Backfire (29 page)

Judge Sherlock’s home

Pacific Heights, San Francisco

Thursday night

Savich punched off his cell. He watched Sean happily playing an NFL video game with his grandmother, who knew squat about football, and he was winning. He wondered if Sean was smart enough to be on the 49ers’ side in the game and not the Redskins’. He leaned down and said quietly to Sherlock, “Cheney said they’re getting about fifty calls an hour on the hotline with sightings of Xu and/or Charlene. The SFPD has provided some manpower to sift through the calls, since the field office hasn’t the staff to do it.”

“At least we can discount the calls that have Xu walking around, since he isn’t,” Sherlock said. She rubbed her hands over her arms.

“Cold?”

“No, I guess someone walked over my grave. I wonder where that saying comes from. It’s pretty gruesome.”

“But descriptive. What did you feel?”

“I’m worried that something bad’s going to happen, Dillon. Soon.”

He didn’t say anything. He pulled her to her feet, then sat down and brought her down on his lap and held her. He knew she was right, something bad had to happen, with two armed and desperate people out there, their pictures all over TV.

After they got Sean bathed and buttoned into his Spider-Man pajamas, they got him down but, unfortunately, not out. He couldn’t stop talking. He was too excited about how he’d stomped his grandmother at NFL football. He had, to Savich’s surprise, gone for the Patriots. Savich finally sang him his favorite song of all time, guaranteed to put him out by the end of the first verse—“You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from
Toy Story.

Sherlock was grinning when Sean’s eyes closed. “Every time,” she whispered.

They were getting ready for bed when Savich’s cell rang.

“Savich here.”

He was quiet, listening, his expression unchanging, but Sherlock saw his eyes darken. The bad something had happened.

She looked down at her watch. It was an hour and a half short of midnight on Thanksgiving night.

Skyline Motel

El Cerrito, California

Friday, one minute after midnight

Eve looked at the cluster of cop cars surrounding the motel office, parked at all angles throughout the lot. The few motel guests were grouped together, talking, probably trying to figure out what had happened. They knew enough, Eve thought, looking at the M.E.’s white van. They just didn’t know who had shot Jerol.

After they’d spoken to Mrs. Idling, Eve and Harry had come outside, primarily to get out of the way of the El Cerrito forensic team and the M.E. She said to Harry, “I hate this. That young man is dead because he must have recognized Xu on TV. But what I don’t understand is why Xu came back to the office and shot him. Why not simply leave? Why even come to the office in the first place?”

Harry said, “Maybe Xu couldn’t be sure about him, didn’t want to chance him making a phone call. The kid was another loose end.” He watched them wheel young Jerol Idling out, already zipped into a green body bag. Savich and Sherlock and Cheney followed. They were speaking to the El Cerrito police chief, Glenis Sayers.

Eve said to Harry, “When Chief Sayers’s detectives arrived at the scene, they found the name Joe Cribbs with the license plate number that Jerol had written down for him next to it. When they matched it to the blue Honda that was stolen in Sausalito on Tuesday, they called her. Bless her, she called Cheney right away, so it’s thanks to her we’re in the mix at all.”

They watched El Cerrito police officers crowding around the chief, one of them with his arm around Mrs. Idling’s shoulders. She was plastered against him. They could hear her sobs from where they stood. Life can be snuffed out from one moment to the next, Eve thought. It was horrible and scary, and true for each and every human being on this earth.

Harry nodded. “There isn’t any doubt it was Xu. Everything fits. Mrs. Idling never saw him, but she knew a guy had paid cash to check into room two-seventeen on Tuesday. Jerol told her the guy seemed sick, favoring his arm when he checked in, said the guy seemed really out of it. The Joe Cribbs signature in the ledger is pretty illegible, as if written with the wrong hand. Remember Xu is left-handed, and he was shot in that arm. I’ll bet ballistics matches the bullet to the gun that killed Dr. Chu.”

