and motioned for me to enter.
'You're here early,' he said as I sank onto his visitor's chair.
'I could say the same for you.'
'Been here since six. Pressure's coming down about these snipings. I hear you had quite an evening.'
'McFate's already reported on the Grant case?'
He nodded. 'And did a fair amount of grumbling about how my former lady friend had managed to foul up one of his crime scenes.'
My face became hot with anger. 'Damn him!'
'Consider the source.' Greg harbored no more goodwill toward McFate than I did.
'I'd rather not.' I dug in my bag, where earlier I'd placed the pouch containing the gun I'd found at Hilderly's flat. Greg raised his eyebrows when I set it on his desk blotter. Quickly I explained how I'd come to have it. 'Could you ask the lab to bring out that serial number?'
'Why?'
'Knowing its history might shed some light on why Grant was murdered. Or even why Hilderly was killed.'
Greg looked doubtful, but he merely nodded. 'Okay, I'll send it down. I can't tell them to place priority on it, though.'
'I don't expect you to. Another thing: may I take a second look at those files on the snipings?'
'Again, why?'
'I have a feeling there's something I missed the other day.'
His gaze suddenly turned inward, reminiscent. 'You remember when we first met, and I accused you in my sexist way of relying on woman's intuition?'
I nodded.
'You were fiddling with a hair ribbon you'd had on, and without noticing what you were doing, you twisted it into a little noose.'
'That's right. I'd completely forgotten.'
'Well, over the years I've come to realize it's just plain good investigator's instincts you rely on. And I've come to trust them, too. You're welcome to the files.'
He picked up the phone receiver and asked that the files be brought in, then made arrangements to have the gun sent to the lab. 'You can use my desk again,' he added when he hung up. 'I'm due in a meeting in fifteen minutes and probably won't be back until afternoon. If there's anything you need to tell me, call me then.'
I watched him leave the cubicle, thinking that he looked not all that different from the man who had made me want to hang him in the old days. But underneath he had changed – become more mellow, plus a good bit sadder and more cynical.
Well, hadn't we all? I thought as I moved around the desk and took his chair.
When a clerk brought the files in, I began going over them in a great deal more detail than I had earlier in the week. This time I paid particular attention to the other three sniping victims.
The first victim – the restaurant employee – was Bob Smith. A common name – perhaps false. I noted it on my legal pad, put a question mark beside it. Smith's employment record was spotty: for the nine months prior to his death he'd worked in food preparation at a small pizza restaurant on Market Street; in the fifteen years before that he'd sporadically held various food-service jobs in Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix. His only long-term employment-from 1967 to 1973-was with American Consolidated Services of Fort Worth, Texas. I made a note to find out more about the company. Smith had lived alone in a rooming house in the Outer Mission; from police talks with the landlord and other tenants, the picture that emerged of him was of a loner, a drifter, a man without family and friends. Whatever I'd sensed I'd missed in the files did not have to do with him.
The second victim was a nurse, Mary Davis, birth name Johnson. Another common name. Davis had worked at Children's Hospital in Laurel Heights less than two months before she was shot while walking to her car on a quiet side street near the crisis clinic where she'd been on night duty. Before that she'd done psychiatric nursing at Letterman Army Hospital in the Presidio, and S.F. General, There was an eight-year period of unemployment after her 1975 marriage, and in 1983 she'd attended City College for additional training in the psychiatric nursing field. Before her marriage she'd been with the American Red Cross from 1968 to 1974. Davis's family and friends described her as a devoted wife and mother, good neighbor, and active volunteer for an organization providing counseling for AIDS patients.
I noted down several details about Davis, feeling an idea begin to take shape.
The third sniping victim, John Owens, was a veteran living on disability pay in a small home near the beach in the Outer Sunset. His wife and friends described him as the designated neighborhood repairman: he had a shop in his garage and was a genius with balky machinery. The fact that he was confined to a wheelchair due to injuries suffered in shelling near Saigon in 1972 didn't affect his ability to fix practically anything-
Vietnam again.
Hilderly had been there. So had Hank and Willie. And John Owens. All roughly within the same time frame. I checked my notes on Mary Davis: American Red Cross, 1968 to 1973. Had she also been over there? Bob Smith, too, maybe?
Embittered war protester knocking off veterans eighteen or so years after they'd fought their war? No. It sounded too much like the plot of a bad made-for-TV movie. Besides, Hilderly and Davis hadn't been in the military. And Hank wasn't what you'd call your typical vet. For that matter, neither was Willie.
I wished Greg were there so we could talk it over; he was good at sorting out the possibilities from the improbables. But he wouldn't be back until afternoon, and I had to be in Berkeley in less than an hour.
What I needed was more information. I picked up Greg's phone receiver and called Hank's flat; only the machine answered. The same was true at Willie's house. I got the number of his main store on Market Street from directory assistance. Willie wasn't there, either, but I finally tracked him down at the Daly City store, in conference with its manager.
I asked, 'When will you be free?'
'Christ, McCone, I don't know. I've got a full schedule today, going round to the stores.'
'Give me a time when you'll be back at Market Street.'
'Five? Five-thirty?'
'Good. I'll see you then.' I hung up before he could reply and called Ted at All Souls. 'What's Hank's schedule today?'
'Let me-dammit, get down!'
'Ted?'
'I was talking to Alice. She just walked across my keyboard and screwed up the computer. Back, you beast!' There was a thump and a tiny, indignant yowl. 'Now- what?' he asked. 'Hank's schedule?'
'If it won't interrupt your parenting too drastically.'
'Don't be sarcastic. You could have taken them off my hands, you know.'
'The schedule…?'
'In court this morning. Back around two. Says he's going to clear up a few things and then go home early for a change.'
'Okay, will you give him this message, please, and tell him it's urgent? I want him to meet me at Willie's Market Street store between five and five-thirty. Emphasize the urgent.'
'Willie's, Market Street, four-thirty. That's so he'll get there on time; Hank, as you know, runs late. Will do, and I'll see that he follows through on it.'
There are times when I thank whatever powers-that-be for Ted's calm efficiency. 'Great,' I said. 'One more thing- is Rae in her office yet?'
'I think I heard her stumble in there about five minutes ago. Hold on.'
When Rae picked up her extension, she sounded none too cheerful. 'I just read about Tom Grant in the paper,' she said. 'Did you get involved in that?'
'I arrived right after the secretary found his body.'
'They didn't mention you.'
'Good. I'm notorious enough as is. Listen, I'll fill you in on it later. Do you have time to check into something for me this morning?'
'If it's not too complicated. My brain seems to be on hold. Okay, go ahead.'
