I sighed, and then I had to say it.
“Toni, the problem is, Avis Richardson is only fifteen years old.”
“She’s eighteen. She showed us her ID.”
“She’s a liar,” I said. “And that’s just the beginning.”
“This is just wrong,” Sandy said, collapsing into a kitchen chair and sobbing into her hands.
She was crying so hard, it was difficult to make out everything she said, but this much I got loud and clear: “We planned for him. We delivered him. We’re giving him a loving home. Avis didn’t want him. She had no love for him at all.”
I went to Sandy and took her gun out of her coveralls pocket and ejected out the magazine.
She looked up at me, pleading. “Help us. What do we have to do to keep him?”
“You can’t keep him, Sandy,” I said, knowing that my words were like taking a hatchet to her heart. “This baby already has a family who wants him. I’m very sorry for your pain.”
Chapter 81
OUR DEPARTURE from Clark Lane was excruciating; slow and tearful.
Cops, neighbors, and Devil Girlz crowded around the Explorer as Toni handed me a car seat and other things for the baby, and Sandy pushed papers into my hands.
“This letter is for Tyler to read when he’s older,” Sandy said. And she gave me her diary and a fat envelope of pictures documenting the baby’s birth.
I put the photos in the door pocket, evidence that would do until Tyler’s DNA was processed, and I set up the car seat in the backseat.
Claire fired up the ignition, and as soon as we cleared Taylor Creek, I reclined in the passenger seat and dozed, my eyes flashing open every few minutes over the next four hundred miles. I kept turning to look back at Tyler.
What was next for this baby?
Would he be okay?
As dusk blotted out sundown over Bryant Street, we pulled into the parking lot outside the Medical Examiner’s Office. Conklin was standing next to his car, tossing his keys into the air, catching them, waiting for us to arrive.
He came over to the car, opened the back door, and stood speechless as he gazed down at the baby.
“This kid is adorable,” he said. “So what’s the plan?”
I unfolded my aching bones, got out of the Explorer, and said, “We’re going to wait a few hours before calling Child Protective Services.”
I hugged Claire good-bye, took Tyler and his car seat, and got into the squad car, Conklin behind the wheel. He said, “The last place Avis Richardson used her cell phone was Tijuana. She called her parents. That was twelve hours ago.”
“Here’s what I think,” I said. “We introduce the baby to the Richardsons. Tell them to call Avis’s phone. Even if they just leave a message, that’s fine. They just need to say, ‘We got your baby back.’
“We put a trap on their phone line,” I said. “And we take the baby to St. Francis. We have undercover work in neonatal until Avis comes to see the baby. We put another team at the hotel.”
“And if she doesn’t show?”
“I’ll think of something else. You can bet I will.”
“Works for me,” said Conklin.
Chapter 82
SONJA AND PAUL RICHARDSON were waiting in the hallway outside their suite, shades of hope, expectation, and praise-the-Lord lighting their faces.
They ran toward us as we got off the elevator, and I braced for the imminent shock of separating from the baby.
I clutched the little boy as I told Sonja that by law we had to take him to the hospital, and the legal system would dictate what happened to him after that.
“But I knew you would want to see him first,” I said and handed the child to his grandmother.
It was a beautiful moment.
Sonja’s pretty face shone with tears as she held him. Her husband curved a protective arm around her shoulders and put a hand on his grandson’s chest. Sonja looked up at me and said, “Thank you so much for finding him.”
“This is a great day,” Paul said. “A great day.”
Back in the suite, we all sat down for a serious conversation.
“Sonja, Paul,” I said. “Avis has to come in. Avis was the one who placed the ad on Prattslist. We have a copy of the ad. She wasn’t solicited. She put the baby up for sale and was paid twenty-five thousand dollars. That’s child trafficking. We have a copy of the contract she signed.”
Conklin said, “Avis is in Mexico, and that means that she’ll be deported when she’s caught. If Ritter is with her, he’s guilty of transporting a minor across international lines. He’s in enough trouble to keep a platoon of lawyers busy for years.”
