Savich said, “Nothing from Hammersmith about the Dodge Charger he’s been looking for?”
“He’s had no luck with that,” Cheney said. “And no useful leads yet from any of the hotels in the city on the man—or woman—who was driving it.”
Savich said, “After what the killer did to Mickey O’Rourke, we should stop talking about a woman. We all think you’re right, Cheney. It’s a man who killed Mickey O’Rourke.”
Burt Seng said, “Still, guys, it could have been a very strong woman. Hey, Eve here could carry lots of dead weight.”
“Not that much,” Eve said.
Dillon said, “Mickey O’Rourke weighed two hundred and ten pounds, and everyone has described the perp as slender, not very big, so it’s got to be a man, a very fit man.”
Harry said, “I agree; even the ponytail couldn’t have managed it.”
Eve said, “I know I couldn’t, so it’s a man. For sure. Now, I don’t think Cindy was putting us on, either, about the name Sue—it was too raw, too fast. I don’t know who this Sue is, but I agree, she can’t be O’Rourke’s murderer. Maybe an accomplice, but not the killer.”
Sherlock said, “Boozer Gordon described a man, too, not a woman; there was no question in his mind. So, yeah, good-bye, Sue.”
“Without those kids,” Harry said, “not only wouldn’t we ever have found Mickey O’Rourke, but, bigger yet, we still would have been trying to fit our killer into a female body.”
Cheney said, “I say we buy those kids tickets to a Forty-niners game.”
Savich repeated slowly, “If Sue is an accomplice, was she with the killer when he beat Mickey? Did she question him? Did she tell him to slice Mickey’s throat? If so, then why wouldn’t she go with him to bury him? As his lookout, his helper, whatever? But she didn’t.” Savich stopped cold. He looked very thoughtful, then, without another word, he started quickly typing on MAX’s keyboard.
Sherlock cocked her head at him, since she knew that Eureka! look well. He’d thought of something, something big. She said, “We’ve been working on a bit of information Boozer Gordon gave us. When the man was putting on plastic gloves to draw Boozer’s blood, Boozer noticed two rings on his fingers. The diamond pinkie ring sounds like the one Mrs. Moe described the shooter wearing when he rented the Zodiac. As for the other one, Boozer said it looked sort of ‘religious’ and actually asked the man if he was a priest. The man said no, he’d won it in a poker game. But still it could be an easy lie. Since it was an odd sort of ring to wear, it could have significance, it could be important.”
Eve said, “Priests don’t wear rings, not in the Catholic Church, though bishops do.”
Sherlock nodded at her. “We sent a police artist to meet with Boozer and get a sketch of the ring. Here it is, to the best of Boozer’s memory.”
While everyone looked at the drawing, Sherlock said, “Even though it’s pretty rough, we sent the sketch back to the Hoover Building. Given all the ecclesiastical rings I looked at on the Internet, Boozer’s description of the ring isn’t far off. We should know soon if our people can find anything.” But Sherlock didn’t look hopeful.
Harry pointed to the sketch. “The ring does look faintly religious. I hope you’re right and it’s important to this guy, for whatever reason.”
“Well, well, would you look at this,” Savich said. He looked down at MAX again for a moment, then smiled at everyone. “In all the talking we’ve done about Sue, we’ve assumed Sue is an American woman because it’s an American name, short for Susan. But it occurred to me to ask if there are names in other languages that sound like Sue, since this case revolves around espionage. I ran it as a search through MAX, and it turns out there are names in Chinese that are pronounced Sue, or close to it. The closest one is a family name, written in English as X-u or S-u. Either way, since it’s a surname it can be a man or woman’s name, but no matter, I’d say Xu is a man and very probably Chinese.”
Cheney rose straight up, slammed his fist to the table. “That’s got to be right! It fits too well not to be. It all makes sense now. The Cahills had a Chinese handler named Xu who probably recruited them to get access to Mark Lindy’s classified information. Question is, why is Xu still in the country? Why is he still around more than eight months after the Cahills were arrested?”
