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“Good.” She turned to Steve. “I’m sorry about this. I just need a couple more hours. If you call the cops now, I’m afraid they’ll kill my family.”

Steve gave her a perplexed look as Sara closed the door. “It won’t be too long,” she promised. “Your wife will notice and call the cops tonight.”

“Hah,” Steve mumbled. “More likely she’ll think I got in a car wreck and she’ll spend the night screwing the gardener.”

“What now?” Brian said as they took the elevator back down to the first floor.

Sara pursed her lips. “I’ve got to find Scott. I have to know that he’s safe.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I don’t know. If Scott really did move out… maybe his new phone number is listed. Or maybe my parents would know where to find him…”

“All right. Let’s call them.”

“No,” Sara said. “
They
will be expecting that. They’ll trace the call. Do you have any food at your house?”

“Sure.”

“Good, let’s go eat lunch. I need to think this through.”

As they crawled back into the car, Brian gave Sara a puzzled look. He shoved the key into the ignition but didn’t start it. “What’s the matter?” Sara said.

Brian took a deep breath. “Are you really going to try to get hold of him?”

“I have to. I’ve got to know he’s okay. I have to know my little girl is safe. I can’t go on with this unless I know.”

“Fine. But I want you to think about something. This is very important. Promise me you’ll think about this before you do anything.”

“Okay.”

Brian paused. Whatever he had to say was making him uncomfortable. He started to speak and then stopped.

“Well, spit it out.” Sara said. “The suspense is killing me!”

Brian licked his lips. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way. I think you should ask yourself this: Could Scott be one of them?”

Sara felt a surge of panic as the question hung in the air. “Why?” she said. “Why would I even think that?” Her voice was shaky.

Brian turned to face her, his right arm hanging over the back of the seat. “Think about it like this. These guys did some kind of mind control on you. Hypnosis, drugs, who knows what they did… but they must have had an agent of some sort who had access to you. Someone who saw you every day. That’s the only way they could be sure that their plan was working. They would have had to keep an eye on you. Maybe Scott was part of it.”

“No,” Sara said. “No way. Scott’s my husband. He wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t.”

“If you say so. I won’t argue with you. Just think about it.”

Brian started the car and rolled into traffic. Sara tried not to hyperventilate as she thought over everything that had happened in the last few hours. She couldn’t even be sure what was real anymore. She distinctly remembered living with Scott all that time, and yet she was now convinced that Scott had actually moved out. What else might she have been programmed to believe? Did she really know Scott as well as she thought? Had they been together for all those years or had it been some sort of hallucination? Had their entire relationship been a lie?

It seemed impossible. Then again, that was the way she’d felt when she saw the house. How well did Sara know any of her friends? Jim had turned out to be a traitor. Could Scott have been part of it as well?

Chapter 35

Brandy was up early Saturday morning. She was supposed to meet Lee at his office so they could track down Scott Murphy and Steve Crenshaw, Sara’s boss, but she wanted to visit the crime scene at Union Square first. Brandy had a lot of questions about what exactly had happened, not the least of which was the location of the shooter. She wouldn’t know for sure what kind of gun had killed Fortress for a few more hours, but she had already developed a theory.

Brandy had considered the idea that someone might have shot Fortress with a lower caliber gun, perhaps a handgun. That would account for the inconsistency of his head wound, but that theory had problems. Using a handgun, the killer would almost certainly have been in the crowd somewhere, and would have been immediately noticed. There would have been no doubt as to his location, and there would have been plenty of witnesses.

Having ruled out the handgun theory, Brandy began looking for the most likely answer. What she decided was that the killer had probably used a .308 just like the one Sara had. It was the best way to create an abundance of evidence against Sara. Both rifles would probably have been matched, meaning that the firing pins and barrels would have been machined to make them resemble one another as closely as possible. That way, in the event that the investigators found the bullet that killed Fortress, the ballistics would reasonably match those of Sara’s rifle. No jury would find Sara innocent after that.

