4th of July (13 page)

I could not believe what I saw next. My eyes were pinned to the rearview mirror, watching as the car kept coming toward me on a collision course.

I leaned on my horn, but the car just got bigger in my rearview. What the hell was going on? Was the driver on his freaking cell phone? Did he see me?

Adrenaline shot through me, and time splintered into fragments. I stepped on the gas and jerked the wheel to avoid the collision, driving off the road and onto a front lawn, taking out a garden cart before coming to rest at the base of a Douglas fir.

I jerked the Explorer into reverse, tearing up the lawn before getting back onto the roadway. Then I took off after the fast-disappearing maniac who’d almost driven through my backseat. Who hadn’t stopped to check on the wreck he almost caused. The asshole could have killed me.

I kept the red car in sight, getting close enough to recognize its elegant shape. The car was a Porsche.

My face got hot as my fear and anger came together. I gunned my engine, following the Porsche as it wove through traffic, crossing the double yellow line repeatedly.

The last time I’d seen that car, Keith had been fixing the oil pan.

It was Dennis Agnew’s car.

A dozen miles flew by. I was still on the Porsche’s tail when we went up and over the hills into San Mateo and south on El Camino Real, a seedy thoroughfare bordering the Caltrain tracks. Then, without signaling, the Porsche hooked a sharp right into a strip mall entrance.

I followed, squealing into the turn, coming to a stop in a nearly desolate parking lot. I turned off the engine, and as my racing heart slowed to a canter, I looked around.

The minimall was a down-market collection of retail shops: auto parts, a Dollar Store, a liquor store. Down at the far end of the lot was a square cement-block building with a red neon sign in the window: Playmate Pen. XXX Live Girls.

Parked in front of the poster-plastered storefront was Dennis Agnew’s car.

I locked the Explorer and walked the twenty yards to the porn shop. I opened the door and went inside.

THE PLAYMATE PEN WAS an ugly place lit by harsh overhead lights and flashing neon. To my left were racks of party toys: dildos and ticklers in garish colors and molded body parts in lifelike plastic. To my right were soda and snack machines—refreshment for all those film lovers trapped inside tiny video booths with their brains hooked into their fantasies, hands firmly on their joysticks.

I felt eyes tracking me as I walked the narrow aisles lined with videos. I was the only female wandering loose in the place, and I guess I stood out more in my slacks and blazer than if I’d been stark naked.

I was about to approach the clerk in front when I felt a dark presence at my elbow.

“Lindsay?”

I started—but Dennis Agnew looked thrilled to see me.

“To what do I owe the honor, Lieutenant?”

I was caught in a maze of stacks and racks of chicks-and-dicks, but like a steer in the chute of a slaughterhouse, I could see that the only way out was straight ahead.

Agnew’s office was a brightly lit, windowless cubicle. He took the chair behind a wood-grain Formica desk and indicated where I should sit—a black leather sofa that had seen better days.

“I’ll stand. This isn’t going to take long,” I said, but as I stood there in the doorway, I had to look around the room.

Every wall was hung with framed photos signed to “Randy Long” from G-stringed lovelies, porn film publicity stills of overheated couplings featuring Randy Long and his partners. I also saw a few flashbulb snapshots of Agnew posing with grinning guys in suits.

Bells started clanging as I matched the mugs of young up-and-coming wiseguys to the mobsters they’d later become. At least two of the suits were now dead.

It took me another couple of seconds to realize that Dennis Agnew and the younger, long-haired Randy Long in the photos were one and the same. Agnew had been a freaking porn star.

“SO, LIEUTENANT, WHAT CAN I do you for?” Dennis Agnew said, smiling, making neat stacks of his papers, corraling a loose pile of cock rings, pouring them like coins from one hand to another, then onto the desktop.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to pull,” I said, “but where I come from, running a car off the road is a crime.”

“Seriously, Lindsay. You don’t mind if I call you Lindsay?” Agnew folded his hands and gave me one of his bleached-beyond-white smiles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s crap. Twenty minutes ago you ran me off the road. People could’ve been killed. I could’ve been killed.”

“Oh. No. Couldn’t have been me,” Agnew said, furrowing his brow and shaking his head. “I think I would’ve noticed that. No, I think you’ve come here because you want to see me.”

