21st Birthday (Women's Murder Club #21)(23)

But had he done it?

And if so, why?

Had Franks witnessed something she wasn’t supposed to see?





CHAPTER 31





CINDY WAS AT HER DESK, laser-focused on her work, when a static storm crackled over her police scanner.

The signal faded, came back strong, and she could make out a few words. Piecing sentence fragments together, she gathered that a deceased female had turned up in McLaren Park. She listened, hoping for more information. A voice over the radio sputtered the name “Tara Burke.”

Cindy fell back in her chair.

She righted her chair, spun around to where the radio sat on the windowsill, and fiddled with the channel dial in search of clear signal but didn’t get it. She ran out to the newsroom, found Jonathan Samuels at his desk and told him what she’d heard. He opened a file drawer, grabbed his camera, and said, “All set.”

The two had picked up the portable scanner, left the Chronicle building, and gone directly to the underground parking garage across the street. By the time they were strapped in and heading toward the park, the name Tara Burke had been withdrawn.

“Correction … vic … unidentified.”

Cindy said, “That’s messed up. How’d they get that so wrong?”

“Overexcitement,” Samuels said, “and bias confirmation. Slow down, will you?”

Cindy eased up on the gas. Her urgency had cooled, but who, what, where, when, and why was still news. According to the scanner chatter, this was likely just another homicide who’d been buried in the greens and brambles of McLaren Park.

Traffic flowed and soon the car was closing in on the Burkes’ gabled house.

Samuels said, “Up ahead.”

She said, “Good catch,” and turned down the radio. Two blocks away, police vehicles were pulling away from the curb near the park, streaming toward them, then, passing them.

“There’s our story,” she said. “We just have to get it.”

Cindy parked the car on the street opposite three marked CSI vehicles, a K9 transport vehicle, and some cruisers.

Samuels hung his press pass on a cord around his neck, Cindy pinned hers to her jacket, and together they crossed the street toward the law-enforcement vehicles. Cindy picked out the youngest of the uniformed officers who was standing alone, thumbing his phone.

“Hi there,” she said. “I’m Cindy Thomas with the San Francisco Chronicle.”

He said, “How can I help you?”

“I’m covering this crime. What you can tell me about what happened here?”

“I’m not authorized to do that.”

“Okay, but, if I don’t know your name …?”

“Hah-hah. No. Sorry.”

“Okay then. Mind if we just take a walk in the park?”

“Not in the crime scene, uh, Cindy. Off-limits until CSU is done here.”

That’s when Cindy noticed a woman sitting on her porch across the street, watching all of it.

Cindy said, “Thanks anyway,” and she and Samuels crossed to the wood frame house with a small porch and front garden.

Calling up to the woman in the rocking chair, Cindy said, “Hi there. We’re from the Chronicle. May we talk with you for a minute?”

The woman answered, “Come on up. See the gate latch? There you go. I’m in no rush.”

Introductions were made. It seemed Ms. Melissa Goeden, retired social worker, knew of Cindy, read her column, and was, in fact, a fan.

“I’m the one who found her,” said Ms. Goeden. “Well, Sparky did.” She petted the head of her cocker spaniel lying at her feet. “That poor girl.”

Ms. Goeden used her finger to mimic a blade slashing across a neck.

Samuels said, “That’s awful. You didn’t by chance learn her name?”

“I was there when they found her driver’s license. She’s somebody Franks. Candy. No, no. Wendy. Wendy Franks. After that, it was ‘Thanks for being a good citizen, ma’am. Now get out of our crime scene.’”

Cindy said, “We’re familiar. But thank you from us. You helped us a lot and maybe we can help find Wendy’s killer.”

“You be careful, Cindy. Be very careful,” said Ms. Goeden.





CHAPTER 32





I WAS WORKING at a desk outside of Brady’s office.

We faced each other through his wall and he could still close his door for privacy. At the opposite end of the squad room, Alvarez sat at my desk and Conklin was at his. They were engaged in animated conversation.

Looking hard for the bright side, at least I still had my own computer.

I put two photos up on my computer desktop; one of Tara Burke next to the morgue close-up of Wendy Franks’s face. I compared them, scrutinized them, confirming what I already knew. They didn’t match. So who was Wendy Franks? I was restless. She was haunting me. Why had she been murdered? Why hastily buried in McLaren Park? The park had a history as a dumping ground for inconvenient corpses, but the coincidence of a fresh body in close proximity to the Burke house bothered the hell out of me.

Except for matching her home address to the one on her driver’s license — she had moved to Sausalito from Santa Barbara two years ago — three databases had turned up a big pile of nothing so far. She had no record, not even a parking ticket. She’d graduated from UCLA. She was single, painted and sold seascapes, according to an article in a local paper that had covered her one-woman show. Sausalito is in Marin County and, accordingly, Clapper had tossed the case to Marin PD.