12th of Never (Womens Murder Club 12) (20 page)

The golden-haired little girl who had been sitting in the courtroom beside Lynnette Lagrande darted through the crowd and ran to her father. She was bawling as she grabbed him around his waist and cried out, “Daddy, let’s go home.”

Nicky Gaines went to the little girl and peeled her away from Keith Herman. “Lily, you’ll see your dad again soon. You just have to stay with your grandma for another few days.”

Yuki stood in one place and stared inward.

What had just happened?

Had Lynnette Lagrande, the beautiful and prim school-teacher, just sprouted hair on her palms? Was Floyd Meserve, the good cop, a simpleminded dick who had in fact killed Jennifer Herman because he loved Lynnette Lagrande? Who had kidnapped the child—and why? And what did Keith Herman have to do with all of the above?

All that Yuki knew for sure was that if the judge hadn’t declared a mistrial, Keith Herman would have gotten off. Because reasonable doubt of this magnitude hadn’t been seen in San Francisco in the last fifty years.

RICH CONKLIN WAS shaving in the men’s room when Brenda, the squad assistant, pushed open the door and stuck her face in.

“Hey. Could you knock, maybe?” Conklin said. He pulled paper towels out of the collar of his shirt, dried his face.

“Here you go,” Brenda said. She knocked on the open door.

Conklin laughed. “What is it, Brenda? What do you need?”

“There’s been a shooting at the aquarium.”

“You don’t mean the Aquarium of the Bay?”

“That’s the one.”

“Shit,”
Richie said. “Tell Brady about this.”

“He’s the one called me, told me to find you and tell you to get down there.”

“Is Morales in?”

“She’ll be in later. Sergeant Boxer is taking the day off. It’s all on you and about a hundred uniformed cops until the day shift comes in.”

Conklin went to his desk, collected his weapon, and put on his jacket. Then he jogged downstairs and checked out an unmarked car from the lot outside the ME’s office.

He drove north through the morning rush on the Embarcadero. It was a twenty-minute drive to the Wharf even with the siren on and a clear lane. Which he didn’t have.

As he wove through traffic, Conklin thought about Professor Judd, how he’d come in yesterday morning wearing a cashmere overcoat on top of his pajamas, how he’d bulled his way into the squad room, then demanded that Conklin listen to his dream.

Conklin had said, “Let’s hear it, Professor. Did someone get whacked? Or should I say, is someone about to get whacked?”

Judd had dragged out the story, talking about the arc of light, the watery eclipse, the moving walkway, and the gradual realization that he was dreaming, until Conklin had shouted, “Will you get to the fucking
point?
”

“There was a shooting,” Judd had said.

“Who got shot?” Conklin asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know? How is that? Weren’t you there?”

“I didn’t see a person go down, and I didn’t see the shooter.”

“So let me get this straight. You had a dream. You essentially left your body, materialized at the aquarium, and that’s where you heard a shot.”

“That’s right.”

The little professor had stuck out his jaw, daring Conklin to argue with him. He had crumbs on his chin and on the collar of his pin-striped pj’s.

Conklin said, “Nobody has called in a shooting. So you didn’t see a victim in your dream, and there’s no victim in real life, either. I can’t do anything with this, Professor.”

Judd had said, “I guess I’m going to have to be my own detective.” He patted his hip, as though he were packing a gun. “I’ve got a license to carry.”

Conklin had said, “Thanks for coming in, Professor.”

Now there had been a shooting at the aquarium. Had the professor’s dream been another fulfilled prophecy? Or had the professor gone and shot someone?

Conklin called Inspector Paul Chi.

“Chi, it’s Conklin. Do me a favor. You and Cappy go pick up Professor Judd and bring him to the Hall. Just hold him for questioning. You don’t have to tell him anything. Just nail him down. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

CONKLIN PULLED HIS car up to the command post—three black-and-whites and a clump of cops standing in front of barricades blocking the entrance to Pier 39. Conklin leaned out of his window, signed the log, and asked the sergeant what was up.

The sergeant told him, “One victim, shot through the head. It’s a mess in there. Put your waders on.”

Conklin drove straight ahead to the turnaround in front of the Aquarium of the Bay, a tacky-looking white building with peaked roofs, awnings, flags, and a large blue cutout of a shark on the wall.

