The Dirty Secrets Club

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The Dirty Secrets Club Page 4

by Meg Gardiner


  She gave him a thumbs-up as a good-bye.

  At the edge of the scene, Lieutenant Tang was talking to Callie Harding's boss. Jo headed over. The chill in the air had seeped into her.

  Harding's boss looked washed out. "This is a loss to the law enforcement community, no less than if a police officer had died. I want to be kept apprised of your investigation."

  Tang's arms were crossed. "Certainly." She gave Jo a look that seemed full of warning. "Jo Beckett, consulting forensic psychiatrist—Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Fonsecca, head of the Criminal Division."

  Fonsecca was slight and rumpled. Under the harsh street lighting he looked sepulchral, with thinning gray hair and a basset-hound face behind rimless glasses. He seemed disconsolate. But his voice was smooth and pointed, like a pungee stick.

  "I don't understand why SFPD has called in a psychologist. I don't believe for one second that Callie killed herself," he said.

  "Psychiatrist, Mr. Fonsecca," Jo said. "And I can help determine whether Ms. Harding committed suicide or not."

  "Whatever. I want you all to find out what happened to my prosecutor. No politics, no propaganda, no bullshit."

  Tang was bristling. "We will, sir. I imagine Dr. Beckett will want to talk to you at length. Tomorrow. Right?"

  "Certainly." Jo was getting Tang's message: Not here, not now. Keep quiet.

  "Call my secretary," he said.

  Officer Cruz walked past. Tang collared him, possibly as an excuse to end the conversation with Fonsecca.

  "Could another vehicle have been pursuing Harding's BMW besides you?" she said.

  "Not that I saw," he said. "And the streets were empty. I would have noticed another vehicle peeling off."

  "Check with businesses near the start of the pursuit. See if you can get CCTV footage." She pointed at the tunnel stairwells leading up to Bush Street. "Grab the footage from the stairwell surveillance cameras, too."

  "Right."

  Jo said, "Are you certain Harding's passenger tried to jump out during the pursuit?"

  "Positive. She was frantic to escape from that car. Even at high speed."

  Again, like a tic, Cruz looked up at the bridge railing. Jo's gaze followed.

  Jumpers often take their time, give it a last glance. But once they step off, they don't want to see the ground rush at them. They take off their glasses. Sometimes when they leap, they turn to see the sky and not the fatal pavement flying to meet them.

  But it's almost always a leap, a determined burst into space and oblivion. They don't topple. They propel themselves away from buildings, bridges, cliffs.

  And Callie Harding's exit from the world certainly looked propulsive.

  "Have they identified the passenger?" Jo said.

  "Driver's license lists her as Angelika Meyer," Cruz said.

  Fonsecca straightened. "What? Are you sure?"

  Cruz looked at his notes. "That's the name."

  "No, that's—oh, dear God. She's an intern in our office. A law student at Hastings." Fonsecca touched a hand to his forehead. "This makes no sense. Why would Angelika . . . Oh, this is horrendous."

  He pulled out his cell phone. "Excuse me." He walked away, punching numbers.

  "What is going on?" Tang said.

  Jo watched him go. "I don't know. Why didn't you want me to talk to him?"

  "He's not part of this investigation, no matter how hard he tries to butt in. He doesn't know about the writing on Harding's thigh, and he doesn't need to know. Don't reveal that information unless I authorize it."

  "I won't."

  Cruz said, "Understood, Lieutenant."

  "Good." Tang squinted at Jo. "The passenger said 'Stop it' to you?"

  "Clear as ice." Jo stared back. "I know. Forty-eight hours."

  "And counting down."

  Jo nodded. She touched Cruz's arm and handed him her card. "If you think of anything else, call me. Anything at all."

  He nodded and she walked away, heading down Stockton toward Union Square.

  That was a good catch. For a second she seemed to hear machinery tearing itself to pieces. She seemed to hear voices speaking her name. Familiar voices, wounded and yearning. Momentarily she wanted to run. The glare of the Caltrans construction spotlight dimmed behind her. In its wake, the street lighting looked dingy. Office windows were yellow slicks on the walls of a canyon rising above her to the stars. Ahead, the street opened into Union Square. She reached the corner and inhaled as though she'd just found oxygen.

