Parking on the street, she fished the heavy-duty flashlight out of her glove compartment and got out to look around. The mailbox, posted at the bottom of a steep, winding driveway, seemed as good a place to start as any. As long as she didn’t steal or open his mail, she wasn’t committing a felony.

  The short stack of envelopes inside was certainly not six months’ worth. More like a few days.

  Has someone been collecting it periodically and giving it to him at another location?

  The interior of the house was completely dark, though a couple of exterior motion lights flashed on as she passed, which startled her. Katrina saw only two newspapers lying on the front step, both dated within the last couple of days.

  She tried to open the side gate, but it wouldn’t budge. Feeling her way over the top, she fiddled with the latch to unhook it and shined her light through the darkness to avoid tripping over cats or possums as she pushed overgrown branches out of her face.

  In the rear courtyard, the moonlight revealed a four-tiered wooden deck. The top two were covered with potted plants; the lower two were lined with lounge and Adirondack chairs, with a couple of tables with umbrellas, a built-in stone barbecue, and a pizza oven. At the bottom was a rectangular pool and Jacuzzi encircled with tall eucalyptuses, firs, and peppertrees, which blocked out the view from the street or side yards.

  This is a total party house. Probably even more impressive with the lights on.

  Based on the vast accumulation of dead leaves, the house had been vacant for some time. Katrina put her nose to the sliding glass door to the kitchen, shining her light across the cabinets and granite countertops. She saw no signs of life until she came across a box of cereal and a half-eaten banana sitting on the island. The peel was yellow, so it hadn’t been there for long.

  Looks like he, or someone else, was here for a quick breakfast.

  When her phone started ringing, Katrina felt a spike of adrenaline and thrust her hand into her purse to squelch the ringer. The last thing she needed was for a neighbor to report her to the police for trespassing.

  She didn’t know what triggered it, but an even bigger set of motion detector lights flashed on. She also heard a new buzzing sound, like a surveillance camera following her every move. Someone was watching her.

  Walking as fast as she could toward the side yard, she pushed through the thicket of branches to the gate, ran back to her car, and locked herself inside. Sometimes her mind was her worst enemy, but this time, she didn’t think it was all in her head.

  After taking several deep breaths, her heartbeat slowed as she drove away, repeatedly checking her mirrors for anyone following her. Pushing the speed limit, she drove the twisty, narrow road down the north side of Mount Soledad and up Torrey Pines to the Sheraton. She didn’t feel safe until she’d pulled the latch across the door to her room.

  Katrina lay on the bed for a few minutes, trying to shake it off. Then, she changed course and set her mind on learning as much as she could about the Battrelles, and Alex in particular.

  First, she searched online for connections between the Battrelles and the Fontaines—business, personal, or otherwise. Linda had mentioned that Vincent and his younger son, Michael, were on the Vitaleron board, but what about Alex?

  A two-year-old news brief said Alex had stepped down and was being replaced by his brother, Michael, but gave no explanation. It also stated that the board had created a new seat for Simon Fontaine’s surgical partner, Dr. Warren Russell, and the corporate title of medical adviser.

  Finding nothing else, she opened the Sun-Dispatch archive to see if it contained items that didn’t come up on Google. This was a good call, because it had an exclusive photo library, which included social events such as the Jewel Ball, a high-end charity fundraiser at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. In a five-year-old shot, Alex had his arm around Victoria, but Michael did not. In one from a few months ago, Michael was holding her hand, and Alex wasn’t pictured.

  Katrina wondered why Vincent hadn’t mentioned the relationships between Victoria and his sons or suggested she pursue any leads at Vitaleron, a curious omission given Linda’s prohibition on mentioning the Battrelles in stories without permission.

  Going further back, she found a story about Vincent Battrelle’s sizable donation to a new meditation garden at the McDonald Center and another about a room being named after Simon Fontaine. It almost seemed like they were competing to see who could get more attention for making a better or bigger donation. But other than the philanthropic items, the newspaper’s coverage of the Battrelles was nil.

  The only person she could think to call about the dynamics between the families was Simon’s brother, William. But it was getting late, so the call would have to wait until morning.

  Switching her focus to the Fontaine family, Katrina pulled up Victoria’s Facebook page. Because it was set to private, she couldn’t see any photos or her friend list, but the Vitaleron website provided a decent bio: By thirty-five—the same age as Katrina—Victoria had run several start-up biotech companies before landing at Vitaleron. She held a bachelor’s in economics from the University of Southern California and an MBA from Stanford.

  Not too shabby.

  On the board of directors’ page, Katrina recognized all but one of the officers’ names: Darren McMurphy, who was secretary. Simon Fontaine was board chairman and CEO, Vincent Battrelle was vice chairman, and Michael Battrelle was treasurer.

  Because director seats often came as rewards for investments, she cross-checked the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) website for their stockholdings. It was no surprise that Simon Fontaine and Vincent Battrelle were the largest stockholders by far. Their offspring followed close behind, with Victoria Fontaine leading, followed by Alex and Michael Battrelle. Warren Russell was next, then Darren McMurphy and his father, Patrick. Patrick was also on the board, and although he wasn’t an officer, she figured he had broader political clout as the city’s Port Commission chairman.

