16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

She put a hand on my waist and walked me to her office, then settled in behind her desk as I took the chair across from her. Claire is African American, bosomy, and warmhearted, although how she manages warmth when she performs or oversees twelve hundred autopsies a year is kind of a mystery.

She said, “I can’t stop thinking about Joe. How’s he doing?”

I had called her while I was waiting for Joe to reappear from his trip into Sci-Tron and again from the hospital, but I updated her now.

“His doctor tells me it’s still too soon to know.”

“I’m so sorry about this, Linds. But he’s going to pull through. It’s Joe we’re talking about.”

I took a deep breath and said, “One minute he’s raising his glass to ‘happy days.’ Next minute …”

I put my hands over my eyes, breathing deeply, willing myself not to cry. When I looked up, my friend was watching me with deep concern.

She reached over the desk and grabbed my hands. “Let me know how I can help. I can call the doctor. Look at film. Go with you to the hospital. Whatever you need. Anything.”

“Thanks, Claire. Very much.”

I gave her Dr. Dalrymple’s card and she put it next to her phone.

I said, “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Yeah, well, obviously we’re full up here and overflowing. But something rare came in last night. And I need to tell you about it.”

“Go ahead.”

“A forty-year-old white woman in nice clothes was found in the street just off the Embarcadero and brought in with the blast victims. She had some bruises that make me think she was hit by a car, but not the kinds of lacerations people got who were inside Sci-Tron or close to it.

“Her handbag was missing,” Claire said, “so no ID. I thought she’d died from cardiac arrest. That scene last night could cause some people to have a heart attack, you know?”

“Don’t I ever.”

“I did the post. Her heart was perfect, Lindsay.”

“She had a stroke maybe? Or an aneurysm?”

“Before I went there, something was nagging at me. I gave her another external exam. Found something that reminded me of a case that came in a few months back.”

“Don’t stop now,” I said.

“She had a nice bruise on her left hip and a scrape on her arm, probably got bumped by a car. This wasn’t fatal. But there was a puncture wound on her right buttock centered on a bruise the size of a quarter. I have seen a nearly identical puncture and bruise once before.”

Claire had my attention, but I felt urgently that I had to get into my car and switch on the sirens. I needed to get to the hospital. I had to meet with Joe’s brothers. I had to see Joe.

I said, “What are you saying, Claire?”

“I’ve sent out the victim’s blood. I’ll know more soon. Right now I’m calling her manner of death undetermined. But what I’m thinking is that this nice-looking lady was killed. That her death was a homicide.”

CHAPTER 14

AFTER AN EMOTIONALLY wrenching meeting with Joe’s brothers at my husband’s bedside, I cried all the way back to the Hall. I washed my face, reset my ponytail. Then I joined Conklin for a meeting in Brady’s office.

It was a tough transition.

I was still with Joe, not knowing if he would slip away before I saw him again. At the same time I was needed here and now.

Brady was keyed up and focused. He had taped up an enlargement of Sci-Tron’s final moments on the wall facing his desk, where he could see it all the time. He offered us chairs, booted up his computer, and pulled up the video of our interrogation of Connor Grant that morning.

The three of us watched it together, looking for something we’d missed. Something we should have asked. We strained for something useful or revealing. Straining through the nothing Grant had given us for any kind of lead.