10th Anniversary Part 31

MARILYN BURNS was screaming, "G.o.d, oh G.o.d, I can't believe this. What happened?"

She peered between her fingers and identified the dead man with one neat hole in his forehead, another in his neck, as Albert Wysocki.

I joined Conklin as he helped the paramedics strap Cindy in and load the gurney into the ambulance. He was panting and he was pale, and I knew he wanted to go to the hospital with Cindy. But he'd shot a man. He had to follow protocol for a shooting that was witnessed by thirty law enforcement officers. Conklin would have to wait for the ME, the Crime Scene Unit, and Brady to arrive.

I touched his shoulder, and his eyes met mine. His expression was flat, drained of emotion.

I've done what he had done. I've felt the same adrenaline overload covering rage and fear and the emotional numbness of shock.

"Is Wysocki dead?" my partner asked me. "Did I kill him?"

"It was him or you, Richie. You're lucky to be alive."

"I'm glad I nailed the b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Heeyyyy ... Lindsayyyy," Cindy called out to me from inside the ambulance.

"I'm right here, girlfriend," I called back.

"You'll go with Cindy to the hospital?" Conklin asked me.

I nodded and climbed up into the ambulance. I gripped Cindy's hand and told her that I loved her and that everything was going to be okay.

"Did I get the story?" she asked me.

"You sure did."

Conklin stood at the rear doors. He said, "Lindsay?"

"I'll stay with her until you get to the hospital," I said to him. "She's going to be fine."

Chapter 107.

LIGHT FROM THE SUNRISE was streaking through the windows when I greeted Martha inside the front door. I stripped off my jacket, my holster, and my shoes, and tiptoed down the hall to the master bathroom. I stepped into the "car wash," let it blast me pink, and then put on my cloudy blue pj's that were on the hook behind the door where I'd left them what seemed like a year ago.

Deja vu all over again.

When I edged under the covers, Joe woke up and opened his arms to me, and that was good, because I wanted to tell him everything that had happened since I'd called him from the hospital.

"Hey," he said, kissing me. "How's Cindy?"

"Honestly? It's like it never even happened," I told him. "She was asleep a minute after she got into the cab and woke up in a hospital bed five hours later."

"Is she ... all right?"

"He didn't get around to raping her," I said. "Thank G.o.d."

I made myself comfortable under Joe's arm, fitting my whole body tightly against him, my left leg over his, my left arm across his chest. "The doctor says she'll be fine when the drugs wear off."

"What did you find out about the bad guy?"

"He was some kind of lowlife freak, Joe. A friendless, unmarried, psychotic loner, fifty-five years old. He put in about eighteen hours a day in the Quick Express garage. Apparently he slept there in his car half the time."

I told Joe that Wysocki had managed the place for some guy who lived in Michigan, so he had run of the place. Had the keys. Kept the log sheets. Ran the scheduling.

"No one questioned anything he did. And so he hangs an 'Out of Service' sign on the freight elevator, and that box becomes his own private real estate."

"A big fish in a mud puddle," said Joe.

"Exactly," I said. "We found a date book in Wysocki's jacket pocket. Actually had the words 'Date Book' inked on the cover. Inside, he'd written a list of his victims, six of them, and times, dates, places, what they were wearing.

"He had Cindy's name in there," I said. "Just made me sick to see her name written in that lineup."

"He called it a date book?" Joe said. "So maybe he was acting like he was on a date."

"That makes some kind of psycho sense, I suppose. He picks up a girl, drugs her. Drives her back to his little out-of-service boudoir. I'm guessing he waits until his victims are semiconscious, then rapes them before the drugs wear off. Oh, yeah. Always the gentleman, he drives them home - or to a nearby alley. Perfect evening for Al Wysocki. Doesn't even have to send flowers the next day."

"How's Conklin doing?"

"Crazed. A wreck. He says to Cindy at the hospital, 'Don't you ever do that again.' She says, 'What? Catch a cab?'"

We both laughed.

My indomitable friend Cindy.

Joe turned onto his side and kissed me. I melted against him.

"I love you so much," I said. "I think I loved you even before I met you."

He laughed, but I saw that there were tears in his eyes.

Chapter 108.

LOOKING INTO JOE'S EYES, I remembered the first time his baby blues locked on mine. We were working a case together. I was the lowest-ranking person there, and he was a top-of-the-heap Federal guy: Deputy Director of Homeland Security.

I liked his looks - his thick brown hair and solid build - and not only was he smart but he had an easy, confident manner, too.

He pa.s.sed me his business card and touched my fingers, and we did a double take as electricity arced between us. It didn't take long for us to get involved, but our sizzling new connection had been disrupted repeatedly and for months by missed planes and crossed schedules.

Joe lived in Was.h.i.+ngton, DC and I lived in the City by the Bay, and both of us had taken recent blows to the heart.

He'd been recovering from a savage divorce, and I was still suffering from the loss of someone close who had been shot and killed on the job.

Neither of us was prepared for the frustrating up-and-down year of long-distance dating that was later complicated even more by an insane - and unconsummated - crush between Conklin and me.

Through all of it, Joe had been a rock, and I'd hung in like I was clinging to a cliff by my fingernails. I knew what was good for me. And I loved Joe. But I couldn't give myself over to the permanence of the relations.h.i.+p.

