The 24th Hour, page 13
Inside her office, Claire skimmed the death certificate and the three copies. Cause of death, five .40-caliber rounds. Manner of death, homicide. She signed and dated them all.
She turned on the light box behind her desk and put up Fricke’s X-rays, which she’d already reviewed at least a half dozen times. Had she overlooked something? Did the five matching shots in the same locations on both Holly and Jamie’s bodies mean something to their killer, and if so, what? Was this the mark of a serial killer just getting started in Pacific Heights or was this personal?
She studied the X-rays, animated the murder in her mind. The shooter had taken the first shot to Fricke’s back and the bullet had lodged in the fourth rib, grazing his spine. Theorizing now, Claire pictured Fricke spinning around reflexively—a reaction to the shot. She could imagine him seeing the shooter and throwing a punch to his face. Then Jamie Fricke had dropped to his knees. The shooter put a second round in Fricke’s heart, then his groin, his liver. And as Fricke rolled onto his side or back, he shot Fricke in the forehead. The coup de grâce. The bullet was still in Fricke’s head when she’d gone in after it. The head shot killed him, but Fricke wouldn’t have survived the others.
Claire placed one copy of Jamie Fricke’s X-rays into a large envelope that she would have hand-delivered to Jackson Brady in the morning. She slipped the second set of files into another large envelope, this one addressed to Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk. Dr. G., the night shift ME for the last fifteen years, specialized in trace evidence. She left the envelope on his desk.
She filed the original of Jamie Fricke’s films and paperwork in her open case file drawer, right next to Holly Fricke’s. Then Claire stripped off her gown, cap, and gloves, put it all in the trash.
Earlier, Claire and Lindsay had commiserated about the lack of visual evidence in Holly’s death. No witnesses. No security camera footage. There was one known witness in Jamie’s murder: Dan Fields, the neighbor who’d seen the shooter. His view was partial, seen from three stories overhead with some obstruction from trees and the corner of the building next door. Fields had not seen the shooter’s face. He’d said that the killer was wearing black, and he’d seen no identification on the clothing. And he hadn’t seen if the victim had punched out at the shooter. Fields had been shocked by the killing and didn’t move until after the shooter drove off in Jamie’s black Jaguar. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Claire changed from her rubber-soled shoes to street shoes and was ready to go.
She found Bunny straightening up in the autopsy room.
“Bunny. Have you seen Dr. G.?”
“He just texted me. He’s parking his car.”
“Good.”
Claire was eager to compare notes with the good doctor.
CHAPTER 61
DR. HUMPHREY GERMANIUK was not just a highly regarded medical examiner, but he’d taught at UCLA Medical School before joining the medical examiner’s office. After retiring from teaching, he came back to the ME, night shift, and he and Claire were friends.
He was just coming through the ambulance bay when Claire said, “Thanks, Bunny. Put in for overtime. Dr. G. will take it from here.”
Bunny didn’t have to be told twice. She went to the ladies’ room and came out shortly in street clothes, hair loose around her shoulders, lip gloss. As she left the ME’s office, Claire and Dr. Germaniuk both wished Bunny a good night.
Claire gave Dr. G. a couple of minutes to gown up, then open his office door and ask her what was lying in wait for him. She got right to it. “I left Jamie Fricke’s files on your desk. A million dollars for your thoughts.”
He said, “You look tired, Claire.”
“Is that your professional opinion or a little help from my friend?”
“Both,” said Dr. G.
Claire nodded. “I hear you. I’m a brain wreck. Come with me, Dr. G. If you don’t mind,” she said, going through the swinging doors to the cold storage room. She opened Fricke’s drawer and slid his body out.
“What do you think of this here?” Claire asked Dr. G., unwrapping Fricke’s hand with great care. Dr. G. cleaned his thick, black-rimmed glasses and, when James Fricke’s right hand had been entirely freed from the bandage, peered at the dead man’s hand.
Claire told him her theory of the injury and Dr. G. looked closely at Fricke’s skinned knuckles.
“Hmm. It sure looks like he got a punch in before the curtain dropped. You swabbed it?”
