“Don’t worry. I’m not goin’ back in there,” the cop said with a sardonic chuckle.
Burden lifted his two-way and got an ETA on the criminalist: fifteen minutes, best case. His partner was en route, as well, but he decided not to wait. He pulled a pair of blue booties from his pocket—he’d learned first day on the job as a detective years ago to carry the things with him. And they’d come in handy on more than one occasion.
He walked into the townhouse. A sour-stale odor flared his nostrils. It was a scent he’d experienced a number of times over the years—the way homes of elderly individuals can sometimes smell, particularly when mixed with the putrid cologne of death.
The place was well kept, orderly, and clean. Oil paintings and dated knickknacks betrayed their age about as blatantly as the yellowing black-and-white photographs that sat on a bureau in the living room.
And then, in the bedroom...two bare feet visible from the doorway. Burden walked another couple of yards and had enough of a view to get a sense of what he was dealing with. He bit the inside of his lip.
“Inspector.”
Burden did not look away from the body. “What is it?”
“The criminalist made better time than he thought. He’ll be here in five minutes.”
“Yeah. Right. Send him in when he gets here.”
“See what I mean?” the officer asked. “What kind of monster would do that to a poor old woman?”
Burden sighed deeply. “I think I know just the kind of monster we’re looking for. And I know who to call to help find him.”
5
July 27
12:07 PM
George Washington University Hospital
900 23rd St., NW
Washington, D.C.
FBI Profiler Karen Vail walked the hospital hallway with her son, Jonathan, and DEA Special Agent Robby Hernandez. Vail and Robby were both off duty, a rare Saturday when they had time to decompress, grab lunch at Charlie Palmer’s, and then a late afternoon movie. They left their case folders on their desks, their problems neatly tucked away in a file drawer, and all concerns of serial murders and drug cartels out of reach of their collective consciousness.
Robby’s shoulder was still in a sling, recovering from a gunshot wound he had sustained two months ago. But the injury had an unforeseen, nonmedical side effect: Jonathan got a kick out of handily beating the one-armed Robby in every video game in the teen’s arsenal, so they played together at every opportunity. Robby represented the positive male presence Jonathan lacked, and Jonathan gave Robby the father-son relationship he had wanted but not yet experienced.
With various bruises and lacerations now healed and a knee that finally felt whole following recent surgery, Vail had found peace being at home after a tenuous two weeks in the Napa Valley. What started as a dream vacation had degraded into a recurring nightmare that, for a while, Vail had difficulty awakening from.
But Vail and Robby were not at the hospital for their ailments; they were visiting a friend and colleague, Mandisa Manette, who had been shot in front of the White House just before Vail and Robby left for Napa. It had taken three surgeries thus far, but she was making steady progress and had begun rehabilitation.
Jonathan insisted on waiting in the hall, choosing instead to trade text messages with his friends.
“We won’t be long,” Vail said.
Jonathan already had his phone out, eyes riveted to the screen. “Take your time.”
Robby reached out to pull open the Physical Therapy department door, but Vail slapped her hand against the wood panel. “You think she’ll be glad to see us?”
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
Vail bobbed her head. “Every time she and I get together it turns into a major ordeal.”
“I could say the same thing, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing you.”
Vail elbowed him in the side. Robby pulled open the door.
Gripping two wooden parallel bars was Detective Mandisa Manette. Her normal corn-rowed hair was pulled back into a bun, disheveled and in need of a shampoo. Rather than the lithe, athletic detective, Manette was having difficulty negotiating the normally automatic movement of walking. The therapist’s gaze snapped up—causing Manette to stop and twist her body.
“Jesus Christ. Kari, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Good to see you, too,” Vail said. She turned to Robby. “See what I mean?”
“Robby,” Manette said. “You still dating this crystal ball psychic magician?”
Robby grinned broadly, then stepped forward and gave Manette a hug. “How are you doing?”
