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  “I’m serious. Let’s go, let the crime-scene guys do their work.”

  “No formal statement?”

  “You’ve made enough of a statement to satisfy me for the time being.”

  “Chief of detectives and wife,” I said. “That’s a conflict of interest any way you look at it.”

  “I don’t care, Alex,” Bree said. “I’m taking you home. You can make a formal statement after you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”

  I almost agreed, but then said, “Okay, I’ll leave. But can we stop by Sampson’s room before we go home? He deserves to know.”

  “Of course,” she said, softening. “Of course we can.”

  I stayed quiet during the ride away from the ambush and shooting scene. Bree seemed to understand I needed space, and didn’t ask any more questions on the way to GW Medical Center.

  But my mind kept jumping to different aspects of the case. Where had Watkins and Soneji’s widow met? Through Kimiko Binx? And who was the other wounded guy? How had he come to be part of a conspiracy to kill me and Sampson?

  Riding the elevator to the ICU, I promised myself I’d answer the questions, clean up the case, even though it was all but over.

  As the door opened, I felt something sharp on my right arm and jerked back to look at it.

  “Sorry,” Bree said. “You had a little piece of Scotch tape there.”

  She showed me the tape, no more than a half inch long, before rolling it between her thumb and index finger and flicking it into a trash can.

  I twisted my forearm, to see a little reddish patch, and wondered where I’d picked that up. Probably off Nana Mama’s counter earlier in the morning, left over from one of Ali’s latest school projects.

  It didn’t matter because when we reached the ICU, the nurse gave us good news. Sampson was gone, transferred to the rehab floor.

  When we finally tracked him down, he was paying his first visit to the physical therapist’s room. We went in and found Billie with her palms pressed to her beaming cheeks, and her eyes welling over with tears.

  I had to fight back tears, too.

  Sampson was not only out of bed, he was out of a wheelchair, up on his feet, with his back to us, using a set of parallel gymnastics bars for balance. His massive arm and neck muscles were straining so hard they were trembling, and sweat gushed off him as he moved one foot and then the other, a drag more than a step with his right leg. But it was incredible.

  “Can you believe it?” Billie cried, jumped to her feet, and hugged Bree.

  I wiped at my tears, kissed Billie, and broke into a huge grin before clapping and coming around in front of Sampson.

  Big John had a hundred-watt smile going.

  He saw me, stopped, and said, “’Ow bout that?”

  “Amazing,” I said, fighting back more emotion. “Just amazing, brother.”

  He smiled broader, and then cocked his head at me, as if he felt something.

  “Wha?” Sampson said.

  “I got him,” I said. “The one who shot you.”

  Sampson sobered, and paused to take that in. The therapist offered him the wheelchair, but he shook his head slowly, still staring at me intently, as if seeing all sorts of things in my face.

  “F-get him f-now, Alex,” John said finally, with barely a slur and his face twisting into a triumphant smile. “Can’t yah see I got dance less. . .sons ta do?”

  I stood there in shock for a moment. Bree and Billie started laughing. So did Sampson and the therapist.

  I did, too, then, from deep in my gut, a belly laughter that soon mixed with deep and profound gratitude, and a great deal of awe.

  Our prayers had been answered. A true miracle had occurred.

  My partner and best friend had been shot in the head, but Big John Sampson was not defeated and definitely on his way back.

  Epilogue

  Two days later, I awoke feeling strangely out of it, as if I were nursing the last dregs of the worst hangover of my life.

  Department protocol dictated I sit on the sidelines on paid administrative leave while the shootings were investigated. After what I’d been through, and because I was feeling so run-down, I should have taken the time to stay home and recover with my family for at least a week.

  But I forced myself out of bed and headed downtown to talk with my union representative, a sharp attorney named Carrie Nan. I walked her through the events in the factory. Like Bree, she felt comfortable with me talking to Internal Affairs, which I did.

