CHAPTER 68
MORALES HAD BOOSTED another car, a 2004 Subaru Outback, and it was perfect. The sea-foam-green color was boring, the car was dirty, and it had open boxes of old picture frames in the back. There wasn’t a person in the state of California who would give this car a second look or even a first.
Not even the cops would be looking for a car worth five grand on a good day.
Randy was humming as she cruised slowly down 7th Street and stopped at the light at Bryant. She took in the whole of the Hall of Justice, the gray granite building where she had gone to work every day last summer.
It gave her a tremendous high to reflect on those months, going every morning through the lobby, clearing security, working an actual job in Homicide. And she had turned in an award-quality performance that would never be credited by the Academy.
She liked thinking about the killings she’d finessed, no one suspecting her—ever. And she’d gotten Rich Conklin to fall in love with her. Oh, man. He was so hooked.
You were dazzling, baby, Randy said.
“I did it for us, lover,” she said. “Just for us.”
And that was why the outcome was so wrong. She’d scored big-time, and Randy should be alive. And so she was stuck remembering what Lindsay Boxer had caused. She hated that woman so much, her thoughts alone should have been enough to kill Boxer dead.
The stoplight changed and Morales turned onto Bryant and drove slowly past the Hall. A few cops were grouped around a squad car at the curb. She knew them, could remember all of their names. She had an impulse to wave.
Randy said, Get a move on, sweetheart.
“I know. No showing off,” Morales muttered.
She stepped on the gas and, after clearing the Hall, turned left onto Harriet. There was a parking lot on her left, right near the ME’s Office, and Boxer used to park her car there in the shade of the Interstate.
Morales peered along the rows of parked cars but didn’t see Boxer’s blue ride. Hell, she had probably gone for the day. No problem. She knew where Boxer lived, had memorized the address months ago. When her lover was still alive. When she still believed in a happily-ever-after life.
The kind of life Boxer had.
Morales took a left on Harrison Street, and headed north toward Lake Street. She hoped the Boxer-Molinaris kept the curtains in their apartment open. She wanted to see the sergeant at home with her husband and child. She wanted to get a feel for their neighborhood.
And then, after she’d seen her mom and little boy, she was going to come back here and destroy everything that Lindsay Boxer loved.
CHAPTER 69
LAST NIGHT, THINKING about the f-you e-mail she had gotten a couple of days ago from Morales, Cindy had lain awake in bed, trying to figure out if there was a way in the world she could locate that hateful woman.
Cindy didn’t remember falling asleep, but then daylight pried her eyes open. She picked up last night’s thoughts as though she had never dropped them.
But now she had an idea.
She cleaned up, made coffee, and then called her new pal in Wisconsin, Captain Patrick Lawrence of the Cleveland, Wisconsin, PD.
The captain answered on the first ring and said he was just getting in, to give him a second to take off his jacket. She heard the clunk of the phone on his desk and then he was back.
“I’ve got time to talk right now, Cindy.”
“I need some help, Pat, of the usually off-limits-to-reporters kind.”
The captain told Cindy he was happy to help her as long as she kept his name out of it. He couldn’t chase Morales himself when she was out of his county, but the fact that she was tied to Randy Fish gave the captain some personal interest in the outcome of the case.
Cindy paced around her small apartment as she told the captain about Morales’s e-mail.
“She pegged me when I was watching for her outside her mother’s house. I didn’t get a look at her car. She had her high beams on, but apparently she saw me. I’m thinking she has to be driving a stolen car.”
Lawrence said, “Makes sense she’d be boosting cars of opportunity. I would imagine she’d rotate them out pretty regularly, hoping it would take a while for local PDs to catch up with her ride.”
“Pat, here’s the favor: Could you access a stolen-car database and give me a list of recently stolen cars in San Francisco?”