  How am I supposed to keep the Battrelles out of my Vitaleron stories? If I can find this, so can my competitors.

  She found it peculiar that previous stories were vague or silent about progress of the drug trials, but if the company wasn’t bragging about it, the drug probably wasn’t close to winning FDA approval.

  As her brain started to spin, she decided to use an organizational tool she found helpful and drew a tree diagram of all the players. She included executives, board members, and major investors at Vitaleron, using different colored lines to designate personal or familial connections between them, placing stars next to the biggest investors, and black X’s over the dead people, highlighting the power vortex that would be filled with someone else.

  With the Fontaines gone, the company’s management and board leadership will go through a reorganization. It seems natural for Vincent or Michael Battrelle to take over the key positions and others to move up in the hierarchy. That seems like a possible motive for murder to me.

  When she was finished, she realized there were no women in the tree except Victoria. Where were Mrs. Fontaine, Mrs. Battrelle, or her daughter, Meredith, in all of this? Once Katrina got her own place, she would transfer the tree diagram to her living-room wall, like they did on the TV crime shows, so she could update it as she found new connections. She figured Goode was probably doing the same thing.

  With that, Katrina closed her laptop and found some slow jazz on her phone to calm her mind. The radiation might slowly kill her, but it was the only way to shut off the static and get some sleep.

  Chapter 11

  Goode

  Sunday

  Goode was awakened at 5:25 a.m. by the smell of French roast brewing in his kitchen, his favorite kind of alarm clock. His brain began compiling a to-do list almost immediately. Five hours of sleep was usually enough for him to get by, but after staying awake for two days straight, he’d needed a solid seven and a half.

  With a mug of strong home brew, he wrote up his list at the table that doubled as his eating and workplace. He put the plate with his toasted bagel to one side of his laptop and his coffee and notebook to the other, where his papers, files, and books were stacked in several piles.

  So much for the separation of my personal and professional space. I keep meaning to put some of these books away. Or read them. Or buy a bigger table.

  His online search for background on Alex Battrelle came up empty. It was almost as if he didn’t exist.

  Maybe I just don’t know what to look for yet.

  Around 7:00 a.m., Artie texted him with the ten o’clock start time for Simon Fontaine’s autopsy. Goode texted Stone and agreed to meet up at the morgue.

  After showering, he headed out in the Explorer for a latte in Bird Rock, a neighborhood of La Jolla south of his cottage named for a giant rock offshore that was once shaped like a bird and also drew flocks of them. Goode always drank too much caffeine early in an investigation, which was as good an excuse as any for the worst of his addictions. But he knew not to eat anything right before an autopsy, a lesson he only had to learn once.

  Sure enough, Goode was right about the bruising on Dr. Fontaine’s neck. Pathologist Clarence Thompson confirmed there was a needle mark in the bruising on Simon’s neck just like on Victoria’s arm, on the opposite side from the bullet wound.

  But Thompson didn’t find the bullet because it had gone clean through Simon’s brain without hitting any major arteries. Thompson also confirmed that the wound was postmortem—hours after the heart had stopped pumping blood to that area, which explained why the seepage was so scant and gelatinous.

  “Do you know what kind of gun it was?” Thompson asked.

  “There was a 9mm next to the body,” Goode said. “We haven’t found any bullets or casings yet, but I did find an unspent 9mm round in Victoria’s purse. Now that we know it went through and through, I’ll have them go back and look again. Problem is, we still don’t know where he was when he got shot.”

  “See these?” Thompson asked, holding up a squeezed set of tweezers. “Rug fibers in his hair. He also had bruises on his scalp and abrasions on his face, arms, and knees. They look like rug burns.”

  “The house has Berber carpeting,” Goode said.

  “There you go.”

  “Can you tell how he got the bruises on his scalp?” Stone asked.

  “Probably from falling, but not a long or hard fall,” Thompson said. “Are there stairs inside the house?”

  “Yeah, three flights, all carpeted. There’s also a tile stairway that goes from the patio to the pool,” Goode said. “Does he have any broken bones? What about a fall from an exterior balcony?”

  “His hip is kind of splayed out, possibly due to a fall, but his skull probably would have cracked open if he fell or was pushed from a balcony. I also found no fractures in his legs or feet. You said it was a tile patio, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose he could have injected himself with something that made him drowsy, causing him to fall down the carpeted stairs. But who injects themselves in the neck?” Thompson said.

  “Devil’s advocate,” Artie said. “What if he saw Victoria on the floor, panicked, tripped, and fell as he was running downstairs for his phone to call 911?”

  “I found his phone in his shorts pocket, remember?” Goode said.

  “True. But if he was in shock he could’ve forgotten where he put it. I’ve done that.”

  “Yeah, but the lividity is mostly on his right side, and you found him on his back, correct?” Thompson asked.

  “Correct,” Goode said.

  “So, what if he was pushed down the stairs, hit his head, and was knocked out cold?” Stone suggested. “Someone injects him and dumps him off the balcony, but he doesn’t land on his head. That someone also shoots him, though not necessarily in that order.”

