3rd Degree (4 page)

“I'm proud of you, Michelle. Please don't say anything. Just put Malcolm on. You are a hero, though.”

Michelle put the phone down, and Danko had to choke back a laugh at how they obeyed his orders.

It was priceless and it said so much about the human con-dition. Hell, it might even explain Hitler at Munich. These were very smart people, most of them with graduate degrees, but they rarely questioned anything he told them.

“Yeah. It's me.”

He heard Malcolm's cheerless voice. This boy was brilliant, but he was truly a killer, probably a psychopath; he even scared Danko sometimes.

“Listen to me. I don't want to stay on too long. I just wanted to give you an update - everything is working beau-tifully. It couldn't be better.”

Danko paused for a couple of seconds. “Do it again,” he finally said.

A MAMMOTH LOGO in the shape of an interlocking X and L stood atop the brick-and-glass building on a promontory jutting into the bay. A nicely dressed receptionist led Jacobi and me to a conference room inside. On the paneled walls, articles and magazine covers featuring Morton Lightower's glowing face ran the length of the room. One Forbes cover asked, CAN ANYONE IN SILICON VALLEY STOP THIS MAN?

“Just what does this company do?” I asked Jacobi.

“High-speed switches or something. They move data over the Internet. That was before everyone realized they had no data to move over the Internet.”

The door to the conference room opened and two men stepped in. One had salt-and-pepper hair and a ruddy com-plexion, a well-cut suit. Lawyer. The other, heavy and bald-ing, with an open plaid shirt. Tech.

“Chuck Zinn,” the suit introduced himself, offering a card to Jacobi. “I'm X/L's CLO. You're Lieutenant Boxer?”

“I'm Lieutenant Boxer.” I stared at the card and sniffed. “What's a CLO?”

“Chief legal officer.” He bowed apologetically. "This is Gerry Cates, who helped found the company with Mort.

“Needless to say, we're horrified around here.” The two men took seats, as we did, around the conference table. “Most of us have known Mort since the beginning. Gerry went to Berkeley with him. I want to start by promising the full coop-eration of the company.”

“Are there any leads?” Cates inquired. “We've heard Caitlin is missing.”

“We're doing everything we can to follow up on the baby. We were told the family had an au pair - who's missing. Any help you could give in finding her?”

“Maybe Helene could help you out. Mort's secretary.” Cates looked at the lawyer.

“I think that's doable.” Zinn scratched a note.

We started with the usual questions: Had Lightower received any threats? Were they aware of anyone who'd want to do him harm?

“No.” Gerry Cates shook his head and glanced at the lawyer. “Of course, Mort's financial affairs were paraded all over the media,” he continued. “People are always popping off at shareholder meetings. Financial watchdogs. Hell, you want to redo your kitchen, they're crying you're bleeding the company.”

Jacobi sniffed. “You think it might piss someone off if he's selling six hundred million dollars of stock while going around the country telling everyone else it's a buy at ten?”

“We can't control our share price, Inspector,” Cates replied, clearly upset by the question.

A tense silence settled over the room.

“You'll provide us a list of all your clients,” I said.

“Doable.” The lawyer jotted down a note again.

“And we'll need access to his private computers, e-mail, and correspondence.” I lobbed a grenade at the CLO.

The lawyer's pen never touched the page. “Those files are private, Lieutenant. I think I'd better check our legal footing before I can agree to that.”

“I thought you were the legal footing,” Jacobi said with a grin.

“Your boss has been murdered, Mr. Zinn. I'm afraid they're our matters now. There was a note at the bomb scene,” I said. I pushed across a copy of the photo. “It referred to Morton Lightower as an `enemy of the people.' There's a name at the bottom, August Spies. Mean anything to either of you?”

Zinn blinked. Cates took a deep breath, his eyes suddenly blank.

“I don't need to remind you that this is a murder investi-gation,” I said. “If anyone's holding something back, now would be the time...”

“No one's holding anything back,” Gerry Cates said stiffly.

“You probably want to talk to Helene now.” The CLO straightened his pad, as if the meeting was over.

“What I want is Lightower's office sealed, now. And I want access to all correspondence. Computer files as well. And e-mail.”

“I'm not sure that's doable, Lieutenant.” Chuck Zinn arched back in his chair.

