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CHAPTER 13

FRANCES ROBINSON’S LAPTOP was open and angled so that it faced the desk chair. I lightly tapped her computer touch pad to wake the screen and turned the computer around, wondering what she’d last been working on.

There was only a single page open on the screen, and blank but for four words centered and typed in twenty-point boldface type. I SAID. YOU DEAD.

Conklin came over and stood behind my right shoulder. “Jesus. This again.”

“Here’s our connection to Jacobi. Right?”

I called out to CSI Dale Culver. “Dale. I need you over here. Get a shot of the screen.”

I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo of the four enigmatic words myself.

That line had to be behind the killer’s motive, but how so and what did it mean?

Our crew of homicide cops came together in the center of the living room, exchanged comments and theories. We were all in agreement that the smartly furnished condo looked like a spread in Architectural Digest . It hadn’t been rifled or tossed, and there were no signs that anything had been stolen from Frances Robinson—except for her life, of course.

Sometime in the last few hours, a killer had delivered one bullet to her brain and another to her chest.

I pictured how the murder might have gone down.

The shooter rings Fran Robinson’s doorbell. Does she know him? Was it her ex-husband? Maybe the killer was wearing a uniform. Did he present himself as a cop? Or a utility worker? Was the killer a woman? An avid romance fan gone wild?

Fran opens her door. Hello?

Bang-bang.

The killer steps over the body, careful not to bloody the soles of his shoes. He walks across the hardwood floor to Fran’s desk. Wearing gloves, he opens the laptop, calls up a blank page, and types, “I SAID. YOU DEAD.” Then the killer moves on.

The sky is still black and moonless when Robinson’s killer leaves by the building’s service door without drawing attention to himself. Then he beats it over to Golden Gate Park, where he assassinates Warren Jacobi.

Were my old friend and Frances Robinson random victims of a spree killer? Or did they have a connection?

And if so, what was it?