The 6th Target (8 page)

She thought back to the last time she’d seen Madison, at the beginning of the summer when the little girl had come to the office with her father.

For about twenty minutes Madison had twirled around in the chair across from Cindy’s desk, scribbling on a steno pad, pretending that she was a reporter who was interviewing Cindy about her job.

“Why is it called a ‘
dead
line’? Do you ever get afraid when you’re writing about bad guys? What’s the dumbest story you ever wrote?”

Maddy was a delightful kid, funny and unspoiled, and Cindy had felt aggrieved when Tyler’s secretary had returned, saying, “Come on, Madison. Miss Thomas has work to do.”

Cindy had impetuously kissed the child on the cheek, saying, “You’re as cute as
ten
buttons, you know that?”

And Madison had flung her arms around her neck and returned the kiss.

“See you in the funny papers,” Cindy had called after her, and Madison Tyler had spun around, grinning. “That’s where I’ll be!”

Now Cindy turned her eyes to her blank computer screen, paralyzed with thoughts of Madison being held captive by people who didn’t love her, wondering if the girl was tied up inside a car trunk, if she’d been sexually molested, if she was already dead.

Cindy opened a new file on her computer and, after a few false starts, felt the story unspool under her fingers. “
The five-year-old daughter of
Chronicle
associate publisher Henry Tyler was abducted this morning only blocks from her house. . .
.”

She heard Henry Tyler in her head, his voice choked with misery: “Write the story, Cindy. And pray to God we’ll have Madison back before we run it.”

YUKI CASTELLANO SAT three rows back in the gallery of Superior Court 22, waiting for the clerk to call the case number.

She’d been with the DA’s office only about a month, and although she’d worked as a defense attorney in a top law firm for several years, switching to the prosecution side was turning out to be dirtier, more urgent, and more real than defending white-collar clients in civil lawsuits.

It was exactly what she wanted.

Her former colleagues would never believe how much she was enjoying her new life “on the dark side.”

The purpose of today’s hearing was to set a trial date for Alfred Brinkley. There was an ADA in the office whose job it was to attend no-brainer proceedings like this one and keep the master calendar.

But Yuki didn’t want to delegate a moment of this case.

She’d been picked by senior ADA Leonard Parisi to be his second chair in a trial that mattered very much to Yuki. Alfred Brinkley had murdered four people. It was sheer luck that he hadn’t also killed Claire Washburn, one of her dearest friends.

She glanced down the row of seats, past the junkies and child abusers, their mothers and girlfriends, the public defenders in ad hoc conferences with their clients.

Finally she homed in on Public Defender Barbara Blanco, who was whispering to the ferry shooter. Blanco was a smart woman who, like herself, had drawn a hell of a card in Alfred Brinkley.

Blanco had pleaded Brinkley “not guilty” at his arraignment and was certainly going to try to get his confession tossed out before the trial. She would contend that Brinkley was bug-nuts during the crime and had been medicated ever since. And she’d work to get him kicked out of the penal system and into the mental-health system.

Let her try.

The clerk called the case number, and Yuki’s pulse quickened as she closed her laptop and walked to the bench.

Alfred Brinkley followed meekly behind his attorney, looking clean-cut and less agitated than he had at his arraignment — which was all to the good.

Yuki opened the wooden gate between the gallery and the court proper, and stood at the bench with Blanco and Brinkley, looking up into the slate-blue eyes of Judge Norman Moore.

Moore looked back at them fleetingly, then dropped his eyes to the docket.

“All right. What do you say we set this matter soon, say Monday, November seventeenth?”

Yuki said, “That’s good for the People, Your Honor.”

But Blanco had a different idea. “Your Honor, Mr. Brinkley has a long history of mental illness. He should be evaluated pursuant to 1368 to determine his competence to stand trial.”

Moore dropped his hands to his desktop, sighed, and said, “Okay, Ms. Blanco. Dr. Charlene Everedt is back from vacation. She told me this morning that she’s got some free time. She’ll do the psych on Mr. Brinkley.”

His eyes went to Yuki. “Ms. Castellano, is it?”

