“In hindsight, probably not the best idea.”
“Next thing I know, she has my gun. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ she says. ‘I know what you did to that other girl, and I’m not going to end up like her.’”
“What’d you say?”
He couldn’t remember, but details weren’t important anymore. “I try to calm her down. I say I’ll help her. But she tells me I’m not her father.”
“What about the gun?”
“It’s heavy. She can’t hold it straight. All of a sudden it goes off. Boom. Then two more times. It kicks, and the rounds end up in the wall. She starts crying and drops the gun.”
“That’s when you should have left.”
Thackrey looked at his phone and considered the thought. He tried to remember driving away. Had he left? No. He saw himself standing in the living room with Elise. “I stayed. I put on her favorite song—Sam Cooke singing ‘You Send Me.’ She’s like a little girl now. She wants to be held. We dance in the living room without any lights. Back and forth in front of the sofa. She’s humming along. I tell her she’ll be okay. We hold each other in the dark, barely moving. The song’s on repeat. It goes on and on.”
Each time he remembered, something different flew at him. Now, alone in the car, he held up his hands against what was coming. “But all the speed I snorted is going through me like a truck. My head’s spinning. I keep it in as long as I can. Then my whole body’s…rushing. I think I’m having a stroke. I don’t know what’s happening. All of a sudden, she’s fighting me. ‘Take me home,’ she says. ‘Take me home.’ Over and over. I try to touch her, but she’s like this thing coming apart in my hands. I grab her hands…neck. She digs her nails into my arm. She’s crying, making this terrible sound. I think: This is what I’ve always hated. How uncontrolled she is.”
Had he screamed out loud just now or only remembered it? He looked outside again and watched leaves floating in a puddle. “She falls backward.” Thackrey spoke quietly, his voice hoarse from screaming, or imagined screaming. “One minute I’ve got her. The next, she hits her head on the corner of the table and blood’s everywhere. The song…it’s unbelievable…the stupid music’s still playing. I lie down and cradle her head. For once in her life, she’s still.”
“Which is when you called us.” Russell’s disembodied voice coming out of the phone startled him.
“Yeah…that’s when I called you.” Thackrey put his hands on the steering wheel and saw their innocence.
“Ben, listen,” Russell said. “You need to do something. Call Armand. He’s got lawyers.”
“I don’t know. The thought of being in that office…listening to the way he talks—”
“You don’t have a lot of choices, Ben.”
Thackrey looked across the parking lot and saw the street number and the building’s darkened windows. Story over. “I don’t need a lot of choices—I just need one.”
(ii)
(FRIDAY, 10:31 A.M.)
Susan Hart sat in the chair that faced Mahler’s desk. “What is it this time?”
“I was thinking about your ponytail,” Mahler said. “You were the youngest. Just twenty, right?”
“I still am twenty.”
“Your father talked about the things you won’t get to do.”
“What’s to stop me? You asked me once what I want. You know what I want? To breathe again. To take a long, full breath and feel it in my lungs.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
“You keep blinking.” Susan Hart leaned forward and peered at him. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“The migraine affects my vision. Someone’s coming to help me.”
“Good,” she said. “You know, I never saw the guy who killed me. Did I tell you that? I stopped to catch my breath, and he came up behind. It’s usually the best part of a run. You’ve got the high of your run, of being spent. Except for that time—”
“We figured that from the footprint patterns.”
“I heard him, though. Voice like he had a snake for a tongue. ‘You should be more careful.’ That’s what he says as he’s squeezing the cord around my neck. ‘Bitch,’ he says. I always hated men saying that word, and it was the last thing I heard.”
“This time we’ll arrest him.”
“It won’t change my murder, will it? I’m not coming back. This…with you…it’s not living in the real world.”
“I get that.”
“You remember that Dickinson poem where she says our death makes a short, potential stir? My death wasn’t my own.”
“It’s my fault we didn’t get Partridge.”
She looked down at her hands. “I hated that my death was with that man…and you.”
“With me?”
“After I died, you were always there, wanting something.”
“You’re right.”
“I like you, Eddie, but I don’t want to be stuck here with you. Saying the same things over and over.”
“Is that what we do?”
“It’s better when we talk about other things or we don’t talk at all.”
“So it’s changing?”
She smiled a thin, wan smile. “You are, Eddie. I’m dead, remember? This is you. Each time you think of me, it’s different.”
A knock sounded on Mahler’s office door. He looked up to see Kate standing inside.
“Your message said to come over.” Holding her briefcase, she shifted back and forth. “It said urgent.”
He glanced at the empty chair opposite him. Susan Hart never hung around for company. “Close the door, Kate. Please.”
“What is it, Eddie? Come on.”
“Close the door.”
Kate pulled the door shut and looked at her phone. “I’m due for a court appearance in forty-five minutes. What do you want?”
What did he want? It was the same question she asked the last time. He never knew what he wanted. Or, rather, he did—to have her come into his office while he replayed the fantasy of changing their last argument two years ago. He would retrace his steps all the way back to her apartment and awaken to her kissing him in bed. The impossibility of it washed over him, an unexpected grief. He took a deep breath. “I can’t see.”