“Let me tell you what's doable, Mr. Zinn.” I fastened on his phony, compliant grin. “What's doable is that we're back here in two hours with a subpoena, and anything deleted from those files in the past twenty-four hours goes under the heading of impeding a murder investigation. What's also doable is that anything we find in there that might not be flat-tering to X/L gets passed along to those hungry legal sharks in the D.A.'s office. Any of that sound doable, Mr. Zinn?”

Gerry Cates leaned toward his lawyer. “Chuck, maybe we could work something out.”

“Of course we can work something out.” Zinn nodded. “But I'm afraid that's all we have time for today. And you must be busy as well. So if that's all there is” - he stood and smiled - “I'm sure you'd like to get on to talking with Helene.”

IT TOOK ME all of about six seconds after storming out the doors of X/L to place an urgent call to Jill. I took her through the frustrating meeting I'd just come out of.

“You're looking for a subpoena,” Jill cut me off, “to get into Lightower's files?”

“Duh, Jill, and fast, before they send in the Arthur Ander-sen boys to do a little office tidying.”

“Any evidence there's anything in Lightower's computer to back that up?”

“Call me suspicious, Jill, but when a guy I'm interviewing starts to twist around like a cod on a fishing line, those little police antennae behind my ears always go twang.”

“How do they go, Lindsay?” Jill chuckled back.

“Twang,” I said, more firmly. “C'mon, Jill, I'm not screw-ing around.”

“Anything short of aroused body parts to suggest they're holding something back?” The blood began to roil in my chest. “You're not gonna do this for me, are you?”

“I can't do this for you, Lindsay. And if I did, whatever you found wouldn't make it through arraignment. Look, I could try to cut a deal with them.”

“Jill. I've got a multiple-murder investigation.”

“Then if I were you, I'd try to apply some nonlegal pressure.” “You want to spell that out for me?” Jill snorted. "Last I checked, you still had a few friends in

the news media....“ ”You're saying maybe they'd be more forthcoming if their

company got trashed a little on the front page of the Chronicle.“ ”Duh, Linds...“ I heard Jill giggle. All of a sudden a beep sounded on my cell phone. Cappy Thomas at the office. ”Lieutenant, I need you back

at home base, posthaste. We got a line on the au pair."

TWO WOMEN WERE SITTING in Interrogation Room 1 when I got back. They owned a small placement service for nannies and au pairs, Cappy informed me. “A Nanny Is Love!”

“We called in when we heard about what happened,” Linda Cliborne, in a pink cashmere sweater, explained to me. “We placed Wendy Raymore in that job.”

“She seemed perfect for it,” her partner, Judith Hertan, jumped in. Judith took out a yellow file and pushed it across the table. Inside was a filled-out A Nanny Is Love! application form, a couple of letters of recommendation, a Cal-Berkeley student ID with a photo on it.

“The Lightowers adored her,” Linda said.

I stared at the small laminated photo of Wendy Raymore's face. She was blond with high cheekbones, a wide, blossoming smile. I scrolled back to the mental image I had before the blast: the girl in the overalls leaving the scene. This could be her.

“We carefully screen all of our girls. Wendy seemed like a gem. She was cheerful and attractive, a totally likable kid.”

“And the Lightowers said their little baby had taken to her like honey,” her partner added. “We always check.”

“These recommendations... you checked them, too?”

Judith Hertan hesitated. “We may not have followed up on all of them. I did check with the school, made sure she was in good standing. We had her college ID, of course.”

I fixed on the address: 17 Pelican Drive. Across the bay in Berkeley.

“I think she said she lived off-campus,” Linda Cliborne said. “We mailed her confirmation to a post office box.”

I took Cappy and Jacobi outside the room. “I'll alert the Berkeley PD. And Tracchio.”

“How do you want to handle it?” Cappy looked at me. What he meant was, What kind of force should we use to pick her up?

I stared at the photo.

“Use everything,” I said.

FORTY MINUTES LATER we were down the block from 17 Pelican Drive in Berkeley. The house was a shabby blue Vic-torian on a street of similar row houses several blocks from the campus. Two patrol cars had the street blocked off. A SWAT van pulled up alongside. I didn't know what to expect, but I wasn't taking any chances.

