“Cindy Thomas is an investigative reporter.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Inevitably she’s going to want an inside track on this story.”
“For God’s sake. Are we done?”
“Lindsay, please keep in mind that whatever the press writes is worldwide and forever. Oh, hi, Rich,” Bec said to Conklin. “I’ll call you,” she said to me.
Conklin sat down and said, “What’s this about? Don’t tell Cindy anything?”
“Something like that,” I said.
Cindy Thomas is an honest, dedicated, and talented writer, and she has helped me solve crimes. That’s how good she is. The kind of bureaucratic bull Bec Rollins had brought into the squad room like a lame pony is exactly why I’d eventually said “No, thanks” to the corner office.
I’d committed to being a career homicide detective. I had to be better than good. I had to be excellent.
Chapter 27
Conklin and I sat in the observation room, our hands cupped around containers of cold coffee, as Lieutenant Lawrence Meile and Captain Jonah Penny, from Vice and Narcotics, respectively, interviewed each of the three Narcotics cops whose names we’d tagged four hours before.
It was uncomfortable, yeah, and painful to see men I’d known for years being grilled about their whereabouts at the time Chaz Smith had been shot. In fact, no one was happy in that interrogation room, not the men asking the questions and especially not Sergeant Roddy Jenkins.
Jenkins kept his voice even, but I thought he was a picture of contained fury as Meile asked him to produce an alibi for Chaz Smith’s time of death — and he didn’t have one.
“I was just driving around. That’s what I like to do when I’m off duty.”
Meile said, “Come on, Roddy. It was two days ago. Where were you in the afternoon?”
“I was screwing your wife, Meile. Ask her. It was pretty good.”
Meile boiled out of his chair and went for him. Penny pulled Meile off Jenkins, and Conklin got into the room in time to stop Jenkins from throwing a punch.
“Roddy. Roddy. Settle down.”
Jenkins acted like Conklin wasn’t there. He shouted at Meile, “I said I was driving around. What? Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You accusing me of taking out that douche bag? I’m not saying another fuckin’ word until my fuckin’ lawyer is sitting next to me.”
Roddy’s name was still on the short list when he threw down his badge and gun and stormed out of the interview room shouting, “Fuck you. Fuck all a’ you.”
Conklin returned to the observation room, said, “That could’ve gone better.”
I said, “I don’t mind seeing his temper. He’s organized. He’s got a lot of years on the force. He’s smart enough to have waited in the bathroom for Smith, and if he was mad, I don’t doubt he would have pulled the trigger. And get two shots dead center too.”
“He’s worked in the department long enough to get a hate-on for dealers.”
“Yeah.”
I crumpled my coffee container, dunked it into the trash, answered my ringing phone.
I hoped the call was from Joe; it wasn’t, but it was almost as good. Claire was calling.
“Got a couple of minutes for me, girlfriend?”
Chapter 28
I said to Conklin, “Claire wants to see me. If she had nothing on the heads, she would’ve said so on the phone, right?”
“We’ve got an interview in a few minutes, Linds.”
“I’ll be right back.”
I jogged down the stairs to the lobby, stiff-armed the back door, and trotted along the breezeway to the ME’s office.
I found my BFF in the chill of the morgue. Her lab coat with the butterfly applique on the breast pocket was buttoned up to her neck and she was wearing sweatpants under that.
“Summertime” was playing loudly on the radio, the San Francisco Symphony’s version. Claire’s husband, Edmund, plays cello in the orchestra.
“Dr. Perlmutter just sent me a status report,” Claire shouted. She turned down the volume.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh, what’d she say?”
“Here’s what you want to know,” Claire said. “None of those skulls belonged to Cecily Chandler.”
“Not that I’m doubting you, but what did she say exactly?”
“Cecily Chandler had A-one perfect teeth,” Claire told me. “And not all of them were homegrown. Her dental records do not match the dentistry in any of the skulls.”
I felt let down.
I hadn’t been as certain as the supermarket tabloids were that Harry Chandler murdered his wife, but if Cecily Chandler’s head had been discovered in Chandler’s garden, I would have been more convinced that he was our killer.
I said to Claire, “Well, it only means that Chandler didn’t bury his wife’s head in the garden. Doesn’t mean he’s off the hook for the others, right? Any other news from the doctor?”
“There was no trauma to any of the skulls.”
“So you still don’t know causes of death.”
“That’s correct.”
My best friend held up a finger and said, “So, I’ve been working on the head of our Jane Doe in the cooler. I made a maggot milk shake.”
“Wonderful. I hope you’ll give me your recipe.”
“Maggots, like all animals, are what they eat. If Jane here was poisoned or drugged, the tox screen on the milk shake would reveal that. So I put some squirmers into the blender and sent that out to the lab. Hoping for something, Linds. I was hoping for arsenic. Instead, we found benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine.”
“So you’re saying Jane Doe was a drug user.”
“Yep, but there wasn’t so much that it would’ve been fatal, so — ”
“So all we know is that Jane Doe did drugs.”
“We’re not done yet. Dr. Perlmutter is working up those skulls for facial identification. We’ll have something soon.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Good. Because right now we have nada, nothing, goose egg,” I said. “I need help.”
Chapter 29
I was thinking about the seven unidentified heads as I retraced my steps back upstairs to the squad room. I came through the gate, saw Conklin at his desk with a thin, lank-haired man of about forty sitting in a side chair talking to him.
Conklin introduced me to Richard Beadle, the headmaster of the Morton Academy. I shook his damp hand, took my desk chair, and joined the interview already in progress.
