The Trial Read Free

bar. There was screaming like crazy. I stayed down until our manager found me and said, ‘Come on. Get outta here.’”
    I asked, “You didn’t see who did the shooting?”
    Kelly said, “No. Okay for me to go now? I’ve told this to about three of you. My wife is going nuts waiting for me at home.”
    We took Kelly’s contact information, and when Covington signaled us that the Vault was clear, Conklin and I gloved up, stepped around the dead men, their spilled blood, guns, and spent shells in the doorway, and went inside.

Chapter 6
    I knew the Vault’s layout: the ground floor of the former bank had been converted into a high-end haberdashery. Access to the nightclub upstairs was by the elevators at the rear of the store.
    Conklin and I took in the scene. Bloody shoe prints tracked across the marble floors. Toppled clothing racks and mannequins lay across the aisles, but nothing moved.
    We crossed the floor with care and took an elevator to the second-floor club, the scene of the shooting and a forensics investigation disaster.
    Tables and chairs had been overturned in the customers’ rush toward the fire exit. There were no surveillance cameras, and the floor was tacky with spilled booze and blood.
    We picked our way around abandoned personal property and over to the long, polished bar, where two women in expensive clothing lay dead. One, blond, had collapsed across the bar top, and the other, dark-haired, had fallen dead at her feet.
    The lighting was soft and unfocused, but still, I could see that the blond woman had been shot between the eyes and had taken slugs in her chest and arms. The woman on the floor had a bullet hole through the draped white silk across her chest, and there was another in her neck.
    “Both shot at close range,” Richie said.
    He plucked a beaded bag off the floor and opened it, and I did the same with the second bag, a metallic leather clutch.
    According to their driver’s licenses, the brunette was Lucille Alison Stone and the blonde was Cameron Whittaker. I took pictures, and then Conklin and I carefully cat-walked out of the bar the way we had come.
    As we were leaving, we passed Charlie Clapper, our CSI director, coming in with his crew.
    Clapper was a former homicide cop and always looked like he’d stepped out of a Grecian Formula commercial. Neat. Composed. With comb marks in his hair. Always thorough, never a grandstander, he was one of the SFPD’s MVPs.
    “What’s your take?” he asked us.
    “It was overkill,” I said. “Two women were shot to death at point-blank range and then shot some more. Three men were reportedly seen talking to them before the shooting. Two of them are in your capable hands until Claire takes them. We have one alive, being booked now.”
    “The news is out. You think he’s Kingfisher.”
    “Could be. I hope so. I really hope this is our lucky day.”

Chapter 7
    Before the medical examiner had retrieved the women’s bodies, while CSI was beginning the staggering work involved in processing a bar full of fingerprints and spent brass and the guns, Conklin and I went back to the Hall of Justice and met with our lieutenant, Jackson Brady.
    Brady was platinum blond, hard bodied, and chill, a former narcotics detective from Miami. He had proven his smarts and his astonishing bravery with the SFPD over the last couple of years and had been promoted quickly to run our homicide squad.
    His corner office had once been mine, but being head of paperwork and manpower deployment didn’t suit my temperament. I liked working crime on the street. I hadn’t wanted to like Brady when he took the lieutenant job, but I couldn’t help myself. He was tough but fair, and now he was married to my dear friend Yuki Castellano. Today I was very glad that Brady had a history in narcotics, homicide, and organized crime.
    Conklin and I sat with him in his glass-walled office and told him what we knew. It would be days before autopsies were done and guns and bullets