I jumped in between Nina and Parker, breaking their daggerlike stares. “Guys! Come on. You can deeply offend each other later. We’ve got a case to solve. Let’s get to work.”
Both Nina and Parker let out long, resigned sighs. Nina went back to scanning her laptop, and Parker snaked another slice of pizza.
“Okay.” I flopped onto the couch, tucking my legs underneath me and snagging a pepperoni from Parker’s slice of pizza. “We’re looking for a murderer who’s kidnapped Sampson.”
Parker’s eyes flashed. “Lawson …”
I narrowed my eyes at him, my words tight. “We’re looking for a murderer who’s kidnapped Sampson. What do we know?”
“We know that none of the murders have been exactly the same. Different MOs, different crime scenes, vics don’t seem to have anything in common.”
“So, random killings?” I asked.
Parker wagged his head. “I don’t think so. There’s got to be some pattern, something about the victims that we’re missing. I mean, most killers—your garden-variety sociopaths—are opportunists.”
“And there’s not much opportunity to murder a man on the twenty-third floor of his highly populated office building. And the woman from Pacific Heights—I believe the term you used was Fort Knox?” I said.
“Right. The victims must have had something the killer wanted very badly.”
I grimaced. “Like their eyeballs.”
“Let’s take the first victim—the lawyer.”
“What’s his name?” Nina piped up, her fingers flying over the keyboard.
Parker extracted his leather notebook from his jacket pocket “Um, Alfred Sherman, esquire,” he said.
I frowned. “Alfred Sherman? Doesn’t that name sound familiar?”
Parker bit the end of his pen. “Well … Alfred Pennyworth was Batman’s butler.”
“No, that’s not it….”
Parker went back to scanning his notebook. “Alfred Sherman, attorney. Worked down in the Financial District, right across from the—”
I blinked. “Transamerica building. He worked right across from the Transamerica building, right?”
Parker referred to his book and nodded. “Uh-huh, that’s right. How did you know that?”
I went to the bookshelf and slid out my grandmother’s photo album and began to thumb through it. I stopped, snapping out a yellowing photograph of Grandmother and myself standing out front of the Transamerica building when I was nine years old. I was grinning with a crooked ponytail. The sun was glaring off the plate-glass windows of the building, and there was a man standing with us, wearing a seventies-style seersucker suit. I jabbed my index finger at the man. “Is that the attorney who was murdered?”
Parker reached into a manila envelope, rifling through crime-scene photos. He slid one out, and my stomach lurched as I caught sight of the man, in Parker’s photograph, his skin purpled and pasty, laid out on a coroner’s gurney. He was older and more weathered, but he was certainly the same man.
Parker’s eyes went wide. “Alfred Sherman,” he said slowly. “How did you know him?”
“He was my grandmother’s attorney. He took care of her will, her assets. He was the only”—I sucked in a breath—“he was the only norm who knew about what she could do.”
Parker took the photograph from me and whistled, holding the two together.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said.
“I haven’t seen him since my grandmother passed away—and that was almost ten years ago. Now I guess I never will.”
Parker stroked his chin. “He knew about your grandmother’s powers?”
I nodded.
“Did he know anything about you?”
“About my complete lack of power? I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I can’t see how it would ever come up.”
“Interesting,” Nina said from her spot on the floor. “Alfred Sherman was kind of the premier attorney for the Underworld.”
“What?” I said, standing.
“Specifically, he was a go-between for UDA and the San Francisco DA’s office.”
Parker’s eyebrows shot up. “I can’t believe the boys missed this.”
“They wouldn’t have known,” I said, chewing on my lower lip. “But I should have.”
“If he was a go-between, he would have known Sampson, right?” Parker asked.
Nina and I nodded.
Parker shrugged. “So Sampson knew the first victim.”
“A lot of people would have known Mr. Sherman. Anyone high up at UDA. Any of his clients. Any of them could have had a grudge against him.”
Parker rested his hand on my forearm, and I sat down. “Calm down, Lawson, I’m just trying to lay out the facts. We’re not accusing anyone.”
“Tell me again about each of the murders,” Nina called over her shoulder.
I must have paled because Parker put his hand on my thigh and massaged it gently. “Why don’t you go lie down? You’ve had a hell of a night. You could really use some rest.”
I wanted to protest, to help with the case, but the idea of hearing Parker detail the grisly murders again made my stomach quiver dangerously.