12th of Never (Womens Murder Club 12) (24 page)

“So you’re going down, Mr. Herman. You make a full statement, including how and where you murdered your wife, you save the people the time and expense of a trial, it will count in your favor. You see that, don’t you?”

“I’m not saying a word. You can talk to my lawyer, John Kinsela. See you in court.”

Something fell to the floor in the kitchen. Lily said, “Uh-oh.”

“If that’s the way you want it, Mr. Herman. Your face will be all over the media again, every single day you’re in court. Just curious. Don’t you think you owe your daughter something? Don’t you think that if you spent the next two hundred years in jail, you still couldn’t pay her back for what you’ve taken from her?”

Herman looked at Brady, kept a steady gaze.

Brady stood up, took his cuffs in hand, and said to Herman, “Stand up and put your hands behind you, right now, or I’ll have a half dozen cops in here in ten seconds to drag you out.”

“And if I make a statement?”

“I’ll make sure you’re incarcerated at Folsom. There’s a nice little suburb around there. Your mother could move there with Lily.”

Herman stared out the window, his face expressionless, unreadable. Brady readied himself for whatever was going to happen in the next few seconds. He was watching for furtive movements. If Herman bolted for the kitchen, Brady had to get to him before he grabbed the little girl. If Herman rushed him, he’d have to take the man down.

Keith Herman stood up, turned around, and put his arms behind his back.

“Done,” he said.

MACKIE MORALES ASKED Richie, “Have you ever thought about getting married?”

He said, “Instead of that, why don’t I tell you the funniest thing that ever happened to me on the job?”

She laughed. “I see. Okay. Tell me your funny story.”

It was their first actual date, Sunday lunch in Sausalito. They were at Scoma’s, a terrific old restaurant right on a pier with a first-class view of the bay, Angel Island, and, of course, the city skyline.

Mackie had pulled her thick hair into what she said was a “side pony,” and her gold cross glinted in the V of her blue pullover. Rich couldn’t decide where to put his eyes. She was just entirely adorable.

He said, “So four new mosques had opened in town and we were supposed to go around, get on a first-name basis with the imams, you know, facilitate community relations.”

The waiter came over with their order—a chilled shellfish platter, iced tea, and freshly baked bread. Rich passed Morales the basket of rolls and she took one.

“Go on with your story,” she said. He could tell that she wanted the story to be good.

“Okay. So we’re at a mosque and one of the imams comes up to me and my partner and says he’s got some information on a possible terrorist threat. And he wants to give us the info, but not there. He says he has to be really careful.”

“Oh, my God,” Morales said, eyes fixed on his.

“So we arrange to meet him at a little park after morning prayers and whatnot, and I check out a car from impound, looks nothing like a cop car.”

“Like a sports car?”

“Exactly. A BMW. Red. And so me and my partner drive to the park, and there’s the imam sitting on a bench, wearing his robe and his cap and reading the Koran. And my partner waves to him like to signal him, the plan being we’ll park the car in the shadows and talk. But the imam doesn’t see us. And so we go around the block three times, trying to signal him, and he looks right past us.”

“Humph,” said Morales. “That must’ve been frustrating.”

“Now, at the same time we’re going around and around, this almost retired cop drives to the park in his black-and-white, parks at the far corner under the trees. He’s just running out his time before getting his pension. And so he’s sitting in the car reading his fishing magazines—and I see this whole thing unfolding.”

They were cracking crab legs with their hands, putting shells in a bowl.

“Hang on a sec,” Morales said. She reached over, knocked a bit of crab off his chin.

Rich grabbed her wrist, kissed her palm, released her hand, and went on with his story. Mackie colored, smiled up at him, and he smiled back at her.

“So the old-timer is reading
Outdoor Life
,” Richie said, “and the imam sees him and jumps off the bench and starts running toward the cruiser. Now, understand, this sergeant knows nothing about this. He hears the door open behind him, jerks his head around, sees this guy in Middle Eastern clothes dive into the backseat.”

Morales was shaking her head and laughing into her napkin.

