11th Hour (Women's Murder Club 11)

“Har-har. Who were you talking to on the phone?”

“Old boys’ network. Top secret,” he said melodramatically. “I have to fly to DC tomorrow for a few days. Cash flow for the Molinari family.”

“Okayyy. Yay for cash flow. What kind of soup?”

It was tortellini en brodo with baby peas served up in a heavy white bowl. I went to work on the soup and after a minute, I held up the bowl and said, “More, please.”

Between bites, I told my husband about the house of heads, which was what the Ellsworth compound would inevitably be called from that day forward.

“It was indescribable, Joe. Heads, two of them set up on the back patio. A display of some sort, like an art installation, but no bodies. There was no sign of mayhem. No disturbance in the garden except for the two holes the heads had been in. Then CSU exhumed five more heads, just clean skulls. Honestly, I don’t know what the hell we’re looking at.”

I told Joe about the numbers 104 and 613 handwritten on a pair of index cards.

“Cindy is running the numbers. So far we know that six-one-three is an area code in Ottawa. Lots of radio stations start with one hundred and four. Put the two numbers together and you get a real estate listing for a three-bedroom house in Colorado. What a lead, hmmm?”

“Ten-four,” he said. “Radio call signal meaning ‘I acknowledge you. Copy that.’”

“Hmmm. And six-thirteen?”

“June thirteenth?”

“Uh-huh. The ides of June. Very helpful.”

Joe brought a big bowl of pralines and ice cream to the counter. We faced off with clashing spoons, then had a race to the bottom. I captured the last bite, put down my spoon, held up my arms in victory, and said, “Yessss.”

“I let you win, big mama.”

“Sure you did.”

I winked at him, took the bowl and the spoons to the sink, and asked Joe, “So, what’s your gut take on my case?”

“Apart from the obvious conclusion that a psycho did it,” said my blue-eyed, dark-haired husband, “here are my top three questions: What’s the connection between the skulls and the Ellsworth place? What do the victims have in common? And does Harry Chandler have anything to do with those heads?”

“And the numbers? A tally? A scorecard?”

“It’s a mystery to me.”

“One of our Jane Does is relatively fresh. If we can ID her, maybe the numbers won’t matter.”

Four hours later, I woke up in bed next to Joe with the remains of a nightmare in my mind, something Wes Craven could have created. There had been a pyramid of skulls heaped up in a dark garden, hundreds of them, and they were surrounded by a garland of flowers.

What did it mean?

I still didn’t have a clue.

Chapter 15

BY SEVEN, I was awake for good, this time with a mug of milky coffee and my open laptop. I zipped through my e-mail fast but stopped deleting junk when I saw two Google alerts for SFPD.

The alerts were linked to the San Francisco Post, and the front-page story was headlined “Revenge vs. the SFPD.”

My stomach clenched when I saw the byline.

Writer Jason Blayney was the Post’s crime desk pit bull, well known for his snarky rhetoric and his hate-on for cops. The Post didn’t mind if Blayney stretched the facts into a lie — and often, he did.

I started reading Blayney’s account of Chaz Smith’s murder.

Chaz Smith, a known top-tier drug dealer, was assassinated Sunday afternoon in the men’s room at the Morton Academy of Music during their annual spring recital. The academy, located on California Street, was packed with parents and students during the shooting.