Patterson, James: Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree

LEAVE IT TO CLAIRE, San Francisco's chief medical officer, my best friend of a dozen years, to say the one thing in the midst of this madness that would make me cry. “Charlotte Lightower was pregnant.”

Claire was looking drawn and helpless in her orange sur-gical scrubs. “Two months. Poor woman probably didn't even know herself.”

I don't know why I found that so sad, but I did. Maybe it made the Lightowers seem like more of a family to me, humanized them.

“I was hoping to catch up with you sometime today.” Claire gave me a halfhearted smile. “Just didn't envision it like this.”

“Yeah.” I smiled and wiped a tear from the corner of my eye.

“I heard what you did,” Claire said. She came over and gave me a hug. “That took a lot of guts, honey. Also, you are a dumb bunny, do you know that?”

“There was a moment when I wasn't sure I was going to make it out, Claire. There was all this smoke. It was every-where. In my eyes, my lungs. I couldn't see for shit. I just took hold of that little boy and prayed.”

“You saw the light. It led you out?” Claire smiled.

“No. Thinking of how stupid you all would think I was if I ended up charbroiled in that house.”

“Woulda put a bit of a damper on our margarita nights,” she said, nodding.

“Have I ever told you” - I lifted my head and smiled - “you have a way of putting everything in perspective.”

The Lightowers' remains were side by side on two gur-neys. Even at Christmas the morgue is a lonely place, but on that Sunday afternoon, with the techs gone home, graphic autopsy photos and medical alerts pinned to the antiseptic walls, and a grisly smell in the air, it was as grim as I could remember.

I moved over to the bodies.

“So, you called me down here,” I said. “What did you want me to see?”

“I called you down here,” she said, “ 'cause it occurred to me that you needed a good hug.”

“I did,” I said, “but a killer medical revelation wouldn't hurt.”

Claire moved over to a table and started to take off her surgical gloves. “Killer medical revelation?” She rolled her eyes. “What could I possibly have for you, Lindsay. These three people, they were blown up.”

Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree

Chapter 13

AN HOUR LATER Tracchio and I held a tense, very emo-tional news briefing on the steps of the Hall. Cindy was there, along with about half the city's news force.

Back in the office, Jacobi had run the name on the photo, August Spies, through the CCI database and the FBI. It came back zilch. No match on any name or group. Cappy was dig-ging up whatever he could on the missing au pair. We had a description from Lightower's sister, but no idea how to find her. She didn't even know the girl's last name.

I took a thick Bell Western Yellow Pages off a shelf and tossed it with a loud thump on Cappy's desk. “Here, start with N, for nannies.”

It was almost six o'clock on Sunday. We had a team down at X/L's offices, but the best we could get was a corporate public relations flack who said we could meet with them tomorrow at 8 A.M. Sundays were shit crime-solving days.

Jacobi and Cappy knocked on my door. “Why don't you go on home?” Cappy said. “We'll handle it from here.”

“I was just gonna buzz Charlie Clapper.” His CSU team was still picking through the scene.

“I mean it, Lindsay. We got you covered. You look like shit, anyway,” Jacobi said.

Suddenly I realized just how exhausted I was. It had been nine hours since the town house had blown. I was still in a sweatshirt and running gear. The grime of the blast was all over me.

“Hey, LT.” Cappy turned back. “Just one more thing. How did it go last night with Franklin Fratelli? Your big date?”

They were standing there, chewing on their grin like two oversize teenagers. “It didn't,” I said. “Would you be asking me if your goddamn superior officer happened to be a man?”

“Damn right, I'd be asking',” Cappy said. “And might I add, for my goddamn superior officer” - the big detective threw his bald head back - “you're looking mighty fine here in those tights. That Fratelli brother, he must be quite a fool.”

“Noted.” I smiled. It had taken me a long time to feel in charge of these guys. Both of them had double my time on the force. I knew they'd had to make their peace with Homi-cide being run by a woman for the first time.

“Something you want to add to that, Warren?” I asked.

“Nope.” He rocked on his heels. “Only, we doin' suits and ties tomorrow, or can I wear my tennis shorts and Nikes?”

I brushed past him, shaking my head. Then I heard my name one more time. “Lieutenant?”

I turned, piqued. “Warren?”

“You did good today.” He nodded. “The ones who matter know.”

Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree

Chapter 14

IT WAS ONLY a ten-minute drive out to Potrero, where I live in a two-bedroom walk-up. As I went through my door, Martha wagged up to me. One of the patrolmen at the scene had taken her home for me.

The message light was flashing. Jill's voice: “Lindsay, I tried to call you at the office. I just heard....” Fratelli: “Listen, Lindsay, if you're free today...” I deleted it without even hearing what he had to say for himself.

I went into the bedroom and peeled off my tights and sweats. I didn't want to talk to anyone tonight. I flicked on a CD. The Reverend Al Green. I stepped into the shower and took a swig of a beer I'd brought with me. I leaned back under the warming spray, the grit and soot and smell of ash chipping off my body, swirling at my feet. Something made me feel like crying.

I felt so alone.

I could've died today.

I wished I had someone's arms to slide into.

Claire had Edmund to soothe her on a night like tonight, after she pieced three charred bodies together. Jill had Steve, whatever... Even Martha had someone - me!

I felt my thoughts drift to Chris for the first time in a while. It would be nice if he were here tonight. It had been eighteen months since he died. I was ready to put it behind me, to open myself to someone, if someone happened to be on the scene. No drum roll. No “Ladies and gentlemen, the envelope, please....” Just this little voice in my heart, my voice, telling me it was time.

Then I drifted back to the scene at the Marina. I saw myself on the street, holding Martha. The beautiful, calm morning; the stucco town house. The redheaded kid spin-ning his Razor. The flash of orange light.

Over and over I ran the reel, and it kept ending at the same point.

There's something you're not seeing. Something I had edited out.

The woman turning the corner just before the flash. I had seen only a glimpse of her back. Blond, ponytail. Something in her arms. But that wasn't what was bothering me.

It was that she never came back.

I hadn't thought about it until now. After the blast...The kid with the Razor was there. Lots of others. But the blond woman wasn't among them. No one interviewed her. She never came back...Why?

Because the son of a bitch was running away.

That moment flashed over and over in my mind. Some-

thing in her arms. She was running away. It was the au pair. And the bundle in her arms? That was the Lightowers' baby!

Womans Murder Club 3 - 3rd Degree

Chapter 15

HER HAIR FELL in thick, blond clumps onto the bathroom floor. She took the scissors and cut again. Everything had to start over now. Wendy was gone forever. A new face began to emerge in the mirror. She said good-bye to the au pair she had been for the past five months.

Cut away the past. Wendy was a name for Peter Pan, not the real world.