  Good catch. Barry Cohen didn't know how his words would hit her.

  For a vivid instant she saw Daniel, felt his hand take hers, heard again the words he gave her when the world turned to shit.

  No, she thought.

  She exhaled and shook off the embers that guttered in her mem-

  The DIRTY SECRETS CLUB 39

  38 Meg Gardiner

  ory, threatening to ignite. She dug her fingernails into her palms to stop her hands shivering. The shivering was nerves, just nerves. It had been a long time since she'd had to jump into a trauma situation.

  She whispered to herself, "Get over it."

  This wasn't about her. It was about the three people dead in the wreck behind her, and a young woman who was close to joining them. A young woman who seemed to be calling out a warning.

  She blinked the chill from her eyes and walked on.

  The vibration from the cell phone brought his eyes open. He inhaled, staring at the dark ceiling, instantly alert.

  It would be news, an automatic text update. Quietly, so as not to disturb the night, the dark, his privacy, Perry turned the phone in his hand to read the display. He was looking for confirmation, and he found it in a single word.

  Dead.

  His hand curled around the phone. The prosecutor was gone.

  He didn't read the rest. The how, or the how many others. For a moment his eyes stung and his throat burned, and tears threatened to boil up. He fought them back. His gaze lengthened and he let his mind fly free. He would learn the details soon enough. Right now, he wanted to savor the moment.

  Harding was dead. Gone, the dirty bitch.

  His mind tried to race, but he forced it to slow down. His heart felt large in his chest, beating slowly, full of blood.

  Full of joy.

  He hoped she had suffered. That she had died screaming, weeping, maybe choking on her own blood, unable to breathe. Slowly he smiled. How does it feel to be on the wrong end of the pain, Callie? He leered at the ceiling, picturing it, until the dark ceiling above him became a movie screen. And in this private movie epic, he saw panic on Harding's face, and knowledge; watched her fighting for air through a throat that was broken and swollen, hands too smashed to move. He hated the fact that he hadn't been on the scene, at her side at that moment, to witness it live.

  You want justice? Here it is. Turnabout's a bitch, ain't it? He bit back a laugh. His eyes were wet.

  Did she give up anything? Names, knowledge, secrets? He hoped, he wished.

  Wished he'd been able to walk up to the prosecutor and kiss her good-bye. The thought excited him.

  In his vision he saw her. She realized death was coming. God, how he hated her. Hated them all. I paid. Now you pay. He saw her cry like a little child. Saw her piss herself. Saw her lips move.

  She was praying. Not this, no. Forgive me, I'm dirty, dirty, dirty. No.

  In the dark Perry Ames lay rigid, feeling as he always felt at these moments. Completely frustrated. He couldn't be with Callie Harding when she left this life, and picturing her exit relieved his rage only for a few lonely minutes. Solitude is the best defense, because in the end you can't rely on anything but yourself.

  That, and death. Dirty, dirty, dirty bitch.

  6

  The foghorn woke Jo, lowing its warning across the bay. She rolled over and opened her eyes. Sunlight needled the ceiling, gold flecked through the leaves of the magnolia tree outside. The foghorn moaned again.

  Sun and fog, together.
San Francisco was a city of multiple personalities.

  It was six forty-five. Jo felt the late night as a low note of fatigue echoing down to the bone. She got up, pulled a kimono arounc herself, and raised the blinds. A vivid day greeted her. The sky was acrylic blue and the more flamboyant homes on the hilltop—blue, yellow, and green with gingerbread gables—looked Easter-egg bright. In the distance, past dense rooftops and Monterey pines, the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge glowed red in the dawn. Mist clung to the water below it, but here above Fisherman's Wharf her neighborhooc gleamed.

  She was lucky to live here, and she knew it. Her house was a classic San Francisco Victorian, adobe-red with white gables. Tuckec back from the street, it looked unassuming. And it was Plain Jane compared to the faux mansion next door, which had a rooftop terrace adorned with statues of Roman godlets. Cupid was covered in pigeon crap.

  Curtains twitched in one of the mansion's upstairs windows. She sighed. Her neighbor was checking to see if her lights were on. She lowered the blinds and hit the shower.

