Unlucky 13 (11 page)

Leila used her thumb to point behind her to Laramie.

“We had a fight. About another girl he’s been seeing, of course. Now I have to get back home on my own, but I sure don’t ever have to see that shit again.”

“And you’re not afraid to hitchhike?”

“Not at all. I would only get into a car with a woman. Do you live in Portland?”

“My mom. I’m going to spend a little time with her. She’s a million
laughs and she cooks, too.”

“Cool. Hannah, I didn’t get any sleep last night. Would you mind if I nap for a few minutes?”

Mackie dialed around and found a light-music station. By the time Leila was asleep, Mackie was thinking about Lindsay Boxer. It was good to be going back to San Francisco. Richie and Lindsay wouldn’t even be thinking about her.

Surprise. We’re ba-a-ack.

Beside her, Leila
stirred.

Between now and San Francisco, she had to deal with the girl.

YUKI STOOD WITH
Brady and gangs of lighthearted after-dinner guests who were filling the
FinStar
’s world-class Ocean Bar to the walls. Inside, the bar was all gold trim and rusty autumn colors. Beyond the curving floor-to-ceiling windows, the night was ink-black, lit only by the foam breaking, leaping around the bow as the glorious ship steamed toward Sitka.

Yuki wore a sexy black
dress, her new pale coral necklace, and strappy heels. She nursed her first margarita, hoping to see the aurora borealis, an amazing natural light show that often appeared at night in this part of the world.

Brady looked savagely handsome. He, too, was wearing black: turtleneck, blazer, and trousers. His dark clothes contrasted wonderfully with his flashing blond hair. He held out his hand.

“Come with me, sweetie. Let’s go to the Veranda Deck.”

Back home, Yuki was up at six, organized and overworked, always moving, doing whatever she could to prosecute criminals and put them away.

She felt different with Brady. With him it was okay to show her softer, more vulnerable side, to let him take the lead and take care of her. It was the first time she’d ever trusted a man this way, both
emotionally and practically. She trusted him that much. But she didn’t like heights.

Yuki put down her glass and, taking her husband’s hand, said, “Lead the way.”

Together she and Brady climbed the three winding flights of tawny carpeted staircase that coiled below the huge illuminated art work of stars suspended above the staircase. Arriving at the Veranda Lounge, Brady put his hand to the
small of her back and steered her through the crowd to the glass right at the front of the ship.

Just then, the room filled with awed murmurs.

There, off the starboard side, Yuki saw a pale aqua feathering in the sky. The color gathered depth and motion, forming a swath of light that ran from east to west, curling back on itself in a loose swirl.

Brady stood behind her and wrapped her in his
arms as they watched the effect of atomic particles colliding, discharging energy some sixty miles overhead, creating an ethereal watercolor that bled through the velvet night.

“I
must
get pictures,” Yuki said.

“That can be arranged,” said her husband.

He took her hand, led her to the door, and made sure she safely cleared the high threshold.

The cold wind on the deck brought tears to Yuki’s
eyes, but she shot a dozen pictures, each with her blowing hair across the lens. Then she saw Lyle, their cabin steward, who volunteered to point and shoot.

“How long will this last?” she asked him.

“Maybe hours, or—the way I heard it—it could disappear if you
sneeze
.”

“Quick,” she said, shoving her camera into his hand.

She and Brady stood with arms around each other, their backs to the blackness
below and above, lit now with the magical northern lights.

Yuki thanked Lyle and took back her camera. She turned to Brady, stood on her toes, and pressed her body against him. He pulled her in even closer.

She shouted above the wind, “You should take me to bed.”

“How did we ever get so lucky?” said Brady.

MY DAY STARTED
in Jacobi’s big office with its view of the bail-bond storefronts and All Day Parking on Bryant.

Jacobi had new information from our contact at the FBI. He said, “The evidence from our bridge victims and the one in the LA parking lot matches. Same type of injuries, and they found a granule of RDX.”

“Nice of the FBI to keep us posted. But I’m still working a double homicide
by hamburger bomb.”

