Chapter 56.

I THOUGHT PAUL Chi might still be steamed at me for questioning the slam-dunk first-degree murder charge against Candace Martin. If he wasn't fuming now, he would be after I told him I was still turning over stones on his case, that I still wasn't prepared to let it go.

It was about 5 p.m. when I brought him a latte and sat down across from him at his very tidy desk in the squad room.

Chi looked at me, his expression absolutely blank, and said, "You still trying to pry open my closed case?"

I nodded. "You just have to let me get this out of my system," I said. "If you were me, you'd do the same."

"You're the boss."

"You remember Bernard St. John?" I asked him.

"The piano teacher. How could I forget that guy?"

"I just spoke with him."

"I'm not p.i.s.sed off, Lindsay. I just want to understand you better. Fifty homicides a year come through here. We solve only half of them. And that's in a good year. So, here we got one that we actually close. Why has this this case gotten to you?" case gotten to you?"

"I can't explain it."

"Can't explain an insult to me, McNeill, Brady, the SFPD as a whole, and the DA's entire office? You think this is going to score us any points with the DA?"

"I've got to do this, Paul. If Candace Martin is guilty, my poking around isn't going to change that."

"But you don't think she is guilty, do you?"

"I don't know."

Chi grinned. A rare occurrence. Like a blue moon in June.

"What's funny?" I asked him.

"I like this about you, Lindsay. You never give up. But you know, Brady doesn't have a sense of humor."

"I'll deal with him when I have to."

Chi shrugged and said, "So what did Bernard St. John tell you?"

"That Dennis Martin was sleeping with Ellen Lafferty. Lafferty confided in him."

"Whoa-ho. Well, there's your motive, Sergeant. You're making the case against Dr. Martin even stronger. Candace found out her husband was sleeping with the nanny, so she shot him. Motive as old as the history of mankind."

"Or - what if it was the other way around?"

"You think Lafferty Lafferty was the shooter?" was the shooter?"

"It's not so crazy, Paul. I want to talk to you about that contract killer. Gregor Guzman."

Chi just shook his head and sighed.

"Doggedness suits you, Lindsay. Okay, what do you want to know about Gregor Guzman?"

"Tell me everything you've got."

Chapter 57.

AS CHI TAPPED on the computer keyboard, he told me, "Eleven hits are attributed to Guzman - that's eleven unsolved that match his MO."

I scooted the chair so close to Chi's desk, I could see my reflection in the monitor.

"It's a very elegant MO," Chi was saying. "First, he's stealthy. He's never seen and he leaves no evidence. Two, he always uses a twenty-two and his kill shots are head shots. His first shot does the job. His second shot is almost on top of the first. I'd say that second shot is just for insurance. He's a h.e.l.l of a marksman."

"Dennis Martin took two shots to the chest."

"That's correct."

Chi hit some keys on his computer and brought up a series of photos of the elusive hit man. The first was a grainy black-and-white still shot that had been lifted from a video of a man leaving Circus Circus, the famous casino in Vegas.

The next photo was of a balding man in a car, taken by a tollbooth surveillance cam outside of Bogota.

The third picture was of possibly the same man in a dark suit, standing beside an advertising kiosk, watching the crowd enter a public building. The picture was t.i.tled, "Lincoln Center, New York."

The last picture was the money shot.

It was taken at night with a long lens pointed at the pa.s.senger-side window of a dark SUV, time-dated September 1 of last year. Candace Martin was in profile in the pa.s.senger's seat. The way her hair fell obscured part of her face.

Next to her in the driver's seat was a balding man who had turned to face her. His features were difficult to make out because of the shadow inside the car's interior.

It was hard to say if the man pictured was Gregor Guzman or even if the woman in the pa.s.senger seat was Candace Martin.

"How sure are you that this man is Guzman?" I asked Chi.

"All pictures of Guzman are educated guesswork. We have no official photos to compare them to, but the face-recognition software found an eighty-three percent correlation between the four photos I just showed you."

"Paul, if your case hung on this picture in the SUV, Candace Martin would walk."

"The DA wanted to use it. It shows premeditation. I gotta admit something to you, Lindsay."

"I'm right here, Paul. And I'm listening."

"Apart from this piece-a-c.r.a.p picture with Candace Martin, no one in law enforcement has reported seeing Gregor Guzman in the past three years. Who knows if he's even alive?"

Chapter 58.

CINDY STOOD AT the windy corner of Turk and Jones just before six that evening. The Tenderloin was a rough neighborhood, arguably the worst in San Francisco.

As a light rain came down, the homeless pulled up their hoodies, hunched over their shopping carts, crouched under the eaves of the rent-by-the-hour Ethel Hotel and Aunt Vicky's, the down-and-dirty gay bar next to it.

