Unlucky 13 (Women's Murder Club 13)

If that wasn’t the first sentence in the lede paragraph of her upcoming career story, she didn’t know squat about journalism.

Cindy heard the buzz of her cell phone with an incoming text message. She grabbed it. Lindsay.

I’m in a meeting. Later.

She was about to reply when an old greenish Subaru wagon drove past her, heading north on Lake Street. It was almost as if she’d conjured up one of the cars she was looking for—and it was real and right in front of her.

The dusty-green Subaru Outback cruised through the intersection of Lake and 12th and seemed to slow as it passed Lindsay’s building. Then it continued on, its taillights receding up ahead, already too far away for Cindy to read the plate number.

She tossed her phone onto the passenger seat, strapped in, jerked the car into gear, pulled out into the lane, and jammed on the gas. Thirty seconds later, she was flying east, past blocks of multicolored Victorian houses, tailing the green all-wheel-drive vehicle that was heading toward the Presidio.

She could make out the silhouette of the driver through the Subaru’s rear window three cars ahead, but she wasn’t close enough to tell if the driver was male or female.

Was Mackie Morales driving that car?

Actually, Cindy had no idea.

CHAPTER 71

CONKLIN AND I were taking up space in the tech bullpen at Clapper’s forensics lab, peering over the bony shoulders and fuchsia hair of Bo Kellner, a sharp young criminalist who specialized in digital forensics.

The three frames I’d snipped from several days of surveillance footage shot at the Hayes Valley Chuck’s Prime restaurant were getting this kid all excited. Well, the frames were exciting, but Kellner was already highly enthused about his new facial-recognition program called Hunting Wolf.

He’d just installed it yesterday, and he was already being given a real-life opportunity to run Hunting Wolf through its paces. He was as excited as if he’d won the Instant Scratch-off Lotto.

I only half listened to Kellner talk about his program because I was juggling anxiety on two fronts: the upcoming ransom deadline from our friendly mechanical belly bomber and my constant thrumming, live-wire fear for the lives of Yuki and Brady.

Conklin, however, appeared to be in the present, and he wanted to get to know Bo Kellner’s new baby.

“What do you know about facial recognition?” Kellner asked Conklin.

“Pretty much what’s been produced in this lab and what I’ve seen on cop TV.”

Kellner laughed. “Okay, then. So let’s start with this.”

He inputted one of the faces from the grainy footage I’d sent to the lab twenty-four hours ago. It was a three-quarter view of a thin white man with a full beard who’d been caught on camera ordering from the menu hanging over the counter.

Kellner was saying, “If this was actual footage, Hunting Wolf could read his lips and tell you what he ordered,” when my phone chirped. I fished it out of my jacket pocket and glanced at the caller ID.

It was Cindy.

I texted her that I couldn’t talk but I’d call her later. Thinking, yes, after I had the belly bomber in my theoretical crosshairs.

Right now Belly Bomber was job one.

Kellner was saying, “So now Hunting Wolf is scanning this gray-and-white image, using algorithms that look for light and shadow and specific features, relaying that information as a face print—a unique numerical code.”

“I’m more or less following you,” Conklin said.

“Look,” Kellner said. “See the flickering at the top of the frame? The program is scanning pretty fast, but when it reaches the center of the face, the rapid movement will slow down as it tracks the features.”

Kellner rotated the face from three-quarters to a frontal view. He said, “Now I’m going to mess with the picture a little. I’m going to delete the beard and fill in the lower half of the face with what we call male physiological norms.”

Kellner moved the cursor around, twiddled with the image, and within seconds the guy with the beard was clean-shaven with a nice jawline.

Kellner said, “So now, I enter this clean face into the database and give him a name: Kellner1SFPD. We’ve gone from facial tracking to facial recognition.”

The software jiggled, locked in