21st Birthday (Women's Murder Club #21)(27)
The doorknob turned and Martha got her old haunches under her and trotted to the foyer.
“To be continued,” said Joe. He went to the door and a grinning Julie stepped in, Gloria Rose behind her holding a tray of chocolate-chip cookies that smelled a hundred percent delicious.
“See the faces?” Julie said, pointing to how the chocolate chips formed smiles, frowns; some cookies looked like they were laughing and some seemed very stern. Cracked me up. I grabbed Martha’s collar and said to our lovely neighbor and nanny, “I’ll fire up a pot of decaf.”
“I’m all coffeed out,” she said, “but dying to taste the cookies. Got milk?”
“Pull up a stool,” Joe said.
He and Julie slid the cookies onto a plate, and minutes later, Julie was telling us who all the faces were — a kind of chocolate-chip-cookie mug book: guy at the grocery store, lady with a cat on a leash, me, Joe, Gloria Rose, and Martha.
“This is me,” Julie said. “No one can eat this one. Not even me.”
It was hilarious, chocolate chips arrayed across the upper curve of the cookie standing in for her curls and a chippy smile from side to side.
For an hour, I lost myself in family magic time. It was all delicious and I soaked it up. I might need to draw on the good feelings in the days to come if the horrible Burke case continued to be unsolved, devolving from horrible to cold.
CHAPTER 36
I CAME THROUGH the bullpen gate at eight on Saturday morning and headed straight into the break room.
Rich Conklin got up and followed me in, watched me vigorously clean out the coffee maker, refill the tank and the filter, tap the brew button with a vengeance.
I said, “Any word on Burke? Please tell me he came home last night.”
“No such luck,” said my old friend.
During the years I’ve been partnered with Rich, we’ve both grown some stress-induced gray hairs. I plucked. He didn’t. A little silver looked good on him.
He took my mug down from the high shelf and we stood together watching the coffee drip into the pot. It was hypnotic and I felt myself relax.
He asked “How you doin’?” The Joey Tribbiani imitation was our shorthand way of saying “we’re friends.”
I replied, “How you doin’?”
“I asked first.”
“Do I look ragged? I think I had 100 percent REM sleep. I was running all night.”
“From or to?”
“After, I think. I was chasing, not catching.”
We took our coffee to a table that had stood in this room since the Kennedy years, kicked the chairs out from under, and sat down.
Rich said, “Speaking of chasing, Cindy interviewed Clapper this morning.”
“Good for her.”
“Yep. It aired on KRON.”
“What did Clapper say?”
Rich was saying “Same old bull —” when Brady appeared right beside us.
“Where’s Alvarez?” he asked Conklin.
“She left her charger in her car. She’ll be right back.”
Brady said, “I need alla y’all in my office, PDQ.”
PDQ turned out to be under five minutes.
Brady’s hands were clasped on his desk. Alvarez had retrieved her charger and was inside the glass box in time for roll call. We all were. Alvarez and I sat across the desk from Brady. Conklin leaned against the doorframe. Chi stuck his head in, read the tension in the room, and backed out without speaking.
Conklin closed the door.
Brady said, “There’s been another ugly-ass murder.”
I was thinking, Tara.
“Teenage girl, throat cut in her car in the parking lot at her school.”
“ID on the vic?” I said, my mouth suddenly dry.
“Yeah. Sorry, Boxer, I know you talked to her. It’s Melissa Fogarty, aka Misty.”
I jumped up and shouted, “That son of a bitch!”
Every cop in the department turned their head.
Brady said, “Down, Boxer.”
“She said she was going to break up with him.”
He said, “You go to the ME’s office and take a look at the victim. Conklin, Alvarez, go to the crime scene. The car will be transported to the lab soon. Stay with the CSIs at the scene and then head out to Hunters Point and have someone there show you the car. Killer had to leave something at the scene, in the vehicle or on the girl. Y’all stay in close touch with me.”
Alvarez and Conklin edged past and Brady shook his finger at me. “Get a grip, Lindsay. No mistakes.”
I nodded, left Brady’s office, took the stairs at a jog, exited by the lobby’s back door to the breezeway that connected the Hall to the medical examiner’s office.
Hitting speed dial, I left a message for Claire, saying, “I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER 37
JONNY SAMUELS SAID, “He’s changed in the space of a week, you notice?”
Cindy had just wrapped her interview with Chief Charles Clapper outside the Hall of Justice. The building was gray granite and a pretty good backdrop in the morning light.
Clapper had said to her and the camera, “We’re still looking for Tara Burke. The San Francisco Chronicle is running her photo on their website and in the print edition. Our tip lines are open. If you’ve seen Tara or think you know where she could be … Look. This is a twenty-year-old woman. She doesn’t have much money on her, if any. Her young daughter has been murdered.