“You know what, Boxer? Leave it with the Feds. It’s their case. They’ve got the mega-lab and the manpower. We’ve got plenty to do in our own backyard.”

“Is that an order?”

“Yeah, right. Would that work?”

No. It wouldn’t.

“I’m working the case, Jacobi.”

I called Donna Timko, head of Chuck’s Prime product development, but after learning that she was out of town for the
day, Conklin and I got Holly Restrepo out of holding.

We gave the woman an intensive six-hour, three-way chat, and she entirely, adamantly stuck to her story. Namely, her bastard husband had been threatening her. She didn’t remember anything until we arrived and she was holding the shotgun and Rudolfo was bleeding out on the floor.

My sweetheart of a partner said, “Holly, time is flying. If
you tell us you shot Rudolfo in self-defense, you might be able to work out a deal. If he dies, you’re looking at capital murder. You’ll never touch your children again.”

Holly Restrepo rolled her crazy-twitchy eyes and said, “Do I seem like I’m in my right mind?”

Yes, she did.

She was practicing her insanity defense on us.

It was that kind of day. Frustrating and haunted by belly bombs yet
to explode. I was ready for it to be over.

I’d been home for about ten minutes and had just hung up my jacket and unpacked my gun when Cindy’s ID came up on my home phone.

“Linds, may I come over?”

“Of
course
. Joe’s making veggie lasagna. Get your skinny butt over here.”

A half hour later, Cindy bounced in, looking cute in jeans and a pink cardigan, with a rhinestone barrette in her hair.
She also looked wired.

“I need some baby love,” she said.

“Sit yourself down.”

Cindy reached out her arms, and Joe handed Julie over. For a woman who didn’t want kids—not now!—she took to holding our little one like she held babies every day.

She made intense small talk with Julie, nothing deep or personal apart from asking her if she preferred Leno or Letterman, causing Julie to burble, which
made me laugh out loud. I had to tear Julie away from Cindy so I could put her down before dinner.

Cindy picked at her lasagna, and she asked Joe the kinds of questions that come easily to a reporter. She even asked follow-up questions. I continued to feel that something was bothering her, though—and she didn’t care to discuss it in front of Joe.

Whatever was stuck in her shoe, she softened
it with a couple of glasses of wine, then turned down coffee and dessert in favor of a third glass, effectively killing the bottle. About then, Joe said he had some calls to make. He kissed the top of Cindy’s curly-haired head and left the room.

I said to Cindy in my best film noir cop growl, “Okay, sister. Start talking.”

CINDY CAREFULLY SET
her wineglass down on the coffee table, kicked off her ballet flats, and curled up in a corner of the couch. I sat across from her in Joe’s big leather chair.

“What’s going on?” I asked her.

“You’re going to kill me,” said Cindy, “but I wish you wouldn’t.”

I read her face and saw something that looked like guilt in her eyes. I felt a stinging shock of alarm. What
the hell could Cindy have done to tick me off?

I said, “Only one way to find out.”

And then she told me.

“When you said Morales had been seen in Wisconsin? In a town near Lake Michigan? I tracked her there.”

“You’re joking. You didn’t do that, Cindy.”

“Randy Fish’s father had a house on the lake that still belongs to his estate. I thought Morales might be there. I brought cops with me when
I went. I wanted to be in on the takedown and write about her, you know. Get an exclusive. But—she was already gone.”

“You took something I said to you as a friend—”

“I know, I know. But
you weren’t working the case
, Lindsay. She was in
Wisconsin
. Not on your patch.”

“And so you went out on this, this story, using my private information without asking me? Do you realize how that could come
back on me?”

Cindy picked up her glass, drained it, and said, “You know, I figured I’d turn the information over to you and Richie and you’d nail her and she would be prosecuted here and we’d all win. Look, I don’t blame you for whatever you think of me. I was wrong. I’m really sorry. Thanks for dinner, Linds.”

She put down her glass and toed around for her shoes. I didn’t think Cindy was actually
steady enough to make it through the front door. And there was no way she could drive.

“I’m not going to beg you, Cindy. But if you don’t spit it out, I will come over there and smother you with a throw pillow.”