“I swabbed the hell out of it,” said Claire. “I’ve got the swabs packaged and I called Hallows to make sure he gives it priority treatment. Rapid DNA could be back tonight.”
Dr. G. nodded approvingly.
Claire went on. “Contents of the box for the lab: fluids from the tox screen, clothes bagged, fingernail scrapings, slugs, all in the carton under the reception desk with the swabs, five of them in individual tubes. Loomis is careful. I just hope they come early tonight.”
“I’m taking over, okay, Claire?”
“Triple okay,” she said. “If the lab calls back with the DNA, wake me.”
“You’re off duty, Claire. I’m in charge and I’m not going to let you down.”
CHAPTER 62
BAO WAITED WITH Joe in his car parked on the shoulder of Turquoise Way three hundred yards downhill from the blue house. The road was flanked by homes with small yards overlooking the steep hillside below.
Bao was focused on Thordarson and Wooten’s threat-catcher program. She hadn’t found a match from Eastern Europe to San Francisco but was not giving up.
Joe was fixated on the east side of the sorry-looking blue house at the top of the road. At nearly five in the afternoon, the sky was overcast, building up to a soaking rain. The target house was dark and silent, shadowed by its taller neighbors, trees, and the darkening sky.
A little while earlier, Joe had peered into the house through a gap in a window shade. He’d counted five, possibly six, fit young men sleeping on the floor and sofa. But there could be others in the adjacent, windowless room. Joe pictured what else he’d seen—the array of computers on the dining table and the box of .40-caliber ammo on the windowsill. And it was the second item that was keeping him in the car.
He checked his watch again to see how much time had elapsed since Steinmetz’s assistant had told him that backup was on the way. It seemed like half a lifetime passed before Bao looked up from her phone and turned to Joe.
“Incoming backup,” she said.
Joe got out of the car and stood against the door looking down the road. A white police van turned onto Turquoise Way and came up the hill. Joe held up his badge and the van braked hard next to him.
The passenger door slid opened and a uniform stepped out, introduced himself as Sergeant Brian Whalen and his partner, behind the wheel, as Inspector Ray Lipari. Joe introduced Bao and himself and nodded to the three cops wearing tactical gear seated in the rear of the van.
Whalen said, “Wait a minute. Molinari. You’re not a cop. You’re an independent whatchacallit. Contractor. Boxer’s husband, am I right?”
Whalen had crossed swords with Lindsay in the past. This operation was Joe’s responsibility. He was working from a phoned-in tip, and with manpower he didn’t know. The outcome for St. Vartan’s could be apocalyptic. So, he did what he had to do.
“Whalen, let me be clear. This is an FBI operation. I’m in command. Are you in or out?”
“I was never out. What’s the plan?”
Joe pointed out the blue house a few hundred yards uphill. He told Whalen, “I saw five or six sleeping males in that house, mid-twenties, four used cars out front. We have a short time frame in which to unwind a cyberattack on a hospital. There are industrial-grade computers set up in that house’s main room and I saw a box of .40-caliber ammo on the windowsill.”
“So they’re armed.”
“Very likely. At the moment they’re camping in a property that’s not theirs. We can bring them in on trespassing alone.”
Whalen said, “We have tac gear and search warrants.”
“Good. I’ve roughed out a plan,” said Joe. “It’s basic. Form a perimeter around the house. Your men knock and announce, then enter through the back door. If the subjects don’t drop to the floor, flush them out the front. Director Wong and I will be waiting for them. If they shoot, we shoot. But we prefer live captives who talk.”
Whalen had questions and Joe answered. He described the layout of the house, its location on its lot, and the long drop down a hillside at the rear boundary line.
Joe said, “The van is now our command post. Once the perimeter is in place, Lipari calls you, and you drive up the hill, block off the driveway, trapping their vehicles from leaving the property.”
Whalen said, “I’ve got it, Molinari. Make arrests, transport this gang of whatever to booking, go home.”
Joe said, “Right. I think we can wrap this up in under an hour.”
Whalen was nodding when everything changed.
The lights in the run-down blue house went on.