  If her house looked humble from the street, inside it was all air and space, and saturated with color. Big windows captured each ounce of sunlight the capricious weather offered. Her bed frame was Japanese, lacquered to a black shine, covered with a scarlet comforter and gold pillows. Hot colors were good. They helped her wake up, reminded her of heartbeats and action. The orchids on the dresser were a fiery orange.

  She loathed confined spaces, and the house let her breathe. It even boasted a million-dollar view of both the Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge. To see it, she just had to shinny up the downspout to the roof. Piece of cake.

  She loved this place. But it could be too quiet, now that it was just her.

  Climbing out of the shower, she felt revved up. She dressed and slipped on her necklace, a silver chain on which hung a Coptic cross and a white-gold ring. Downstairs in the kitchen she booted up her laptop. Sunlight cut a wedge through the French doors. The tiny backyard was shaded by the old magnolia and overrun with sage, lilac, and an unruly wall of white-flowering clematis.

  Her computer sang at her. She took a look. Lieutenant Tang had sent a hunk of preliminary information.

  Callie Ann Harding. Age thirty-six. Palo Alto address. Divorced, no children. Next of kin was her ex-husband, Gregory Harding of Portola Valley. Harding had been contacted. He had identified the body.

  Hell of a wake-up call for the ex. Jo pulled off the top of a pen with her teeth, opened a notebook, and made a note to contact Harding ASAP.

  She pulled up the next file: Callie Harding's driver's license photo.

  Even under the harsh lens of the DMV camera, Harding looked strikingly attractive. Her cheekbones had the angular look common to long-distance runners. Her hair was pulled back into a serene French twist and dyed a platinum shade that hinted at a healthy ego and libido. It was a Monroe blonde, set against serious, no-nonsense Dragnet eyes. Her gaze was piercing and intensely alive.

  Jo pulled out her psychological autopsy checklist. Her spirits tanked.

  She worked within the NASH framework—determining whether a death was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. To do that, she gathered as much hard evidence as possible. But none of the information she usually relied on would be available here.

  The police report on the crash hadn't been filed yet. Forensics hadn't analyzed the BMW to determine whether a mechanical fault had caused the wreck. Harding's family, friends, and coworkers hadn't been interviewed. The autopsy was scheduled for noon, which meant Barry Cohen was clearing the decks to get it done. But toxicology screening, blood, and urine tests wouldn't be back.

  She was going to have to tag along with detectives and scrounge information from the medical examiner. And neither law enforcement nor the ME's office was eager to share their findings with a psychiatrist.

  She had a good working relationship with Barry Cohen, but some of his colleagues disdained the concept of the psychological autopsy. In their view, they did science. Jo did hoodoo.

  They were half right. The psychological autopsy wasn't science. Like all of medicine, it was an art.

  She didn't split open cadavers. Nonetheless her work dug deeply into the deceased. She investigated the victim's history—medical, psychological, educational, and sexual. She looked for early warning signs of suicide. She learned about the victim's relationships. Read their writings. Excavated their online activities. Asked about their premonitions and mood swings. She gathered reactions to the victim's death from friends and relatives. She asked about old and current enemies.

  People did have them. And not like her mother, who kept an enemies list of every kid who'd knocked one of her children off a play ground slide.

  And to evaluate the victim's mental state she uncovered their fears, phobias, and fantasies. Death is a physical event, but when it comes to human beings, state of mind makes all the difference. Between murder and self-defense. Between legal insanity and manslaughter.

  And in this case, between accident and murder-suicide.

  Still, her conclusions were inevitably a matter of judgment. Manner of death? We have a 9.3 for suicide, 9.85 for murder. And for accident? A 2.1 from the Soviet judge. Not a winner.

  In the end, the police and the medical examiner determined how people died. Jo determined why. Because a forensic psychiatrist doesn't cut open the victim's body, but his life.

  But in this case, she didn't even have a cause of death. Welcome to the front line. Flying blind, into a fog bank.

  She printed all the files, put everything in a satchel, and headed out the door, locking the house behind her, a small house never intended for one person.

