“I can’t keep living this way. I’ve got an offer for Janet or Nicole, whichever one of them can name the killer and give you enough evidence to prove it.”
Chandler and I discussed his offer for another minute or two, and then I asked him to stand by.
Conklin and I found Nicole napping in the interview room, cheek down on the old gray metal table. I kicked the chair and it scraped across the floor. She lifted her head and Conklin and I took chairs on either side of her.
“How’s it going, Nicole?” the good cop asked her.
“It’s late. I want to go home now.”
I slapped morgue photos down on the table one after the other, close-up shots of arms, legs, thighs, buttocks with knife wounds, and a right shoulder blemished by burns from a stun gun.
“Do you recognize these body parts, Nicole?”
“Oh. Gross.”
I pointed to the knife cuts in the quartered haunch of human flesh.
“See these? These are stab wounds. And I’m betting they’re going to perfectly match the knife you were waving around a few hours ago. The lab is doing the workup now.”
“Well, you gotta do what you gotta do,” Nicole said.
Her words were flippant, but her expression had changed. She was starting to believe that we had evidence to indict and convict. Her eyes flicked from the photos to me and then back.
“We’re only hours away from nailing you to the wall, Nicole. But if you confess before we lock this case up, you could avoid the death penalty.”
“Really.”
Her voice was resigned. She twisted up her hair, kept her hands on her head, leaned back in the chair, and looked at the ceiling. She was beat. And so were we.
I got up, righted Nicole’s chair so that the force of the legs hitting the floor made her head jounce. I sat back down across from her.
“Look at me, Nicole.”
She shook her head.
“Then listen to me. Harry Chandler wants to know what happened to his wife and to the seven other women you killed. He’ll pay your attorney’s fees if you confess to all of it. There is no limit to how much he’ll spend on an attorney to represent you.”
I got up, opened the door, and Harry Chandler came in. He was big, imposing, and he looked straight at Nicole.
He said, “It’s a good deal and it’s your choice. Top-dog attorney, top-drawer law firm to negotiate your sentence — or you can deny everything and get whatever kind of lawyer you can afford.”
Nicole said, “Do you care about me, Harry?” She lifted her arms up to Chandler, but he backed away and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Nicole wailed, a wordless, keening cry.
Then she wiped her face with the sleeves of her turtleneck and said in an uninflected voice, “I need aspirin. I want to make a statement.”
Chapter 114
IT WAS A new day, a Friday to be exact, and Yuki, Claire, Cindy, and I were all gathered in Jackson Brady’s office.
Cindy plugged in her laptop, checked the power light, got ready for her just deserts.
“Start talking, Lindsay,” she said as she opened a new file. “What happened after Nicole spoke to Harry Chandler?”
“Well, she got a great lawyer, Francine Bloom, beautiful woman. Wore a three-thousand-dollar Armani suit, Ferragamos —”
“Lindsay! Stop fooling around.”
Claire, Yuki, and I laughed. It was a nervous, almost giddy reaction to enormous relief.
The bloody fingerprints under the freezer lid had been smudged. The stab wounds in the body parts and the stun-gun wounds were inconclusive. And Janet Worley wouldn’t turn on her daughter.
Maybe Nicole would have been convicted anyway, but it wouldn’t have been a sure thing. Nicole’s confession slammed the house-of-heads case closed.
Yuki and Claire knew it all, and now Cindy deserved the whole scoop and nothing but the scoop.
I told Cindy that we weren’t laughing at her; we were just relieved. “Nicole confessed to killing the seven women whose heads were buried at the Ellsworth compound. And she confessed to killing Cecily Chandler too.”
“Oh. My. God. But why?”
“Because Harry Chandler gave her a good deal. And because she believed we had incontrovertible evidence.”
Cindy said, “I meant why did she kill Cecily?”
“This is Nicole’s story, you understand. She was only sixteen when Janet and Harry got involved. Harry dumped Janet, and Nicole wanted to avenge her mother. Her idea of justice was to strangle Cecily one dark night in the garden. Take that, Harry.”
“And what did she do with the body?”
“Dragged Cecily into the basement and then went to her mother for help.”
“So Janet was part of this?” Cindy asked, fingers doing the cha-cha on her keyboard.
“Janet and Nicole sawed Cecily’s body into pieces, bagged and froze the parts. Then they drove up north to Modoc National Forest.”
“That’s, what? A six-hour drive? They buried her body in the wilderness?”
“Nicole says that they put the wrapped parts in the backseat under a tarp. When they got to a good deserted section of road, they stopped the car every hundred yards and walked into the woods with a package for the animals to eat,” I told my friend. “So Janet was involved in covering up Cecily’s murder. She did it for Nicole, but actually she was protecting her entire family.
“According to Nicole, that was the only time she involved her mother.”
“Meanwhile, Harry went on trial for Cecily’s murder,” Yuki said.
“Right,” I said, “and with the spotlight on him and her own involvement in this crime Harry didn’t commit, Nicole fixated on Harry.
“Janet and Nigel stayed on as caretakers and lived in the main house ‘so the place wouldn’t go cold,’ as Janet said, and Nicole eventually took up residence in number two.
