4th of July (26 page)

I stopped by Chief Stark’s office on my way out.

“What’s wrong, Boxer? Where’s your party hat?”

“It’s bothering me, Chief. He’s protecting other people, I’m sure of it.”

“That’s your theory. Guess what? I believe the guy. He’s said he’s smarter than we think, and I’m gonna give him credit for being the big, bright bulb he claims to be.”

I gave the chief a tired smile.

“Shit, Boxer. He confessed. Be happy. This goose is cooked. Let me be the first to congratulate you, Lieutenant. Great catch. Great interview. It’s over now. Thank God, it’s finally over.”

THE PHONE RANG, YANKING me out of a sleep so deep, I thought I was in Kansas. I fumbled around in the dark for the receiver.

“Who is this?” I croaked.

“It’s me, Lindsay. Sorry to call so early.”

“Joe.” I pulled the clock toward me; it read 5:15 in bright red numbers. I felt a jolt of alarm. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Everything’s fine with me,” he said, his voice calm, warming, sexy. “There’s a crowd outside your house, though.”

“You’re picking that up by GPS?”

“No, I just turned on the TV.”

“Hold on,” I said.

I stepped across the room and pulled up a corner of the window shade.

A couple of reporters had set up on the lawn, and camera crews were stringing cables out to satellite vans that curved around the road like Conestoga wagons.

“I see them now,” I said, getting back under the covers. “They’ve got me surrounded. Shit.”

I snuggled back down into the bedding and with the phone tucked between my face and my pillow, Joe felt so close, he could have been in the same time zone.

We talked for a good twenty minutes, made plans to get together when I got back to the city, and winged some kisses across the phone line. Then I got out of bed, threw on some clothes and a little makeup, and stepped outside Cat’s front door.

Reporters converged and pushed a posy of mikes up to my chin. I blinked in the morning light, saying only, “Sorry to disappoint you guys, but I can’t comment, you know. This is Chief Stark’s case, and you’ll have to talk to him. Th-th-that’s all, folks!”

I stepped back inside the house, smiled to myself, and closed the door on the fusillade of questions and the echoing sound of my name. I threw the bolt and turned off the phone’s ringer. I was taking down my crime notes from the kids’ corkboard when Cindy and Claire rang in with a conference call to my cell phone.

“It’s over,” I told them, repeating what the chief had said. “At least that’s what I’ve been told.”

“What’s really going on, Lindsay?” my intuitive, highly skeptical friend Cindy asked.

“Boy, you’re smart.”

“Uh-huh. So what’s the deal?”

“Off the record. The kid’s really proud of himself for getting into the psycho-killer hall of fame. And I’m not sure he’s totally earned it.”

“Did he confess to the John Doe killing?” Claire asked.

“There you go, Butterfly,” I said. “Another smarty.”

“Well?”

“No, he did not.”

“So where do you come out?”

“I don’t know what to believe, Claire. I really thought whoever killed these people also killed John Doe. Maybe I was wrong.”

IT WAS A RARE place for me to be: I was sitting in the backseat of a patrol car with Martha. I rolled down the window, undid the buttons on my blazer, and took in the excitement that was building on Main Street.

A marching band tuned up on a side street where Boy Scouts and firefighters were dressing flatbed trucks as floats. Men on ladders hung banners across the roadway, and flags flew from light posts. I could almost smell the hot dogs grilling. It was the Fourth of July.

My new buddy Officer Noonan let us out in front of the police station, where Chief Stark was standing before a crowd of bystanders and reporters six deep.

As I made my way through the crowd, Mayor Tom Hefferon came out of the station house wearing khaki shorts, a polo shirt, and a fishing hat covering his bald spot. He shook my hand and said, “I hope you’ll spend all of your vacations in Half Moon Bay, Lieutenant.”

Then he tapped on a microphone and the crowd quieted down.

“Everyone. Thanks for coming. This is truly Independence Day,” he said, a tremor cracking his voice. “We’re free, free to resume our lives.”

He put up his hand to quell the applause. “I give you our chief of police, Peter Stark.”

