Page 38 of 25 Alive

Bao said, “I sure am. And you?”

“Uh-huh.”

She cracked a quick grin and said, “I’ve done nothing but talk about myself. Got any burrs under your saddle?”

“Bao, I’ll talk about the burrs under your saddle for as long as you want. If you want to. All that’s bothering me is what we don’t know.”

“Like.”

“Like why Steinmetz wants to see us in”—he looked at his phone—“an hour.” He snagged the server’s attention, and she told him, “It’s coming right up.”

Joe’s educated guess after thirty years psyching out suspects for and with the FBI was that Bao had been spending so much time working as a fill-in with Chief Steinmetz in San Francisco, she had incensed her son and husband back home in DC, who had drawn a line in the sand. Bao was multilingual and experienced in the methods of drug cartels. But she’d likely never expected to juggle a family life on one coast and a working life on another. He guessed that Bao’s husband, Brian, was threatening divorce.

Without knowing the guy, Joe considered what Brian might be feeling. And then he turned that thought inward. What if Lindsay wanted to transfer to, say, New York? Even temporarily, like for a year with breaks to travel home? He couldn’t leave his job in San Francisco. Their daughter, Julie, was almost six. Would Lindsay even consider disrupting their lives?

Joe turned back to Bao. “Want me to fly to DC and have a talk with Brian?”

Bao laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“Maybe …”

“I can just imagine how that would go.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

Bao said, “Joe, I appreciate your support. But I have to handle this …”

Joe could also imagine things from Bao’s point of view. She was at a make-or-break stage in her career. Despite being a pro with a couple of decades in grade, she’d been consigned to the background in DC. But the SF office was smaller than the one in DC, less populated with senior agents, and she was needed here.

All of this was what Joe had gathered from things Bao didn’t say.

The waitress came to their table and set down a tray of bamboo baskets, each filled with the specialty of the house: tasty, steaming little buns stuffed with meats, exotic seafood, spiced vegetables, and other five-star delicacies. In that moment, it was all about the food.

She and Joe unwrapped their chopsticks. Joe had lifted one dim sum halfway to his mouth when Bao’s phone rang.

“It’s Steinmetz,” she said, stabbing the talk button. “Chief? Yes, we’ll be there in forty-five … Oh. Okay. Twenty is possible. Yes. He’s here. We’ll see you soon.”

CHAPTER59

SECTION CHIEF CRAIG Steinmetz was overweight and balding, and the creases on his face made him look seventy. But Joe, who’d first partnered with Steinmetz twenty years ago, knew he was closer to sixty, just with a lot of mileage on him.

When Joe and Bao were seated in front of the chief’s desk, facing the two US flags flanking the plate-glass window overlooking Golden Gate Avenue, Steinmetz asked, “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

“We’re good,” Joe answered for them both.

Bao said, “You said this case was urgent?”

There was a tone in her voice, maybe agitation left over from the interrupted conversation at lunch. Steinmetz caught it and gave Bao a sharp look. He opened a desk drawer, pulled out this morning’s edition of theChronicle,and dropped it onto his desk. The headline was in seventy-two-point boldface type:DARIO GARZA JUDGE MURDERED.

An inch-thick folder followed the paper, and whenSteinmetz opened it, Bao and Joe saw that there were enlarged photos inside, along with a packet of documents.

Steinmetz began slapping the photos face up on his desktop in the space between the two agents.

The pictures were gruesome. First, a bedroom with two decapitated bodies. Then a series of close-ups of the bullet holes in the male’s chest, the front and back of the female’s head, blood soaking the carpeting. And the final scene. The bathtub with the two severed heads, the male’s head tipped and leaning against the tub wall.

Steinmetz said, “These are the remains of Judge Martin Orlofsky and his wife, Sandra.”

“The FBI is going to get involved?” Joe asked.

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