16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

News anchor Dallas Greer asked the opinions of the experts, and the majority accepted GAR’s statement as true.

Roger Watkins, CBS’s crusty international correspondent, was the dissenting voice. He said, “Although Sci-Tron was funded by corporate donors, it was managed by an ecumenical group of educators. See, that doesn’t jibe as I see it. Sci-Tron was not authoritarian in any way. It’s a museum that was principally designed for kids. Blowing it up sends a very confusing signal and is off message for GAR.”

Alexander Carter disagreed. He had been analyzing and reporting on domestic terrorism since McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people in 1995.

Said Carter, “Roger, with all due respect, are you suggesting that GAR is taking credit for someone else’s bomb? Or could this be more likely? GAR is known for ditching the traditional terrorist playbook. They don’t have a headquarters, nor a spokesperson or leader. They thrive on their open-source recruitment and management. Equal bombs for all.

“How can anyone, without certain knowledge, say that Sci-Tron was a random act of terror unrelated to GAR?”

Both men had made good points, and I was weighing their arguments against what I knew of Connor Grant.

Was he a partner in GAR? Was he a lone wolf who had been inspired by GAR? Or, if he was in fact the bomber, as I believed, had he acted entirely by himself for his own sick reasons?

Or was he innocent of all charges and just a lying piece of crap?

I pictured him in a small cinder-block interrogation room contemplating a possible death sentence. I thought I could get him to tell me the truth again.

CHAPTER 7

IT WAS ALMOST midnight when Rich Conklin found me in the waiting room outside the ICU.

He sat down beside me and I updated him on Joe’s condition.

“They put him into a coma to stop him from thrashing. Along with the bleeding around his brain, he’s got a lot of broken bones. Right leg is fractured in two places, right arm burned and snapped just above the wrist. He’s got three or four cracked ribs.”

Richie is more than a partner. He’s like a sibling with no rivalry between us. A couple of years back he fell in love with and is now living with Cindy Thomas, one of my dearest and closest friends. He is family.

&nbs

p; Now he walked with me to the glass-walled intensive care unit down the hall, where Joe lay in a hospital bed, tubes going into and out of him. He was wired up to monitors, with his leg in traction, bandages around his head.

I said, “Why did he have to go inside that place? Why?”

“I know. I know,” Richie said.

We both knew. We’d both gone into no-win firefights with eyes wide open, gotten shot, and gone back for more.

Richie put his arms around me and I cried against his chest. He said all the right things: that Joe was strong, that he was in great hands, that he was going to live to kick ass. “With his broken leg.”

And then he said, “You heard that GAR took credit?”

“I heard.”

“We should go, Linds. Brady is waiting for your debrief.”

I left my number with the nurse’s station and followed Richie back to the Hall of Justice, a gray granite building that houses the criminal court, the DA’s offices, a jail, and the Southern Station of the SFPD.

We parked on Gilbert Street and entered the building through the main entrance, a set of double glass-and-steel doors leading to a marble-lined lobby. We cleared night shift security and headed up the back stairs to the Homicide squad room, on the fourth floor.

The squad room was a fairly grim place on the best of days, but at night it was like a crypt. The lighting was stark, the green walls looked gray, and so did the dear old-timers and rookies and guys on their second shift sharing desks to answer the incessant ringing of the tip lines. Some of them looked up and said, “Hey, Boxer. You okay?”

The bull pen was gritty, but there was no place on earth I’d rather work.

At the back of the room was a glass-walled office with a princely view of the interstate. This was the lieutenant’s office and he was there now.

Jackson Brady, formerly of Miami PD, had transferred to our Homicide Unit a few years back. It hadn’t taken long for him to earn his promotion to lieutenant and become the boss. I’d had issues with Brady at first, but despite his nofrills style, I had come to like him.

He was fearless. He was tough. He was loyal to the max and he was a decider. You couldn’t ask much more from your commanding officer. Last year Brady had married Yuki Castellano, another of my closest friends. Welcome to the family, Brady.