Backfire (5 page)

San Francisco General Hospital

Friday afternoon

The first thing Eve heard when she slipped into Ramsey’s cubicle was the sound of machines, some beeping, some humming. Then she saw all the lines running into and out of his body. She couldn’t imagine trying to rest like that. She saw Molly standing over Ramsey, her head lowered, speaking to him quietly. She looked up when Eve came in.

“Eve, it’s good to see you. Do come in. Ramsey, it’s Eve.”

Thank the good Lord he was awake. Eve nodded to Molly, leaned over Ramsey, and felt her throat clog. Not a single word could get through without risking tears. She stared down at him, taking everything in.

Ramsey saw her fear, and he wanted to reassure her, at least smile at her, but it was hard to make his mouth muscles work. He felt oddly detached from his own body. He thought it was all the drugs that were making it hard to focus his mind on anything. But there was no pain, and that was a profound blessing, thanks to the magic morphine pump. He felt her clasp his hand and squeeze, felt her warm breath, like lemons, he thought, when she leaned close. “You’re looking good, Ramsey. I gotta say I’m really happy about that.”

For a moment, he couldn’t find words. Where were the words? “So are you, Eve. Don’t worry, I’m going to pull through, Molly told me so. And don’t cry. I don’t want to walk into the men’s room and read ‘Barbieri’s a weeping wuss’ scratched on the wall. What would that do to your reputation?”

She started to say she never cried, but that lie would perch right on the end of her nose. His voice was thin, insubstantial, and that scared the bejesus out of her. The last thing he needed was for her to fall apart. “We got a regular hoedown outside, FBI everywhere. They’re all huddled together, so I slipped in to see you.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to shoot you, of all people.”

Ramsey frowned. Eve squeezed his hand again. “I know, why shoot the judge?”

“Can you tell me what happened, Ramsey?”

Surely he could try to do that again for Eve before his lights went out. “It was late, nearly midnight. I was out back, staring up at the stars and over at the Marin Headlands, and I was remembering Cal asking if he could sink his fingers into those pits on the surface of the moon.”

Was it her imagination or did he sound stronger? Pits in the moon? This hard-as-nails federal judge was wondering about the pits on the moon?

“I didn’t hear a thing out of the ordinary, nor did I see anything or anyone. One shot and I was down and out.” He paused, and the pain suddenly surfaced. He jerked, gritted his teeth, but it didn’t lessen, it was pulling him down. He pressed the morphine button.

Molly said, “If I hadn’t called out to him, Eve, he wouldn’t have turned and moved, and the bullet would have hit him in his chest.” Saying the words broke the dam. Molly burst into tears.

Ramsey said, “No, sweetheart, I’ll be okay. No need to cry.” He hated to see her cry, but there was nothing he could do, only lie there helpless, wanting to howl. “Eve—I remember now. There was a boat. A Zodiac, pulled up near the beach. I saw it.”

Eve’s heart speeded up. A Zodiac—now they had a place to start. She saw his eyes were squeezed tightly shut, his mouth in a thin seam. “Just a moment,” he said, and she watched him press the button again. But she couldn’t stand it. She went to get the nurse, but when she came back he was out again.

Molly was huddled over him, her shoulders shaking. It nearly broke Eve’s heart.

Sea Cliff

San Francisco

Late Friday afternoon

Emma Hunt pushed back her piano bench and rose. She couldn’t concentrate on Gershwin’s
Rhapsody in Blue,
though she loved the sheer romantic exuberance of it, how the music built and built until its grandeur, its firecracker opulence, made her fingers tingle and her heart beat faster. But not today. Emma sighed. Ever since her dad was shot the night before, she’d felt deadening fear. She heard Cal and Gage squabbling in the next room, speaking their twin talk, taking pleasure in knowing their mother had no clue what they were saying. Neither did she, but the two of them understood each other perfectly. Did they realize no one else could understand them? Oh, yes, she’d bet a week’s allowance on it.

“Emma?”

She turned to see her mother standing in the doorway, holding Cal and Gage’s hands. Both of them looked grubby from playing underneath the big oak tree outside the music room door. Her mother looked frazzled, but she was trying to pretend she was fine.

Emma smiled, though it wasn’t easy. Her brothers didn’t need to see that she was afraid—no, not just afraid, she was terrified—their father would die. “Mama, do you need me to do something with the boys?”

