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inside, he took his notebook out of the glove box and turned to the tab with
Lindsay s name written in meticulous script.
Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer.
There was just enough glow from the streetlights to add to his notes.
He wrote: Wounded. Alone. Armed and dangerous.
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Part Three
Back in the Saddle Again
Chapter 46
THE SUN WAS ONLY a blush on the dawn sky when a loud ringing jarred me out of
sleep. I fumbled for the phone, nailed it on the fourth ring.
 Lindsay, it s Yuki. I hope I didn t wake you. I m in the car and this is my
only free minute, but I can tell you everything fast.
Yuki was passionate and smart, and I knew this about her she always spoke at
ninety miles an hour.
 Okay. I m ready, I said, flopping back into the bed.
 Sam Cabot is out of the hospital. I deposed him yesterday, Yuki said, her
voice a rhythmic rat-tat-tat.  He recanted his confession of the hotel
murders, but that s the DA s problem. As for the action against you, he says
you fired first, missed him, and that he and Sara returned fire in
self-defense. Then you gunned them down. Crock of shit. We know it and they
know it, but this is America. He can say whatever he wants.
My sigh came out as a kind of strangled groan. Yuki kept on talking.  Our
only problem is that he s such a heartbreaker, that pathological little crud.
Paralyzed, propped up in that chair with his neck in a brace, quivering lower
lip. Looks like a cherub who s been blindsided  
 By a vicious, gun-happy chick cop, I interrupted.
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 I was going to say blindsided by a sixteen-wheeler, but whatever. She
laughed.  Let s get together and strategize. Can we make a plan?
My calendar was so sparkling clean it was practically virginal. Yuki, on the
other hand, had booked depositions, meetings, and trials almost every hour for
the next three weeks. Still, we picked a date a few days before the trial.
 Right now the media are churning up the waters, Yuki continued.  We leaked
to the press that you re staying with friends in New York so they won t hound
you. Lindsay? Are you there?
 Yep. I m here, I said, eyes fixed on the ceiling fan, ears ringing.
 I d suggest that you relax if you can. Keep a low profile. Leave the rest to
me.
Right.
I showered, dressed in linen slacks and a pink T-shirt, and took a mug of
coffee out to the backyard. I had a question for Penelope as I scooped
breakfast into her trough:  How much chow can a big pig chow if a big pig
chows pig chow?
City girl talking to a pig. Whowoulda thunk it?
I considered Yuki s advice as the sea breeze wafted across the deck. Relax
and keep a low profile. It made good sense, except that I was in the clutches
of a monster desire to do something. I wanted to shake things up, bang heads,
right wrongs.
I really couldn t help myself.
I whistled to Martha and started up the Explorer. Then we headed out toward a
certain house in Crescent Heights the scene of a double homicide.
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Chapter 47
 BAD DOG, I SAID to Martha.  You can t keep out of trouble, can you? Martha
turned her melting brown eyes on me, wagged her tail, then resumed her
surveillance of the boulder-sculpted highway.
As I drove south on Highway 1, I was bristling with excitement. Three miles
down the road, I turned off at Crescent Heights, an idiosyncratic collection
of houses freckling the face of the hill at the tip of Half Moon Bay.
I pointed the Explorer up the gravelly one-laner, feeling my way along until
the scene of the crime nearly jumped out at me. I pulled over and turned off
the engine.
The yellow clapboard-sided house was a charmer, with three gabled dormers, an
overgrown flower garden, and a whirligig of a lumberjack sawing wood attached
to the post-and-rail fence. The nameDaltry was painted on the handmade
mailbox, and a half mile of yellow plastic tape was still wrapped around this,
the American dream.
Crime scene. Do not enter by order of the police.
I tried to imagine that two people had been brutally murdered in this homey
little cottage, but the images didn t fit together. Murder should never happen
in a place like this.
What had drawn a killer to this particular house? Was it a targeted hit or
had the killer just happened on this home-sweet-home by chance?
 Stay, girl, I told Martha as I got out of the car.
The murder had occurred more than five weeks ago, and by now the police had
relinquished the crime scene. Anyone who wanted to snoop could do so, as long
as they didn t break into the house and I saw signs of snoopers everywhere:
footprints in the flower beds, cigarette butts on the pavement, soda cans on
the lawn.
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I stepped through the open gate, ducked under the tape, and walked around the
house, slowly frisking the scene with my eyes.
There was an abandoned basketball under the shrubbery, and a single child s
sneaker on the back steps, still wet from last night s dew. I noticed that one
of the basement windows had been removed from its frame and was leaning
against a wall of the house: the probable point of entry.
The longer I stayed at theDaltry house, the harder my heart pounded. I was
creeping around a crime scene instead of taking charge of it, and that made me
feel weird and bad, as though this crime was none of my business and I
shouldn t be here. At the same time, I felt driven by what Claire had told me
on the phone last night.
TheDaltrys of Crescent Heights weren t the first murder victims to be
whipped. Who else had been savaged this way? Did these killings connect with
my unsolved case, John Doe #24?
Relax and keep a low profile, Yuki had said. I actually laughed out loud. I
got into the Explorer, patted my furry sidekick s flank, then bumped down the
gravelly road to the highway.
We would be back in the center of Half Moon Bay in ten minutes. I wanted to
see the O Malley house.
Chapter 48
OCEAN COLONY ROAD WAS lined with patrol cars on both sides of the street. The
insignias on the car doors told me that the local cops were finally getting
the help they badly needed. They d called in the state police.
As I drove past, I saw that a uniformed officer was guarding the front door
of the house and another cop was interviewing the UPS man.
Detectives and crime scene techs entered and left the house at irregular
intervals. A media tent had been set up on a neighbor s lawn, and a local
reporter was going live from Half Moon Bay.
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I parked my car down the block and walked toward the house, blending in with
a clump of bystanders who were watching the police process the scene from the
sidewalk across the street. It was a good enough vantage point, and as I stood
there, I sifted through my impressions, hoping for a nugget of insight.
To start with, the houses of the victims were as different as chalk and
cheese. Crescent Heights was a blue-collar community with Highway 1 whizzing
between the unpretentious homes and their view of the bay. Ocean Colony backed
up onto a private golf course. The O Malley house and the others around it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]