4th of July (24 page)

“That’s right,” I told her. “I’m Lieutenant Boxer. I’m with the SFPD.” And then I showed her my badge.

The woman’s face stiffened instantly. “I’ve already talked to the police.”

“That’s great. So I’m sure you won’t mind doing it again.”

I pulled out the chair beside her desk and sat right down.

“I understand that you and Dr. O’Malley were close friends,” I said to her.

“I’m not ashamed of what you’re insinuating. The man was miserable at home, but I wasn’t a threat to his marriage and I damned well had nothing to do with his murder.”

As I watched, Ms. Harris squared all the pads, pens, and papers on her desk. Tidying up. Getting everything straight and true. What was running through this neatnik’s mind right now? What did she know about the O’Malleys?

“And you’re the listing broker for his house?”

“That’s not a reason to murder someone, for God’s sake. Are you crazy? I’m one of the top brokers in this area.”

“Take it easy, Ms. Harris. I wasn’t implying that you murdered anyone. I’m just trying to get a handle on the victims because I’m working another unsolved homicide.”

“Okay. I’m still a little raw, you know.”

“Sure. I understand. Have you actually sold the house?”

“Not yet, but I have an offer pending.”

“Good. How about showing the house to me, Ms. Harris? I have a couple of questions that I hope you can answer. Maybe you can help solve Ben O’Malley’s murder.”

PACIFIC HOMES FLYERS WERE fanned out on a table in the foyer, and the flowers had been changed since Joe and I had taken our self-guided tour of this pretty house on Ocean Colony Road.

“Mind coming upstairs with me?” I asked the Realtor.

Ms. Harris shrugged, tossed the keys down next to the lilies, and started up the stairs ahead of me.

When we got to the entrance of the master bedroom, she hung back.

“I don’t like to go into this room,” she said, casting her gaze around the pale green bedroom with its brand-new green carpet.

I could imagine the murder scene almost as well as she could. Only three weeks before, the body of Lorelei O’Malley had lain gutted about ten feet from where we stood.

Emily Harris swallowed hard, then joined me reluctantly in front of the walk-in closet. I showed her the faint painted-over outline of the peephole in the door and the still-visible crescent where Joe’s thumbnail had left its impression in the wood filler.

“What do you make of this?” I asked her.

Emily’s voice thinned and became scratchy. “This kills me, that’s what I make of it,” she said. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? He was videotaping sex with Lorelei. He told me he wasn’t sleeping with her anymore, but I guess he lied.”

Then her face crumpled and she started to cry softly into a bouquet of pale blue tissues she pulled from her handbag.

“Oh, God, oh, God,” she sobbed. After a while she blew her nose, cleared her throat, and said, “My relationship with Ben has no bearing on his murder. Can we get out of here now?”

Not if I could stop her. Whatever I might learn from Emily Harris, there was no better time than now, no better place than right here.

“Ms. Harris.”

“Jesus Christ. Call me Emily. I’m telling you all this personal stuff.”

“Emily. I really need to know your side of the story.”

“Fine. You know about Sandra?”

I nodded my assent, and as if I had pulled the plug, she spilled.

“Don’t you think I worried that she killed herself because Ben was seeing me?” She dabbed at her swollen eyes, and more tears came.

“Ben said Sandra was a head case, which is why he didn’t leave her. But after she killed herself, I stopped seeing him for a year.

“Then Lorelei came into the picture. The Princess. Ben thought the sooner he got married, the better for Caitlin, so what could I say? I was still married, Lieutenant.

“Then we started up again.

“My place mostly. Motels once in a while. Funny enough, I don’t think Lorelei gave a damn about Caitlin.

“But Ben and I made the best of the situation. Played a game with it. He called me Camilla. I called him Charles. His Royal Highness. It was fun. And I miss him so much. I know Ben loved me. I know he did.”

I didn’t say, “As much as a scurvy, cheating prick can love someone,” but I did open the door to the walk-in closet and invite the real estate broker inside.

“Please, Emily.”

I showed her the second peephole in the back wall.

“This hole goes through the wall . . . to Caitlin’s room.”

