Katrina nodded knowingly and smiled. “Thanks.”

  I’ll be patient. I’m not going to give up. Don’t you worry.

  “Oh, and by the way,” Linda said. “I’m going to announce at the afternoon news meeting that this story is all yours moving forward. The cops and government editors will have to warn their overambitious reporters not to covet their sources. Now, go make me look good!”

  In the next ninety minutes, Linda stopped by Katrina’s desk several times to check on her progress, making it difficult to concentrate.

  “What’s your lede?” she kept asking.

  Micromanage much?

  “I don’t know yet,” Katrina snapped at Linda on her third visit. “I still have more calls to make.”

  I’m sure she’s trying to head off any conflict before John Palmer gets involved, but give me a break and back off, lady.

  Katrina made a quick round of calls to Goode, Stone, and the ME’s office to allow them to confirm or deny William’s claims, but no one answered, so she left voicemails.

  After Katrina bristled at Linda’s personal check-ins, the editor started sending over editing suggestions on Katrina’s half-written story, which Linda was reading from her office on the network server. Annoyed, Katrina went into Joanne’s office to complain.

  “Does she always read over your shoulder like that?” she asked. “It’s unnerving. I’m still trying to report the dang thing. It’s not even a story yet!”

  “She calls it ‘shepherding,’” Joanne said, shrugging empathetically. “But I feel your pain. It will get better. She hasn’t edited your raw copy before, so she’s anxious. Her ass is on the line because she recruited you, and you keep digging up stuff about the Battrelles.”

  “Well, if this is typical for an A-1 story, I’m not feeling inspired to write another one.”

  Due to these constant interruptions, Katrina didn’t get a chance to call Goode or the ME’s office again until 6:00 p.m. Still no response.

  Once Katrina turned in her story, Linda changed the lede, gouged a few holes here and there, then had Joanne do a light clean-up edit before sending it on to John Palmer. By the end of this painful, tedious process, the top of the story was virtually unrecognizable, but Katrina was pleased that the “namby-pamby” reference made it into the headline, even though she knew it could cause some conflict for her relationship with Goode and Stone.

  It’s such a great quote. I had to put it in the story. If they don’t already know reporters don’t write our own headlines, I’ll just have to edumacate them.

  Her story was posted online minutes after she left the newsroom at nine thirty.

  By the time Katrina got into her car, she felt wrung out, like a wet rag, but too wound up to relax, let alone sleep.

  I hate to say this, but I don’t want a drink, I need a drink.

  Zipping up the hill, she was in her neighborhood supermarket seven minutes later, buying herself a pricier-than-usual bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

  You definitely earned it.

  Two steps into her apartment, she kicked off her heels and dropped her purse in one fluid moment, heading into the kitchen to pop the cork. She couldn’t wait for her boxes to arrive so she could drink her wine from an actual wineglass.

  The Cab warmed her throat going down. Despite the presentation in a plastic cup, the extra bucks she spent on the wine were well worth it. Sliding open the glass door, she walked out onto her balcony and gazed appreciatively down the canyon to the freeway below. But the moment was lost as soon as she remembered her broken car window. She quickly came inside to close the blinds and lock all her doors, fearing that someone was watching her with binoculars from some hidden perch.

  Katrina topped off her glass. She wanted to shut off her phone, but she had to leave it on in case the copy desk—or Goode—called. She’d been told that there weren’t many copyeditors left after the last rounds of layoffs, but they still called with questions after a story had been posted online but before it was sent to the presses. That’s why they called it web-first.

  Setting the phone on the master-bathroom counter, she felt tired but restless from hours of adrenaline coursing through her system. She knew that a long shower, and probably more wine, was the only way to relax.

  Don’t drink too much or you’ll wake up, brain spinning again, at 3:00 a.m., imagining the contents of the next threatening note.

  When the water was hot but not too hot, she let the pulsating jets massage her back, neck, shoulders, and forearms, which were tight and achy after hours of hunching over the keyboard.

  Goode’s going to be mad about the story, but I did leave him two messages. I wonder why he didn’t call me back? He didn’t even call to check on me. Maybe he’s not as into me as I thought.

  After toweling off, she returned to the living room with her wine. Sitting on the floor, she leaned back against the wall and tucked her legs into her sleeping bag. She had a few more sips until her eyelids felt heavy, too tired to get up and pour the rest of her glass back into the bottle. She put her phone into airplane mode, lay down, and drifted off.

  Chapter 32

  Goode

  Tuesday

  After the bullet caper, Goode spent several hours trying to chase down a sample of the sex drug for Artie. He started with an informal call to Dallas Fairchild, the Vitaleron biochemist, but that turned into a legal miasma.

  “I’ll have to run that up the chain and get back to you on that,” Fairchild said. “By the way, I’m having those cameras installed after hours tonight, so we should have them working by ten o’clock. As you suggested, I haven’t told a soul since Victoria already authorized it. Let’s see what happens.”

  “Great,” Goode said. “Thanks for doing that so fast.”

  Fairchild called Michael Battrelle about getting Goode a sample. Michael called Vincent, who called Darren McMurphy, after which the detective found himself on the phone with Milton Biggs again.