“By then, she had a degree in biology, a driver’s license, unrequited love for Harry, and recurring fantasies about killing again.”
Cindy told me to hang on a minute, which I did, and then she said, “So, the victims come from many parts of the world. They were all on a house tour, maybe self-guided tours.”
“Exactly. Every now and then a tourist, a Harry Chandler fan, presented Nicole with an opportunity to relive her first murder,” I said. “She knew which ones were unlikely to be reported missing right away, and Nicole told us that she liked petite dark-haired women who reminded her of Cecily.”
Claire said, “What she’d do is take them down to the basement on a pretext of showing them some of Harry’s personal trophies, and they were easy enough to kill. A zap with a stun gun from behind, then a knife across the throat.”
Yuki said, “She got the disposal part down to near perfection. Then, thank God, she got lazy.”
“Lazy, but not crazy,” I said. “Nicole knows right from wrong. You know what she said to me when I took her to jail? ‘Tell my mom to be happy for me. I retired at the top of my game.’”
Chapter 115
THE WOMEN’S MURDER Club was going for a ride in my Explorer on our way to a long overdue reckoning. I was behind the wheel and Cindy was behind me, leaning over the seat divider, breathing down my neck.
We headed up Seventh at a good clip, crossed Market, passed the Civic Center BART, then turned left on McAllister.
I slowed the car and stopped at the light. There was a pack of unmarked cars parked in front of the Asian Art Museum, across the street from the Abby Hotel. Just as promised.
The Abby Hotel was a peach-colored six-story Victorian building with white trim, a brown awning over the entrance, and a fire escape zigzagging up the front of the building.
It stood in all its shabby elegance across the street from the Asian Art Museum, two blocks from City Hall. The homeless roamed this part of McAllister freely, but it was also the hub of government and legal activity.
Now, at noon, the streets and sidewalks were filled with suited m
en and women from the courts carrying briefcases or pulling luggage trolleys, their heads bent to their iPhones.
I parked in front of the hotel, and the girls and I got out of my car. I showed my badge to the doorman, a gnarled-looking boozer somewhere between his late fifties and early seventies. It looked to me as though the last time he’d had his uniform cleaned was — never.
Then I bent at the window of an unmarked car to talk to Lieutenant Meile from Vice. He was working off his guilty conscience by giving us a tip and following up by providing all hands on deck.
He gave me a room number, said, “History tells us he’ll be in there for another twenty minutes.”
Two cops from Vice, Billy Fried and Johnny Rizzo, got out of the unmarked and joined me and the girls on the sidewalk.
The six of us entered the Abby’s scruffy, mildewed lobby; we passed on the rickety metal elevator car and instead took the fire stairs to the third floor.
Vice took the lead. Fried rapped on the door while Rizzo took a stance on the other side of the doorway, holding his gun in a two-fisted grip.
Fried said, “Open the door. This is the SFPD.”
There was a scuffle inside, two alarmed voices, and then the sound of something crashing.
Fried turned the knob, saw the chain, and applied the force of his foot to break in the door. He stepped in and said, “Hands up, Blayney. Everyone, freeze.”
I headed into the room and saw Jason Blayney raise his hands, dropping the stained sheet he’d been holding in front of his privates. Jewel Bling, a low-rent call girl, was still in the bed. She drew a ratty blanket up to her chest. A lamp had been shattered during Blayney’s overheated rush to get dressed and lay on the carpet of this beyond horrific maroon-and-gray-appointed room.
“I’m researching a story on prostitution,” Blayney yelled. A bulb hanging from a cord above him swayed, casting a harsh, unflattering light on his blanched face and naked body.
“Research?” The hooker hooted. “What kind of research? How many times you can get your pipes cleaned for thirty dollars?”
Cindy stepped forward with her camera and shot a lot of pictures of Blayney trying to cover himself with his hands.
“I want to make a deal,” said Jewel Bling. “Shut up!” Blayney bellowed.
He grabbed the sheet off the floor and turned a pitiful face to Cindy. His eyes were squinched up, and he cried out, “Cindy, please. Let this go and I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
I was stunned.
This was the bastard who wrote lies and leaked information for the pure glory of getting his name on the front page. Now he was begging for mercy.
“My wife will leave me if she sees those pictures,” he said.
“She’ll take the kids. They’re all still young. I won’t be able to explain this to them.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. “You’re a hypocrite, Blayney. This is part of the SFPD’s crackdown on crime. He’s your collar, Billy.”
Billy Fried walked to Blayney, dragged the reporter’s hands behind his back, and cuffed him.
“You’re under arrest for pandering, buddy. Don’t worry. The penalty is just going to be a fine.”
Cindy fired off a few more shots with her Nikon, then said, “I think I’ve got your best angle, Jason. And don’t worry. I will spell your name right. You don’t have to worry about that.”
Chapter 116
RICH CONKLIN WAS DRAGGED away from a deep place of no pain.
He’d been sleeping when Cindy squeezed his good shoulder, called his name. He opened his eyes and saw the tops of her breasts showing in the neckline of her loose pink top.
