4th of July (15 page)

We parked at the curb and saw a blond woman in a pink Lilly Pulitzer dress exit the house and lock the front door. When she saw us, her face stretched into a heavily lipsticked smile.

“Hello,” she said, “I’m Emily Harris, Pacific Homes Real Estate. I’m sorry; the open house is Sunday. I can’t show you the home now because I have an appointment in town. . . .”

My face must have shown disappointment, and I saw Ms. Harris size us up as likely prospects.

“Listen. Replace the key in the lockbox on your way out. Okay?”

We got out of the car, and I linked my arm through Joe’s. Looking every bit the married couple shopping for our new home, Joe and I climbed the front steps and unlocked the O’Malleys’ front door.

THE INSIDE OF THE house had been sanitized, spiffed up, and repainted—whatever it took to get top dollar for a very challenging property. I lingered in the center hall, then followed Joe up the winding staircase.

When I got to the master bedroom, I found him staring at the closet door.

“There was a small hole here, at eye level—see, Linds? It was patched.” He dented the still-malleable Spackle with his fingernail.

“A peephole?”

“A peephole in a closet,” said Joe. “That’s odd, don’t you think? Unless the O’Malleys were making home movies.”

My mind whirled for a moment as I grappled with a possible connection between homemade porn and the Randy Long variety. Had the cops seen the camera setup?

And if they had, so what?

There was nothing illegal about consenting adults at play.

I stepped inside the newly painted closet, batted the wire coat hangers aside, then grabbed them to stop their jangling.

That’s when I saw another patch of Spackle visible under the fresh paint.

I prodded it with a finger and felt my heart start to hammer. There was another peephole at the back of the closet and it went right through the wall.

I took one of the hangers off the rod and straightened it into a long wire, which I inserted into the hole.

“Joe, could you go find where this comes out?”

The wire felt like a living thing as I waited for the tug that finally came from the other end. Joe returned seconds later. “It goes through to another bedroom. You should see this, Lindsay.”

The room next door was still partly furnished, with a ruffled four-poster, matching vanity, and an ornate full-length mirror affixed to the wall. Joe pointed out the hole disguised as a floral detail in the mirror’s carved wooden frame.

“Shit, Joe. This is their daughter’s room. Were those bastards spying on Caitlin? Were they filming her?”

I stared out the car window as Joe drove us back to Cat’s house. I couldn’t stop thinking about that second peephole. What kind of people had the O’Malleys been? Why would they have trained a camera on that child?

Had it been some kind of nanny-cam in the past?

Or was it something far more sinister?

My mind did pretzel loops around that peephole as I tried on every possibility. But it all came back to one question: Did any of this tie in with the murders?

IT WAS ONLY NOON when we got back to Cat’s house. Joe and I went into my nieces’ bedroom so that we could use their wall-size corkboard to plot out what we knew about the murders.

I found marking pens and construction paper, and pulled up two small red plastic stools to sit on.

“So what do we know?” Joe asked, tacking yellow paper across the board.

“Circumstantial evidence suggests three killers. The ME says it looks to him as though various knives and belts were used, backing up my theory that there were multiple perps, but there’s really nothing else. Not a hair, not a fiber, not a print, not a speck of DNA. It’s like working a case in the 1940s. CSU wouldn’t help crack this one.”

“What do you see as a pattern? Talk it out for me.”

“It’s not coming in clear,” I said, moving my hands over a make-believe crystal ball. “Stark told me that the victims were all married. Then he says, ‘That doesn’t mean anything. Eighty percent of the population here is married.’”

Joe printed the victims’ names on the sheets of paper.

“Keep going,” he said.

“All of the couples had children except the Whittakers. The Whittakers made kiddie porn, and Caitlin O’Malley may have been a victim. That’s pure speculation. The porn angle makes me think there may be some connection to the local porn guys, and through them to organized crime—speculation again. And lastly, my John Doe doesn’t seem to match the victim profile.”

“Maybe the first murder was an impulse,” said Joe, “and the later murders were premeditated.”

“Hmm,” I said, letting my gaze drift to the windowsill, where sweet potatoes grew in water glasses, sending out tendrils and fresh green leaves along the ledge.