“See what?”
“Remember when we were together, and I got migraines? I had those things in my eyes?”
“The dead spots? You called them something—”
“Scotoma. That’s what’s happening now.”
“So what do you see?”
“A bright light. Growing and moving across my eyes. It’s like…flickering.”
“It’s there now?”
He blinked and looked. For an instant he saw her, gripping her purse strap—a familiar sign of impatience. She was always smarter, quicker, three steps ahead. He remembered the sexual energy of having all that intelligence waiting for him. “The light was there a minute ago. It alternates with this other thing. Like a blind space I can’t see through. The space blocks out the middle of my sight.”
“Shouldn’t you go to the ER?”
“I don’t have time. Truro’s given us a deadline to make an arrest. We’ve got two and a half hours.”
“So, you’re kidding, right?” Kate pulled her hair away from her face. “Deadline or no deadline, you can’t see, and you’re driving a car?”
“We’re close to the end on this investigation. I can’t stop.”
“You have a suspect in the Elise Durand homicide? You can make an arrest?” She was suddenly a lawyer again, all business.
“I can’t say any more. But we’re close.”
Kate rechecked her phone. “In that case, I have to go. Why’d you call me?”
“I wanted to talk to somebody…you.”
“Now I remember why we’re not together.” Kate sa
t in front of Mahler, in the chair Susan Hart had left two minutes earlier. “How much medication have you taken? When was the last Imitrex?”
“Couple hours.” Mahler spread pill packages on his desk. “I’ve taken two hundred milligrams today.”
“Take a hundred more and another four hundred of the ibuprofen.”
“You want me to OD?”
“You want to be able to see?”
Mahler cut apart the packages and swallowed the pills.
“Drink some black coffee,” Kate said. “I’ll get a cup from the break room.”
Mahler heard the parental tone in her voice. She was taking care of him. If he needed any confirmation of how far they were from their old intimacy, it was there in her solicitude.
When Kate returned, she put a paper cup in Mahler’s hand.
Mahler tasted the coffee. “You’re going to miss your appearance.”
“I texted Pat and asked her to take care of it.”
“Who’s the client?”
Kate shrugged. “It’s not that interesting.”
He felt trapped by the pain of being with this Kate, who no longer loved him and who reminded him of what he had lost—both wanting her to leave and needing her to stay. “Tell me,” he said. “Just sit there a minute and tell me.”
“Okay. Peter John Fenton.” Kate settled back in her chair. “Appearance before Judge Barron. Room 105J.”
“Barron? I hope your Mr. Fenton has friends in high places.”
“My Mr. Fenton has six friends every morning. His problem is, he drinks them for breakfast and then gets in his car.”
“Let me guess. Third DUI.”
“Fourth. Few years ago, this guy has his own tax preparation business. How do you screw that up, right? Somehow he manages it. Apparently his charm alone isn’t enough to save the marriage. The unemployment runs out, and his wife leaves him for sunnier shores. Takes the kid and the dog. To Mr. Fenton, all this looks better when he’s half in the bag. Which brings us to an appearance before Barron.”
Mahler drank more coffee. “This how you imagined your career when you were a first-year at Hastings?”
“Life’s a hoot, isn’t it?” Kate stood. “I should go. How’re the thingies in your eyes?”
Mahler blinked and stared at his desktop. “Better.”
His phone buzzed. He held it at arm’s length to read a text from Eden. He stood. “We might have a new break in the Partridge case. I’ve got to run, too.”
Kate paused in the doorway and turned back toward him. “You still talking to her, Eddie?”
“Who?” He saw Kate weave in and out of his vision.
She smiled. “Come on, Eddie. You’ve got two girls in your life. I’m the other one.”
“Sometimes. Not as much.”
Kate pointed to his phone. “You’ll arrest him now. It’ll end.”
“Yeah,” Mahler said. “Or at least it’s nice to think so.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
(i)
(FRIDAY, 10:45 A.M.)
Rivas and Holland drove Spear Street through San Francisco’s South Beach, each intersection revealing a right-hand view of the Embarcadero waterfront one block away. At mid-morning, the street lay in a dark canyon of tall buildings. The area had a cold, lonely beauty. When they found the block they were looking for, the wide sidewalk was empty but for a dog walker and a young mother pushing a stroller.
Rivas checked the address. In front of them stood a high-rise condo, occupying half the block. He double-parked and put a police ID on the dashboard. Climbing out, he bent backward to look up. A forty-story glass building rose to the sky, its upper floors gleaming in the morning sun. “Fuck,” he said.
Holland joined him on the sidewalk. “Yeah. Fuck is right. I just sent Frames the address. He asked me to keep him up to speed.”
They walked across a patio to the building’s lobby, where a concierge stood at ease on a green marble floor. “Good morning, gentlemen. Welcome to Empyrean Towers. How may I help you?”
Holland held up his badge. “We’re going to 3711. You don’t need to announce us.”