“Yes, Your Honor. This is a delaying tactic,” she said, her words coming out clipped and fast, her usual rat-a-tat style. “Defense counsel wants to get her client out of the public eye so that the media flap will die down. Ms. Blanco knows perfectly well that Mr. Brinkley is quite competent to stand trial. He shot and killed four people. He turned himself in. He confessed of his own volition.

“The People want and deserve a speedy trial —”

“I understand what the People want, Ms. Castellano,” said the judge, countering her verbal machine gun with a patient drawl. “But we’ll get a quick turnaround from Dr. Everedt. Shouldn’t take more than a few days. I think the People can wait that long, don’t you?”

Yuki said, “Yes, sir,” and as the judge said, “Next case,” to his clerk, Yuki left the courtroom through the vestibule and out the double courtroom doors.

She turned right, down the dingy marble hall toward her office, hoping that the court-appointed shrink would see what she and Lindsay knew to be true.

Alfred Brinkley might be crazy, but he wasn’t legally insane.

He was a premeditated killer four times over. Soon enough, if all went well, the prosecution would get their chance to prove it.

I TOSSED THE KEYS TO CONKLIN and got into the passenger-side door of the squad car.

Conklin whistled nervously through his teeth as we pulled onto Bryant, headed north on Sixth Street for a few blocks, then went across Market Street and north toward Pacific Heights.

“If there was ever a thing that would make you not want to have kids, this is it,” he said.

“Otherwise?”

“I’d want a whole tribe.”

We theorized about the kidnapping — whether or not there really had been a murder and if the nanny could have played a part in the abduction.

“She was inside,” I said. “She would’ve known everything that went on in the household. How much money they had, their patterns and movements. If Madison trusted her, the abduction would have been a piece of cake.”

“So why pop the nanny?” said Conklin.

“Well, maybe she outlived her usefulness.”

“One less person to cut in on the ransom. Still, to shoot her in front of the little girl.”

“Was it the nanny?” I asked. “Or did they shoot the child?”

We lapsed into silence as we turned onto Washington, one of the prettiest streets in Pacific Heights.

The Tyler house stood in the middle of the tree-lined block, a stately Victorian, pale yellow with gingerbread under the eaves and plants cascading over the sides of the flower boxes. It was a dream house, the kind of place you never imagined being visited by terror.

Conklin parked at the curb, and we took the Napa stone path six steps up to the front-door landing.

I lifted the brass knocker and let it fall against the striker plate on the old oak door, knowing that inside this beautiful house were two people absolutely steeped in fear and grief.

HENRY TYLER OPENED THE FRONT DOOR, paling as he seemed to recognize my face. I held up my badge.

“I’m Sergeant Boxer and this is Inspector Conklin —”

“I know who you are,” he said to me. “You’re Cindy Thomas’s friend. From
homicide
.”

“That’s right, Mr. Tyler, but please . . . we don’t have any news about your daughter.”

“Some other inspectors were here earlier,” he said, showing us down a carpeted hallway to a sumptuous living room furnished authentically in 1800s style — antiques and Persian rugs and paintings of people and their dogs from an earlier time. A piano was angled toward the windows and a zillion-dollar panoramic view of the bay.

Tyler invited us to sit, taking a seat across from us on a velvet camelback sofa.

“We’re here because a witness to the kidnapping heard a gunshot,” I said.

“A gunshot?”

“We have no reason to think Madison has been harmed, Mr. Tyler, but we need to know more about your daughter and Paola Ricci.”

Elizabeth Tyler entered the room, dressed in beige silk and fine wool, her eyes puffy and red from crying. She sat down beside her husband and clasped his hand.

“The sergeant just told me that the woman who saw Madison kidnapped heard a
gunshot
!”

“Oh, my
God
,” said Elizabeth Tyler, collapsing against her husband.

I explained the situation again, doing my best to calm Madison’s parents, saying we knew only that a gun had been fired. I left out any mention of blood against glass.

After Mrs. Tyler had composed herself, Conklin asked if they’d noticed anyone who seemed out of place hanging around the neighborhood.

“I never saw a thing out of the ordinary,” Tyler said.

“We watch out for one another in this neighborhood,” said Elizabeth. “We’re unabashed snoops. If any of us had seen anything suspicious, we would have called the police.”

