10th Anniversary (22 page)

“Candace Martin killed her husband,” she said to me. “Not Ellen Lafferty. Not Caitlin Martin. I know you don’t think Candace did it, but I do, and I’m never going to have an opportunity to prove it. She’s going to get away with it.”

Was Yuki right?

Had I been chasing a flipping red herring?

I opened my mouth, but no words came out, and then Yuki was gone.

AFTER WHAT WAS undeniably one of the worst days she had ever had as a prosecutor, Yuki left the Hall to go home. She had nearly reached the sidewalk when she heard Brady call out to her.

God. Not Brady. Not now.

Yuki turned and saw him coming down the steps toward her, his hair flying loose from that ponytail of his.

Very attractive man.

Yuki thought of what Lindsay had told her, that Brady was married, and dammit, she didn’t want to go through another doomed relationship with another unavailable guy. She wanted stability, a home life…

“Yuki, I’m glad I caught you,” Brady said, pulling up alongside her. “Have dinner with me?”

“Okay,” she said.

Now they were at Town Hall in SoMa, the former Marine Electric Building, one of the best places around for casual dining with a sophisticated twist.

The interior was dark, with exposed brick, hardwood floors, and subdued lighting. Jackson Brady’s hair seemed to draw light from the overhead starburst fixtures that had once hung in the ceiling of a theater in Spanish Harlem.

Yuki was having a margarita, a drink that she loved and that took her out of her misery—and, if she had more than one, out of her mind as well. If she’d ever earned a margarita, today was the day.

“A suspension of the case isn’t the worst thing,” Brady was saying. He was working on the Cajun shrimp appetizer along with his beer.

“No, it’s not the worst thing,” Yuki agreed, “but it’s still a
disaster.
You know how many hours I put into that case?”

“Seven thousand?”

Yuki laughed. “Not seven thousand, but a whole hell of a lot, and now it looks like that bitch is going to go free.”

“Unless you find more evidence.”

“Yeah. If we find more evidence, we can still try her with a new jury, but you know, the world turns, the files stack up, some other heinous piece of crap is caught, and we mount another case.”

“I’ll keep the Candace Martin file on my desk.”

“Thanks, Jackson. Even if you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it.”

“Now, tell me you don’t lie, why don’t you?”

“I lie sometimes.”

Yuki laughed again. “Well, don’t lie to me.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious. I’ve been told that you’re married. What’s the story?”

“I’m still married.”

“Fuck,” Yuki said. “Waiter.”

Brady took her arm out of the air. “I’m still married. But I hope not for long.”

Yuki took a slug of her margarita, set the glass down, and as the waiter came by, said to him, “Could you take this drink away? Thanks.” Then she said to Brady, “Tell me the whole story. I’m listening.”

“You remember that shooting incident I told you about?” Brady asked her.

Yuki said, “You shot the guy who came up out of the crack between the bed and the wall holding a semiautomatic.”

“Yeah. So Liz and I were already heading our separate ways, and that deal that went down—almost getting whacked, killing the guy, the IAB, the media on our lawn—all that tore it. Whatever thin connection we had left.”

“Because you’re a cop?”

“Yep. Because I’m a cop,” he said. “She wouldn’t be the first woman who said, ‘I didn’t sign up for this.’ So after a year, we separated and I moved to San Fran. Alone. Divorce is pending. Pending on how much she can make me beg for it.”

“You have kids?”

“Nope.”

“Want any?”

“Maybe. I’m forty. But I’m not there yet. How about you?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“We don’t have to decide tonight,” Brady said.

“Okay,” Yuki said, laughing. This guy was funny. She liked him. A lot.

The waiter brought the buttermilk-fried chicken, a side of sautéed greens, and creamy-looking yams, and Yuki felt herself on the verge of coming back to life. She hadn’t eaten all day.

Brady picked up his fork, paused with it in the air, and said, “I was going to tell you about Liz.”

“I know.”

“I was. And I want to ask you something.”

Yuki had a forkful of chicken in her mouth. She was getting high from the chicken. She turned her eyes on Brady.

“Mmm-hmm?”

“Will you come home with me tonight?” Brady said.

RAIN WAS IN THE FORECAST, but it came down only when Cindy was leaving her office for the day. She stood at the curb under her red umbrella, cold rain blowing up the skirt of her raincoat and soaking her new shoes.