“Better than you,” she said. “What’s up with the sling?”
“Same as you. GSW. No big deal, I’m back on the job already.”
“Sequestered in this hospital, I tend to be a little out of touch. Especially when people don’t visit you.”
“I was here last week,” Vail said.
“I don’t consider you ‘people,’” Manette said. “I mean real flesh-and-blood humans.”
“Sounds like you’re doing well,” Robby said. “Getting back to your old self.” He gestured toward her with a raise of his chin. “How’s your hip coming along?”
“I got me a brand new one, titanium or some shit like that. Bionic space-age technology. I’m going to be faster, stronger than before.”
“Yeah,” Vail said. “And she’ll be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
“I got a doc who’s got a bedside manner just like yours,” Manette said. “I slapped him upside the head. He’s much nicer to me now.” She shifted her weight and grabbed the parallel bars. “If he wasn’t such a hunk, I’da fired his ass the first day.”
Vail’s phone rang. Her hand sprung to the holster and silenced it, then pulled it free. Glanced at the display and said to Robby, “It’s your father.”
Robby rolled his eyes. “Will you stop saying that every time your boss calls you?”
Vail feigned innocence.
“What’s that?” Manette asked. “Vail’s ASAC’s your father?” She looked back and forth at both of them. “Man, Kari. You don’t tell me nothin’. Sounds like I missed some juicy shit wasting away in this here hospital.”
“Juicy shit, indeed.” Vail turned and answered the call.
“Karen,” Thomas Gifford said. “Sorry to bother you on a Saturday. But something’s come up.”
“I think this is the part where I make believe there’s static on the line and then press the END button.”
“I’m serious, Karen. I’ve got something here.”
“And you’ve got at least eleven other profilers you can call.”
“The one I really need has retired. And he’s out of the country so I can’t even give him a shout. So you’re it.”
“Robby and I have plans with Jonathan for a movie later.”
“Take a rain check. A detective just called the unit with a fresh eighty-two-year-old female, sexually assaulted and murdered.”
“So you want Mark Safarik. He’s the world expert on the sexual homicide of elderly females—”
“Yes, yes,” Gifford said. “But like I said, he’s unreachable. And I know you worked with him before he retired and coauthored his last paper.”
Vail sighed. “So I’m the pinch hitter.”
“For lack of a better term, yeah.”
Vail looked at Robby and gave him a thumbs down sign. “Where and when?”
“We’ve got you booked on a flight to San Francisco leaving out of Reagan in two hours.”
“San Francisco? Wait, I get it. This is a joke, right? I had the nightmare of my life in Napa, so you’re sending me back there a few months after I got out of that godforsaken place. Good one, sir.” She pressed END and disconnected the call.
“Problem?” Robby asked.
Her BlackBerry rang again seconds later. Vail looked at the phone, then at Robby. Brought the handset to her ear. “You weren’t kidding, were you.”
“No, Karen, I wasn’t. I’m emailing you the flight information. Pack whatever you need and get over to Reagan ASAP.”
“Fine.”
“And—please, promise me one thing.”
“Only one thing, sir?”
“Only one thing,” Gifford repeated. “But it’s a big one. Stay out of trouble. This one time. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
6
Karen Vail arrived at San Francisco International Airport at 11pm. Her connecting flight in Atlanta was delayed due to weather somewhere over the country, so she’d picked up a copy of Nelson DeMille’s latest novel at an airport bookstore and devoured half of it by the time she touched down at SFO.
Robby had turned her on to DeMille. He’d said DeMille’s main character, John Corey, was a lot like her—a sarcastic, wise-cracking former detective. She told Robby he had his head up his ass. But now that she’d read DeMille’s novels, she realized that maybe she did share a few similar characteristics with John Corey—but she wouldn’t give Robby the satisfaction.
