“What you tell me will remain confidential.” Unless the police made her give it up-but Fitzgerald didn’t have to know that.
Fitzgerald glanced at her watch. “It’s too long a story, and I have an appointment in five minutes. Why don’t you meet me at eleven? There’s a coffee shop on the ground floor of the building-the Real Bean. We’ll talk then.”
Rae waited at a table in the Real Bean, a cooling cup of cappuccino in front of her. Every now and then she’d take a sip, which only reminded her how much she hated designer coffees. Why had she ordered it? Maybe it went with the territory.
All around her casually dressed workers were sipping exotic brews and nibbling on muffins, carrot cake, or sandwiches with an inordinate amount of alfalfa sprouts protruding from them. Many worked on laptops, others read newspapers. Although it was a small shop, none of the patrons acknowledged the others and it seemed to Rae they even avoided eye contact with the counterpersons. Another sign of twenty-first-century isolationism.
Rae watched the clock behind the counter. Eleven-thirteen. Eleven-twenty-two. Eleven-forty. Fitzgerald had been held up at the office… she hoped.
Eleven-fifty.
Noon.
Twelve-oh-seven.
No, Rae had been stood up. She left the café, took the elevator to the fourth floor, and asked the receptionist if Ms. Fitzgerald was still in.
“I’m sorry, she isn’t.”
“When did she leave?”
“At about a quarter to eleven. She said she’d be gone the rest of the day, on urgent personal business. Would you like to make an appointment for tomorrow?”
“No, thank you.”
Rae turned away, went to push the elevator button.
Urgent personal business? Was Fitzgerald covering her ass with the “powerful forces” and “dangerous people”?
SHARON McCONE
Last night I dreamed I was flying. It felt so real-the freedom, the soaring, the thrilling turbulence. But then I woke to dull light and immobility, and Hy was gone from the armchair. And I remembered his side of the conversation with Len Weathers that I’d overheard. Became afraid for him all over again.
In my presence, Hy’s demeanor had been calm, supportive, and loving. But I felt the tension and rage that was roiling inside him. He would do what he felt he had to do about the person who had put me into this state, even if it forced him to sacrifice himself.
No way to stop this thing he’d set in motion. Unless…
Unless I could identify the perp myself-in cooperation with my operatives, of course. Could I guide them in this investigation? Sure. I’d already taken control, my eyes telling them what to do. I’d lead them to the shooter; then they could go to the police and have the person taken into custody where Len Weathers couldn’t get at him.
I didn’t care what happened to the shooter; if I weren’t bound to this bed and could nail him myself, I wouldn’t treat him gently. But I didn’t want Hy involved in a murder-for-hire case.
Murder for hire.
No, that wasn’t Hy’s style. He’d told Weathers he needed him if there was a problem. Backup, that was all. Hy would do the job himself. And that would add to the burden of guilt he carried from his time in Southeast Asia-a burden that only in recent years had begun to ease.
Can’t let that happen.
I began focusing in a way I never had before: split my energy between trying to will my fingers and toes to move and examining the facts of the case. One finger, one fact. One toe, another fact. Over and over. And the energy, instead of weakening from the split, grew stronger. My mind seemed to expand, to grow-
Although I only imagined the twinge of feeling in my right hand, it gave me hope.
A woman came into my room: short, blonde, with an upturned nose-what in my cheerleading days we used to call perky. She sat in the armchair and introduced herself. Sarah Lawson, speech therapist.
“I understand you’re able to communicate yes and no with eyeblinks,” she said.
I blinked once.
“That’s wonderful, because this afternoon I’m going to start working with you, so you can spell out words with your eyes. One blink, A; two blinks, B; and so on.”
And twenty-six blinks, Z. An exhausting process.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sarah said, “and I won’t deny it. The process is tough, and it’ll take a long time until you can put a coherent sentence together. But you can do it; many patients have. A French editor, Jean-Dominique Bauby, dictated an entire book that way.”
I’d heard of Bauby. He died within two years of the stroke that disabled him.
I closed my eyes and let the tears flow.
JULIA RAFAEL
By noon, when the SFPD still had no leads on the Haven Dietz murder, Julia decided to drive to the Brandt Institute and share both the Dietz and the Peeples files with Shar.
Shar looked tired, and Julia understood why: on the way in she’d seen Hy escorting Kay Hunt, Shar’s adoptive mother, out to his car. Julia had met Mrs. Hunt only once when she’d paid a visit to the pier on one of her trips to the city; she’d seemed fine then, but Julia had heard about the scene here yesterday. Today must have brought more of the same.
Madres! Mierda!
She read each file through verbatim to Shar, held up the photographs appended to them for her to see: formal headshot of Dietz before the attack; group shot with the staff at the financial management firm where she’d been employed; informal and badly lighted snap of her in front of her apartment. Formal shot of Peeples; Larry with his parents at the vineyard; Larry and Ben Gold with Seal Rock in the background. Shar’s eyes lingered on all of them.
Julia asked, “Is there something I should be looking into more deeply?”
Blink.
“Peeples?”
Blink.
“The money?”
Blink.
“It had to come from someplace, right? Maybe Thelia or Diane can help me there?”
Blink.
“What about Dietz?”
Blink.
“The police’re investigating her murder. You think I should conduct my own investigation?”
Blink, blink.
“What, then? Dig deeper into her background? Maybe go back a long time before she was attacked?”
Blink.
Julia paused, then realized what Shar was trying to tell her. “In her job Dietz had access to a lot of money.”
Blink.
“I hear you.”
Even if you can’t speak, I hear you loud and clear.
CRAIG MORLAND
He and Mick sat across the round table in the conference room, going over the city hall investigation file with Diane D’Angelo. D’Angelo, the latest addition to the agency staff, was tall, willowy, and blonde, with what Craig thought of as patrician features-the kind of woman he’d dated in prep school and college and later in Washington, DC. The kind of woman his parents had expected him to marry.
Sorry, folks. The instant I connected with Adah, I knew why I’d never been serious about any of those well-bred beauties.
He didn’t actively dislike D’Angelo, but he couldn’t understand why Shar had hired her. She was a poor fit for the agency. Or maybe that was why Shar had brought her aboard; the other operatives were an odd mixture, and none of them totally mainstream. Even he, once the standard-issue fed, had been transformed in subtle ways by his relationship with Adah and his move to San Francisco. Maybe Shar’s motivation in hiring Diane had been as simple as wanting someone who would blend in at society parties.
Still, Craig didn’t completely trust Diane, and he and Mick had decided not to share with her the information about the videos that Craig had found in Harvey Davis’s condo.