I wadded up a paper napkin and threw it at her. "Shut up," I said.

She batted it back. "You are so crazy," she said, still laughing.

I downed my Corona and said, "Let's order. Cindy can just catch up."

Claire agreed. Cindy had proven that she could start from behind, get down a half pitcher of beer and a steak, have dessert, and still be the first one across the finish line.

I signaled Lorraine to come over. She recited the specials, coconut shrimp and rum-sauteed chicken. We ordered the specials and more beer, and as soon as Lorraine left, Claire said, "You're not going to believe this one, Linds. It's right up there with my top ten most unbelievable cases. And it starts with a guy lying dead in the middle of the road."

"Hit and run?"

"It sure looked like a car accident," she said, "but there were no tire tracks, no bruising on the victim. A hat was lying a few yards from the body, a black baseball cap with an X X on the back of it. And that's all we had. No witnesses. No surveillance tapes. Nothing except a dead body and a random baseball cap." on the back of it. And that's all we had. No witnesses. No surveillance tapes. Nothing except a dead body and a random baseball cap."

"Heart attack? Aneurysm?"

"Let me tell you, this guy was young, twenty-something. And he looked like he'd been laid out at a wake, only he was on the center line, stopping traffic," Claire said.

"So now I'm doing the post, looking over this young dude's perfect body. I do a full-body X-ray and find a twenty-two bullet behind his right eye. That gunshot wound was not visible, Lindsay."

"I'm not believing in invisible bullets, b.u.t.terfly."

"It's like this. The round goes into the corner of the eye," Claire said, pointing to where one of her eyes met the bridge of her nose. "Eyeball moves away from the bullet, then closes up behind it so that you cannot see a sign of it."

"Huh. Interesting. So now you're saying it's a homicide."

"Yeah. Northern Station caught it, asked me to help."

"Did ballistics get a hit on the round?" I asked.

"Before we could get the bullet to the lab, we got something better. At around the same time the roadkill dude took a slug to the eye, a liquor store owner was gunned down in an armed robbery.

"The liquor store surveillance tape shows the shooter is wearing tight black jeans and a black shirt and the exact same baseball cap as the one we found in the road. Black with an X," Claire said.

"So local cops know the liquor store shooter and ID him. His street name is Crank, and he's found at home, sleeping in his bed. Cops roust him and drag him into the station on the liquor store killing. Suddenly, Crank breaks down and then he starts to sing."

"Oh, yeah? And what was the name of the tune?"

"Called it, 'I shot the dude by accident, yo. I didn't mean to do it, yo.'"

"Come on," I said, laughing, digging into my chicken.

"I know, but this is true true. Here's what happened in the missing middle of the story," Claire said. "There was a near-miss traffic accident.

"Crank is fleeing the liquor store homicide and cuts off this guy in a Honda Civic. Crank gets out to apologize to the Civic so the guy doesn't call the cops, and Civic says to Crank, 'You drive like a girl and you look like one, too.' I guess it was the worst thing he can think to say."

"Uh-oh."

"Yeah, how'd he know he was going to hit a nerve? So Crank whips his gun out of the back of his jeans and says, 'Well, this girl's packin',' and he shoots the guy."

"Oh, man."

"Yeah. Somewhere in that shooting, his hat falls off, the one that was caught on tape in the robbery. If Crank hadn't robbed that store, he would never have been caught for killing Civic."

"He didn't know his victim."

"Bingo. Total stranger calls him a girly man. Bang."

"And there you have an accidental shooting, yo."

"And he blames the victim ..."

Claire's laugh cut off as she looked up at a spot right behind my shoulder. I turned, expecting to see Cindy. But it was Lorraine, coming to clear the table.

"You girls want coffee and dessert?" she asked.

"h.e.l.l, yes," I said. "We're eating for four."

Lorraine laughed and read off the dessert menu. I picked chocolate mud pie, and Claire went for a spiced-apple tart.

I called Cindy while we were drinking our coffee and left her a snarky message. I left another one when we paid the check, and then my cell phone battery died.

I don't know why, but I wasn't worried about Cindy.

I should have been. But I never saw it coming.

Chapter 100.

I GOT HOME at eight-something that evening, left my wet shoes on the doormat, and went inside. Martha came wiggling up to me, her fur still damp, and I bent to hug her and got my face washed for me.

I called out to Joe, "Hey, sweetie, thanks for walking Martha."

I found him on the phone in the living room, teetering towers of papers stacked all around him. I heard him call the person on the phone "Bruno" and say something about containers, which meant he was talking to the director of Port of L. A. Security. This was Joe's freelance job that was supposed to last a month but had been his steady paycheck for the better part of a year.

