The safe house was brick, three stories. Edwardian style. A porch light shone brightly and there was muted light in some of
the windows. Rae went up the front steps, noticed the eye of a surveillance camera trained on her as she rang the bell. A
female voice came through a speaker above the bell, asking her to identify herself.
She did, holding up her credentials to the camera.
“I’ll be right there,” the voice said.
A woman dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt opened the door. “Callie’s been waiting a long time for you, Ms. Kelleher.”
“I realize that. I’m sorry.”
“Not my problem. I’d’ve been up anyway; it’s my night on the door. Callie’s in the coming-together room.” She gestured toward
an archway to her right.
Interesting name for living room. Rae liked it.
She went over there and looked in. A dark-haired woman was curled in an oversize armchair, an afghan pulled up to her shoulders.
The room was filled with similar comfortable furnishings, and a gas log flickered on the small tiled hearth—a fireplace that
had once burned coal, but was later converted.
When Rae cleared her throat, the woman started and looked up. Rae saw that she was a beauty. Big, heavily lashed gray eyes,
sculpted chin and cheekbones. But the bleakness in those eyes and the tight lines around her mouth told of a hard life. As
did the yellowing bruise on her chin. She couldn’t’ve been much over twenty.
“Ms. O’Leary, I’m Rae Kelleher. Sorry to be so late.”
“No worries. I don’t sleep much anyway. This story about an inheritance—it’s not true, is it?”
“No, it’s not. How did you know?”
“I don’t have any relatives, at least not any that would leave me money.”
“Then why did you call me, agree to meet with me?”
Callie O’Leary motioned for Rae to be seated across from her. “Because this has got to be about Angie. I saw on the news that
they identified her body. I know… quite a few things about Angie, and it’s time I told somebody.”
Rae’s phone buzzed. She looked at the number, saw it was Hy and said, “I need to take this.”
After she’d ended the call, she sat silently for a moment, fingers pressed to her lips, feeling sick inside.
“Bad news?” Callie O’Leary asked.
“… Yes.”
“You need to leave? We can talk another time. I’ll be here until it’s safe for me to get out of town.”
Rae forced her mind away from what Hy had told her about Shar and back to the situation at hand. “No,” she said. “It’s bad
news, but there’s nothing I can do to help.”
Besides, she was doing what Shar would want her to.
“So how come you’re here?” she asked Callie.
“Guy threatened me.”
“Don’t you get a lot of threats in your line of work?”
“Not like this. Not from somebody so powerful.”
“Somebody connected with Angie?”
She nodded.
“Tell me about it.”
O’Leary’s earlier resolve had faded. “This guy, he’ll kill me if I do.”
“Not if he can’t find you.”
“He can find me, a guy like that. And the security isn’t all that good here.”
“I know a place where it is.”
Ricky was going to be amazed when she brought a hooker home.
A
fter midnight. Still no word.
Once he’d made his calls people started to arrive. Ted and Neal. Ricky, in lieu of Rae, who was working a lead. Craig had
stopped in briefly, but he would be off on an early morning flight tomorrow, pursuing another lead. Julia. Robin Blackhawk,
Shar’s half sister. Brother John. Mick. And Elwood Farmer, sitting silent and calm by himself. Hy hadn’t called Elwood because
he assumed the traditional old man didn’t have a cell phone, but Ricky had supplied a number. An iPhone, no less. Traditional
or not, Elwood had entered the twenty-first century in style.
Two hours gone now, and nothing from the doctor. Two hours in surgery: God, what a toll that must be taking on his wife’s
weakened body!
He wondered what he’d been thinking, sitting here alone and refusing company. Refusing comfort. Since he’d changed his mind
he was surrounded by the most caring people he’d ever known. Family, what a family should be. What they so often weren’t.
The nurse on the desk was eyeing them nervously. So many people crowding the waiting room. Hy went up to her and asked, “Do
you want some of them to leave? They can sit with me in shifts.”
“No, Mr. Ripinsky. They can stay as long as they behave themselves.”
“Well, that’s kind of a risky proposition. Anybody misbehaves, you tell me and I’ll throw them out myself.”
