14th Deadly Sin: (Women’s Murder Club 14) (26 page)

“I have to see you,” I said when she answered.

“What happened? Did something happen to Ted?”

“He’s hurt, but he’s alive.”

“What happened?
Tell me—now.
”

“I’ll be at your house in fifteen minutes. I’m driving you to the hospital. Get someone to watch your kids.”

Her phone clunked to the floor. I called her name, but she was screaming and calling to her children.

I took the quickest, fastest route to the Swanson house, thinking that now, maybe, Nancy would tell me what she knew.

She was standing at the curb in a man’s white shirt, jeans, and bedroom slippers when I pulled up.

“Which hospital?” she asked me, getting into the passenger seat. “What’s his condition? Is it serious?”

“Buckle up,” I said.

The car shot off the curb and I set my course for Metropolitan Hospital. Nancy clenched her fists and beat her thighs as I told her about the standoff at Oswaldo Vasquez’s house.

I told her Vasquez had called her husband in a panic, saying that a number of cars had driven up to his house and that he perceived them to be a threat. I said that by the time Ted and I arrived, a full-scale shootout between the police and the men in those cars was in progress.

“He was safe in the car with me,” I told Nancy. “Then—he jumped out of the car and ran toward Vasquez’s house.”

“Oh, my God. That’s when he got shot?”

I nodded. “He was down but not out when the EMTs arrived.”

“This is all your fault,” she hissed at me. “Damn you, Sergeant.”

“I understand what you’re going through, Nancy, and I feel terrible for you.”

“I don’t care how you spin it. You’ve been crowding Ted for weeks now and he’s never done anything wrong. Anything he did, he did it for us. His family.”

“Do you understand the truth? Your husband is a criminal.”

She scoffed and said, “The real criminal is Kingfisher.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“He’s the one who had the Calhoun family killed, or didn’t you know?”

“Do you know this for a fact?” I asked her.

Nancy Swanson covered her face with her hands. Her neck and arms were red with welts. She sobbed, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I have three kids. We can’t lose Ted. He has to live, do you understand?”

I said, “Nancy, can you tell me anything that might help us get the shooters?”

She turned her burning eyes to me and said, “Are you out of your mind? I’m a cop’s
wife.
Don’t you think I know what you’re trying to do?”

I stopped the car outside the emergency room and Nancy unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door, and took off at a run.

My phone began buzzing before I could close the door.

It was Brady.

“Vasquez is missing,” Brady said. “He doesn’t answer his phone. His house is empty, Boxer. He’s just gone.”

THE NEXT MORNING at ten, Conklin and I took the drive to Parkmerced with two uniformed officers following behind.

Nancy Swanson opened the door. She was wearing the same big shirt and jeans she’d been wearing yesterday, and from the look of her eyes, she’d been crying since then, too.

I introduced Conklin, but she didn’t look at him. I handed her the search warrant and she stepped aside, snapping, “What do you have against Ted? Do you even know how he’s doing?”

“Have you heard from Vasquez?” I asked her.

“If I had, you’d be the last person I’d tell.”

Conklin and I went through the house, which looked cheerful now with daylight coming through the many windows facing the greenery of Villa Merced Park. We gloved up, and with Nancy watching, Conklin and I searched the den. We found a trick panel in a bookcase. There were innumerable banded stacks of twenty-dollar bills inside.

One of the uniformed officers uncovered more cash under the frozen food in the basement freezer, and Conklin uncovered a cache of guns in the bedroom closet, under the carpet, below a trapdoor. I turned up more stacks of money in the dishwasher.

Nancy had stashed it there in a hurry.

Swanson’s car was included in the warrant, and I turned up five passports and some cash in a trap inside the dash. We bagged and tagged everything. While we packed up, I called Jacobi. He sighed loudly and said, “I love you, Lindsay.”

I had to laugh. And so did he.

Once we were back at the Hall, we went straight to Jacobi’s office with our cartons of Swanson’s stuff. Jacobi picked up the phone, punched in a number, and said, “We’re ready for you, Sergeant.”