She laughed and said, “Please don’t hurt me.”

“We’ll see.”

She grinned, sat back on the couch, and said, “Okay. So when we got to the house, Morales was gone. But she had wired the
house with explosives. Yeah! To blow up. I have that on excellent authority.”

“How do you know it was Morales who did that?”

“
Off the record
—her prints were found under a layer of dust. Anyway, the FBI is watching the house. Hoping she’ll go back to it so they can nail her. Personally? What do I think? I think she’s out of that house for good.”

“Because?”

Cindy took a deep breath and let it
out as a long sigh.

“Earlier this week, a female fitting Mackie’s description robbed a bank in Chicago. She killed two people—a guard and a bystander. I just flew out there and talked to two customers who had fled before the cops locked them down. The way they described her, Linds, get this: five foot six to five foot eight. Athletic. Could be Hispanic.”

I said, “That’s a
description?
I call
that a vague generality that could fit too many people to be useful at all. But listen, Cindy. Please look at me. Let’s say you’re actually onto Morales. Thank God you didn’t confront her. Are you kidding me? She’s on the FBI’s top-ten most-wanted list. Number
five
. You know better than almost anyone how dangerous she is.”

Cindy said, “I’m a
crime
journalist, Linds. A damned good one, as it turns
out.”

That was indisputable. Cindy had helped me solve more than one case with her doggedness, and she had some kind of intuition that couldn’t be put down to luck. She had told me once that she was one killer story short of national acclaim. I understood what Morales meant to her.

But that didn’t mean she should be trying to get close to her. I nodded my head in agreement and said, “I know
how good you are. I know.”

Cindy said, “So—may I have some coffee now? I’m not done telling you what’s going on.”

I KEPT MY
eyes on Cindy while I brewed the coffee. She was tapping on her phone, looking as distracted as she had seemed over dinner.

Joe came into the kitchen and I whispered to him, “She’s tracking Morales.”

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline.

“By herself? You gotta love her,” he said.

“And—why?” I said dubiously.

“She’s a lot like you.”

“Come
on
,” I said. “You really think
that?”

He grinned, gave me a swat on the behind, poured coffee for himself, and went back to his office.

I called out, “Cindy, come get your mug.”

She sugared and milked her java, after which we took our mugs to the living room and assumed our former positions.
She swiped at her cell phone with her thumb, and just when I was ready to scream, she got up and brought her phone over to me.

“I
just got an e-mail with these attachments about three hours ago,” Cindy said. “Sometimes a picture is actually worth a thousand blah-blah-blahs.”

“What am I looking at?” I asked her.

The first photo was of three State of Wyoming Highway Patrol cars, flashers on, clumped up along the side of a highway.

The second shot showed traffic cones across the lane and a half-dozen khaki-uniformed troopers
standing around what looked like a female body lying in the ditch off the shoulder of the road.

“You’re saying that’s Mackie?”

“No,” said Cindy. “Keep flipping through.”

The next photo was a tighter shot of the corpse. I thought that I was looking at a hit-and-run, but by the fourth photo, it was clear that the victim had been shot through the left temple.

“Who sent you these to you?” I asked.

“Off the record,” Cindy said, “they’re from a cop friend of mine who got the pictures from an undisclosed source. There’s no ID yet on the victim. I don’t know her, Linds,” Cindy said, “but she looks familiar.”

I looked at the close-ups of the victim. She was pretty, in her twenties, long dark hair, pale skin, slender build.

The gunshot wound to the temple made me think that if she had been
a passenger, the driver could have shot her and dumped her out of the vehicle.

Or, if she had been driving and stopped her car for someone and rolled down her window, the person standing outside the car could have popped her, dragged her out, and stolen her car.

Then I came to the close-ups of the victim’s hands. All of her fingers had been cut off at the first digit—and that changed everything.

Cindy said, “Remind you of something?”

Yes. It reminded me of Randy Fish, a sexual sadist who had used different methods to kill and torture his victims. He had cut the fingers off one of his last kills with a pair of pruning shears—while the girl was alive. He’d told me all about that.