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One pulled the lock release, and Spat opened the cargo doors and checked out the drugs in the same way One had checked out the money: carefully.

When Spat was satisfied, the two young men in his employ moved the cartons efficiently to Spat’s minivan, then got back inside it.

The transaction was completed quickly. Spat came around to the driver’s side of the panel van and said to One, “Talk on the street about some mayhem in a furniture store.”

“That right?” One said. “I haven’t heard.”

“OK, my friend. Vaya con Dios. ”

“Stay in touch,” said One.

It was a cool night, but One was sweating. The Wicker House drugs had reportedly been paid for and were on the way to Kingfisher. He’d expected there would be talk on the street. As long as no one knew who he was.

The gangstas on the corner shouted something at him as he drove past.

He gave them the finger before he realized they had only shouted “Lights!” He switched on his headlights, got onto the freeway, and headed home.

He’d earned a good night’s sleep.

He hoped he could get one.

CHAPTER 48

TWO MEN SAT in a darkened car on Texas Street, two houses in from the corner of Eighteenth, one block away from a commercial strip. Potrero Hill was a pretty area with a view of the bay from higher on the hill, but lower, in front, all you could see were the facades of the somewhat run-down Victorian houses, the intermittent trees, and the rats’ nest of telephone wires overhead.

The guys in the car were watching one house in particular, a quaint, middle-class house that was light green with dark green trim, fronted with a short brick wall and a walk of cement pavers leading up to an unpainted wood-panel front door.

At about midnight, a silver Camry backed into a spot between a couple of scruffy trees. The man who got out of the car was white and had dark hair with a balding spot at the back of his head. He was wearing a dark-blue SFPD Windbreaker. As he locked up his car, his phone rang. He leaned against his car and spoke and listened.

Then he pocketed his phone, walked up to the front door, and let himself in with his keys. Lights went on in the downstairs hallway and then the kitchen. Those two lights went out, and another went on in the second story, in a front room, probably a bedroom. Within the next half hour, the only light in the house was the blue light from the TV.

And then the TV went off, too.

One of the men in the car said to the other, “I’ve never liked these old houses. I look at them. All I see is maintenance.”

“When you have a family, you like a deck in back. A yard. Barbecue and whatnot. Christ. How long we been waiting here?”

“Take it easy,” said the first man. “After we say hello to Inspector Calhoun and his family, we can go get something to eat.”

“I’m way ready,” said the second man.

“You’re sure you don’t want to sit here and count stars?”

The second man scoffed. One of them was going to take the front door while the other went to the back.

“See you inside,” said the first man.

“Don’t get anything on you,” said the second man.

They both adjusted their guns and got out of the car.

CHAPTER 49

I WAS AWOKEN out of a heavy sleep by my husband saying, “Lindsay, honey. Wake up.”

But why? I heard no shrieks or alarms or barks, no wails or any other emergency sounds. I was in bed and the light in the bedroom was dawnlike, so why was Joe waking me up?

Then my eyelids flew open.

“Where’s Julie?”

“Julie is fine. Everything is OK, honey.”

I rolled over onto my side and scanned Joe’s face for whatever was behind his waking me up when I needed to sleep. He was smiling.

“What time is it?”

“Seven,” he said.

“Is it Saturday?” I asked him.

“Yes. We’re going for a drive: you, me, and baby makes three. And Martha makes four.”

“I can’t go,” I said.

“The car is gassed up. I’m going to feed Julie. Coffee is on. Just get yourself up and leave the surprise part to me.”

I blinked at Joe, thinking how pretty much everyone in the Southern Station was working the weekend on the helter-skelter case of the Windbreaker cops. Still, he was right. I needed a little time to recharge.

I texted Brady that I was taking a mental health day.

He got right back. Really?

It’s just for the day.

OK. I’ll buddy up with Conklin.

A half hour later, the Molinari Four were in Joe’s lovely old Mercedes, heading down the coast. Highway 1 hugs the shoreline, and I was reminded once again how gorgeous California is. I’m not saying I stopped thinking about the Windbreaker cops, but I shook the case off long enough to call my sister, Cat.

We made a pit stop in Half Moon Bay, where my sister lives with her two daughters. Pretty soon, the little girls were romping with Martha on the beach and we grownups lagged behind them, catching up on missed chapters in each other’s lives and marveling at the way the sun lit the coastline.

“You doing OK, Linds?” Cat asked me.

“Yeah. Sure. Like usual, a little preoccupied. How about you?”

“When a princely frog appears, it will all be perfect.”

We grinned at each other. I for one was thinking about when Joe and I got married here in Half Moon Bay not long ago.

My sister and I held hands and the girls hugged and kissed me, after which the Molinari family piled back into the car and continued in a southerly direction. Martha sat on my lap and hung her head out the window. The baby slept in her carrier behind us. Joe sang along with the radio.

It was kind of marvelous.

We reached our lunch destination, Shadowbrook Restaurant, which is built into the side of a hill overlooking Soquel Creek. And the best part, the part that made our little kiddo squeal, was the cable car that traveled down from the parking lot to the restaurant so that you could see the tropical gardens and waterfalls outside the glass.

Joe was quite animated over lunch. He’d been working on the case he called CBM, Claire’s Birthday Murders. He had mined and sieved the databases, looking for intersecting lines between stabbings of women in San Francisco on May twelfth, as well as murders, bank robberies, domestic violence, and more traffic accidents than I would have thought possible. But still, even with his giant brain and investigatory genius, plus access to law enforcement databases, he’d come up with no hard evidence connecting the incidents to an actual suspect.

But you know what?

Our minds were sharp. We had the space to talk and turn ideas over, to compare what we’d already confirmed about the five women who’d been stabbed to death in San Francisco on May twelfth in sequential years.

Namely, the women were strangers to one another. None of the crimes had been witnessed or solved, and no serious suspects had even been questioned.

We had made progress by the process of elimination, and Joe and I were even more firmly convinced that the five CBMs on our list had all been done by the same guy.

Something had tripped off that killer five years ago and sent him on an anniversary spree. Unless his fury had run its course, he was still free and highly likely to kill again.

CHAPTER 50

ON THE WAY home, Joe dropped me off at Susie’s Café. Susie’s is the Women’s Murder Club “clubhouse,” where Cindy, Claire, Yuki, and I get together more or less weekly to brainstorm our cases, to bitch about the lumps life hands out, and of course to celebrate good news, both tiny and huge, over hot Caribbean food and cold beer on tap.

I blew kisses to Joe, then turned toward the bright light coming through Susie’s windows and the faint plinking sound of steel drums, which got louder when I opened the front door.