The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(3)

JULIAN SAW HIS run as a punt return.

He charged into an elderly man in a shearling coat, sending the man sprawling. He snatched up the old guy’s shopping bag, said, “Thanks very much, you knucklehead.”

What counted was that he had the ball.

With the bag tucked under his arm, Julian streaked across Geary, dodging and weaving through the crowd, heading toward the intersection at Stockton. He sprinted across the street and charged along the broad, windowed side of Neiman Marcus where a Christmas tree laden with lights and ornaments rose forty feet into the rotunda. Revolving glass doors split a crowd of shoppers into long lines of colorful dots going inside or filing out onto the sidewalk accompanied by Christmas music: “I played my drum for him, pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.” It was all so crazy.

Julian was still running.

He yelled, “Coming through! No brakes!” He wove around the merry shoppers, sideswiped the UPS man loading his truck, and, with knees and elbows pumping, bag secured under his arm, dashed up the Geary Street straightaway and veered left.

Another crowd of shoppers loaded with shopping bags spilled out of Valentino. Julian shot his left hand out to stiff-arm a young dude, who fell against a woman in a fake-fur coat. Bags and packages clattered to the sidewalk. Julian high-stepped around and over the obstacles, easy-breezy, then broke into a sprint again and turned left on Grant Avenue.

Julian chortled when the oncoming pedestrians scattered as he headed toward them; he gave the finger to a wiry guy who yelled at him. He ran on, knocking slowpokes out of his way and shouting, “Merry flippin’ Christmas, one and all.” God, this was fun. He couldn’t see the goalposts, but he knew that he was scoring, big-time.

Julian’s long strides ate up the pavement, and despite the blood pounding in his ears, he listened for sirens. He still had the ball, but the clock was ticking. He glanced over his shoulder and saw, finally, two people who looked like cops running up behind him.

He was winded, but he didn’t stop. Show me what you’ve got, suckers. He put on another surge of speed as he headed toward Dragon’s Gate and the Chinatown district. He slowed only when a lady cop’s authoritative voice shouted, “Freeze or I’ll shoot!”

He thought, In this crowd? I don’t think so. And he kept running.





CHAPTER 3





MY PARTNER, INSPECTOR Richard Conklin, was running out of time, and he needed my help.

He said desperately, “Would be nice if she’d tell you what she wants.”

“Where would the fun be in that?” I said, grinning. “You figuring it out is kind of the point.”

“I guess. Make our own history.”

“Sure. That’s an idea. Romantic, Rich.”

We had slipped out of the Hall of Justice to do some lunchtime Christmas shopping in San Francisco’s Union Square because of its concentration of upscale shops. Richie wanted to get something special for Cindy. He wanted his gift to make her speechless, but when he asked her for a hint about what she wanted, she’d offered practical ideas. A multiport device charger. New cross-trainers. A gel-foam seat for her car. He grinned, thinking about her.

Rich had wanted to marry Cindy from pretty much the moment he met her. And she loved him fiercely. But. There’s always a but, right?

Rich was from a big family, and while he was still in his thirties, he’d always wanted kids. Lots of them. Cindy was an only child with a hot career—one that took her to murder scenes in bad places in the dead of night. And Rich wasn’t the only crime fighter in the relationship; Cindy had solved more than one homicide, had even shot at and been shot by a crafty female serial killer who’d become the subject of Cindy’s bestselling true-crime book.

All this to say, Cindy was in no hurry to start a family.

It was a conflict of priorities that in the past had broken up my two great friends, and it was tremendous that they were back together now. But as far as I knew, the conflict remained unresolved.

Rich pointed out an emerald pendant around the neck of a mannequin in the window of a high-end jewelry shop. “Do you like that?”

Just as I said, “Beautiful, Rich. And very Christmasy,” I heard a scream behind us.

I whipped around to see a man in a red down jacket running hard, bowling down shoppers. He closed in and then passed us, yelling, “Coming through! No brakes!” He collided with a group of people walking out of Neiman’s. They scattered and he just kept going.

An elderly man in a shearling coat was hobbling down the street in pursuit, blood streaming out of his nose. He cried, “Stop, thief! Someone stop him!”

Rich and I are homicide cops, and this was no murder. But we were there. We took off after the man in the red down jacket who was running with all the power and determination of a pro tailback.

I yelled, “Freeze or I’ll shoot!” But the runner kept going.





CHAPTER 4





I DIDN’T TRUST myself to run full out. My doctor had recently benched me for two months because I was anemic. So I slowed to a walk and yelled to my partner, “You go! I’ll call it in.”

I got on my phone and summed up the situation for dispatch in a few words: There had been a robbery, a grab-and-dash. Conklin was pursuing the suspect on foot, running east on Geary Street between Stockton and Grant Avenue.