“No, sweetie, I’m going to clean them up myself. I wanted to tell you the Gershwin sounded wonderful. Do you know I listened to Gershwin himself playing
Rhapsody in Blue
on iTunes and sometimes you sound just like him? Maybe better.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “You’re my mother. Of course you’d say that. You know I’m not as good as Gershwin. Mrs. Mayhew says he was brilliant.”

Molly said, “Ellie will be here soon to watch the boys so you and I can go back to the hospital.” She glanced at her watch. Emma knew her mother hadn’t wanted to leave her dad at all, that she’d rather have stayed beside his bed, holding his hand, telling him he would be all right. But it was better for the twins that she came home to see them. The hospital staff always patted Emma’s head, her shoulder, telling her every other minute that her father would recover. She was grateful everyone cared so much. She closed her eyes for a moment. Her father’s stillness scared her the most. He was never still, always in motion, laughing or using his hands when he talked. She always clutched her mother’s hand when they were with him.

Cal and Gage pulled away from their mother and ran to the corner of the music room, where they had stacked piano music into two equal piles, one for each of them. What on earth did they plan to do with those piles? They knew better than to tear the pages; she’d yelled at them too much about that over the past year. The boys were arguing now, and about what? Emma said, “I wonder when they’ll start speaking English to each other?”

Molly smiled. “They already say your name and
Mama
and
Papa
to each other.”

“And ice cream.”

That got a small smile. “And ice cream. Don’t worry about the Gershwin, you’re ready to play for the audience and the orchestra. You know they love listening to you. The concertmaster, Mr. Williams, told me you were a miracle. Naturally, I agreed.”

“That’s because Mr. Williams doesn’t have perfect pitch and he wishes he had mine,” Emma said matter-of-factly. “I sure hope Giovanni will like my
Rhapsody in Blue.
”

“Of course he will. Emma, I really don’t think you should be calling the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra by his first name. Maybe best to call him Mr. Rossini. You’re eleven. You want to show him respect.”

Emma was silent for a moment, a frown between her eyebrows, identical to her mother’s. “I know I’m only a kid, but he asked me to call him Giovanni. He said he’d like me to go to Milan to study with Pietro Bianci.” She said the name slowly, careful to get the pronunciation right.

Molly went on alert. “When did this happen?”

“Yesterday at Davies Hall, while you and Dad were trying to get Cal and Gage to behave—before Dad—” Emma swallowed. “He doesn’t think Mrs. Mayhew is the right teacher for me anymore.”

Molly, momentarily distracted, said, “Not only does Mrs. Mayhew know every single serious piece of music for the piano in the universe, she’s played most of them, including Gershwin, both in Paris and London.”

“Mrs. Mayhew is very old, Mama; that’s what Giovanni—Mr. Rossini—said. He told me her teaching isn’t what it used to be.”

Emma’s eighty-two-year-old piano teacher had elegance, style, and immense talent and goodwill. She had
known
George Gershwin. Who cared if she didn’t play as well as she did fifty years ago? As for Emma going to Italy to study at her age? Not a chance. She wanted to tell Emma she wasn’t about to let her out of her sight until she was twenty-one, maybe even thirty-five, not after what had happened five years ago, but the words fell out of her head. She swallowed. She would have a talk with Mr. Rossini, but even that didn’t seem important now. Ramsey was fastened to more high-tech machines than she’d ever seen in one place. He could still die. Tears gushed up into her throat, and she had to swallow to keep them down.

But Emma knew, of course. She rushed to Molly, squeezed herself against her. “Dad will be all right, Mama.” She pulled away a bit. “I had a dream about him on Wednesday night, the night before—it was Thanksgiving, and we were all sitting around the table and he was carving a turkey about as big as our backyard, and he was singing ‘Roll out the Barrel.’ He looked really good, Mama. He looked happy.”

Molly drew in a deep breath. Thanksgiving was six days away. She was not going to lose it again in front of her child. “I’ve never heard your father sing that song.
”

“Neither have I, but he sang it in a big deep booming voice. It was sort of catchy.”

“I wonder how much that turkey weighed,” Molly said. “Do you think Safeway will have one that big?”

Emma smiled. “Not a chance. That turkey must have weighed one hundred pounds. I think we’d eat leftovers for a year. I hear Mrs. Hicks.”

Molly called out, “Cal, Gage, would the two of you stop trying to break each other’s heads? Are you ready to go, Em?”