The concierge straightened and raised his chin. “Sir, it’s Empyrean policy to announce all guests.”
“Your choice, Ace.” Holland shrugged. “You ring them before we get there, and we’ll come back and charge you with obstruction.”
The concierge’s eyes widened. He gestured toward the elevators. “First one’s the express to the upper floors.”
The elevator leapt upward with a suddenness that seemed to lift the men off their feet. When the doors opened to the thirty-seventh floor, Rivas and Holland found the entrance to 3711. They took out their guns. Rivas looked at Holland and pressed the doorbell. The door opened, and a young Asian man faced them.
“Santa Rosa Police.” Rivas waved his badge. “Are you Russell Tao? I have a warrant for your arrest.”
Russell nodded silently and stepped backward.
“Put your hands where I can see them.”
Inside the apartment, music played. Wilco singing “Far, Far Away.”
Holland pushed past Rivas into the living room, where another young man was on his knees beside an open suitcase.
Holland stood in front of him, Glock in hand. “Victor Banerjee? Santa Rosa Police. We have a warrant for your arrest. Let me see your hands and stand up.”
Holland waited while Victor stared back at him and slowly rose from the floor.
“Where on earth is Santa Rosa?” Victor asked.
When Rivas took over, Holland checked the rest of the condominium. He returned a minute later, shaking his head.
Holland patted down Victor and Russell. He removed their cell phones, handing one to Rivas and putting the other on the kitchen counter. Then he cuffed their hands behind their backs and pushed them onto the sofa.
Rivas read the two men their Miranda rights. When he finished, he took one of Rushton Tyndale’s prints from his pocket and held it toward the men. “Recognize yourselves?”
Victor peered at the photo. “Is that supposed to be us?”
Holland smiled. “That your defense? Might want to work on it.” For a moment, he turned from the men to look out at the wide vista of the city and the bay. “Quite a view, gentlemen. It’s like you’re on top of it all.”
Russell looked at him. “We are on top of it all.”
“But it’s a long way down.”
Rivas tucked the photo back in his pocket. “You didn’t expect us so early, did you? One of our guys found your keystroke logger.”
Russell mugged surprise. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You want to tell us what happened?”
“I thought you already knew,” Russell said.
“Tell us now, before lawyers get involved. Might help your case.”
Victor smiled. “We’ll wait for the suits.”
Holland studied the sixty-inch TV screen, which was divided into nine pictures, each showing a webcam feed from a room in the house. In the living-room picture, he could see himself looking at the screen. “You need a security system inside your house?”
“You never know,” Victor said, “when the riffraff might show up unannounced.”
Rivas faced him. “Where’s your Mercedes, Mr. Banerjee?”
“My Mercedes?”
“1959. License 9AKR321. Registered to you. We have a photo of it entering the gate at Spring Lake Park the night of Elise Durand’s murder.”
Victor shrugged. “Basement parking garage.”
“Why don’t you show me?”
Holland stepped close to Rivas. “You want to call for a couple units from the SFPD before you do that?”
“Be a little complicated now,” Rivas said.
Holland nodded. “Up to you.”
Holland patted the top of Russell’s head. “This guy? He’ll be fine.”
Rivas and Victor left the apartment and walked down the corridor. On the elevator, Rivas tapped the button for the basement garage and stepped behind Victor. The doors closed. Rivas felt the whoosh and the floor drop out from under his feet as the elevator descended. In his ear, his grandmother suddenly whispered, “Ready now, Danny?”
Her voice unnerved Rivas. Did Victor hear it? He leaned against the elevator to steady himself. Then, as if in a dream, he watched Victor drop his shoulder against the control panel, tripping the emergency stop. The car lurched. Off-balance, Rivas reached out blindly. Victor dodged under the detective’s outstretched hand and kicked into Rivas’s lower leg, snapping it like a dry stick. Rivas sucked in a sharp breath and fell against the elevator wall. Victor swung his elbow and struck the bridge of Rivas’s nose, breaking bone and flinging Rivas’s head backward. Shifting his weight, Victor swept a foot against Rivas’s heels, collapsing the detective onto the floor. Rivas lay still, his face covered in blood.
Victor jumped toward the fallen man. Sixty seconds or so before security personnel noticed the stopped elevator.
Ten already gone.
Hands cuffed behind him, Victor reached into Rivas’s pockets for the keys. By feel, he awkwardly inserted the metal shaft into the keyhole and released the cuffs.
Thirty seconds.
Victor removed his belt and wrapped it around Rivas’s legs. He yanked it tight.
Forty seconds.
He pulled his phone out of Rivas’s front pocket, tapped at the phone screen, and found the websites for the building’s security cameras.
Fifty seconds.
The elevator display showed they were on the twenty-ninth floor. On his phone he located the security camera for the hallway on the twenty-ninth floor. It was empty.
Sixty seconds.
Victor switched off the emergency stop and opened the elevator doors. Grabbing the belt, he hauled Rivas off the elevator. Just before the doors closed, he saw a small pool of blood on the elevator floor. Too late.
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