A woman in a Bomb Squad jacket came running up, holding what looked like a fragment from a blown-apart leather case.
“Mark it,” Niko instructed her. “If we can find the handle, maybe there’ll even be a print.”
“Wait,” I said as she started to walk away. What she had found was a wide leather strap, the piece that closed over the top of a briefcase and buckled into the clasp. Two gold letters were monogrammed into the strap. AS.
A sickening feeling rose up inside me. They were fucking with us. They were mocking us. I knew what the letters stood for, of course.
A.S. August Spies. My cell phone went off and I grabbed it. Cindy was on the line. “Are you there, Lindsay?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m here. What’s up?”
“They took credit for the bombing,” she told me. “Somebody called it in to the paper. The caller said he was August Spies. He said, ‘Three more days, then watch out!’ He said this was just practice.”
Chapter 82
By late afternoon it finally caught up with me that I hadn’t gotten even an hour’s sleep for the second night in three days.
I also started to feel that I was missing something important about the case. I was sure of it.
I called Cindy and Claire together. I’d been so focused on finding Hardaway, I’d missed something else.
Claire had spent the day in the morgue with the grim task of trying to identify the victims of the Rincon Center blast. There were sixteen dead so far, and more to come, unfortunately. She agreed to meet for a few minutes across the street at Susie’s, our familiar corner table.
The minute I hit the street on the way to Susie’s, I could feel the anxiety, see it on faces. Claire and Cindy were waiting for me inside.
“The note about Jill is the key.” I told them my latest theory as we sipped our tea.
“The note said she was part of the state,” Claire said, looking puzzled.
“Not that one. Cindy’s e-mail. It said, ‘This one wasn’t like the others.…’ ”
“This one was personal,” Cindy finished it off.
“You’re thinking Jill had some personal contact with this guy?” Claire blinked. “Like what?”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking. Just that each of these victims was chosen precisely. None of the killings have been random. So what led them to Jill? They tracked her. They cased her home and picked her up. Lightower, Bengosian … Something tied Jill to the two of them.”
“Maybe one of her cases?” Cindy shrugged. Claire seemed unconvinced.
There was a lull in the conversation. We looked around. The silence brought us all to the same place. The empty seat at the table.
“It’s so strange to be here,” Claire said, letting out a breath, “to be doing this, without Jill. To be talking about her.”
“Jill’s gonna help us,” I whispered.
I looked at both of them. A renewed sparkle was in their eyes.
“Okay,” Claire said, nodding, “how?”
“We’re going to look over her old cases,” I said. “I’ll try and get someone on Sinclair’s staff to pitch in.”
“And we’re looking for what exactly?” Cindy narrowed her eyes.
“You got the e-mail. Something personal,” I said. “Just like this case is for us. Look at the faces in here, and out on the street. Somebody has to stop these bastards, these murderers.”
Chapter 83
Bennett Sinclair hooked me up with Wendy Hong, a young prosecutor in his department, and with April, Jill’s assistant. We requisitioned Jill’s casework over the past eight years. All of it!
It was a mountain of paperwork, wheeled up from the law morgue in large laundry-style pushcarts and stacked in Jill’s office in columns of thick, bound files.
So we started in.
By day, I still ran the investigation, trying to close in on Hardaway. But at night, and every other available moment I could find, I went downstairs and plowed through the files. Claire pitched in. So did Cindy. Deep into the night, it seemed Jill’s light was the only one left on in the Hall.
This one was personal. The phrase rang in our ears.
But we didn’t find anything. A lot of people’s time wasted.
If there was a connection to August Spies in Jill’s life, it wasn’t in her files. Where was it? It had to be there somewhere.
Finally, we loaded the last of the files to go back to the morgue.
“Go home,” Claire said to me, exhausted herself. “Get some sleep.” She struggled up and pulled on her raincoat. She placed her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll find another way, Lindsay. We will.”
Claire was right. I needed a good night’s sleep more than anything in the world, other than a warm bath. I had staked so much on this.
I checked in with the office one more time, then, for the first time I could remember, packed up to head home for some sleep. I got in the Explorer and started heading down Brannan for Potrero. I stopped at a light. I was feeling totally empty.
The light changed. I sat there. I knew inside that I wasn’t going home.
I jerked a right when the light changed, and headed out on Sixteenth toward Buena Vista Park. It wasn’t as if any brilliant idea flashed into my brain.… More like a lack of anything else to do.
Something connected them. I was sure of that much. I just hadn’t found it.
There was a single patrol guy guarding Jill’s town house when I pulled up. Crime scene tape blocked the stairs to the landing.
I ID’d myself to the young officer at the door, who was probably happy for the diversion at this time of night. I stepped inside Jill’s house.
Chapter 84
A really creepy feeling came over me that this might not be something I should be doing. Walking around the home I had been to so many times, knowing Jill was dead. Seeing her things: a Burberry umbrella, Otis’s food bowl, a stack of recent newspapers. I was overcome with a sense of loneliness, missing her more than ever.
I went into the kitchen. I leafed through some loose things on an old pine desk. Everything was just as she’d left it. A note to Ingrid, her housekeeper. A few bills. Jill’s familiar handwriting. It was almost as if she were still there.
I went upstairs. I walked down the hall to Jill’s study. This was where she did her work, spent a lot of her time. Jill’s space.
I sat down at her desk. I smelled her scent. Jill had an old brass lamp. I flicked it on. Some letters scattered on the desk. One from her sister, Beth. Some photos: her and Steve and Otis at Moab.
What are you doing in here, Lindsay? I asked myself again. What are you hoping to find? Something signed by August Spies? Don’t be a fool.
I opened one of the desk drawers. Files. Household things. Trips, airline mileage statements.
I got up and stepped over to the bookshelf. The Voyage of the Narwhal, The Corrections, stories by Eudora Welty. Jill always had good taste in books. Never knew when she found the time to read these things. But somehow she did.
I bent down and opened a cupboard under the shelf. I came upon boxes of old pictures. Trips taken, her sister’s wedding. Some went back as far as her college graduation.
Look at Jilclass="underline" frizzy hair, thin as a rail, but strong. They made me smile. I sat on the hardwood floor and leafed through them. God, I miss you.
I saw this old accordion-style folder, wrapped tightly by an elastic cord. I opened it. Lots of old things. What it contained surprised me. Letters, photos, newspaper clippings. Some report cards from when Jill was in high school. Her parents’ wedding invitation.
And a file stuffed with newspaper clippings. I leafed through them. They were mostly about her father.
Her dad was a prosecutor, here and back in Texas. Jill told me he used to call her his little Second Chair. He’d died just a few months before, and it was clear how much Jill missed him. Most of the articles were on cases he had worked on or appointments he had received.