“But because Avis is a minor,” I said, “if she comes in on her own, we can try to protect her. We’ll work with the DA to get her into the juvenile offenders system. But if she’s deported from Mexico …,” I said with a shrug. “Trust me. You don’t want her to be tried as an adult.”
A look passed between husband and wife.
Paul Richardson sighed deeply.
“Avis is in the bedroom,” he said. “Actually, Jordan is in there, too.”
Chapter 83
I SAID to the Richardsons, “Please take the baby to the kitchen. Lie down with him on the floor. Go. Now.”
The Richardsons looked startled, but they did as I said.
I pulled my gun, Rich pulled his, and we flanked the door to the bedroom.
I shouted, “Avis Richardson. Jordan Ritter, this is Sergeant Boxer. It’s all over. Come out with your hands up.”
There was silence, but before Rich could kick in the door, we heard Ritter’s voice.
“Sergeant. We don’t have any weapons.”
The door opened and Ritter came out with his hands up. He hadn’t shaved and his cheeks were sunburned. Even so, he still looked like an ad for an upscale men’s clothing line.
Rich spun Ritter around and flattened him against the wall. He frisked him and was cuffing him as Avis darted out of the bedroom.
Avis had her hands up, too, but she was wiggling one of her fingers to draw my attention to a shiny gold band.
“We got married,” she cried. “Jordan and I got married.”
“Congratulations,” I said as I threw her against the wall with great satisfaction.
Once again, in my heart I wanted to slap this girl. Instead I cuffed her and said, “Avis Richardson, you’re under arrest for child trafficking, neglect of a child, and obstruction of justice. You have the right to remain silent …”
Suddenly a desperate kind of mayhem broke out around me.
Sonja and Paul Richardson swarmed around their daughter, and the baby wailed, then drew a breath and wailed some more.
To my left, Conklin arrested Jordan Ritter for kidnapping and statutory rape. Ritter was yelling, “I want to see my son,” as Conklin read him his rights.
I stuck my face three inches from Ritter’s nose. “Shut the fuck up,” I said.
Next I called for an ambulance for the baby.
“What’s going to happen to Avis?” Paul Richardson asked me as I took the baby out of his wife’s arms.
“She’ll be booked and kept in holding until her arraignment,” I said. “If you want my advice, hire the best attorney you can buy. Maybe he’ll get her tried as a juvenile. I’d also make a few calls and get your daughter’s marriage to this sleazebag annulled.”
Book Four
THE HEARTBREAK KID
Chapter 84
MY EYELIDS FLEW OPEN. I stared up at the information that Joe’s projection clock flashed onto the ceiling. It was October 11. Fifty-four degrees. 6:02 a.m.
I had been in midthought when I’d woken myself up, but what had I been thinking?
Joe stirred beside me and said, “Linds. You up?”
“Sorry to wake you, hon. I was dreaming. I think.”
He turned toward me and enfolded me in his arms. “You remember the dream?”
I tried to backtrack, but the dream was gone. What was worrying
me? Joe was safe. The Richardson baby was at St. Francis, perfectly well. Then I had it.
Candace Martin.
I was thinking about her.
I started to tell Joe why Candace Martin was surfing my nocturnal brain waves, but he was already snoring softly against my shoulder. I disengaged myself and put my feet on the floor.
Joe murmured, “What?”
“I’ve got to go to work,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”
I kissed his cheek, ruffled his hair, and tucked the covers under his chin. I snapped my fingers and Martha jumped onto the bed. She circled a couple of times, then dropped into the hollow I’d left behind.
Less than an hour later, I blew into the Hall of Justice with two containers of coffee.
I took the back stairs two steps at a time, and elbowed open the stairwell door to the eighth floor. I negotiated the maze of corridors that led to the DA’s department.
Yuki was at her desk in a windowless office. Her glossy black hair, parted in the middle, fell forward as she stared down at her laptop. My shadow crossed her desk.
