12th of Never

Brady was Lieutenant Jackson Brady, head of the homicide squad, SFPD, Southern District. Yuki reached down and ran her fingers up his leg, stopping at the round pink scar on his thigh, where he took a bullet that nicked his femoral artery. It was sheer good fortune that he had gotten to the hospital in time.

She said, “Me, too. I’ve got court in an hour.”

Yuki got up, pulled her robe from the bedpost, and started for the kitchen of the condo her mother had left her. In a way, Keiko Castellano still lived here. She often talked to Yuki, although not out loud. It was as though Keiko’s voice, her opinions, her experiences were so embedded in Yuki’s mind that Keiko was just always there.

Now her mother said, “You good girl, Yuki-eh, but foolish. Brady still married. Look what you doing.”

“You shouldn’t be watching,” Yuki muttered as she picked pillows off the floor and threw them onto the bed.

“I can’t help myself,” Brady said. He zipped up his fly and reached for his shirt. “You’re so very cute.”

Yuki grinned, slapped his butt. He yelled, “Hey,” grabbed her, lifted her into his arms, kissed her.

Then Brady said, “I wanted to tell you about this case.”

“Start talking.”

As Yuki made coffee, she mentally rebutted her mother’s commentary, telling Keiko that, as she well knew, Brady was separated, and his soon-to-be-ex-wife lived in Miami, as far across the country as possible.

Brady was saying, “You’ve heard of Jeff Kennedy?”

Yuki poured coffee into Brady’s mug.

“Basketball player.”

“He’s a 49er, sweetie. His girlfriend turned up dead in her car, couple miles from his house.”

“Homicide? And you think this Niner is the doer?”

Brady laughed, shook his head. “You’re a tough talker.”

Yuki put her hands on her hips and grinned at him. “It’s been said more than once that I’m one tough cookie.”

Brady took a sip of coffee, put the mug in the sink, put his arms around Yuki, and said, “Kill ‘em in court today, Cookie. I’ll call you later.”

He kissed the center part in her hair and went for the door.

Chapter 8

AT NINE THAT morning, Dr. Perry Judd walked through the swinging half door at the entrance to the homicide squad room and demanded the attention of a detective, saying, “I want to report a murder.”

Rich Conklin had walked Dr. Judd back to Interview 2 and had been trying to get a straight story ever since.

Dr. Judd said that he taught English literature at UC Berkeley. He was fifty, had brown hair, a goatee, and small eyeglasses with round frames the size of quarters. His jacket and button-down shirt were blue, and he wore a pair of khakis with a pleated front.

He had seemed to be a solid citizen.

“I was going into Whole Foods on Fourth Street last night,” Judd said. “There was a woman right in front of me and it just happened that I followed her into the store. She said hello to one of the cashiers. I got the feeling she was a regular there.”

The professor then described the woman in extraordinary detail.

“She was blond, about two inches of black roots showing. She was about forty, a ‘squishy’ size ten, wore a white blouse with a ruffled neckline and a necklace. Green beads, glass ones.”

Judd had gone on to say that the woman had been wearing sandals, her toenails painted baby blue.

Then the professor had gone completely off-road. He began quoting from obscure books, and although Conklin seriously tried to get the connection, the guy sounded psycho.

Conklin liked to let a witness lay out the whole story in one piece. That way he could shape and sharpen his followup questions and determine from the answers if the witness was telling the truth or talking crap.

Dr. Judd had stopped talking altogether and was staring into the one-way glass behind Conklin’s back.

Conklin said, “Dr. Judd. Please go on.”

The professor snapped back to the present, then said to Conklin, “I was thinking about The Stranger. You know, by Camus. You’ve read it, of course.”

Conklin had read The Stranger when he was in high school; as he remembered it, the story was about a murderer who had separated from his feelings. Not like a psychopath who didn’t feel—this killer had feelings, but was detached from them. He watched himself commit senseless murders.

What could this 1940s novel by Camus possibly have to do with a woman shopper at Whole Foods?

“Dr. Judd,” Conklin said. “You said there was a murder?”

“This woman I described went to the frozen-foods section, and I was going there myself to get a spinach souffle. She reached into the case and pulled out a pint of chocolate chip ice cream. She was turning back when three muffled shots rang out. She was hit in the back first, then she whipped around and was hit twice more in the chest. She was dead by the time she hit the floor.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No. I didn’t think to do it until now.”

“Did you see the shooter?”

“I did not.”

“Were there any other witnesses?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Judd said.

Conklin was a patient guy, but there were eleven open case files on his desk, all of them pressing, and Perry Judd was a waste of time.

Conklin said to the professor, “You said you teach writing. You’re also a creative writer, right?”

“I write poetry.”

“Okay. So I have to ask you—no offense—but did this murder actually happen? Because we have had no reports of any kind of homicide at any supermarket last night.”

“I thought I had said I dreamed it last night. It hasn’t happened yet,” said Perry Judd. “But it will happen. Have you read Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre?”

Conklin tossed his pen onto the table, pushed back his chair, and stood up.

He said, “Thanks for your time, Professor. We’ll call you if we need to talk with you again.”

There was a knock on the mirrored glass.

Conklin got up, stepped outside the room.

MacKenzie Morales, the squad’s extremely attractive summer intern, looked up at him and said, “Rich, could I talk to Dr. Judd for a minute? I think I can get to the bottom of this.”

Chapter 9

MACKENZIE MORALES, A.K.A. Mackie, was twenty-six, the single mother of a three-year-old boy. More to the point, she was smart, going for her PhD in psychology. She was working in the homicide squad for no pay, but she was getting credit and doing research for her dissertation on criminal psychopathy.

Conklin was finished with Perry Judd, but what the hell. If Morales wanted a shot at making sense out of crap, okay—even though it was still a waste of time.

Morales took a chair next to Dr. Judd and introduced herself as Homicide’s special assistant without saying she was answering phones and making Xerox copies. She shook Judd’s hand.

“Do I know you?” Professor Judd asked Morales.

“Very doubtful. I was going through the hallway,” she said, pointing to the glass, “and I heard you mention Sartre’s novel—”