“That makes sense. Maybe my John Doe was killed in a crime of passion. If so, the killer or killers didn’t feel the urge again for quite a long time. Same signature. But what’s the connection?”

“I don’t know yet. Try boiling it down for me.”

“We’ve got eight related murders within a ten-mile radius. All the victims had their throats slit, except for Lorelei O’Malley, who was gutted. All eight plus John Doe were whipped. Motive unknown. And there’s a prime suspect who’s an ex-porn stud and a Teflon-coated sleazeball.”

“I’ll make some calls,” Joe said.

WHEN JOE GOT OFF the phone with the FBI, I picked up the marking pen and Joe summarized his notes.

“None of the victims raised any red flags: no felonies, no changed names, no connections with Dennis Agnew. As for the Playmate Pen guys,” Joe said, “Ricardo Montefiore, aka Rick Monte, has been convicted of pandering, lewd public behavior, and assault, and that’s it for him.

“Rocco Benuto, the bouncer at your porn shop, is a lightweight. One count of possession. One count of breaking and entering a convenience store in New Jersey when he was nineteen. Unarmed.”

“Hardly the typical profile of a serial killer.”

Joe nodded, then continued. “All three come up as ‘known associates’ of various low-to-midlevel mobsters. They attended a few wiseguy parties, provided girls. As for Dennis Agnew, you already know about the murder charge in 2000 that was dismissed.”

“Ralph Brancusi was the lawyer who got him off.”

Joe nodded again. “The victim was a porn starlet from Urbana, Illinois. She was in her twenties, a heroin addict, busted a few times for prostitution. And she was one of Agnew’s girlfriends before she disappeared for good.”

“Disappeared? As in, no body was found?”

“Sorry, Lindsay. No body.”

“So we don’t know if her throat was slit.”

“No.”

I put my chin in my hands. It was frustrating to be so close to the very heart of this horror show and yet have not one decent lead to run with.

But one pattern was clear. The murders were coming closer together. My John Doe had been killed ten years ago, the Whittakers eight years later, the Daltrys a month and a half ago. Now two double homicides in one week.

Joe sat down on the little stool next to mine. He took my hand, and we stared at the notes tacked to the corkboard. When I spoke, my voice seemed to echo in the girls’ small room.

“They’re ratcheting up their timetable, Joe. Right now, they’re planning to do it again.”

“You know this for a fact?” Joe said.

“I do. I can feel it.”

I AWOKE TO THE jarring sound of the bedside phone. I grabbed it on the second ring, noticing that Joe was gone and that there was a note on the chair where his clothes had been.

“Joe?”

“It’s Yuki, Lindsay. Did I wake you?”

“No, I’m up,” I lied.

We talked for five minutes at Yuki’s trademark warp speed, and after we hung up, there was no falling back to sleep. I read Joe’s sweet good-bye note, then I pulled on some sweats, put a leash on Martha, and together we jogged to the beach.

A cleansing breeze whipped in off the bay as Martha and I headed north. We hadn’t gotten very far when I heard someone calling my name. A small figure up ahead came running toward me.

“Lindseee, Lindseee!”

“Allison! Hey, girl.”

The dark-eyed little girl hugged me hard around the waist, then dropped to the sand to embrace Martha.

“Ali, you’re not here alone?”

“We’re having an outing,” she said, pointing to a clump of people and umbrellas a ways up the beach. As we got closer, I heard kids singing “Yolee-yolee-yolee,” the theme song from Survivor, and I saw Carolee coming toward me.

We exchanged hugs, and then Carolee introduced me to “her” kids.

“What kind of mutt is that?” an eleven- or twelve-year-old with a sandy mop of Rasta hair asked me.

“She’s no mutt. Sweet Martha is a border collie.”

“She doesn’t look like Lassie,” said a little girl with strawberry curls and a healing black eye.

“Nope. Border collies are a different breed. They come from England and Scotland, and they have a very serious job,” I said. “They herd sheep and cattle.”

I had their attention now, and Martha looked up at me as if she knew that I was talking about her.

“Border collies have to learn commands from their owners, of course, but they’re very smart dogs who not only love to work, they feel that the animals in the herd are theirs—and that they are responsible for them.”

