3rd Degree (7 page)

Julia turned down the volume. “Attractive?” She grinned. “Honey, they will never know. Whatya think.” She covered herself in the wig and struck a modeling pose.

Michelle pretended to laugh, but inside, she wished she hadn't been so stupid as to leave that goddamn inhaler lying around. She wasn't like Julia, who had killed a man last night looking right in his eyes. And now she was laughing about it, gloating.

“Mica, honey.” Malcolm turned around. “I need you to be a brave girl and place your finger on this spot.” He taped the wired blasting cap to the soft C-4 and molded in the rigged cell phone. “This is the delicate part. I just need you to hold the green and red wires, baby, so they don't cross.... That would be very bad.”

Mal always made fun of her. Just a Wisconsin cheese head, he would say with a laugh. But she had proved herself. She put her finger on the wire, trying to show that she was brave. She wasn't a farm girl anymore.

“Nothing to get worried about.” Malcolm winked, seeing her unease. “All that drama about crossing the wires, that's for the movies. Now what is certifiably hairy is that I set these little wires to the ringer, not the phone battery; other-wise, they'll be picking up our parts as far away as Eau St. Claire.” Her hometown.

Michelle's finger was trembling. She didn't know if he was toying with her or not.

“Done.” Malcolm finally exhaled, pushing the lenses up onto his brow. He wheeled back in the chair. "Juiced, as they say, and revved up to roar. Blow the dome right off of City Hall. Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea.

“Think we should take her out for a little test drive?” Mal said. “Whatya say?” Michelle hesitated. “C'mon,” he said, grinning, “you look like you've seen a ghost.”

He handed her a second cell phone. “Number's already punched in. Just remember, it's just a toy until the fourth ring. That's a no-no. You don't want to hear the fourth ring. Take the wheel, honey.... Let her rip.”

Michelle shook her head and handed it back to him. Mal merely grinned.

“C'mon, nothing to worry about. No juice, no boost. It's all set up.”

Michelle took a deep breath and pressed the SEND button, just to show she could. A second later, the phone wired to the bomb jangled.

“Contact.” Malcolm winked.

A chill shot through her. Mal was so confident. He had it all planned. But things could go wrong. In the Middle East, Palestinian bombers blew themselves up all the time.

Beep. Her eyes went to the briefcase. Second ring. She tried to look calm, but her hand was shaking. “Malcolm, please.” She tried to give it back. “You see it works. I don't like this, please....”

“Please, what, Mica?” Malcolm held her wrist. “You don't trust me?”

The bomb phone jangled again. Third ring...

Michelle's blood went cold. “Cut it out, Mal.” She fumbled for the disconnect button.

The next ring was contact. “Malcolm, please, you're scar-ing me.”

Instead of complying, Mal pinned her hand. All of a sudden she didn't know what was going on. “Jesus, Mal, it's about to -”

Beep. Fourth ring.

The sound split the room like a scream. Michelle's gaze locked on the phone. On the bomb.

It began to vibrate. Oh shit... She looked into Malcolm's eyes.

A buzzer sounded.

No explosion. No flash. Just a sharp click.

On the blasting cap.

Malcolm was grinning. He lifted the disengaged cap he'd been holding. “I told you, baby. No juice, no boost. So what'd you think? I think it drives just fine.”

Michelle's body relaxed. Inside, she was screaming. She wanted to punch Malcolm in the face. But she was too spent. Sweat was pouring through her T-shirt.

Malcolm took the blasting cap and wheeled the chair back over to the device. “You think I was gonna set this beauty off?” He shook his head. “Fat chance, baby. She's got important work to do. This bomb is going to blow the minds of everybody in San Francisco.”

ABOUT SEVEN, I was back at my desk. My teams scattered all around the area, chasing the leads we had. Cindy had got-ten me a copy of this book, Vampire Capitalism. She said it would give me an idea of the new radicalism that was starting to take hold.

I flipped through the chapter headings: “The Failure of Capitalism.” “Economic Apartheid.” “Vampire Economics.” “The Armageddon of Greed.”

I didn't even notice Jill standing at my door. She knocked, making me jump. “If only John Ashcroft could see you. The linchpin of the city's law-enforcement machine... Vampire Capitalism?”

“Required reading,” I said, smiling, embarrassed, “for the serial killer with a bang.”