We asked the Tylers about their movements over the past days and about their habits — when they left the house, when they went to bed at night.

“Tell me about your daughter,” I said. “Don’t leave anything out.”

Mrs. Tyler brightened for a moment. “She’s a very happy little girl. Loves dogs. And she’s a musical genius, you know.”

“I saw a video. She was playing the piano,” I said.

“Do you know she has synesthesia?” Elizabeth Tyler asked me.

I shook my head. “What is synesthesia?”

“When she hears or plays music, the notes appear to her in color. It’s a fantastic gift —”

“It’s a neurological condition,” Henry Tyler said impatiently. “It has nothing to do with her abduction. This has got to be about money. What else could it be?”

“What can you tell us about Paola?” I asked.

“She spoke excellent English,” Tyler said. “She’s been with us only a couple of months. When was it, sweetie?”

“September. Right after Mala went home to Sri Lanka. Paola was highly recommended,” Mrs. Tyler said. “And Maddy took to her instantly.”

“Do you know any of Paola’s friends?”

“No,” Mrs. Tyler told us. “She wasn’t allowed to bring anyone to the house. She had Thursdays and Sunday afternoons off, and what she did on those days, I’m sorry, we really don’t know.”

“She was always on her cell phone,” Tyler said. “Madison told me that. So she had to have friends. What are you suggesting, Inspector? You think she was behind this?”

“Does that seem possible to you?”

“Sure,” said Tyler. “She saw how we live. Maybe she wanted some of this for herself. Or maybe some guy she was seeing put her up to it.”

“Right now, we can’t rule anything out,” I said.

“Whatever it takes, whoever did it,” Henry Tyler said, his wife starting to break down beside him, “just please find our little girl.”

PAOLA RICCI’S ROOM in the Tylers’ house was compact and feminine. A poster of an Italian soccer team was on the wall opposite her bed, and over the headboard was a hand-carved crucifix.

There were three main doors in the small room, one leading out to the hallway, one opening into a bathroom, and another that connected to Madison’s room.

Paola’s bed was made up with a blue chenille spread, and her clothes hung neatly in her closet — tasteful jumpers and plain skirts and blouses and a shelf of sweaters in neutral colors. A few pairs of flat-soled shoes were lined up on the floor, and a black leather bag hung from the knob of the closet door.

I opened Paola’s handbag, went through her wallet.

According to her driver’s license, Paola was nineteen years old.

“She’s five nine, brown haired, blue eyed — and she likes her weed.”

I waggled the baggie with three joints I’d found in a zipper pocket. “But there’s no cell phone here, Richie. She must’ve taken it with her.”

I opened one of the drawers in Paola’s dresser while Conklin tossed the vanity.

Paola had white cotton workaday underwear, and she also had her days-off satin lingerie in tropical colors.

“A little bit naughty,” I said, “a little bit nice.”

I went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet. Saw her various lotions and potions for clear skin and split ends, and an opened box of Ortho Tri-Cyclen, the patch for birth control.

Who was she sleeping with?

A boyfriend? Henry Tyler?

It wouldn’t be the first time a nanny had gotten involved with the man of the house.
Was something twisted going on? An affair gone wrong
?

“Here’s something, Lieu,” Conklin called out. “I mean, Sarge.” I stepped back into the bedroom.

“If you can’t call me Boxer,” I said, “try Lindsay.”

“Okay,” he said, his handsome face lighting up with a grin. “Lindsay. Paola keeps a diary.”

AS CONKLIN WENT TO SEARCH Madison’s room, I skimmed the nanny’s diary.

Paola wrote in beautiful script, using symbols and emoticons to punctuate her exclamatory writing style.

Even a cursory look through the pages told me that Paola Ricci loved America.

She raved about the cafés and shops on Fillmore Street, saying she couldn’t wait for nicer weather so that she and her friends could sit outside like she did at home.

She went on for pages about outfits she’d seen in shop windows, and she quoted her San Francisco friends on men, clothes, and media stars.

When mentioning her friends, Paola used only their initials, leading me to guess that she was smoking pot with ME and LK on her nanny’s nights out.