How to Succeed in Murder (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

Traveling in a car with a missing windshield isn’t exactly conducive to casual conversation. You have to yell over the noise, and if your husband suddenly stops at a light you may find yourself shouting things like, “Should I carry the gun while you’re driving?” which can frighten the pedestrians.

So after one or two attempts, I gave up and concentrated on looking like it was perfectly normal to be roaming around town in a shot-up VW.

Jack took the lower road through Lincoln Park, then cut through the residential Sea Cliff area and turned into the Presidio. Once we were in the former military installation, he seemed to relax. There were hardly any cars on the narrow roads.

He headed downhill, and finally came to a stop in the deserted west parking lot of Crissy Field.

I looked around. There wasn’t a soul in sight. With the fog and the drizzle and the darkness I shouldn’t have been surprised that no joggers were out using the paths along the bay.

“Jack, what are we doing here?”

“Get everything you need out of the car,” he told me.

What I needed was a stiff belt of whiskey. “What?”

He reached into the back for my laptop bag, and shook the broken safety glass off. “We’re leaving the car here, Charley. Is there anything else you need?”

“We’re leaving the car here?”

Being shot at gets my adrenalin going, but the same apparently can’t be said for my mental powers.

“There are security cameras at the museum. The police are already looking for it. We need to leave it here and report it stolen right away.”

“Oh.” I looked around. I had my purse and Jack had the laptop bag. “I think that’s it.”

He got out. I had one more look around the interior of the car, took the only other thing I wanted, and got out.

“You’re bringing the flower?” The bright pink gerbera daisy that had been in the dashboard vase.

“You gave it to me.” I looked up at him. It’s possible I wasn’t thinking quite clearly yet.

He dropped the laptop and grabbed me. For an instant I thought we were about to get shot at again, but Jack just crushed me to himself, muttering all sorts of half sentences and muffled phrases that added up to something quite nice. When he finally released me the flower was a goner, but I felt completely restored.

“What are we doing now?”

He slung the laptop bag over his shoulder, grabbed my hand, and started walking fast.

“Jack, the Warming Hut looks closed,” I told him. It was the little café at the end of the path where you could get a nonfat latte and feel virtuous after your workout. That is, if it wasn’t locked and dark.

But he wasn’t heading for the café. He was heading for the fishing pier. Probably the coldest, windiest place in all of San Francisco, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Jack?”

“I have to get rid of the gun, Charley. You stay here.” He left me on the path and jogged out across the wooden pier, which stretched into the bay almost directly under the Golden Gate Bridge. When he got to the far end, he took the gun from his pocket and pitched it out over the water.

I had a bad feeling that I knew what he’d say when he got back, and I was right.

“Feel like taking a walk?”

***

I can’t count how many times I’ve gone running at Crissy Field. Its wide gravel path along the water is perfect on a sunny day. You don’t even notice the distance from the east parking lot to the fishing pier and back. But I’d never done it in new Via Spiga pumps after getting shot at and ditching my car.

This time I noticed the distance.

But, by the time we made it the mile or so to the little bridge at the tidal marsh, the cavalry had arrived. Granted, it was in the form of Flank behind the wheel of an enormous black Hummer that Harry had recently acquired, but by that point I didn’t much care.

“Harry must have sent him,” Jack said. He’d spent most of our slog along the waterfront on his cell phone. First the police, to report the car stolen, then Harry, to make sure a second gunman hadn’t targeted him after he and Jack had split up. Then Mike, and I don’t know who else because my feet hurt too much by then to pay attention.

“Why the hell didn’t Harry just give you a ride after golfing?” I asked. My uncle could have at least inconvenienced himself a little to spare my husband from being used for target practice.

“He ran into some crony on the course, and they decided to go to another bar when the clubhouse closed. I’d have gone with them, but the bar was in Vegas. They were taking the other guy’s private jet.”

Typical.

“He’s on his way back now,” Jack told me. “They said they’d turn the plane around when I called.”

Great. Harry would probably be home before I would.

