Patterson, James - Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

All I’d had to do was shake his hand on it.

If I’d done that, I would have been driving to the Hall this morning, making a speech to the troops about going forward, diving into the mountain of paperwork on my desk, unsolved cases. I would’ve taken back my command.

But, although the chief had laid it on really thick, I’d turned him down.

“I still have some vacation time, Chief. I need to take it.”

He said he understood, but how could he? I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and I had a sense that I wouldn’t know until I’d gotten to the bottom of the killings in Half Moon Bay.

Those unsolved murders were a part of me now, too.

My gut told me that if I did what I was good at, if I persevered, I would find the SOB who had killed my John Doe and all those others.

Right now, that was all I really cared about.

I took 280 southbound and, once clear of the city, I rolled down the windows and changed the channel.

By 10:00 a.m., my hair was whipping across my face, and Sue Hall was spinning my favorite oldies on 99.7 FM.

“It’s not raining this morning,” she purred. “It’s the first of July, a beautiful gray San Francisco day—just floating in pearly fog. And isn’t the fog something that we love about San Francisco?”

Then, the perfect song poured through the speakers: “Fly Like an Eagle.”

I sang along in full voice, the tune pumping oxygen into my blood, sending my mood right through the ozone layer.

I was free.

The horrific trial was in my rearview mirror, and suddenly my future was as open as the highway ahead.

Eighteen miles out of the city, Martha needed a rest stop, so I pulled over into the parking lot of a Taco Bell in Pacifica. It was a wooden shack built in the sixties before the zoning commission knew what was happening. And now there stood one of the tackiest buildings in the world on one of the most beautiful spots on the coastline.

Unlike most of the highway, which streamed high above the ocean, the fast-food restaurant parking lot was at sea level. A row of rocks separated the asphalt from the beach, and beyond it the deep blue Pacific flowed over the rim of the horizon.

I bought an irresistible cinnamon-sugared churro and a container of black coffee and took a seat on the boulders. I watched tattooed, hard-bodied surfers riding the waves as Martha ran over the luminous gray sand until the sun had nearly burned off the fog.

When this great moment was sealed in my memory, I called Martha back to the car. Twenty minutes later, we entered the outskirts of Half Moon Bay.

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 107

I DROVE ACROSS THE air bell on the apron of the Man in the Moon Garage and honked a little shave-and-a-haircut until Keith came out of his office. He lifted off his baseball cap, shook out his golden hair, stuck the cap back on, smiled my way, and sauntered on over.

“Well, well. Lookit who’s here. The Woman of the Year,” Keith said, putting his hand on Martha’s head.

“Oh, that’s me, all right,” I said, laughing. “I’m just glad it’s over.”

“Yeah, I totally get it. I saw that Sam Cabot on the news. He was so pitiful. I was really scared for you, Lindsay, but it’s water over the hill now. Congratulations are in order.”

I murmured my thanks for his interest and asked Keith to fill up the tank. Meanwhile, I took the squeegee from a bucket and cleaned the windshield.

“So, what’re you up to, Lindsay? Don’t you have to go back to work in the big city?”

“Not right away. You know, I’m just not ready yet. . . .”

As the words left my mouth, a red blur breezed across the intersection. The driver slowed and looked right at me before gunning the engine and tearing down Main.

I’d been in town for less than five minutes, and Dennis Agnew was back in my face.

“I left the Bonneville at my sister’s house,” I said as I observed the Porsche’s contrail. “And I have a little unfinished business here in town.”

Keith turned and saw that I was watching Agnew’s Porsche disappear down the street.

“I’ve never understood it,” he said, jacking the gas gun into my tank, shaking his head. A bell rang as the gas meter racked up the gallons. “He’s a really bad dude. I just don’t understand why women are so attracted to trouble.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said. “You think I’m interested in that guy?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Very. But not the way you mean. My interest in Dennis Agnew is purely professional.”

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 108

AS WE HEADED TO Cat’s house, Martha jumped around from backseat to front, barking like a fool. And when I parked in the driveway, she leaped through the car’s open window and ran up to the front door, where she stood wagging her tail and singing in a high key.

“Be cool, Boo,” I said. “Show a little restraint.”

I jiggled the key in the lock and opened the front door; Martha trotted inside.

I called Joe and left him a message: “Hey, Molinari, I’m at Cat’s house. Call when you can.” Then I left a message for Carolee, telling her that she and Allison could stand down from pig-sitting detail.

I spent the day thinking about the Half Moon Bay murders while I cleaned up around the house. I cooked up some spaghetti and canned baby peas for dinner, making a mental note to do some grocery shopping in the morning.

Then I brought my laptop into my nieces’ room and set it up on their shelf of a desk. I noticed that the sweet potato vines had sent another couple inches across the windowsill, but the notes Joe and I had tacked up on the girls’ corkboard were unchanged.

Our little scribblings detailing the circumstances and the savagery done to the Whittakers, Daltrys, Sarduccis, and O’Malleys still led nowhere. And of course my lone John Doe remained pinned to the wall.

I booted up my laptop and went into the FBI’s VICAP database. The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was a national Web site with one purpose: to help law enforcement agents link up scattered bits of intel related to serial homicides. The site had a kick-ass search engine, and new information was always being plugged in by cops around the country.

Now I typed in key words that might make the tumblers spin, some answers fall into place.

I tried them all: whippings administered cum-mortem, couples killed in bed, and of course slashed throats, which sent up a storm of information. Too much.

Hours passed, and my vision started to blur, so I put the computer on “hibernate” and dropped down onto one of my nieces’ small beds to rest for a few minutes.

When I woke up, it was pitch-black outside. It felt as though something had awoken me. A slight noise that didn’t belong. According to the time flashing on the kids’ VCR, it was 2:17, and I had a prickly sense that I couldn’t nail down, as if I were being watched.

I blinked in the blackness and saw a red blur shoot across my vision. It was the afterimage of that red Porsche and it called up snatches of the disturbing scenes I’d had with Agnew. The set-to at the Cormorant and the one at Keith’s garage. The near collision on the road.

I was still thinking about Agnew. It was the only thing that explained the sensation of being watched.

I was about to get up and go to my room for what remained of the night when a series of hard pops and the sound of splintering glass shattered the still night air.

Shards of the window fell all around me.

Gun! Gun! Where the hell was my gun?

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 109

MARTHA’S REFLEXES WERE QUICKER than mine. She dove off the bed and crawled under it. I was right behind her, rolling onto the floor while riffling through my shocked mind, trying to remember where I’d put my weapon.