He parked his vehicle, then called Brenda to say that he had arrived at the scene. He sat behind the wheel for a moment, feeling that whatever had happened inside the aquarium was his fault. That he should have paid more attention to that twerpy professor. That instead of posting a team at the aquarium, which he could have done, he’d told Professor Judd that there was nothing he could do.

Now someone was dead, and Conklin was 99 percent sure that the professor had done the shooting and that he would have an alibi. Not just an alibi, but a rock-solid, airtight, unimpeachable alibi.

Conklin rummaged in the glove compartment and located half of a packaged brownie. He gobbled it down, then got out of the car and headed to the staircase outside the aquarium building. He climbed the stairs, taking them two at a time.

He entered the building on the second floor, badged the cop at the door, and took a left past some exhibits, including a cylindrical tank full of shiny, swirling fish. Another cop was guarding the elevator.

“You’ve got to take the fire stairs, Inspector. The elevator is out.”

Christ.

Conklin took the fire stairs down, opened the fire door, and stepped into eight inches of cold seawater. He passed the 725 gallons of illuminated moon jellies, then slogged along the dimly lit corridor, following signs to the three-hundred-foot-long moving walkway that had been tunneled under the bay.

Conklin stopped at the head of the walkway, which was no longer moving, and tried to get his bearings. The aquarium arced overhead. Sharks and other large fish, schools of anchovies, and various slimy creatures from the deep swam over and around him. It was like surround sound for the eyes—and it wasn’t comfortable.

Halfway down the tunnel, a stream of water poured onto the walkway through a hole about six feet up the wall. At best, the spray was destroying evidence. At worst, the entire exhibit was in danger of becoming like a submarine with a breached hull.

Feeling suddenly sick from the underwater effect, Conklin held on to the railing. He really didn’t want to puke in the crime scene. He steadied himself, took some deep breaths, then he pushed off and sloshed over to where the CSIU team was processing the scene.

The victim’s body was facedown on the walkway, and the rising water was almost to the point where it would cover the hole in the back of his head.

Charlie Clapper, longtime head of the CSIU, was stooped over the body, lifting a pocket flap with his gloved hand.

Conklin said, “Hey, Charlie. What’s the story here?”

“Well, Rich, we’ve got a white male, fifty or so, shot through the back of the head, as you can see. Hold on, I’ve got his wallet. Crystal, can you shine a light on this?”

A young tech in high rubber boots came over to them and flashed her light on the dead man’s driver’s license.

Clapper said, “Here we go. Our victim is in fact a white male, fifty-two, five foot six, hundred and forty pounds, hazel eyes. Name of Mr. Perry Judd. FYI, Mr. Judd never knew what hit him.”

“Damn it,” Conklin said. “This man is Perry Judd? You’re sure?”

“I’m only sure that I’m holding Perry Judd’s driver’s license.”

“Can you turn his head so I can see his face?” Conklin asked.

“Not until the ME gets here,” said Clapper. “You know that, Richie. Until then, we gotta cool our heels.”

JOE AND I spent the night inside a cozily furnished hospital room, holding Julie, bottle-feeding her, and telling her that she was a good strong baby and that we loved her so much.

When we weren’t with Party Girl, we slumped in chairs in the waiting room, where we counted holes in the acoustic tiles and sometimes caught a few, very fractured
z
’s.

As long as the night had been, the hours between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. had been longer. We drank vending machine coffee as we waited for Dr. Erwin Dwy, Julie’s hematologist, to see us. And then, finally, he came to the waiting room and brought us back to his office.

Dr. Dwy was 6 feet 9 inches tall, going gray at the temples, and had a long, smiling face and sad eyes. He offered us chairs at his desk and we sat across from him, watching him take phone calls from parents of sick children. Between calls, he apologized, then took another call, until at last he gave us his attention.

“Let me be candid with you,” said Dr. Dwy, folding his hands on his desk. “I don’t have wonderful news.”

I was already terrified; I had been in that state since we’d last seen Dr. Gordon and she had said Julie should have an aggressive workup at the hospital. But now, looking into Dr. Dwy’s eyes, I reached a new high in terror.

