****Act
Two****
Medical Examiner Claire Washburn was literally up to her
elbows in a body when Cindy Thomas entered the morgue. The crime reporter had
built up a healthy resistance to gore over her relatively short career, but
the sight of a vivisected body still managed to chill her blood. Four gurneys
bearing sheet-draped bodies were lined up for post-mortem exams. Staffers
buzzed around, collecting and classifying as quickly and efficiently as they
could in the cramped space. Cindy hovered near the door and cleared her
throat.
Claire looked up at her half-expected guest and shook
her head. “Honey, I just got started. There's not much I can tell you.”
Her hands rooted around the corpse's chest cavity, and the sickening squishes
made Cindy cringe.
“I so wish I was here for official business, but
I'm not on the slasher story,” she explained, hoisting the canvas tote
filled with quasi-evidence. “Lindsay said I should bring this stuff to
you.”
“She did, huh?” Claire huffed. Her hand emerged
from the corpse with a neatly punctured heart in tow. She weighed the heart
and recited the results to her assistant. “Is the inspector aware that I am
currently, for lack of better words, totally slammed?”
Abashed by her friend's unusual brusqueness, Cindy
grimaced and nodded. “Sorry. You know what? It's not a big deal, just
personal stuff. It can wait.” She slumped in defeat and turned to leave.
“Cindy.”
The young woman turned back and found Claire looking
at her intently.
“You're already here. Speak it.”
Aware that Claire had bigger fish to fry, Cindy cut
right to the point. “I kind of... have a stalker? Weird notes. Flowers.”
Suddenly feeling silly, she snickered and bowed her head. “Like I said, it's
not a big deal.”
Claire's hands went still. Her face, partially
obscured by her mask and safety shield, measurably softened. “Are you
okay?”
“On the ten point freak-out scale, I'm pulling a
five,” Cindy admitted.
“Hmm.” Claire whispered something to her
assistant. She pulled down her mask and de-gloved, approached Cindy with her
hands out. “Give it over. I'll run some tests once I'm out from under this
mess.”
Cindy surrendered the tote and smiled her thanks.
Claire grasped Cindy's elbow and they retreated to the relative calm of her
office.
“How long has this been going on?” Claire asked,
in a voice mercifully free from recrimination.
“About a week. I've been pinged three times so
far.”
Once the
baggies were spread out on her desk, Claire immediately noticed the flattened,
preserved bouquet. “I'm guessing that one arrived first. You planned on
keeping it, so... did you assume it was from a secret admirer?”
Cindy instantly blushed. “Well... sort of.
'Stalker' wasn't the first thing that leaped to mind.”
“Way I see it, secret admirers aren't much
better,” Claire said. “Who'd you think it was from?”
“Doesn't matter. I asked, I was wrong, that's a
dead end,” Cindy explained, trying to neatly end that line of questioning.
Claire tucked her chin low and looked suspiciously
giddy. “But you had your hopes.” She bumped Cindy with her hip. “Come
on. Spill it. You know you want to tell me.”
Cindy took a step back and crossed her arms. “Maybe
someday when you aren't totally slammed,” she said, tilting her head toward
all those bodies waiting for the doctor's attention.
“The truth takes less time than all these
evasions.”
“Oh, no,” Cindy moaned. “Believe me. The truth
would take so, so much longer.”
“Now that's just fuel on the fire. You've got a
sweet spot for somebody, and I will have that name,” Claire proclaimed,
despite being 70/30 sure she already knew the name quite well. “Mark my
words, child.”
With a beleaguered droop of her head, Cindy tried
again to divert Claire's deft perception to a more productive topic. “I
appreciate that you're trying to distract me – thank you – but I'm really
more concerned about the person who sent me the flowers than the person who
didn't.”
“Uh-huh.” Claire stared at her for a moment more,
then looked over the notes and flowers. “Might be late this evening before I
can get to it. If you don't want to go home tonight, you know we'd be happy to
have you at Casa Washburn.”
The offer was especially generous, considering the
difficulties Claire and husband Ed had endured of late, but Cindy gently
refused. “I'm still only registering a five. If that changes, I may show up
on your doorstep with my pillow and blankie. And my trusty can of pepper
spray, since Lindsay forbade me to leave home without it.”