Eve said, “But that doesn’t help us tonight. Maybe Xu doesn’t know we’ve got him made, doesn’t know we’re looking for that blue Honda he’s driving. I wish Mrs. Idling hadn’t dismissed the shot she heard as a backfire for those precious minutes before she came over to investigate.”

Harry said, “The corker is she saw two cars skidding out of the parking lot, with the door to Mr. Cribbs’s room standing wide open.”

Eve said, “It means he was too sick to ditch the Honda, but he wasn’t too sick to call someone to the motel to help him. He’s been here a day and a half. He could have called the Chinese for help. You think that second car was driven by a Chinese connection?”

Harry shook his head. “That doesn’t sit right with me, doesn’t feel right. But you know, if not the Chinese, then who? And was that other person the one who shot Jerol?” He
thought about that, but no answer stepped up. He said, “That second car, Mrs. Idling is sure it’s an older Corolla. Since there was no license plate matching it in the register, it wasn’t anyone who was staying here, legally, at the motel. If they’re smart, they’ll leave the Honda somewhere and we’ll have no way to trace them.”

Eve said on a sigh, “Whoever it is, it’s a game changer. With help, Xu can go anywhere he wants now.”

Cheney called out, “Harry, we need you over here.”

Harry Christoff’s house

Laurel Heights, San Francisco

Saturday morning

Eve kicked back, put her booted feet on the ottoman. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday, and she felt grungy. She leaned her head back against the sofa back and said, “My head hurts.”

Harry stood over her, a cup of coffee in his hand. “You ate breakfast an hour ago so it’s okay to drink another cup of this fine brew. Then we’ll talk.”

Talk?
That opened her eyes.
What did he mean, talk?
Eve didn’t want to talk—a
guy
talk about two adults enjoying sex and no commitment? No, that wasn’t Harry. Harry was honorable to his feet. Like big statue-of-David feet. No, Harry felt guilty because he’d made love to her and now it was morning and somewhere along the line he’d realized she expected more from him, and so he regretted ever pulling down her blue bikini panties. How was he ever going to explain that to her so she didn’t shoot him?

She stared at him, unblinking. He hadn’t said a word while he’d chowed down on his cereal, one of those health-food brands she’d never heard of, while she’d slathered strawberry jam on her toast. Not a single word about how incredible she was and it was the best night of his life, and how about now let’s get naked right here, on the table? Would she climb up on the table? Yes, she would.

She continued to stare at him. To her eye, Harry radiated guilt.

Eve drank a bit of coffee and watched Harry walk to the chair opposite and sit down. He looked indolent and loose, his legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, and he steepled his fingertips together.
Tap, tap, tap.

Maybe she was wrong, maybe he didn’t feel guilt about having sex with her, wanting now to shoulder the blame, to claim all the fault. Maybe she was wrong. Instead, maybe he was feeling cocky he’d scored with her. Was that better than his feeling guilty about seducing her?
Seducing
her? What had happened between them—what was it last night, three times? Talk about a busy two-way street.

Harry said in a brooding voice, “You’re so pretty, it drives me nuts.”

Pretty?
He was beginning his guilt speech by telling her she was
pretty
and it drove him nuts? No, what she was was a mess. She needed a shower, she needed a couple of multivitamins, she needed to have Harry tell her it wasn’t just because she was
pretty
that he was attracted to her; what she wanted him to say was something very different, like it was her insides that turned him on, and he didn’t for a single instant feel guilty about making love with her, and he wanted more, he wanted—Eve pulled out her cell. “I want to speak to my dad.”

“Why now?” His left eyebrow shot up. He still looked, she thought, loose and relaxed, indolent as a lizard, and she wanted to smack him.

She managed a credible sneer. “What do you care? Oh, I see, if Daddy asks me where I am, I’ll have to confess to him I’m currently only twenty feet from a guy’s bedroom, wherein lies a rumpled bed, and the guy’s name is Harry Christoff, and sorry, Dad, he’s not in the U.S. Marshals Service, he’s a dippy FBI agent.”

Harry grinned at her. “I love to listen to you spit out a hundred words without taking a breath. Actually I’d like to speak to your dad. Don’t you think it’s about time? He really doesn’t like FBI agents?”

