3rd Degree (3 page)

The news didn't exactly surprise us. But the realization that a bomb had gone off in our city, that we had murderers out there with C-4, that a six-month-old baby was still miss-ing, sent a numb quiet around the room.

“Shit,” Jacobi sighed theatrically, “there goes the after-noon.”

“LIEUTENANT,” someone called from across the room,

“Chief Tracchio on the phone.”

“Told ya,” Cappy said, grinning.

I picked up, waiting to be reamed out for leaving the crime scene early. Tracchio was a glorified bean counter. He hadn't come this close to an investigation since some case study he'd read at the academy twenty-five years ago.

“Lindsay, it's Cindy.” I'd been expecting to hear the Chief; her voice surprised me. “Don't get cranky. It was the only way I could get through.”

“Not exactly a good time,” I said. “I thought you were that asshole Tracchio, about to nail me to the wall.”

“Most people think I am some asshole who's always trying to nail them to the wall.”

“This one signs my checks,” I said, taking a semi relaxed breath for the first time all day.

Cindy Thomas was part of my inner circle, along with Claire and Jill. She also happened to work for the Chronicle and was one of the top crime reporters in the city.

“Jesus, Linds, I just heard. I'm in an all-day yoga clinic. In the middle of a `downward dog' when my phone rings. What, I sneak out for a couple of hours and you decide now's the time to be a hero? You all right?”

“Other than my lungs feeling like they've been lit with lighter fluid... No, I'm okay,” I said. “There's not much I can tell you on this now.”

“I'm not calling about the crime scene, Lindsay. I was call-ing about you.”

“I'm okay,” I said again. I didn't know if I was telling the truth. I noticed that my hands were still trembling. And my mouth tasted the bitter smoke of the blast.

“You want me to meet you?”

“You wouldn't get within two blocks. Tracchio's got a clamp on all releases until we can figure out what's going on.”

“Is that a challenge?” Cindy snickered.

That made me laugh. When I first met her, Cindy had sneaked her way into a Grand Hyatt penthouse suite, the most guarded murder scene in memory. Her whole career sprang from that scoop.

“No, it's not a challenge, Cindy. But I'm okay. I swear.”

“Okay, so if all this tender concern is being wasted, what about the crime scene? We are talking a crime scene, aren't we, Lindsay?”

“If you mean, did the backyard grill flare up at nine on a Sunday morning? Yeah, I guess you could quote me on that. I thought you were out of touch on this, Cindy.” It always amazed me how quickly she got herself up to speed.

“I'm on it now,” she said. “And while I'm at it, word is that you saved a kid today. You should go home. You've done enough for one day.”

“Can't. We got a few leads. Wish I could talk about them, but I can't.”

“I heard there was a baby stolen out of the house. Some sort of twisted kidnapping?”

“If it is,” I said with a shrug, “they have a new way of handling the potential ransom payers.”

Cappy Thomas stuck his head in. “Lieutenant, M.E. wants to see you. In the morgue. Now.”

LEAVE IT TO CLAIRE, San Francisco's chief medical officer, my best friend of a dozen years, to say the one thing in the midst of this madness that would make me cry. “Charlotte Lightower was pregnant.”

Claire was looking drawn and helpless in her orange sur-gical scrubs. “Two months. Poor woman probably didn't even know herself.”

I don't know why I found that so sad, but I did. Maybe it made the Lightowers seem like more of a family to me, humanized them.

“I was hoping to catch up with you sometime today.” Claire gave me a halfhearted smile. “Just didn't envision it like this.”

“Yeah.” I smiled and wiped a tear from the corner of my eye.

“I heard what you did,” Claire said. She came over and gave me a hug. “That took a lot of guts, honey. Also, you are a dumb bunny, do you know that?”

“There was a moment when I wasn't sure I was going to make it out, Claire. There was all this smoke. It was every-where. In my eyes, my lungs. I couldn't see for shit. I just took hold of that little boy and prayed.”

“You saw the light. It led you out?” Claire smiled.

“No. Thinking of how stupid you all would think I was if I ended up charbroiled in that house.”

“Woulda put a bit of a damper on our margarita nights,” she said, nodding.

