The foreman took his glasses out of his jacket pocket, flipped them open, and set them on his nose. At last, he began to read.
“We, the jury in the above-entitled action, find the accused, Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer, not guilty of the charges against her.”
“So say you all?”
“We do.”
I was so numb, I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly. And when I played the statement back in my mind, I half expected the judge to overrule what the foreman had just said.
Yuki grasped my wrist tightly, and only when I saw the smile lighting her face did I fully realize that I wasn’t imagining anything. The jury had found in my favor.
A voice shouted, “No! No! You can’t do this!”
It was Andrew Cabot, on his feet, holding on to the chair-back in front of him where Mason Broyles sat, white-faced and grim, and beaten.
Broyles’s request that the jury be polled was a demand, and the judge complied.
“As you hear your seat number called, please tell the court how you voted,” said Judge Achacoso.
One at a time the jurors spoke.
“Not guilty.”
“Not guilty.”
“Not guilty . . .”
I had heard the expression, but I’m not sure I understood it until that moment. With both my attorneys’ arms around me, I floated in a feeling of relief so complete it was a dimension of its own. Perhaps this feeling was reserved only for moments of redemption, moments like this.
I was free, and my heart took flight.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Part Five
The Cat’s Meow
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 106
THERE WAS A MOODY gray sky overhead when Martha and I left my apartment and headed out of San Francisco. I turned on the car radio and caught the weather report, listening with half an ear as I negotiated the stop-and-go snarl of the usual commuter traffic.
As I bumped along Potrero Street, I was thinking about Chief Tracchio. Yesterday, when we’d met at the Hall of Justice, he’d asked me to come back to work, and I’d gotten as flustered as if he’d asked me for a date.
All I’d had to do was shake his hand on it.
If I’d done that, I would have been driving to the Hall this morning, making a speech to the troops about going forward, diving into the mountain of paperwork on my desk, unsolved cases. I would’ve taken back my command.
But, although the chief had laid it on really thick, I’d turned him down.
“I still have some vacation time, Chief. I need to take it.”
He said he understood, but how could he? I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and I had a sense that I wouldn’t know until I’d gotten to the bottom of the killings in Half Moon Bay.
Those unsolved murders were a part of me now, too.
My gut told me that if I did what I was good at, if I persevered, I would find the SOB who had killed my John Doe and all those others.
Right now, that was all I really cared about.
I took 280 southbound and, once clear of the city, I rolled down the windows and changed the channel.
By 10:00 a.m., my hair was whipping across my face, and Sue Hall was spinning my favorite oldies on 99.7 FM.
“It’s not raining this morning,” she purred. “It’s the first of July, a beautiful gray San Francisco day—just floating in pearly fog. And isn’t the fog something that we love about San Francisco?”
Then, the perfect song poured through the speakers: “Fly Like an Eagle.”
I sang along in full voice, the tune pumping oxygen into my blood, sending my mood right through the ozone layer.
I was free.
The horrific trial was in my rearview mirror, and suddenly my future was as open as the highway ahead.
Eighteen miles out of the city, Martha needed a rest stop, so I pulled over into the parking lot of a Taco Bell in Pacifica. It was a wooden shack built in the sixties before the zoning commission knew what was happening. And now there stood one of the tackiest buildings in the world on one of the most beautiful spots on the coastline.
Unlike most of the highway, which streamed high above the ocean, the fast-food restaurant parking lot was at sea level. A row of rocks separated the asphalt from the beach, and beyond it the deep blue Pacific flowed over the rim of the horizon.
I bought an irresistible cinnamon-sugared churro and a container of black coffee and took a seat on the boulders. I watched tattooed, hard-bodied surfers riding the waves as Martha ran over the luminous gray sand until the sun had nearly burned off the fog.
When this great moment was sealed in my memory, I called Martha back to the car. Twenty minutes later, we entered the outskirts of Half Moon Bay.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 107
I DROVE ACROSS THE air bell on the apron of the Man in the Moon Garage and honked a little shave-and-a-haircut until Keith came out of his office. He lifted off his baseball cap, shook out his golden hair, stuck the cap back on, smiled my way, and sauntered on over.
“Well, well. Lookit who’s here. The Woman of the Year,” Keith said, putting his hand on Martha’s head.
“Oh, that’s me, all right,” I said, laughing. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
“Yeah, I totally get it. I saw that Sam Cabot on the news. He was so pitiful. I was really scared for you, Lindsay, but it’s water over the hill now. Congratulations are in order.”
I murmured my thanks for his interest and asked Keith to fill up the tank. Meanwhile, I took the squeegee from a bucket and cleaned the windshield.
“So, what’re you up to, Lindsay? Don’t you have to go back to work in the big city?”
“Not right away. You know, I’m just not ready yet. . . .”
As the words left my mouth, a red blur breezed across the intersection. The driver slowed and looked right at me before gunning the engine and tearing down Main.
I’d been in town for less than five minutes, and Dennis Agnew was back in my face.
“I left the Bonneville at my sister’s house,” I said as I observed the Porsche’s contrail. “And I have a little unfinished business here in town.”
Keith turned and saw that I was watching Agnew’s Porsche disappear down the street.
“I’ve never understood it,” he said, jacking the gas gun into my tank, shaking his head. A bell rang as the gas meter racked up the gallons. “He’s a really bad dude. I just don’t understand why women are so attracted to trouble.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said. “You think I’m interested in that guy?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Very. But not the way you mean. My interest in Dennis Agnew is purely professional.”
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 108
AS WE HEADED TO Cat’s house, Martha jumped around from backseat to front, barking like a fool. And when I parked in the driveway, she leaped through the car’s open window and ran up to the front door, where she stood wagging her tail and singing in a high key.
“Be cool, Boo,” I said. “Show a little restraint.”
I jiggled the key in the lock and opened the front door; Martha trotted inside.
I called Joe and left him a message: “Hey, Molinari, I’m at Cat’s house. Call when you can.” Then I left a message for Carolee, telling her that she and Allison could stand down from pig-sitting detail.
I spent the day thinking about the Half Moon Bay murders while I cleaned up around the house. I cooked up some spaghetti and canned baby peas for dinner, making a mental note to do some grocery shopping in the morning.