About time?
To apologize to him for seducing his daughter, but, hey, it happened, so let’s move on? She studied his face, took another slug of her coffee, and carefully set the cup down on a magazine to spare the shiny wood surface. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he was holding himself very quiet, his eyes focused on her face. No way was she going to let him speak to her dad. She said between seamed lips, “I was thinking you don’t really like women except to sleep with them to add another notch to your belt. But that’s not it—you feel guilty, right? You’re sorry you seduced a colleague. Were you thinking about apologizing to my dad? And then you’d like me to just go away so you can forget it ever happened.”

Harry couldn’t help himself. He smiled at her. What was her idiot talk about his not liking women? About his feeling guilty he’d slept with her? He felt calm and steady, better than he’d felt in so long he couldn’t even remember when or why.
Well, Eve, the truth is making love to you made me remember that life is really a very fine thing indeed. You think I feel guilty because I made love with a colleague? Don’t you realize you’re my entire bloody army of salvation? Bring on your daddy.
He said, “I’m now a reformed git. Here’s to the power of the ponytail.” He picked up his coffee cup, said slowly, feeling his way, “You think I took advantage of you?”

She thought about that for a moment. She had to be honest here. “Maybe not every time.”

Harry wasn’t about to dwell on each glorious time; he’d shake himself out of his chair and that wouldn’t put the focus where it belonged. “That ponytail of yours—it’s a big draw, Barbieri. I look into those big blue eyes of yours, listen to you smart-mouth me, and I find myself thinking I’d like to see that ponytail at the breakfast table for, say, the next fifty years, or so. Yeah, at least fifty years. I come from healthy stock, and so do you.” There, he’d spit it right out, and waited.

Oh, no, no, that wasn’t a guy’s guilty speech or a cocky speech. What this was was way too fast, way too much, even with his light hand and that intent look in his eyes. Beautiful eyes, he had. No, wait, stop it.

What was he saying? Eve couldn’t get her brain around it. He wanted to see her ponytail for fifty years? Across the breakfast table? As in marriage? Eve jumped out of the chair, grabbed her jacket, and was at the front door in under thirty seconds.

He called after her, “What about calling your dad?”

“He doesn’t need to know yet what kind of deep trouble I’m in.”

“Can you tell me about this deep trouble? Maybe it concerns me?”

She shook her head and was gone. Harry didn’t go after her. He listened to her engine rev, heard her back too fast out of the driveway, and hoped she didn’t knock over the azalea pot he hadn’t brought in yet for the winter.

Harry sat back in his chair and smiled. Sitting across the breakfast table from Eve for fifty years. It sounded fine to him, more than fine, it sounded like he’d wake up smiling a whole bunch of mornings. He loved her brain, her smart mouth, her courage, and, well, her gorgeous athletic body as well, and her gorgeous athletic body’s enthusiastic reaction with him was something to make a guy grin like a fool for a millennium.

He sat back and closed his eyes, wondering how long it would take her to come to grips with what they could be together, given a healthy chance. She’d thought he was going to give her the guy talk about not wanting it to be more than sex? How could she ever think that
? Well, there’s your history, stupid.

He drank the rest of his coffee, set the cup on his knee. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He caught himself when Xu’s face intruded clearly in his mind’s eye. He was not that far away, and who was with him? The El Cerrito police had found the Honda downtown, but no trace of Xu or his companion.

There had been hundreds of calls yesterday, but nothing helpful in finding Charlene Cartwright, either. It was a manhunt now, pure and simple. Until the end played out, Judge Hunt, Savich, and everyone in their path was in danger. He had to get showered and shaved, get himself to the hospital.

As he lathered his face, he wondered what he could do that would really count. Other than chase Barbieri down and kiss her stupid and convince her it wasn’t only sex for him.

He thought he’d ask Savich to write a country-and-western song about a girl with a swinging blond ponytail and shit-kicker black boots.

Time to get yourself together, Barbieri.