Unlucky 13 (19 page)

“Sure,” Walt said. “I’m running late. I’ve got a few more stops to make before I hit rush hour.”

The big kid used a brick to wedge open the back door and went to help Walt.

“You came just in time,” Tony said. “I didn’t know if we were going to have enough patties to get through lunch.”

“I’ll tell management to boost your weekly order.”

“Good. Thanks,” said Tony. “Hey, you know that girl I
told you I liked? Gita?”

“Sure. In your drama class.”

“That’s her,” said Tony. “We’re hanging out now.”

“That’s fine,” said Walt. “Good luck with that.”

Tony grinned and said, “See you next week.”

Walt passed gas as he climbed into his van. He settled in, picked up his cup, and sucked up a long pull of chilly Coco-Primo before putting the van into gear.

He was whistling through his teeth
as he pulled the truck out onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and headed west to his next stop.

Man, he was like riding the moon.

In the back of the freezer compartment was a box of frozen patties packed lovingly with a little extra bang.

Every way he looked, it was win/win.

Money or
ka-boom
.

Or possibly both.

Why not? Life was good. And he didn’t owe anyone a damned thing.

CONKLIN AND I
were in Jacobi’s corner office on the fifth floor. Traffic was flowing, and the sun was bright.

I took in my old friend’s office, which had been furnished for him in wide, comfy couches and chairs, an expansive desk, and a pretty nice-looking Persian carpet—all of which he deserved after his hard years in Homicide and recompense for his shot-up hip and other permanent
injuries he’d taken on the Job.

The three of us were grumbling about the lack of progress on the
FinStar
. As we waited for the new mayor to arrive, Jacobi was saying that Yuki, who weighed barely a hundred pounds, could be broken like a twig.

“But she’s got a quick mind,” I said. “She’s thought her way around killers a few dozen times, you know.”

At that the mayor came through the doorway.

His Honor Robert Worley was a serious man of thirty-six, a lawyer and former car-dealership owner, married and the father of four, a pillar of the community. He was charismatic and handsome, and he was building his public service career with no ceiling on his ambitions.

I knew he didn’t want to make any mistakes.

He shook hands all around, put his coat over the back of the couch, and took a seat,
saying, “Sorry. The traffic was against me. I mean, it fought me like hell.”

Jacobi got up and closed the door and gave the mayor a bottle of spring water from the fridge. Then we all took seats in the soft leather furniture. Jacobi led the discussion by saying that he’d been partnered with Conklin and me and added, “These two are the best of the best, Your Honor. None better. Boxer, tell the
mayor what we have on the belly bomber.”

The mayor leaned forward, clasped his hands between his taupe pinstriped knees, and said, “I’ve been thinking about this case since I saw those bodies in the Jeep. One of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”

I brought him up to date on the failed stakeout on San Leandro Street and the note the bomber had left behind after he emptied the cash from the briefcase.

When I’d answered the mayor’s questions, I ran through the ticktock on the day’s events. I told him that I’d called in the FBI and that we’d lost the belly bomber a nanosecond after he made his demand.

“Mr. Mayor, the bomber threatened multiple bombs,” I said. “Chuck’s may not pay the ransom, and even if they do, this psycho is enjoying himself. I’ll bet he wants to kill
people more than he wants
a payoff. He likes the game too damned much.”

The mayor asked me, “What do you suggest?”

“We should shut down Chuck’s Primes in San Francisco, which will at least stop people from eating Chuck’s burgers immediately. And I think we should ask the governor to close down every Chuck’s in California while we and the FBI work on the case.”

The mayor, being a lawyer, didn’t agree.

“As I understand
it, all you have that links Chuck’s to the explosive material in the original incident is a lab report of the bomb ingredients. You can’t actually place those burger bombs in the actual restaurant, correct?”

I couldn’t believe what the mayor was saying.

We had two dead people with Chuck’s hamburger wrappings in the backseat of their car. We had explosive material in high-quality chopped steak
consistent with Chuck’s Prime. We had the bomber holding up Chuck’s CEO for ransom to stop further bombings. Surely that was enough to connect the bomber to Chuck’s.
Come on
.

