The 8th Confession (Women's Murder Club 8)

“Write down their names,” Conklin said, bringing the girl a pad and pen. Sammy came back to earth, gave Conklin a look meaning Are you crazy?

I asked her, “What do you mean, ‘drive us to work’? Drive what?”

“Bagman had a van, of course.”

Sammy’s voice was starting to crack. Conklin went out of the room, returned with a high-octane cola, and handed it to the girl, who drained the can in one long swallow.

I thought about Rodney Booker, the handsome man who’d gone to Stanford and joined the peace corps, then taken a hard turn into the drug business, giving it an original and especially cruel twist.

Sammy had described the horror, seemingly without understanding what was making me sick. Booker had kept a willing harem of teenage crack dealers, and he’d addicted them to a drug that delivered mind-blowing sex — until they burned out and died.

Booker was a modern-day devil.

Of course someone had killed him.

I asked Sammy where Booker’s van was, and she shrugged again. “I have no idea. Have I done my civic duty? May I go, please?”

Conklin pushed on. “So let me get this straight. Booker was cooking meth in his house?”

“He was for a while, but it was dangerous.”

Sammy sighed long and loud, remained silent for a few seconds, then resumed.

“My whole life dried up when Bagman died. Now my freaking parents are ‘cleaning me up.’ You know what it’s like to drop down a well? That’s my life. I’m going out of my mind.”

“ Uh-huh,” Conklin said. I admired his tenacity. “You told Cindy Thomas that you know who killed Bagman —”

“I never said that.”

“Sergeant?” Conklin said.

“We have enough,” I said, standing up, putting on my jacket.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Conklin said to Sammy. “Anything you say can and will be used against you —”

“You’re arresting me?”

Sammy stiffened as Conklin got her to her feet, clamped the cuffs around her wrists.

“I want my phone call,” she said. “I want my father.”

Chapter 84

SAMMY’S FULL NAME was Samantha Pincus, as we found out when her father blew into the squad room like a winter squall.

Neil Pincus was a lawyer who worked pro bono for the down-and-out habitués of the Mission District, where he and his brother had a two-man law practice in the same building that housed From the Heart.

I sized Pincus up as he stood over me at my desk and demanded to see his daughter. He was five ten, a taut 160, late forties, balding, and his scalp was sweating from the steam that was shooting out of his ears.

“You’re holding my daughter for something she said without counsel present? I’m going to sue you each individually and I’m going to sue the city, do you understand? You didn’t read her her rights until she indicted herself.”

“True,” I said. “But this wasn’t a custodial interrogation, Mr. Pincus. Her rights weren’t violated.”

“Sam didn’t know that. You terrified her. What you did was tantamount to torture. I’m a heck of a victims’ rights lawyer, and I’m going to send the two of you to hell.”

Jacobi was watching from behind the glass walls of his office, and twelve other pairs of eyes in the squad room were cast down, sneaking peeks.

I rose to my full five-foot-ten, plus two inches for my shoes, and said, “Take it down a few notches, Mr. Pincus. Right now this is just between the four of us. Help your daughter. Get her to cooperate, and we won’t book her.”