Page 2 of The 24th Hour

The restaurant’s main room was dimly lit, banked on our right with an open kitchen, lined to our left with mahogany dining tables and large contemporary artwork. The air smelled indescribably delicious.

Yuki said, “The Women’s Murder Club is in the house.”

I followed her finger and saw Cindy and Claire sitting at a table for four near a spiral staircase. They were both grinning. Claire, dressed in navy-blue silk, had never looked happier. Yuki and I pulled out chairs and joined them. Waiters fussed. As Yuki predicted, we were in time for the caviar course presented with a curl of salmon in a scallop-shell dish.

God, this was good.

We were joking and roasting the birthday girl as the next course was served—then a woman screamed, loud enough to lift the roof.

“Nooooooo!”

Our waiter dropped a water glass. I grabbed his sleeve and showed him my badge.

“What’s up there?”

“Staff ch-ch-changing room.”

I got to my feet, knocking over my chair, and started up the corkscrew staircase. I took two steps at a time, and when I was halfway up, I heard a man shout, “You crazy bitch!”

I pulled my gun and, with my left hand on the railing, I raced to the top of the stairs.

TWO

AS OUR WAITER had said, the second floor was a changing room. It was carpeted, about thirty feet square, densely packed with rows of lockers and benches between the rows. The lockers formed barricades and I couldn’t see between them from where I stood in the doorway. Even though I was armed, it was dangerous as hell to be here without my partner.

I listened as I scanned the maze of a room. I heard nothing, saw no movement, and then a shadow shifted in a far corner to my left. The shadow was a woman, lying on her side with her back pressed against the wall twenty feet away. I saw that, except for her pink bra that had been pushed up above her breasts, the woman was naked. The dim overhead lighting flickered. The rheostat was to my left and so I dialed up the lights. I reached the woman in seconds and identified myself. She didn’t seem to notice.

But I was taking mental notes of her. She was in her twenties; her eyes were puffy and partially closed and she waswheezing out little cries. I spoke to her again, asked her name, but she didn’t respond. That’s when I saw the fresh bruises encircling her neck and wrists.

She’d been choked and beaten, but she was alive.

I whipped my head around, scanned the area. Where was the damned attacker? Invisible.

I pulled my radio from my blazer pocket, connected to dispatch, and barked out a request for backup and an ambulance. If the attacker was still in the room, he’d heard me and would know that the cops were on the way.

Where was he?

I scoped out the room again from this new angle. There had to be an exit that led down to the kitchen, but I couldn’t leave the victim alone to look for it.

Taking a chance, I stood up and shouted, “SFPD! Step out with your hands in the air.”

That didn’t happen. Restaurant sounds had resumed on the floor below. China clanked, diners laughed. Where was the man who’d cursed loud enough to be heard downstairs over the music and chatter?

And then I saw movement at the far end of a row of lockers. A man was half hidden behind an open locker door. Was this the attacker, or a waiter changing into his work clothes—or one and the same?

With just a sliver view, I made him as a white male, mid-twenties, average height and weight, dirty-blond hair, and he was half naked. The tails of his white dress shirt hung down to mid-thigh, front and back. His underwear and trousers were coiled around his feet.

It was him.

We made eye contact and he panicked, hopping, stumbling, bouncing off lockers as he tried to pull up his pants.

I shouted, “Stay where you are. Show me your hands.”

He stopped and, leaning against a locker, held out his palms. He didn’t have a gun. I let out a breath and said, “Turn around, close that locker, and put your hands on the door.”

“I’m going to get dressed, okay?”

“What’d I just say?”

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