Finally Joe got tired of it. He called me out on my ambivalence. Then he quit his job and moved to San Francisco. Somehow, while negotiating the zigs and zags, we'd found ourselves in each other.

"I just love you so much," I said to Joe. I kissed the corners of his eyes. He put his hand on my cheek, and I kissed his palm.

He said, "I love you almost too much, Linds. I can't stand it when you're not here and I'm lying in the dark, thinking about bullets coming at you. It's terrible to have thoughts like that."

"I'm very careful," I said. "So don't think about bullets."

I bent to kiss him, my hair making a curtain around our faces. That kiss went deep and it stirred me up. Stirred Joe up, too.

We smiled as we looked into each other's eyes. There were no walls between us anymore.

I said, "I sure would like to make a baby with you, Joe."

I'd said it before. In fact, I'd said it every month for a while now. But right this minute, it was more than a good idea. It was an overwhelming desire to express my love for my husband in a complete and permanent way.

"You think I can make a baby on demand, Blondie?" Joe said, unb.u.t.toning my pajama top. "You think a guy in his late forties can 'just do it'? Hmmm?" He unknotted the tie on my drawstring pants and pulled the string as I unsnapped his drawers.

"Because, I think you could be taking me for granted. Maybe even taking advantage of me."

"Well," I said, "I guess I am."

Joe's hands on my b.r.e.a.s.t.s made my skin hot and my blood burn. I shrugged out of my flannels and lowered myself onto him.

"Go ahead," I sighed. "Try and stop me."

Chapter 109.

IT WAS EARLY DECEMBER, about 10 p.m. on a d.a.m.ned cold night in Pacific Heights. Conklin and I were in an SFPD SUV, miked up, wearing our Kevlar and ready to go.

Six unmarked cars were parked here and there along the intersecting roadways of Broadway and Buchanan. Civilian vehicles provided cover for those of us on the ground.

Above and around us, snipers hid on the rooftops surrounding the eight-story Art Deco apartment building with its white-granite facade.

I'd been staring at that building for so long that I had memorized the bra.s.s-etched door, the ornate motifs and appointments, and the topiary boxwood and hedges between the side of the building and the street. I knew every line in the face of the liveried doorman, who was, in fact, Major Case lieutenant Michael Hampton.

There was a NO PARKING ANYTIME, NO LOADING NO PARKING ANYTIME, NO LOADING zone in front of the building, and we could see every pedestrian walking past the door or going into the building. zone in front of the building, and we could see every pedestrian walking past the door or going into the building.

If Major Case's confidential informant was telling the truth, all of our planning and manpower would culminate in the takedown of a legendary bad guy.

If the CI was wrong, if someone blew the whistle and called the game, there was no telling when, or if, we'd ever get this opportunity again.

I stretched out one leg, then the other, to get the kinks out. Conklin popped his knuckles. My breath fogged out in front of my face. I would have given up half my pension for a cup of coffee, the other half for a chocolate bar.

At half past eleven, just when I thought I'd never be able to walk again, a long Cadillac limo pulled up in front of the apartment building. Adrenaline fired through my bloodstream, chasing out the cramps and the lethargy.

The "doorman" left his post and opened the door for the pa.s.sengers. They had come from the opera and were dressed accordingly.

Nunzio Rinaldi, the third-generation capo of an infamous mob family, stepped out of the limo, wearing a smart black suit and a silver tie. He offered a hand to his wife, Rita, who had platinum-white hair you could have seen in a blackout. There was a high s.h.i.+ne on the limo, and Rita Rinaldi's jewels sparkled in the night.

As the Rinaldis stepped away from the car and moved toward the lavish vestibule of their apartment building, a slight man in a dun-colored hooded raincoat, carrying a shopping bag and walking a small Jack Russell terrier, rounded the corner.

I saw him only out of the corner of my eye - he was one pedestrian out of many, and there were also cars speeding across my sight line to the doorman. But suddenly the little dog was running free and the man had dropped the shopping bag and pulled a gun from inside his coat.

It happened so fast, I doubted my eyes. Then I saw streetlight glint on the gun barrel.

The gun was pointed at the Rinaldis.

I inhaled and yelled, "GUN!" into my mic, blowing out eardrums all along Broadway.

Chapter 110.

AS I YELLED, Lieutenant Hampton lunged for the gunman. Bringing down his arm, he yanked and twisted the would-be shooter around and fell on top of him.

Three bullets were discharged. Pedestrians screamed, but almost before the echoes died, it was all over. The shooter was disarmed and down.

Conklin and I charged across the street and were there before the bracelets snapped shut. I was panting, standing over the hooded gunman as Hampton leaned down and said, "Gotcha, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Thanks for making my day."

A few feet away, Rita Rinaldi pressed her bejeweled hands to her cheeks and wailed. She had to be thinking that the men in black had come for her husband.

Nunzio Rinaldi put his arms around his wife and said to Conklin, "What the h.e.l.l is this? Who is that man?"

Conklin said, "Sorry for the commotion, Mr. Rinaldi, but we had to save your life. We had no choice."

But I had questions, and maybe I'd get some answers, too.

I ripped off the gunman's hood, grabbed a thin tuft of silver-brown hair, and lifted his head clear off the pavement.