  “Did you miss me?” Goode asked facetiously to a wall of silence. “I thought McMurphy handled Vitaleron.”

  The guy’s got no sense of humor.

  “Considering the circumstances, we thought it best if I stepped in to avoid any appearance of conflict,” Biggs said. “What can I do for you this time, Detective?”

  “I think you already know this, but I need a sample of the sex drug so we can get it analyzed,” Goode said.

  “Right, and we aren’t going to hand that over voluntarily. You’ll have to go through the courts, and I’ll tell you right now, we will fight you.”

  “What’s the problem?” Goode asked. “Don’t you want to know if Simon and Victoria Fontaine were murdered, or conversely, if Vitaleron’s experimental drug could be fatal?”

  “Why would we share the proprietary formula of an unapproved drug, whose development has cost many millions of dollars, with another lab? If your goal is to taint the public’s perception of our product, we will fight you even harder.”

  “We have no such intention,” Goode said. “I’m just doing my job, Mr. Biggs.”

  Once Goode reported back to Stone, the sergeant contacted the department’s legal counsel. The preliminary answer was to follow the usual process: Write up a search warrant affidavit and see if a judge would approve it. But an hour later, the attorney told him to back off—at the chief’s request via the mayor’s office.

  “The mayor thinks there’s no pressing need for this, so the chief says we should stand down,” Stone told Goode.

  “You have got to be kidding. Why is the chief even discussing this with him?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What is in this stuff?”

  “I don’t know, but let’s take a beat. Vitaleron could file for an injunction and demand a hearing, but that would only delay the inevitable. Between us, I’ve never seen the mayor step into a case since I joined the force. The chief suggested finding another way to get the same information on the QT.”

  “I’d say this is not only highly unusual but highly improper, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, and I told the chief as much. He just shrugged.”

  “Is he an investor too?”

  “You got me.”

  Goode took a walk, trying to come up with another option.

  You’d think there would be some of this stuff at the Fontaine house if one or both of them were experimenting with it. I should’ve looked more carefully through Victoria’s purse.

  It occurred to him that they should check the drug audits and inventories that they seized from Simon’s office and the Vitaleron lab for other substances for which to test.

  I need to check in with London at the RCFL to see if he’s done that yet. But what if Simon—or his surgery partner, or both—were selling this stuff to their patients on the sly? They probably wouldn’t keep track of that in writing.

  When London didn’t answer his phone, Goode decided to go down there in person.

  Judging by his expression, London was pretty spooked when he met Goode in the lobby. Goode’s crappy day must have been written all over his face.

  “Sorry, I haven’t gotten to your stuff yet,” London said. “We’re really backed up, and I’m doing the work of three examiners.”

  “Well, I need an answer on this, and I’m not leaving until I get it,” Goode said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I need to see the computer files with the drug inventory from Dr. Simon Fontaine’s office.”

  London shook his head helplessly.

  “What now?” Goode said.

  “My wife started having slow contractions a while ago, and she’s going to call or text me any minute to take her to the hospital.”

  Are you kidding me?

  “But I guess I can copy the hard drives to see if we have the file you need.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Goode said, relieved. “That would be great.”

  “Come on back with me,” London said, checking his phone as he led Goode through several hallways to a room of metal shelves stacked with computers and tagged with case numbers.

  London pulled down Victoria’s laptop, Simon’s desktop, and the surgery computers and put them on a table. After extracting the data from the hard drives and converting it to searchable files, London uploaded them all to the CAIR system.

  “There, that’s almost everything,” London said. “It’s going to take some more time to do the email and browser-history searches you requested.”

  “I assume you haven’t gotten to the security footage yet either?”

  “Oh, right, no, sorry, I haven’t. Look, my wife just texted me, I’ve got to run.”

  “That’s a priority, okay?” Goode called after London as he jogged toward the door. “We need to know who went in and out of there that day.”

  “On it. I’ve got another examiner helping me, and we’ll get to that as soon as we can. Promise.”

  As he drove away, Goode realized he was grinding his teeth. His dentist had warned him about drinking too much caffeine, but that advice had gone into the ether.

  It was getting close to sunset, so Goode headed north to blow off some bad juju at Windansea.

  Wait, there were green capsules mixed in with the Viagra in Simon’s medical bag. I could also give Victoria’s Hermès bag another once-over while I’m there. SDPD property room, stat!

  He got off at the next exit to reverse course, feeling a rush of optimism as he headed south toward downtown, where the evidence locker awaited.

  I have a good feeling about this.

  Within the hour, Goode was going through evidence boxes and envelopes. Bending the rules for his convenience, he transferred the vial of green capsules and blue pills from Simon’s medical bag into the Hermès bag.

  “I meant to hand this off to the ME’s investigator, but I guess we got our signals crossed,” he told the clerk. When she looked confused, he added, “We need to look through it for potentially toxic substances or anything else that could have caused their deaths.”

  The clerk nodded and let him take the purse, which he knew wasn’t entirely kosher. Once these items were checked separately into evidence, they both should have been logged out as such when they left the building to maintain the chain of custody.