She was dressed in a stylish red pantsuit and a Burberry summer raincoat, a pile of briefs squeezed into her leather satchel. “I figured you could use a drink.”

“I could,” I said, tapping the book against the desk, “but I'm still on duty.” I offered her a bag of Szechuan soybeans instead.

“What are you doing,” she snickered, “heading up the department's new Subversive Authors wing?”

“Very cute,” I said. “Here's a fact I bet you didn't know. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Warren Buffet made more money last year than the thirty poorest countries, a quarter of the world's population.”

Jill smiled. “It's good to see you developing a social con-sciousness, given your line of work.”

“There's something bothering me, Jill. The fake secondary device outside Lightower's town house. The note on the company form balled up in Bengosian's mouth. These people have made their motive clear. But they're trying to taunt us. Why play the game?”

She balanced a red shoe on the edge of my desk. “I don't know. You're the one who catches 'em, honey. I just put 'em away.”

There was a bit of a pause. A stiff one. “You mind if I change the subject?”

“Your soybeans,” she said with a shrug, popping one in her mouth.

“I don't know if this'll sound silly. I was a little worried the other day. Sunday. After we ran. Those marks, Jill. On your arms. Something got me thinking.”

“Thinking about what?” she asked.

I looked into her eyes. “I know you didn't get those marks from a shower door. I know what it's like, Jill, when you have to admit you're human, like the rest of us. I know how you wanted that baby. Then your dad died. I know you pretend that you can work everything out. But maybe you can't some-times. You won't talk about it with anyone, even us. So the answer is, I don't know about those marks. You tell me.”

There was stubbornness in her eyes that suddenly turned fragile, something about to give. I didn't know if I had gone too far, but to hell with it, she was my friend. All I wanted was for her to be happy.

“Maybe you're right about one thing,” Jill finally said. “Maybe those marks didn't come from a shower door.”

THERE ARE CRIMES that are brutal and inexcusable. Some-times they make me sick, but their motives are open. Now and then, I even understand. Then there are the hidden crimes. The ones you are never meant to see. The kind of cruelty that barely breaks the skin but crushes what's inside, the little voice that is human in all of us.

These are the ones that really make me wonder about what I do for a living.

After Jill told me what had been going on between her and Steve, after I wiped her tears and cried with her like a little sister, I drove home in a daze. A pall had clung to her face, a whitewash of shame I will never forget. Jill, my Jill.

My first instinct was to drive over there that night and slap a charge on Steve. All along, the slick, self-righteous prick had been bullying her, hitting her.

All I could think of was Jill, the face I saw on her, that of a little girl. Not the Chief Assistant D.A., top of her class at Stanford, who seemed to breeze through life. Who put mur-derers away with that icy stare. My friend.

I tossed and turned the whole night. The following morn-ing, it took all I had to focus on the case. Overnight the lab tests confirmed Claire's findings. It was ricin that had been ingested by George Bengosian.

I had never seen the Hall as tense as it was that morning, bustling with dark-suited Feds and media managers. I felt as if I was sneaking past security just to call Cindy and Claire.

“I need to see you guys,” I told them. “It's important. I'll meet you at Susie's at noon.”

By the time I arrived at the quiet counter caf‚ down Bryant, Cindy and Claire were squeezed into a corner booth. Both wore anxious looks.

“Where's Jill?” asked Cindy. “We figured she was coming with you.”

“I didn't ask her,” I said. I sat in the seat across from them. “This is about Jill.”

“Okay...” Claire nodded, confused.

Piece by piece, I took them through my first suspicions about the marks I had seen on Jill while we were jogging. How I didn't like the looks of them and how maybe, in the aftermath of losing the baby, she had done them to herself.

“That's ancient history,” Cindy shot in. “Isn't it?”

“You asked her?” asked Claire. Her gaze was deadly serious.

I nodded, my gaze fixed on hers.

“And...?”

“She said, `What if I didn't make those marks myself?'”

I watched Claire studying me, trying to read my face. Cindy blinking, beginning to understand.

“Oh, Jesus,” muttered Claire. “For God's sake, you don't mean Steve...”

I nodded, swallowed.

A deep, sickening silence fell over the table. The waitress came. We ordered numbly. When the waitress left, I met their eyes.