The chief was in full uniform, complete with brass buttons, shiny badge, and gun. As he shook hands with the mayor, the corners of his mouth turned up and, yes, he smiled. Then he cleared his throat and bent over the mike.

“We have a suspect in custody, and he has confessed to the murders that have terrorized the residents of Half Moon Bay.” A cheer went up into the morning mist, and some people broke down and wept with relief. A little boy brought a lit sparkler up to the platform and handed it to the chief.

“Thank you, Ryan. This is my boy,” he said to the crowd, his voice choking up. “You hang on to that, okay?” The chief pulled the child next to him, kept his hand on his son’s shoulder as he went on with his speech.

He said that the police had done their job, that the rest was up to the DA and the justice system. Then he thanked me “for being an invaluable resource to this police department” and, to more and wilder cheers, he handed a brass medal on a ribbon to his son. A patrolman held the boy’s sparkler while Ryan hung the medal around Martha’s neck. Her first commendation.

“Good dog,” said the chief.

Stark then credited every officer in his command and the state police for all they had done to “stop this one-man crime wave that took the lives of innocent citizens.”

As for me, by bringing in the killer, I’d gotten back into my own good graces.

I was still “a damned good cop.”

But even as I basked in the moment, I had to fight down a disturbing thought. It was like the little boy who was waving his sparkler and pulling on his father’s sleeve and demanding attention.

It was a thought like that.

What if the “one-man crime wave” didn’t stop?

THAT NIGHT, FIREWORKS EXPLODED with incessant booms and rapid-fire cracks over Pillar Point and bloomed in the sky. I put a pillow over my head, but it didn’t block the noise worth a damn.

My hero dog was squashed way under the bed, her back against the wall.

“It’s nothing, Boo. It’ll be over soon. Chin up.”

I fell asleep only to be jolted out of it by the metallic rattle of a key in the lock.

Martha heard it, too, and streaked out of the bedroom toward the front door, barking sharply.

Someone was coming through the door.

It all happened so fast.

I wrapped my hand around my gun, lowered myself from the bed to the rag carpet, and, with my pulse hammering, I crept toward the front room.

I was touching the walls, counting the doorways between my room and the living room, my heart in my throat, when I saw the shadowy figure coming into the house.

I went into a crouch, clasped my piece with both hands in front of me, and yelled out, “Put your fucking hands where I can see them. Do it now.”

There was a shrill scream.

Moonlight pouring in from the open doorway lit my sister’s terrified face. The small child she was carrying in her arms screamed along with her.

I almost screamed myself.

I stood up, took my finger off the trigger, and let my gun hand fall to my side.

“Cat, it’s me. I’m so sorry. That’ll do, Martha! That’ll do.”

“Lindsay?” Cat came toward me, adjusting Meredith in her arms. “Is that gun loaded?”

Brigid, only six, trailed behind my sister. She pressed a floppy stuffed animal over her face and broke into a piercing wail.

My hands were shaking, and the blood was pounding in my ears.

Oh, my God. I could have shot my sister.

I PUT THE GUN down on a table and grabbed Cat and Meredith into one fierce hug.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I called and called,” Cat said into the crook of my shoulder. Then she pulled away from me.

“Don’t arrest me, okay?”

I picked Brigid up and wrapped her in a hug, kissed her damp cheek, held her dear head with my hand. “Martha and I didn’t mean to scare you, honey.”

“Are you staying with us, Aunt Lindsay?”

“Just for the night, sweetie.”

Cat turned on a light and looked around at the spackled bullet holes in the wall.

“You didn’t pick up,” Cat said. “And the answering machine said it was full.”

“It was full of reporters,” I told her, my heart still galloping. “Please forgive me for scaring the crap out of you.”

Cat reached out with her free arm, hooked my head toward her face, and kissed my check.

“You’re a damned scary cop, you know?”

I walked with Cat and the girls to their room, where we calmed ourselves as well as the sniffling children. We got them into their pajamas and tucked into their beds.

“I’ve been listening to the news,” Cat said as she closed the door to the girls’ room behind us. “Is it true? You caught the guy and it turns out to be Keith? I know Keith. I liked him.”