Claire smiled and patted her arm. She looked past
Cindy and saw her assistant busily logging autopsy data, and she felt a pang
at having to leave her friend in distress. “You look tired. If you don't
have somewhere to be right now – and if you don't mind the constant whine of
a Stryker saw - you're welcome to hang out here. Rest a while.”
Nodding gratefully, Cindy slumped onto Claire's
battered sofa. “I haven't been sleeping well,” she said, clutching a throw
pillow to her chest. “Maybe just for a little bit.”
“As long as you need. I'm gonna order in some
sandwiches, so plan on staying for a late lunch,” Claire said, and closed
the door behind her.
Strange as it might have seemed, the morgue office
had taken on an aura of safety for Cindy; it felt almost like the basement of
a friend's house. Cindy closed her eyes and imagined a pool table and a bar,
an old television set with a rabbit ear antenna. Her sense of well-being
gradually returned. Her heart rate slowed and her breathing leveled out.
She fell asleep to the sound of a Stryker saw, and
the memory of Lindsay Boxer's calm voice promising her everything was going to
be alright.
****
Lindsay loved her partner like nobody's business, but
there was one thing about the man that made her crazy: when they weren't
heading toward an emergency call, Warren Jacobi drove like a granny bound for
church. Lindsay fiddled with the radio, changing the station a dozen times.
Looked out the window at the city crawling past. Loudly and deliberately
cracked her knuckles.
“Can you hold still?” Jacobi suddenly snapped.
“Can you speed up?” she countered. “Bicycles
are passing us. I'm startin' to think you're lost.”
“I know exactly where we're going. It's my day to
drive, so suck it up.”
She tried to suck it up, she really did, but Lindsay
didn't want to be here. She wanted this case over and done so she could figure
out what to do about Cindy's stalker – and what to do about Cindy. After a
few painfully quiet moments, she started playing the drum solo from
“Wipeout” on her thighs.
Jacobi sighed and rubbed his eyes. In a show of détente,
he pressed a tad harder on the accelerator. “What's up with you?” he
queried. “We've got the suspect, got the murder weapon, got a clue to
follow... as far as multiples go, this one's been a cakewalk.”
Lindsay knew he was right about the case. Rarely did
a violent perp covered in damning evidence simply fall into SFPD's collective
lap. Rarely did they get such quick replies from immigration authorities, who
claimed they were busily tracking down names for recent U.S. visitors of
Romanian extraction.
And the clue Jacobi mentioned held promise as well;
forensics found an address scrawled on a slip of paper in the suspect's shoe.
It might lead to their mysterious giant's secret identity, or help explain his
motive. If Jill could manage to wrangle an interpreter, they'd prize out a
confession and all the pieces would snap cleanly into place.
“It's not about the case,” Lindsay confirmed.
“Okay. Problems with a certain reporter, then.”
She tried for a dismissive tone. “Shuh... what
makes you say that?”
“I'm a genius detective,” Jacobi teased. “Come
on. The girl hasn't been around for a week or so. Shows up today, flirts with
that gym-built uniform -”
“Please! She was not flirting with him.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Pointless if she was,” Jacobi
said with a grin. “Graham is gay.”
Lindsay snorted in disbelief. “Nuh-unh. Every time
I see him, Graham's talking about girls,” she asserted. “The guy's a
loud-barking dog.”
Jacobi didn't see the point in criticizing Lindsay's
faulty gaydar; the irony would be lost on her. “Fine. Sexual orientation
notwithstanding, he appeared to be flirting with Cindy, and you were ready to
stomp that boy's soft parts.”
“I was not!”
“Be easier on everybody if you'd just face facts.
Pete's grown. He'd understand.”
“Warren, knock it off.”
“Okay,” he said, though he was plainly not
finished. He waited a few ticks and sallied forth again. “It probably
wouldn't be as tough as you think.”
Lindsay slammed her eyes shut and prayed with all her
might for Jacobi to shut his yapper before this developed into a full-fledged
argument.
“1288 Parson,” he said. “Not all who wander are
lost.”
The car came to a stop. Lindsay opened her eyes and
found her prayers answered; they had arrived at their destination.
“All I'm saying is - ” Jacobi began.