  The two detectives, Alice Walker and Gary Pan, were polite, thorough, and, I thought, fair. They took me through the scenario six or seven times in an interrogation room I’d used often on the job.

  I stuck with the facts, and not the swinging emotions of elation and rage that I’d felt during the entire event. I kept it clean and to the point.

  The scene was an ambush. In all three shootings, I’d seen a pistol. I’d made a warning. When the pistol was turned on me, I shot to save my life.

  Detective Pan scratched his head. “You sound kind of detached when you describe what happened.”

  “Do I?” I said. “I’m just trying to talk about it objectively.”

  “Always said you were the sharpest tack around, Dr. Cross,” Detective Walker said, and then paused. “After you shot the third Soneji, did you scream something like ‘I’ll kill every single Soneji before I’m through?’”

  I remembered, and it sounded bad, and I knew it.

  “They had me surrounded,” I said at last. “I was caught in an ambush, and had already engaged with three of them. Did I lose my cool at that point? I might have. But it was over by then. If there were others, they were long gone.”

  Pan said, “Kimiko Binx was there.”

  “Yes. What’s she saying?”

  Walker said, “We’re not at liberty to say, Dr. Cross, you know that.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Just being nosy.”

  Pan said, “There were others there, by the way. In the factory.”

  Before I could say anything, Pan’s cell buzzed. Then Walker’s.

  “What others?” I asked. “I didn’t see anyone else.”

  The detectives read their texts, and didn’t answer me.

  “Sit tight,” Pan said, getting up.

  “You need anything?” Walker asked. “Coffee? Coke?”

  “Just water,” I said, and watched them leave.

  There were others there, by the way. In the factory.

  I hadn’t seen a soul. But was that true? Different spotlights had been aimed at me from different places and angles. There had to have been a fifth person at the least. There had to—

  Two men in suits entered the room along with Chief Michaels and Bree. The first three were stone-faced. Bree looked like she was on the edge of a breakdown.

  “I’m sorry, Alex, but…,” she said, barely getting the words out before she looked to Chief Michaels. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?” I asked, feeling as if I were suddenly standing with my back to the rim of a deep canyon I hadn’t even realized was there.

  “Alex,” Michaels said. “The third Soneji, the one you shot off the roof of the alcove, died two hours ago. And some very damning information has come forward that directly contradicts your account of the shooting.”

  “What evidence?” I said. “Who are these guys?”

  One of the suits said, “Mr. Cross, I am Special Agent Carlos Ramon with the US Justice Department.”

  Coming around the table, the other suit said, “Special Agent Jon Christopher, Justice. You are under arrest for the premeditated murder of Virginia Winslow and John Doe. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and—”

  I didn’t hear the rest. I didn’t need to. I’d recited the Miranda warnings a thousand times. As they handcuffed me, I kept looking at Bree, who was crushed, and wouldn’t return my gaze.

  “You don’t believe them, do you?” I said, as Pan started to urge me toward the door and b
ooking. “Bree?”

  Bree looked my way finally with devastated, teary eyes. “Don’t say another word, Alex. Everything can and will be used against you now.”

  “I’m not on trial. San Francisco is.”

  Drug cartel boss the Kingfisher has a reputation for being violent and merciless. And after he’s finally caught, he’s set to stand trial for his vicious crimes—until he begins unleashing chaos and terror upon the lawyers, jurors, and police associated with the case. The city is paralyzed, and Detective Lindsay Boxer is caught in the eye of the storm.

  Will the Women’s Murder Club make it out alive—or will a courtroom shocker ensure their last breaths?

  Read on for a sneak peek at the shocking new

  Women’s Murder Club story.

  Coming soon from

  It was that crazy period between Thanksgiving and Christmas when work overflowed, time raced, and there wasn’t enough light between dawn and dusk to get everything done.

  Still, our gang of four, what we call the Women’s Murder Club, always had a spouse-free holiday get-together dinner of drinks and bar food.

  Yuki had picked the place.