Joe waved at me, and I waved back and headed to the shower: a six-head, low-flow, spa-type contraption that made me feel like royalty. I took some time in what I liked to call the car wash, lathered my hair with a lavender shampoo I love, and let my mind drift in the steam.

I toweled off with a man-size bath sheet and threw on my favorite pj's - blue flannel with clouds. Joe came in and hugged and kissed me and we got into it a little. Then Joe remembered and said, "Conklin called."

"When was that?"

"Just before you came in."

"Did he say what was up?"

"Nope. Just 'tell Lindsay to call' and 'can you believe the Niners, that dumb play in the last quarter?'"

I said, "I'd better call him."

Joe grabbed my a.s.s and I smacked his. I wriggled out of his arms, saying, "Later, buddy."

I called Conklin from the bedside phone.

He picked up on the first ring. "Cin?"

"It's Lindsay," I said. "What's up?"

"I can't reach her," he said. "She's not picking up, not returning my calls."

I didn't like the sound of his voice. He was scared, and that scared me.

"She didn't show up to dinner, Rich. I called her a couple of times, left messages. Maybe her phone died. Did you try her at the office?"

"Yeah. I'll try her there again."

"Call me back."

I was hunting for my softy spa socks when Conklin called again.

"I got her voice mail, Linds. This isn't like Cindy. I called QT. I'm going over there."

"What are you thinking?" I asked him.

"I'm thinking this is probably unfounded panic on my part and she's going to be blistering mad. But what can I say? I love the girl."

"I'll see you at QT's," I said.

I took off my pj's and hung them on a hook on the back of the bathroom door.

Chapter 101.

I'D BEEN TO Quentin Tazio's combination home and computer forensics lab many times, always when we were in a jam that required him to apply his skills in a strictly outside-the-box kind of a way.

His place is on Capp Street in the Mission, a former machine shop - squat, gray, two-story, and cement-faced with roll-up garage doors on the street level.

At nine-thirty at night, the streets were rockin' with people going in and out of taquerias, galleries, restaurants, and bars. Traffic was clogged and impatient. A drunk peed against one of the young trees dotting the sidewalk.

As I parked my car parallel to Conklin's, I told myself that Cindy was fine, that she'd just gotten involved in a story and lost track of the time. That said, Cindy pushed herself into ugly situations and always worked against her fear, a trait we shared. But there was a difference between us.

I was a trained cop with a gun and a badge and a department behind me. Cindy had a press pa.s.s and a BlackBerry.

I put an SFPD card on the dash, then went to the doorway and pressed the b.u.t.ton next to Tazio's name.

QT's digitized voice came through the speaker, and a second later I was buzzed in.

I hooked a left at the end of a narrow hallway and stepped into a vast, cold s.p.a.ce lit by the glow of plasma screens. Monitors hung edge-to-edge on the walls, a built-in desktop went around three sides of the s.p.a.ce, and there was a staircase in the middle of the concrete floor that went up to QT's living quarters.

Conklin called out to me and I crossed to the far side of the room, where he was standing behind QT.

"We're getting somewhere," Conklin said.

QT grinned up at me with his large, bright choppers. His bald head gleamed. His long white fingers spanned the curving keyboard. He was good-looking in a naked-mole-rat kind of way.

"Cindy has a GPS in her phone," QT told me, "but it's not sending a signal. It's either turned off or underwater. I had to dump her phone logs to find her last ping."

Dump her phone logs without a warrant, I thought. Whatever it took to find Cindy, to know that she was okay.

Peering over QT's shoulder, I took in his computer screen, a map of San Francisco dotted with flags standing for cellular tower locations.

The best geek in the state of California clicked on an icon that stood for a tower in the Tenderloin. A circle appeared on the screen. He clicked on another tower, and then a third, and overlapping circles came up as he triangulated Cindy's last cell phone signal. I saw one small irregular patch that was common to all three towers.

QT said, "I can get accuracy up to two hundred and fifty meters. The location of that last ping isn't far from here. This is Turk," QT said, pointing with the cursor.

"Turk and what?" Conklin asked, completely focused on the screen. "Turk and Jones?"

"Yeppers. You nailed it, Rich."

"That's where that cab company is."

"What cab company?" I asked. "What's this about?"

"Quick Express Taxi," Quentin said, zooming in on the intersection, rolling his cursor over it.

"Her phone isn't underwater," Conklin said. "It's underground."

I didn't understand any of this, but I read the urgency in my partner's face.

"Let's go," he said to me.

Chapter 102.

I'D GOTTEN INTO the pa.s.senger seat of Conklin's unmarked car and barely closed the door when he jammed on the gas. The car leapt forward, slid sideways, then sent up a wake as we sped over the slick pavement.