She pulled a wad of tissues out of her pocket and caught the long, high-pitched, trumpeting
ahh-chooooooooo-ahh,
a sneeze that just about took off the top of her head.

It looked like every damn cab in the city was taken or off duty. Cindy phoned All-City, the cab company she used regularly, and after listening to background music and ads, she was told, “Sorry, please call back later.”

Cindy sneezed again, damm it. Not only was she fighting a cold, she was also half starving and now late for dinner at Susie’s. She visualized the back room at Susie’s, that haven of warmth—and the name Quick Express leapt into her mind.

She pictured the cab company she’d visited earlier in the week when she was working on the drug-and-rape story. Since then, there had been no reports of the serial rapist, and the story had taken a dive off the front page.

That was the good news and the bad.

Good that she’d scared off that psycho by turning the brights on him with her three-part, above-the-fold story.

Bad because he’d gone underground—and that meant he might never be caught.

Meanwhile, she had a connection in the taxi business. It was just before six. With luck, the dispatcher she’d met, Al Wysocki, would still be on duty. Maybe he’d do her a favor.

Cindy pulled the number up from her phone list and pressed
call.
The phone rang and a voice she recognized answered, “Quick Express Taxi and Limo.”

“Al Wysocki?”

“This is Al.”

“Al, it’s Cindy Thomas from the
Chronicle.
I met you a few days ago while I was working on my story.”

“Yep, I remember you. Blonde.”

“That’s me, Al, and I’ve got a problem. Could you send a cab to the
Chronicle?
I’m soaked to my skin and I’m late for dinner.”

“No problem, Ms. Cindy. I’ll have someone there in five.”

CINDY WAS DELIGHTED with herself. She described her raincoat and umbrella to Wysocki, folded her phone, put it in her pocket, and ducked back into the building, where she could see the traffic through the glass doors.

In five minutes, almost on the nose, a yellow Crown Vic pulled up and the window rolled down. She ran out to the street and immediately recognized the round face of the driver.

“Lady,” he said with a grin. “You called a cab?”

“Al, I didn’t mean
you
should come yourself, but thanks a ton. You’re too nice.”

Cindy closed her umbrella, reached for the door handle, and opened the back door.

“I was going off duty,” Wysocki said as Cindy settled into the backseat. “Happy to help you out. Hey. I gotta share this
with someone who isn’t going to get jealous. Where are we going?”

Cindy gave Al Susie’s address, Jackson and Sansome, and leaned her umbrella against the door so the water would drip onto the mat.

“Share what?” Cindy asked, grabbing tissues from her pocket and blowing her nose.

“This is my lucky day,” Al told her, stopping at the red light on 2
^nd
. “I won the lottery.”

“What?”

“Yeah, five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Come onnnn. You’re kidding me!”

“Seriously, I just kept playing my lucky numbers, and yahoo!—I won. I’m quitting tomorrow morning when I see the boss. This is Al Wysocki’s last fare. I got a bottle of schnapps,” he said. “Share a toast with me to my new life?”

“I don’t know how that’ll mix with Sudafed.”

“Hey, just a sip. It’ll do your cold good.”

“Okay, then. Hit me,” Cindy said. “You must be mind-boggled. Five hundred
grand!
So what are your plans?”

Wysocki opened the twist-off cap on the flask of high-octane spirits, poured Cindy a few ounces into a small plastic cup, and handed it to her through the partition.

“I’m going to buy a sailboat,” he said. He clinked the bottle against her plastic cup.

“To your new life,” she said.

“Thank you, Ms. Cindy. Yeah, I’ve been going to the boat shows for about eleven years. I know just the one I want.”

Cindy smiled and said “What… kind of… boat?”

“I want to get a sailing yacht. Small one, handmade, wooden hull,” Al said, looking at Cindy in the rearview mirror as the light turned green. He said, “You okay, back there?”

“No…,” she said slowly, casting her eyes toward Wysocki’s mirrored reflection. What was wrong with her? She was having trouble focusing. “I… feel…”

Wysocki grinned.

“You should feel great,” he said. “You were looking for me, missy. And now you’ve found me.”

