Dixon was the man in charge.
When they were seated on the wide leather sofa, Dixon said, “I understand from John Carroll that you’re interested in locating Alison Muller.”
“She’s a possible witness,” I said. “She may have been the last to see a victim of a recent homicide.”
“Yes, we understand that she may well have been with Michael Chan.” Dixon went on. “We want to level with you, Mrs. Molinari. Call it interagency cooperation. But in exchange, we need you to back off your inquiries into Alison Muller.”
Really? They didn’t have the authority to take me off my case. If that was what they wanted, they shouldn’t have come to me here. What was up?
I said, “That’s not my call. Not yours, either. Muller is a person of interest in a quadruple homicide. Our case. SFPD.”
“I want to assure you that Muller didn’t kill Michael Chan,” said Dixon. “Muller wanted him alive. We all do.”
“So what happened?” I said, not promising anything.
Knightly looked around the apartment from his seat on the sofa. He got up. Went to the large windows facing Lake Street and looked out. Keeping watch, I thought.
Dixon said, “We’ve been in contact with Muller. She was working Chan, trying to establish if he, like his wife, was in Chinese intelligence.”
“And was he?”
“Muller didn’t know. She had already left the hotel and was walking northeast on Market at the time of the incident. This is documented. She doesn’t know anything about the other victims.”
“I’d like to talk with her myself,” I said. “Officially. Once I’ve cleared her, I’ll be happy to move on.”
Julie started to fuss. I made an educated guess that she needed changing and that she was about to make this need extremely well known.
“That’s not possible,” Dixon said. “She’s undercover on a job. When her current assignment wraps up, we’ll put her in touch with you.”
Pretty much what Khalid Khan had said to me a few days ago. I pressed on.
“What can you tell me about a passenger named Michael Chan who was on WW 888?”
He was lying. But maybe he’d tell me the truth when I asked the question that was most important to me.
“Joe Molinari,” I said. “Do you know where I can find him?”
Knightly returned to the sofa and said, “I know of Molinari, but he’s ancient history. We have no current information about him, I’m afraid.”
“I just want to know if he’s alive. Can you tell me that?”
“Believe me, I would tell you if I knew,” said Agent Knightly of the CIA. “He’s not one of ours.”
Julie let out a wail. The two men put their cards on the kitchen island and let themselves out of the apartment.
What the hell had just happened?
Alison Muller’s colleagues had said she was alive.
And for all I knew, Joe Molinari, my husband, the father of my crying little girl, that man was dead.
CHAPTER 60
AS SOON AS Julie was asleep in her crib, I filled the tub with the hottest water I could bear and got in. But even lavender-scented bubbles couldn’t relax my mind.
Those men from the CIA had lied to me. Maybe they had been in contact with Alison Muller, maybe not. My gut was telling me they just wanted me to stop looking for her, calling attention to her, speaking to the FBI about her. As for what they’d said about Joe, I couldn’t read them. Not for sure.
I imagined Joe, working out of his home office, that small room that he could almost wear like a sweater. Those months when he was home all day with the baby—had he been working for the CIA? Had he been working with her?
The day of the killings in the Four Seasons, had Joe been there because he had been teamed up with Muller? Maybe while she was on the fourteenth floor killing Chan, he had been waiting to get her out of the hotel unseen.
Far-fetched? Maybe. But it was too damned much of a coincidence that the two of them had disappeared at approximately the same time.
I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. In the light of the streetlamp coming in through the window, I stared up at the juncture between the walls and the ceiling and wondered now if Joe had been alone in his car when he looked into our camera outside the Chan house.
Had Muller been sitting beside him in the passenger seat? Had the two of them come to the Chan house—not to do their own surveillance, but to take out Shirley Chan? Had our squad car in the driveway delayed Shirley Chan’s murder?
I cannot explain why an idea suddenly jumped into my mind, but it did. I sat up straight in bed.
Joe had taken all of his electronic devices with him before he disappeared—hadn’t he? I’d gone through our bedroom and also Joe’s office. But I hadn’t gone through Julie’s room.
I got out of bed and went to the nursery next door. Martha trotted behind me. I whispered to her to sit, and then I turned on the Finding Nemo lamp on the white-painted dresser. The light from the lamp was pale and yellow, but I could see the whole room. I peeked in on Julie and she was breathing softly. So I began opening her drawers.
I took out folded onesies from the top drawer, baby blankets from the second, diapers from the bottom, and when I didn’t find anything of interest, I put it all back and stepped over to her closet.
I pulled the chain on the closet lightbulb and took stock. Julie had very few clothes needing hangers, but Joe and I both had stored excess clothes here. I grabbed up armloads of coats and ski outfits we never wore, putting them on the floor. Then I took boxes of shoes off the shelf.
Once I had the boxes on the floor, I flipped the lids on the dress shoes, both mine and Joe’s. And then my heart froze solid. On top of the shoes Joe had worn when we got married was a tablet. I’d never seen it before. The charger was in the box with the shoes.
CHAPTER 61
MARTHA LICKED MY face as I plugged in the charger and turned on the tablet. I pushed her away and stared at the box that was requesting a password.
I had no idea what Joe’s password would be. And then the image of a number jumped into my mind. It was the haziest kind of memory because I hadn’t thought about it when I saw it. Now I wasn’t sure if I’d seen it at all. I bolted to Joe’s office and opened the center drawer. I had put all of the contents back after I had tossed it, failing to find clues or evidence of Joe’s whereabouts.
Now I pulled the drawer all the way out. I dumped the take-out menus and pens and paper clips onto the rug, then took the drawer over to the desk lamp and looked at where the bottom met the sides of the drawer.
Something was written in pencil close to the seam, a long line of numbers and letters that added up to nothing.
Like the best kind of password.
I brought the empty drawer to the tablet on the floor of Julie’s room and typed the alphanumeric into the password box on Joe’s page. I got blocked several times. There were eighteen characters in this chain, and I blew it a few times.
The third time, I was slow and deliberate, and I was sure I’d typed in the eighteen characters perfectly.
And still the password was rejected.
I typed in a few obvious combinations of birthdays and names, but no luck. Joe was a spy. Triple threat. CIA, FBI, Homeland Security. He wasn’t using a password he’d written in his pencil drawer. He wasn’t going to use password1234, either. He wouldn’t use his daughter’s name to guard his secrets. Right?
Just for laughs, I typed in JulieAnne, and bam. I was in. Imagine that. Folders populated the little desktop.