11th Hour (Women's Murder Club 11)

Chandler said, “I’ll walk you out.”

I started down the gangway and this time Chandler’s hand on my back was firmer, more forceful. I stepped away and turned to give Chandler a questioning look.

“You’re like a butterfly,” Harry Chandler told me, fixing his gray searchlight eyes on mine, “with steel wings.”

I was taken aback for three or four reasons I could have spat out right away. Had Harry Chandler’s crazy just surfaced?

What had Nigel Worley told me?

Harry Chandler would like you.

I said, “I hope you’re not coming on to me, Mr. Chandler. Because when a suspect in a murder investigation hits on a cop, you know what I think? He’s desperate. And he’s trying to hide something.”

Chandler said, “You actually think of me as a suspect, Sergeant?”

“You haven’t been excluded.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

I said sharply, “Stay anchored. If I were you, I wouldn’t draw attention to myself by leaving town.”

Chapter 24

JASON BLAYNEY MOVED PURPOSEFULLY through the large open space with the supersize bar and the high ceiling, the main room of the yacht club.

The reporter was twenty-seven years old, an average-to-nice-looking guy, and, along with his more intellectual talents, he had a trick left arm. When he was a kid, he had learned how to pop his shoulder so that it looked deformed, and this little sleight of arm gave him an edge in certain situations.

Right now, for instance, the arm made the security guy decide not to confront him. Blayney said, “How ya doing? I’m with the O’Briens. Mind if I use the bathroom?”

Guard said, “Sure,” and pointed the way.

Blayney went to the men’s room, washed his hands, finger-combed his hair, and straightened the camera hanging from his neck.

Then he left the club through the back door that opened onto the wide deck fronting the marina. He was imagining the smoking interview he was about to have with Harry Chandler.

Blayney had grown up in Chicago, and after graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, he had gotten off to a fast start at the LA bureau of the New York Times. Six months ago, he got the offer from the San Francisco Post to aggressively report on crime, and he’d moved up the coast and into a job that fit him like the cover of darkness.

Now he had a prominent platform to do whatever it took to crush the Chronicle’s dominance in crime reportage and establish himself as a player on the national stage.

Today, Blayney was as stoked as he’d ever been in his life. Yesterday’s ruckus at the Chandler house was the start of a monster story that had legs up to the moon. He’d flattered a traffic cop and gotten a tip, and as far as he knew, he was the first journalist to learn that several heads had been dug up at the Ellsworth compound.

By itself, this information was tremendous on every level, and he was just getting started.

A half hour ago, Blayney had followed Lindsay Boxer from the Ellsworth compound. As soon as she got into her car, he’d been sure that she was going to the yacht club to interview Harry Chandler.

He took his time, and as he headed into the marina, Blayney saw Boxer leaving the slip where Chandler’s boat was docked. Her head was down, her blond hair hanging in front of her eyes as she talked on her phone. Blayney thought of Lindsay Boxer as a character in his story; she was a good cop, but what really got him going was that she was emotional. If he dogged her, she would react and probably lead him into the heart of the story. She could be the heroine or the screwup on both of her active cases. He really didn’t care which.

Either way, Lindsay Boxer had taken him to Harry Chandler.

He took a couple of pictures, but she didn’t notice him.

“Nice one, Sergeant,” he said quietly. “I think you made the front page.”

Chapter 25

BLAYNEY IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZED the man heading up the gangway to his yacht wearing denim and walking with a swagger. It was a thrill to actually put his eyes on the actor in real time, real size, the man whose face had been ubiquitous on Court TV for almost two years, a guy who possibly had killed his wife and gotten away with it.

Blayney wanted an interview with Chandler as much as he had ever wanted anything in his life. He pointed his camera and took another couple of shots, then called out, “Mr. Chandler.”