“Do the commands! Show how she does it, Lindsay,” Ali begged me. I grinned at her.

“Who wants to be a sheep?” I asked.

A lot of the kids snickered, but four of them, including Ali, volunteered. I told the “sheep” to scatter and run down the beach and then I unleashed Martha.

“Martha. Walk up,” I called to her, and she ran toward the little group of five. They squealed and tried to evade her, but they couldn’t outdo Martha. She was fast and agile, and with her head down, eyes focused on them, she barked at their heels, and the kids kept together and streamed forward in pretty tight formation.

“Come-bye,” I shouted, and Martha herded the kids clockwise toward the bay. “Away,” I called out, and Martha looped them back around toward the cliff, the children giggling gleefully.

“That’ll do,” I called out, and my little black-and-white doggy kept the kids in a clump by running circles around their legs, shepherding them, breathless and giddy, back to the blankets.

“Stand, Martha,” I said. “Good job. Excellent, sweetie.”

Martha barked in self-congratulation beside me. The kids clapped and whistled, and Carolee handed out cups of orange juice and toasted us. When the attention had gone off me and Martha, I huddled with Carolee and told her about my conversation with Yuki.

“I need a favor,” I said.

“Anything,” said Carolee Brown. And then she felt compelled to say, “Lindsay, you would be a great mom.”

MINUTES AFTER SAYING GOOD-BYE to Carolee and the kids, Martha and I climbed the cliff and crossed the grassy field toward Miramontes Street. My feet had just touched the sidewalk when I saw a man maybe a hundred yards away pointing a smallish camera in my direction.

He was so far away, all I could see was the glint of the lens, his orange sweatshirt, and a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. And he didn’t let me get any closer. Once he saw that I had noticed him, he turned and walked quickly away.

Maybe the guy was just taking pictures of the view, or maybe the tabloid press had found me at last, or maybe that pinging in my chest was just paranoia, but I felt kind of uneasy as I headed home.

Someone was watching me.

Someone who didn’t want me to see him.

Back at Cat’s, I stripped my bed and packed my things. Then I fed Penelope and changed her water.

“Good news, Penny,” I told the wonder pig. “Carolee and Allison promised that they’ll come over later. I see apples in your future, babe.”

I put Joe’s sweet good-bye-for-now note into my handbag and, after a thorough look around, made for the front door.

“Home we go,” I said to Martha.

We scrambled up into the Explorer and headed back to San Francisco.

AT SEVEN THAT NIGHT, I opened the door to Indigo, a brand-new restaurant on McAllister, two blocks from the courthouse, which ought to have taken my appetite away. I passed through the wood-paneled bar into the high-ceilinged restaurant proper. There, the maître d’ checked me off his list and escorted me to a blue velvet banquette where Yuki was leafing through a sheaf of papers.

Yuki stood to hug me, and as I hugged her back, I realized how very glad I was to see my lawyer.

“How’s it going, Lindsay?”

“Just fabulous, except for the part when I remember that my trial starts Monday.”

“We’re going to win,” she said. “So you can stop worrying about that.”

“Silly me for fretting,” I said.

I cracked a smile, but I was more shaken than I wanted her to know. Mickey Sherman had convinced the powers that be that we would all be best served if I was represented by a woman attorney and that Yuki Castellano was “a great gal for the job.”

I wished I felt as sure.

Although I was catching her at the end of a long workday, Yuki looked fresh and upbeat. But most of all, she looked young. I reflexively clutched my Kokopelli as my twenty-eight-year-old attorney and I ordered dinner.

“So, what have I missed since I skipped town?” I asked Yuki. I pushed chef Larry Piaskowy’s pan-seared sea bass with a parsnip purée to the far side of my plate and nibbled at the fennel salad with pine nuts and a carrot-tarragon vinaigrette.

“I’m glad that you were outta here, Lindsay, because the sharks have been in a feeding frenzy,” Yuki said. I noticed that her eyes made direct contact with mine, but her hands never stopped moving.

“Editorials and TV coverage of the outraged parents have been running twenty-four/seven. . . . Did you catch Saturday Night Live?”