It was infuriating. Not just that Agnew was a creep with a fast car who didn’t give a shit, but his mocking attitude really fried me.

“See these girls?” he said, hooking a thumb toward his “wall of fame.” “You know why they do these flicks? Their self-esteem is so low they think by debasing themselves with men, they’ll actually feel more powerful. Isn’t that ridiculous? And look at you. Debasing yourself by coming here. Does it make you feel powerful?”

I was choking on this load of crap, sputtering, “You arrogant horse’s ass,” when I heard a voice saying, “Whoa. Please tell me you’re applying for a job here.”

A small man with a cheap green jacket buttoned over his beer belly appeared in the office doorway. He leaned against the doorjamb, an arm’s length from where I stood, running his eyes over me. It was a look that just about skeeved me out of my skin.

“Rick Monte, this is Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer. She’s a homicide cop from San Francisco,” Agnew said. “She’s on vacation—or so she says.”

“Enjoying your time off, Lieutenant?” Rick asked my bustline.

“I’m loving it, but I could make this an official visit at any time.”

As soon as I said those words, I felt a jolt straight to the heart.

What was I doing?

I was on restricted duty and out of my jurisdiction. I’d chased a citizen in my own car. I had no backup, and if either of these jerk-offs phoned in a complaint, I’d be up on disciplinary action.

It was the last thing I needed before my trial.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were upset,” Dennis said in his oily voice. “I haven’t done anything to harm you, you know.”

“Next time you see me,” I said through clenched teeth, “turn and walk the other way.”

“Oh. Pardon me. I must have it wrong. I thought it was you who followed me.”

I was hot to fire off a comeback, but this time I stifled it. He was right. He hadn’t actually done anything to me. He hadn’t even called me a name.

I left Agnew’s office, kicking myself for showing up on this lowlife’s turf.

I had pointed my nose toward the front of the shop, intent on putting this horrid little scene behind me, when my way was blocked by a brawny young guy with blond streaks in his mullet and tattooed flames shooting out of his T-shirt collar.

“Out of my way, hot stuff,” I said, trying to squeeze past him.

The guy held out his arms while standing like a boulder in the middle of the store. He smiled, daring me.

“Come on, mama. Come to Rocco,” he said.

“It’s all right, Rocco,” Agnew said. “This lady is my guest. I’ll walk you out, Lindsay.”

I reached for the door, but Agnew leaned against it, boxing me in. He was so close all I could see was his face: every pore, every capillary in his bloodshot eyes. He pressed a videocassette into my hands.

The cover advertised Randy Long’s epic performance in A Long Hard Night.

“Take a look when you have a chance. I put my phone number on the back.”

I pushed away from Agnew and the video clattered to the floor.

“Move it,” I said.

He stepped back, just clearing the door enough so that I could open it. Agnew had a grin on his face and his hand on his crotch as I left.

I WOKE UP THE next morning thinking about Dennis Agnew, that slime. I took my coffee out to the porch and before it had cooled enough to drink, I was taking my agitation out on a rattle in the Bonneville’s engine.

I had a feeler gauge in hand and was fiddling with the valves when a car rolled up and parked in the driveway.

Doors slammed.

“Lindsay? Helllooo.”

“I think she’s been swallowed by that big gold boat.”

I ducked out from under the hood, wiped my greasy hands on a chamois, and reached out my arms to Cindy and Claire, grabbing them both in one giant hug. We squealed and jumped around, and Martha, who’d been sleeping on the porch, joined in.

“We were in the neighborhood,” said Claire when we broke from our clinch. “Thought we’d stop by and see how much trouble you’ve gotten into. So what’s this, Lindsay? I thought all these gas gluttons had been crushed and outlawed.”

“Don’t be talking bad about my baby,” I said with a laugh.

“It runs?”

“No, sirree, Butterfly. She flies.”

The girls handed me a beribboned spa basket from Nordstrom’s full of great mood-altering bath and body stuff, and after a unanimous show of hands, we piled into the Bonneville for a ride.

I buzzed down the electric windows, and as the car’s big whitewalls softened the road, the zephyr coming off the bay mussed and tousled our hair. We rounded the loops of Cat’s neighborhood and were headed up the mountain when Claire showed me an envelope.