He crossed the room to Elwood, sat down beside him. Shar’s birth father nodded to him, but remained silent.
Hy felt uncomfortable; he barely knew the man, and even McCone had been struggling to connect with him.
“She will be all right,” Elwood said.
Hy glanced at him, startled.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“
Saika mukua kettae.
Her spirit is strong.” Farmer shrugged. “Some things, you just know.”
“Because you’re her father?”
“Well, there’s something about blood.” He shot a keen look at Hy. “You know how strong she is. Why are you doubting her?”
He thought on the question. “Maybe because I’m not sure how well I’d do in the same situation.”
Elwood made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Then doubt yourself, not your wife.”
Doubt himself. He’d been doing that ever since Southeast Asia. Why transfer the feeling to Shar? Elwood was right—just stop
the doubting altogether.
“Saika mukua kettae.”
After a moment Elwood added, “You can’t take control of her physically; the doctors are doing that. But mentally, emotionally…”
He shrugged again.
“Thanks. I’ll try.”
They sat there together in silence, waiting for news, and Hy felt the strength that radiated from Shar’s father.
Three hours gone.
C
allie O’Leary asked, “You
live
here?”
“I do.” They had just pulled through the automatic gate to the house in Sea Cliff; to the north the Golden Gate Bridge shone
orange through the gathering mist. The big, multistoried residence loomed before them, soft lights in only a few of its windows.
“Awesome,” Callie said, “but where’re all the security guys?”
“They’re here. You just don’t see them—and neither do intruders.”
“Rad. This PI business, it must pay real good.”
Rae smiled and stopped the car. “It helps to have married well.”
They got out and went to the front door, where Rae punched numbers on a keypad, then let them in and rearmed the system. The
house was quiet: the younger kids had gone back to Charlene and Vic’s home in Bel Air, Chris was at her apartment in Berkeley,
and Mick was probably at the hospital. Ricky, too—he’d promised he’d fill in for her.
When they entered the living room, Callie again said, “Awesome!”
“Are you hungry?” Rae asked. “Do you want a drink?”
“… I’m not hungry and I haven’t had a drink since I went to Hope House. Probably I shouldn’t now.”
“Soda? Coffee? Anything else?”
“No thanks. All I want to do is sit down on that couch and look at that beautiful fireplace. I’ve never seen one like that,
just standing in the middle of the room with rock all around it.”
Rae motioned for Callie to sit. “Where’re you from?” she asked.
“You mean where I was born? Honolulu. My dad was in the navy. We moved a lot. I headed out when they were gonna leave San
Diego for someplace on the East Coast.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I had three brothers. They liked them better than me. And I liked San Diego.” She looked sharply at Rae. “And no,
nobody abused me. They… just didn’t care if I was there or not.”
“So you were living in San Diego… ?”
“And a guy made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Move to LA, live in his penthouse, make a lot of money. Old stupid story, and
I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s cool.”
The front door opened. “Hey, Red, where are you?” Ricky, back from the hospital.
“Living room.”
She could hear him pulling off his coat and hanging it on the rack in the entryway. He called, “Shar’s still in surgery. They
were getting edgy about a cast of thousands in the waiting room, so I took a break.”
He appeared in the archway, and his gaze rested on Callie. “Hi. Who’s this?”
“A new friend, Callie O’Leary.”
Something flickered in his eyes; he knew exactly what she was. He’d had plenty of contact with women like her in the music
business.
“Well, Callie,” he said, “welcome to our home.”
Callie’s eyes widened and she turned to Rae. “Oh my God, you
did
marry well. Ricky Savage! I can’t believe it! I’ve listened and listened to his music hundreds of times, and I saw that movie
he did last year.”
“Crappy movie,” Ricky told her. “But I thought I looked okay in a beard.”
Rae said, “Callie needs a safe place to stay. And she wants to tell me something.”
He replied, “A safe place is what we have to offer.”
F
our and three-quarters hours gone.
He grasped Ted’s hand, thought about praying.
Funny thought, for an atheist.
Religion just didn’t work for him. What worked was the life force: McCone, loving her, soaring through the sky together.…
He concentrated on that.
