We looked up and down Jones, peering into shop windows, and didn’t see Neddie. We split up. I went up Geary, and Richie took O’Farrell. We checked in with each other by phone, and fifteen minutes after losing Neddie, Conklin and I met back at the car. We took our seats and kept our eyes on the alley. Damn it to hell! How did we freaking lose that guy?
And then—Neddie walked right past us. His eyes were still down and he was talking to himself.
I heard only a few words: “… need some cash.”
I said to Conklin, “Now.”
We sprang out of the unmarked car and walked up on Neddie as he turned into the alley.
We were ten feet away when he saw us and started to scream. He unlocked the green metal door that led to the building and disappeared inside. I heard the door lock behind him. I pulled on the handle anyway, but it was secure.
I let out a few loud curses.
Conklin pulled his gun and shot out the lock.
CHAPTER 83
CONKLIN PULLED OPEN the metal door, and we rushed through the doorway into a garbage room piled high with bulging construction bags. The room was about fifteen feet square and was bracketed by two doors.
We’d come through the first, the metal door that connected the trash room to the alley. Neddie was crouched against the wooden door in the far wall, which led to the underground corridor—and he was screaming, “I’m good. I’m good.”
At the same time he was trying to fit a key into the door lock and was having no luck. His height and the short length of his arms and his fear were preventing him from inserting the key.
I took very quick stock of the situation. Neddie was crying and wailing, and yet I’d seen him walking normally. If what he was doing now was an act, it was a very convincing act of a man playing with half a deck.
My gun was in my hand when I said, “Neddie. Give me your keys.”
He was making terrible whimpering sounds, like a small animal caught in a trap. I wondered what the hell I thought I was doing, holding a gun on a mental patient armed with a set of keys.
Did I seriously think I would shoot him? For what?
Was this the “weird-looking guy” who might have killed a half dozen people or more? Or was he just what he seemed to be, a mental patient on a walkabout? I couldn’t know. And I couldn’t take any chances.
Conklin said, “Neddie. I’m Richie. No one’s going to hurt you. See?” He showed Neddie his gun, then opened his jacket and slipped the gun into his holster.
“My partner, Lindsay, will put her gun away, too.”
I did it.
Rich went on, “Sorry to scare you, Neddie. Sorry about the noise. Let’s go upstairs so we can talk.”
Bags rustled behind me. I spun around and saw a maintenance worker hiding between the garbage bags and the wall, his hands over his ears, trying to make himself invisible.
Neddie said to Conklin, “Talk. Just talk, right, Richie?”
Rich reassured him, and Neddie said, “I give up, I give up.”
Neddie was holding a small bunch of keys above his head, and Rich reached for them. Neddie ducked under Rich’s arm and threw himself facedown on top of the orderly.
What is this?
Neddie said to the man, “Lawrence, we’re leaving here together.”
Lawrence said, “Neddie, leave me out of this. Go or don’t go. It’s no business of mine.”
“It is now,” said Neddie.
The squeal in his voice was gone. Neddie had a straightup normal voice and there was something in his hand. Conklin and I saw it at the same time. It was a syringe, and Neddie had positioned the needle so that it pricked Lawrence’s neck.
One minute we had been trying to disarm a suspect with a set of keys. Now we had a hostage situation that couldn’t be more unstable. This had to be handled with competence and grace, or people were going to die.
I used my soothing hostage-negotiator tone. “Neddie. Tell me what you want so we can keep everyone safe.”
Neddie angled for a more comfortable position on his bed made of Lawrence’s body and the garbage pile. I could see the dimple in Lawrence’s neck where the needle penetrated flesh. Blood beaded up on his skin.
If Neddie pushed the plunger on the syringe, Lawrence would become paralyzed, and if he couldn’t breathe, he would die. We were only a short sprint from the hospital, but as I understood the effect of sux, we might as well be on Mars.
“Neddie,” I said. “Tell me what you want.”
