Tell No Lies Read online

  She lowered the envelope for him to read.

  jack holley

  And an address in the Tenderloin. The city, misspelled, with no state or zip code.

  The stamp, unmarred by a postal mark. Not surprisingly, there was no return address.

  “So Jack Holley, whoever he is, never got this ultimatum,” Daniel said.

  He looked up from the couch, and she looked down at him. Her hand, clammy against his neck.

  At the same time, they directed their stares to the silver laptop on the kitchen counter.

  Side by side, they walked over. Cris flipped the laptop open and keyed JACK HOLLEY TENDERLOIN into Google. Took a deep breath. Her finger hovered above the return key. A faint sheen of perspiration glistened on her cheek.

  Reaching across, he clasped his hand over hers and lowered her finger to the key.

  The little wheel spun atop the page as it loaded, and then the top search result slapped them in their faces.

  LONGTIME TENDERLOIN RESIDENT

  VICTIM OF BRUTAL KNIFE MURDER

  November 16—Everyone in the Tenderloin seemed to know Jack Holley. Always a bright smile and a wave on his way to the second-floor walk-up where he’d lived for nearly thirty years. Which is why his vicious murder last night has left this community in shock.…

  Heat rolled across Daniel’s skin. He felt his face flush, his breath snag in his throat. “Not a joke,” he said.

  Cristina glanced down at the envelope still in her hand, then released it quickly onto the counter, as if it had burned her. Her throat lurched a bit when she swallowed. “Okay,” she said. “Now what?”

  Chapter 7

  When Daniel opened the door, the woman behind it was not at all what he expected. Attractive bordering on stunning—pronounced cheekbones, smooth ebony skin, slender body fitted into a plain white oxford and pressed slacks—and younger than seemed plausible. She couldn’t have been thirty. A small hip-holstered pistol bulged her jacket on the right side.

  “Thanks for coming so quickly, Detective.”

  “It’s ‘Inspector.’ San Francisco likes to be special. Which means we get to be inspectors instead of mere detectives.” She flashed a quick smile, showing honest-to-God dimples, and it was no longer a question of bordering on stunning.

  Daniel stepped aside. “My wife, Cristina.”

  The inspector offered her hand. “Nice to meet you. Theresa Dooley, Homicide Detail. Your husband and I spoke on the phone.”

  “Glad you’re here,” Cris said. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Nah, I’m good.” Dooley moved inside with a single swift step, glancing up the two-story height of the foyer. “Now you’re Brasher, right? As in the Brasher—”

  “Yep,” Daniel said. “The letter’s on the kitchen counter. Right up this way.”

  As Dooley followed them up, Cris said, “We didn’t handle it anymore after … you know, we saw what it was. We figured fingerprints.”

  “Smart,” Dooley said.

  “I’m a Mission High grad. That’s what we learned instead of baking pies in home ec.”

  “Mission High?” Dooley paused on the stairs. “No shit. I went to Balboa.”

  Cris’s face lightened. “The Buccaneers.”

  “First time I’ve heard a Bear call us anything but the Fuckaneers.”

  “You’re armed, so I thought I’d restrain myself.”

  “Less armed than I was back then.” Dooley’s grin seemed more for their surprising rapport than at the crack. “Did you know the Hernandez brothers?” she asked. “Linebackers?”

  “I’m out of your age range, lady,” Cris said. “I knew the older Hernandez brothers. Carjackers.”

  Dooley laughed. “Jesus, those games. Ex-con parents rolling in on Harleys, bumping Tupac. You guys had those rump-shaking cheerleaders.”

  “Yeah, we did,” Cris said. “It was good to get out.”

  “Yup. I don’t see many grads in houses like this,” Dooley said. “Actually, I don’t see many grads I’m not handcuffing.”

  They hit the landing, and Cris and Daniel slowed, the good mood instantly dissipating. On the kitchen island next to the pan of cooling chicken and Cris’s now-drained wineglass, the envelope and sheet of paper were spotlit like objets d’art.

  The inspector’s face shifted. All business.