“If you don’t get up, you won’t be able to sleep tonight,” she said.
He loved looking at her sweet face. Her rhinestone clip sparkled in her blond curls. Rhinestones looked like diamonds on Cindy. Still, he wanted to get her actual diamonds someday.
“Come to bed,” he said. He took her hand, tugged on it. She frowned, said, “No. You have to get up. Come on.” She left the room.
“What’s wrong, Cin?”
“You said you wanted to talk,” she called.
“I said that? Oh, last week? When you were steaming toward a deadline and said you couldn’t be disturbed?”
Rich heard her choking on a laugh in the next room.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost six. Jeez. He’d been sleeping all day.
He shuffled into the living room in his T-shirt, sling, boxers.
The table was set and champagne was open, standing in a flowerpot full of ice. Cindy bent over the table and lit some candles.
“Sit here, honey,” she said, patting the back of the chair. He did what she told him to do, then watched her pour champagne into the two flutes they had gotten at a flea market six months ago.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked.
“It’s a new tradition,” Cindy told him.
Now he smelled the aroma of herbs and spices coming from the kitchen. He hadn’t eaten anything in twelve hours.
“What are we calling this tradition?” he asked. “It’s the first-day-of-the-month dinner, Richie. And I propose that we do this every month, no matter what. No matter what case. No matter what deadline. We need to shut everything off for an hour and just be together.”
“Sure, Cindy. It’s a good idea. Why do you look so sad?”
“I have to apologize.”
“For?”
“I’ve been straying in my mind.”
“Some other guy?”
“No, not that.”
Cindy explained to him that she’d been in a panic about committing to marriage and motherhood, had worried about losing her place as a journalist, being marginalized as a part-time writer.
“I’ve been keeping part of myself out of our relationship.”
“Okay, stop beating yourself up now.”
He got up from his seat and hugged Cindy with his good arm. “I want you to be happy, Cindy. I know you’re ambitious and I love that about you. Plus, I’m a boring guy without you.”
“I was so scared when you got shot.”
“I know.”
“It got me focused on the right stuff.”
“Did you make beef stew?”
“For instance, that you’re just the best man in the world.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes, Richie. I do.”
“Did you make your deadline today?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“Nope.”
“We won’t have babies until you say so. If you say so.”
“You still want to marry me?”
“Feed me our new traditional first-day-of-the-month dinner, Cindy. Please?”
“You betcha. I might have burned it though.”
“Kiss me.”
“Okay. Here. Here. And here.”
“After we eat, let’s go to bed.”
Chapter 117
JACOBI AND I were having dinner at Aziza, a Moroccan restaurant; aromatic, homey, decorated in deep, earthy tones, and fragrant with all the spices of Arabia.
Jacobi’s color was good and he was wearing a blue sweater that made him look years younger than his age. Better than he’d looked in a long time.
“William Randall died without gaining consciousness,” Jacobi told me. “Good side of that is that he wasn’t convicted of anything. His widow will still get his pension.”
“You think Randall knew that Chaz Smith was a dirty cop?” Jacobi shrugged. “He could have known. It’s very possible. Ah. I got back the ballistics, Lindsay.”
“Are you going to tell me something bad, Jacobi? Because I just want to catch up and have dinner.”
“The shot to Randall’s kidney came from Brady’s gun.
That was the kill shot, and since Brady’s going to be on leave for a while, it won’t matter if he has to be without his gun and badge while we prove he
fired on Randall in self-defense.”
“Don’t tell me I have to keep running the squad, Jacobi. I really don’t want to do it.”
“I’m going to be running the squad. Me.”
“Yeah?” I grinned. I liked what Jacobi was saying. A lot. “Until Brady returns and I can move back upstairs to my nice office with its beautiful view of Bryant Street.”
I slapped his hand above the plate of couscous, lifted my virgin mojito, and said, “Here’s to having you back in the corner office.”
Jacobi grinned and clinked his glass against mine, and then he laughed.
“I’m not going to let you cowboy around while I’m running the squad.”
“Oh, like you can change me. Don’t get your hopes up.”
“You’ve got a baby in the oven, Boxer —”
“I think that’s ‘bun in the oven’ —”
“And I’m part of your family. Don’t forget that I walked you down the aisle on the happiest day of your life.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
I hadn’t forgotten a minute of that day. Me on Jacobi’s arm. Walking on rose petals. Seeing my husband-to-be waiting for me in the gazebo overlooking the sea.
I put my hand on my tummy, stared off into space, then came back to the moment when I realized that Jacobi was staring at me.
“Is something wrong, Boxer?”
I touched his hand. “You were terrific that day. Standing up for me.”
“It was a great honor.”
His eyes showed me what I already knew. How much he cared. How close we had been and would always be.
“I’m going to get sloppy,” I said. “Brace yourself.”
“No, no, please don’t do that,” he joked.
I got up and went around the table and he stood up, and I hugged him really hard. I said into his ear, “I missed you, Warren. I’m so glad you’re coming back.”
Chapter 118
IT WAS A pretty Sunday morning and I was at Mountain Lake Park, herding children.