We all donned protective vests under our police jackets. It was 11:45. The Berkeley PD had the house under surveil-lance. They said no one had left, but a black girl carrying a Cal-Berkeley bag had gone in thirty minutes before.

“Let's go find a missing baby,” I said to the guys.

Jacobi, Cappy, and I crept behind a line of parked cars close to the front of the house. No sign of activity inside. We knew the place could be booby-trapped.

Two inspectors sidled up to the front porch. A SWAT team guy waited with a ram in case we needed to break in. The

scene was eerily quiet.

I gave the nod. Let's go in.

“Open up! San Francisco Police!” Cappy rapped heavily on the door.

My eyes were peeled to the side windows for any sign of activity. They had already used a bomb. I was sure there'd be no hesitation to opening up with guns. But there was nothing.

Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching from inside, the sound of a lock being turned. As the door swung open, we trained our guns on whoever was behind it.

The black girl in a Cal-Berkeley sweatshirt, whom the Berkeley cops had seen going in. One look at the SWAT team and she let out a startled scream.

“Wendy Raymore?” Cappy barked, yanking her out of the doorway.

The shocked girl could barely speak. Cappy threw her into the arms of a waiting SWAT team member. Trembling, she pointed to a staircase. “I think she's up there.”

The three of us pushed our way inside. Two upstairs bed-rooms were open and empty. No one inside. Down the hall, another door was closed.

Cappy rapped at the door. “Wendy Raymore? San Fran-cisco Police!”

There was no answer.

The adrenaline was burning in my veins. Cappy looked at me and checked his gun. Jacobi readied himself. I nodded.

Cappy kicked open the door. We moved in, leveling guns around the room.

A girl in a T-shirt shot up in bed. She looked stunned, blinking sleep from her eyes. She started to shriek: "Oh, my

God, what's going on?"

“Wendy Raymore?” Cappy kept his gun on her.

The girl's face was white with terror, eyes going back and forth.

“Where's the baby?” Cappy shouted.

This is all wrong! Fucking all wrong, I was thinking.

The girl had long dark hair and a swarthy complexion. She looked nothing like the description Dianne Aronoff had given us. Or the picture on Wendy Raymore's student ID. Or the girl I saw hurrying away from the bombing. I thought I knew what had happened. This girl had probably lost her ID, or it had been stolen. But who had it now?

I put down my gun. We were staring at a different girl.

“This isn't the au pair,” I said.

LUCILLE CLEAMONS had exactly seventeen minutes left on her lunch hour to wipe the ketchup stain off Marcus's face, get the twins to the day care clinic, and catch the 27 bus back to work before Mr. Darmon would start docking her $7.85 per hour (or 13 cents a minute).

“C'mon, Marcus,” she sighed to her five-year-old, who was sprouting a face full of ketchup. “I don't have time for this today.” She dabbed at his white, collared dress shirt, which had taken on the look of one of his messier finger paintings, and - damn - none of the stain was coming off.

Cherisse pointed from her chair. “Can I have an ice cream, Momma?”

“No, child, you can't. Momma's got no time.” She looked at her watch and felt her heart stab. Oh God...

“C'mon, child.” Lucille crammed their Happy Meal boxes onto the tray. “I got to get you cleaned up fast.”

“Please, Momma, it's a McSundae,” Cherisse cried.

“You can buy your own McSundae or whatever you like when it's your dollar sixty-five going across the table. Now both you come get yourselves cleaned up. Momma's got to go.”

“But I am clean,” Cherisse protested.

She dragged them out of the booth and hurried toward the bathroom. “Yes, but your brother looks like he's been in a war.”

Lucille pulled her kids along the back corridor leading to the bathrooms. She opened the door to the ladies' room. It was McDonald's. No one would mind. She raised Marcus on the counter and wet a paper towel and started to rub at the mess on his collar.

The boy squirmed.

“Damn, child, you want to make the mess, you got to own up to the cleaning. Cherisse, you got to pee?”

“Yes, Momma,” the girl replied.

She was the cleaner of the two. They were both five, but Marcus barely knew how to pull down his own zipper. Some of the ketchup was starting to come off.

“Cherisse,” Lucille barked, “you going to get on that toi-let seat, or what?”