By the time I skidded to a stop on the roadside, a cloud of dust billowed around me and I couldn’t see beyond the windshield.
I got out of the Bonneville and leaned against it. My legs were rubbery and my hands shaking.
For now, the chase was over.
But I knew it wasn’t really over.
Someone had me in his crosshairs, and I had no idea who it was or why.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 115
I PHONED THE MAN in the Moon Garage on my cell phone and got Keith’s answering machine.
“Keith, I’m in a little jam. It’s Lindsay. Please pick up.”
When Keith answered, I gave him my coordinates. Twenty minutes felt like an hour before he pulled up in his jouncing tow truck. He hooked up the Bonneville for her ignominious return home, and I climbed up into the passenger side of the cab.
“It’s a luxury car, Lindsay,” Keith chastised me. “You’re not supposed to do loop-de-loops with this thing. It’s more than twenty years old, for God’s sake.”
“I know, I know.”
Long silence.
“Nice blouse.”
“Thank you.”
“No, really,” he said, making me laugh. “You should wear more stuff like that.”
Back at the garage, Keith flipped open the Bonneville’s hood.
“Ha. Your fan belt snapped,” he said.
“Ha. I know that.”
“Did you know that in a pinch you could fix this with a length of panty hose?”
“Yes, I did. But, strange as it may seem, I didn’t have any tights in my roadside emergency kit.”
“I have an idea. Why don’t I buy this car back from you? Give you a hundred bucks more than you paid me.”
“I’ll think about it. No.”
Keith laughed and said he’d drive me home and I had to accept his offer. Since he was going to find out anyway, I told Keith what I hadn’t told my girlfriends, hadn’t even told Joe yet.
I told him about the gunfire the night before.
“And now you think someone’s following you? Why don’t you go home, Lindsay? Seriously.”
“Because I can’t turn this murder case loose. Not now. Especially since someone threw a dozen rounds at my sister’s house.”
Keith gave me a sorry look, tugged on the bill of his Giants cap, handily negotiated the turns in the road.
“Anyone ever call you stubborn?”
“Sure. It’s considered a good trait in a cop.”
I understood what he was getting at. I no longer knew whether I was being intrepid or stupid.
But I wasn’t yet ready to make the call.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 116
WHEN KEITH AND I pulled up in front of Cat’s house, the driveway was fulclass="underline" the Explorer, a patrol car, a glazer’s truck bearing the legend “We Do Windows,” and a big metallic-blue van with Disaster Master decals on the doors.
I thanked Keith for the lift and, with Martha trotting behind me, I went inside the house, where I found a big man with a little mustache and a horseshoe of dark hair around his head, vacuuming the sofa. He turned off his power vac and “Uncle Chris” and I exchanged introductions.
“Buncha snoopy reporters showed up,” he said. “I told them you moved out until the house was put back together. Okay?”
“Perfect. Brilliant.”
“And Chief Stark was here a few minutes ago. Said to call him when you could.”
I ignored the forty-seven messages blinking on the answering machine and called the station from the kitchen phone. I got the duty officer.
“The chief’s in an interview,” she said. “Can he call you back?”
“I really wish he would.”
“I’ll see to it, Lieutenant.”
I hung up and walked down the hall to my nieces’ room.
The blankets were still on the floor. A window was shattered, and one of those sweet potato vines was drying up on the floor. I’d dented the dresser really good when I bashed the chair against it, and the whole room full of stuffed animals seemed to rebuke me.
What if the kids had been here?
What then, Lindsay?
I dragged the unbroken chair over to the corkboard, sat down, and stared at my notations on the murders. My eyes went right to the thing that disturbed me most.
Sometimes the most telling facts hide in plain sight until you’re ready to see them.
I had tunnel vision now—on the peepholes in the O’Malleys’ closet.
I changed my clothes and put Martha outside with Penelope. “You two play nice.” Then I carefully angled the Explorer around the glazer’s truck and out to the street.
I drove back into town.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 117
THE WATCHER TOOK THE blue Taurus north on 280, sticking to the freeway through Hillsborough. His thoughts were varied, but most of them centered on Lindsay Boxer.
Thinking about Lindsay gave the Watcher a complex set of feelings. He was kind of weirdly proud of her, the way she kept surviving, kept snapping back. The way she refused to back off, stand down, go back to where she came from.
But it was bad news that she insisted on being their problem. Bad news for her.
When it came right down to it, they didn’t want to kill her. Killing a cop, especially this particular cop, would mean an all-out manhunt. The whole SFPD would spill out of the city and work her murder. Maybe the FBI, too.
The Watcher slowed at the exit sign for Trousdale Drive, then his sturdy little car glided down the off-ramp. A mile and a half later, he turned right at the huge Peninsula Hospital, and right again onto El Camino Real, heading south.
He found an Exxon station two blocks down the road and went inside the attached minimart. He wandered around for a couple of minutes, picking up a few small things: a bottle of springwater, a Clif bar, a newspaper.
He paid the busty teenage girl at the cash register $4.20 for his purchases and another $20 for gas. As he left the store, he unfolded the morning paper and saw the story on page one.
GUNSHOTS RIP THROUGH INSPECTOR’S HOUSE
There was a picture of Lindsay in uniform over the story, and in the right-hand column was a follow-up about the Cabot case. Sam Cabot had been charged with a double homicide, “Continued on page 2.”
The Watcher put the paper neatly down on the passenger seat and filled up his tank. Then he started the car and headed toward home. He would talk to the Truth later. Maybe they wouldn’t kill Lindsay the way they had the others. Maybe they would just make her disappear.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 118
THE LATE DR. O’MALLEY’S office was inside a two-story brick house on Kelly Street, his name etched on a brass plaque to the right of the doorway.
I felt a little rush as I rang the bell. I knew the chief would kick my butt for going around him, but I had to do something. Better to beg forgiveness later than to ask permission and be refused.
The buzzer sounded, and I pushed open the door. I found the waiting room to my left: small and square, with gray upholstered furniture and yards of condolence cards strung up around the walls.
Behind the reception desk, framed in the open window, was a middle-aged woman with graying hair in a sixties flip.
“I’m Lieutenant Boxer, SFPD,” I said, showing my badge. I told her that I was working on a cold homicide case that had some similarities to Dr. O’Malley’s unfortunate death.
“We’ve already spoken to the police,” she said, scrutinizing my badge and the winning smile I’d put on just for her. “Hours and hours of questions.”