. I’ll be sure to send flowers next week.”

  Yuki thought, He doesn’t get it. Or he doesn’t feel the same way. Or he doesn’t want to open up. All of that was possible. All of that was painful.

  Their waitress materialized with a blood orange margarita for her, sparkling water with a slice of lemon for Brady. Yuki put down half her drink right away. She had told Claire that neither she nor Brady liked to talk about squishy feelings, but hell, an uncomfortable talk was not just necessary, it was overdue.

  Bolstered by tequila, Yuki took the plunge—again.

  “It feels like we’re losing each other,” she said.

  “I’m right here,” said Brady. “Scooch over.”

  She slid toward him, and Brady reached over and dragged her close, wrapping both of his arms around her, resting his chin on the top of her head and saying, “What brought this on? Oh, I get it.”

  He pulled back to look into her face.

  “This is about your birthday. And now you’re thinking about having a baby?”

  Yuki leaned against Brady’s chest, slipped her fingers between his shirt buttons.

  “No,” she said, “no, this isn’t about a baby. Not now.”

  “Okay, good. What is it, then?” her husband asked.

  “Don’t you feel it?” she said. “That we’re kind of drifting apart?”

  There was some silence before Brady said, “I see. I see. I’m neglecting you.”

  He disengaged from their embrace, seemed flustered or as if he was looking for the right words. He sipped his water before saying, “Jacobi unloaded a pile of administrative work on me. He just can’t handle it all anymore. On top of that and every other dog biting my butt, I’m primary on that attempted murder and suicide.”

  Yuki had heard about the case. A woman had left divorce court and driven her car onto a sidewalk and into her husband, his girlfriend, and the husband’s lawyer. Then she had sped to the Golden Gate Bridge, climbed over the railing, and jumped to her death.

  Brady said, “The husband and girlfriend are okay, but the lawyer is in ICU. If he dies, it’s got to be processed as a homicide, even though the killer already self-inflicted the death penalty.”

  Yuki said, “See, I miss talking like this. Even about work. Hearing what you’re thinking about.”

  He tipped up her chin and pecked her lips. When dinner came, Yuki turned down another drink. Brady ate like he hadn’t eaten in the last twenty-four hours. After he had put down his knife and fork, he asked her to b
ring him up to speed on her woman-on-man rape case.

  While she was telling him, he glanced at his phone a couple or three times, saying “Hang on” and “’Scuse me,” returning texts before shutting the phone off.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Work. My phone is always open.”

  He couldn’t turn off his phone for an hour? That clinging sadness she’d been carrying around had finally lightened, and now it was weighing her down again.

  They skipped dessert and coffee. Later that night when they were both in bed, and rain clouds veiled, then revealed, the full moon outside their bedroom window, Yuki lay wide awake.

  Had Brady been telling her the truth when he said he was just overly busy? Or was he keeping something from her?

  What in the world was wrong?

  CHAPTER 31

  YUKI DROPPED OFF to sleep sometime after two and slept through the alarm that went off at half past seven. Later, when she started awake, Brady’s side of the bed was empty.

  She would just get to work on time if she pulled herself together fast—and somehow she did it, walking smartly through the doorway to the DA’s suite of offices at nine fifteen. Apart from the fact that her hair was still damp, she was good to go.

  The DA’s office was organized with small windowed rooms at the perimeter, surrounding a maze of cubicles at the center. The cubes were fully occupied with paralegals and assistants on the phones, making casework hum.

  As Yuki passed Len’s corner office, his assistant, Toni Reynolds, who manned the desk outside his door, waved her down.

  “Yuki, Len needs to see you and Arthur. Right away.”

  “Now?”

  “As soon as his meeting breaks up,” Toni said. “Oh.

  Good. Here’s Arthur. Both of you, please sit down. He’ll be right with you.”

  Yuki was surprised at this summons to Len’s office. “Right away”? What had happened?

  Yuki and Arthur had hardly settled into chairs in the hallway when Len Parisi’s office door blew open.

  Len’s assistant said to Yuki, “I hope you don’t mind, but I had to coordinate a lot of schedules. Judge Rathburn wants to see all concerned at ten.”

  Yuki didn’t know why the judge wanted to see them, and she didn’t get a chance to ask. Parisi appeared in his doorway looking exasperated and told Yuki and Art to come in.

  They took the love seat and watched the big man edge behind his cluttered mahogany desk and sink heavily into his chair.

  He moved stacks of papers around on his desk, lined up his pens, then got into the business at hand.

  “Giftos filed a motion to suppress the sex video,” he said. “That video is all we’ve got. I’ve never felt at peace with that. Rathburn is reasonable,” he said. “He listens and he can be reached. Don’t let Giftos intimidate you, Yuki. And he will try.”

  Yuki said, “People underestimating me is my secret weapon.”

  Parisi cracked a smile, then said, “Toni set the meeting for ten. It’s nine thirty. Don’t be late.”

  She and Arthur sprang from the sofa and out the door. At the elevator bank Yuki watched the indicator lights track the car down from the jail on the seventh floor. The elevator was old. Creaky. Slow. Like everything in the Hall of Justice, outmoded.

  “Stairs,” Art said.

  “Done.”

  They took the fire exit, and as they jogged down to the second floor, Arthur said, “I had a dream. We were in court and a pack of dogs came rushing through the door. They were on the scent of something big, and they were determined.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “I don’t know. I woke up.”

  Yuki laughed. “That’s it? The whole dream?”

  “The lead dog had red fur.”

  She smiled at her new deputy. “Well, Arthur, we’re about to face off against the man who set Len’s hair on fire.”

