10th Anniversary (Women's Murder Club 10)

“What did you find out about the bad guy?”

“He was some kind of lowlife freak, Joe. A friendless, unmarried, psychotic loner, fifty-five years old. He put in about eighteen hours a day in the Quick Express garage. Apparently he slept there in his car half the time.”

I told Joe that Wysocki had managed the place for some guy who lived in Michigan, so he had run of the place. Had the keys. Kept the log sheets. Ran the scheduling.

“No one questioned anything he did. And so he hangs an ‘Out of Service’ sign on the freight elevator, and that box becomes his own private real estate.”

“A big fish in a mud puddle,” said Joe.

“Exactly,” I said. “We found a date book in Wysocki’s jacket pocket. Actually had the words ‘Date Book’ inked on the cover. Inside, he’d written a list of his victims, six of them, and times, dates, places, what they were wearing.

“He had Cindy’s name in there,” I said. “Just made me sick to see her name written in that lineup.”

“He called it a date book?” Joe said. “So maybe he was acting like he was on a date.”

“That makes some kind of psycho sense, I suppose. He picks up a girl, drugs her. Drives her back to his little out-of-service boudoir. I’m guessing he waits until his victims are semiconscious, then rapes them before the drugs wear off. Oh, yeah. Always the gentleman, he drives them home — or to a nearby alley. Perfect evening for Al Wysocki. Doesn’t even have to send flowers the next day.”

“How’s Conklin doing?”

“Crazed. A wreck. He says to Cindy at the hospital, ‘Don’t you ever do that again.’ She says, ‘What? Catch a cab?’”

We both laughed.

My indomitable friend Cindy.

Joe turned onto his side and kissed me. I melted against him.

“I love you so much,” I said. “I think I loved you even before I met you.”

He laughed, but I saw that there were tears in his eyes.

Chapter 108

LOOKING INTO JOE’S EYES, I remembered the first time his baby blues locked on mine. We were working a case together. I was the lowest-ranking person there, and he was a top-of-the-heap Federal guy: Deputy Director of Homeland Security.

I liked his looks — his thick brown hair and solid build — and not only was he smart but he had an easy, confident manner, too.

He passed me his business card and touched my fingers, and we did a double take as electricity arced between us. It didn’t take long for us to get involved, but our sizzling new connection had been disrupted repeatedly and for months by missed planes and crossed schedules.

Joe lived in Washington, DC and I lived in the City by the Bay, and both of us had taken recent blows to the heart.

He’d been recovering from a savage divorce, and I was still suffering from the loss of someone close who had been shot and killed on the job.

Neither of us was prepared for the frustrating up-and-down year of long-distance dating that was later complicated even more by an insane — and unconsummated — crush between Conklin and me.

Through all of it, Joe had been a rock, and I’d hung in like I was clinging to a cliff by my fingernails. I knew what was good for me. And I loved Joe. But I couldn’t give myself over to the permanence of the relationship.

Finally Joe got tired of it. He called me out on my ambivalence. Then he quit his job and moved to San Francisco. Somehow, while negotiating the zigs and zags, we’d found ourselves in each other.

“I just love you so much,” I said to Joe. I kissed the corners of his eyes. He put his hand on my cheek, and I kissed his palm.

He said, “I love you almost too much, Linds. I can’t stand it when you’re not here and I’m lying in the dark, thinking about bullets coming at you. It’s terrible to have thoughts like that.”

“I’m very careful,” I said. “So don’t think about bullets.”

I bent to kiss him, my hair making a curtain around our faces. That kiss went deep and it stirred me up. Stirred Joe up, too.

We smiled as we looked into each other’s eyes. There were no walls between us anymore.