Emily gasped and put both hands to her face.

“I never saw that. I know nothing about it! I have to go,” she said, turning and running out of the bedroom. I could hear her high heels clacking as she ran down the stairs.

I caught up to Emily as she grabbed the keys from the hall table and opened the front door. She stepped outside.

“Emily.”

“I’m done,” she said, her chest heaving, pulling the door closed and locking it behind us. “This is too painful. Don’t you understand? I loved him!”

“I can see that,” I said, walking beside her, then standing next to the driver’s-side door as she fired up her engine.

“Just tell me one more thing,” I persisted. “Did Ben know a man named Dennis Agnew?”

Emily released her emergency brake and turned her tear-streaked face toward me.

“What? What are you saying? Did he sell our videos to that slime?”

Emily didn’t wait for an answer. She yanked on the steering wheel and jammed down the accelerator.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said to the retreating Lincoln.

I CRUISED BY THE idling patrol car at the end of Sea View Avenue, lifting my hand in greeting as I passed. Then I hooked a right into Cat’s driveway and parked the Explorer next to the Bonneville. Apparently, Keith had returned the old girl while I was away.

I let Martha into the house and gave her a biscuit. Then I turned my attention to the blinking answering machine. I pressed “play” and started making notes on a scratch pad.

Joe, Claire, and Cindy had all phoned in with worried requests for me to call back. Message number four was from Carolee Brown inviting me to dinner at the school that night.

Then, a message from Chief Stark, his voice weary as it came through the speaker.

“Boxer, we got the labs back on that belt. Call me.”

Chief Stark and I had been playing phone tag all day. I swore as I flipped through the scratch pad looking for his number. Then I dialed.

“Hang on, Lieutenant,” said the duty officer. “I’ll page him.”

I heard the sound of the police band sputtering in the background. I tapped my nails on the kitchen counter and counted to seventy-nine before the chief got on the line.

“Boxer.”

“That was a fast return on the lab report,” I said. “What have we got?”

“It was fast for a reason. There were no prints, not that that surprises me. But unless you count bovine DNA, there was nothing else, either. Lindsay, the bastards dripped a little beef blood on the buckle.”

“Aw, give me a break!”

“I know. Shit. Look, I gotta go. Our mayor wants a few words with me.”

The chief hung up, and, by God, I felt sorry for him.

I walked out to the deck, took a seat in a plastic chair, and hung my ankles over the railing as Claire had advised me to do. I stared out beyond my sandals and the neighbors’ backyards to the aqua blue line of the bay.

I thought again about that belt lying on the lawn this morning, and the bloodstain that had turned out to be nothing.

One thing was clear.

The killers hadn’t tried to kill me.

The belt was a warning meant to scare me away.

I wondered why they’d bothered.

I hadn’t solved John Doe’s murder and ten years later I was still sucking swamp water here.

Meanwhile, the killers were out there, and all the white hats had was a tantalizing handful of “what ifs” and “how comes” that went nowhere.

We didn’t know why.

We didn’t know who.

And we didn’t know where they would strike again.

Other than that, everything was the cat’s meow.

FAMILIES, THE BANE OF modern civilization, where the scum of the past was kept alive, cultivated, and refined. At least that was the Watcher’s perspective tonight.

He opened the mudroom door and entered the pink stucco house high up on Cliff Road. The Farleys were out for the night, so secure in their cocoon of wealth and privilege that they never even bothered to lock the door.

The mudroom led into a glassed-in kitchen that was glowing with the last rays of sunset.

This is just surveillance, the Watcher reminded himself. Get in and out in under five. Same as always.

He took his camera from the inside pocket of his soft leather jacket and panned the room, taking a series of digital photos of the many tall glass panes, the mullions wide enough for a person to enter.

Zzzzt, zzzzt, zzzzt.

He moved quickly through the kitchen to the Farley family room, which cantilevered out over the mountainside. Amber light filled the woods, giving the shaggy eucalyptus bark an almost human presence, the trees like elderly men watching his movements. As though they understood and approved.

Just surveillance, he told himself again. Things were too complex, too hot right now to go forward with their plans.

