Marcia Muller: Locked In

I blinked again.

“You can hear me. See me.”

Blink.

“Can you move?”

I decided two blinks would mean no.

“Can you talk to me?”

Blink, blink.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re on your way back. I’m getting your doctor.”

Thank God. I knew I could count on you, Ripinsky.

But what the hell took you so long?

She propped her right elbow on the desk and lowered her forehead to the palm of her hand. Her eyes ached and pain needled above her brow. Through the open doorway of her study she could hear her stepdaughters, Molly and Lisa, squabbling downstairs over which DVD to watch. She wouldn’t interfere. Let them duke it out-that was her parenting philosophy. Prepare them ahead of time for the often rocky shoals of life.

She took several deep breaths. The throbbing stopped. She raised her head and fumbled in the desk drawer for eyedrops. They soothed the ache.

She raised her head and stared out the window to the northeast at the fog-shrouded towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. Below the house waves pounded the shoreline. Many millions’ worth of view. She remembered when she and Ricky and the real-estate agent had first toured the multilevel mansion in the exclusive Sea Cliff area: it was so beautiful that she ached to live there. She’d been poor and in debt most of her life, and she couldn’t believe anything remotely like that was possible. But in the bedroom with the indoor hot tub overlooking the sea, Ricky had put his arms around her and said, “What do you think, Red? Will you live here with me?” The answer was a given.

Back to the present, she told herself.

But the present was so depressing. Shar…

She thought back to her initial interview with the woman she’d hoped would be her boss, when Shar was staff investigator at All Souls Legal Cooperative, a poverty law firm. Rae had been in her twenties, trapped in a bad marriage to a professional student, and adrift as far as a career was concerned. Shar’s faith in her ability to make a good investigator had given her the strength to break with her husband and move on. And as they worked together, a friendship strong enough to last a lifetime had formed between them.

At least, she’d thought it would last a lifetime, till some scum-bag had pumped a bullet into Shar’s brain.

And now she was trying without much success to connect this old homicide to Shar’s shooting. Cold cases fascinated most people, but as far as Rae was concerned they were a pain in the ass. For that matter, so was the director at the San Francisco Victims’ Advocates. Maggie Lambert, an old-school feminist and former rape victim with great empathy for her mostly deceased clients. But Maggie wasn’t interested in providing accurate files or details. She wanted instant resolutions to cases that had been gathering dust forever.

Plus it was hard for Rae to focus when she was so worried about Shar.

Shar-now almost but not quite a relative by marriage. Ricky was only Shar’s former brother-in-law, but his and her sister Charlene’s six kids-four of whom Rae was participating in raising-had caused her enough trouble to qualify her for family membership. They weren’t collectively called the Little Savages for nothing.

Back to the files.

Angie Atkins, in her late teens, a hooker who’d been found slashed to death three years ago in an alley off Sixth Street downtown-San Francisco’s skid row. No family, no history. She’d never been fingerprinted-didn’t hold a driver’s license-but Rae had a lead on another hooker who had been Angie’s best friend. So far her informant had only given her a first name-Callie-which she could’ve made up in order to get the money for her next fix.

Victims’ Advocates was a nonprofit group funded by various foundations and state and federal grants. Their focus was on cold cases involving violence to women. Although they employed two investigators, they were currently on overload, and McCone Investigations had agreed to take the case pro bono.

Why, Rae thought now, had she been the one Adah Joslyn approached with the assignment? And why had she agreed? She didn’t draw a salary from the agency, didn’t need to work if she didn’t want to. But although she and Ricky had so much money that neither of them would have to lift a finger for the rest of their lives, idleness wasn’t a component of their natures. So he managed his recording company, scouted for new talent, issued an occasional CD, and performed charity concerts. She wrote and investigated, because both pursuits were in her blood.

Now Rae tried to think of scenarios that would link the cold case with the burglar who had rifled their offices and then shot Shar. It was a stretch. She’d asked Patrick Neilan, the operative who coordinated their investigations, to look into those that Shar had been working three years ago. He’d turned up nothing to link with this one.

Finally Rae gave up and decided to have a glass of wine while she waited for Ricky to return from his recording company’s headquarters in LA.

Then the phone rang. An informant with an address for Angie Atkins’s friend Callie-last name O’Leary.

He was really pissed off, and Celestina Gates wasn’t improving his mood any.

She strode around the living room of her Nob Hill condominium issuing statements that boiled down to it’s-all-about-me and why-haven’t-you-found-out-who’s-ruined-my-life. Tall, willowy, with long dark hair, she normally would have attracted Mick. Had attracted him when he’d first met her. Now, instead of taking her to bed, he wanted to dangle her off her twelfth-story balcony.

Being pissed off had to do with Shar’s condition: Gates’s problem seemed so trivial compared with what had happened to his aunt. His aunt, who had put up with his immaturity, mentored him, given him a sure direction in life.

If this Gates bitch had anything to do with Shar’s shooting… He waited with gritted teeth till his client’s tantrum had passed, sitting on her red leather sofa and looking at the gray sky above the grim brownstone facade of the old Flood Mansion across California Street-a creation of famed architect Willis Polk that now housed the exclusive Pacific-Union Club. When Gates finally sat in a matching chair opposite him and fumbled with a cigarette and lighter, he said, “Ms. Gates, something’s wrong here.”

“Of course something’s wrong! My life and career are destroyed!”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Her nostrils flared. “What, you think I’m not telling you everything?”

She’d said it, he hadn’t. “Yes, I do.”

“How dare you-?”

He held up his hand. “Last night I was rereading the case histories you describe in Protect Your Identity . In each one, it took a long time for the individual to regain access to bank accounts and establish new credit card accounts and ratings.”

Wary now. “Yes.”

“I understand that as an expert on identity theft, this would be easier for you to accomplish than for a run-of-the-mill victim-even one using your book.”

“I suppose so.”

“Yet you chose to hire our agency.”

“Well, sometimes an objective investigator can do a better job than the individual involved.”

“Uh-huh. You claim you’ve been financially ruined.”

“I have been.”

“This condo-your mortgage is ninety-five hundred and thirteen dollars a month.”

“How do you-?”

“And that Jaguar in the garage downstairs is leased for three thousand.”

“… Right.”

“Your credit cards are all clean, and over there in the foyer are five big shopping bags full of stuff from places like Gucci and Neiman Marcus.”