Flank got out of the car and did his best to cover all conceivable angles around us, performing an intricate series of commando/bodyguard stances while opening doors and shoving us in to safety. It was like watching a water buffalo attempt ballet.

I sank against Jack in the back seat, and his black leather jacket made a squelching noise. Or maybe it was me. Then Flank did something which was in flagrant violation of the law, for which I will always be grateful.

He handed me a flask of whiskey.

***

Once home, all I really wanted was a hot shower and to throw away my shoes. But I had a feeling everyone I knew was about to show up on my doorstep, so I settled for toweling myself off and changing into dry sweats before heading back downstairs to ask my husband a few questions.

Starting with “How long have you been carrying a gun?”

He was in his office, and—I don’t know how he does this stuff—perfectly dry in fresh clothes. He gave me a distracted sort of look.

“On and off since I was about twenty-two.”

I took a breath and told myself it wouldn’t be helpful to kick him.

“How about if we just stick to discussing the gun that’s at the bottom of the bay?”

“You’ll have to be a little more specific.”

“Jack!”

“Okay, okay.” He touched something on his keyboard and the computer screen changed. Then he gave me his attention. “I started carrying that gun this week. And before you start giving me a lecture on gun control, I think you should admit that it came in pretty handy—”

“Why don’t I have one?”

He blinked. “What?”

“I’m the one who’s undercover. I think I should have one too. And I think you should admit that another one would have come in pretty handy—”

“Charley, the last time I gave you a gun you shot somebody. And as I recall, you didn’t enjoy it.”

True. Nevertheless… “That doesn’t change the fact that another one would have come in damn handy tonight. And it might have come in damn handy in the Broadway Tunnel the other night too.”

He did a sort of teeth grinding thing before he answered.

“You’re telling me you would have opened fire in the middle of a crowded city street?”

“Well, of course not. Not if you put it like that. But—”

My argument was cut off by the sound of the doorbell.

Harry, probably. Flank would have raised the alarm for anyone else. I had the sneaking suspicion that our bodyguard planned to spend the night parked outside our house. And, for once, I didn’t mind.

“We’ll finish this later,” Jack said, on his way to the stairs.

Damn right we would. I followed him, picking up the pace when the bell rang again, and thinking I knew exactly what I was going to say to my uncle for running off to Vegas and leaving Jack alone in the fog.

Jack opened the door.

“Harry—”

But it wasn’t.

“Inspector Yahata,” Jack said. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”

My brain did that nuclear meltdown thing it does whenever I see the detective. How had he known it was us at the museum? I mean, okay, he probably heard it was our car involved, and maybe he thought the “it was stolen, officer” story was a little fishy, but—

Suddenly he was in my hallway and hitting me with that unnerving x-ray glance.

“Are you hurt?”

I had what promised to develop into nasty bruises on my knees and shins from the concrete floor of the museum’s portico, and a few scrapes on my hands and arms from the whole exploding safety glass thing in the car. But I wasn’t about to tell him that.

“I’m fine, naturally. Whatever do you mean?”

Why did I always end up sounding like a bad Blanche DuBois in a third-rate production of
Streetcar
when I was around this guy?

He tried a different question.

“What happened?”

Not big on chitchat, the homicide inspector. Which was just as well, because I’d transitioned into speechlessness. Something to do with the realization that Jack had been expecting Yahata.

They were both looking at me. It’s possible one of them had asked me a question. But the sound of things clicking into place made it hard to hear anything else.

Jack looked a little concerned. “Charley, do you need to sit down?”

“What—” My voice was squeaky, so I tried again. “What—” Better. “The hell—” Much better. “Is going on here?”

Jack took a minute to consider his answer. “How about I make some coffee and we fill you in?”

***

Yahata knew everything. What’s more, he’d known all along. Because Jack had told him everything. All along.

It took more than a cup of coffee for me to make sense of that.

“So let me get this straight…Jack is working for you?” I stared at the inspector. We’d gathered in the kitchen, but the room’s bright lights didn’t help me read him.

