Catherine Coulter: Backfire

“Yeah, we even got brochures for mud baths in Calistoga if you want. Is Mr. Cribbs feeling better? He looked pretty bad when he checked in yesterday. I mean, he was all hunched over, and I knew he didn’t feel good. Do you know, he looks kind of like-”

Charlene said quickly, “He’s fine, only a flu of some sort.”

“Hey, aren’t you a little old for Mr. Cribbs? I mean, like his mother?”

Well, now, that’s quite enough out of you. Charlene raised her hand and shot him in the face with Xu’s Beretta. As she fired, she jumped back. She didn’t want his blood to splatter on her clothes.

Judge Sherlock’s home

Pacific Heights, San Francisco

Thursday night

Savich punched off his cell. He watched Sean happily playing an NFL video game with his grandmother, who knew squat about football, and he was winning. He wondered if Sean was smart enough to be on the 49ers’ side in the game and not the Redskins’. He leaned down and said quietly to Sherlock, “Cheney said they’re getting about fifty calls an hour on the hotline with sightings of Xu and/or Charlene. The SFPD has provided some manpower to sift through the calls, since the field office hasn’t the staff to do it.”

“At least we can discount the calls that have Xu walking around, since he isn’t,” Sherlock said. She rubbed her hands over her arms.

“Cold?”

“No, I guess someone walked over my grave. I wonder where that saying comes from. It’s pretty gruesome.”

“But descriptive. What did you feel?”

“I’m worried that something bad’s going to happen, Dillon. Soon.”

He didn’t say anything. He pulled her to her feet, then sat down and brought her down on his lap and held her. He knew she was right, something bad had to happen, with two armed and desperate people out there, their pictures all over TV.

After they got Sean bathed and buttoned into his Spider-Man pajamas, they got him down but, unfortunately, not out. He couldn’t stop talking. He was too excited about how he’d stomped his grandmother at NFL football. He had, to Savich’s surprise, gone for the Patriots. Savich finally sang him his favorite song of all time, guaranteed to put him out by the end of the first verse-“You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from Toy Story.

Sherlock was grinning when Sean’s eyes closed. “Every time,” she whispered.

They were getting ready for bed when Savich’s cell rang.

“Savich here.”

He was quiet, listening, his expression unchanging, but Sherlock saw his eyes darken. The bad something had happened.

She looked down at her watch. It was an hour and a half short of midnight on Thanksgiving night.

Skyline Motel

El Cerrito, California

Friday, one minute after midnight

Eve looked at the cluster of cop cars surrounding the motel office, parked at all angles throughout the lot. The few motel guests were grouped together, talking, probably trying to figure out what had happened. They knew enough, Eve thought, looking at the M.E.’s white van. They just didn’t know who had shot Jerol.

After they’d spoken to Mrs. Idling, Eve and Harry had come outside, primarily to get out of the way of the El Cerrito forensic team and the M.E. She said to Harry, “I hate this. That young man is dead because he must have recognized Xu on TV. But what I don’t understand is why Xu came back to the office and shot him. Why not simply leave? Why even come to the office in the first place?”

Harry said, “Maybe Xu couldn’t be sure about him, didn’t want to chance him making a phone call. The kid was another loose end.” He watched them wheel young Jerol Idling out, already zipped into a green body bag. Savich and Sherlock and Cheney followed. They were speaking to the El Cerrito police chief, Glenis Sayers.

Eve said to Harry, “When Chief Sayers’s detectives arrived at the scene, they found the name Joe Cribbs with the license plate number that Jerol had written down for him next to it. When they matched it to the blue Honda that was stolen in Sausalito on Tuesday, they called her. Bless her, she called Cheney right away, so it’s thanks to her we’re in the mix at all.”

They watched El Cerrito police officers crowding around the chief, one of them with his arm around Mrs. Idling’s shoulders. She was plastered against him. They could hear her sobs from where they stood. Life can be snuffed out from one moment to the next, Eve thought. It was horrible and scary, and true for each and every human being on this earth.

Harry nodded. “There isn’t any doubt it was Xu. Everything fits. Mrs. Idling never saw him, but she knew a guy had paid cash to check into room two-seventeen on Tuesday. Jerol told her the guy seemed sick, favoring his arm when he checked in, said the guy seemed really out of it. The Joe Cribbs signature in the ledger is pretty illegible, as if written with the wrong hand. Remember Xu is left-handed, and he was shot in that arm. I’ll bet ballistics matches the bullet to the gun that killed Dr. Chu.”

Eve said, “But that doesn’t help us tonight. Maybe Xu doesn’t know we’ve got him made, doesn’t know we’re looking for that blue Honda he’s driving. I wish Mrs. Idling hadn’t dismissed the shot she heard as a backfire for those precious minutes before she came over to investigate.”

Harry said, “The corker is she saw two cars skidding out of the parking lot, with the door to Mr. Cribbs’s room standing wide open.”

Eve said, “It means he was too sick to ditch the Honda, but he wasn’t too sick to call someone to the motel to help him. He’s been here a day and a half. He could have called the Chinese for help. You think that second car was driven by a Chinese connection?”

Harry shook his head. “That doesn’t sit right with me, doesn’t feel right. But you know, if not the Chinese, then who? And was that other person the one who shot Jerol?” He thought about that, but no answer stepped up. He said, “That second car, Mrs. Idling is sure it’s an older Corolla. Since there was no license plate matching it in the register, it wasn’t anyone who was staying here, legally, at the motel. If they’re smart, they’ll leave the Honda somewhere and we’ll have no way to trace them.”

Eve said on a sigh, “Whoever it is, it’s a game changer. With help, Xu can go anywhere he wants now.”

Cheney called out, “Harry, we need you over here.”

Harry Christoff’s house

Laurel Heights, San Francisco

Saturday morning

Eve kicked back, put her booted feet on the ottoman. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday, and she felt grungy. She leaned her head back against the sofa back and said, “My head hurts.”

Harry stood over her, a cup of coffee in his hand. “You ate breakfast an hour ago so it’s okay to drink another cup of this fine brew. Then we’ll talk.”

Talk? That opened her eyes. What did he mean, talk? Eve didn’t want to talk-a guy talk about two adults enjoying sex and no commitment? No, that wasn’t Harry. Harry was honorable to his feet. Like big statue-of-David feet. No, Harry felt guilty because he’d made love to her and now it was morning and somewhere along the line he’d realized she expected more from him, and so he regretted ever pulling down her blue bikini panties. How was he ever going to explain that to her so she didn’t shoot him?