The occupants were awake.
CHAPTER 63
JOE’S BRAIN WENT into overdrive, assessing the ways things could go terribly wrong. The young men could see the van and grab their guns, resulting in a Wild West–style shoot-out. Or they could leave the house before the perimeter was set, take off through the canyon, and get lost until night. Or it could go the other way. These kids might be a college study group, armed with nothing more than their cheat sheets. People could get hurt right here in the next few minutes.
Five cops, including Whalen, secured their tactical gear and huddled with Joe near the van as he gave them their orders.
On Joe’s go, the team moved out.
It started to rain as Joe and Bao reached the front door of the house. Through a crack in the door, Joe saw that some of the young men were on their feet, pulling on their clothes. Two sat in front of computers. They hadn’t seen the cops. Then a bullhorn sounded, and a voice announced, “This is SFPD. We’re coming in. Toss your guns. Drop to the floor. Hands behind your heads. Do this now and no one gets hurt.”
There was shouting inside the small house. One of the men disappeared from Joe’s view. The others fell to their knees. A tall kid with leadership presence shouted to his guys, “Front door. Front door. Let’s go.”
“Ready, set,” said Joe to Bao.
Joe put his shoulder to the front door, which splintered as it broke open. Four half-dressed young men pushed aside strips of wood and ran through the doorway with drawn guns, muscling past Bao and Joe.
Joe fired three shots into the air and shouted orders to halt.
The four dropped to the walkway. The cops seized their guns, wrenched their arms around their backs, and cuffed them. Joe heard, “You have the right to remain silent…” and watched as the captives were marched to the van.
Bao entered the house with Officer Boyd Jamieson to make sure the house was cleared while allowing her to check out the computers.
Joe felt a rush of satisfaction, a feeling he’d missed since he last worked a case in the field. He holstered his gun and was calling Steinmetz’s office—when a shot sounded from the canyon to his left.
Joe yelled, “Everyone down!”
The bullet had hit Officer Devon Brown, who was standing just to Joe’s left side. Blood spouted from Brown’s left thigh as he dropped.
The van pulled up, blocking the cars in the driveway. Whalen got out, wove between the cars, put his arm around Brown’s shoulders, and helped him into the van’s passenger seat.
Whalen said to Brown, “We’ll get you some help, Dev.”
“All I need is a Band-Aid,” said Brown.
Joe stood behind an open car door, using it as a shield. He was searching the canyon with his eyes, looking for the shooter, when Bao ran out of the house to where he stood.
Joe turned to Bao thinking she didn’t look right. Her eyes were red and there were raw spots on the backs of her hands. She smelled of smoke.
“What happened, Bao?”
She said, “I was doing a cursory check of the computers while Jamieson cleared the house. Joe. Those guys were selling drugs. Online. Mail delivery. The house is full of courier envelopes. There were two pill presses in the spare room. Binding chemicals. Plastic bags. The works.”
“Anything on Apocalypto?”
“I was moving fast but I saw nothing but lists and addresses and ledgers of receipts. No ransomware. No hospital anything. These are not our guys.”
CHAPTER 64
JOE LIFTED BAO’S right hand and then looked at the right side of her neck.
“What happened to you? Are you burned?”
“One of those guys just appeared, Joe, I don’t know from where. Next thing I know, he’s at the stove and there’s a frying pan on the burner. He turned on the gas and dumped the grease onto the burner and the fire got a good start. I’m okay, but it could have been worse. I smothered the flames with wet dish towels. Jamieson got the curtains out of the way and the guy ran out the back door.”
Joe asked Bao, “Do you see the guy here?”
As Whalen and Lipari stuffed the modern-day drug dealers into the van, shackled them, checked them, checked again, Jamieson jump-started a rusted Ford sedan in the driveway.
“Dev, hold on to me,” he said to the injured cop as he transferred him from the van to the Ford and headed out to the hospital with him. As the used car lot in front of the house thinned, Bao saw a flash of red in the nearby canyon.
She said, “Look,” as the red flash disappeared behind a rock.
“That’s the guy who set the fire,” Bao said. “That’s him.”
