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CHAPTER 48

IT WAS JUST after nine in the morning when Brady and I arrived at the crime scene. I saw a row of fancy Victorian houses in different colors, canting downward at the angle of the street. The block had been cordoned off with crime-scene tape and barriers, a thick blue line of uniformed officers and their squad cars.

I’ve worked hundreds of murder scenes, but this was more security than I’d seen—ever.

Brady stopped his car at the end of the street near the control center, a small trailer filled with communication gear. I pulled up behind him and hopped out.

Brady pointed to one of the houses and said, “I’ll walk through the scene with you, if Hallows says okay. It’s the whitish house, second one in from the end,” he said. “Number 1848. You’ll run point until the scene is released.”

I looked up and down the street and saw two medical examiner’s vans, three CSU vans, and a herd of patrol cars banking the street. And I saw Yuki, standing outside her car on her phone, no doubt getting warrants to search neighboring houses.

I looked hard at number 1848. It looked like a San Francisco dream house. Cream-colored, with gingerbread trim and a front porch with rocking chairs and a couple of bird feeders hanging from porch beams.

“Brady. C’mon, talk to me, will you?”

Brady said again, “It wouldn’t do any good, Boxer. We both need to hear it from Hallows.”

“Wait. Wait. You want me to be primary on two new homicides in addition to Jacobi and Robinson?”

“Two days at the most, then Cappy will take over and you’ll continue heading up the Jacobi and Robinson task force.”

We started walking toward house number 1848. When we reached the cordon, a CSI told us that Hallows was waiting for us inside the front door.

Excellent.

The answer man was on the scene.