“First of all, I’m not a wiseass,” she started. He merely squinted at her. Fine, that wasn’t too convincing an argument. I wouldn’t believe that one, either. “Second, I’m a lot better cop than Corey.”
That was when Robby tilted his head and said, “You’re comparing your skill set to a fictional character?” And then he delivered his zinger, designed to put her in her place: “Besides. Come to think of it, I think maybe Corey’s a little smarter than you are.”
At that point, Vail fell back on the only card she had left to play. “Who would you rather sleep with. Fictitious John Corey, or me?”
Robby didn’t have a comeback for that—or he chose to keep it to himself. Wise choice.
Vail took a cab to the Hyatt Regency in the city, left a message for Inspector Lance Burden that she had arrived later than she had anticipated, and told him she would meet him at 8 AM at the Hall of Justice’s Homicide Detail on Bryant Street. Then she sent an email to her friend, Roxxann Dixon, an investigator with the Napa County District Attorney’s office, who served with her on the Crush Killer task force a few months back. Vail didn’t know if they would be able to coordinate a dinner together, but she wanted her to know that she was working a serial killer case in the city in case they had a chance to see one another.
The wind coming off the Bay struck her as she got out of the cab on California Street. Vail walked past the cable car, loading passengers in front of the Hyatt, and strode up to the hotel’s entrance, where the escalators carried her up to the third floor. As the moving stairs lifted her toward the lobby, the grandness of the central atrium left her jaw slack. Ahead, a massive sculpture—it looked like a swirling copper sphere—sat atop a black marble base with water cascading down its sides. To her left, thousands of tiny lights, suspended from above, stretched what must’ve been a hundred feet in length by a hundred feet in width.
“Wow,” she said under her breath.
After so many sleepless nights on this coast, Vail was relieved to enjoy a restful evening, in a comfortable bed and no middle-of-the-night pages, texts, or calls. She dreamt of Robby and was disappointed when she awoke early to find that he wasn’t beside her. Despite the momentary letdown, she felt refreshed and ready to go to work.
After showering, while still wrapped in a bath sheet, she pulled open the curtains and peered out the window for the first time. Her view was the finest she had ever seen: the room was on the fourteenth floor and overlooked the Embarcadero and Port of San Francisco. Maybe this trip won’t be so bad after all.
To her right stood the steel blue Bay Bridge, stretching from an island on the left all the way to the furthest reaches of her window’s field of vision on the right. A cargo ship marked Hanjin in enormous white letters set against a dark body ferried blue and red containers on its back. An escort tug tailed it a safe distance astern as both vessels passed beneath the farthest span of the bridge.
The sky was a thick gray, remnants of fog hanging low in the distance. While pondering the weather and what to wear, her wakeup call came, the automated voice welcoming her and informing her that the high temperature was expected to be a nippy 52 degrees. Actually, the recording omitted the adjective.
In her haste to pack—Gifford hadn’t left her much time—she’d neglected to check the weather. She pulled out the pair of form-fitting jeans that she had worn on the plane and snuggled into a tight-knit black sweater. She stepped into the cylindrical, windowed elevator and again marveled at the curtain of hanging lights as the car descended to the lobby. Curbside, she was about to hail a taxi when a text message from Inspector Burden hit her BlackBerry. He wanted to meet instead at the crime scene, in an area he called the Marina District.
Vail gave the cab driver the address and asked how long till they arrived. It was only a few miles—a ten-minute ride, traffic permitting.
She arrived as promised, in front of a well-appointed line of charming row houses, decked out in muted colors of butterscotch and sapphire, each sporting their own variation of wrought iron-wrapped balconies.
Standing out front of a creamy avocado building marked with a brass “114” was a tall, thin man chomping on a slice of gum. Vail paid the taxi driver, then walked up to the house. “Karen Vail. Are you Burden?”
The inspector extended a hand. “With a lot of things, yeah.”
Vail took it. His grip was soft and quick. “A sense of humor. A bad one, but a sense of humor. That’s good.”