“That son of a bitch.” Cindy shook her head. “I'd like to cut off his balls.”

“Join the club,” I shot back, “that's all I thought about last night.”

“How long?” asked Claire. “How long has this been going on?”

“I don't really know. She keeps saying it was the baby. When she lost it, Mr. Sensitivity there laid the blame on her. `You couldn't do it, could you? The big hotshot. You couldn't even do what every other woman can. Have a child.' ”

“We have to help her,” Cindy said.

I sighed. “Any ideas how?”

“Get her the hell out,” Claire said. “She can stay with one of us. Does she want out?”

I didn't know. “I'm not sure she's gotten there yet. I think what she's dealing with now is just shame. Like she's letting people down. Us. Maybe him. Strange as it sounds, I think there's a side of her that wants to prove she can be the wife, and mother, he wants her to be.”

Claire nodded. “So we talk to her, right? When?”

“Tonight,” I answered.

I looked at Claire. “Tonight,” she agreed.

Our food came and we picked at it without much appetite. No one had even asked about the case. Suddenly Claire shook her head. “Like you didn't have enough go-ing on.”

“Speaking of which” - Cindy pulled up her bag - “I have something for you.” She brought out a spiral notebook and ripped off a page.

Roger Lemouz. Dwinelle Hall. 555-0124.

“This guy's at Berkeley. In the Linguistics Department. Globalization expert. Be prepared: his view of life, let's just say, may not exactly coincide with yours.”

“Thanks. Where'd you get this?” I folded the paper in my purse.

“I told you,” Cindy said, “a million miles away.”

I PUSHED THE SITUATION with Jill to the back of my mind as best I could; I phoned and managed to catch Roger Lemouz in his office. We spoke briefly and he agreed to see me.

Just getting out of the Hall was a breath of fresh air. These days, I rarely went over to this part of the bay. I parked my Explorer near the stadium off of Telegraph Avenue and headed past the street rats hawking pot and bumper stickers. The sun was beating onto Sproul Plaza, students in back-packs and sandals sitting around, reading on the steps.

Lemouz's office was in Dwinelle Hall, an official-looking concrete structure just off the main quad. “Please, it's open,” a strong, Mediterranean accent answered my knock. A hint of something more formal, educated. British?

Professor Lemouz leaned back behind a chaotic desk in the small office cluttered with books and papers. He was large-shouldered and swarthy, with curly black hair falling over his forehead, a shadowy growth on his face.

“Ah, Police Inspector Boxer,” he said. “Please sit, be my guest. Sorry the surroundings are not so plush.” The room was musty and smelled of books and smoke. An ashtray and a pack of unfiltered Rothmans were on the desk.

I lowered myself into a seat across from him and pulled out my pad. I handed him a card.

“Homicide,” Lemouz read, bunching his lips, seemingly impressed. “So I suspect it's not some rogue etymological nuance that brings you here?”

“Perhaps another interest of yours,” I said. “You're aware, of course, of the events going on across the bay?”

He sighed. “Yes. Even a man with his nose in his books most of the time brings it out now and then. Tragic. Totally counterproductive. Fanon said, `Violence is its own judge and jury.' Yet, one cannot find it completely surprising.”

Lemouz's phony sympathy appealed to me about as much as a dentist's drill. “You mind telling me just what you mean by that, Mr. Lemouz?”

“Of course, Madam Inspector, if you would be so kind as to tell me just why you are here.”

“It's Lieutenant,” I corrected him. “I head up the Homicide detail. And I was given your name as someone who might have some firsthand knowledge of what's going on here. The ideological scene. People who might find blowing up three sleeping people and almost killing two innocent children as well as virtually imploding someone's vascular system an acceptable form of protest.”

“By `over here,' I assume you mean the peaceful, academic groves of Berkeley,” Lemouz said.

“By `over here,' I mean wherever someone would want to do these awful things, Mr. Lemouz.”

“Professor,” he replied. “The Lance Hart Professor of Romance Languages” - I saw the glimmer of a smile - “as long as we're spouting credentials.”

“You said you didn't find these murders surprising.”

“Why should they be?” Lemouz shrugged. "Should the patient be surprised he is ill when his body is covered in lesions? Our society is infected, Lieutenant, and the very people who transmit the disease look around and go, `Who, me?'