CLAIRE AND I were at Susie’s, all by ourselves, alone. First Yuki had blown us off, and now Cindy was a no-show; no show, no call, no nothing. Getting stood up by both of them had never happened before.

Claire said of Yuki, “Stop worrying yourself. That girl needs to get naked with a man every now and then. You know that, Lindsay. It’s good for her.”

“I don’t have to like her getting naked with Jackson Brady, do I? I mean, come on. Of all the men in all the world, why him?”

Claire laughed. “A lot of girls would be clicking their heels to get naked with Brady.”

“It messes with the chain of command.”

“Anybody sleeps with anyone you know, it messes with the chain of command.”

I wadded up a paper napkin and threw it at her. “Shut up,” I said.

She batted it back. “You are so crazy,” she said, still laughing.

I downed my Corona and said, “Let’s order. Cindy can just catch up.”

Claire agreed. Cindy had proven that she could start from behind, get down a half pitcher of beer and a steak, have dessert, and still be the first one across the finish line.

I signaled Lorraine to come over. She recited the specials, coconut shrimp and rum-sautéed chicken. We ordered the specials and more beer, and as soon as Lorraine left, Claire said, “You’re not going to believe this one, Linds. It’s right up there with my top ten most unbelievable cases. And it starts with a guy lying dead in the middle of the road.”

“Hit and run?”

“It sure looked like a car accident,” she said, “but there were no tire tracks, no bruising on the victim. A hat was lying a few yards from the body, a black baseball cap with an
X
on the back of it. And that’s all we had. No witnesses. No surveillance tapes. Nothing except a dead body and a random baseball cap.”

“Heart attack? Aneurysm?”

“Let me tell you, this guy was young, twenty-something. And he looked like he’d been laid out at a wake, only he was on the center line, stopping traffic,” Claire said.

“So now I’m doing the post, looking over this young dude’s perfect body. I do a full-body X-ray and find a twenty-two bullet behind his right eye. That gunshot wound was not visible, Lindsay.”

“I’m not believing in invisible bullets, butterfly.”

“It’s like this. The round goes into the corner of the eye,” Claire said, pointing to where one of her eyes met the bridge of her nose. “Eyeball moves away from the bullet, then closes up behind it so that you cannot see a sign of it.”

“Huh. Interesting. So now you’re saying it’s a homicide.”

“Yeah. Northern Station caught it, asked me to help.”

“Did ballistics get a hit on the round?” I asked.

“Before we could get the bullet to the lab, we got something better. At around the same time the roadkill dude took a slug to the eye, a liquor store owner was gunned down in an armed robbery.

“The liquor store surveillance tape shows the shooter is wearing tight black jeans and a black shirt and the exact same baseball cap as the one we found in the road. Black with an
X,
” Claire said.

“So local cops know the liquor store shooter and ID him. His street name is Crank, and he’s found at home, sleeping in his bed. Cops roust him and drag him into the station on the liquor store killing. Suddenly, Crank breaks down and then he starts to sing.”

“Oh, yeah? And what was the name of the tune?”

“Called it, ‘I shot the dude by accident, yo. I didn’t mean to do it, yo.’ ”

“Come on,” I said, laughing, digging into my chicken.

“I know, but this is
true.
Here’s what happened in the missing middle of the story,” Claire said. “There was a near-miss traffic accident.

“Crank is fleeing the liquor store homicide and cuts off
this guy in a Honda Civic. Crank gets out to apologize to the Civic so the guy doesn’t call the cops, and Civic says to Crank, ‘You drive like a girl and you look like one, too.’ I guess it was the worst thing he can think to say.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, how’d he know he was going to hit a nerve? So Crank whips his gun out of the back of his jeans and says, ‘Well, this girl’s packin’,’ and he shoots the guy.”

“Oh, man.”

“Yeah. Somewhere in that shooting, his hat falls off, the one that was caught on tape in the robbery. If Crank hadn’t robbed that store, he would never have been caught for killing Civic.”

“He didn’t know his victim.”

“Bingo. Total stranger calls him a girly man. Bang.”

“And there you have an accidental shooting, yo.”

“And he blames the victim…”

Claire’s laugh cut off as she looked up at a spot right behind my shoulder. I turned, expecting to see Cindy. But it was Lorraine, coming to clear the table.