“Maybe he’s trying to clean things up before he checks out,” Harry said.
Eve said, “To stay here over eight months, he’d have to be an American citizen, whether he’s working for the Chinese or not, or have excellent fake papers.”
Harry said, “And the reason he’s still here is because the Cahills know exactly who he is, and they could announce his identity to the world at any moment they liked.”
Savich said, “Say Xu is an agent for the Chinese. They can’t be happy with him that the simple retrieval of information of Mark Lindy’s data—meant to be done with stealth and alert no one it was even taken—turned instead into the very messy murder of a U.S. citizen, one working for the federal government. Imagine if it got out that Chinese intelligence was responsible, and the press got ahold of it—heads would roll. This Xu’s continued usefulness to his employer, maybe even his life, might depend on the Cahills keeping their secrets. He had no choice but to stay here.”
Cheney said, “So Xu had to try to get the Cahills off, or make them think he would, to prevent them from giving him up.”
Cheney said, “I wonder if the CIA already suspects Chinese involvement? If so, they probably beat us to this Xu name days ago.”
Savich said, “I’ll speak to Billy Hammond at the CIA again, give him a heads-up. They’re much better placed to follow this up quickly, if they haven’t already.”
“Will he tell you the truth?” Eve asked him.
“I suppose it’s a vague possibility. On the other hand, Hammond was a stone wall when I asked him what kind of intelligence the Cahills were after on Lindy’s computer.”
“It’s possible they don’t know,” Eve said. “I mean, who knew the Forty-niners would be having a winning season?”
They were interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Come,” Cheney called.
The door opened to Agent Andre Devereau. Behind Andre stood Molly Hunt.
“She needs to see you, Cheney, so I brought her back.” Cheney nodded, and Agent Devereau closed the door behind Molly.
Eve was on her feet. “Molly? What’s happened? Are you all right?”
Molly was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, sneakers on her feet. Her vivid red hair was wild around her head, no makeup on her face. She looked like a teenager.
She said to Eve, “A phone call came in a half-hour ago. You told me never to pick up, and to record every call, and I did. I didn’t want to stay there and wait, so I came right over. Eve, call my home number. The voice mail access code is one-five-five-nine.”
Eve picked up the landline and punched the speakerphone. She dialed Molly’s number, and they all heard it ring, heard her punch in the code. There was the date and time, then a muffled gravelly voice.
“Mrs. Hunt, the mole on the back of your left thigh is very sexy. I’m thinking you and I will get together after your murderer husband is underground. It will be you and me and Emma. She can teach me to play the piano, and I can teach her—other things. The murdering bastard won’t be with us much longer, Molly—may I call you Molly? I’ll come for you, I promise.”
Eve knew if she even breathed deeply everyone would hear it as she pressed the stop button.
Molly stood as pale as the morning fog snaking over the bay behind her, her hands clenched at her sides. But when she spoke, her voice was calm. “I can’t figure out why he called Ramsey a murderer.”
“He said it twice,” Sherlock said. “Does he believe Ramsey is a murderer because he was presiding over a death penalty trial—namely, the Cahills’?”
Eve walked to Molly, placed her hands on her shoulders. She looked her right in the eye. “Molly, how could this guy have seen y
ou naked?”
Molly ran her tongue along her bottom lip. “The bathroom has a large window looking out at the ocean, right beside the Jacuzzi. Ramsey and I like to—” She broke off, swallowed. “There are blinds, but we never use them. There are no neighbors to look in, after all, and it’s a direct view to the ocean and the headlands beyond.”
Harry said, “Too far from the water to see a mole, even with binoculars. So he may have managed to sneak up to the back of the house and look in on you without your seeing him. It could have been any time, even before he shot Ramsey. Think, Molly. Do you remember anything—maybe a shadow you couldn’t identify, a flash of movement out of the corner of your eye?”
Molly shook her head. “It was raining last night while I was bathing. When I looked at the window, I only saw the raindrops streaming down the glass, nothing else, I’m sure.”