  As they walked along the hallway, Yuki turned her mind back to this complication that could kneecap the case against Briana Hill.

  Without the video, it was Marc Christopher’s word against Briana Hill’s, a coin toss that left plenty of room for a jury to find reasonable doubt.

  Yuki didn’t know Judge Rathburn, but she knew James Giftos.

  He was the type of defense lawyer who was sometimes called a bomb.

  Would Rathburn allow the video into evidence? Or would James Giftos, a man twenty years older than she, with twice as much trial experience, blow up her case before she ever presented it to the jury?

  CHAPTER 32

  MY HEAD WAS still swimming with images from the Pier 45 murder scene when I arrived at my desk the morning after.

  I envisioned the sparse crowd on the pier; the deceased, Laura Russell, in her blood; her crying teenage daughter. I thought about the sketchy secondhand report that the shooter was white, and had worn a nice coat. And of course, I was still stuck on the rude dismissal by Sergeant Garth Stevens.

  Conklin hadn’t yet punched in, so I headed for the break room and found that Sergeant Paul Chi and his partner, Cappy McNeil, had appropriated the table. I’ve worked with these two homicide pros since back in the far-distant day, when Jacobi and I were partners.

  Chi is precise, diligent, a man Jacobi refers to as “human ground-penetrating radar.” I remember Jacobi toasting Chi when he was promoted to sergeant, saying, “Chi can see around corners and beyond time.”

  Cappy is a different kind of cop—a career detective who, in twenty years on the force, has solved case after case without ever getting ruffled or into a jam.

  I thought Chi and McNeil could give me some advice about the murder of Laura Russell. They made room for me at the table, and we sat together with a box of pastries between us. When I had laid it all out, including the intel from my confidential informant and my personal experience with Stevens and Moran, I asked, “Do either of you know these guys?”

  “I know Stevens,” Cappy said, tucking into a honey bun. “What do you want to know?”

  “Whatcha got?”

  He chewed slowly, swallowed, and finally said, “This is just between you, me, Chi, and Honey Bun, and I’m about to take Ms. Bun down.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  Between bites the wise Cappy McNeil told me that Stevens was a dedicated drinker—no surprise, since he and my father had been fellow barflies. Cappy added that Moran had been violent with two different girlfriends, or so he’d been told.

  “He didn’t introduce his gun into the fights, but he knocked those women around pretty bad. If he was a pro ballplayer, he’da been suspended for at least a year.”

  I pushed for more.

  “Any known misbehavior on the job?”

  Chi said, “This is all gossip, you understand, Boxer?”

  “I understand. What’s the gossip?”

  “When Stevens was in Narcotics, there was talk that he may have gotten payoffs from a big-time dealer. Well, I only heard about it after some evidence against that guy went missing.”

  “Come on. He’s that dirty?”

  “The talk never became an investigation,” said Cappy. “Stevens’s boss, Lieutenant Chris Levant, liked him then and likes him to this day. Their wives are friends. So Stevens was moved to Central Station’s investigative team and later partnered up with Moran. The two them became the hub of Levant’s Homicide detail.”

  Cappy continued, “They did close out that case of a teenage girl who went missing in Polk Gulch. Found her body in a storage locker, and they collared the perp, who was then convicted. So whatever else, they do a good job.”

  I told Chi and McNeil what my CI had said: that a string of homeless people had been shot, with no arrests.

  “She said about three, and that was before the last two.”

  “You sure about that? You checked out the database?” Chi asked me.

  “I did. But I don’t have names. I’m not even sure if the victims had IDs. If the cases weren’t worked up, they could have easily been filed as ‘identity unknown,’ ca
se to be solved after the second coming.”

  The bull pen was starting to get noisy. The night shift was checking out, and the day shift was drifting into the break room, calling back and forth, laughing, filling up their mugs and grabbing sugared breakfast treats.

  Chi hunched over the table and said, “Say there’s something to this, Boxer. What would be the point of Stevens lying down on the job?”

  I shrugged. “I hoped you’d tell me.”

  “Careful,” said Cappy. “Like I said, Levant is Stevens’s godfather. He has weight with the mayor.”

  I mimed zipping my lip.

  Chi grabbed hold of my arm.

  “Trust your gut.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  I was rinsing out my mug when Conklin came through the doorway. He pulled a cup off the drain board and joked around with Chi and Cappy about not getting any sleep last night.

  “Your girlfriend pretty glad to see you, sonny?” said Cappy.

  I rolled my eyes and left them to the boy talk.

  At my desk I booted up my computer and started going through my e-mail. I was thinking of telling Brady that I was disturbed about how poorly the murder scene had been handled. But I vividly remembered that he’d told me to step back. He was the boss, and he wasn’t subtle. I knew I should listen to him.

  All I had to go on was Millie Cushing’s bug in my ear and a strong feeling that Stevens and Moran, key players in Lieutenant Levant’s obsolete Homicide fiefdom, weren’t right.

  Hunches are valuable in this line of work. As Paul Chi had said, I had to trust my gut.

  CHAPTER 33

  JUDGE RATHBURN WAS on the phone when Yuki and Art arrived, but waved them into his chambers and offered them chairs in the seating area at the far end of the room.

  The judge was in his fifties, bearded, and wearing glasses, suit pants, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a gold-and-green-striped tie. His office walls were hung with family photos and framed quotes from famous people, ranging from Ronald Reagan and John Wayne to Theodore Roosevelt and Mother Teresa. A sculpture of the scales of justice took up a corner of his desk, and he had a pretty good view of the traffic on Bryant Street under an overcast sky.