  It was called Uncle Maxie’s Top Hat and was a bar and grill that had been a fixture in the Financial District for 150 years. It was decked out with art deco prints and mirrors on the walls, and a large, neon-lit clock behind the bar dominated the room. Maxie’s catered to men in smart suits and women in tight skirts and spike heels who wore good jewelry.

  I liked the place and felt at home there in a Mickey Spillane kind of way. Case in point: I was wearing straight-legged pants, a blue gabardine blazer, a Glock in my shoulder holster, and flat lace-up shoes. I stood in the bar area, slowly turning my head as I looked around for my BFFs.

  “Lindsay. Yo.”

  Cindy waved her hand from the table tucked under the spiral staircase. I waved back, moved toward the nook inside the cranny. Claire was wearing a trench coat over her scrubs, with a button on the lapel that read SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. She peeled off her coat and gave me a hug and a half.

  Cindy was also in her work clothes: cords and a bulky sweater, with a peacoat slung over the back of her chair. If I’d ducked under the table, I’m sure I would have seen steel-toed boots. Cindy is a crime reporter of note, and she was wearing her on-the-job hound dog clothes.

  She blew me a couple of kisses, and Yuki stood up to give me her seat and a jasmine-scented smack on the cheek. She had clearly come from court, where she worked as a pro bono defense attorney for the poor and hopeless. Still, she was dressed impeccably, in pinstripes and pearls.

  I took the chair across from Claire. She sat between Cindy and Yuki with her back to the room, and we all scooched up to the smallish glass-and-chrome table.

  If it hasn’t been said, we four are a mutual heart, soul, and work society in which we share our cases and views of the legal system, as well as our personal lives. Right now the girls were worried about me.

  Three of us were married: me, Claire, and Yuki; and Cindy had a standing offer of a ring and vows to be exchanged in Grace Cathedral. Until very recently you couldn’t have found four more happily hooked-up women. Then the bottom fell out of my marriage to Joe Molinari, the father of my child and a man I shared everything with, including my secrets.

  We had had it so good, we kissed and made up before our fights were over. It was the typical: “You are right.” “No, you are!”

  Then Joe went missing during possibly the worst weeks of my life.

  I’m a homicide cop, and I know when someone is telling me the truth and when things do not add up.

  Joe missing in action had not added up. Because of that I had worried almost to panic. Where was he? Why hadn’t he checked in? Why were my calls bouncing off his full mailbox? Was he still alive?

  As the crisscrossed threads of espionage, destruction, and mass murder were untangled, Joe finally made his curtain call with stories of his past and present lives that I’d never heard before. I found plenty of reasons not to trust him anymore.

  Even he would agree. I think anyone would.

  It’s not news that once trust is broken, it’s damned hard to superglue it back together. And for me it might take more time and belief in Joe’s confession than I actually had.

  I still loved him. We’d shared a meal when he came to see our baby, Julie. We didn’t make any moves toward getting divorced that night, but we didn’t make love, either. Our relationship was now like the Cold War in the eighties between Russia and the USA, a strained but practical peace called détente.

  Now, as I sat with my friends, I tried to put Joe out of my mind, safe in the knowledge that my nanny was looking after Julie and that the home front was safe. I ordered a favorite holiday drink, a hot buttered rum, and a rare steak sandwich with Uncle Maxie’s hot chili sauce.

  My girlfriends were deep in criminal cross talk about Claire’s holiday overload of corpses, Cindy’s new cold case she’d exhumed from the San Francisco Chronicle’s dead letter files, and Yuki’s hoped-for favorable verdict for her client, an underage drug dealer. I was almost caught up when Yuki said, “Linds, I gotta ask. Any Christmas plans with Joe?”

  And that’s when I was saved by the bell. My phone rang.

  My friends said in unison, “NO PHONES.”

  It was the rule, but I’d forgotten—again.

  I reached into my bag for my phone, saying, “Look, I’m turning it off.”

