This one was personal. The phrase rang in our ears.
But we didn’t find anything. A lot of people’s time wasted. If there was a connection to August Spies in Jill’s life, it wasn’t in her files. Where was it? It had to be there somewhere.
Finally, we loaded the last of the files to go back to the morgue.
“Go home,” Claire said to me, exhausted herself. “Get some sleep.” She struggled up and pulled on her raincoat. She placed her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll find another way, Lindsay. We will.”
Claire was right. I needed a good night’s sleep more than anything in the world, other than a warm bath. I had staked so much on this.
I checked in with the office one more time, then, for the first time I could remember, packed up to head home for some sleep. I got in the Explorer and started heading down Brannan for Potrero. I stopped at a light. I was feeling totally empty.
The light changed. I sat there. I knew inside that I wasn’t going home.
I jerked a right when the light changed, and headed out on Sixteenth toward Buena Vista Park. It wasn’t as if any brilliant idea flashed into my brain…. More like a lack of anything else to do.
Something connected them. I was sure of that much. I just hadn’t found it.
There was a single patrol guy guarding Jill’s town house when I pulled up. Crime scene tape blocked the stairs to the landing.
I ID’d myself to the young officer at the door, who was probably happy for the diversion at this time of night. I stepped inside Jill’s house.
Chapter 84
A REALLY CREEPY FEELING came over me that this might not be something I should be doing. Walking around the home I had been to so many times,
knowing Jill was dead. Seeing her things: a Burberry umbrella, Otis’s food bowl, a stack of recent newspapers. I was overcome with a sense of loneliness, missing her more than ever.
I went into the kitchen. I leafed through some loose things on an old pine desk. Everything was just as she’d left it. A note to Ingrid, her housekeeper. A few bills. Jill’s familiar handwriting. It was almost as if she were still there.
I went upstairs. I walked down the hall to Jill’s study. This was where she did her work, spent a lot of her time. Jill’s space.
I sat down at her desk. I smelled her scent. Jill had an old brass lamp. I flicked it on. Some letters scattered on the desk. One from her sister, Beth. Some photos: her and Steve and Otis at Moab.
What are you doing in here, Lindsay? I asked myself again. What are you hoping to find? Something signed by August Spies? Don’t be a fool.
I opened one of the desk drawers. Files. Household things. Trips, airline mileage statements.
I got up and stepped over to the bookshelf. The Voyage of the Narwhal, The Corrections, stories by Eudora Welty. Jill always had good taste in books. Never knew when she found the time to read these things. But somehow she did.
I bent down and opened a cupboard under the shelf. I came upon boxes of old pictures. Trips taken, her sister’s wedding. Some went back as far as her college graduation.
Look at Jill: frizzy hair, thin as a rail, but strong. They made me smile. I sat on the hardwood floor and leafed through them. God, I miss you.
I saw this old accordion-style folder, wrapped tightly by an elastic cord. I opened it. Lots of old things. What it contained surprised me. Letters, photos, newspaper clippings. Some report cards from when Jill was in high school. Her parents’ wedding invitation.
And a file stuffed with newspaper clippings. I leafed through them. They were mostly about her father.
Her dad was a prosecutor, here and back in Texas. Jill told me he used to call her his little Second Chair. He’d died just a few months before, and it was clear how much Jill missed him. Most of the articles were on cases he had worked on or appointments he had received.
I came upon an old yellowed article. The source surprised me.
San Francisco Examiner. September 17, 1970.
The headline read PROSECUTOR NAMED IN BNA BOMBING CASE.
The Black National Army. The BNA was a radical group back in the sixties. Known for violent robberies and armed assaults.
I scanned the article. The prosecutor’s name sent a chill racing down my back.