“Yeah. I liked him, too.”

“And what’s that car in the driveway? It looks like Uncle Dougie’s car.”

“I know. It’s a present for you.”

“Come on. Really?”

“A house gift, Cat. I want you to have it.”

I hugged my sister again really hard. I wanted to say, “Everything’s fine now. We got the bastard.” But instead I said, “We’ll go for a test drive tomorrow.”

I said good-night, and as my sister turned the taps for a bath, I took Martha down the hall and opened the bedroom door. I switched on the light and froze in the doorway.

Actually, I almost screamed again.

CAROLEE’S LITTLE GIRL, ALLISON, was sitting on my bed. That was alarming enough—but how she looked alarmed me more. Ali was barefoot, wearing a thin eyelet nightgown, and she was crying her heart out.

I put down my gun and went to her, dropped to my knees, and grabbed her little shoulders.

“Ali? Ali, what’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

The eight-year-old threw her body against me and wound her arms tightly around my neck. She was shaking, her body heaving with sobs. I hugged her and peppered her with questions, not even giving her time to answer.

“Are you hurt? How did you get here, Ali? What on earth is wrong?”

Allison said, “The door was open, so I came in.”

At that, new tears sprang from some mysterious wound that I couldn’t fathom.

“Talk to me, Ali,” I said, setting her away from me, checking her out, looking for injuries. Her feet were cut and filthy. Cat’s house was a mile from the school and across the highway. Allison had walked here.

I tried again to get answers, but by now, Ali was incoherent. She clung to me, gulping air and choking out tears, making absolutely no sense.

I pulled on a pair of jeans over my blue silk pajamas and stepped into my running shoes. I slipped my Glock into my shoulder holster and covered up with my denim jacket.

I wrapped Ali in my hooded sweatshirt and lifted her into my arms. Leaving Martha behind in the bedroom, I went with Ali to the front door.

“Honey,” I said to the hysterical child, “I’m taking you home.”

CAT’S FORESTER WAS RIGHT behind the Explorer, blocking it in. The keys to the Bonneville were in the ignition, and the big gold boat was facing the road.

So I buckled Ali into the backseat, got behind the wheel, and turned the key. The engine vrooomed smoothly to life. At Highway 1, I signaled to go north under a crackling, rocket-streaked sky, toward the schoolhouse. Shockingly, Allison shouted, “NO!”

I looked into the rearview mirror and saw her pale face, utterly wide-eyed. She pointed with her finger south.

“You want me to go that way?”

“Lindsay, pleeease. Hurry.”

Ali’s fear and urgency were electrifying. All I could do was trust the little girl, so I took the car south until Ali whispered from the backseat, “Turn here” at a lonely intersection.

The rat-a-tat bangs of the Fourth of July pyrotechnics overhead pumped adrenaline into my already overloaded system. There had been too much shooting recently, and I was experiencing each bang as an exploded round.

I accelerated the Bonneville up the winding dirt track that was Cliff Road, skidding around the corners like a big rig on grass. I heard Keith’s chiding voice in my mind: “You can’t do this, Lindsay. This is a luxury car.”

I drove through a starless tunnel of eucalyptus trees that finally opened into a wide mountain view. In front of and to the left of us was a round stucco house clinging to the side of the hill.

I looked again into the rearview mirror. “What now, Ali? How much farther?”

Allison pointed to the round tower of a house. Then she clapped her hands over her eyes. Her voice was barely audible.

“We’re here.”

I PULLED THE CAR just off the road and looked up at the house—a three-story column of glass panes and stucco. Two thin bands of light moved sporadically on the lower floor.

Flashlight beams.

Otherwise, the house was dark.

Clearly, people were inside who didn’t belong there. I slapped at the pockets of my denim jacket and got a sick feeling even before I knew that I was right: I’d left my cell phone on the table beside my bed. I could see it lying against the clock.

This was very bad news.

I had no car radio, no backup, and I wasn’t wearing a vest. If a crime was in progress, going into that house alone wasn’t a real good idea.

“Ali,” I said. “I have to go for help.”