He gave me a quick, slight smile. “Not precisely. The department has retained the services of MJC.”

Mike and Jack’s company. Okay. Now we were getting somewhere.

“To find out who killed Clara and Lalit?”

Yahata gave an infinitesimal shake of the head. “Not precisely. They have been retained to test, and—if necessary—recommend enhancements to the security of the department’s information systems.”

Right. That made perfect sense. Except… “Does the police department usually outsource that sort of thing?”

Jack looked surprised, maybe because he wouldn’t have bet I knew what outsourcing was.

Yahata replied mildly, “‘Usually’ is not an applicable word in this situation.”

Okay. Whatever.

“So how does our going undercover at Zakdan fall within the scope of what Jack and Mike are doing for the department?”

The inspector’s jaw tightened. I’d hit a nerve. “By the slimmest of threads.”

Jack explained. “The department’s network uses the Zakdan enterprise system for information management.”

I’d learned enough in the last week to realize what that meant. “So if there’s a vulnerability in the Zakdan code, the SFPD computer system is at risk.”

Jack’s look said I’d made the connection faster than he’d expected. And that he was kind of turned on by it. “Exactly.”

I finished the last of my coffee, thinking. Because of the above-board work that Mike and Jack were doing for the department, Yahata had apparently been able to make peace with the less above-board fact that civilians were being used to investigate the sordid goings-on at Zakdan.

“But.” I spoke as if I’d been thinking out loud, which didn’t seem to bother them. “Brenda and Eileen and Simon and I aren’t really looking for the person who’s sabotaged the code. We’re looking for the killer. Which means…” I turned to the inspector. “You agree they’re connected.”

“I do.”

Ah HA! Now we were getting somewhere. Now it was time to—

“It’s time to call off the undercover operation,” Jack said.

“
What?
Jack, we’re just starting to make progress. I didn’t even tell you everything we found out today, and—”

“And nothing,” he said firmly. “You got shot at today. The operation is over.”

“No.” I shook my head.

“Charley—”

“Hang on a minute. I don’t mean ‘no’ to ending the operation—although I do—”

“Charley!”

“I mean ‘no’ I didn’t get shot at today. You did. I wasn’t the one they were after.”

“Really? Because as I recall we were both ducking for cover up there.”

“You and Mike are the ones who went into Zakdan as the big time computer security specialists investigating the software bug,” I insisted. “Don’t try to tell me you didn’t think that might draw the killer’s attention to you. Well, it did. Nobody started shooting at me tonight until I drove up the lawn to get you. They were after you, Jack. Just like they were after you when they tried to drive us into the tunnel wall.”

Inspector Yahata had been observing the exchange with undisguised fascination. Now, in the silence that followed my outburst, he looked at Jack sharply. And said something I never thought I’d hear.

“Your wife is right.”

I stared at him as he continued speaking to Jack.

“The fact that the killer is aware of your involvement in investigating the glitch in the Zakdan software could be a valuable distraction. As long as you are the target of their hostilities, Charley’s team might not be scrutinized. Your efforts provide a certain amount of cover for her efforts.”

My first thought was that I liked the sound of “Charley’s team.” My second was that I didn’t like “Jack is the target.”

Then I had a third thought, and it was a doozy.

“Inspector, if you agree that there’s a connection between the murders and the bug, why don’t you have undercover cops or detectives or something investigating at Zakdan? Not that I’m complaining or anything, but—”

Something in the way he was looking at me made it impossible to continue. When he answered, it was with carefully chosen words.

“The fact that I agree there’s a connection does not necessarily mean the department agrees there’s a connection.”

This was not exactly cheerful news.

My mouth went dry. “What does the department think?”

Yahata looked like there was a lot he wanted to say, but he didn’t say anything.

Jack cleared his throat. “If I had to guess, I’d guess that there are some people who took Lalit Kumar’s suicide as a pretty clear sign of his guilt.”

I stared at him. “What? Why would he have killed Clara?” Then my eyes widened. Kumar was the chief technology officer, which presumably meant he had unlimited access to the Zakdan code.