Chapter Twelve
On my second day in San Francisco, I worked out of a small cubicle near Jamilla Hughes' desk at the Hall of Justice. I attended a couple of her briefings on the Golden Gate Park murders, which were thorough and highly professional. She was impressive.
Everything about the murder case was weird and wrongheaded, though. No one had a fix on it yet; no one had a good idea, at least none that I'd heard so far. The only thing we knew for sure was that people were being murdered in particularly horrible ways. It happens more and more frequently these days.
Around noon, I got a call on my cell phone. 'Just checking in,' the Mastermind said. 'How is San Francisco, Alex? Lovely city. Will you leave your heart there? Do you think it's a good place to die?
'Or how about Inspector Hughes? Do you like her? She's very pretty, isn't she? Just your type. Are you going to f*ck Jamilla? Better hurry then. Tempus fugit.' He hung up.
I went back to work. Lost myself for a couple of hours. Began to make some minor progress.
Around four o'clock, I was staring out at the start of rush hour San Francisco-style - pretty mild, actually - while I talked to Kyle Craig. He was still at Quantico, but he was definitely heavily involved in the case.
Kyle was in a position to choose the cases he became personally connected with, and he told me this was going to be one of them. We'd be working together again. I looked forward to it.
I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and saw Jamilla approaching. She had her leather jacket half-on and was struggling into the second sleeve. Going somewhere?'Hold on, Kyle,'I said into the receiver. 'We have to go,' she said, 'to San Luis Obispo. The're going to exhume a body. I think it's related.'
I told Kyle that I had to leave right away. He wished me happy hunting. Jamilla and I took the elevator down to the parking garage beneath the Hall of Justice. The more I saw of her work, the more I was impressed; not just by her savvy, but by her enthusiasm for the job. A lot of detectives lose that after a couple of years. She obviously hadn't. Are you going to f*ck Jamilla? Better hurry then.
'Are you always this pumped up?' I asked her once we were inside her blue Saab and heading out toward Highway 101.
'Yeah. Pretty much,' she said. 'I like the work. It's tough, but interesting, honest most of the time. I could do without the violence.'
'This case in particular. The hangings give me the creeps.'
She looked over at me. 'Speaking of life-threatening situations, you'd better buckle up. We've got a hike ahead of us, and I used to drive funny cars as a hobby. Don't be fooled by the Saab.'
She wasn't kidding. According to the road signs, it was about 235 miles to San Luis Obispo. Heavy rain peppered the car most of the way. She still got us there by eight-thirty.
'In one piece, too.' She nodded and winked as we whisked off the highway at the San Luis Obispo exit.
It looked like an idyllic spot, but we were there to exhume the corpse of a young girl. She had been hung and her blood had been drained.