“I’m working on it,” he said. “But while I figure that out, put your guns down on the floor. If you call for help, if you let anyone through either door, my friend Larry is a corpse. I guarantee it.”
CHAPTER 84
I WAS STILL stunned by the changes in Neddie. His high-pitched, singsongy speech was gone. When he fixed his eyes on mine, I saw cool resolve. He was cornered and he was willing to kill. He might also be willing to die.
Ten feet away from where I stood, Lawrence breathed loudly and stretched his neck minutely in an attempt to move it away from the needle.
Neddie adjusted his position correspondingly, pressing down on Lawrence with his full weight, sending the needle in deeper.
I said, “I think I understand what you want, Neddie. No guns. No one comes in and no one leaves. What’s on your mind?”
He said, “I’ve killed eight people. Larry is lined up to be number nine, but here’s the thing. I don’t like odd numbers. If I kill him, I’ve got to kill one of you. I admit that would be hard to do. So here’s the deal.
“Take your guns out with your fingertips and kick them over to me. I’ll leave and lock the door behind me. Anyone comes after me, I’ll shoot. After I’m clear of this shithole, you’ll never see me again.”
“We can’t do that,” I said. “It’s got to be our way. Put down the needle, Neddie. Live to see another day.”
“Oh, Lady Cop, do you really think I’ll just give up and let you put me away? I’ve been locked up for my whole life. Isn’t that enough?”
We were in a freaking standoff from hell. Adrenaline had red-lined my heart rate. I was fully aware that Neddie could pump Larry full of sux before I got my gun out my holster.
I said in the calmest tone I could muster, “I hear you, Neddie, and here’s my counteroffer. Let Larry go. My partner and I will work with the DA and tell your side of the story. The abuse you’ve suffered. The extenuating circumstances that brought you to this point. He’ll listen to us.”
Neddie remained in a crouch only yards in front of me. It wasn’t going well for Larry. He whimpered and said, “Neddie, man, I never did anything to you.”
Neddie said, “Shut up, Larry.” It looked to me that he was weighing his options. I was weighing mine. Could I dive onto him? Knock the needle out of his hand?
I was gauging the distance when Neddie spoke.
“If I give up,” he said, “you have to tell the media in your own words. Make sure they understand that I’m a genius who fooled everyone. You have to make it clear that in your professional opinion, Edward Lamborghini is one of the most brilliant serial killers—of this century. Do that. Give me your word.”
I didn’t trust him, but I needed him to trust me.
I said, “Okay, Neddie. That’s a deal I can live with. You have my word. Now slowly toss the needle down.”
A dreamy smile came over his face. What was this psycho thinking? He locked his eyes on mine. And— no! He pushed the plunger.
At the same time I heard the shot.
Conklin!
Neddie shouted and the needle jumped out of his hand. He gagged, rolled off Lawrence and the mound of garbage bags, and lay still.
Conklin went to Lawrence, who clasped the side of his neck and gasped, “He … stabbed me.”
I grabbed the keys off the floor and jammed one after the other into the lock in the basement door. On the third try the key twisted easily and the door creaked open. I ran into the cavernous and well-traveled basement corridor
.
I saw a medical team conveying a patient on a stretcher toward Saint Vartan’s.
I flashed my badge and I yelled, “We need help. Two men are down. One needs a respirator, NOW. We need an emergency unit, NOW.”
CHAPTER 85
NEDDIE HADN’T MOVED since he was shot, but Lawrence Janes was gasping the shallowest of breaths.
I held his hand. I was thinking that the sux was old. There was a chance Neddie hadn’t shot the full dose into Larry before he went down. If sux was injected into a muscle, rather than an artery, it took longer for the drug to paralyze the body. That was good for Larry.
I fanned a small flame of hope and stayed with him, telling him, “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be fine. I’m here. We’re getting help. Hang in there, Larry. Hang in there.”
An emergency team blew through the doorway. “He was injected with sux,” I said.
The medic didn’t ask any questions, just went straight to work and bagged Larry right there on the floor. Seeing his chest rise and fall gave me such relief that tears came into my eyes.
