Unlucky 13 (Women's Murder Club 13)

Sacco took us back to his office, where he printed out a list of personnel with copies of their photo IDs. He left us briefly and returned with security DVDs from the four cameras, two positioned inside and two outside the restaurant.

On the way out, Conklin bought burgers and fixings to go. In the interest of full disclosure, when we got back to our desks, I offered to take one of those sandwiches off Conklin’s hands. I was nearly starving. Still, I scrutinized the meat very thoroughly. Then I closed the sandwich and ate it all up. It was delicious.

Conklin and I watched videotape for the rest of the day, jumping a little when we found the gritty images of David Katz and Lara Trimble ordering hamburgers, sodas, and fries to take out. A young cowgirl behind the counter took their order and their cash, then handed them the bag of food. The victims took the bag and left with their arms around each other.

We looked at the footage forward and back, enlarged it, sharpened it, focused on every area in the frame.

No one but the girl behind the counter had spoken to Trimble and Katz, and there was no altercation of any kind.

I called Clapper and brought him into the loop. He asked me to forward the employee contact material to him and said he’d call his FBI contact.

“They’re gonna tear Chuck’s apart,” he said.

CHAPTER 6

IT WAS THE end of the day. We were nowhere on belly bombs and I was hungry. I was pulling on my jacket when Brady dropped by the double desk I share with Conklin.

“I just got a call from the FBI,” he said.

“Belly bomb bulletin?”

“Just open the mail I sent the two of you.”

Conklin and I both did that and saw a grainy black-and-white photo of a woman leaving a post office on a rural street. I almost recognized her, but not quite. Conklin, however, looked frozen. He looked shocked.

Brady said, “That’s our old friend Mackie Morales, in a one-stoplight town in Wisconsin.”

I got it now. Mackie had clipped her long, curly hair, a standout feature of her natural beauty. Now her dark curls were very short and she was wearing a canvas jacket to midthigh. Mackie was angular and thin. She could dress like a man and get away with it.

Along with recognition came images and chilling memories of Randy Fish, a savage serial killer who had fixated on me. Fish should be on death row, but instead he was serving out his eight consecutive life sentences in some extra-toasty corner of Hell.

Fish’s lady love was this woman, Mackenzie, aka Mackie, Morales, midtwenties, who had spent the summer right here at the Southern Station of the SFPD. Posing as an intern while working her way to her PhD in psychology, she had worked her way into Conklin’s heart and used information she gleaned from interning with us to commit some murders of her own.

Her plan had been to distract us, impress her lover, and set him free.

Her plan had backfired.

She, too, should be languishing on death row, but she had escaped from a hospital bed and hadn’t been heard of again—until now.

I looked over at Conklin, who was staring at the image of Morales. I knew that he was still ashamed that this criminal nut job had conned him. Actually, she’d conned both of us.

I flashed on Morales’s three months in our house, a proficient and slippery killer convincingly disguised as our cheerful back-office summer temp. No one was safe while Morales was free.

“So is she in custody?” Conklin asked Brady.

“Afraid not. This was a random video from a security cam across the street from the post office in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. That’s about a half hour from Cleveland. Someone who had been in the post office recognized Morales from the wanted poster, and after a few days, this video ended up at the FBI.

“She could be anywhere by now,” Brady said. “So keep your eyes open. And have fun tonight, Boxer. Take good care of my baby.”

CHAPTER 7

CLAIRE HAD PUT Yuki’s all-girl engagement party together in a flash. Instead of going to Susie’s Café, our customary watering hole, we met at Rickhouse, a restaurant bar in the financial district known for its sophisticated cocktails and its cozy brick and bourbon-barrel-stave decor.

I was late, but with a little help from the maître d, I found Claire, Yuki, and Cindy in the mezzanine level overlooking the bar below.

Yuki was radiant in office wear: vintage I. Magnin, 1960s black silk chiffon with rhinestones, and she was wearing her open-toed silver pumps that she never gets to wear.

She also had her mom’s diamond ring, a four-carat solitaire the size of a cocktail onion, on the ring finger of her left hand. That thing almost lit up our little table in the dark.