16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

er his shoulder. The other was a large duffel bag, which he loaded into the cab’s trunk himself.

Cary Woodhouse pulled into traffic and stayed four cars back from Grant’s cab. When it headed into town toward the Civic Center, five by six blocks of majestic old granite buildings surrounding a treed plaza, Woodhouse felt some alarm. City Hall was the focal point of the Civic Center, with its huge gilded dome, which was taller than even the dome topping the Capitol Building in DC.

The Civic Center Plaza was always open. It was a public square, but why would Grant be coming here at night? Cary Woodhouse continued following the cab along McAllister, crossing Polk. The cab reduced speed and signaled for a left turn. It looked like the taxi was taking the short ramp in front of City Hall that led down to a valet parking area below.

Then the cab stopped at the top of the ramp.

Woodhouse pulled his car into the fire lane, out of the way of sparse traffic, and watched Grant’s cab from fifty feet away. He called Micah and Jeff, told them what he’d seen and that he was pretty sure what was on Connor Grant’s program for the night.

What Grant had done to Sci-Tron had described his character in full, and a man’s character didn’t change. Woodhouse felt strongly that Grant was looking for another highvalue target. The valet parking area was as close as a vehicle could get to the north entrance of City Hall, a beautiful and historic building, the jewel in San Francisco’s crown.

The cab was still poised at the top of the ramp, not moving. He tried to anticipate Grant’s next move. As he watched, the cab’s left-side rear passenger door opened and Grant got out. He leaned down toward the driver’s window, seemed to be demanding that the cabdriver open the trunk. It also seemed to Woodhouse that the driver was refusing. He had his hand sticking out the window, the universal sign for Give me the money.

Woodhouse took it that the driver wanted to be paid and that he wasn’t taking the cab any farther. Maybe he’d gotten a whiff of nutcase stink off his passenger.

Woodhouse, a former military officer, didn’t need to wait for this dispute to be settled. He opened his car door and placed his Ruger 10/22 rifle on the doorframe. He took a bead on Grant’s temple and said softly, “This is for you, Lisa.”

He fired.

A split second before Woodhouse’s gun went off, Grant reached into the backseat of the cab. The crack of the rifle shot was loud enough to shock both Grant and the cabdriver.

The driver leapt from the cab and ran. It was a woman, skinny, fast, and she just vamoosed. Good, thought Woodhouse. One less thing to worry about.

Then he noticed that Grant had taken a position behind the cab’s rear passenger door. Grant fired his pistol at Woodhouse. He got off three quick shots. The first one hit Woodhouse in the shoulder, and the other two went through his windshield.

Woodhouse fired back, but the pain and the bleeding from his shoulder threw off his aim. Instead of blowing a hole through Grant’s head, his shot hit the trunk of the cab.

The last thing Cary Woodhouse expected to happen under that black, starry sky was for something loud and as bright as the sun to obliterate everything.

CHAPTER 96

I HUNG UP with Jacobi and tried to tell Joe what I could barely understand or believe.

The TV was on mute and the explosion was on a short loop. It kept playing again and again, with a crawl at the bottom of the screen reading, “Bomb goes off at Civic Center. Area is closed while bomb squad, fire dept., police contain the perimeter.”

Joe said, “What did Jacobi say?”

I said, “It was about Connor Grant. Jacobi told me that Grant was trying to blow up City Hall.”

“How does he know that?”

Joe asked me to repeat every word of what Jacobi had told me. We stepped out of the kitchen and Julie’s earshot.

I told Joe, “A man called the police station right after the explosion and asked for the chief. His name was Micah Woodhouse. He was the father-in-law of Lisa Woodhouse, one of the Sci-Tron victims. Micah told Jacobi that his son Cary had been watching Grant, making sure that he didn’t blow up anything again.

“According to Micah Woodhouse, Cary had followed Grant to the Civic Center and had called his father to say he was suspicious. And then a taxi blew up in front of City Hall.

“Micah thinks his son was killed in the blast.”

Joe and I went over to the sofa, switched on the TV, and watched as new images came on the TV. It appeared that the roads had been torn up, a few vehicles had been overturned, and City Hall had taken some damage, not yet assessed. But the many iconic buildings were still standing. The body count wasn’t yet in, but when Joe picked up his phone to access the Twitterverse, he told me that it was confirmed: the passenger in the cab was dead.

I tried not to show Julie that I was shaken when I put her to bed. Had Cary Woodhouse foiled Grant’s plan? Or was Grant’s entire escapade meant to end in a suicide car bomb?

Connor Grant.

Still a mystery to the final freaking kaboom.

CHAPTER 97