“Almost forgot. Jacobi sent this.”

I glanced at the eight-by-eleven-inch manila envelope in her hand. The night before, I’d called Jacobi and asked him to get me anything he could find on Dennis Agnew, aka Randy Long.

I filled Cindy and Claire in on my first accidental meeting with Agnew at the Cormorant bar, the set-to at Keith’s garage, and the near-rear-ender. Then I described my skeevy tour of the Playmate Pen in minute detail.

“He said that to you?” Cindy exclaimed after I quoted Agnew on “women debase themselves with men so they can feel powerful.” Her cheeks pinked; she was pissed off right up to her eyelashes. “Now, there’s someone who should be crushed and outlawed.”

I laughed and told her, “Agnew had this wall of fame, like something you’d see in Tony’s office in the Bada Bing. All these signed photos from porn queens and wiseguys. Unreal. Claire, will you open that, please?”

Claire took three pages from the envelope. They were stapled together and annotated with a Post-it note from Jacobi.

“Read it out loud, if you don’t mind,” Cindy said, leaning over the back of the front seat.

“There’s some minor league stuff: DWI, assault, domestic violence, a drug bust and some time at Folsom. But here ya go, Linds. Says he was charged with first-degree murder five years ago. Case dismissed.”

I reached over and peeled off Jacobi’s handwritten note: “The vic was Agnew’s girlfriend. His lawyer was Ralph Brancusi.”

I didn’t have to say more. We all knew Brancusi was a high-profile defense attorney. Only the wealthy could afford him.

Brancusi was also the lawyer of choice for the mob.

WHEN WE GOT BACK to Cat’s house, there was a patrol car in the driveway, and Chief Stark was walking toward us. He looked as grim as ever, brow scrunched up, with a haunted look in his eyes that was actually contagious.

“What is it, Chief? What’s happened now?”

“The ME’s starting the posts on the Sarduccis,” he said, squinting into the sun. “This is your formal invitation.”

I felt a surge of excitement that I masked out of consideration for the chief. I introduced Cindy and Claire.

“Dr. Washburn is the CME in San Francisco,” I said. “Okay for her to come along?”

“Sure, why not?” the chief grunted. “Take all the help I can get. I’m learning, right?”

Cindy looked at the three of us and saw that she wasn’t being included in the invitation. Hell, she was the press.

“I get it,” she said good-naturedly. “Look, I’ll hang out here, no problem. I’ve got my laptop and a deadline. Plus, I’m a leper.”

Claire and I got back into the Bonneville and followed the chief’s car out to the highway.

“This is great,” I said, my enthusiasm brimming over. “He’s letting me into the case.”

“What am I doing?” Claire said, shaking her head. “Aiding and abetting your completely ill-advised involvement when we both know you should be out on the porch with a gin and tonic, your butt in a chair and your legs over the railing.”

I laughed. “Admit it,” I said. “You’re hooked, too. You can’t turn away from this thing, either.”

“You’re nuts,” she grumbled. Then she looked over at me. My grin set hers off.

“You kill me, Lindsay. You really do. But it’s your ass, baby.”

Ten minutes later, we followed Stark’s car off the highway into Moss Beach.

THE MORGUE WAS IN the basement of the Seton Medical Center. It was a white-tiled room smelling as pristine and fresh as the frozen-food section in a supermarket. A cooler hummed gently in the background.

I nodded at two evidence techies who were grousing about some bureaucratic scheduling screwup as they folded the victims’ garments into brown paper bags.

I was drawn to the autopsy tables in the middle of the room, where the ME’s young assistant was running a sponge and hose over the Sarduccis’ bodies. He turned off the water and stepped aside as I approached.

Joseph and Annemarie lay naked and exposed under the bright lights. Their glistening bodies were unmarked except for ugly slash wounds across their necks, their faces as unlined in death as those of children.

Claire called my name, breaking my silent communion with the dead.

I turned and she introduced me to a man in blue scrubs and a plastic apron, with a net over his gray hair. He had a slight, stooped build and a lopsided smile, as if he had Bell’s palsy or had suffered a stroke.