14th Deadly Sin (Women's Murder Club 14)

“We’ve run the slugs taken from Maya Perez.”

“Good. What did you get?”

“Two thirty-eights. The gun that fired them isn’t in the system. I wish I could give you something. A name. Another shooting. Something.”

There are days when being a cop is challenging and worthwhile and days where the job is duller than watching a dripping faucet. Today was neither. A cold canvass in the Mission was stressful and dangerous, and it had been unproductive. A total bust.

Conklin and I went back to the Hall and briefed Jacobi and Brady on our great huge bag of nothing. That meeting took about five minutes, including the Q&A.

I walked with Richie out to the parking lot.

He tried to cheer me up, saying, “Someone is going to slip up. Bad guys almost always do.”

I’ve said the same thing to Richie. Joe has said the same thing to me. It’s the cops’ version of “Everything is going to be OK.”

Hah.

Whoever these Windbreaker bastards were, they were organized, they were disciplined, they had untraceable weapons, and their timetable was short. How long would it be before another low-tech, high-cash business was shot all to hell by men portraying themselves as San Francisco’s finest?

My partner and I waved good-bye, got into our respective cars, and exited the lot.

As I made the turn up Bryant, I glanced up at the Hall and saw that Jacobi’s office light was still on. I felt bad for him. The job was my former partner’s entire life.

We had to get these shooters for a number of reasons, and one of them was surely that we had to do it for Jacobi, before he retired as chief of detectives.

CHAPTER 28

LIFE WAS GOOD chez Molinari. Martha, our loyal doggy, was asleep on the sofa next to my dear husband, and although he was on the phone, the wonderful aromas coming from the kitchen told me dinner was ready.

“Heyyyy, Blondie,” said my husband, cupping the phone. I blew him a kiss and went to the baby’s room.

Julie was sleeping on her back. She had kicked off her blanket, so I pulled it up to just under her arms. She waved a fist in her sleep and I kissed her sweet forehead. She pushed me away. I took this as a sign that my little girl was asserting her personality, even in her sleep. Go, Julie.

But seeing my beautiful child brought me straight back to Maya Perez’s apartment. I visualized the small, windowless room she had turned into a chick-yellow nest for her baby, who would never be.

I watched Julie breathing for more than a few minutes. Then I shucked my clothes and hit the rain box for fifteen delicious minutes. When I returned to the living room in my man-in-the-moon-patterned PJs, Joe was dishing up the chicken cacciatore.

I went over to him and got a big hug, a kiss, and a belated jumpety howdy-do from Martha.

I said, “Lucky, lucky me.” And I meant it.

“Vino?” Joe asked me.

“You don’t have to twist my arm,” I said. “So what did the home team do today?”

“I’ve been doing a little work,” he told me.

“Really?”

“Free work. I’ve been looking into the CBM case.”

Joe seemed to be in a very perky mood. He pulled out a bar stool for me and another for himself and we sat down at the kitchen island to eat.

“What, I have to ask, is CBM?”

He poured out the glasses of wine and explained, “Claire’s Birthday Murders.”

“Really?” I said, repeating myself. “And you came up with something?”