3rd Degree

As we neared the port, flashing green and red lights were all over the place. It seemed as if every cop in Oakland was on the scene. “C’mon, we’re getting out here.”

The three of us jumped out and ran toward an old brick warehouse marked 333. Trestles rose into the night. Huge container loads were stacked everywhere. The port of Oakland actually handled the majority of the freight traffic in the Bay Area.

I heard my name being called. Claire, jumping out of her Path?nder, ran up to us. “What do we have?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said.

Finally I saw an Oakland precinct captain I’d worked with coming out of the building. “Gene!” I ran up to him. With what was going on, I didn’t have to ask.

“The victim’s dumped on the second floor. Single shot to the back of the head.”

Part of me winced, part of me relaxed. At least it was only one.

We headed up steep metal stairs, Claire and Cindy following behind. An Oakland cop tried to stop us. I pushed my badge at him and moved past. A body was on the floor, partially wrapped in a bloody tarp. “Goddammit,” I said. “Those bastards.” Two cops and an EMS team were leaning over the victim.

There was a note fastened by a metal twist to the tarp. A bill of lading.

“ ‘You were warned,’ ” I read it out loud. “‘The criminal state is not exempt from its own crimes. Members of the G-8, come to your senses. Renounce the colonizing policies. You have three more days. We can strike anywhere, anytime. August Spies.’ ”

At the bottom of the page I saw the words in bold print, RETURN THIS TO THE HALL OF JUSTICE.

My body stopped dead. A wave of panic tore at me. For a second I couldn’t move. I looked at Claire. Her face crumpled with shock.

I pushed an EMT out of the way. I went down on my knees. The first thing I came upon was the victim’s wrist—the aquamarine David Yurman bracelet I knew so well.

“Oh no,” I gasped. “No, no, no …”

I peeled back the tarp.

It was Jill.

Part Four

Chapter 68

Thinking back, I remember only flashes of what happened next. I know I stood there, unable to comprehend what I was seeing: Jill’s beautiful face, lifeless now. Her eyes staring forward, clear, almost serene. “Oh no, no …,” I repeated over and over.

I know my legs gave out, and someone held me. Claire’s voice, cracking: “Oh my God, Lindsay …”

I couldn’t take my eyes off Jill’s face. A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of her mouth. I reached out and touched her hand. She still had her wedding ring on.

I heard Cindy start to cry, and saw Claire holding her. I kept repeating over and over, This can’t be Jill. What does she have to do with August Spies?

Then things fell into a daze. I kept reminding myself, It’s a crime scene, Lindsay, a homicide scene. I wanted to be strong for Claire and Cindy, for all the cops around. I asked, “Did anyone see how she got here?” I looked around. “I want the area canvassed. Someone could’ve seen a vehicle.”

Molinari tried to pull me away, but I shook him off. I had to look around, find something. There was always something, some mistake they had made. You assholes, August Spies… You scum.

Suddenly Jacobi was there. And Cappy. Even Tracchio. My homicide team. “Let us handle it,” Cappy said. Finally, I just let them take charge.

I was begi

I watched them take her away. My friend. Jill …I watched Claire help place her into the morgue van and send it off, sirens blaring. Joe Molinari comforted me as best he could, but then he had to return to the Hall.

Then as the crime scene quieted down, Claire, Cindy, and I sat on the steps of an adjoining building in the light rain. Not a word passed between us. My brain echoed with questions I couldn’t answer: Why? How does this fit? It’s a different case! How can Jill be co

How long we sat on those steps I don’t know. The haze of urgent voices, flashing lights. Cindy weeping, Claire holding her. Me too stu

A thought kept creeping into my head. If only I had gone to Jill’s that night. None of this might have been…

Suddenly a ringing broke the silence. Cindy’s cell. She answered, her voice tremulous. “Yes?” Cindy drew a breath. “I’m at the scene.”

It was her Metro desk.

In a halting voice, she gave details of what had taken place. “Yes, it looks like it is part of the terror campaign. The third victim …” She described the location, the e-mail she had received at the paper, the time.

Then Cindy stopped. I could see tears glazing her eyes. She bit her lip, as if she was afraid to let the words out. “Yes, the victim’s been identified. Her name is Bernhardt … Jill.” She spelled it letter by letter.

She tried to say something else, but the words caught in her throat. Claire reached for her. Cindy sucked in a breath, wiped her eyes. “Yes,” she said, nodding. “Ms. Bernhardt was Chief Assistant District Attorney of the City of San Francisco.…”

Then, in a whisper, “She was also my friend.”

Chapter 69

I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. I didn’t want to go home.

So I stayed at the crime scene until the lab teams had come and gone; then for about an hour I crisscrossed the deserted streets of the port searching for anyone, a night worker, a vagrant, who might’ve seen who dumped Jill off. I drove around, afraid to go to the office, afraid to go home, reliving the awful sight over and over again, tears streaming down my face. Turning over that tarp—seeing Jill!

I drove until my car seemed to know the place I was headed. Where else did I have to go? Three o’clock in the morning. I found myself at the morgue.

I knew Claire would be there. No matter what time it was. Doing her job because it was the one thing that could hold her together. In her blue scrubs, in the operating room.

Jill was laid out on the gurney. Under those same harsh lights where I’d seen so many victims before.

Jill…My sweet darling girl.

I stared through the glass, tears wending down my cheeks. I was thinking I’d failed her in some way.

Finally I pushed through the glass doors. Claire was in the middle of the autopsy. She was doing what I was doing. Her job.

“You don’t want to be in here, Lindsay,” she said when she saw me. She drew a sheet over Jill’s exposed wound.

“Yeah, I do, Claire.” I just stood there. I wasn’t going to leave. I needed to see this.

Claire stared at my swollen, tear-stained face. She nodded, the tiny outline of a smile. “At least make yourself useful and hand me that probe on the tray over there.”

I handed Claire her instrument and traced the back of my hand against Jill’s cold, hard cheek. How could this not be some dream?

“Widespread damage to the right occipital lobe,” Claire spoke into the microphone on her lapel, “consistent with a single, rear-entry gunshot trauma. No exit wound; the bullet is still lodged in the left lateral ventricle. Minimal blood loss to the affected area. Strange …,” she muttered.

I was barely listening. My eyes still fixed on Jill.

“Light powder burns around the hair and neck indicate a small-caliber weapon fired at close range,” Claire continued.

She shifted the body. The opened rear of Jill’s skull appeared on the monitor.

I couldn’t watch that. I looked away.

“I’m now removing what looks like a small-caliber bullet fragment from the left ventricle,” Claire went on. “Signs of severe rupture, symptomatic of this type of trauma, but … very little swelling …” I watched Claire as she probed around and removed a flattened bullet. She dropped it into a dish.