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CHAPTER 29

MURIEL WAS WAITING for me inside a woodsy café that was hung with baskets of spider plants and stands of foliage acting as curtains at the windows. Jacobi’s beloved partner stood to greet me with a hug. The former TV actress’s features were drawn with grief, but she was still lovely when she gave me a sad smile. We sat at a sturdy table with stocky wooden chairs, our knees nearly touching, and ordered cold casseroles of black beans, kale, cheese, and rice, with a drink order of pale Chablis that smelled like roses.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

Muriel said, “The worst was last night when I went to bed alone, and this morning when I woke up alone. Warren and I used to hold hands until we fell asleep.”

I thought of my relationship with Joe, and the worry I always felt when he was away. My expression must have changed because Muriel was calling my name, and I only responded the third time she said, “Lindsay.”

“Slide a little closer, Lindsay. I’ll be your photo tour guide.”

I’d checked out Jacobi’s iPhone from evidence, and now I placed it on the table and Muriel pulled her chair around, so we sat side by side. I pulled on gloves and removed it from the evidence bag, then fixed my eyes on the screen as Muriel gave me the log-in code, and we went through Jacobi’s photo library together.

“That’s the great blue heron,” she said, pointing. I poked the thumbnail to enlarge it. “Have you ever seen this bird in flight?”

“Warren never mentioned bird-watching to me.”

“Ah,” she said. “Well, I’ll let you in on the secret, Lindsay. He enjoyed the bird-watching, but it was a cover. He did it mainly for show. He was actually going to Golden Gate Park to look for a man he suspected of killing a teenage girl in the park years ago. Warren saw him drag her body into the Lily Pond. And then the guy disappeared into the shadows. He was never identified or caught, and Warren was the only witness.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well. He told me it was on a night when he was taking a walk through the park to work off his dinner. It was pretty dark, and he said that it happened fast—like, in seconds—but Warren was sure he saw a guy manhandling a girl’s dead body, tossing her into the pond. He was too far away to make any kind of ID on the guy. He reported it, and the girl’s body was recovered a few hours later, but she had no ID and was probably homeless. I think it was attributed to a suicide.”

Muriel shrugged. That was all she knew.

I asked, “So, Warren kept returning to the Lily Pond, and eventually he saw a guy there he thought might be the murderer? Thought the guy might’ve come to relive his crime all this time later?”

“Warren didn’t know why, but this one guy kept showing up there. And this case still woke him up at night. He wanted to do something about it.”

Muriel and I then went back to the photo gallery. I saw tranquil wildlife pictures of birds flying, pecking tree trunks, and feeding baby birds. But I was thinking like a cop.

If Jacobi was watching for a killer, maybe the killer knew he was being watched. Did Jacobi take a picture of him? Maybe there’s a better picture on one of his hard drives.

Muriel rummaged in her handbag and pulled out three external drives held together with a rubber band. She pushed the packet over to me, and I plugged one drive after the other into my tablet. As we reviewed the digital images, I did see a few pictures of a man in the park near the Lily Pond. He was lanky, looked to be of average height, wearing tattered jeans, work gloves, and a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. The hood did its job of obscuring the man’s face beyond any chance of identification. And if that wasn’t enough of a handicap, Jacobi’s images were underexposed and unfocused.

Still, Jacobi had taken several pictures of this person. Was this the same man Jacobi assumed had killed a homeless teenaged girl? Or was he just a guy who liked the park in the early hours? Was he a serial killer? Or was this the man who’d sunk a KA-BAR into Jacobi’s kidney, then encircled his neck with the blade? Had he left messages inside matchbook covers, spelling out, “I said. You dead”?

Who the hell is he?

I had to find out, to complete the circle, to close this open case in Jacobi’s name.