Another doctor attended to Neddie. He listened to his heart and announced, “He’s gone.” With his body limp, spread out on the pile of garbage bags, Neddie looked deceptively young and innocent and good.
I took Richie’s gun and I called Brady.
“It was a good shoot, Brady,” I said. “Conklin had no choice.”
“I’m on the way,” said Brady.
I told the medical personnel to leave Neddie’s body just as it was. That the police were coming. That everything in this room was ours until further notice.
I opened the alley door and stood in the doorway with Richie, looking out at the blank concrete wall.
I said to my partner, “Neddie had no way out and so he chose suicide by you, Rich. He said he didn’t want to spend another day in lockup. He knew we were armed. He wanted to go out on murder victim number nine. You saved Larry’s life, and he’s going to have a great story to tell his grandchildren. You did what you had to do. And you did it perfectly.”
He nodded. He said, “Thanks,” but he was hurting. And then he said, “You know what I hate?”
“I do.”
He hates to shoot someone. He hated that he’d taken a life. I told my partner that I’d be back in a second, then wandered out into the alley, out of earshot from Rich, and called Cindy.
“I’ve got something for you,” I said. “The Stealth Killer is dead, and yes, that’s on the record. Give me a couple of hours, I’ll get Brady to give it to you officially and with quotes.”
“That would be tremendous, Lindsay.”
“Right now, though, can you call Richie? I think he really needs to talk to you.”
CHAPTER 86
CINDY WAS IN her office at the San Francisco Chronicle polishing her story, headlined, “The Stealth Killer’s Last Stand.”
Lindsay had told her about the shooting death of Edward Lamborghini, a.k.a. Neddie Lambo, by an unnamed homicide inspector and how close the victim had come to taking the life of hospital employee Lawrence Janes. Lindsay had also put Brady on the phone to confirm her story, after which Cindy had spoken with Dr. Terry Hoover, director of the Hyde Street Psychiatric Center.
According to Dr. Hoover, Neddie had had “privileges.” Chief among them was that he had permission to leave the facility alone during daylight hours as long as he returned by dinnertime curfew.
The dazed Dr. Hoover allowed that Neddie had been well-liked, a friend to all, and that it seemed to him in retrospect that this patient had been wildly underestimated.
“It’s possible, I suppose,” said Hoover, “that Edward could have had access to drugs here at the psychiatric facility, to the pharmacy at Saint Vartan’s, and to the whole of San Francisco. But did he commit any crimes? The Neddie Lambo I knew could never have done that.”
But he had.
After speaking with Hoover, Cindy had researched Edward Lamborghini’s background, and while she couldn’t unseal his criminal record, she thought he had to have committed a horrific crime to be sent to Johnston Youth Correctional when he was only seven years old. When Johnston had closed, Neddie was transferred to the Hyde Street Psychiatric Center, a next-to-zero-security hospital. She thought the facility would be tightening up their “privileges” policy. PDQ.
Cindy scrolled to the top of her page. Under the headline was her lead paragraph.
Edward Lamborghini, a patient at the Hyde Street Psychiatric Center on Bush Street at Hyde, was shot to death today by a homicide inspector of the SFPD.
Sergeant Lindsay Boxer, who was present at the scene during the incident, said, “Mr. Lamborghini confessed to killing eight people. He was armed and holding a bystander hostage. He refused to drop his weapon and attempted to kill his hostage with a lethal injection before he was brought down.”
Lindsay’s quote was perfect. Richie hadn’t been able to speak to her on the record about his take-down of Neddie Lambo, but he’d given her background color that had made the writing pop: descriptions of the signage in the trash room, the smell of garbage, the look of the cavernous underground tunnel.
The story was good. Vivid. Accurate. Moving.
Cindy reread the entire four-thousand-word piece again, tightened it up in a few places, spell-checked everything.
Then she sent her story to the editor in chief, Henry Tyler.
While she waited for him to read, she called Richie. When she left him this morning, he’d been in deep sleep getting the rest he deserved and needed.