  “Sign it out on the log here,” she said, handing him a clipboard.

  Well, it’s mostly true, and these are unusual circumstances. I’ll put the bag back once I look through it again and get these pills to Artie. At least this time I know what I’m looking for.

  Heading for Artie’s office, he hoped that Vitaleron had made the men’s pill green for branding purposes, because “the little blue pill” was already associated with Viagra, their primary competitor.

  Once he reached the morgue, Goode turned on the Explorer’s overhead light to reexamine the purse’s contents for drugs. But other than Simon’s vial, which he’d placed there himself, he didn’t find any.

  “Where’d you get this?” Artie asked when Goode handed over the drug vial.

  “Evidence locker,” he said. “I meant to submit these to you before. Let’s make sure the blue ones are really Viagra, and let’s hope these greenies are the Vitaleron sex drug. If that stuff turns up in Simon’s blood, it might change the whole face of this case.”

  “You got it,” Artie said. “Who knows? Maybe he was going for super-stud and mixed the two, felt faint, or had a heart attack, causing him to fall down the stairs.”

  “I never thought of that,” Goode said.

  “So much to learn, grasshopper,” Artie said, chuckling as he put the requisition slip into a padded envelope with the vial and handed it to his assistant. “I’m going out for a cold one. Want to join me?”

  “Absolutely,” Goode said. “Enough frustration for one day.”

  They drove separately to a brewery in the Fashion Valley mall, where one beer turned into three, followed by a round of premium tequila shots, which went down nicely with a basket of hot, crispy chips and a bowl of guacamole with fresh chunks of avocado. The music was booming and the acoustics were terrible, so they had to sit close and speak loudly to hear each other.

  By the time they split the bill around ten o’clock, Goode had cheered up considerably.

  Artie’s a good guy. He’s going to help us solve this case.

  But that warmth faded as soon as he saw that he’d missed two calls from Katrina, along with an angry email from Stone with a link to the story Katrina had posted around 9:15 p.m. Stone had called several times since then, pissed that Goode wasn’t picking up.

  “Oh, effing hell,” Goode said as he read the story in his car. His ear was buzzing as he felt his brain constricting with tension.

  He didn’t get Katrina’s first call because he’d been in the underground evidence locker, where there was no reception. He must have missed her second call while he was at the morgue.

  Thick walls or something?

  He didn’t even wait to listen to Stone’s messages before dialing Katrina’s number. The call went to voicemail, so he left a message, tainted by alcohol and his own failure to anticipate this situation.

  “Namby-pamby? Really, Katrina? I mean, are you trying to get me fired?”

  He immediately regretted his tone as soon as he hung up, as the images of Katrina’s cracked window and threatening note came back to him. He sat in silence for a minute, then headed north to La Jolla in a dour mood.

  You just made everything worse, you dolt.

  Goode eased the Explorer into the lot at Windansea, where a stiff breeze was roiling the deep-green water into choppy peaks, and shut off the ignition. Closing his eyes, he focused on the sound of the waves breaking and tried to pull out of the downward spiral.

  Stone’s messages didn’t help. “I thought you had your girl under control,” Stone barked. “The chief is on a rampage. Where the hell are you? Call me!”

  “How was I supposed to know William was going to tell her that?” Goode told his own image in the rearview mirror. “I don’t even know how he got the information.”

  You should have followed up with her like you promised. Be proactive. Stone thinks this is your fault, and the chief obviously blames you too. Because it is your fault.

  “Yes, well, I would argue that it’s because of all the shit that went down with Milton Biggs, the mayor, and the chief today,” he replied to the voice in his head. “So, I say it’s their fault. Plus, London’s wife was having a baby, then I had to find those pills and get them to Artie, and I still haven’t even had a chance to look at the stuff on the CAIR drive. It was only a few beers.”

  Looking into his own glassy eyes, he saw disappointment reflected back.

  Don’t forget the tequila. Maybe next time you’ll know better. Katrina is not Norman Klein; she’s a force to contend with. You couldn’t have stopped her, but you could have tried to mitigate the situation.

  With that, he called Katrina again and left her a voicemail, apologizing.

  “Sorry about that last voicemail, and I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to check on you today. It was a crazy day. I didn’t get your messages in time, obviously, and the shit is already rolling downhill. Next time, maybe you could give me a heads-up that you’re going to need to talk to me after hours, so I can watch for your call? I’m going home to bed now before I do any more damage. Goodnight.”

  Chapter 33

  Katrina

  Wednesday

  When Katrina woke up on Wednesday, she realized that two voicemails from Goode had come in after she’d put her phone into airplane mode. The first one left her annoyed and a little angry, but the second one calmed her down. He sounded so beaten up that she felt bad for him.

  He acknowledged that I didn’t do anything wrong, which is good, but now he wants me to call to warn him that I’ll need to talk to him later?

  Checking her voicemails at work, she had a whopping fifteen, which beat her personal record from the day her mafia series started running. The new messages were weighted almost equally in support of and opposition to William’s assessment of the police investigation.