Page 12 of 25 Alive

That suggestion was still under consideration.

Now, as Judge Orlofsky banged his gavel, Yuki’s mouth went dry. No matter how many times she tried a killer, she felt the enormity of her responsibility. Her nerves knotted up until she spoke. And then the feeling passed.

Orlofsky said, “Ms. Castellano. Are you ready with your opening statement?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Yuki got to her feet, stepped out to the center of the well, the space between the judge’s bench and the lawyer’s tables, and faced the jury.

CHAPTER17

THE “I SAID. You dead” task force met in an empty corner office at the far end of the fourth-floor corridor. Cappy, Chi, Conklin, Alvarez, and I sat on opposite sides of a long table, leaving the desk chair at its head for Brady. The tension in the room was palpable. We were all shocked and anguished over the death of our friend and former colleague Warren Jacobi. And there was more.

This so-called war room was the largest office in the Homicide department and the most depressing. It had a history overrun with ghosts caused by disgraced former lieutenant Ted Swanson, who’d gone to prison but left his stink behind at SFPD Southern Division. It was a stink no amount of scrubbing or air freshener could remove, and from which the Southern Division still hadn’t fully recovered.

But his old office was huge, so now we used it as a conference room.

The circumstances surrounding Jacobi’s so-called retirement had been due unequivocally to Swanson’s actions.Swanson had been devious but smart and persuasive, and he’d headed up a squad of a dozen cops assigned to Robbery and Narcotics—then he’d redefined the term “corruption” by turning the cops reporting to him into thieves and killers, inveigling his department into a get-rich scheme by targeting a drug dealer who’d been doing big business in San Francisco.

For a couple of years, Swanson Inc. had robbed this drug boss of multiple millions, inevitably leading to a shootout between his people and ours, the bloodiest wholesale murder ever known within our Homicide department.

Warren Jacobi had been in the dark about Swanson’s drug business. Still, as Swanson’s boss, my good friend had to take the fall for internal and public relations reasons.

Knowing how Swanson’s detestable criminal behavior had affected Jacobi’s life, career, and legacy, sitting here bothered me now more than ever.

CHAPTER18

JACKSON BRADY ENTERED the war room, took his seat, and tapped the table with his pencil, calling us to order.

He said, “Ya’ll know what happened to our old friend Warren Jacobi, who led this department for years. It’s sickening to have to post his morgue photo, but here it is. Shots from the scene are on the way.”

Nobody spoke as Brady taped the picture to the grubby wall. The shot of Jacobi’s half-draped body, his gruesomely slashed neck and face, his blank eyes, left us all speechless.

It hurt to see Jacobi’s photo up there next to the photos of Frances Robinson. One of her crime scene photos showed her lying face up, legs bent, on the marble floor of her foyer, blood pooled around her head and torso. There was a look of surprise on her face. She was open-mouthed, with a bullet hole in her forehead. Another photo showed Robinson’s draped body on a stainless-steel table awaiting autopsy. She’d been cleaned up but looked pitifully, painfully dead.

Brady retook his seat and went on.

“Clapper called the New York City chief of police. He wanted to know the source of that letter to the editor about Jacobi’s death that ran in theNew York Flash,but according to theFlash’s editor-in-chief, it came via email from a temporary or ‘burner’ address.”

Brady stated that no one had any idea who had authored the mysterious letter to theNew York Flash. But it had since been picked up by social media. Maybe we’d get a tip. Maybe.

Brady moved on to assignments. “Boxer is point on Jacobi and Robinson. But we all need to work together on both murders. As you know, they are connected by the two ‘I said. You dead’ notes left at the scenes. Or a version of that. And by their relative proximity in time and location.

“I’m available day or night,” Brady said. “Call me.”

Once the organizational part of the meeting was over, we discussed what we didn’t have. No prints, no DNA, no witnesses. We were at square one, but we had a damn good team and, between us, decades of homicide investigation experience with contacts across the greater San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

Brady said, “Cappy. You have anything?”

Cappy stood, tucked in his shirt with his thumbs, and said, “Chi and I canvassed Robinson’s building for three hours. So far, we haven’t found any other connections to Jacobi beyond the proximity and the notes left at the scenes. So, what else did they have in common?”

I said, “They were both in their sixties. Neither onemarried. Robinson was divorced. Jacobi had a long-term live-in girlfriend. Muriel Roth. Muriel is retired from her acting job in daytime TV—”

Brady cut me off. “I’ll notify Muriel. And she needs twenty-four-hour protection. Who do you like for that?”

Cappy named three uniforms in our division and two each in Northern and Central. Brady took notes, then said, “I’ll call their COs. Cappy, as soon as I get names, you assign them as needed. Are we good?”

Cappy nodded. “Let me know when it’s a go.”

---