  Dooley read the letter, then removed a pair of tweezers from her jacket pocket and used them to flip the sheet. “Weird handwriting, huh?”

  “The pencil really scraped into the paper,” Daniel said. “Like the words were carved. A lot of anger behind them. And the spatial organization on the page is off, too. See how it slants there? Plus, some of the letters are too close, others far apart. Might indicate dyslexia.”

  Dooley chewed her cheek, leaning over the paper. “A counselor, you said, right? Any other insights?”

  “Well, it’s probably from someone in Metro South. I mean, who would walk a letter to a rear mail room in a random building?”

  “Someone trying not to get caught.”

  “But the person obviously wasn’t planning to screw up and stick the letter in the wrong mailbox. He had to figure it would just get picked up with the rest of the outgoing mail and go straight out. Wouldn’t be marked until the post office. So there wouldn’t have been any trail back to the building to worry about.”

  “Point taken.” Dooley fluffed out a large evidence bag. “So who’s in your building on a given day?”

  “Aside from social-services workers?” Daniel said. “Felons, parolees, juvenile delinquents.”

  Dooley grimaced.

  “We’ve got Probation and Parole on floors two and three, Anger Management on the fourth, Domestic Violence on the fifth, and—” He caught himself. “Basically, there’s no one in the building who wouldn’t be a suspect.”

  “Splendid.” Using the tweezers, Dooley guided the letter into the Ziploc. “I’ll put on my Miss Marple costume and we’ll lock everyone in the conservatory until we straighten it out.”

  Daniel barely registered the joke, his thoughts moving to the people he passed in those corridors every day, rode next to in the elevators, made small talk with at the vending machines. One of them had issued a threat and carried it out with the edge of a blade. For a nausea-inducing moment, Daniel found himself considering the merry band of parolees who composed his own group. A-Dre’s scowl leapt up from memory, the heat behind his words: I am who I am because they made me this way.

  Dooley had said something.

  “What?” Daniel asked.

  She tapped the envelope with her tweezers. “I said, what do you make of the envelope? You said it was the kind used by the department?”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it was an employee,” Daniel said. “We have supplies stolen all the time. Anything that’s not locked down.”

  “Sounds like you’re running some effective rehabilitation over there.”

  “The news said it was brutal,” Cris cut in abruptly. Her arms were crossed as if against a sudden cold, and Daniel realized she’d been missing from the conversation for a while. “The murder,” she said. “Was it brutal?”

  Dooley paused with the tweezers but did not look up. “Yes,” she said.

  Cris refilled her wineglass, her hand shaking. Dooley’s eyes lifted, taking note of the uneven pour.

  Rather than drink, Cris pushed the rim of the glass against both lips, steadying herself. “You’ve been investigating Jack Holley’s murder. Already, I mean?”

  “I caught the case, yeah,” Dooley said. “That’s why you got me.”

  “Any leads?” Cris pressed. “I mean, are you close to catching whoever did this?”

  “I can’t really discuss that,” Dooley said. “But no.”

  Daniel watched the inspector navigate the envelope into the second plastic bag. Then glanced over at Cristina, her face as close to blanched as her skin could manage. He said, “I’m sorry I didn’t…” He trailed off.

 
“Look,” Dooley said, “it’s a break. Would’ve been better a week ago, but…” She glanced up, caught his crestfallen expression, put it together. “Come on. You’re supposed to know to check your box every day in case an inept murderer accidentally sticks a threat with a deadline in there?”

  Daniel’s mouth was bitter, the taste of regret. “So a man died because the mail wasn’t sorted properly.”

  “I consider myself an expert in guilt,” Dooley said, “so let me clear this up right now. You couldn’t have done anything. This is one of those little cosmic jokes the world plays on us now and again. A tiny tear in the fabric just to show how things really are. Which is? Out of our control. Thousands of people die every day because they caught the wrong green light or chose the wrong surgeon. You didn’t do this. A knife-wielding motherfucker did this. And you’ve got no more guilt in the matter than Jack Holley’s daughter for not inviting him to dinner that night or his neighbor for not knocking on his door at eleven fifty-nine to borrow a cup of sugar.”

