The 6th Target (Women's Murder Club 6)

“The voice was altered,” I told Jacobi. “I’ll send the tape to the lab.”

“Before you do that, get the parents to listen to it. Maybe we can get a positive ID on the child’s voice.”

“Could still be a sicko getting his rocks off,” Conklin said as Jacobi walked away.

“I hope that’s what it is. Because we’re not ‘calling off the dogs.’ Not even close.”

I couldn’t say what I was thinking.

That we’d just heard Madison Tyler’s last words.

Chapter 55

BRENDA FREGOSI HAD BEEN the homicide squad assistant for some years and, at only twenty-five years old, was a natural mother hen.

She was clucking sympathetically as I spoke to Henry Tyler on the phone, and when I hung up, she handed me a message slip.

I read her spiky handwriting: “Claire wants you to come to the hospital at six this evening.”

It was almost six now.

“How did she sound?” I asked.

“Fine, I think.”

“Is this all she said?”

“This is what she said exactly: ‘Brenda, please tell Lindsay to come to the hospital at six. Thanks a lot.’ ”

I’d just seen Claire yesterday. What was wrong?

I drove toward San Francisco General, my mind swirling with terrible, sinking thoughts. Claire once told me this thing about brain chemistry, the nub of it being that when you’re feeling good, you can’t ever imagine feeling bad again. And when you’re feeling bad, it’s impossible to imagine a time when y

ou won’t be circling the drain.

As I sucked on an Altoids, a little girl’s voice was crying, “Mommy,” in my head, and it was mixed up with the bad knee-jerk reaction I had to hospitals ever since my mother died in one almost fifteen years ago.

I parked in the hospital lot on Pine, thinking about how good it had been having Joe to talk to when I felt this low, frustrated from three days of staggering blindly into dead ends.

My thoughts turned back to Claire as I stepped into the hospital elevator. I stared at my fried reflection in the stainless steel doors. I fluffed my bangs uselessly as the car climbed upward, then when the doors slid open, I stepped out into the antiseptic stink and cold white light of the post-op unit.

I wasn’t the first to arrive at Claire’s room. Yuki and Cindy had already moved chairs up to her bed, and Claire was sitting up, wearing a flowered nightgown and a Mona Lisa smile on her face.

The Women’s Murder Club was assembled — but why?

“Hey, everyone,” I said, walking around the bed, kissing cheeks. “You look gorgeous,” I said to Claire, my relief that this wasn’t a life-support emergency bringing me almost to the point of giddiness. “What’s the occasion?”

“She wouldn’t tell until you got here,” Yuki said.

“Okay, okay!” Claire said. “I do have an announcement to make.”

“You’re pregnant,” said Cindy.

Claire burst out laughing, and we all looked at Cindy.

“You’re crazy, girl reporter,” I said. A baby was the last thing Claire needed at age forty-three, with two near-grown-up sons.

“Give us a clue,” Yuki blurted out. “Give us a category.”