“Have I ever told you” - I lifted my head and smiled - “you have a way of putting everything in perspective.”

The Lightowers' remains were side by side on two gur-neys. Even at Christmas the morgue is a lonely place, but on that Sunday afternoon, with the techs gone home, graphic autopsy photos and medical alerts pinned to the antiseptic walls, and a grisly smell in the air, it was as grim as I could remember.

I moved over to the bodies.

“So, you called me down here,” I said. “What did you want me to see?”

“I called you down here,” she said, “ 'cause it occurred to me that you needed a good hug.”

“I did,” I said, “but a killer medical revelation wouldn't hurt.”

Claire moved over to a table and started to take off her surgical gloves. “Killer medical revelation?” She rolled her eyes. “What could I possibly have for you, Lindsay. These three people, they were blown up.”

AN HOUR LATER Tracchio and I held a tense, very emo-tional news briefing on the steps of the Hall. Cindy was there, along with about half the city's news force.

Back in the office, Jacobi had run the name on the photo, August Spies, through the CCI database and the FBI. It came back zilch. No match on any name or group. Cappy was dig-ging up whatever he could on the missing au pair. We had a description from Lightower's sister, but no idea how to find her. She didn't even know the girl's last name.

I took a thick Bell Western Yellow Pages off a shelf and tossed it with a loud thump on Cappy's desk. “Here, start with N, for nannies.”

It was almost six o'clock on Sunday. We had a team down at X/L's offices, but the best we could get was a corporate public relations flack who said we could meet with them tomorrow at 8 A.M. Sundays were shit crime-solving days.

Jacobi and Cappy knocked on my door. “Why don't you go on home?” Cappy said. “We'll handle it from here.”

“I was just gonna buzz Charlie Clapper.” His CSU team was still picking through the scene.

“I mean it, Lindsay. We got you covered. You look like shit, anyway,” Jacobi said.

Suddenly I realized just how exhausted I was. It had been nine hours since the town house had blown. I was still in a sweatshirt and running gear. The grime of the blast was all over me.

“Hey, LT.” Cappy turned back. “Just one more thing. How did it go last night with Franklin Fratelli? Your big date?”

They were standing there, chewing on their grin like two oversize teenagers. “It didn't,” I said. “Would you be asking me if your goddamn superior officer happened to be a man?”

“Damn right, I'd be asking',” Cappy said. “And might I add, for my goddamn superior officer” - the big detective threw his bald head back - “you're looking mighty fine here in those tights. That Fratelli brother, he must be quite a fool.”

“Noted.” I smiled. It had taken me a long time to feel in charge of these guys. Both of them had double my time on the force. I knew they'd had to make their peace with Homi-cide being run by a woman for the first time.

“Something you want to add to that, Warren?” I asked.

“Nope.” He rocked on his heels. “Only, we doin' suits and ties tomorrow, or can I wear my tennis shorts and Nikes?”

I brushed past him, shaking my head. Then I heard my name one more time. “Lieutenant?”

I turned, piqued. “Warren?”

“You did good today.” He nodded. “The ones who matter know.”

IT WAS ONLY a ten-minute drive out to Potrero, where I live in a two-bedroom walk-up. As I went through my door, Martha wagged up to me. One of the patrolmen at the scene had taken her home for me.

The message light was flashing. Jill's voice: “Lindsay, I tried to call you at the office. I just heard....” Fratelli: “Listen, Lindsay, if you're free today...” I deleted it without even hearing what he had to say for himself.

I went into the bedroom and peeled off my tights and sweats. I didn't want to talk to anyone tonight. I flicked on a CD. The Reverend Al Green. I stepped into the shower and took a swig of a beer I'd brought with me. I leaned back under the warming spray, the grit and soot and smell of ash chipping off my body, swirling at my feet. Something made me feel like crying.

I felt so alone.

I could've died today.

I wished I had someone's arms to slide into.

Claire had Edmund to soothe her on a night like tonight, after she pieced three charred bodies together. Jill had Steve, whatever... Even Martha had someone - me!

