10th Anniversary

eight and extra large.

Her computer was turned off on her desk, untouchable without a warrant.

“Is Avis okay?” Kristin asked, in a tone that told me she didn’t care at all.

“She’s with her parents,” I said. “She’s doing okay, but she’s been through an ordeal. Kristin, has Avis called you or written to you? We’re trying to find her baby.”

“Baby? I don’t know anything about a baby.”

“Avis was nine months pregnant,” I said. “You saw her every day. Unless you’re blind, you must have known she was pregnant.”

“Well, I didn’t,” the girl said. “She was a pretty good eater and she didn’t work out.”

Turning to Conklin, I said, “You know, Inspector, I’m getting sick of these kids lying their faces off.”

“I don’t think they understand that we are homicide cops,” he said. “Maybe they think that because they go to a rich kids’ school, they’re outside of the law.”

The girl was staring at us now, eyes going back and forth between us and darting to a spot on the floor. I followed her eyes to a pile of laundry and saw the corner of a plastic bag under a sock.

I said to Conklin, “You’re right. They’re spoiled. They’re living in a separate universe. A universe where this,” I said, toeing the sock aside, “a few ounces of marijuana, isn’t illegal. But, of course it’s possession of an illegal substance, and in this case, given how much you have here, Kristin, I’m thinking it could even be possession with intent to sell.”

“That’s not mine. I never saw it before.”

I had to laugh. Two feet from her bed and she’d never seen it before.

“I say it’s your grass and that your urine is going to show that you’ve been smoking it.”

I reached under my coat for my cuffs, and the girl backed up.

“Kristin Beale, you’re under arrest for possession of narcotics.”

“No … what, are you — kidding? I’ll get kicked out of here. Okay, okay, okay. Like, what do you want to know?”

“Where is the baby?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who is the father of Avis’s baby?” I said.

“She never told me. I am telling you the truth.”

“Someone got her pregnant,” said Conklin.

“She’s gone out with boys, but no one regularly.”

“More lies,” I said. “I think you’ll tell us the truth at the station. Of course, we’ll have to call your parents.”

“I think she was going out with a married man,” the kid yelled at me. “Look. She didn’t tell me. One time, I asked her if she was pregnant. She said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ I asked if her secret boyfriend was married, and she gave me a look. Like this. And she told me to never tell anyone. And that is everything I know. Everything. She never talked about the baby again. Maybe she told Larry Foster. Those guys are tight.”

Chapter 32

I PUT MY CARD on Kristin’s desk and told her to call me if she had any thoughts she’d like to share that might save a baby’s life. I flushed the weed down the toilet in the bathroom down the hall, and then, muttering under my breath about teenagers, my partner and I left the dorm.

During the six hours we had spent interviewing Avis’s friends at Brighton, her parents had called me a dozen times. I had nothing for them, so I’d let the calls go through to voice mail. But as we were driving away from the campus empty-handed, Brady called.

I picked up the call on the third ring.

The lieutenant sounded agitated.

“The press has the story,” he said. “It’s going to hit the fan on the networks in a couple of hours, but it’s already broken on cable news and the Web.”

Cindy was my next caller.

“Lindsay. How could you not call me? You promised the story to me. You swore.”

“I’ve got nothing, Cindy. Nothing at all. Zero. Zip. Legwork with no payoff.”

Conklin’s phone rang, too. It was Paul Richardson saying that the media were gathering outside their hotel, clamoring for a statement.

“Don’t tell them anything,” Conklin told Avis’s father. “Stay in your room and get the hotel to block your incoming calls. Use only your cell phone.”

“The press is going to do cartwheels with this story,” I said to Conklin as we got back into the car.

“Maybe a lead will come out of it,” he said.

“I like your optimism.”

I’d seen similar stories spin out of control and confuse evidence, spawn hoaxters, and contaminate jury pools. “Baby missing” could become kidnapping, child trafficking, even witchcraft or alien abduction. And that would be before the supermarket tabloids got hold of the story.

“We need to catch a break,” Conklin said as we got back on the road.

I sighed loudly.

I wished I felt upbeat about this one. But I was feeling that it was too late to strap in. We’d already hit the wall.

Chapter 33

THE PRESS-MOBILES were already parked in front of the Hall, satellite trucks and setups with talking heads using the gray, granite edifice as a backdrop.

Conklin pulled into the lot off Harriet Street and I got a buzz in my hip pocket. Yuki was texting me to say she wanted to see me, tell me about her date last night. She’d put a picket fence of exclamation marks at the end of her message.

I fired back a message in return, saying that I had to see her, too. Important!!!!!

At just after six, I edged into the standing-room-only crowd at MacBain’s Beers o’ the World Saloon, a cop- lawyer-bail-bondsman hangout two blocks from the Hall. There were peanut shells on the floor, exotic beer on tap, and a pool table in back. Yuki was at the bar.

I opened my jacket and, revealing my badge hooked to my belt, flashed it at the guy sitting to Yuki’s right.

“I didn’t do it, Sergeant,” he said, holding up his hands. We both laughed. “Congratulations on, you know, getting married,” he said.

“Thanks for the seat, Reynolds.”

I said, “Hey, girlfriend,” to Yuki, kissed her cheek, planted myself on the bar stool. Then I ordered a Corona and plunged ahead. “I met with Candace Martin last night.”

“You did what? I don’t think I heard you right.”

Yuki was only sitting a foot away from me, but she jacked up the volume to a yell. She’d never been angry with me before, and frankly I felt ashamed.

I flashed back to that trial of mine a couple of years ago, when I’d been accused of wrongful death in the shooting of a teenage girl who had fired on me and Jacobi without provocation.

It was absolutely self-defense, but I was put on trial anyway. The city of San Francisco couldn’t help me. I