James Patterson - 11th hour

I said to Claire, “Well, it only means that Chandler didn’t bury his wife’s head in the garden. Doesn’t mean he’s off the hook for the others, right? Any other news from the doctor?”

“There was no trauma to any of the skulls.”

“So you still don’t know causes of death.”

“That’s correct.”

My best friend held up a finger and said, “So, I’ve been working on the head of our Jane Doe in the cooler. I made a maggot milk shake.”

“Wonderful. I hope you’ll give me your recipe.”

“Maggots, like all animals, are what they eat. If Jane here was poisoned or drugged, the tox screen on the milk shake would reveal that. So I put some squirmers into the blender and sent that out to the lab. Hoping for something, Linds. I was hoping for arsenic. Instead, we found benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine.”

“So you’re saying Jane Doe was a drug user.”

“Yep, but there wasn’t so much that it would’ve been fatal, so — ”

“So all we know is that Jane Doe did drugs.”

“We’re not done yet. Dr. Perlmutter is working up those skulls for facial identification. We’ll have something soon.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Good. Because right now we have nada, nothing, goose egg,” I said. “I need help.”

I was thinking about the seven unidentified heads as I retraced my steps back upstairs to the squad room. I came through the gate, saw Conklin at his desk with a thin, lank-haired man of about forty sitting in a side chair talking to him.

Conklin introduced me to Richard Beadle, the headmaster of the Morton Academy. I shook his damp hand, took my desk chair, and joined the interview already in progress.

“I gave out my home number,” Beadle said. “I felt that I should do that, but now my phone rings constantly and at all hours. Parents are distraught. Kids are having nightmares, and I don’t know how to comfort them.

“Here’s the latest,” Beadle went on. “This is the prizewinner. Chaz Smith’s family is speaking to the school through lawyers. They’re suing us. Please tell me you’ve got something on that killer. Anything will do, anything I can tell the board and the parents.”

“We’re working this case hard,” Conklin said. “It’s our number one priority. Let’s look at pictures, okay?”

Beadle had printed out sixteen photos that had been taken at the spring recital. Most of them were impromptu family portraits that had been shot in the school lobby before the fire alarm had rung.

I scrutinized each shot, and as I looked at cute kids and proud folks, I asked myself if I could be wrong about an angry cop called Roddy Jenkins. Could he really have taken a stolen. 22 to the Morton Academy and put two rounds into Chaz Smith’s forehead?

I didn’t see it. And I didn’t see Jenkins. Not in the foreground and not in the background, and I didn’t see anyone who looked out of place.

The headmaster put a name to every man, woman, and child in each picture. We tagged partial sleeves and collars and hairlines to the identified pictures, and every piece of clothing matched to a known person.

Except for one.

I stared at an unfocused picture of the back of a blue suit jacket worn by someone we couldn’t identify, and my throat tightened.

Was I looking at the only recorded image of the shooter?

I was pawing through photos in search of that blue jacket when Brady’s shadow crossed my desk. We all looked up.

Brady was menacing even when he wasn’t trying to be, like a linebacker primed to unload.

The lieutenant said hello to Beadle, then banged six photographs down in front of him, every one of them a picture of a cop who worked for the SFPD.

I knew all six of those men. Knew them well.

“Give them all a thorough inspection, Mr. Beadle,” Brady said, looking like he was going to shake the guy until he picked out the shooter.

What if, in his panic, Beadle picked someone out?

What if he fingered a good and innocent cop?

Beadle’s eyes bored in on each of the six photographs; he took Brady’s advice and didn’t rush.

“I don’t recognize anyone,” Beadle said, finally. “Is one of these men the killer?”

Brady’s relief was apparent.

“No,” he said. “You did fine.”

We wrapped up the interview and I said good night to the office. Or I tried to.

Reporters were waiting for me outside the Hall, a bunch of them surging up from Bryant Street, stampeding toward me as I stood on the top of the Hall’s front steps.

Now that I knew what Jason Blayney looked like, it was easy to pick him out of the crowd.

Blayney was at the leading edge of the pack of reporters, some of whom I’d known for years. Others had to be out-of-towners who’d just blown into the Bay Area for a big, banging story that would be making headlines indefinitely: murder at the Ellsworth compound.

The reporters were on the move, sticking elbows into ribs, treading on toes, jostling video equipment as they angled for position on the Hall’s front steps.

Microphones advanced.

Cameras fired in a 180-degree arc around my face.

I’d been mobbed by the press hundreds of times before, but today, I’d been told to keep my mouth shut and let Brady do the talking.

Jason Blayney called out to me, “Sergeant Boxer. What does Harry Chandler have to do with the bodies at his house? Is he a suspect?”

Overlapping questions came at me like flights of arrows: How many bodies had been found? Had the victims been identified? Had the SFPD arrested anyone?

“Is Harry Chandler a suspect, Sergeant?”

“Lindsay, please give us something, okay?”

I looked for a way out, but the crowd was dense and shifting, too thick to bull through. I reminded myself to adopt the wise and cool mind-set Bec Rollins had advised.

Suddenly, that seemed like a good idea.

I took a breath, said, “Sorry, everyone. You know the drill. I have nothing to tell you at this point. I have to protect the integrity of the investigation. That’s all I’ve got, so if you’ll please excuse me, I’ll see you some other time.”

The reporters weren’t taking no way for an answer. I looked around for anyone leaving the Hall of Justice who could step in and take the cameras off me. I was hoping to see the DA or Jackson Brady.

But that wasn’t happening, and Jason Blayney was still in my face.

“Sergeant Boxer, the public has a right to know something. If there’s a murderer on the loose — ”

“Mr. Blayney? We can’t give out information about an ongoing investigation. You know that, or you should know that. You want a statement, contact Media Relations in the morning. Thank you.”

I ignored the renewed flight of questions and parted the throng by lowering my head and making gravity my friend. I’d gotten down the steps and across Bryant, all the way to my car in the lot, when I heard footsteps, someone running up behind me. It was Jason Blayney, damn it, and he was calling my name.

I kept my back to him, got into the Explorer, had the door half closed behind me when Blayney put his hand on the door handle and pulled.

Was he kidding? This was over the freaking top.

I whipped around and faced him down.

“Blayney, are you crazy? The answer is no. No statement. No nothing. Now back the hell off.”

Grinning, he took my picture, then shut off his tape recorder and said, “Thanks for your nothing statement, Sergeant.”

I knew I was going to see my picture on the Post ’s front page and that I was going to look insane.

So much for wise and cool.

I was steaming as I drove out of the lot. Blayney was a cockroach, but frankly, he and I both had the same questions.