I said into the speaker phone, “Saturday? What Saturday? This Saturday?”
“Yes. So listen, I hired this great wedding planner, and all you girls have to do is put on the dresses and show up. Details to follow.”
“We’re wearing bridesmaids’ dresses?” I asked, totally horrified.
“Of course. Pink ones. Off the shoulder. Big skirt.”
Well, Cindy and Claire would look good in pink. I would look like a half-baked ham.
“Don’t worry, Linds,” Yuki said. “You can use it after the wedding. It’s a nice little cocktail dress.”
“And I was just sitting here wishing I had an off-the-shoulder pink cocktail dress,” I said, laughing in order to keep the terror out of my voice. “Can I get a tiara to go with that?”
Yuki laughed and said, “I’m kidding about the dresses, girls. I’m not having any maids of honor, none of that. Having a judge. Having vows. Having food. Having dancing. Sound okay?”
“Brilliant,” Claire said. “We’re throwing your engagement party. For four. Tonight.”
Right after we said good-bye to Yuki, I left Claire’s office, jogged through the breezeway, and entered the back door to the lobby of the Hall of Justice, with its super-size ceilings and garnet-colored marble walls. I took the stairs to Homicide and after passing through the squad’s outer office went through the little swinging gate and into the bullpen.
I said, “Yo,” to our PA, Brenda, and then made my way around the desks in the bullpen. I found Brady in his hundred-square-foot glass cubicle at the far end.
He looked just like always—delts and biceps pulling the fabric of his blue shirt, white-blond hair pulled back and banded in a short pony, head bent over his computer.
I’d had a few issues with Brady since he’d taken over my old job as squad boss. From the first, I bucked at Brady’s impersonal management style. But lately, I hate to admit, I’ve become a fan. He’s impartial. He’s decisive. And he has a track record as a really good cop.
I knocked on Brady’s glass door. He said, “Come in, Boxer.”
I did and kept coming, all four steps to his desk. Then I grabbed his shoulders and kissed him.
“Congrats, boss.”
The look on Brady’s face was priceless.
“Thanks.”
I was grinning my face off as I crossed the squad room to my desk and Conklin’s. My partner looked up from his computer and said to me, “I saw you kissing up to the boss.”
“He and Yuki are getting married. Swear to God. And we’ve got a hot lead. So, let’s get to work.”
Chapter 5
I swung down into my desk chair and said to my partner, “The explosive material in the belly bomb is a magnesium compound and the victims ingested it.”
“They ate it? And it exploded? That’s not possible.”
“I’m quoting Claire, who got that from the FBI lab. They found a trace of the compound in the stomach contents. Seems that stomach acid activates the explosion.”
“Damn,” Conklin said, rocking back in his chair. “Do the Feds have any theories as to who put this stuff into the food?”
“Not yet. I’m way open to anything you come up with.”
I pulled up the scene pictures again, this time focusing on the hamburger bag and waxed-paper wrappers among the pile of litter on the floor. The hamburger bag had come from Chuck’s Prime, a chain of fast-food restaurants that had made a name for themselves for hamburgers of superior grass-fed, made-in-America beef.
I turned my computer so Conklin could see the photo and said, “Look here. I think Trimble and Katz had a couple of Chuckburgers—and sometime not long after that, they blew up.”
Conklin said, “There’s a Chuck’s in Hayes Valley, about fifteen minutes south of the bridge.”
We signed out a squad car and Conklin drove. I listened to the car radio with half an ear while Conklin said, “I should tell you, Linds. I eat at Chuck’s twice a week. Maybe more.”
“I’ve had a Chuck’s bacon burger a few times and have to say, they’re pretty tasty.”
“Yeah,” Conklin said. “Might be time for a change.”
Twenty minutes later, we parked at the corner of Hayes and Octavia near the park known as Patricia’s Green and in the heart of the Hayes Valley commercial district, a strip with trendy shops, boutiques, restaurants, and cafés.
In the middle of the block was a big parking lot, and beside the lot, like a sunny seaside trattoria, was Chuck’s.
The outside tables were shaded by market umbrellas, and inside, a counter wrapped around two walls, and square wooden tabletops formed neat lines. Few people were eating burgers at this time of morning, but the serving folks were ready for the lunch crowd, smartly dressed as they were in aqua cowboy shirts with pearl buttons and tight white jeans.
I badged the girl at the cash register and asked to speak to the manager. Mr. Kent Sacco was paged and about thirty seconds later, a pudgy man in his early thirties came from an office at the back and greeted us with a sweaty handshake and a business card.
We took a table by the front windows and I told Mr. Sacco that the victims on the bridge last week may have eaten their last meal at Chuck’s.
I said, “We need to see your security tapes.”
“Sure. Whatever I can do for you.”
“We need contact information for your kitchen and serving staff.”
Sacco took us back to his office, where he printed out a list of personnel with copies of their photo IDs. He left us briefly and returned with security DVDs from the four cameras, two positioned inside and two outside the restaurant.
On the way out, Conklin bought burgers and fixings to go. In the interest of full disclosure, when we got back to our desks, I offered to take one of those sandwiches off Conklin’s hands. I was nearly starving. Still, I scrutinized the meat very thoroughly. Then I closed the sandwich and ate it all up. It was delicious.
Conklin and I watched videotape for the rest of the day, jumping a little when we found the gritty images of David Katz and Lara Trimble ordering hamburgers, sodas, and fries to take out. A young cowgirl behind the counter took their order and their cash, then handed them the bag of food. The victims took the bag and left with their arms around each other.
We looked at the footage forward and back, enlarged it, sharpened it, focused on every area in the frame.
No one but the girl behind the counter had spoken to Trimble and Katz, and there was no altercation of any kind.
I called Clapper and brought him into the loop. He asked me to forward the employee contact material to him and said he’d call his FBI contact.
“They’re gonna tear Chuck’s apart,” he said.
Chapter 6
It was the end of the day. We were nowhere on belly bombs and I was hungry. I was pulling on my jacket when Brady dropped by the double desk I share with Conklin.
“I just got a call from the FBI,” he said.
“Belly bomb bulletin?”
“Just open the mail I sent the two of you.”
Conklin and I both did that and saw a grainy black-and-white photo of a woman leaving a post office on a rural street. I almost recognized her, but not quite. Conklin, however, looked frozen. He looked shocked.
Brady said, “That’s our old friend Mackie Morales, in a one-stoplight town in Wisconsin.”
I got it now. Mackie had clipped her long, curly hair, a standout feature of her natural beauty. Now her dark curls were very short and she was wearing a canvas jacket to midthigh. Mackie was angular and thin. She could dress like a man and get away with it.
Along with recognition came images and chilling memories of Randy Fish, a savage serial killer who had fixated on me. Fish should be on death row, but instead he was serving out his eight consecutive life sentences in some extra-toasty corner of Hell.
Fish’s lady love was this woman, Mackenzie, aka Mackie, Morales, midtwenties, who had spent the summer right here at the Southern Station of the SFPD. Posing as an intern while working her way to her PhD in psychology, she had worked her way into Conklin’s heart and used information she gleaned from interning with us to commit some murders of her own.