  “I read a book called Kill Him Some More. Seems fitting,” Goode said.

  Stone glared at him. “A little respect, please.”

  Goode shrugged. Sure seems like overkill to me.

  “What if he’s gearing up for some afternoon delight, tells his sex partner to inject the experimental drug into his neck so it goes to the brain faster?” Artie suggested. “But something goes wrong and he has a heart attack. His lady gets scared, calls a friend to help her move the body, and they stage the suicide scene.”

  “I talked with his lady friend and she said she hadn’t seen him since Friday morning at her place,” Goode said. “She mentioned she was worried he might be with another woman, but she could be lying about the last time she saw him. I still haven’t seen the security footage yet, so I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Any of these scenarios are possible, but I still say the fall from a balcony would cause different injuries,” Thompson said. “We need more information, especially the tox screen, before we can definitively determine cause or manner of death for either victim. But at this point, I’m leaning toward homicide. Did you find any drugs in the house they might have injected?”

  “No, that’s the most suspicious part. No empty vials, no used syringes, no paraphernalia at all near either victim, which points to an outside suspect removing them,” Goode said. “Based on that and the gunshot, I’d call it a murder staged as suicide for Simon. I’m still on the fence about Victoria because of her history.”

  “Well, she probably wouldn’t have shoved three oxys down her own throat and then died, right?” Stone said.

  “Unless she choked on them,” Goode said.

  “Good point,” Stone said.

  “But as a working theory, if Simon was murdered, and Victoria had no reason to kill him, then someone likely murdered her too. Is that what you’re saying?” Goode asked Thompson.

  “Sounds about right, yes.”

  Walking outside to the parking lot, Goode and Stone chatted about strategy for serving the next round of search warrants simultaneously the next morning, to catch everyone by surprise: one at Simon Fontaine’s surgery office, where they would audit inventory and purchasing records to determine if any drugs were missing; the second at Vitaleron headquarters, where the R&D lab was located and experimental human trials were underway.

  “They must have a private computer server. We might find internal communications that give us a clearer motive or dovetail with that memo Victoria was going to write but that don’t show up on Victoria’s and Simon’s personal computers,” Goode said. “It could be an issue with funding, FDA approval, or a disgruntled employee. Anything, really.”

  “I’ll have Byron call RCFL to meet us there,” Stone said, stopping to answer his phone. “It’s the lieutenant.”

  As Stone briefed Wilson on the working theory and questions raised by the autopsy, Goode could hear the lieutenant yelling. Stone rolled his eyes and made the “blah blah blah” yapping motion with his hand.

  “He’s all fired up,” Stone said after hanging up.

  “No kidding.”

  “Yeah, he wants a news conference tomorrow afternoon to brag about what we find with the warrants. His exact words were, ‘We need to show the public that we are kicking this case’s ass,’” Stone said. “I guess a lot of investors are worried about their nest eggs going down the tubes.”

  Speaking of which, Goode said, “What do you think about me throwing a few bones to that new reporter, Katrina Chopin, at the Sun-Dispatch? I checked her out and she’s the real deal. I think she could be helpful to us. Would also be good to keep an eye on her.”

  Stone, who knew him too well, gave Goode his characteristic “don’t bullshit me” look. “C’mon, I saw you guys talking yesterday,” Stone said. “You have a thing for her, don’t you? I don’t even know how that’s possible, since she got to town, like, five minutes ago—”

  If Goode didn’t come clean, Stone would figure it out anyway. “Remember when you called me Friday night and I was at Piatti?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Totally random chance. I stopped by for my usual martini and mussels. There was only one open seat, so we started chatting—”

  “Dude, you are everywhere, and into everything.”

  “I was still in vacation mode. I had no idea she was a reporter. We never even got that far. But it’s not about that. She and I are both professionals. This is about the case.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes, to the best of my ability. Plus, she’s the daughter in the ‘Double-Judge Murder’ case. She comes from good people.”

  “Oh, I didn’t—” Stone said, falling uncommonly speechless for a moment. “All right, then. Carry on. Just be careful. I know how you are with pretty, smart, manipulative women. Your ex-wife, for example. Remember her?”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  Chapter 12

  Katrina

  Sunday

  Katrina had been hoping to find an apartment near the beach. Ever since she’d left San Diego, she’d missed the ocean, like a long-lost lover.

  Growing up, she’d always enjoyed tagging along with Franny to watch the sunsets and the sinewy surfers. Wetsuits peeled down to reveal ripped pecs and six-pack abs, dripping with salt water. Boards tucked under their arms as they jogged to their trucks.

  But coastal housing prices were ridiculous, especially when she had a beautiful four-bedroom home waiting for her in Point Loma.

  Out of steam by Sunday afternoon, she turned down a side street in Mission Hills to grab a Diet Coke at the market. Somehow, she missed the driveway and was about to do a U-turn in the cul-de-sac when she saw a faded For Rent sign at the bottom of the hill.

  Thirty minutes later, she was writing a check to the chain-smoking manager of a U-shaped retro complex of apartments that were dated but spacious. They were so cheap, in fact, that she took a two-bedroom, telling herself she now had a home office or music room.