Lindsay was already halfway out the door. She slammed
it shut on his unwanted advice and charged up the front walk as if fleeing a
fire.
Even from the sidewalk, the house simply didn't look
right. Weathered green paint hung off the siding in curved scales, peeling
loose like snake skin. All first floor windows were obscured by heavy, dark
drapes. Despite the chilly fall temperature, several of the second floor
windows gaped wide open.
As Lindsay approached, she noted two broken glass
panels on the open front door – a sign of forced entry. She looked back
toward Jacobi, pointed at the door, and unholstered her gun. In a flicker, he
was at her side.
Lindsay took point and knocked on the door. Even that
modest touch made the loose, creaky door swing open wider. She craned her head
around to see through the gap, but the room was full dark. She called out
loudly. “San Francisco Police Department. Anybody home?”
When no answer came, Lindsay asked Jacobi for his
penlight and flashed the beam into the darkened foyer. On the floor, showing
black in the pool of illumination, was a trail of blood droplets.
“We got blood,” she whispered, affirming both
exigent circumstances and a possible second crime scene. They exchanged a
practiced look, held fast for a silent three count, and went through the door
as a tight tandem unit.
Barely five steps in, they found the first body. A
thin black man wearing a wife beater and pajama pants lay sprawled on the
filthy front room carpet. Two wounds were evident: one clean punch through the
heart and a wide slash across his throat. He would have exsanguinated almost
instantly.
“Same wound pattern as the Seeger vics,” Jacobi
said. He pulled out his cell. “I'll call it in.”
“There's two more on the couch.” Lindsay aimed
the flashlight toward the claret-drenched sofa, where another man and woman
lay dead. Their pale bare feet and hands protruded from beneath a fuzzy
blanket. “No visible defensive wounds. Might have caught them sleeping, or
passed out.”
Jacobi nodded. “Or maybe they knew him.”
A scrabbling sound from the kitchen made them both
jump, and Lindsay swung her light and gun toward the noise.
“Police! Raise your hands and come out - ”
“NO! NO! I AM SORRY!” a woman screamed from the
kitchen. She darted past the beam of light and ducked out of sight. “GO
AWAY! I'M SORRY!”
The scrabbling sounds resumed. An object whizzed out
of the darkness and plunked Lindsay hard on the mouth, then fell to the floor
with a woody clonk. Lindsay felt her top lip split and a trickle of blood ran
over her teeth. Two more projectiles flew out of the kitchen. One caught
Jacobi on the shoulder, the other cracked his cell phone against his ear. He
yelped and scrambled for cover beside the kitchen door.
“Dammit!” Lindsay shouted, and squeezed the
trigger of her Beretta, firing a quick shot into the floor. The booming noise
barely died away before she shouted again. “Police! Stop throwing shit and
get out here, right now!”
“I DIDN'T KNOW! I AM SORRY!” the woman yelled
again, her thickly accented voice ripped and raw. She crawled into the front
room and collapsed in a sobbing, fetal heap.
Lindsay covered her while Jacobi finished calling in
backup. He snapped on a set of cuffs and hauled the hysterical woman to her
feet while Lindsay searched for a switch and flipped on the overhead lights.
Her slick boot sole landed on something round and her
balance went momentarily sideways. Lindsay righted herself, looked down and
saw a wooden apple and two wooden lemons, like the kind used in tacky 1970's
centerpieces. She licked her bloodied lip and privately cursed the flung apple
that stung like a softball.
The crazed apple-hurler herself appeared physically
unharmed. She wore a long, dark raincoat over a sheer nightgown – a gown
crusted with the dried blood of others - and a pair of sneakers. Her gaunt
pallor was classic junkie chic.
“Is anyone else in the house?” Jacobi asked her,
but she didn't seem to hear him. Louder, and with greater insistence, he
repeated the question.
“Shh, shh. Don't wake them,” she whispered,
staring blankly into Jacobi's eyes. She shook her head violently side to side,
as if trying to fling out a memory. “I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't
know. I didn't know.”
“What the hell did these people get into?”
Lindsay asked, while the traumatized lone survivor, much like the murderer,
chanted a mantra of exculpation.
“I didn't know,” she said. “I didn't know. I
didn't know. I didn't know.”
****