A man in blood-spattered green scrubs entered the waiting room. At first glance Hy didn’t recognize him, then he realized
he was Dr. Ben Travers, the surgeon with whom he’d briefly spoken before Shar went into surgery.
The blood—his wife’s.
He stared at the doctor, trying to read his face. It looked like a mask.
Ted let go of Hy’s hand, motioned that he should stand up.
He did, and moved toward the surgeon, hoping for the best, steeling himself for the worst.
H
e always got lost in Scottsdale.
It was strange, because he had a good sense of direction and the city was laid out on a grid. But there were a few twists
and turns that he couldn’t comprehend, and although Daniel Black-stone’s house was on Mariposa Street close to the main shopping
area, Craig kept taking side streets and passing the same roundabout with the rearing life-size bronze horses in its center.
The third time past, he called Daniel.
“Not again,” his friend said. “Don’t you have GPS?”
“On this piece of shit rental? Give me a break—and directions.”
“Where are you?”
“By the horses.”
“Coming from which way?”
“How the hell should I know?”
A sigh. “Take the street—I forget its name—where there’s a gallery on one side and a jeweler’s on the other.”
“All you have in this town is jewelry stores and galleries.”
“It’s right there, past the horses.”
“North or south?”
Another sigh. “West.”
“Which way is west?”
“Just look for the sun and go the other way. Then turn left on my street.”
“Yes, boss.”
Craig and Daniel Blackstone had been friends during their FBI years in DC. Had pub-crawled and trolled for women together,
gone to ball games, spent time gambling in Atlantic City. Then Daniel had split from the Bureau—something to do with one of
his cases that involved a political cover-up that he would never talk about—and a couple of years later Craig had gone to
San Francisco to be with Adah. They’d stayed in touch, though, and more than once he’d tapped into Daniel’s expertise.
He made the left turn and finally spotted the house—nondescript beige stucco, surrounded by pink and white oleanders and palm
trees. Craig parked at the curb, got out of the small rental car, and stretched his cramped muscles. The house’s door opened
and Daniel’s voice called, “You find the place all right?”
“Asshole,” Craig muttered.
“Say that louder.”
“Asshole!”
Daniel Blackstone was tall and lean, with chiseled features and long dark hair secured in a ponytail. He wore turquoise rings
and the buckle of the belt that cinched his jeans was one that he’d told Craig he’d bought from a down-and-out rodeo champion.
A Western shirt and string tie completed his outfit.
Daniel was from Maryland, but he’d gone native in Arizona.
“You want a beer?” he asked, heading back toward the kitchen.
“A beer? Man, it’s the middle of the morning.”
“I don’t keep local hours. As they say, the sun’s over the yardarm—someplace.”
Well, why not?
“I got chips and guacamole, too.”
Even better.
A few minutes later Craig was seated in a deep armchair in Daniel’s office—beer, chips, and guac to hand and computers and
audio equipment all around. Daniel was working at one of the monitors, ashes from his cigarette falling onto the keyboard.
After a moment he said, “It’s the same young blonde woman in every scene. Voiceprint is identical.”
“Can you tell anything about her?”
“Well educated. Has that overprivileged lilt—you know, the one that makes factual sentences into a question. Like that one
you were so hung up on in DC—what was her name?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Oh, yeah—Lauren. Lovely Lauren. You took her away from me.”
“You never had her to begin with.”
“Valid point.” Daniel paused. “All right, I’m doing a high-res zoom on the guy with the tattoo. You think it’s SF’s mayor?”
“Could be.”
“Not. This tattoo is a press-on. Come over, look at it.”
Craig got up and looked over Daniel’s right shoulder. Daniel zoomed in ever closer. “See this edge? It’s tipped up a little.
And the skin tone’s different, filtered through the latex.”
“So it was a setup.”
“Right. Now watch this.” He clicked on another scene—the woman and the Amanda Teller lookalike. “It’s a good fake, judging
from the photos of Teller you’ve given me, but there’s one little problem: check out her skin.”
Craig squinted at the magnified image. “What about it?”