The mayor kept talking.

“This anonymous guy who’s making the threats could have planted the bombs in that hamburger without being a Chuck’s employee, couldn’t he?”

I didn’t see how.

The mayor went on.

“Or maybe the bombs
weren’t in the
hamburgers
, but the kids ate them and something else, and the product was in their systems.”

He paused, but I didn’t know what to say. The guy
didn’t want to close Chuck’s down, and he didn’t want me to contradict him.

“Look, Sergeant. I understand you. I don’t want more people to die either,” Morley said. “But, I can’t padlock a company without direct evidence,” he said.

The
mayor shook hands with us again, told us to keep working—even harder—and to get in touch with him immediately if we had a breakthrough in the case.

He exited Jacobi’s office leaving us with absolutely nothing but bomb threats in the wind.

MORALES HAD BOOSTED
another car, a 2004 Subaru Outback, and it was perfect. The sea-foam-green color was boring, the car was dirty, and it had open boxes of old picture frames in the back. There wasn’t a person in the state of California who would give this car a second look or even a first.

Not even the cops would be looking for a car worth five grand on a good day.

Randy was humming
as she cruised slowly down 7th Street and stopped at the light at Bryant. She took in the whole of the Hall of Justice, the gray granite building where she had gone to work every day last summer.

It gave her a tremendous high to reflect on those months, going every morning through the lobby, clearing security, working an actual job in Homicide. And she had
turned in an award-quality performance
that would never be credited by the Academy.

She liked thinking about the killings she’d finessed, no one suspecting her—ever. And she’d gotten Rich Conklin to fall in love with her. Oh, man. He was
so
hooked.

You were dazzling, baby
, Randy said.

“I did it for us, lover,” she said. “Just for us.”

And that was why the outcome was so wrong. She’d scored big-time, and Randy should be alive. And
so she was stuck remembering what Lindsay Boxer had caused. She hated that woman so much, her thoughts alone should have been enough to kill Boxer dead.

The stoplight changed and Morales turned onto Bryant and drove slowly past the Hall. A few cops were grouped around a squad car at the curb. She knew them, could remember all of their names. She had an impulse to wave.

Randy said,
Get a move
on, sweetheart
.

“I know. No showing off,” Morales muttered.

She stepped on the gas and, after clearing the Hall, turned left onto Harriet. There was a parking lot on her left, right near the ME’s Office, and Boxer used to park her car there in the shade of the Interstate.

Morales peered along the rows of parked cars but didn’t see Boxer’s blue ride. Hell, she had probably gone for the day.
No problem. She knew where Boxer lived, had memorized the address months ago. When her lover was still alive. When she still believed in a happily-ever-after life.

The kind of life Boxer had.

Morales took a left on Harrison Street, and headed north toward Lake Street. She hoped the Boxer-Molinaris
kept the curtains in their apartment open. She wanted to see the sergeant at home with her husband
and child. She wanted to get a feel for their neighborhood.

And then, after she’d seen her mom and little boy, she was going to come back here and destroy everything that Lindsay Boxer loved.

LAST NIGHT, THINKING
about the f-you e-mail she had gotten a couple of days ago from Morales, Cindy had lain awake in bed, trying to figure out if there was a way in the world she could locate that hateful woman.

Cindy didn’t remember falling asleep, but then daylight pried her eyes open. She picked up last night’s thoughts as though she had never dropped them.

But now she had an
idea.

She cleaned up, made coffee, and then called her new pal in Wisconsin, Captain Patrick Lawrence of the Cleveland, Wisconsin, PD.

The captain answered on the first ring and said he was just getting in, to give him a second to take off his jacket. She heard the clunk of the phone on his desk and then he was back.

“I’ve got time to talk right now, Cindy.”

“I need some help, Pat, of the
usually off-limits-to-reporters kind.”

The captain told Cindy he was happy to help her as long as she kept his name out of it. He couldn’t chase Morales himself when she was out of his county, but the fact that she was tied to Randy Fish gave the captain some personal interest in the outcome of the case.

Cindy paced around her small apartment as she told the captain about Morales’s e-mail.