Cindy b.u.t.toned her coat and pulled up her collar, staring at the cab company across the street that took up the northeast corner of the intersection. There were two plate-gla.s.s windows at the street level, each with a flickering neon sign, one reading QUICK EXPRESS TAXI QUICK EXPRESS TAXI, the other, CORPORATE ACCOUNTS WELCOME CORPORATE ACCOUNTS WELCOME. There was nothing welcoming about that storefront.

Rich had told her to meet him in a coffee shop a couple of doors down, but Cindy couldn't wait. She called Rich, and when she got his voice mail, she left him a message and then crossed Turk against the light.

As she approached Quick Express, Cindy noticed the cab company's vehicle entrance on Turk: a cave of an opening that sheltered a ramp down to the lower parking levels. Yellow cabs were lined up at the curb. Men stood in the drizzle, smoking on the sidewalk, taking swigs from paper bags.

Cindy walked up to the window and saw the dispatch office on the other side of the gla.s.s, much like a ticket office in a movie theater but bigger. She knocked on the gla.s.s.

The man in the office was regular height, in his forties, with dark hair and a pale moon face. He was wearing a rumpled plaid shirt and khakis. He looked agitated as he worked the phone lines while delivering blunt instructions into a radio mic.

Cindy had to speak loudly over the sound of incoming radio calls.

"I'm Cindy Thomas," she said into the grill. "Are you the owner here?"

"No, I'm the manager and dispatcher, Al Wysocki. What can I do for you?"

"I'm a reporter at the Chronicle Chronicle," she said. She dug her press pa.s.s out of her handbag and held it against the window.

"What's this about?"

"One of your drivers might have saved someone who was having a heart attack. The person who called the paper only remembers that the driver was in a taxi minivan," Cindy lied.

"You got a name?"

"No."

"And what's the driver look like?"

"All this person remembers is that the minivan had a movie ad on it."

"Gee. A movie ad," Wysocki said. "Okay, look. We have six vans in the fleet. Three are in. Three are out. But you understand, none of the drivers has a call on any of these cabs. They drive what's here when their shifts start."

"May I take a look anyway? It shouldn't take long."

"Knock yourself out."

Wysocki told Cindy that the garage had three levels - the main floor, which she was on, and two subterranean levels. Two of the vans were on the first floor down, and the third was on the second floor down.

Cindy thanked the man and began her tour of the parked taxis in the dark, grimy, stinking-from-gas-fumes underground garage. Twenty minutes later, she'd located all three vans, none of which had a movie ad on its side.

She took the stairs back to the main floor and left her card with the dispatcher, taking his card in return.

"Okay if I call you again?"

"Feel free," said Wysocki, who grabbed his microphone and barked a street address to a cabbie.

Cindy left the garage through the front door on Turk and found Richie waiting for her on the street corner.

"You were suppposed to wait for me in the coffee shop," he said.

"I'm sorry, Rich. I was a bit early so I thought I'd follow up on something. Honey, this is just legwork. And this is just a cab company."

"A cab company, and you suspect a cabbie of being the last person to see a woman who was drugged and raped."

"Well, none of the cabs here is the one."

"I don't like the chances you take to get a story, Cindy," Rich said, opening the pa.s.senger-side door for her. "This is mugger's alley. I'm dropping you home. Then I've got to meet Lindsay."

Cindy looked up at her fiance, stretched up onto her toes, and kissed him. She said, "You're very d.a.m.ned overprotective, Richie. And this is the weird part: I kind of like it."

Chapter 59.

CONKLIN AND I met with the Richardsons once again in their pricey suite at the Mark Hopkins, with its billion-dollar nightscape of n.o.b Hill and Union Square. The view embraced the Transamerica Pyramid and skysc.r.a.pers of the Financial District, San Francis...o...b..y, and the western span of the Bay Bridge, reaching to Treasure Island.

I've lived in San Francisco my whole life, and I've rarely seen the city from a vantage point like this.

I stared out at the lights while Conklin told the Richardsons that we needed an uninterrupted hour with Avis. He said it would be easier on Avis if we talked to her here rather than down at the Hall. And he said that being with her alone might produce more truth-telling than talking with her while her parents were present.

Sonja Richardson said, "I don't think she has anything left to tell," but both parents agreed to let us talk to Avis alone.

Now the parents were having "light dining" upstairs at Top of the Mark, and Avis was in the kitchenette, looking at me over her shoulder with fierce antipathy.

"How many times do I have to tell you," she groused. She opened the refrigerator and took out a bowl of dip, then rummaged in the cupboard and put her hand on a bag of chips. "I told you everything I know."

"Come over here and sit down, Avis," Conklin said.

She looked surprised at the tone Conklin had taken with her, which was actually mild compared with the images I was having of grabbing her by the scruff of her neck and throwing her against a wall.