Assuming she was right, Brandy knew that the second shooter would have been further from the square… probably twice as far as the building where Sara had been located. Without a ballistics expert, it would be hard to pin down a location, but Brandy wanted to take a look and see how things lined up.

Brandy showed her ID to the guard on duty and entered the barricaded section around the stage. She inspected the Plexiglas barrier again and confirmed that there were no bullet markings. She searched the rest of the area, including the trees and the concrete planters. Then she went into the gated area around the stage and climbed the stairs, trying to remember exactly how Fortress had fallen.

She stood there and gauged the distance between the other buildings that were within the line of sight. There were half a dozen rooftops with a clear shot, all in easy range for a midlevel sniper rifle. Which one, though? It was impossible to guess. The further ones might be ruled out by mathematics, but Brandy didn’t have those numbers available.

It was ten after eight when Brandy glanced at her watch and realized she was late for her appointment with Lee. She started for the gate, but then something caught her eye. There was a woman in the square, just beyond the barricades. She seemed to be wandering aimlessly, deep in thought. The woman looked dirty and disheveled. Her mussy hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her clothes looked slept in. She didn’t look homeless though, more like someone lost, someone confused… 

It was then that when Brandy realized who the woman was. She barely recognized Sara from the photos she’d seen. Sara had changed her hair and her skin was lighter, probably from living the last few months as a recluse.

Brandy’s excitement got the best of her. She called out to Sara. She realized her mistake as soon as she did it. Sara Murphy turned and saw her, and she panicked. Brandy leapt down the stairs and yanked open the gate, but by the time she got out around the fence, Murphy was half a block away.

Sara raced out into traffic, nearly causing an accident. She paused in the middle of the street and Brandy watched in absolute horror as a large truck came barreling down the street behind her. Brandy screamed Sara’s name but her voice was buried under the bloodcurdling squeal of the delivery truck’s brakes. Brandy watched breathlessly as Sara somehow managed to avoid being crushed by jumping up on top of the car in front of her. The vehicles collided with a sound like thunder and breaking glass. Then Sara dropped down between them and vanished. Brandy thought she was dead for sure.

As the two vehicles came to a shuddering halt, Brandy ran over and bent down next to them. Murphy was nowhere to be seen.

Brandy leapt up and circled the truck just in time to see Sara rounding the corner a block away. She gave chase, but by the time she got to the corner, Sara was crawling into an old brown Volvo. She was gone, and Brandy wasn’t even close enough to get a license plate number.

Brandy’s phone started ringing. “Hello?” she said breathlessly.

“Brandy, it’s Lee. Murphy’s at it again.”

“What do you mean?”

“We just had a car blow up on Van Ness.”

“What? A car bomb?”

“Definitely. The thing did a backflip in the street. Also took out a bus stop. It’s a real mess down here and the press is everywhere.”

Brandy chewed on that for a second. She thought of telling him everything that had just happened, but decided to save it. The story was too long and she wanted to get over there. “I’ll be right there,” she said, hanging up.

Brandy arrived ten minutes later. The street was blocked off in both directions. There were several fire trucks scattered around the area and half a dozen ambulances. Bystanders lined the sidewalks and reporters pressed up to the police blockade. Brandy stepped around a fire truck and saw the scene spread out before her.

There was an upside-down convertible in the northbound lanes. It was in pieces. The front half of the body had been blown to shreds. Bits and pieces of metal and smoldering plastic lay scattered up and down the street. Two body bags were on the ground and paramedics were dealing with several more injured people. Brandy found Lee in the middle of it.

“What do we know?” she asked.

Lee was next to the car, supervising his forensics team. “Not much,” he said. “The driver was practically vaporized. There’s not much left of him at all. The car was a rental. After we get this cleaned up, we’ll try to get an ID on the owner.”

“So what makes you think this is connected to Murphy?” Brandy said.

Lee grinned sourly. “How many terrorists are in the city right now that you know of?”

Brandy glanced across the scene. “It wasn’t Murphy,” she said.

Lee cocked an eyebrow. “How do you know?”