“He could have managed to get to the window unseen by the deputies guarding the house,” Eve said. “It’s a big property, with lots of ways in, if one climbs the cliff or sneaks through Mr. Sproole’s yard. It’s a huge risk to take, though. It’s more likely he saw you a week or more ago. When he was planning to shoot Ramsey.”
Sherlock said, “Molly, did you tell the marshals?”
Molly nodded. “They weren’t happy. They checked around the house right away, but they didn’t find anything. You know the rain was heavy.”
Molly stared at each of them in turn. “He’s going to kill Ramsey unless you find him. How many more times can he fail? He was promising me, you heard the certainty in his voice. He’s going to kill Ramsey.”
Savich hated the despair in her voice, and he snapped her back. “Molly, have you taken a bath every night since last Thursday night when Ramsey was shot?”
She started. “Well, no. I’ve been so exhausted, I’ve hopped in and out of the shower, but last night—” She gave a hoarse laugh. “Last night I needed to calm myself down, get it together for the children. I soaked for a good thirty minutes. And maybe he was outside, watching me, and I didn’t know it—I was lying there, my eyes closed, and I was so thankful Ramsey had survived the elevator attack—” She looked at them blindly. “I know he was there watching me, all the time, he was watching me.”
And in everyone’s mind—Could he have gotten to her last night, broken into the house without alerting the marshals outside?
Sherlock said with infinite calm, “He’s not going to try to take you. His whole purpose is to terrify you, to scatter your focus, and our focus. The best thing for your peace of mind, and for ours, would be to take you and the kids to a safe house for the duration.”
Cheney nodded. “I can arrange it.”
Molly said, “That’s like in the movies. I can’t believe any of this, it’s all so surreal, and Ramsey—” She broke off, pulled herself together, cleared her throat. “All right. Good. I’ll try to make the boys think it’s a mini-vacation, maybe down by the zoo? We’ll need to transport Emma’s piano, since she plays at Davies Hall in a week and a half.”
Harry said, “It’d be less risky to rent one, bring it to the safe house.”
“No, that wouldn’t work. Emma’s piano—it’s been her lifeline since Ramsey was shot.”
Cheney said, “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.”
“Thank you. I’ll head home, then, and get everything ready. But what if he’s watching the house? What if he sees us leave? And follows us? He’ll know you’re taking us away; he’ll know it.”
Savich said, “No, Molly, he won’t know where you’re going. Listen to me, this guy isn’t some kind of superman who knows all, sees all. He’s only one man, and we’ve done this before. Trust me, this is going to throw him off his game.”
But not for very long, Eve thought. They had no idea whether his game included continuing trying to kill Ramsey, or even what his game was. Not that she would say that to Molly. He knew they would all hear his phone call to Molly. If he thought about the consequences at all, which, of course, he had, she knew they were going to have to be very careful while moving her.
Molly slowly nodded. “I don’t want to tell Ramsey about this. There’s nothing he can do. I can’t stand worrying him more when he’s helpless. It would destroy him to know he can’t protect us. All right, I’ll get Emma out of school now.”
Crandall Building
California Street
San Francisco
Late Monday morning
Damn her eyes, I’m one of the most famous defense lawyers in the world. How can she do this to me?
Milo Siles mashed the elevator button once more, then another couple of times for good measure. The elevator doors opened, and he stepped in. Eight other people surrounded him, most taller than he, and he felt the familiar punch of claustrophobia. He closed his eyes and thought about the .38 he’d left in his glove compartment. He’d managed to wheedle a permit for it, not an easy task in San Francisco. It was a good thing he’d left it there or he might have shot the selfish cow and her greedy moron of a lawyer. How demeaning it was to be forced by a lamebrained judge to meet with a lamebrained mediator on the twelfth floor of the Crandall Building, in her lawyer’s conference room, to listen to her lawyer demand half a million dollars from him every single year for the rest of her selfish self-centered life, plus the house in Claremont, plus the shares in the vineyard in Sonoma, plus support for their two boys until they were eighteen.
