Patterson, James - Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

“You’re amazingly perceptive,” I said. By now, I was picturing him naked, too.

“Listen, naked lady, rumor has it I’m going to be in your town this weekend. The whole weekend.”

“Good, ’cause I miss you,” I said, my voice dropping down a few notches, getting a little throaty. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

We flirted until my skin was damp and my breath was short. When we hung up a few minutes later, we had a plan for our upcoming good time.

I dropped my robe, stepped into the shower, and, as the hot spray beat on my skin, began to belt out a pretty good rendition of “My Guy,” loving the vibrato in my voice coming back at me in my little tiled sound studio.

Whooo! Let’s hear it for Lindsay Boxer, pop star.

For the first time in a whole lot of days, I put the job out of my mind.

I felt great, at least for the moment.

I felt gorgeous.

And very soon, I was going to be with my love.

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 27

CHIEF TRACCHIO WAS obviously surprised to see me when I knocked on the partially open door to his office. There was a lot of dark wood paneling in there and a big photo mural of the Golden Gate Bridge that took up the whole wall facing his desk.

“Boxer,” the chief said now. Then he actually smiled. “Come in.”

I’d thought about my speech all night, rehearsed it in my mind all morning, had the first line all teed up and ready to go.

“Chief, I have a problem.”

“Drag up a chair, Boxer. Let’s hear it.”

I did as he said, but as I looked into his face, I forgot the careful phrasing, the curlicues and fripperies, and blurted out the whole deal at once.

“I don’t like being a boss, boss. I want to go back to investigation full time.”

His smile was gone, long gone. “What are you saying, Lieutenant? I don’t get you.”

“I wake up in the morning feeling wrong, Chief. I don’t like supervising a lot of other people. I don’t like being Lieutenant Inside,” I explained. “I like being on the street, and you know that’s where my abilities lie, Tony. You know I’m right.”

For a second or two I wasn’t sure Tracchio had even heard me — his face was that stony. Was he thinking of all the killers I’d helped put away? I sure hoped so. Then he slapped the desk with such force, I inadvertently pushed my chair back a couple of inches.

He exploded verbally, spit actually flying in my direction.

“I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, Boxer, but you’ve got the job. You — no! Don’t say anything! You know how many men got bumped when you were promoted? You know how many guys in the squad still resent you? You were promoted because you’re a leader, Boxer. You’re squad commander. Do your job. End of conversation.”

“Chief—”

“What? Make it quick. I’m busy.”

“I’m better on the ground. I close cases, and my record bears that out. I’m spinning my wheels in my office, and those guys who want to be lieutenant, well, you should promote one of them, Chief. You need someone in my job who wants it.”

“Okay, now that you’ve started this, I’ve got a couple of other things to say to you,” Tracchio said.

He opened a desk drawer, pulled out a cigar, chopped off the tip of it with a pocket guillotine gizmo, and puffed blue smoke into the air as he lit his stogie.

I waited breathlessly.

“You’ve got room to grow in this job, Boxer. When it comes to crime solution, the SFPD is dead last across the board. In the whole country! You need to learn to supervise better. Help other cops with your experience. You need to put out a positive image of the SFPD. Be a beacon of good. You gotta help us recruit and train. You’re nowhere when it comes to that stuff, Boxer, and — I’m not finished!

“Not long ago you got shot and almost died. We almost lost you for good. You weren’t even on duty that night, and you showed no self-control at all. Jacobi invites you on a stakeout, you say, ‘Let me at it.’”

Tracchio stood, whirled around, put his hands on the back of his chair. His reddened face radiated exasperation. “You know, I don’t even understand what the hell you’re beefing about. You’ve got it easy. How would you like my job?”

I stared at him dully as he began ticking off departments on his sausage fingers: “I’ve got Homicide, Robbery, Narcotics, Anticrime, and Special Victims. I got the mayor and I got the governor, and if you think that’s like getting the red-carpet treatment on Oscar night—”

“I think you’re making my point for me, Chief.”

“Look, why don’t you do yourself and everyone else a big favor and suck it up, Lieutenant. Request denied. Now we’re done.”

I felt like a little kid as I picked myself up and left Tracchio’s office. I was humiliated and mad enough to quit — but I was too smart to do it. Everything the man had said was right. But I was right, too.

Recruit and train?

Learn to supervise?

None of that had anything to do with why I’d become a cop.

I wanted to be back on the streets of San Francisco.

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 28

CINDY THOMAS SAT on the back bench of courtroom 4A of the Civic Center Courthouse, squeezed between a reporter from the Modesto Bee and a stringer for the LA Times. She felt keyed-up, focused, and very, very possessive. This was her town, her story.

Her laptop was warm on her knees, and Cindy tapped at the keyboard, making notes as Maureen O’Mara’s first witness was sworn in.

“Good morning, Mr. Friedlander,” O’Mara said. The lawyer’s long auburn hair glowed against the flat blue wool of her suit. She wore a white blouse with a plain collar and a simple gold watch on the wrist of her ring-free left hand.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking, but how old are you?” O’Mara asked her witness.

“I’m forty-four.”

Cindy was surprised. With his creased face and graying hair, she would have put Stephen Friedlander’s age at closer to sixty.

“Can you tell the Court about the night of July twenty-fifth?” O’Mara asked.

“Yes,” Friedlander said. He cleared his throat. “My son, Josh, had a grand mal seizure.”

“And how old was Josh?”

“He was seventeen. He would have been eighteen this month.”

“And when you got to the hospital, did you see your son?”

“Yes. He was still in the emergency room. Dr. Dennis Garza brought me to see him.”

“Was Josh conscious?”

Friedlander shook his head. “No.”

This prompted O’Mara to ask him to speak up for the court reporter.

“No,” he said, much louder this time. “But Dr. Garza had examined him. He told me that Josh would be back at school in a day or two, that he’d be as good as new.”

“Did you see Josh after that visit to the emergency room?” O’Mara asked.

“Yes, I saw him the next day,” Friedlander said, a smile flitting briefly across his face. “He and his girlfriend were joking with the fellow in the other bed, and I was struck by that because there was kind of a party atmosphere in the room. The other boy’s name was David Lewis.”

O’Mara smiled, too, then assumed a more sober expression when she spoke again.

“And how was Josh when you got to see him the next morning?”

“They let me see my son’s body the next morning,” Friedlander said, his voice breaking. He reached forward, clasping the rail of the witness box with his hands, the chair legs scraping the floor.

He turned his hopelessly sad and questioning eyes to the jury, and then to the judge. Tears sheeted down his furrowed cheeks.