21st Birthday by Patterson, James (mystery books to read txt) 📗

For an hour, I lost myself in family magic time. It was all delicious and I soaked it up. I might need to draw on the good feelings in the days to come if the horrible Burke case continued to be unsolved, devolving from horrible to cold.

CHAPTER 36

I CAME THROUGH the bullpen gate at eight on Saturday morning and headed straight into the break room.

Rich Conklin got up and followed me in, watched me vigorously clean out the coffee maker, refill the tank and the filter, tap the brew button with a vengeance.

I said, “Any word on Burke? Please tell me he came home last night.”

“No such luck,” said my old friend.

During the years I’ve been partnered with Rich, we’ve both grown some stress-induced gray hairs. I plucked. He didn’t. A little silver looked good on him.

He took my mug down from the high shelf and we stood together watching the coffee drip into the pot. It was hypnotic and I felt myself relax.

He asked “How you doin’?” The Joey Tribbiani imitation was our shorthand way of saying “we’re friends.”

I replied, “How you doin’?”

“I asked first.”

“Do I look ragged? I think I had 100 percent REM sleep. I was running all night.”

“From or to?”

“After, I think. I was chasing, not catching.”

We took our coffee to a table that had stood in this room since the Kennedy years, kicked the chairs out from under, and sat down.

Rich said, “Speaking of chasing, Cindy interviewed Clapper this morning.”

“Good for her.”

“Yep. It aired on KRON.”

“What did Clapper say?”

Rich was saying “Same old bull —” when Brady appeared right beside us.

“Where’s Alvarez?” he asked Conklin.

“She left her charger in her car. She’ll be right back.”

Brady said, “I need alla y’all in my office, PDQ.”

PDQ turned out to be under five minutes.

Brady’s hands were clasped on his desk. Alvarez had retrieved her charger and was inside the glass box in time for roll call. We all were. Alvarez and I sat across the desk from Brady. Conklin leaned against the doorframe. Chi stuck his head in, read the tension in the room, and backed out without speaking.

Conklin closed the door.

Brady said, “There’s been another ugly-ass murder.”

I was thinking, Tara.

“Teenage girl, throat cut in her car in the parking lot at her school.”

“ID on the vic?” I said, my mouth suddenly dry.

“Yeah. Sorry, Boxer, I know you talked to her. It’s Melissa Fogarty, aka Misty.”

I jumped up and shouted, “That son of a bitch!”

Every cop in the department turned their head.

Brady said, “Down, Boxer.”

“She said she was going to break up with him.”

He said, “You go to the ME’s office and take a look at the victim. Conklin, Alvarez, go to the crime scene. The car will be transported to the lab soon. Stay with the CSIs at the scene and then head out to Hunters Point and have someone there show you the car. Killer had to leave something at the scene, in the vehicle or on the girl. Y’all stay in close touch with me.”

Alvarez and Conklin edged past and Brady shook his finger at me. “Get a grip, Lindsay. No mistakes.”

I nodded, left Brady’s office, took the stairs at a jog, exited by the lobby’s back door to the breezeway that connected the Hall to the medical examiner’s office.

Hitting speed dial, I left a message for Claire, saying, “I’m on my way.”

CHAPTER 37

JONNY SAMUELS SAID, “He’s changed in the space of a week, you notice?”

Cindy had just wrapped her interview with Chief Charles Clapper outside the Hall of Justice. The building was gray granite and a pretty good backdrop in the morning light.

Clapper had said to her and the camera, “We’re still looking for Tara Burke. The San Francisco Chronicle is running her photo on their website and in the print edition. Our tip lines are open. If you’ve seen Tara or think you know where she could be … Look. This is a twenty-year-old woman. She doesn’t have much money on her, if any. Her young daughter has been murdered.

“We need the eyes of the people of this city to help us find her. Ms. Thomas will give you the numbers to call. Thank you.”

Clapper thanked Cindy, and Samuels turned away and walked up the steps to the Hall of Justice.

Cindy was going over her notes, figuring out her lede, and Samuels was looking at the raw video he’d shot when Cindy looked up and shouted, “Oh, my God!”

Six or seven cruisers parked outside the building were suddenly backing out, tires squealing, and heading up Bryant. Sirens blasted.

“Quick,” she said. “I saw Richie in one of those cars. We’ve gotta move.”

“Give me the keys,” he said.

She handed them over. They ran a long block to where they’d parked on Bryant at Sixth. Samuels opened the door for Cindy, then got behind the wheel. Cindy buckled up and grabbed the dash as the car lurched out onto Bryant, then went flat-out as Samuels headed north. They drafted behind the police cars for as long as they could see and hear them, and by then Cindy had picked up a few words through the static on the scanner.

The words were “Sunset Park Prep.” Lucas Burke taught English Lit there. Cindy picked up code 10-10 for “ME needed,” but nothing for “shooter at large” or “ambulance needed” or “officers in need of assistance.”

By the time Cindy and Samuels reached the school, cops had taped off the parking lot and were redirecting pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Samuels pulled into a metered parking spot outside the school and grabbed his camera. Cindy fed the meter and the two of them approached the parking lot on foot.

A girl in her school uniform walked past where Cindy stood with Samuels, her head was down as she spoke into her phone, saying “I can’t