“Our turn, Dom,” Adah prompted.
He looked up, distracted from his thoughts. “Okay,” he said. “The vics are Jim Yatz and a woman with two sets of ID on her-Diane D’Angelo and Susan Angelo. One of your operatives, as Mr. Savage has told me. Our preliminary findings indicate a murder-suicide; Yatz blew her away, then turned his thirty-eight on himself. Neighbors to the right of the house heard an argument going on and turned up their TV to cover the noise. This was about nine o’clock; fifteen minutes later, when the husband got up to get something from the kitchen, everything was quiet.”
Craig said, “Don’t you find it peculiar that two other people involved in city or state government were recently killed in an apparent murder-suicide?”
“You mean Teller and Janssen. The sheriff’s department down in Monterey County has been in close touch with us; they’ve classified it a homicide. In this case it’s different: no injections, and obvious powder burns on Yatz’s hands, apparently from his own gun. There’s also evidence that Angelo had been living there for a fair amount of time.”
Mick said, “So Angelo went home, told Yatz we had evidence on him on DVD, that she’d admitted to everything, and we were taking it to the DA. He shot her, then killed himself.”
“Everything points to that. We’ll know more when we get reports from ballistics and the ME’s office.”
Adah said, “I’d like to see copies of those reports.”
Rayborn nodded. “We can work together on this. I’ll appreciate any input you can offer, and I’ll reciprocate.” His solemn face softened. “I know your record, Adah. You were one of the best, and I’m glad to see you haven’t burned out. This job…” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll be applying to McCone Investigations myself in a few years.”
If there still was a McCone Investigations, Craig thought. Shar wasn’t out of the woods by a long shot, and he didn’t think the rest of them had the heart to carry on without her.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 23
HY RIPINSKY
He filled his coffee mug, then went to the sitting room to watch the morning news. The story of the Yatz and Angelo murder-suicide had made the national reports, bringing with it a rehash of the Teller- Janssen case. The media, of course, were eager to link the two, in spite of denials by officials in both jurisdictions. There was also mention of Angelo’s “double life” as an operative of the McCone agency, whose owner, Sharon McCone, had recently been shot by an intruder at the firm’s offices. Details of her present condition were “unavailable.”
Hy watched for a few moments, then pressed the off button on the remote. Craig had called him around two in the morning to tell him what had gone down at the Yatz house, so none of this was new to him, but he’d been interested in what kind of treatment the press was giving the story. At least no one had ferreted out that Shar had been at the Brandt Institute or brought back to SF General. The story of her shooting had dropped off the radar after a few days, when inquiries to the agency and other people who knew her failed to bring results. Now, he supposed, he and the others would have to field annoying phone calls and encounters again.
The door to the guest room opened and seconds later John appeared, wrapped in one of Hy’s old bathrobes-a blackwatch plaid that he’d never particularly liked. John’s blond hair stood up in spikes and he yawned and blinked groggily at Hy.
“Shar?” he asked. “Any change?”
“I spoke with the nurse a while ago. She’s resting comfortably.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“She’s no longer in crisis, she’s aware of her surroundings-”
“In short, just like she was before she crashed.” John sank heavily into the armchair.
“Not exactly. The bullet and bone fragments have been removed, the clot is gone-”
“And she’s irreparably damaged.”
John’s pessimism was getting to Hy. He picked up his coffee mug and took it into the kitchen. Ralph, their orange tabby, looked up at him from his food bowl, then went on eating.
Hy had spent most of the previous evening sitting beside his wife and watching her face as she lay in the silent motionless state he’d gotten used to. She was no longer in intensive care, but on another floor, in a step-down unit where the nurses came around frequently to monitor her; they slipped in and out, smiling reassuringly at him, checking Shar’s vitals, making notes on her chart. Once in a while he thought he saw her eyelids flutter and imagined a facial tic. But mostly she lay still and waxen.
Gathering strength to get well. Strength for the long fight ahead.
He checked his watch, saw it was time he went to the pier for the staff meeting Adah had called for this morning. That would occupy the time until he was due to see Shar’s attending physician at one o’clock.
RAE KELLEHER
She came into the conference room ten minutes late, slipped into a chair next to Mick. He was taking notes-long, erratic scratches with arrows connecting them-and Craig was speaking.
“… So here’s the theory we’re going to present to the DA’s office: Amanda Teller heard rumors that someone was making sex videos of city officials. She came to the agency and asked Shar for deep background on the Pro Terra Party, in particular Lee Summers and Paul Janssen. She wrote a memo to the mayor, probably detailing what she’d found out, but Jim Yatz intercepted it.”
“Was there actually a memo?” Derek Ford asked. “Or was that more of Yatz’s attempt to muddy the facts?”
“Don’t know,” Craig said. “What I do know is that Teller’s long-term aide, Harvey Davis, had become disenchanted with her. Davis started leaking vague information to me after Yatz hired us to look into purportedly missing documents at city hall. Frankly, I thought Davis was behaving theatrically, had a Deep Throat fixation. He gave me a key to his condo in case something happened to him, and after he was shot I went there and found the videos. He also told me about Teller and Janssen’s plans to meet at Big Sur; the surveillance tapes that I made of their conversation at the Spindrift Lodge suggest that Janssen was on very shaky emotional territory, and that Teller took advantage of it to make him sign some kind of document pertaining to the videos.”
Rae thought,
She started to speak, but Mick said, “We assume the videos were made for the purposes of Janssen and the Pro Terra Party, but we don’t know who made them or who-”
“I do.”
All eyes fixed on Rae as she told them about Lee Summers, his daughter, Callie O’Leary, Hot Shots, and Laura Logan-who was giving a deposition to her lawyer as they spoke. Then everybody began talking at once.
Over the din, Adah said, “Okay, hold it! I want Rae, Craig, and Mick to share their notes and start putting a timeline together. Patrick, you create one of your flowcharts. Everybody else pitch in. This is big-way too big to delay on. And Hy, can you alert Glenn Solomon to what’s going on? We need a heavy-hitting attorney to bring this to the DA.”
“What about who shot Shar?” Rae said somewhat plaintively. “We’re losing sight of that.”
“Not for a moment we aren’t. It’s all going to come out now.”