He rapidly mounted the back stairs to the bedrooms, noting the steps that creaked the loudest, the solid banister. He proceeded down the hallway of the second floor, stepping inside each of the opened doors, taking his photos, memorizing the details. Frisking the rooms as if he were a cop patting down suspects.

The Watcher checked his watch as he entered the master bedroom. Nearly three minutes gone. He quickly opened the closets, sniffed the scents of Vera Wang and Hermès, closed the doors.

He ran down the steps to the kitchen and was about to leave when he thought of the basement. There was enough time for a quick look.

He opened the door and skittered down.

There was an extensive wine cellar to his left, and the laundry room was in front of him. But his eyes gravitated to a door on his right.

The door was in shadow, secured with a combination padlock. The Watcher was good with combination locks. He was very good with his hands. He turned the dial left until he felt the minute resistance, then right and left again. The lock sprung open, and the Watcher unlatched the door.

He identified the equipment in the basement’s half-light: the computer, the laser printer, and the reams of high-quality photo paper. The video and digital cameras with night vision capability.

A thick stack of photo prints sat neatly on a counter.

He stepped quickly inside and closed the door behind him. Flipped the switch that turned on the lights.

It was just a harmless surveillance mission, that was all, one of many.

But what he saw when the lights went on almost sent him over the edge.

MARINARA SAUCE WAS IN the air as I came up the walk to Carolee’s Victorian live-in schoolhouse. I shielded my eyes against the last rays of sun flashing off the many-paned windows and dropped the brass knocker on the big front door.

A dark-skinned boy of about twelve opened up and said, “Greetings, police lady.”

“You’re Eddie, right?”

“Ready-Eddie,” he said, grinning. “How’d you know that?”

“I’ve got a pretty good memory,” I told him.

“That’s good, since you’re a cop.”

A cheer went up as I entered the “mess hall,” a large open and airy dining room facing the highway.

Carolee gave me a hug and told me to sit at the head of the table. “That’s the ‘honored guest’ spot,” she said. With Allison grabbing the chair to my left and Fern, a small red-haired girl, fighting for the chair to my right, I felt welcomed and at home in this huge “family.”

Bowls of spaghetti and a tub of salad with oil and vinegar journeyed around the table, and chunks of Italian bread flew across it even as the kids pelted me with questions and riddles—which I fielded and occasionally aced.

“When I grow up,” Ali whispered, “I want to be just like you.”

“You know what I want? When you grow up, I want you to be exactly like you.”

Carolee clapped her hands together, laughing gaily.

“Give Lindsay a break,” she said. “Let the poor woman eat her dinner. She’s our guest, not something for you to devour along with your food.”

As she got up to bring a liter of cola from the sideboard, Carolee put her hand on my shoulder and leaned down to say, “Do you mind? They love you.”

“I love them, too.”

When the dishes were cleared and the children had gone upstairs for their study hour, Carolee and I took our coffee mugs out to the screened-in porch facing the playground. We sat in matching rockers and listened to the crickets singing in the darkening night. It was good to have a friend in town, and I felt especially close to Carolee that night.

“Any news on whoever shot up Cat’s house?” Carolee asked, concern edging into her voice.

“Nope. But you remember that guy we had a run-in with at the Cormorant?”

“Dennis Agnew?”

“Yeah. He’s been harassing me, Carolee. And the chief isn’t making a secret of the fact that he likes Agnew for the murders.”

Carolee looked surprised, even shocked. “Really? I’m having a hard time imagining that. I mean, he’s a creep, all right,” she said, pausing. “But I don’t see him as a murderer.”

“Just what they said about Jeffrey Dahmer.” I laughed.

Then I drummed my fingers on the arm of the chair; Carolee crossed her arms over her chest, and I imagined we’d both gone inside our heads to think about killers in the wind.

“It’s pretty quiet here, huh?” said Carolee at last.

“Remarkably. I love it.”

“Hurry up and catch that maniac, okay?”

“Listen, if you ever get nervous about anything, Carolee—even if you think it’s just your imagination—call nine-one-one. Then call me.”