  Jo jogged down her front steps. The air was brisk. In the small park across the street, trees swayed as though shaking themselves awake. She glanced at the mansion next door. This was generally the moment when her neighbor liked to intercept her. But today the curtains failed to twitch and the door stayed closed.

  At the corner she caught the cable car. The gripman rang his bell and they tipped past the corner and angled down the steep hill. She held on while the neighborhood slid by. From a distance this hillside looked postcard neat, but up close Jo saw the crevices: narrow passageways that hid tiny courtyards, alleys that cloistered tie-dyed hippie hideaways. Halfway down the hill an old apartment building was being gutted and remodeled. Construction workers were sauntering around the site at a Monday-morning pace. The guy with the hammer slung from his tool belt looked kind of hot.

  Jo checked herself. It wasn't him; it was the gigantic thermos of coffee he was carrying. She got off at the bottom of the hill and headed to Java Jones.

  The coffeehouse was crowded. Behind the counter, Tina smiled.

  "Johanna Renee, good morning."

  "I need an ubercoffee, the biggest you've got, plus a blueberry muffin. And a cheese panini."

  Tina gave her a waspish look.

  "I want calories and caffeine," she said.

  Tina was her younger sister. She had Jo's brown curls and athletic figure. She was wearing a black barista's apron, plus a nose stud and enough silver earrings to get reception from orbiting spy satellites. She was as bouncy as Tigger.

  Jo spoke up to be heard over the stereo. "Who's this?"

  "Mahler. Quality music."

  Jo didn't comment. Tina's playlist of quality music also included Slipknot.

  Tina waved to the air. "Dark and passionate. It's the way to take things. Music, literature, men ..."

  "Coffee."

  Smirking, Tina handed over a mug the size of a Ming vase. Jo carried it to a table by the window. She took a long, greedy swallow. Sitting down, she got out her computer and called the Central Division Police Station.

  Lieutenant Amy Tang answered the phone, sounding like a switchblade, sharp and flashy. "What do you have for me, Dr. Beckett?"

  "Nothing yet. I'm only getting started."

  Tang exhaled with what Jo's finely calibrated psychiatric training took to be a fat
breath of irritation. "What do you need?"

  "Harding's vehicle and driving records."

  Papers rustled. "The BMW was brand-new, purchased three weeks ago. Harding had a clean driving record. No DUIs, no speeding tickets."

  Jo scribbled notes. "The Yoshida and Maki Prichingo cases. Are the files ready for my review?"

  "We're swamped. It'll be this afternoon. Right now I'll send you what the press has reported."

  It would have to do. "Any more information on Harding's passenger? How's she doing?"

  "Alive. Unconscious. She hasn't talked."

  "Where is she?"

  "St. Francis."

  "Good." Jo had staff privileges at St. Francis. She would go by.

  The lieutenant cleared her throat. "What do you think about the sexual fantasy angle?"

  "No thoughts yet. I need evidence before I draw conclusions."

  "I'd say Harding drew her own conclusion in red lipstick. She was dirty."

  "Maybe."

  Jo thought she heard the policewoman tapping a pencil against her desk. "You need anything else before you get to drawing?"

  Yes. Tang—is that your last name, favorite breakfast drink, or emblem of your biting personality? "Not right now. Thank you, Lieutenant."

  Tang hung up without saying you're welcome. In her notebook, next to the woman's name, Jo drew a smiley face with a tongue sticking out.

  She also drew a circle around Angelika Meyer's name. Harding's young passenger was key. If Meyer regained consciousness, she might be able to tell them what had happened inside the BMW. Might tell Jo what it was so damned vital to stop.

  Forty-eight hours and counting down. With the information she was likely to gather in that time, she might as well ask a Ouija board for help.

  With a clatter, Tina set a plate with her muffin and cheese panini on the table. "Your calories."

  "Excellent. Thanks."

  In the sun flowing through the windows, Tina's curls glowed copper, giving the impression that her head was on fire. She sat down and leaned toward Jo.

  "I ran into Mike Sadowski—from your high school class? He's aching to go out with you."

  "You think everybody's aching to go out with me. Barry Bonds. The archbishop. The cable car driver on the Rice-A-Roni box."

 

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