“My kids give me shit too.”
“About the weak handshake or your bad jokes?”
Burden drew back. “Man, you’re a fiery one. Give me a few minutes to adjust to that, okay?”
“Only a few minutes? You’re in danger of impressing me, Inspector.”
He eyed her cautiously. “Maybe a few days.”
Vail broke a smile. “That’s more like it. But if it helps, I’m told I grow on you once you get to know me.”
“I wanted Mark Safarik.”
Vail nodded. Hey, if it was me, I’d want Safarik, too. But she kept that to herself. “He’s not available. You get me.”
Burden pulled his leather jacket tighter as the wind whipping off the Bay blew through his thin shirt.
Vail shivered. “What’s up with your weather? It’s July. If I’d known it was gonna be this goddamn cold, I’d have packed a jacket and gloves.”
Burden pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door to the house. “Don’t you know the famous quote?”
Vail frowned. “I know a lot of famous quotes, Inspector. You have a particular one in mind?”
“‘The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.’ Mark Twain. Well, some think Twain said it.”
“Never heard it.”
Burden moved inside the house. “The city’s weather is kind of like Australia, all messed up calendar-wise.”
Vail eyed him. “Okay. Right. San Francisco is Australia. Got it.” She followed him in through the door and up the stairs.
“Any security other than locks on the doors?”
“Nope.” Burden led her inside, to the mouth of the living room. “That bedroom there,” he said, gesturing down the hall with a nod of his chin. “That’s where the body was found.”
“Got another piece of gum?” Vail asked.
“It’s Nicorette.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “In that case, I’ll pass.”
“By the way. You can drop the Inspector crap. Guys in the unit call me Birdie.”
Vail eyed him. “Birdie.”
Burden shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, I didn’t like it either at first. But after twenty years, I’ve kind of embraced it. Burden works, too. Don’t really care for Lance. No one calls me by my first name. Except my mother.”
“What about your wife?”
“She calls me jackass.” He apparently noted Vail’s confusion. “We’re divorced.”
Burden led the way to the bedroom. “What do people call you
?”
“Depends who you ask. Asshole. Bitch. But those are just my friends.” Vail grinned. “Karen’s fine.”
Burden nodded. “Why don’t we start with Karen, and as I get to know you we can graduate to Bitch?”
“I think I’m going to enjoy working with you, Burden.”
“Hey, I was born in New York. I understand sarcasm.”
“Good. You’re likely to get a good dose of it.” Vail indicated the bedroom. “Shall we?”
“I was trying to avoid it.”
“I can tell.” She pushed open the solid-core wood door and stepped in. A queen bed sat in the middle of the room. Unremarkable furniture lined the wall to her right, below a large bay window that gave her a third-floor view of the top portion of a fog-obscured Golden Gate Bridge tower peeking out between the crests of nearby low-cut trees.
Dried bloodstains soiled the left side of the mattress.
“Vic was eighty-two. Maureen Anderson. Married, haven’t been able to reach the husband. William. Last seen yesterday morning.”
“Who called it in?”
“Neighbor came by for dessert and coffee. She didn’t answer the door. Maureen was apparently very reliable, so an hour later, when she still wasn’t answering, the woman got concerned and dispatch sent out a well-check.”
“Any evidence her husband left on a trip?”
“Nothing we’ve been able to determine. Still following up with airlines, family, credit card records. The usual. Put out an APB as soon as we found the body. He’s the obvious prime suspect.”
Vail winced. “Not so fast. And not so obvious. What do we know about him? About their relationship?”
“Good, according to the neighbors. The usual bickering, but from what we’ve been told, looks like they genuinely loved each other.”
“What was his occupation?” Vail asked. “What level of education?”
“He retired about five years ago. He was a lawyer with a firm here in the city. Last five or so years, he was ‘of counsel,’ picking the cases he wanted to work on.”
“What kind of cases?”
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