I felt my thoughts drift to Chris for the first time in a while. It would be nice if he were here tonight. It had been eighteen months since he died. I was ready to put it behind me, to open myself to someone, if someone happened to be on the scene. No drum roll. No “Ladies and gentlemen, the envelope, please....” Just this little voice in my heart, my voice, telling me it was time.

Then I drifted back to the scene at the Marina. I saw myself on the street, holding Martha. The beautiful, calm morning; the stucco town house. The redheaded kid spin-ning his Razor. The flash of orange light.

Over and over I ran the reel, and it kept ending at the same point.

There's something you're not seeing. Something I had edited out.

The woman turning the corner just before the flash. I had seen only a glimpse of her back. Blond, ponytail. Something in her arms. But that wasn't what was bothering me.

It was that she never came back.

I hadn't thought about it until now. After the blast...The kid with the Razor was there. Lots of others. But the blond woman wasn't among them. No one interviewed her. She never came back...Why?

Because the son of a bitch was running away.

That moment flashed over and over in my mind. Some-

thing in her arms. She was running away. It was the au pair. And the bundle in her arms? That was the Lightowers' baby!

HER HAIR FELL in thick, blond clumps onto the bathroom floor. She took the scissors and cut again. Everything had to start over now. Wendy was gone forever. A new face began to emerge in the mirror. She said good-bye to the au pair she had been for the past five months.

Cut away the past. Wendy was a name for Peter Pan, not the real world.

The baby was screaming in the bedroom. “Hush, Caitlin. Please, honey.”

She had to figure it out - what to do with her. All she knew was that she couldn't let the baby die. She had listened to the news reports all afternoon. The whole world was look-ing for her. They were calling her a cold-blooded killer. A monster. But she couldn't be such a monster, could she? Not if she had saved the baby.

“You don't think I'm such a monster, do you, Caitlin?” she called to the bawling child.

Michelle lowered her head into the sink and dumped a bottle of L'Or‚al Red Sunset dye all over her, massaging it into her cropped hair.

Wendy, the au pair, disappeared.

Any moment now, Malcolm would come by. They had agreed not to meet until they were sure she hadn't been followed. But she needed him. Now that she'd proved what she was made of.

She heard the sound of the front door being rattled. Michelle's heart jumped.

What if she'd been careless? What if someone had seen her coming back with the kid? What if they were kicking the door down now!

Then Malcolm stepped into the room. “You were expect-ing cops, weren't you? I told you they're stupid!” he said. Michelle ran over to him and jumped into his arms.

“Oh, Mal, we did it. We did it.” She kissed his face about a hundred times. “I did the right thing, didn't I?” Michelle asked. “I mean, the TV is saying that whoever did this was a monster.”

“I told you, you have to be strong, Michelle.” Mal stroked her hair. “The TV, they're bought and paid for, just like the rest. But look at you.... You look so different.”

Suddenly, there was a cry from the bedroom. Mal took a gun from his belt. “What the fuck was that?”

She was behind him as he ran into the bedroom. He stared, horrified, at Caitlin.

“Mal, we can keep her, just for a little while. I'll care for her. She's done nothing wrong.”

“You dumb twit,” he said, pushing her onto the bed. “Every cop in the city will be looking for this kid.”

She felt herself wheezing now. The way she always did when Mal's voice got hard. She fumbled around her purse for her inhaler. It was always there. She never went anywhere without it. She'd had it just last night. Where the hell was it now?

“I cared for her, Malcolm,” Michelle said again. “I thought you'd understand....”

Malcolm pushed her face in front of the child. “Yeah, well understand this.... That kid is gone, tomorrow. You make it stop crying. Stick your tits in its mouth, put a fucking pillow over its head. In the morning, the baby's gone.”

CHARLES DANKO didn't believe in taking unnecessary chances; he also resolutely believed that all soldiers were expendable, even himself. He had always preached the gospel:

there's always another soldier.

So he made the call from a pay phone in the Mission Dis-trict. If the call was interrupted, if the call was discovered, well, so be it.

The phone rang several times before someone picked up at the apartment. He recognized the voice of Michelle, the wonderfully coldhearted au pair. What a performance she'd put on.