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“Check your e-mail after lunch,” he said.
At the end of the day, Cindy met with Henry Tyler in his office. He looked distracted and intense at the same time. He didn’t ask her to sit down. He just said, “Where are you on Morales?”
Cindy said, “She’s in town, Henry. She sent me an e-mail telling me that she saw me.”
“She wrote to you?” said the publisher. He was standing behind his desk and had been moving stacks of paper, looking for something. A pen. And he found it. Cindy had a hundred and ten percent of Tyler’s attention now.
He said again, “She wrote to you? What did she say?”
“She told me that she knows I’m looking for her and to get off her tail.”
“Cindy. What the hell? You were going to let the police know where she was, get her arrested. Isn’t that right?”
“Right. That’s still the plan. Get her arrested. Write the stor
y. I’m working with a police captain, trading information, and I think I have an idea why she’s in town.”
“My instincts are telling me to pull you off this, Cindy. It feels like this could go very bad.”
“Henry, this e-mail is huge. I’m being careful—”
“Make sure you understand me. Don’t go near Morales unless you’re in a cop car, with cops. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
Cindy left Tyler, went down the hall to her own office, and called Lindsay again. This was the third message she’d left for her friend, and now she was worried.
It was just a hunch, but she thought maybe Morales was in town not just to see her child but to go after Lindsay. It was no secret that Randy Fish had been fascinated with Lindsay. He had singled her out as the only cop he would talk to, and Mackie knew that. Did that work on her? Was she jealous of Lindsay? It had to have hurt her deeply that Lindsay had been alone with Fish when he died.
That must have almost killed Mackie.
Maybe she was getting this wrong, but psychologically it made sense. She had to let Lindsay know.
She texted Lindsay: Call me.
Then she opened her mail from Captain Lawrence.
He had listed six cars that had been stolen in San Francisco this week, most of them cars that could be profitably chop-shopped for parts or sold in Mexico. She printed out the list, which included a BMW and a Jaguar. The last car on the list was a 2004 Subaru Outback that had been parked two to three blocks down from Candlestick Park. She didn’t know if Morales had stolen that car, but it was the kind of car that went unnoticed, and she could see Morales feeling very safe in an ancient station wagon.
Cindy left her office and got her own car out of the lot. She had the Subaru in mind when she drove toward Lindsay’s neighborhood.
She called Lindsay again as night came on.
CHAPTER 70
CINDY NEATLY BACKED her car into an empty spot under the curbside acacia and hawthorn trees in front of Table Asia Gallery. To her left, 12th Street dead-ended a half block to the north, where it butted up against Mountain Lake Park. Across the intersection of Lake and 12th, the blocky five-story apartment building where Lindsay and Joe lived dominated her eastern view.
Evening rush-hour traffic streamed past her with the urgency of people fleeing their offices for the relief of home.
Cindy fixed her eyes on the flow of cars, putting her mind on “search” for the recently stolen vehicles on Captain Lawrence’s short list. Once she’d locked in, the pissed-off voice in her head was free to carp about the frustrating and demeaning meeting she’d just had with Henry Tyler.
Principally, his order to “go in a cop car with cops” was insulting and lame. How was it possible that Henry Tyler, publisher of the Chronicle, didn’t know that tracking a subject, digging up news to trade with cops in exchange for access, was standard operating procedure for investigative reporters?
She, in particular, had a long history of working with cops and bringing home big stories. Henry knew this full well, and his slap across the face only fueled her determination to nail this goddamned story she’d turned from a stale report of a sighting into a story in three dimensions. Now she needed to bring it home. Collect her prize.
Cindy took mental inventory of the Morales situation. She knew that Morales was in San Francisco, which was a jump on every other reporter in the world and also the FBI. She’d met Morales and knew enough about her to push her buttons. Admittedly, the button-pushing was a two-way street. The inflammatory and scary e-mailed threat from Morales was proof of that.
But, most important, this e-mail had been direct contact between the two of them. I MADE YOU CINDY.
