"How about your husband? Do you know where he is?"
"Probably in the city, too, at our house there. That's where he stays most of the time."
"I need both those addresses and phones. Cells, too."
"Dr. Monks, what exactly is your interest in us?" Julia said scathingly. "First, Gwen tells me you suspect that Eden was murdered. Next thing I know, you're socializing at our house, staggering around like a drunk teenager. Now you're tracking us. Are we under suspicion? Or are you just trying to screw my cousin?"
Monks looked for help to Franchi, and got none. The cop's big, weary face stayed impassive.
"I wasn't drunk, Julia," Monks said. "Somebody drugged me. This has taken a very serious turn."
Long seconds of silence passed. Monks felt himself being weighed. When she spoke again, her tone was still haughty, but a note of uncertainty had crept in.
"I'll have to get my address book. I don't remember the cell numbers."
She returned to the phone a few moments later. Monks wrote down the information and gave her Larrabee's office number.
"If anybody comes back there, don't say anything about this," he said. "Get someplace private and call me."
He clicked the phone off and looked at his judges, wondering if he had given too much away. But Franchi did not seem displeased.
"Okay," Franchi said. "Let's get after it."
Monks picked at a bagel and listened while Franchi dispatched unmarked cars to Gwen Bricknell's apartment building, a Nob Hill high-rise, and to D'Anton's Pacific Heights home. While they waited, Franchi called downtown to start National Crime Information Center checks on the suspects.
It only took a few minutes to find out that nobody answered the phones, or the doors, at either Gwen's apartment or D'Anton's house. Both their vehicles were gone.
"You could try the clinic," Monks said. "Sometimes she goes there on weekends to catch up on work."
'The morning after she tried to off you?" Franchi said sourly.
Monks winced.
"Well, what the hell," Franchi said. "Can't hurt to look."
He called the cars in the field again. The three men waited.
This time, when Franchi's phone rang back, he started to look animated.
"Get some backup, make sure nobody gets out of there," he said into the phone. "Then see if she'll come to the door. If she does, hold her till I get there. Again, that name's Gwen Bricknell. Very good-looking babe, dark hair, about forty." He glanced at Monks, eyebrows raised, for corroboration. Monks nodded.
"And keep this off the radio," Franchi ordered. "I don't want every fucking unit in the Taraval coming in spikes high."
"Her car's there," he told Monks and Larrabee. "Let's hope she lets them in. We can't just go kicking the door down."
More minutes passed, with Franchi talking tersely to the officers on the scene. Monks could not understand all of the clipped, coded copspeak, but it did not sound promising.
Finally, Franchi confirmed that. "Nobody answers the phone inside. They've banged on the doors and windows. Nothing. I'll have to go downtown, try to get a warrant to break in. This is really hanging my ass out." He was looking bleary again, but now pissed off, too. Monks was aware that police tended not to like it when technicalities got in the way, especially in the way of taking down someone genuinely dangerous.
"You want to ride along?" Franchi asked Larrabee. "Catch up on what you've been missing all these years?" Larrabee nodded. To Monks, Franchi said, "I think you ought to stay here, Doctor. If she is in there, it might not be a good idea for her to see you. You could probably use some sleep. Just keep that phone close by, in case the doctor's wife calls."
Monks was a little hurt, like a child who had been ditched by older boys going off on an adventure too rough for him.
He finished the bagel he had been working on, then went into Larrabee's living room and stretched out on the couch. Sleep was out of the question. But it started to come home to him that he was in a warm, safe place.
That was something he had not appreciated nearly enough in his life.
Chapter 31
It was just after seven a.m. when Larrabee and Franchi arrived at D'Anton's clinic, carrying a warrant empowering the police to enter it, by force if necessary. An unmarked car with two plainclothes detectives was waiting in front, and two black-and-white squad cars were parked to triangulate the building, watching the other exits. They had tried repeatedly to rouse anyone who might be inside, but there had been no response.
The break-in was not going to require finesse. Ordinary locks could be picked or opened with a lock gun, but the clinic was protected by high-security deadbolts. All narcotics were locked in a safe, but any place that kept them was still a prime target for burglary. The simplest way in, and easiest to repair, was to break a window. That would set off a silent alarm system connected to the Taraval District police station, but they had been alerted and would not respond.
One of the detectives was in his thirties, comparatively young and agile. At Franchi's okay, wearing gloves and goggles, he smashed a ground-floor window with a gorilla bar. They waited, listening. It was just possible that someone was inside, armed, and that the intrusion would make him – or her – desperate.
The detective cleared the shards of glass from the frame, then went in, boosted by the others, pistol in hand. A minute later, he opened the rear door. Franchi, Larrabee, and the second detective went in next, leaving the uniformed cops outside to guard.
They stepped into a utility area, with stainless-steel counters, sinks, and refrigerators. Larrabee was immediately aware of the crisp smell he associated with medical facilities. It was silent except for the faint humming of physical plant machinery.
Franchi led, his pistol also drawn. He opened a door into a hallway, with four more opposing doors opening off of it. All but one were open. They were procedure rooms, fitted with operating tables and equipment, empty of people.
Franchi stepped quietly past the closed door and pressed himself against the wall. The young detective threw the door open, jumping back and leveling his gun.
Nothing moved inside the room, but there was something on the table.
Larrabee's gut understood before his mind did that it was not just something, but someone.
Franchi turned his head and yelled back down the hallway to the cops waiting outside, "One dead!"
The body was female, with coppery skin and long, jet black hair spilling from her head off the table's end. Her face had been largely peeled away, leaving rough, dark red crusted patches of raw tissue. The table and the floor underneath were slick with blood. There was a thick smell, not decay yet, but its precursor.
Franchi crossed himself, muttering in Italian. The young detective let his gun hand fall, his other forearm rising to cover his mouth. Larrabee had to fight the urge to hyperventilate. He had seen his share of bodies, but never one like this.
"Don't nobody touch nothing," Franchi said roughly. "Is this Gwen?"
Larrabee shook his head. "I saw her photos on the Net. She's pure white-bread. But – that hair. Coffee Trenette has hair like that. Monks said she was at the party last night."
Franchi took two steps into the room, his gaze moving swiftly. It was chaotic, with objects looking like they had been thrown down in haste. Surgical instruments lay in a jumble on a tray. A wastebasket was stuffed with bloody towels. The fingers of a latex glove showed among them.
Then he pointed at something with his pistol, a little flash of gold beside the sink, almost covered by another towel. He moved closer and lifted the towel away with the gun's barrel. The gold was the flex band of a wristwatch, a man's Rolex with a face of striking deep blue.
"You'd remember a watch like that," he said. "Call Dr. Monks. Ask him if he noticed D'Anton wearing it. We'll keep looking."