12th of Never

“Nausea.”

“Oh, my God, I love that book,” Morales said. “I’m a psych major, and the protagonist in Nausea is the very embodiment of depersonalization disorder, not that they called it that back then.”

“Depersonalization. Exactly,” said the professor. He seemed delighted. “Separation from self. That’s what this dream was like. If it was a dream. The imagery was so vivid, it was as if I were having an out-of-body experience. I watched a woman die. I had no feelings about it. No horror. No fear. And yet I know that this dream is prescient, that the murder will happen.”

Judd was hitting his stride now, saying intently to Morales, “Do you remember in Nausea when the protagonist says about himself, ‘You plunge into stories without beginning or end: you’d make a terrible witness. But in compensation, one misses nothing, no improbability or story too tall to be believed in cafes’?”

“Are you saying this has happened before?”

“Oh, yes. But I never reported those dreams. Who would believe that I saw a future murder? But I had to report this one or go crazy. Because I think I’ve seen the victim before.”

“Tell me about the victim,” Morales said. “Do you know her name?”

“No. I think I’ve just seen her at Whole Foods.”

Conklin sat back and listened for any changes in the tall story he had heard before. Dr. Judd told Mackie Morales about the woman with the blond hair with roots, the sandals, and the blue-painted toenails choosing a pint of chocolate chip ice cream before she was gunned down—at some time in the future.

“I heard the shots but I didn’t wake up,” said Judd. “This woman put her hand to her chest, then took it away and looked at the blood. She said, ‘What?’

“And then her legs went out from under her and she slid down the door of the freezer, but she was already dead.”

Morales said, “And do you have any idea why she was—I mean, why she will be shot?”

“No, and I don’t think she saw the person who shot her.”

Perry Judd sighed deeply, put his hand on Morales’s arm, spoke to her as though they were alone together in the room.

“Miss Morales, this is what it is like for me, exactly what Sartre wrote in the voice of Antoine Roquentin: ‘I see the future. It is there, poised over the street, hardly more dim than the present. What advantage will accrue from its realization?’ You see? This is how it is for me.”

Conklin was disgusted. This whole story was about Dr. Judd. He was a flaming narcissist, a diagnosis that didn’t require a degree in psychology to make.

Conklin said, “What’s the address of the store?”

Dr. Judd gave the address in SoMa, only a few blocks away from the Hall, definitely a case for Southern District—if the murder ever really happened, or would happen.

For the second time in ten minutes, Conklin thanked Dr. Judd and told him that if they needed to speak with him again, they’d be in touch.

“He’s a hard-core nutcase, right?” Conklin said to Morales when Perry Judd had left the squad room.

“Yep. He’s delusional. Could be he’s crazy enough to kill someone, though.”

Conklin thought Morales made a fair point. But if Judd was getting ready to kill someone, there was no way to stop him. You can’t lock someone up for having a dream.

Chapter 10

MERCIFULLY, JOE AND the baby were both sleeping. In the same room. In the same bed. At the same time. It was unbelievable, but true.

I filled Martha’s bowl with yummy kibble and brought in the morning paper from the hall.

The headline read: FAYE FARMER DEAD AT 27.

I didn’t stop to make coffee, just spread the paper out over the kitchen counter. The shocking story had been written by my great friend Cindy Thomas, charter member of the Women’s Murder Club, engaged to marry my partner, Rich Conklin, and a bulldog of a reporter.

Unrelenting tenacity can be an annoying trait in a friend, but it had made Cindy a successful crime reporter with a huge future. Her story on Faye Farmer had shot past the second section of the paper and was on the front page above the fold.

Cindy had written, “Fashion designer Faye Farmer, 27, known for her red-carpet styling and must-have wear for the young and famous, was found dead in her car last night on 29th Street and Noe.

“Captain Warren Jacobi has told the Chronicle that Ms. Farmer had been the victim of a gunshot wound to the head. An autopsy has been scheduled for Tuesday.”

It was almost impossible to believe that such a bright, vivacious young woman was dead, her promising life just … over. Had someone taken her life? Or had she killed herself?

I kept reading.

The article went on to say that Faye Farmer lived with football great Jeffrey Kennedy, who was not a suspect and was cooperating fully with the police.

I’d watched Jeff Kennedy many times from the stands at Candlestick Park. At twenty-five, he was already the NFL’s best outside linebacker. His defensive skills and movie-star looks had made him an immediate fan favorite, and at a guaranteed thirteen million dollars a year, he was the league’s fifth-highest earner.

Faye Farmer had been photographed with Kennedy frequently over the last couple of years and had been quoted as saying she was going to be married—“to someone.” The way it sounded, she wanted to get married to Kennedy, but he wasn’t at the until-death-do-us-part stage.

I was dying for more information. This was what’s termed a suspicious death, and my mind just cannot rest until a puzzle is solved. Of course, from where I was sitting at the kitchen counter, I had no more information than anyone else who had read the Chronicle’s front page this morning.

I was just going to have to tamp down my curiosity and get over it.

I put down the paper, then dressed quickly and quietly. I leashed Martha and went down the stairs, thinking I’d start off slowly, see if I could run a half mile, melt off a little of the twenty-five pounds of baby fat I’d added to my 5-foot-10-inch frame. I’d always been a bit hippy. Now I was a bit hippo.

Not a good thing for a cop.

The sun was still coming up over the skyline when I locked the front door behind me. But as I was about to set out, my attention was caught by a woman who was sitting behind the wheel of a rental car parked at the curb. She spotted me, too, got out of the driver’s seat, and called my name.

I had never met her, never wanted to.

And now she’d waylaid me.

There was no place to go. So I stood my ground.

Chapter 11

I DIDN’T KNOW June Freundorfer, but I knew who she was. My eyeballs got small and hard just looking at her in the flesh.

She wore a slim gray custom-tailored suit, had perfect wavy brown hair, and a smile as bright as if she soaked her teeth in Clorox. In brief, she was an attractive forty-five-year-old power babe and she had history with my husband.

Here’s the history.

Agent Freundorfer had been Joe’s partner at the FBI. She was promoted to the FBI’s Washington field office about the same time Joe was hired as deputy director of Homeland Security, also in Washington, DC.

June still lived in DC and until recently, Joe had been flying there regularly to see his government-agency client.