“Because I just saw her halfway across town.” She related her story and Lee listened intently. When she was done, he ran his hand through his hair and scratched the back of his head, deep in thought.

“Well if it wasn’t Sara then who was it?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

Brandy was confident that Sara had nothing to do with the bombing. However, she knew Lee was right about one thing. It was highly likely that the events were related.

They stayed at the scene for another twenty minutes trying to wring stories out of witnesses, but got nothing useful. Brandy and Lee drove separately back to the Tenderloin station. Lee was already in his office when Brandy got there. He was sitting behind a tall stack of paperwork.

“This is your fault,” he said, glancing up at her.

“What?”

He held up a handful of papers. “Do you have any idea what it takes to get a union medical examiner to do an autopsy on Saturday?”

Brandy gave him a sympathetic smile. “I do appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it. At any rate, we should have some answers in a couple hours. You hungry? There’s donuts in the break room.”

“No thanks, I already ate. Are we still going to swing by Murphy’s office?”

“Yeah, her boss is supposed to be there all day. He said to drop by whenever. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready.”

“Okay. On second thought, maybe I will check out those donuts.”

Brandy went to the break room and poured herself a cup of coffee. Ten minutes later, she went back to check on Lee. He was on the phone. Ten minutes after that, he had a line of people standing at his door with questions and waiting for signatures. By the time he was finally ready, it was more than an hour later.

“Sorry about that,” Lee said, finally rising from his desk. “They’re not used to seeing me here on the weekend. At least I have a jump on Monday’s paperwork now.”

“No problem. We ready?”

“Absolutely.” The phone buzzed just as he stepped around his desk. “Inspector Lee?” a female voice said. He rolled his eyes.

“Yes, Ginny?”

“I have a rental agency on the line.”

Lee took the call. A moment later, he put the phone down and smiled. “We’ve got a name on that rented Subaru from last night,” he said. “They’re faxing us the rental agreement.”

Lee led her across the department to the fax at the front desk. It took a few minutes to finish printing. “Well, it all looks legit,” he said. “Name, social. Must have been one of the neighbors.”

“Maybe,” said Sara. “Can I look it over real quick?” She took the papers and snapped a few images with her smartphone.

“What are you doing?” said Lee.

“I’m running a background check. We should hear back in a couple hours.”

Chapter 36

“A thousand bucks just to drive across town?” the kid said. He was a typical San Francisco hippy, a white kid with long dreadlocks and clothes made out of hemp. His t-shirt had a picture of a pot plant on it and his denim jacket had another pot plant drawn on the back in black permanent marker. He smelled like weed and patchouli and a rest stop bathroom. Supposedly, he was a college student, but Stryker had his doubts that the kid was gaining any useful life skills.

“I have to get this car delivered at eight this morning,” Stryker said. He said it in the sincerest tone possible. “I’ll give you five hundred now, and there will be another five hundred waiting at this address on Fisherman’s Wharf.”

“Wow… alright man, I can do that!”

Stryker held out the wad of bills. “Now make sure you do it just like I said. Drive it down Van Ness and deliver it at the Wharf at exactly eight. If the car’s late, even one minute, I’m calling the cops, and don’t think they won’t find you.”

“It’s cool man, I’ll do it. I’m not gonna screw you.”

“Good.” Stryker handed him the money and then stalked off. He had another appointment across town and he was in a hurry. He hailed a cab. He spared the little pothead one last glance as he pulled away into traffic. The kid was toking up right there on the sidewalk.

“Freakin’ California,” Stryker said with a grimace.

Half an hour later, Stryker watched the explosion on Van Ness from the back of his newly purchased Harley. He’d bought the bike on Tuesday for the Bay Bridge job. He was originally going to abandon the vehicle after the job, but now he was glad he’d kept it. It was a newer bike, not as nice as the older ones but certainly more reliable. And he’d gotten it for a steal. With the economy in such bad shape, toys like motorcycles and boats were piling up on Craigslist. The owner had wanted five thousand but when Stryker handed him four in cash, the deal was done.