Catherine Coulter - Backfire

Harry said, “Yes, sir, it’s true. I ordered Deputy Barbieri to keep her mouth shut, and I told everyone here in the hospital to keep this from you or I’d have them all fired.”

“But still-” Ramsey said, but Eve overrode him. “You want guilt? Give me a big share, okay? I allowed you to very nearly get killed in the elevator only two days ago.”

Ramsey frowned at her. “Get real, Eve.”

“I will if you will. Listen, we all do our feeble best, and sometimes things simply don’t go the way we planned or we prefer. Did your recovery take a hit from that fiasco Saturday?”

“No, the elevator business didn’t faze me, Eve. Dr. Kardak even told me I was such a superb physical specimen he felt comfortable taking out the chest tube this morning. They took away my morphine pump, too. I’m on oral pain medication now, and I’m thinking a lot more clearly.” He looked from Eve to Harry. “You two are quite a team, aren’t you?”

“We’re not a team,” Harry said. “That’s a vicious rumor.”

“That’s right,” Eve said. “If we were a team, Harry would be saluting me by now.”

“In your dreams,” Harry said.

Ramsey didn’t laugh. He knew how bad it would make him hurt. He said, “So you think Sue is a code name for a man? That simplifies things, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a start,” Harry said. “All we can do is keep digging.”

“If we were a team, Ramsey,” Eve said, “you could count on me telling the boy here where to dig.”

A laugh came out this time. Ramsey closed his eyes and took some light shallow breaths against the stabbing pain in his chest where the tube was removed. Slowly, too slowly, he eased. He said, “Emma’s performance is in a week and a half. I keep telling my body to get over it and stop whining at me. I really don’t want to miss it.” He managed a smile. “Do you know what a pain it is to have to lie here and let people come in and out and torture you? Amazing that the hospital makes you pay them for it.” He realized he had come full circle. “Sorry for the complaints. I’m a loser. Just belt me.”

“Nah,” Eve said, “not until you have a prayer of belting me back.” He was exhausted, Eve saw it, knew Harry saw it, too. Not only exhausted, he seemed flattened emotionally, like Molly. She knew he’d think about Mickey O’Rourke’s murder and blame himself for a very long time.

She watched Ramsey close his eyes. He said, barely above a whisper, “You’ve got to find the worthless son of a bitch who did this.”

She took his hand, squeezed it. “We will, Ramsey, I swear we will.”

There were two marshals and two SFPD officers nearby, two outside and two inside the room. Of course they’d been listening. She knew they’d all discuss the O’Rourke murder with Ramsey after she and Harry left. Perhaps they’d come up with something. She knew the deputy marshal who was stationed outside Ramsey’s room was smart and committed to keeping Ramsey safe. Not a single sign of trouble, he’d said when they’d arrived to see Ramsey. She hoped it stayed that way.

She said to the guards standing by the window, “Hey, has Judge Hunt talked you into playing poker with him yet?”

Ramsey groaned.

“What, you haven’t stripped them of their paychecks, Ramsey?”

“No, not our paychecks,” Officer Mancusso said. “We told him he’d have to fix parking tickets for our wives.”

Ramsey said, “I tried to tell them I couldn’t fix a thing since I’m a federal judge, not a state judge.”

Mancusso winked at her. “We don’t believe him. We figure a federal judge has got friends everywhere.”

“If you win, Ramsey, what will you get from them?”

Ramsey didn’t open his eyes. “I’m thinking maybe they can get one of their buddies in Contra Costa County to ticket my chief judge’s boat in Discovery Bay. He’s having way too much fun on Cyrano -his big bad cabin cruiser-and drives way too fast. Scares the crap out of the fish. He deserves a couple of tickets, and he needs to spend more time in here commiserating with me.”

Mancusso said, “I heard the chief judge has friends everywhere, too, sir.”

Federal Building

Thirteenth floor

San Francisco

Monday morning

After the forensic team leader Joe Elder and the M.E. Dr. Martin McClure had left the conference room, one back to his beloved lab, the other to his sanitized and very quiet morgue, Cheney summed it up. “So all we have from Joe is a smudged partial palm print that may be identifiable and we know isn’t O’Rourke’s.” Cheney clicked off his second finger. “The M.E. confirms Mickey was tied down and beaten during the two days before he died early Sunday morning. The killer sliced Mickey’s throat with a sharp knife at least six inches long, not serrated, right to left, suggesting he’s left-handed. And last, Sheriff Hibbert let us know the tire tracks were made by a worn Goodyear All Weather, a popular replacement tire for a whole lot of SUVs. So we haven’t got a lot.”

Savich said, “Nothing from Hammersmith about the Dodge Charger he’s been looking for?”

“He’s had no luck with that,” Cheney said. “And no useful leads yet from any of the hotels in the city on the man-or woman-who was driving it.”

Savich said, “After what the killer did to Mickey O’Rourke, we should stop talking about a woman. We all think you’re right, Cheney. It’s a man who killed Mickey O’Rourke.”

Burt Seng said, “Still, guys, it could have been a very strong woman. Hey, Eve here could carry lots of dead weight.”

“Not that much,” Eve said.

Dillon said, “Mickey O’Rourke weighed two hundred and ten pounds, and everyone has described the perp as slender, not very big, so it’s got to be a man, a very fit man.”

Harry said, “I agree; even the ponytail couldn’t have managed it.”

Eve said, “I know I couldn’t, so it’s a man. For sure. Now, I don’t think Cindy was putting us on, either, about the name Sue-it was too raw, too fast. I don’t know who this Sue is, but I agree, she can’t be O’Rourke’s murderer. Maybe an accomplice, but not the killer.”

Sherlock said, “Boozer Gordon described a man, too, not a woman; there was no question in his mind. So, yeah, good-bye, Sue.”

“Without those kids,” Harry said, “not only wouldn’t we ever have found Mickey O’Rourke, but, bigger yet, we still would have been trying to fit our killer into a female body.”

Cheney said, “I say we buy those kids tickets to a Forty-niners game.”

Savich repeated slowly, “If Sue is an accomplice, was she with the killer when he beat Mickey? Did she question him? Did she tell him to slice Mickey’s throat? If so, then why wouldn’t she go with him to bury him? As his lookout, his helper, whatever? But she didn’t.” Savich stopped cold. He looked very thoughtful, then, without another word, he started quickly typing on MAX’s keyboard.

Sherlock cocked her head at him, since she knew that Eureka! look well. He’d thought of something, something big. She said, “We’ve been working on a bit of information Boozer Gordon gave us. When the man was putting on plastic gloves to draw Boozer’s blood, Boozer noticed two rings on his fingers. The diamond pinkie ring sounds like the one Mrs. Moe described the shooter wearing when he rented the Zodiac. As for the other one, Boozer said it looked sort of ‘religious’ and actually asked the man if he was a priest. The man said no, he’d won it in a poker game. But still it could be an easy lie. Since it was an odd sort of ring to wear, it could have significance, it could be important.”