“Hey,” she said, looking up. “Lindsay. What’s wrong?”
“Something is. Okay for me to see the picture of Candace Martin in the car with that hit man Gregor Guzman?”
“Why?”
She stretched her arm across her desk and took a coffee container from my hand. “You don’t mind if I ask why you’re still messing around with my case, do you?”
“Could I just see it again, Yuki? Please. That photo is bothering me.”
Yuki glared at me, bent toward her laptop, and tapped a few keys. She swiveled the computer around so that I could see the screen.
“I could use a copy of that.”
Yuki shook her head no. But at the same time, the printer made a grinding sound, and a black-and-white photo chugged into the tray. Yuki handed it to me.
“I’d give you a harder time,” she said, “but the judge wants to see me in chambers. I’m in the bad-girl corner again. Don’t make trouble for me, Lindsay. I mean it.”
I wished her luck with LaVan and ran for the exit before Yuki could change her mind.
Chapter 85
MINUTES AFTER LEAVING Yuki’s office, I signed the visitor’s log at the entrance to the women’s jail on the seventh floor. It was loud in this wing. The clanging of metal doors and the angry clamor of prisoners rose up around us as an officer escorted me to one of the small, bare conference rooms.
Candace Martin soon appeared in the doorway. She made eye contact with me as the guard removed her cuffs, then took the chair across from me at the scarred metal table.
“This is an unexpected surprise,” she said.
Candace didn’t have any makeup on, hadn’t had her hair done professionally in a year, and was wearing a prison jumpsuit in a shade of orange that didn’t flatter blondes.
Still, Candace Martin had her dignity and her professional demeanor.
I said, “I’m here unofficially.”
“With good news, I hope.”
I pulled the printout of the photo from my pocket and placed it faceup on the table. “Please look at this picture and tell me why you’re inside this vehicle with this man.”
She said, “I’ve seen that picture. That’s not me.”
The overhead light cast three hundred watts of bright white fluorescence, lighting every part of the small room. The red eye of a security camera watched from a corner of the ceiling as the woman in orange slid the photo closer and picked it up.
“I don’t know either of these people,” she said. Then, as though she had been struck with an afterthought, she studied the photo intently again and asked me, “What do you see in this woman’s hand?”
She pushed the grainy black-and-white printout back across the table. The woman in the picture had her head tipped forward, her blond hair covering half her face, and she seemed to be clutching a chain that was fastened around her neck. I saw the glint of a pendant dangling from her clasped fingers.
“Maybe some kind of charm,” I said.
“Could it be a cross?” Candace Martin asked me.
“I suppose.”
“I don’t wear thin gold chains with charms or crosses,” Candace Martin said to me. “But you know Ellen Lafferty, don’t you? Ellen always wears a cross. I’ve got to say, I wonder what it means to her.”
Chapter 86
CANDACE MARTIN was due back in court in an hour, and if my belief in her innocence was warranted, I couldn’t “mess around” with Yuki’s case fast enough. Every day that Candace was on trial, she was a day closer to being convicted of murder in the first degree.
As hard as it would be to convince the court that the wrong person was on trial, it would be a snap compared with getting a murder conviction overturned.
I jogged down the Hall’s back stairs to the lobby, thumbed a number into my cell phone, and waited for private investigator Joseph Podesta to pick up. His voice was thick with sleep, but he said, “Aw-right,” to my request to see him in twenty minutes.
I crossed the Bay Bridge, drove to Lafayette, and found Podesta’s yellow suburban ranch on Hamlin Road, a street lined with a mix of trees and similar ranch-style houses. I parked my car in his driveway, then walked up some stone steps through a rock garden and rang the bell.
Podesta came to the door barefoot, wearing a sweat suit with a sprinkling of bread crumbs on the front. I showed him my badge and he opened the door wide and led me to his home office at the back of the house.
