trouble with a Chinese gang because she didn’t have any money? Now she’ll be up for murder.”
Eve said, “Hopefully attempted murder with mitigating circumstances. Didn’t she think about what would happen to her and her son if she got caught?”
Cheney said, “Caught? She never tried to hide that she’d stabbed Cindy. She was paralyzed by what she’d done, that she’d just tried to kill another human being. Lieutenant Clark said after she described what she’d done and why, her eyes rolled back in her head and she fainted. When she woke up she didn’t say another word. He said he asked her over and over why she hadn’t come and spoken to one of the guards, but she only looked at him with great sadness. He had her brought here to the emergency room.”
Eve looked up to see her boss, Marshal Carney Maynard, standing in the doorway. He looked tired, she thought, and unhappy, and she couldn’t blame him at all. Maynard said, “There aren’t any nurses around who know anything about Cindy Cahill. Is she still alive?”
“She’s still in surgery and hanging in,” Eve said. “That was all the OR nurse could tell us. She said when the surgery’s done, the surgeon will come out and speak to us. It’s nearly one a.m., sir, you didn’t have to come.”
Maynard said, “I did have to come, Eve. Cindy Cahill is here because my people screwed up.”
Marshal Carney Maynard eyed her back and frowned. “How do you figure you suddenly rule the world, Deputy Barbieri?”
“Sir, the truth is I only glanced at the transfer papers. I should have studied them as carefully as I would if they had been papers bringing Qaddafi’s body to the U.S., but I didn’t.”
Maynard waved a hand to cut her off. He was more frazzled than tired, and here was Barbieri desperately trying to shoulder all the blame. It’d be easier if he could heap it all on her head, but he couldn’t. He said, “Since the proverbial buck stops with me, Deputy Barbieri, I’m the one responsible. I knew the importance of this transfer, but I was watching the Monday-night football game. This was the classic definition of a snafu. I’d hoped never to have one with such disastrous results under my watch, but it’s happened, and now we all have to deal with it.
“So dial it down, Eve.” He laughed. “We’ve given our FBI contingent a fine show. Here’s what happened. Turns out we had a new deputy driving the prisoner van. His partner didn’t look closely at the paperwork, and so they did the run they normally do. They drove Clive and Cindy Cahill straight back from one of our holding cells to the San Francisco jail. That simple. No, Deputy. You did your job. I didn’t do mine.”
Sherlock said, “No one wins in a blame game, Marshal Maynard. Not even the FBI contingent.”
Nurse Camp looked in from the doorway. “Dr. Elba is tied up and asked me to speak to you. Cindy Cahill is out of surgery. Dr. Elba thinks she has an even chance, though she’s still oozing blood because of a clotting problem she’s developed from all the bleeding. We moved her to recovery. You won’t be able to speak to her until morning, all right?”
Harry asked, “Could you please find out about a new patient for us, a Mrs. Lin Mei, probably having a psychiatric evaluation?”
Nurse Camp said, “Not in my bailiwick, Agent. The people at the reception desk can help you find her.”
Eve thanked her and watched Savich dial Bill Hammond at the CIA. They could hear a man’s voice loud and clear: “Are you nuts, Savich? It’s four in the damned morning!”
Harry and Eve looked at each other, knew they didn’t want to hear this conversation, and left the waiting room. They took the elevator to the fourth floor to check on Ramsey before they left the hospital. It wasn’t the same elevator. That one still had crime tape plastered over the doors on every floor. Eve didn’t think she’d ever want to ride that particular elevator again in her life.
Judge Corman Sherlock said to his son-in-law the next morning across the breakfast table, “You’re frustrated, Dillon, and no wonder, after last night. How about I give you my membership card for the Pacific Heights Club over on Union Street and you get a good workout? I can call Mr. Eddie, he’s usually there, and he’s been looking forward to mixing it up with you. He outweighs you by a good twenty pounds, all of it muscle. Even though he’s older than you, he’s one tough bald bugger.”
Savich hated to say no; he couldn’t think of anything he needed more than a sweaty hard workout. He shook his head. “I’ve got to take a rain check with Mr. Eddie. Lacey and I have to get over to the hospital as soon as we can. Cindy Cahill’s awake, more or less, and this is our first chance to talk to her.”
Five minutes later, after Sean had demolished a bowl of Cheerios and started to rag on his grandmother about the visit to the zoo she’d promised him, even though the zoo wasn’t open yet, Sherlock started up their rental car for the ride across town to San Francisco General Hospital.
Savich booted up MAX as they drove toward Market Street. “Cheney is already working on getting a sketch of Xu from Lin Mei. He said he’d have it out to Hammersmith about now, but it doesn’t look like he’s posted it yet. I wonder how Cindy will react to it.”
“I only hope she’ll be able to talk to us,” Sherlock said. “Cheney said she wasn’t doing well.”
“If she can, I know in my gut that now she’ll tell us everything she knows about Xu, since he tried to have her killed.”
He sat back for a moment, closed his eyes. “Until Xu murdered Milo Siles, and his game plan became clear, it was a nightmare trying to predict him. Sometimes he was controlled and logical, sometimes not. What he pulled off last night was an act of desperation, beyond his control. He was lucky it worked out as well as it did.”
Sherlock turned onto 101 South. “Ripping up an elevator ceiling, throwing down a smoke bomb, and firing down on a bunch of marshals and Ramsey sure wasn’t a logical, controlled act. I still can’t figure that one out.”
“I can’t, either. It’s so over-the-top and out of character for him. Why was he so desperate to kill Ramsey in such a crazy way? Bottom line, he’s a spy, probably has been for quite a while, and a spy’s first watchword, it would seem to me, is discretion. He buried Mickey O’Rourke in a spot no one would ever find, just bad luck for him that those kids were there.
“But then he murdered Milo Siles and Pixie McCray in broad daylight when he could easily have been spotted. He’s all over the place.”
Sherlock said, “I think with Milo it boiled down to eliminating anyone who could hurt him as fast as possible so he can get out of Dodge. It was desperation, like you said. I think if he’d thought he had a choice, he’d have waited until he could get Milo alone, bury him deep, like he did Mickey O’Rourke. I’ll tell you, Dillon, it gives me a headache.”
Savich grinned at her. “I’m hoping Xu is deluded enough or desperate enough to make a try to kill Cindy in the ICU. I doubled her guard. She’s as well covered as Ramsey. If Xu shows up, we’ll get him, no doubt in my mind.”
“You know he’s got to try. The last thing he wants is for her to talk to us, and he’s got to know she would talk, since he tried to have her killed.”
“Ah, here comes the sketch.”
Sherlock looked over at MAX’s screen at the man’s face. “Not very distinctive, is he? Not a single Asian facial characteristic except maybe for the thick black hair. Green eyes, and a thin, longish face. What age would you say, about thirty-five?”
Savich said, “Yeah, that’s about right.” He stared at the man and found himself wondering how Xu had hooked up with the Chinese government, and why he’d become a traitor to his country of birth.