Joe pulled Bao down to the ground just as the guy showed his gun and fired. Joe returned fire and hit the shooter, who howled in pain.
Joe ordered the uniforms into the woods, but they returned to the blue house empty-handed.
Joe said, “Damn. He didn’t get away, did he?”
Lipari said, “We identified ourselves loud and clear. But this dude ran behind the house. There’s a drop-off back there and the ground was muddy. Look.” Lipari showed Joe his mud-caked shoe sole.
“So the jackass slipped. Cafferty and I ran to the edge. Jackass grabbed on to a root about twenty feet down the slope. We couldn’t reach him. We got hold of a good branch to lower down to him, and by then it was pouring. Guy calls out to God, slips, hitting rocks and roots and whatever on his way down.”
Joe said, “Is he alive?”
“Doesn’t look like it. He’s motionless. I yelled. Told him to hang on, we’d come get him. He didn’t answer. I think he broke his neck. He lost his gun near the top of the slope. We have it and his wallet. His name is Keith Ballantine.”
“Can’t leave him there,” Joe said.
He got back on the phone with Steinmetz, told him he needed a search-and-rescue team. “We need it now.”
Joe said to Steinmetz, “We have to retrieve the guy who got away. He attacked Director Wong and then fired on us, hitting Officer Brown, who’s on the way to the ER. The shooter slid down a steep canyon beyond reach. Alive or dead, I want to bring him in.”
Steinmetz agreed and signed off. Joe saw Bao picking out cops by name, telling them she needed help getting the computers out of the house. Joe called out to her, “Wait for me. I’ll be back.”
He didn’t hear her say, “I’ll be right here.”
THURSDAY
CHAPTER 65
AT SIX O’CLOCK the next morning, Nick Gaines crossed Bryant from the All Day Parking lot to the Hall. He turned so that he was facing the gray granite face of the Hall of Justice building and called Yuki.
“Yuki, sorry to wake you. The gaggle is stopping traffic on Bryant and starting to pack the sidewalks. Uniforms are outnumbered.”
Yuki said, “Aw jeez,” thanked Gaines, and slipped out of bed without waking Brady, made coffee, and called Mary Elena.
“Mary Elena, are you awake?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure I was asleep. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Not yet. Just every journalist in the country is surrounding the Hall. Please get dressed. I’ll pick you up in about forty-five minutes.”
“Party dress or jeans?”
“Your blue skirt suit, Mary Elena. Or the gray jacket and trousers… I want to get you into the building ahead of the press and they’re already stopping traffic.”
“I’ll be ready,” Mary Elena said.
Yuki went to her closet and pulled out the first suit still in a dry cleaner’s bag. No one was going to be looking at her. She showered. Soaped her hair. Dried off and dressed. She put on her watch that had once belonged to her mother. Seven o’clock plus a few seconds. She tiptoed back to the bedroom and kissed Brady goodbye. He startled awake.
“What’s happening? Are you okay?”
Yuki soothed him back to the pillows and blankets, told him she had to be at court early, kissed him again.
She stepped into her shoes and left the apartment. Yuki’s mother’s voice warned her, Drive safe, Yuki-eh. She said, Okay, Mother, I’m good, as she drove her car out of the garage and up the ramp to the street. Checking the time, she was sure she’d be at Mary Elena’s place in ten minutes. If the lights were with her.
This was a big day. Mary Elena was going to testify about the assault again, but this time Schneider would cross-examine her. Unordered thoughts flashed through Yuki’s mind, but chief among them was this: Would Mary Elena hold up on the stand? Would she stay in her main personality?
Yuki thought over the questions she was going to ask, added one, subtracted another, braking her car as she nearly ran the light on Geary Street. After that close call, she turned on the radio to a light jazz station and kept her eyes on the road.
CHAPTER 66
WHEN COURT OFFICER Louie Mack opened the double doors to Courtroom 8G, journalists and the trial curious stampeded through the wide opening and lunged for seats in the gallery. Cindy fought for the last seat nearest the door, throwing her computer bag onto the chair that she called hers, and nailed it.