Half a million dollars. A year.
Milo was so angry at his soon-to-be ex-wife’s outrageous demand, he’d nearly out-shouted his own divorce lawyer. And that officious cow of a mediator had counseled that they all take a deep breath and sit back and close their eyes for a moment. And then what? Sing “Kumbaya”? He wouldn’t be surprised, not in San Francisco.
He’d taken that deep breath and closed his eyes anyway, and that did help him relax, because what he saw was a huge number of zeroes flashing in front of his eyes—the ten million dollars or so he had stashed in his holding company in the Grand Cayman Islands. No way Marjorie or her lawyer would find out about that. He’d been very careful through the years that it couldn’t be traced to him, not by anyone.
He grinned to himself. You never knew, when you went the extra mile to make some real money in this business, if you might have to make a quick exit. This trial with the Cahills was a disaster, but at least it had pushed his nest egg up to that nice round number, more like the nest omelet he’d always wanted. He should never have taken the risk of defending the Cahills’ worthless butts after they screwed up and got themselves indicted for murder. The case was hopeless from the start. He should have known that for all that money there would be risks far beyond keeping the Cahills quiet and cooperative, making his motions, and sitting back to wait. Well, he’d done everything as agreed, and he deserved that money. It was Marjorie’s overspending that had pushed him into it, wasn’t it?
He pictured his wife staring at him across the table, her eyes narrowed beneath her dark brows, which always needed plucking. It made bile rise in his throat. He’d supported her lazy butt for seventeen years, and what had she done to earn it? Be a housewife? As in be the loving wife who tended the house, took care of the children, maybe cooked the occasional dinner? That was a joke. Marjorie had a maid, a cook, and a gardener—and a nanny when the boys were younger. She did nothing at all useful, spent her hours on herself and on her idea of playing, whatever that happened to be. She’d probably had a half-dozen lovers, all of them buff and twenty years younger than she was, he knew it to his gut, and it was he who had paid for them. When he’d stormed out of that ridiculous meditation session with her lawyer, the lead-faced dyke who didn’t make any bones about hating him, Marjorie had come up behind him and whispered in his ear—easy for her to do, since she was two inches taller than he, the cow—“I know more than you think, Milo, about this Cahill trial, about how you’ve cheated your firm. Think about it, dear. Five hundred thousand dollars a year is a lot better than sharing a cell with Clive.”
He’d turned on her, his mouth working with no coherent words at first. “I let you do what you want, what’s in this for you?”
She laughed. “Let me paraphrase Nicole Kidman when they asked her how she felt about splitting up with Tom Cruise—I don’t have to wear flats any longer.”
He’d nearly decked her.
Tom Cruise wasn’t that short, and neither was he.
Milo would have smashed his fists against the elevator doors, but he couldn’t lose it since there were too many people looming over him in the elevator. Marjorie was divorcing him because he wasn’t tall enough for her?
He had to get hold of himself. She’d overheard a conversation with Clive? He couldn’t remember any such conversation, but obviously he hadn’t been careful enough. Well, she’d keep her mouth shut. If she spilled to the cops, then the Feds would seize all his assets under the RICO Act and she wouldn’t see a bloody dime. Maybe sharing a cell with Clive would be worth it, knowing she’d have to get a job, maybe selling bagels in one of those outdoor kiosks at her favorite mall.
Milo walked a block over to the Mason Building, which housed his law firm, and directly into the underground garage to his new Beamer parked next to the express elevator. He admired its sleek lines for a second, still got a kick out of how the door opened for him with his key fob still in his pocket. As he squeezed in, he saw Marjorie’s smiling face again, her smile so big she showed the gold tooth in the back of her mouth she’d never bothered to change out. He smacked his fist on the dashboard. This wasn’t his fault; none of this was his fault. He was a good provider. And he would still send his boys to Princeton, his alma mater.
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