A few minutes later, we were comfortably seated on Jacobi’s leather furniture, telling Phil Pikelny what we had found at Ted Swanson’s house.

Pikelny was lean, maybe thirty-five, an East Coast cop from New York or Boston. He had no discernible accent, and he had a good haircut, handsome clothes, and nice shoes. Swanson, Vasquez, Calhoun, and Robertson had reported to him.

“This is unbelievable,” he said. “How much money was there?”

“Looks to be like a million or so,” I told him. “Between that, the guns, and the passports, I’m guessing that Swanson was leaving soon.”

Phil said, “I completely trusted Ted.”

Jacobi asked Phil what he knew about Vasquez and he said, “I liked him. A lot. And I would say that my opinion of Vasquez now means absolutely nothing. I have no idea where he might be, and he certainly hasn’t called me.”

Conklin and I stopped off at the property room and signed in a million two in US currency and a half dozen assorted guns.

After that, we briefed Brady on the Swanson house haul.

Brady had just gotten off the phone with the hospital. He said, “From what I could determine, Swanson is hanging on by a frayed thread.”

He also told us that Brand and Whitney were in the wind. Not answering phone calls. Not going home.

“Vasquez is still missing,” Brady said. “The car that got away from Naglee was found in a ditch off Highway Ninety-Two with about a hundred bullet holes in the chassis. There was blood in the backseat. The lab is working it up.”

Had Vasquez been murdered or abducted, or had he just gotten a ride out of town?

“Why don’t you two take the rest of the day off,” said Brady. It was five in the afternoon. I don’t remember the last time I’d gone home at five, but this was good.

I had plans for the evening.

I HAD A terrific red dress hanging in my closet. I’d bought it before I got pregnant, without an event in mind. It still had tags on it.

Joe was still out with Martha and Julie when I got home, so I showered and put on my makeup, including eyeliner and mascara.

The red crepe dress had an asymmetrical neckline and hem and a fitted waist. I slipped it on, stepped into a pair of low heels, and looked at myself in the mirror.

I didn’t look like the same woman who wore chinos and a blue blazer every day.

Wow. This was me, too.

The Women’s Murder Club was meeting at a bar and restaurant called Local Edition. It was officially a Women’s Murder Club “Welcome Home Cindy” event, and we were also celebrating
Fish’s Girl
getting a mention in the LA
Times.
These were fine reasons for the four of us to spend some quality time together.

I left Joe a note and headed out toward the restaurant. One block later, while I was negotiating traffic, my phone rang. I glanced down and saw
UNKNOWN CALLER
on the faceplate. I was stuck between a Porsche and a panel van, so I took the call.

The voice was muffled, but the message was clear.

“You break the blue line, you get what you deserve. You and your family aren’t safe, Boxer. They’ll never be safe.”

My blood stopped flowing through my veins and dropped to my feet. “Who is this?” I said.

The line was open. I could hear static, but there was no answer.

I stared at the rear end of the Porsche, but I wasn’t seeing it. I
was
picturing the face of a cop. One cop in particular.

“And you’re not safe from
me
, Vasquez.”

There was a click as the call was disconnected, and at just about the same instant, the driver of the panel van behind me blew his horn.

I put my foot on the gas, wondering if I’d been right when I said “Vasquez.”

But whether my caller was Vasquez or some other vicious hater, I wasn’t going to let this call ruin my evening. That was what I told myself, but I felt a tremor, an internal earthquake, a shifting of my sense of security in my own home. It was almost intolerable.

So what was I going to do about it?

YUKI HAD PICKED the perfect venue to toast our crime reporter friend on her return from her triumphal book tour.

I parked the car at a metered spot on Market and walked a couple of blocks to the historic Hearst Building.

The doorman escorted me down the stairs to the subterranean room that once housed the
San Francisco Examiner
’s printing presses and was now a dark and glamorous club.

The ceilings were high; typewriters lined the walls; the long bar was of polished wood, with rows and rows of wineglasses hanging on overhead racks by their stems. Looking around the perimeter of the room, I saw red leather booths facing white leather swivel chairs across white marble tables, and a number of huge presses were still on the floor, adding to the 1950s feel of the place.