  She sealed the second Ziploc and shook them both for emphasis. “Now CSI’s gonna take a look at these. In the meantime I’ll see what I can do about handwriting samples from the reprobates who cycle through your workplace. As you know, mental-health files are confidential, so we’ll have to get creative. And we’ll regulate the outgoing mail down there in case our suspect’s chicken scratch shows up on a letter to his Aunt Shandrika. My job is to answer the key question.”

  “Which is?” Daniel asked.

  “What did Jack Holley do?” Dooley pointed at them. “Your job is to take care of each other and not think about this too much. Think you can manage that?”

  “One out of two, probably,” Daniel said.

  * * *

  They showed her out and got ready for bed, but twenty minutes later Daniel was still lying there, staring at the ceiling, the sheets clinging to him like vines, the dark room choked with toxic images. The mail room with its flickering light and creaky cubbyholes. That cramped handwriting sliding into view as he’d tugged the sheet free. Poor Jack Holley.

  Sweating, exasperated, Daniel threw back the sheets and sat up, rubbing his face. The walls held the faintest fragrance of a pumpkin candle they’d burned the night before, the comforting scent now cloying. He felt Cristina’s sleep-hot hand on his back.

  “You okay, mi vida?”

  “You’re awake?”

  “Not really.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  He guided her back to the pillow, kissed her temple. After draining the cup of water on his nightstand, he padded down the stairs, clicking on the under-cabinet lights in the kitchen. The heated tiles were warm underfoot, and the Sub-Zero gave off a comforting hum. The knives, magnetized to a metal strip and lined by descending size, were all accounted for. Across the room, the alarm pad glowed a reassuring green.

  Safe. It was safe here.

  He filled his cup from the filtered tap and started back for the stairs, passing the couch and the glass coffee table with the mound of dumped mail. His hand had just flipped the light switch when he froze. Dread mounted, constricting his throat. Something replayed in his mind, an afterimpression ghost-floating on his retinas. Real or imagined?

  Nailed to the floor. Fingertips still touching the switch. Stomach gone to ice. He felt an overwhelming urge just to head upstairs to the warmth of his bed.

  But.

  He pressed the switch, bringing the lights back on. Slowly, he turned his head to take in that mess of dumped-out mail on the coffee table, limned again in the dim glow.

  Peeking from the mound, partially buried, was a second department-gray clasp envelope. And, protruding from the far edge, a third.

  On both he could make out a familiar uneven scrawl.

  Chapter 8

  Swimming in Daniel’s San Francisco Giants shirt, her hair taken up loosely in a butterfly hair clamp, Cristina paced furrows in the floor while Daniel sat on the couch over the two neatly positioned, still-sealed envelopes. The rest of the mail he’d swept off onto the Turkish rug. Ridiculously, he was wearing yellow dishwashing gloves, which he’d used to sift through the mound so as to give Homicide Detail’s elaborately named “police secretarial assistant” at the other end of the phone a precise number of how many department-gray clasp envelopes he had in his possession.

  Two.

  Three, actually, but the third with its neatly typed label was in fact intended for him—the termination agreement Kendra had discussed with him in the hall.

  The PSA told Daniel to sit tight and signed off, first assuring him that Inspector Dooley would get back to them.

  Which left him and Cristina alone at 11:51 at night with two death threats staring at them from the coffee table like cocked guns.

  lyle kane

  316 bay st

  san fransico

  And beside it:

  marisol vargas

  1737 chestnut st #2

  san fransico

  They’d Googled both names already, finding nothing on Lyle Kane and scattered mentions of various Marisol Vargases, none of which mentioned any crime.

  Cris chewed at a cuticle. “I wonder what they’re doing right now. Lyle and Marisol.”

  Daniel was having trouble removing his eyes from the scrawled words. Two names, two lives.

  “Sleeping,” he said.

  “And they don’t know. They have no idea…”

  He laced his fingers, the stupid yellow gloves squeaking together. For some reason he hadn’t taken them off. He’d thrown on jeans and a sweatshirt as well, wanting to face the matter dressed. “We don’t know that these letters are death threats, too.”