  But I saw that the call was from Rich Conklin, my partner and Cindy’s fiancé. She recognized his ring tone on my phone.

  “There goes our party,” she said, tossing her napkin into the air.

  “Linds?” said Conklin.

  “Rich, can this wait? I’m in the middle—”

  “It’s Kingfisher. He’s in a shoot-out with cops at the Vault. There’ve been casualties.”

  “But—Kingfisher is dead.”

  “Apparently, he’s returned from the grave.”

  My partner was double-parked and waiting for me outside Uncle Maxie’s, with the engine running and the flashers on. I got into the passenger seat of the unmarked car, and Richie handed me my vest. He’s that way, like a younger version of a big brother. He thinks of me, watches out for me, and I try to do the same for him.

  He watched me buckle up, then he hit the sirens and stepped on the gas.

  We were about five minutes from the Vault, a class A nightclub on the second floor of a former Bank of America building.

  “Fill me in,” I said to my partner.

  “Call came in to 911 about ten minutes ago,” Conklin said as we tore up California Street. “A kitchen worker said he recognized Kingfisher out in the bar. He was still trying to convince 911 that it was an emergency when shots were fired inside the club.”

  “Watch out on our right.”

  Richie yanked the wheel hard left to avoid an indecisive panel truck, then jerked it hard right and took a turn onto Sansome.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I had been known to get carsick in jerky high-speed chases when I wasn’t behind the wheel.

  “I’m fine. Keep talking.”

  My partner told me that a second witness reported to first officers that three men were talking to two women at the bar. One of the men yelled, “No one screws with the King.” Shots were fired. The women were killed.

  “Caller didn’t leave his name.”

  I was gripping both the dash and the door, and had both feet on imaginary brakes, but my mind was occupied with Kingfisher. He was a Mexican drug cartel boss, a psycho with a history of brutality and revenge, and a penchant for settling his scores personally.

  Richie was saying, “Patrol units arrived as the shooters were attempting to flee through the front entrance. Someone saw the tattoo on the back of the hand of one of the shooters. I talked to Brady,” Conklin said, referring to our lieutenant. “If that shooter is Kingfisher and survives, he’s ours.”

  I wanted the King on death row for the normal re
asons. He was to the drug and murder trade as al-Baghdadi was to terrorism. But I also had personal reasons.

  Earlier that year a cadre of dirty San Francisco cops from our division had taken down a number of drug houses for their own financial gain. One drug house in particular yielded a payoff of five to seven million in cash and drugs. Whether those cops knew it beforehand or not, the stolen loot belonged to Kingfisher—and he wanted it back.

  The King took his revenge but was still short a big pile of dope and dollars.

  So he turned his sights on me.

  I was the primary homicide inspector on the dirty-cop case.

  Using his own twisted logic, the King demanded that I personally recover and return his property. Or else.

  It was a threat and a promise, and of course I couldn’t deliver.

  From that moment on I had protection all day and night, every day and night, but protection isn’t enough when your tormentor is like a ghost. We had grainy photos and shoddy footage from cheap surveillance cameras on file. We had a blurry picture of a tattoo on the back of his left hand.

  That was all.

  After his threat I couldn’t cross the street from my apartment to my car without fear that Kingfisher would drop me dead in the street.

  A week after the first of many threatening phone calls, the calls stopped. A report came in from the Mexican federal police saying that they had turned up the King’s body in a shallow grave in Baja. That’s what they said.

  I had wondered then if the King was really dead. If the freaking nightmare was truly over.

  I had just about convinced myself that my family and I were safe. Now the breaking news confirmed that my gut reaction had been right. Either the Mexican police had lied, or the King had tricked them with a dead doppelganger buried in the sand.

  A few minutes ago the King had been identified by a kitchen worker at the Vault. If true, why had he surfaced again in San Francisco? Why had he chosen to show his face in a nightclub filled with people? Why shoot two women inside that club? And my number one question: Could we bring him in alive and take him to trial?