“I’m doing good, babe,” he said to her. “I’m having chocolate chocolate chip ice cream and coffee with heavy cream. You only live once, right?”
“Totally right.”
“And now I think I’ll go back to bed.” Cindy smiled, just picturing him. “See you later. I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too, Cin.”
Tyler buzzed her.
She punched a button on her console. “Henry?”
“Great job, Cindy. Fire away. Let’s meet after lunch and discuss your follow-up on this.”
Cindy sent her “Stealth Killer” to the copyeditor and sat back to enjoy the moment.
Tyler loved the piece. And people who had been afraid of “the Stealth Killer” would now feel safer out on the street.
Cindy tidied her desk, then went to the cafeteria for a late breakfast. When she returned to her desk and opened her mail, she saw that her inbox was overflowing. The emails all voiced variations on the theme, What great news! Thank God it’s over.
Almost buried in that avalanche of email was one from Lindsay reminding the members of the Women’s Murder Club that they had a meeting tonight, not for laughs over a spicy meal but a working get-together at the Hall of Justice Homicide squad room.
Lindsay was hoping that if they pooled their resources and gave the Connor Grant files a thorough thrashing, they might come up with something damning enough to counter his unjustified, vengeful, and just plain evil complaint against Lindsay.
If it was possible, Cindy was sure that the four of them could do it.
CHAPTER 87
I HAD COMMANDEERED the break room for our meeting because it had a long, well-used table and four folding chairs. There was also a coffeemaker close at hand and a big tin of oatmeal cookies on the counter, courtesy of Inspector Samuels.
I’d asked the property room to bring up the dozens of boxes we’d taken from Connor Grant’s garage laboratory before his trial; he had never asked for their return. They were stacked now in a line against a wall, twelve across, eight high.
Conklin and I had gone through about half of the boxes before the trial and marked the ones we’d ransacked with an X. Nothing we’d found rose to the level of evidence against the science teacher. No. The boxes were neatly filled with papers related to classwork, but no material on bombs, mass murder, GAR, or any antigovernment activity, like we’d hoped to find.
We’d given up after the fiftieth b
ox, owing to the press of work and shortage of manpower. Tonight the WMC was going to dig through the rest.
“Why bother with this?” I asked the girls rhetorically. “Because his complaint to IAB calls me a liar and could cost me my job and my career. Also, and probably more importantly, I think the guy is guilty. He told me that he bombed Sci-Tron. Why?”
“My theory,” said Claire, “is that he’s like an arsonist. He was elated at having pulled off the explosion. He was high. So he bragged to you, and then reality set in when he was booked.”
Yuki said, “Or he wanted to up the stakes. Blow up Sci-Tron and also beat the justice system.”
I said, “I like both theories. Connor Grant is the human equivalent of a switchblade. He acted as his own—brilliant—lawyer and he got off. In my opinion, that just does not comport with the personality of a career high school science teacher. Yuki, you agree?”
“In spades. He was smooth and tricky and sympathetic at the same time. Hey, he beat our pants off.”
I said, “I keep asking myself, who is this masked man, anyway? Granted, going through his boxes could be yet another dive into ninth-grade science, but if there’s a clue in here …”
“… we’ll know it if we see it,” said Cindy.
“Exactly,” I said. “I’m hoping for dirty pictures, sketchy bank accounts, warrants for previous misdeeds, and of course his plans for blowing up a big public venue. Or, hey, Mr. Grant, surprise us. It would be a genuine bonus round if we found evidence of a crime that he was never charged with.
“But for tonight, as a minimum, I’d just like to find something ugly that will scare this guy and get him to retract his complaint against me.”
We did a four-way fist bump and divvied up the boxes.
Claire likes to work with music. She fired up her smartphone and tuned in to something classical. Then she grabbed a filebox, lifted out a fat sheaf of paper, and set it down on the table in front of her. Yuki and Cindy worked as a team, each sorting through a box at a time, showing various bits of paper to each other as they went.