  “They don’t look like Christmas cards.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  Those gouged pencil marks. The envelopes, thin and nearly weightless. Each one, like the first, seemed to hold a single sheet. What the hell did they say?

  Cris checked the phone in her hand, as if a call had somehow been missed in the last thirty seconds. “Where the hell could Dooley be?”

  A fresh consideration soared in and skewered him. The words stuck in his throat, so he swallowed and tried again. “What if they’re dead already? What if their deadlines already passed, like Jack Holley’s?” He didn’t say the rest: Then a mix-up over the goddamned mail would have cost two more lives.

  At this, Cristina finally halted. Despite the cool nighttime air, her cheeks were flushed. Through the south-facing window, the city lights gleamed and wavered like something living.

  She said, “Should we … open them?”

  The question had been working at him like an ulcer since he’d laid eyes on those envelopes. He forced a measured answer. “Wouldn’t that screw them up as evidence?”

  “Not if you use gloves.”

  “How do you know?”

  “CSI: Miami.” Cris crouched and set the ledge of her folded arms on the far side of the coffee table. Stared across those envelopes at him. Tapped the antenna of the cordless phone against her lips. “Between your mailbox and here, you’ve already touched them plenty. The cop told you to use the gloves to count them. It’s not like opening them’s gonna compromise them all of a sudden.”

  Daniel reasoned along with her. “Whenever the hell Dooley gets her hands on them, she’s just gonna do it anyway.”

  His mouth had gone sour. The mounted clock behind him tick-tick-ticked. Cris ran a hand through her bangs and squeezed, hair spiking up between her fingers.

  He nodded at her.

  She nodded at him.

  The first flap, insufficiently moistened, popped up easily.

  admit what youv done. or you will bleed for it.

  The paper trembled in his grip as he turned it over.

  you hav til november 20 at midnite

  A breath shuddered out of him. “That’s Wednesday. Day after tomorrow—”

  Cris was gripping the cordless tightly enough that her fingers had gone pale. “So Lyle Kane’s still alive.”

/>   “And Dooley can get to him.” He grabbed the next envelope and slid a yellow rubber forefinger under the flap, desperate to see if Marisol Vargas was already dead or if she still had a shot.

  The sheet slid out. Same refrain on the front. And the back—

  you hav til november 18 at midnite

  His heart seized.

  Tonight.

  “What?” Cris said. “What, honey? You’re freaking me out.”

  He turned and looked over his shoulder at the wall clock: 11:54.

  His voice, little more than a dry rasp. “Tonight.”

  “Where…?” Cris bounded around the table to read the envelope without having to touch it. “Where’s she—”

  1737 chestnut st #2

  “Jesus, that’s across from Moscone Park.”

  Four blocks away.

  Six minutes.

  Four blocks.

  The phone shrilled, and Cris yelped and jumped back, dropping it. The battery lid popped off, but the phone kept ringing as it spun over to tap Daniel’s shoes. He snatched it up.

  “Dooley?”

  “I just got back. My guy filled me in. I was in the garage with no—”

  “Midnight tonight he’s killing the next person.” A rush of words, his voice unrecognizable.

  “You opened them? Wait. Midnight. That’s—” Her breath blew sharply across the receiver. “What’s the address?”

  He rattled it off, and she shouted it to someone else.

  Daniel was standing. “How long to get someone there?”

  “We’re too far away—we work out of Hall of Justice, twenty minutes to get there. Nearest station is Northern. I’ll have ’em pull a patrol unit off Western Addition. If they roll now, they could get there in fifteen, maybe ten if they code-three it.”

  “I can get there in five.”

  “Brasher?” Dooley’s voice now cool and hard. “Stay put.”

  He was moving, taking giant strides across the room.

  Cris was behind him, twisting her hands in the hem of the Giants shirt, shifting from bare foot to bare foot, her voice thin with fear: “You sure about this?”

  He whipped past the island, tossed the phone on the counter, turned for the stairs. “No.”