I went rigid. I gripped Joe’s hand hard, and I flashed on the night I gave birth to Julie in a blackout with an electrical storm crackling around me. I remembered screaming like a wounded mountain lion—and I wanted to scream like that now.

I don’t have wonderful news.

Joe said, “Tell us what you know, Dr. Dwy.”

“Of course,” he said. “Of course. Well, we gave Julie every test in the book—blood tests, CAT scans, we even did a bone marrow biopsy. She took it very well.

“But this is what it all comes down to,” said the sad-eyed man. “Julie’s white blood cells are abnormally large.”

I blurted, “She has an infection. Dr. Gordon said she had an infection.”

“We believe she has malignant lymphoma. It’s in the leukemic stage.”

Everything went white.

The blood left my head and although I was staring at Dr. Dwy’s face, I saw nothing. I heard a buzzing, then someone was calling my name. I was on the floor, my chair tipped over beside me. I heaved and someone placed a garbage bag right beside my mouth. I heaved again, then there was something cold on my chest.

My blouse was open. Dr. Dwy had a stethoscope on my chest and was listening to my heart. I pushed him away, saying, “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

I tried to sit up, but when I did, everything began to fade again. The doctor told me to just stay down and I tried that, but after a minute or two, I asked Joe to help me up.

When I was standing, Dr. Dwy righted my chair and I buttoned my shirt.

Dr. Dwy said, “Your blood pressure is very low. Have you ever passed out before?”

“No. Because this is the first time someone told me that my daughter has cancer.”

Joe put his arm around me. Tears were sheeting down my face, but I wasn’t sobbing. I was in the present and I was listening hard. I had to keep myself together for Julie.

AFTER I ASSURED Dr. Dwy that I wasn’t going to black out again, he told me and Joe about Julie’s medical condition in a language that seemed to be English, but definitely wasn’t English as I knew it. I just couldn’t grasp what he was telling us; I could only apprehend that Julie’s situation was dire.

I said to the doctor, “Please. Just tell us in simple terms.”

He said, “All you really have to understand right now is that acute leukemias move rather quickly. I don’t like to give statistics, but in this case, I have to tell you that Julie has a fifty percent chance of survival. It’s fifty percent now.

“I advise chemotherapy, the sooner the better. I’d start her on chemo today.”

I wanted to howl, “Nooo,” but I clamped the arm of the chair with one hand, squeezed the life out of Joe’s hand with the other.

My thoughts went to my tiny, helpless child, so recently born, so fiercely loved. She had only been with us for a few weeks, but I had envisioned her life extending out to the horizon. I wanted for Julie what all parents want for their children—that she would have a long and happy life.

I tuned in to Joe saying, “Doctor, what are the side effects of chemotherapy?”

Dwy said, “What you’d expect. She’ll feel sick. She’ll lose her hair. There may be some long-term effects. She could become infertile. And of course, the chemotherapy is not a guarantee that she will successfully beat the cancer. It’s a hard decision, but I know what I would do in your situation.”

Joe said, “My wife and I need a moment to talk this over.”

“Of course,” said Dr. Dwy. “Take your time. But just be aware that if we’re to go ahead with the chemo, I have to organize things for Julie.”

Dr. Dwy stood, ducked his head under the door frame, and left the room. It was unbearably bright in his office once we were no longer in the doctor’s shadow. The overhead fluorescent strip glared, and so did the reflection of light on the blond wood and the white paint. The wall of windows made me feel transparent, and I wanted to be in the dark.

I wanted to grab my baby and run, disappear down a rabbit hole or hide at the back of a cave. I wanted to put Julie back inside my body so that I could protect her, so that nothing bad could ever happen to her. How could I change the devastating fifty–fifty odds Dr. Dwy had given her?

Joe looked drained and grave. He said, “Lindsay, are you feeling okay—physically?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want to do?” he asked me.

“We don’t have a choice. We have to let them shoot her up with chemicals. And we just have to be strong for her when she gets sick. I went through chemo with my mom—”

“I’m not so sure this is the way to go.”

“
What?
You
aren’t?
”

I was sputtering, still dumbfounded by what Joe had said, when a nurse opened the door and told us, “I have a little girl here who wants to be held.”