James Patterson: 11th hour

“No kidding. NBC Nightly News Brian Williams? What did you tell him?”

“Ongoing case. No comment at this time. Call Media Relations.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, and ‘I love your work.’”

I laughed.

Conklin said, “But seriously, Lindsay, if we don’t give Cindy something newsworthy, my home life is going to suck. She was on the scene before we were, you know?”

“Hey, here’s news: Brady gave us the green light. This is officially our case now.”

The Ellsworth garden had been transformed while I was out. An evidence tent had been set up just off the patio, rolls of brown paper had been unfurled over pathways, and a grid of crime scene tape had been stretched across the garden.

I saw several new holes. Soil had been piled on tarps, and halogen lights were on. But even with the halogens, there wouldn’t be enough light to work the scene once the sun had set; the forensics team would have to quit for the night so that evidence didn’t get lost or trampled.

God help us if it rained.

I found my best friend, chief medical examiner Dr. Claire Washburn, inside the tent wearing a size 16 bunny suit and booties, what she called a full-body condom with a zipper.

She greeted me, said, “Fine mess we have here, girlfriend. No, don’t hug me. And don’t touch anything. We’re trying to hermetically seal whatever kind of crime scene this freaking obscenity is.”

She kissed the air next to my cheek, then stepped aside so I could see her worktable.

Four heads were lined up, three of them as clean as the proverbial whistle, and as the head numbered 104.

The fourth skull showed some traces of scalp.

“The hounds just got another hit,” Claire told me. “Another skull. Of the six I’ve examined so far, all were severed with a ripsaw.”

The tent flap opened and Charlie Clapper came inside. Man, I was glad to see the chief of the Crime Scene Unit. Clapper is a former homicide cop, my friend, and SFPD’s own Gil Grissom. He was as dapper as anyone could possibly be in a bunny suit, and I could see comb marks in his hair.

Clapper was carrying a heavy brown paper bag that he handed to Claire, and he held a small glassine bag in his gloved fist.

“Hey, Lindsay. I hear Brady tossed you this hot potato.”

“I self-tossed it. It’s either work the case or lie awake wishing I were working it.”

“I feel the same way. Don’t try to take this once-in-a-lifetime mind-bender away from me. It’s mine. Hey, I’ve got something here for us to ponder.”

“Hit me with it.”

“I found blood in one of the holes, made me think that was our fresh Jane Doe’s grave. If I’m right, this necklace was probably hers.”

He held the baggie up to the light.

“A trinket,” he said. “A necklace. But no neck to hang it on.”

The necklace was made of glass beads on a waxed string with a cheap metal clasp, the kind of costume jewelry commonly found at street fairs. What made this one special was that Jane Doe had handled it. There was a slim chance we might be able to lift her fingerprints from the beads.

Maybe her killer had left DNA on them too.

Charlie Clapper was saying, “I found other doodads. This one,” he said, holding up a baggie. “It’s a pendant. Could be an amethyst set in a gold bezel. The rest of the artifacts have been moldering in the ground too long for me to say what they are or to get anything off them.

“But they are trophies, wouldn’t you say?”

A lightbulb went on in my mind. I was finally getting the picture.

“What if the heads are the trophies?” I said to Clapper. “I think this place is a trophy garden.”

That night we all met in Claire’s domain, the Medical Examiner’s Office, which is right behind the Hall of Justice.

All four of us — Claire, Cindy, Yuki, and me — sat around the large round table Claire used as a desk, ready for a four-way brainstorming meeting of what Cindy had dubbed the Women’s Murder Club.

Normally when we meet to talk about a case, we worry about Cindy reporting something she isn’t supposed to know. If you forget to say “Off the record,” your words could be tomorrow’s headline. But tonight I was more worried about Yuki.

Yuki is an assistant DA and I knew anything we said was off the record — but was it off the pillow?

Yuki was dating Jackson Brady.

Yuki was sleeping with my boss.

I said, “Don’t tell Lieutenant Wonderful, okay? He wouldn’t like this.”

“I hear you,” Yuki said, grinning at me. She patted my arm. She promised nothing.

Claire turned up the lights, passed out bottles of water, told us that the six skulls were in paper bags to prevent condensation and that the long-haired Jane Doe’s remains were in the cooler so that the soft tissue didn’t decompose further.

Claire said, “I’m going to give all seven heads a thorough exam in the morning, but I also hired a forensic anthropologist to consult. Dr. Ann Perlmutter from UC Santa Cruz. You’ve heard of her. She was a special consultant identifying bodies in mass graves in Afghanistan. If anyone can work up identifiable faces on bald skulls, Ann can.”

“How long will that take?” I asked.

Claire shrugged. “Days or weeks. Meanwhile we’ll work with Jane Doe’s face. Photoshop her a little bit. Put her on our website.”

“I can create a Facebook page for her,” said Cindy.

“Not yet,” I said, trying to rein in Cindy’s racehorse tendencies. “Give us a chance to ID her in real life, keep her parents from finding out that she’s dead by seeing her page on the Web.”

I told Cindy and Yuki about the numbers 104 and 613, showed them a photocopy of the index cards we’d found with the first two heads. No numbers had been found with the other heads.

“So, two numbers only. Maybe it’s a game,” said Yuki.

“So you think the killer is into Sudoku?” I said.

“You’re funny,” Yuki said, giving me a soft punch in the arm.

“But you said there were no numbers with any of the other remains,” Claire said.

“To me that means whoever dug up the heads left the numbers,” I said. “These are two distinct acts — burying and exhuming. They may have been done by different people.”

Cindy had been tapping keys on her laptop.

“I just ran the numbers through Google. Came up with a lot of stuff that doesn’t seem related to backyard burials. For instance, I’ve got numbers of committees on radiation, department numbers at European universities.”

“Gotta be some kind of code,” Yuki said.

“Maybe it’s an archive number,” I offered. “The head-and-flower tableau was set up almost like an exhibit.”

“Let me run with this part of the puzzle,” Cindy said. “I’ll let you know what I find, and what do you say, Linds? I have first dibs on the story if I find out what the numbers mean?”

“If you actually find something we can use.”

“Right.”

“I’ll have to clear it before you run it.”

“Of course. My usual penalty for being friends with you guys.”

“Okay,” I said to Cindy. “The numbers are yours.”

“Biggest issue for me,” Claire said, “is that we have no bodies. Without bodies, we may never be able to determine causes of death.”

“Well, at least it’s seven bodies we need to find, not six hundred and thirteen,” Yuki said.

“Not six hundred and thirteen so far,” said Claire. “There are many more backyards in Pacific Heights.”

We groaned as one.

It was raining when I ran out the back door of Claire’s office to my car. Reporters were in the parking lot waiting for me, calling my name.