I released a long sigh.

I was going to drink and laugh tonight, that was for sure.

The doorman showed me to our table, and I was about to sit down when Yuki appeared and fairly danced across the floor.

I was reaching for Yuki when Claire called out “Hey, you two,” and joined us in a three-way hug.

When we were seated, we said “Phones off” in unison, and when we had done it, Claire said to Yuki, “I heard you’ve got big news.”

Yuki had already called me about her settlement for her client, but it was a great pleasure to hear her telling the story to Claire, using her hands, imitating Parisi’s voice.

“When he signed the agreement, he said to me, ‘You really are a little shit, Yuki.’ And I said, ‘I learned from the biggest and the best.’”

And then Yuki laughed her joyous, infectious chortle, and we laughed with her, loud and long. When she got her breath, she said, “Then he winked at me.”

“Did he?” I asked.

“He did. He winked. He smiled. He passed the document across the table and said, ‘Have a good day. I think you will.’”

“He adores you,” Claire said. “He still totally adores you.”

Feeling her presence before we saw her, we looked up to see Cindy wearing slinky black, smelling of lilies of the valley as she leaned down, hugging and kissing all of us.

“
Who
still adores you?” she asked Yuki, sliding in beside her.

Yuki got to tell the story again, and as Cindy had been out of the loop, she heard the long version. She laughed and asked for more detailed explanations, which broke up the dramatic flow, but hell, Cindy is a reporter and facts are her thing.

Then Cindy said, “I’ve got a little news of my own.”

“We know your book got great reviews,” Claire said. “What else you got?”

Cindy said, “I found this next to my clock this morning.”

She pulled a black velvet box from her handbag and put it on the table. There was a collective gasp. We’d seen this movie before. The first time, Richie had gotten down on one knee in the nave of Grace Cathedral. He had proposed and had given Cindy his mother’s ring. In her telling at the time, the angels sang and doves flew through the church and she knew she was blessed.

Then, after the pre-honeymoon period, when the conversation turned to children, she and Richie had hit a thick brick wall.

What had changed?

Cindy opened the box and pulled out a fine gold chain with a sizable diamond pendant.

“This
was
the ring,” she said. “Richie had it made into something different. Just for me.”

Cindy fastened the chain around her neck, then held the stone in its simple setting and slid it back and forth on the chain. That stone was a gasper then, and it was a gasper now.

“So you’re
not
engaged?” Yuki asked Cindy, the only one of our group who was still single.

“There was a note with the necklace,” said Cindy. “Richie wrote, ‘When we’re ready to get married, we’ll pick out a ring together.’”

“Beautiful,” said Claire. “The diamond and the note.”

“That calls for a drink,” said Yuki.

The waiter appeared and recommended several house special cocktails named for people, places, and headline events in the newspaper business.

We toasted everything: Cindy and Richie’s renewed commitment, Yuki’s settlement for the Kordells, Claire’s baby girl’s admission to first grade—and as for me, we toasted the fact that nine months after Julie was born, I could pull off a skinny red dress—“fabulously.”

It was customary for the four of us to discuss our cases, but I just wasn’t up for sharing Numero Uno and the Windbreaker Crew. Not tonight. I held up my phone.

“I’m just calling my husband to say I’m on my way.”

I punched in Joe’s number, and when he answered, I said, “Hey. I’ll be home by nine.”

RICH CONKLIN WAS waiting in a patrol car, parked in front of a row of three-story wood-frame buildings on Stockton Street in Chinatown. All the buildings were occupied by ground-floor retail businesses, while the top floors were mostly residential.

From where Conklin was parked, he had a full view of the downstairs deli-type greengrocer and the door next to it, which was the entrance to the lobby of the Sylvestrie Hotel, a rent-by-the-hour flophouse.

Conklin knew this place pretty well, having busted drug dealers and prostitutes there when he was a beat cop, before Lindsay got him moved up to Homicide.

What he remembered most about the Sylvestrie was that the rooms were pitifully furnished, with dirty sheets in the windows instead of curtains, and that the place vibrated nonstop from the air conditioning in the market downstairs.