But Emma wasn’t looking at her mother, she was staring out the window.

Harry smoothly turned his beloved dark blue Shelby Mustang onto Geary Street.

“Why don’t you tell me about the old newspaper photo of Judge Dredd with an X through his face you found at the scene?” Eve said.

He whipped around and looked at her. “How’d you know—well, yeah, I’m surprised that bit got out. Yeah, that’s what we found. Sitting under the big hydrangea bush in the backyard.”

Eve wasn’t about to tell him she knew because she’d overheard him and Cheney talking about it. “The shooter rubbing our noses in it?”

“That’s what I think.” He gave her another surprised look.

Eve said, “So we’re going to meet the two FBI hotshots at Ramsey’s house in Sea Cliff, check out how the photo got in the hydrangea? Check out the beach for signs of the Zodiac?”

“The forensic team couldn’t find anything on the beach, so no need to traipse down there,” Harry said. “You ever hear of Savich and Sherlock before?”

“Who hasn’t? Only two weeks ago they were front and center on the Kirsten Bolger case, and can you believe it, Bolger grew up right here in San Francisco?” She’d savored the colorful reporting, even felt a good dollop of envy, although she’d never admit it, at least to an FBI agent, particularly this FBI agent.

Harry said, “At least the local coverage has finally run out of juice on Kirsten Bolger’s family. They’ll be taking a rest until the trial begins next year, when they’ll light up their torches again.”

Eve marveled at the two agents—married. What could two people in such stress-filled, dangerous jobs possibly have to say to each other after, say, a violent shoot-out, like the one with Bolger in a North Carolina tobacco field?
Hey, sweetie, you want to go get a beer to celebrate we’re still alive?
She wondered if Sherlock painted her toenails, and imagined a nice French. And Savich was big, tough, hard as nails, good-looking. “Is Savich as fast as he looks?”

Harry nodded as he braked for a red light. “He is. He’s a fourth-degree black belt. Sherlock is a first-degree, a
shodan
—”

“Yeah, yeah, I also know when you’re a sixth
dan,
you wear a red-and-white belt. I mean, come on, why care so much about the color of your freaking belt? One big show, a business, that’s all it is. The bottom line in the real world is to beat the crap out of your opponent, however you can.”

“How do you know about a sixth
dan
?”

“From a book I saw at my boss’s house.”

“At Maynard’s?”

“Yep. He hosts these big barbecues, feeds all hundred of the deputy marshals regularly.”

“That’s a lot of spareribs.” Harry shot a look at her. “Cheney is new at his job, but I wouldn’t mind if he picked up on the barbecue ribs idea from Maynard. So that’s what marshals do? What about fighting?”

She gave him a fast smile, gone in the next instant. “We’ve got martial arts experts of our own, with all sorts of belts and colors. Lots of our deputy marshals are scrappers who like to show off their ripped-up knuckles and bruised kidneys.”

“And you’re not into martial arts?”

“Don’t know about that. I fight dirty, real dirty. Like I said, you want to put your opponent on the ground, his knees around his neck, as fast as possible.” She started to ask him if he’d like to visit her in the marshals’ gym, wear a couple of his prized belts, then remembered her boss telling her,
Play nice, Barbieri, play nice.
She cleared her throat. “So Savich is a computer expert, right?”

She fought dirty? He thought of her toilet adventure in the Macy’s women’s room in Omaha and smiled. “Give Savich a motherboard and he can make bread with it in no time at all.”

“Hey, that was sort of sweet.”

“Sweet? Hey, I tell you what. Let’s mix it up one of these days, Barbieri. I’ll get you feeling a little respect for the discipline. Because you’re so cute with that blond cheerleader ponytail swinging around, I’ll go easy on you.”

She batted her eyelashes at him, very effective, since she was so damned pretty. “Your best shot is I’ll be dazzled by your multicolored karate belt. Turn right here, we’re nearly there.”

When Harry pulled his Shelby into the Hunt driveway a few minutes later, he couldn’t help it, he gawked. “Some digs.”

“It’s got about the best views in Sea Cliff—the ocean, Marin Headlands, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Looks like all the news people have left. So has the SFPD. I don’t like this; someone should be here.” She pulled out her cell, punched in Carney Maynard’s number, and then she dropped her cell and pointed. “Hey, that’s Emma—she screamed!”

Eve was out of the car before Harry could turn off the motor, her Glock 22 in her hand, her long strides eating up ground.