16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

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I saw a medical team conveying a patient on a stretcher toward Saint Vartan’s.

I flashed my badge and I yelled, “We need help. Two men are down. One needs a respirator, NOW. We need an emergency unit, NOW.”

CHAPTER 85

NEDDIE HADN’T MOVED since he was shot, but Lawrence Janes was gasping the shallowest of breaths.

I held his hand. I was thinking that the sux was old. There was a chance Neddie hadn’t shot the full dose into Larry before he went down. If sux was injected into a muscle, rather than an artery, it took longer for the drug to paralyze the body. That was good for Larry.

I fanned a small flame of hope and stayed with him, telling him, “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be fine. I’m here. We’re getting help. Hang in there, Larry. Hang in there.”

An emergency team blew through the doorway. “He was injected with sux,” I said.

The medic didn’t ask any questions, just went straight to work and bagged Larry right there on the floor. Seeing his chest rise and fall gave me such relief that tears came into my eyes.

Another doctor attended to Neddie. He listened to his heart and announced, “He’s gone.” With his body limp, spread out on the pile of garbage bags, Neddie looked deceptively young and innocent and good.

I took Richie’s gun and I called Brady.

“It was a good shoot, Brady,” I said. “Conklin had no choice.”

“I’m on the way,” said Brady.

I told the medical personnel to leave Neddie’s body just as it was. That the police were coming. That everything in this room was ours until further notice.

I opened the alley door and stood in the doorway with Richie, looking out at the blank concrete wall.

I said to my partner, “Neddie had no way out and so he chose suicide by you, Rich. He said he didn’t want to spend another day in lockup. He knew we were armed. He wanted to go out on murder victim number nine. You saved Larry’s life, and he’s going to have a great story to tell his grandchildren. You did what you had to do. And you did it perfectly.”

He nodded. He said, “Thanks,” but he was hurting. And then he said, “You know what I hate?”

“I do.”

He hates to shoot someone. He hated that he’d taken a life. I told my partner that I’d be back in a second, then wandered out into the alley, out of earshot from Rich, and called Cindy.

“I’ve got something for you,” I said. “The Stealth Killer is dead, and yes, that’s on the record. Give me a couple of hours, I’ll get Brady to give it to you officially and with quotes.”

“That would be tremendous, Lindsay.”

“Right now, though, can you call Richie? I think he really needs to talk to you.”

CHAPTER 86

CINDY WAS IN her office at the San Francisco Chronicle polishing her story, headlined, “The Stealth Killer’s Last Stand.”

Lindsay had told her about the shooting death of Edward Lamborghini, a.k.a. Neddie Lambo, by an unnamed homicide inspector and how close the victim had come to taking the life of hospital employee Lawrence Janes. Lindsay had also put Brady on the phone to confirm her story, after which Cindy had spoken with Dr. Terry Hoover, director of the Hyde Street Psychiatric Center.

According to Dr. Hoover, Neddie had had “privileges.” Chief among them was that he had permission to leave the facility alone during daylight hours as long as he returned by dinnertime curfew.

The dazed Dr. Hoover allowed that Neddie had been well-liked, a friend to all, and that it seemed to him in retrospect that this patient had been wildly underestimated.

“It’s possible, I suppose,” said Hoover, “that Edward could have had access to drugs here at the psychiatric facility, to the pharmacy at Saint Vartan’s, and to the whole of San Francisco. But did he commit any crimes? The Neddie Lambo I knew could never have done that.”

But he had.

After speaking with Hoover, Cindy had researched Edward Lamborghini’s background, and while she couldn’t unseal his criminal record, she thought he had to have committed a horrific crime to be sent to Johnston Youth Correctional when he was only seven years old. When Johnston had closed, Neddie was transferred to the Hyde Street Psychiatric Center, a next-to-zero-security hospital. She thought the facility would be tightening up their “privileges” policy. PDQ.