She stopped in her tracks. Several heartbeats passed before she responded. She heard him, but her brain was doing a double take. “Tuesday?” she finally repeated.
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure that’s what he said?”
“Yeah.”
Her thoughts raced. Tuesday… It couldn’t be true. Her father could have lent him the money and Wheeler killed him anyway. At least, that’s what she told herself.
But the thought came too late.
The damage had been done.
A seed of doubt planted because of a few minute, trivial details that did not appear in any police reports. Details that only someone close to her family would recognize. Anyone might know her father had been in the army. And they certainly knew he helped out people all the time, handed out a few dollars. But Sydney could count on one hand the number of people who knew of the little flowered canister her father kept beneath the counter at the pizza parlor, or that he often chided her for “raiding” it to get video money. Even fewer were those who might have known that he kept a twenty beneath the till after he closed out.
And fewer still were those who knew what it meant if her father requested a loan to be repaid on Tuesday.
Sydney banged on the door to alert the guard, then left without speaking. What could she say?
She needed to know the truth. If this man was going to be executed, then he better damned well be guilty.
And if he wasn’t guilty…
Her father’s killer was out there still.
6
Sydney went through the steps of signing out of the prison, thanking everyone, returning her visitor’s pass, then finding herself in the parking lot, standing next to her car, grateful to be outside. She stared out over the bay, the wind rushing in her ears, not sure if it was the first few raindrops that hit her face or the sea spray. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so alone as she did in that one moment, and she had nowhere to go, no one to turn to.
It wasn’t like she could take this to her mother, not yet. In fact, everyone Sydney knew, her mother, her stepfather Jake, even Scotty, they all believed that Wheeler was guilty without a doubt. Who was going to believe a few trivial, though in her mind critical, details that came from a convicted killer and could only be verified from the traumatized memory of a girl just thirteen at the time?
Her thoughts consumed her for most of the drive. When she approached the Golden Gate Bridge her cell phone rang, and she was relieved when she saw it wasn’t her mother’s number on the screen.
“Fitz?” It was Lettie, Dixon’s secretary. “You are coming in tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“I have to. Subpoenaed for court in the morning. Why?” “That officer from Hill City called again. She’s sounding pretty desperate and wanted to know what your schedule was.”
Sydney tried to remember what the officer wanted, but her mind refused to cooperate. “Do me a favor, pick a time, have her come in, whatever.”
“… pick a time… You okay?”
“Yeah. Just a lot to deal with right now.”
She disconnected, tossed the phone on the car seat, then tried to figure out what to do next. By the time she crossed the bridge, the rain was coming down in a steady patter, and she drove around aimlessly, finally ending up at the parking lot at the top of Bernal Hill. The five-hundred-foot undeveloped peak, a rarity in the midst of the city, was mostly used as a dog park, and sometimes on the rare occasion that she varied her running schedule, she borrowed her neighbor’s dog just to have a place to walk, enjoy the peace away from the city’s dense population. It was one of the area’s bestkept secrets, offering unsurpassed panoramic views of the city and the Bay Bridge. During the winter the rains turned the slopes of brown annual grass into a vast sea of green, reminding her of something she might see in Ireland. When it wasn’t raining, it was one of the few sunny spots to be found, and after work, she sometimes drove up here just to watch the fog roll in, an amazing sight that often helped calm her thoughts after a particularly stressful day.
But there was no fog rolling in now, and her thoughts were not calming as the wind blasted the rain against the car, and thunder rumbled in the distance. She could just make out the complex of the hospital below, where the sight of Tara Brown’s sketch had shaken her, or rather the scar Sydney had drawn, the scar that reminded her of Johnnie Wheeler.
And yet, if he could be believed, he wasn’t the man who killed her father.
Then who?
Her thoughts drifted to the envelope left on her coffee table. What was it that Scotty had said about McKnight? That the man kept apologizing for something he did to her father? McKnight was in Texas when her father was killed.
At least that was what she’d always thought…
Lights from the city below dotted the landscape as darkness seeped in. For a few moments she took in the view, and a thought hovered just out of her grasp, something she thought she should remember about her father and McKnight. Something important. But a gust of wind shook the car, and when she saw a flash of lightning off to her left, quickly followed by a clap of thunder, she decided that parking on a bare hilltop below a microwave tower in this weather wasn’t the best of ideas. And maybe once she got home, whatever that thought about McKnight had been would come back to her.
She trudged up the rain-slicked steps, still unable to think what she was missing. Her front door was adjacent to her neighbor’s front door, both accessed via stairs on the side of the house that overlooked the driveway. Their landlord lived below them in the renovated house. With the exception of the teenage boys next door who thought this particular street of mostly single-family homes was their personal drag strip, she liked her neighbors. They were an eclectic group, diverse, much like the city itself. Sydney’s immediate neighbor went by the name Arturo, as opposed to the more formal Arthur on his birth certificate, because he thought using Arturo would bring him more commercial advertising jobs. He was single, in his twenties, made quite a bit of money, and rode a motorcycle, which was why Sydney had ended up with the garage. Arturo lived alone with a large white poodle, Topper, not, thankfully, a prissy poodle, but the sort without his fur trimmed, which made him look more like a giant sheep.
Sydney loved that dog. She liked Arturo, too. He had a key to her place and watered her plants when she was out of town on cases. The neighbors below them, Darlene and Rainie, a lesbian couple in their late fifties, owned the house, and told Sydney they thought Arturo was gay, but had yet to come out of the closet. Of course they based this observation on the fact that their across-the-street neighbor had a daughter, single white female, early twenties, and Arturo barely gave her a second glance. The only thing Sydney knew for sure about Arturo was that he was a closet chef, and there were many nights when she came home to find that whatever recipe he had experimented with, she was the willing recipient of his largesse. Of course, there were often strings attached. Dog sitting for one. Sydney didn’t mind. The pay was good. Now if she could just convince him to let her take his ultra sleek, ultra fast charcoal-black Ducati motorcycle out for a spin. Unfortunately that was his baby, and no one touched that bike. But a girl could dream…
Tonight as she stood on her porch stomping her feet dry, then fitting her key into the lock, it was to the scent of simmering garlic and other savory herbs. She hadn’t even realized she was hungry until that moment, and just when she was wondering what sort of store-bought entrees she had stashed in the freezer, and could heat up before she left for the rally tonight, Arturo’s door opened and out bounded Topper. The dog shoved his nose into her hand, forcing her to pay attention to him. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said, scratching him behind his ears. “I was up at your favorite place just a little while ago.”