“She pegged me when I was watching for her outside her mother’s house. I didn’t get a look at her car. She had her high beams on, but apparently she saw me. I’m thinking she has to be driving a stolen car.”

Lawrence said, “Makes sense she’d be boosting cars of opportunity. I would imagine she’d rotate them out pretty regularly, hoping it would take a while for local PDs to catch up with her ride.”

“Pat, here’s the favor: Could you access a stolen-car database and give me a list of recently stolen cars in San Francisco?”

“Check your e-mail after lunch,” he said.

At the end of the day, Cindy met with Henry Tyler in his office. He looked distracted and intense at the same time. He didn’t ask her to sit down. He just said, “Where are you on Morales?”

Cindy said, “She’s in town, Henry. She
sent me an e-mail telling me that she saw me.”

“She wrote to you?” said the publisher. He was standing behind his desk and had been moving stacks of paper,
looking for something. A pen. And he found it. Cindy had a hundred and ten percent of Tyler’s attention now.

He said again, “She
wrote
to you? What did she say?”

“She told me that she knows I’m looking for her and to get off her tail.”

“Cindy. What the hell? You were going to let the police know where she was, get her arrested. Isn’t that right?”

“Right. That’s still the plan. Get her arrested. Write the story. I’m working with a police captain, trading information, and I think I have an idea why she’s in town.”

“My instincts are telling me to pull you off this, Cindy. It feels like this could go very bad.”

“Henry, this e-mail
is huge. I’m being careful—”

“Make sure you understand me. Don’t go near Morales unless you’re in a cop car,
with cops
. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

Cindy left Tyler, went down the hall to her own office, and called Lindsay again. This was the third message she’d left for her friend, and now she was worried.

It was just a hunch, but she thought maybe Morales was in town not just to see
her child but to go after Lindsay. It was no secret that Randy Fish had been fascinated with Lindsay. He had singled her out as the only cop he would talk to, and Mackie knew that. Did that work on her? Was she jealous of Lindsay? It had to have hurt her deeply that Lindsay had been alone with Fish when he
died
.

That must have almost killed Mackie.

Maybe she was getting this wrong, but psychologically
it made sense. She had to let Lindsay know.

She texted Lindsay: Call me.

Then she opened her mail from Captain Lawrence.

He had listed six cars that had been stolen in San Francisco this week, most of them cars that could be profitably chop-shopped for parts or sold in Mexico. She printed out the list, which included a BMW and a Jaguar. The last car on the list was a 2004 Subaru Outback that
had been parked two to three blocks down from Candlestick Park. She didn’t know if Morales had stolen that car, but it was the kind of car that went unnoticed, and she could see Morales feeling very safe in an ancient station wagon.

Cindy left her office and got her own car out of the lot. She had the Subaru in mind when she drove toward Lindsay’s neighborhood.

She called Lindsay again as night
came on.

CINDY NEATLY BACKED
her car into an empty spot under the curbside acacia and hawthorn trees in front of Table Asia Gallery. To her left, 12th Street dead-ended a half block to the north, where it butted up against Mountain Lake Park. Across the intersection of Lake and 12th, the blocky five-story apartment building where Lindsay and Joe lived dominated her eastern view.

Evening rush-hour
traffic streamed past her with the urgency of people fleeing their offices for the relief of home.

Cindy fixed her eyes on the flow of cars, putting her mind on “search” for the recently stolen vehicles on Captain Lawrence’s short list. Once she’d locked in, the pissed-off voice in her head was free to carp about the
frustrating and demeaning meeting she’d just had with Henry Tyler.

Principally,
his order to “go in a cop car
with
cops” was insulting and lame. How was it possible that Henry Tyler, publisher of the
Chronicle
, didn’t know that tracking a subject, digging up news to trade with cops in exchange for access, was standard operating procedure for investigative reporters?

She, in particular, had a long history of working with cops and bringing home big stories. Henry knew this
full well, and his slap across the face only fueled her determination to nail this goddamned story she’d turned from a stale report of a sighting into a story in three dimensions. Now she needed to bring it home. Collect her prize.