Rich said, “And we can see all this going down and there’s nothing we can do. The old-timer goes flying out of the car, screaming that there’s a suicide bomber in his car, and ‘
Everyone run
.’”

Morales was laughing with tears in her eyes. “Richie, no, please.”

“Yeah, and we get the imam out of the backseat and calm the cop down and we get the info and turn it over to the FBI. And they tell us that the intel involved New York City, and we never hear another word about it.

“And that, since you asked, is the funniest thing that ever happened to me on the job.”

“Good story.” Morales dried her eyes, looked at him, and said, “This is nice, Rich. I’m getting a little bit crazy about you.”

He couldn’t stop looking at her. Was he available? He wasn’t sure. It was too soon after his breakup with Cindy to get involved and yet he really, really liked Morales.

He said, “Let me see a picture of Benjamin.”

She went for her purse, which was looped onto the back of her chair, opened her wallet, and pushed the photo toward him.

“Oh, man. He is a good-looking boy.”

“Thank you.”

“Where is his father?”

“So you want me to tell you about the funniest thing that ever happened to me on the job?”

She grinned.

He said, “Come here.”

He pulled her into a hug, her hair tickling his nose, her arm going around him, both of them still sitting at the table. He kissed the top of her head and said, “We’ve got time to get into the deep stuff.”

“Yes,” she said. “I want this to take a lot of time.”

Richie held her, thought how good this felt, and that he couldn’t wait for more.

IT WAS THE end of another torturous night in the Saint Francis pediatric oncology wing. As light slashed through the windows, Joe and I were still waiting for something good to happen. Dr. Sebetic and his colleagues had stuck pins and needles into our daughter, ran her small body through imaging machines, sent her fluids out to labs, but nothing had yet been concluded. I’m a good interrogator, but I got nothing from the medical staff.

And so two days after we checked Julie into Saint Francis, the death sentence that would not quit still hung over her precious head.

Right then, Joe was sleeping beside me in our private hospital room and Julie was dozing fitfully in her incubator, within arm’s reach of the bed.

Neither of them stirred when my phone rang.

Brady said, “How’re you all doing, Boxer?”

He actually said “ya’ll,” his voice sugared with a trace of drawl from his years in Florida.

I told him there was still no news and then asked, “You need something, Lieutenant?”

“Someone wants to talk to you. Here’s a hint. He’s with the FBI. A very big cheese. I’ve been told he’s got a private line to Washington in his pocket.”

Brady patched me through to Parker’s phone, after which Parker and I went a few rounds. As before, Parker told me that if I didn’t help him with this world-class dirtbag, Randy Fish, the case would always be half closed, half solved, and the remains of the dead girls would never be buried in their family plots.

That would be a crime, to be sure, and that’s the part that always got to me.

“I ran the new names he gave me through Missing Persons and they’re all Fish’s type. Every one of them is a dark-haired young female going to college on the West Coast. We’ve got another girl from San Francisco, Debra Andie Lane, eighteen. We had never connected her to Fish until he told me he’d killed her.”

“How exactly am I going to help you, Ron? You’ve got the FBI at your disposal. I’m a midlevel homicide cop. On leave. And all he’s done is mess with me.”

“The fish man asks for you. All the time. He has conversations with you when you’re nowhere around. You can help with the force of your personality. By withholding and giving praise. Dial it up, cut it off; that’ll work with him.”

“You believe that?”

“Yes, if there’s any chance in the world.”

“Well, thanks for your faith in me, but I’m done with the fish man. Please. Cross me off your call list until further notice.”

I told Parker that yes, I was sure, said good-bye, and flung myself back onto the bed.

Joe opened his eyes, ran his hand over his stubble. “Done with what?”

I told him.

He rolled toward me, put his arm over my waist. “Give it some thought.”

“No.”

What was there to think about? I had to stay near Julie. I had to be right here if a life-or-death decision had to be made.

“Julie is getting the best of care, Lindsay. I’ll be here all day and we’ll both be here all night. I’ll call you, I promise, the second I know anything. You don’t function well when you can’t take action. You’re driving yourself crazy and I hope you’ll understand that I love you and I say this in the kindest possible way. You’re driving me a little crazy, too.”