I looked around at the warehouse of spy equipment Podesta had stored on his metal bookshelves. He wheeled his chair up to his computer, lifted an old tabby cat down from his desk, and put her on his lap.
“If my client wasn’t dead,” he said, palming the mouse, “I wouldn’t show these to you without a warrant.”
“I appreciate your help,” I said.
Podesta clicked on the folder containing the digital photos he’d taken of Candace Martin in a car with someone who had been tentatively identified as Gregor Guzman, a contract killer who was wanted by cops in several states and a few foreign countries as well.
The first photo Podesta pulled up on his screen was the one Yuki had offered into evidence.
“I know these photos suck eggs,” he said. “But I couldn’t use the flash, you know? I can’t swear that’s Guzman, but that woman is Candace Martin. I followed her that night from her house on Monterey Boulevard right to the I–280 on-ramp north. She got off on Cesar Chavez, took a right on Third and then onto Davidson. I was on her tail the whole time.
“It’s a very dodgy place. I’m sure you know it, Sergeant. I had to watch out for myself. It’s a trash heap. A junkyard. I could have gotten mugged, and she could have, too.
“I watched her get out of her Lincoln and get into this guy’s SUV. Ten minutes later, she got out.”
“Can you burn those pictures onto a disc for me?”
“Why not, under the circumstances?” he said.
The computer whirred.
The cat purred.
And pretty soon I had a disc with a lot of grainy pictures taken a couple of weeks before Dennis Martin was killed.
Chapter 87
AT NINE-FIFTEEN I was back at the Hall of Justice, Southern Station, Homicide Division, my home away from home.
I hung my jacket on the back of my chair, then found Conklin in the break room. He was eating a doughnut over the sink, his yellow tie flipped over his shoulder.
“Yo,” he said. “I saved you one.”
“I’m not hungry. But I do have something to show you.”
“You’re being awfully mysterious.”
“It’s better to show than tell.”
Chi was working at his desk, his computer humming, his coffee mug on a napkin, and about thirty pens lined up with the top edge of his mouse pad.
I handed Chi the disc Joe Podesta had given me and said, “You mind, Paul? I want you to see these, too.”
The three of u
s focused on one frame at a time as the dozen digital shots PI Joseph Podesta had taken of a blond woman in profile, sitting with a possible hit man in his SUV, came up on the screen.
Conklin asked Chi to enlarge the best of them and to push in on the female subject’s fist to see if she could be holding on tight to a gold cross. But the more Chi blew up the picture, the fuzzier it became.
“That’s the best I can do,” Chi said, staring at the abstract arrangement of gray dots. “What are your thoughts?”
“Run it through the face ID program,” Conklin said to Chi.
“Face ID, coming up.”
Chi opened the program, and two windows came up on his monitor, comparing Candace Martin’s mug shot with the grainy shot of the blond woman in the car.
Chi turned to look at me and Conklin, a spark of excitement sailing briefly across his face like a shooting star. “It’s not her,” said Chi. “Whoever the woman is in this picture — it’s not Candace Martin.”
Chi then compared the grainy-pictured blonde against a database of tens of thousands of photos at blur speed.
And just as I was beginning to lose hope, we got a match.
Chapter 88
CONKLIN AND I got into an unmarked car and were soon speeding up the James Lick Freeway. As Conklin drove, I ticked off on my fingers the reasons I liked Ellen Lafferty for Dennis Martin’s murder.
“One, she was in love with him. Two, she was frustrated by him. Three, she had access to his gun. She knew where he would be and where Candace would be at the end of the day.
“That’s four and five. And six, if she didn’t do it, she could have ordered the hit.”
“All that,” Conklin said, “and she’s smart enough to frame Candace.”
“She must be a frickin’ evil genius,” I said.
Fifteen minutes later, Conklin parked the car in front of a pale yellow marina-style apartment building. Built in the ’20s, it was a tidy-looking place with bowed windows facing Ulloa Street. It was about a mile from the Martins’ house.