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“Reminds me of someone else,” I said, then filled Claire in on the video of Ralph Hammer’s murder, that the killer put two gunshots into Hammer after he was dead.
The receptionist pushed through the swinging doors.
“Doctor. Mrs. Johnston says shemustspeak with you. She’s hysterical.”
Same time, I got a text from Conklin: “You’re needed up here.”
I said goodbye to Claire and made the return trip to the squad room, fast. As I walked, my mind circled a widening ring of questions.Were Johnston and Hammer murdered by the samekiller? If so how were the three of them connected? And why had that killer sent evidence to me, evidence that would be exhibit one in a murder case against him?
I had just reached my desk when Lieutenant Jackson Brady and Chief Charles Clapper came up the aisle.
Brady said, “Boxer, you’re with me. Conklin, Alvarez, check out a car and follow us.”
Clapper said to all of us, “Meet you there.”
While we waited on Bryant Street for Conklin to sign a car out of the pool, I asked Brady where we were going.
“To the last place I ever expected to go again. Ever.”
CHAPTER 17
BRADY’S VOICE WAS barely audible over the crackling police band static and the rumble of traffic coming through my open window. I buzzed up the window and dialed down the radio.
I said to Brady, “Talk to me.”
He said, “This is what Clapper told me. Some kid on spring break was walking along the beach this morning at around nine. He saw something big riding the waves. Kid thought it was a seal or a bag of garbage.”
“Bodies? What do you mean?”
“A woman in her twenties with a baby in a carrier strapped to her chest.”
I clapped my hands over my mouth and kept them there, but Brady had finished talking. He drove and managed his job by phone and radio, while I unpacked memories that I’d put away but hadn’t forgotten. Baker Beach. A red-haired baby. Murdered. Her mother, dark haired and murdered, her bodyfound on China Beach. Last names Burke. Evan Burke’s granddaughter and daughter-in-law.
Beside me, Brady turned the car first onto Bowley Street and then onto Gibson Road and slowed as we approached the parking lot on the bluff above Baker Beach. Several National Park Service cars had preceded us and two SFPD cruisers were restricting parking lot access to law enforcement only.
A uniformed officer handed Brady a clipboard. He signed the log as did Conklin, who’d just come up behind us. I didn’t wait for the team to come together. As soon as Brady set the brakes, I got out and walked to the edge of the cliff. The big surf roared. I took deep breaths and stared out at the panoramic view: the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, and the seamless sky and seascape rolling out past Lands End Lookout. But the beauty of the place couldn’t lift my mood.
It’s common for an unsolved case to haunt homicide detectives even after retirement. Those cops have framed pictures of those victims and bring their murder books home. They scrutinize current news wondering what they’d missed before the case went cold.
The deaths of Lorrie and Tara Burke were like that for me with one glaring exception: their case had been solved. Their killer was in prison. Still, the pain of their deaths had never left me.
I told myself to snap out of it and lowered my eyes to the mile-long crescent of sand below the ridge. Patrol officers and a CSU van had driven down to the beach. Police had cordoned off a large section of it and were standing by to protect the scene. Gene Hallows, our crime lab director, gestured as he briefed Clapper. CSIs in hazmat suits stepped down fromthe van. Beyond them, the tide gently shifted a body within the margin of foam between the sand and sea.
An officer who’d been stationed at the parking lot came up behind me and saw what I saw.
He muttered, “Jesus, God. It’s déjà vu all over again.”
I felt light-headed. Pin lights sparked in front of my eyes, but before I could drop, someone gripped my left arm and put a hand behind my back. Brady.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Let’s sit down.”
“I’m good.”
“I’m not,” he said. “When you’re ready, take a good look.”
This time when I stared down at the bodies I couldn’t miss it. Like Lorrie and Tara Burke, the deceased baby was a redhead, and her mother was a brunette.
