WHILE THE DISHWASHER hummed and sloshed, Joe and I folded laundry at the kitchen table.
I was on autopilot. My hands turned the jumble of shirts and towels into warm cotton packets, but I was thinking of other things. Among them was my mother’s Limoges vase, which Julie had pulled off a table, smashing it into ungluable shards. I also kept rerunning my cringeworthy meeting with IAD’s Hon, and the cherry on top was that I was weak and headachy, a little bit queasy. It was an overall sick feeling that was becoming harder to ignore.
Joe said, “That’s it? No woo-hoo?”
“Aw, geez, Joe, sorry. Say it again. Please?”
He said, “I got a call from the new head of antiterrorism at the Port of San Francisco.”
“Wow. About a job?”
Joe said, “Yep. There’s a new guy, Benjamin Rollins. Ex-marine. He’s looking for a hands-on risk assessment pro, freelance or on staff, to be decided. He’s known to be kind of a dick, but I think I’d like him.”
I said, “He’s ‘kind of a dick’ but otherwise fantastic?”
“Correct,” said Joe. “This isn’t about love. It’s about money.”
“Three cheers for money.”
Joe cheered. I laughed and we went back to folding.
Actually, this breaking news was fantastic. A few months back Joe had been badly injured in a bomb blast, but he was healing well. It wouldn’t be long before Julie would be going to preschool, and Joe needed a job. Even though my thoughts were scattered, I could focus on that.
I said, “So, what’s the next step?”
Joe was telling me about the interview with Security Director Rollins next week when, of course, the phone rang.
It was a weeknight, and to me that meant I was still on duty. I took the phone out of my jeans pocket and glanced at the caller ID. Joe watched me and shook his head no.
“Brady,” I said into the phone. “What’s wrong?”
He jumped right into it.
“A homeless woman was shot dead on Mission near Spear. Same MO as the others. Point-blank range. No witnesses. But here’s something a little different. She was shot on our street.”
“Say that again?”
“She was shot on the south side of Mission. Our beat. Take it away, Lindsay. You’re lead investigator. Call Conklin. And you might want to compare notes with Stevens.”
“When did this happen?”
“Bystander called it into dispatch thirty minutes ago.
Dispatch bounced it to me. Stay in touch.”
“Brady, wait. I need all units, every cop with a pulse.”
“You got it,” he said.
With Brady, I considered it done.
CHAPTER 59
THE FRESH HOMICIDE on Mission Street required a Code 3 high-speed-with-lights-and-sirens response.
I switched on all of that, and while driving through the fog, I worked myself up into a fine lather.
This was it.