“Really.”

“Randy Fish is a very big deal, and whatever you can do to clear the case, that’s what you should do.”

We argued in whispers for several minutes, but when Joe talked about giving peace of mind to those lost girls’ families, he pushed my buttons, as Ron Parker had done.

“You’re going to nail him this time,” Joe said. “I just know it.”

“You know me, Joe. I’m sure as hell going to try.”

I MET CONKLIN up on Bryant, in front of the Hall. He had the keys to a squad car and also an extra coffee and a chocolate brownie, which I gladly accepted.

“Where to?” he asked, folding his lanky frame behind the steering wheel.

It was about noon when we got on the freeway. A cold front was forming, and the marine layer filled the roadbed from shoulder to shoulder. I knew every twist, turn, and lane change by heart, and so the slow drivers and the fog didn’t worry me.

I just wanted to get there, let Randy Fish do his thing, and get back to my family.

Two hours later, under a dull afternoon sun, we parked in the Atwater penitentiary’s north lot. Conklin and I met Ron Parker at the front gate, then a group of us trudged down cement steps, through echoing corridors, through a gauntlet of profanity-spewing prisoners, and at last confronted Randolph Fish, who was seated behind a triple layer of Plexiglas.

Fish looked bad—bruised, small, and broken. If you didn’t know better, you’d think that he was as dangerous as a sparrow.

“Tell me about Debra Lane,” I said.

Fish didn’t look at Parker or Conklin or the menacing, muscle-bound guards.

“Debby Lane,” he said to me, “was a cute girl, but she had no fight in her, Lindsay. She wouldn’t talk to me. She didn’t bargain. She just screamed until I couldn’t take it.”

I stared at him. I’m pretty sure my face was frozen in horror as Fish complained about his teenage victim.

“She just screamed and screamed,” Fish said again. “I hardly touched her. I wanted to, but I just ended up cutting off her air. She was a bad choice, I have to admit.”

Conklin was also looking at Fish, but without expression. However, out of the killer’s sight, my partner was clenching his fists, punching his thighs. I knew he was flashing on the remains of Fish’s victims, wanting to do something illegal to get Fish’s head on straight. Knock out a few teeth. Shatter a few bones.

Well, that’s what I was thinking, anyway.

Fish told me, “I locked up Debby’s body in a self-storage facility out by Pier 96. I was going to dispose of her later, but you changed my plans for me, Lindsay. You remember. You caught me outside the movie theater. Where you and I met for the first time.”

“Why should we believe you?” I said. “You’re a good liar, Randy. First class. In fact, when have you ever told the truth?”

“It’s in my best interest to help you, Lindsay. Because I want something—and telling you the truth is how I’m going to get it.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to prove to
myself
that I can change.”

I looked into his deep brown eyes, something a lot of women had done while begging for their lives. Despite Ron Parker’s magical belief in me, I had no leverage. Fish would take us to Debra Lane’s body. Or he wouldn’t.

“Let’s go,” I said.

WE WERE BRINGING up the rear of the Randy Fish motorcade, the cherubic serial killer and his armed guards bumping along ahead of us on the patchy road.

I swore as our right front wheel slammed into a pothole on Amador Street, jarring my teeth and snapping my last nerve.

Conklin muttered, “Sorry.”

A thermos rolled off the front seat into the foot well, and as I bent to pick it up my partner jerked the wheel and I banged my head into the underside of the glove compartment.

“Hey!” I said.

“The road is like Swiss cheese, Linds. I’m doing my best.”

“Do better.”

It was getting late, sometime after five, and as the sun bled out, I felt a strong pull to be with Joe and Julie. Yesterday at this time, I’d been checking in with Martha’s dogsitter, then heading down to the basement cafeteria for mac and cheese with Joe.

My heart and soul were at Saint Francis.

But I was also being pulled toward a self-storage locker down the street, on the outskirts of nowhere. We hit a good length of road and Conklin gunned the engine. We sped past a rendering plant on our right and a cement factory on our left. Straight ahead, a spotlighted American flag flew at the entrance to the USA U-Store-It facility.