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CHAPTER 7

CINDY THOMAS WAS at her desk at 8 a.m.

The petite, curly-haired blonde wearing a rhinestone-studded hair band and loose-fitting clothes looked nothing like what she was—a tenacious investigative reporter, twice-published bestselling true-crime author, and leading writer on the San Francisco Chronicle ’s crime beat.

Cindy’s coffee mug was beside her right hand, her police scanner crackled on the windowsill, and her laptop was open. She was completely absorbed in her reading: the editorial page of a New York tabloid called the City News Flash . The top letter to the editor took up most of the screen—and it was making her sick.

The headline above the letter read, NEWS FLASH. “ I SAID. YOU DEAD. ”

The text read, “NOT a joke. I just stumbled upon the blood-soaked body of corrupt former San Francisco Homicide cop Warren Jacobi inside Golden Gate Park.”

That sentence raised the hairs on the back of Cindy’s neck. What kind of crap is this? Warren Jacobi was not corrupt and he was not dead. She reread the letter, which claimed to be a first-person account of a passerby who had just come across Jacobi’s dead body, wrote it up, and sent it to the Flash. The second graf described the clothing Jacobi had been wearing as “a bird-watching outfit” and said that he’d been “knifed to death.” It went on to say that a matchbook with the message “I said. You dead” had been left nearby.

The author was “Anonymous,” and nowhere did the writer say that the crime or the victim’s name had been verified by law enforcement. But the last time Cindy spoke to Jacobi, he had told her that he was photographing birds, recording their signature songs. Bird-watching was his new hobby.

Oh, my God . Cindy clapped her hands over her eyes. This could not be true. No newspaper, not even a rag like the Flash, would print anything about a murder without a statement from the police. But there was no such confirmation. Nothing from Chief Clapper or Lieutenant Brady. She’d tried reaching her cop husband, but her call had gone straight to Richie’s voicemail. Had she missed a mention of it on the scanner? No. This crime hadn’t happened. No freaking way.

Cindy dropped her hands from her eyes and printed out the nightmare from the City News Flash letters to the editor.

Beyond her desk was a large window in her wall that looked out onto the newsroom. Her coworkers were all on deadline, working hard and fast on their columns and assignments. There were shouts across the floor to “Look at this,” the voices penetrating the glass.

She took the printout from the printer tray and read it again. The bombshell was time-stamped 9:15 a.m., East Coast time, today, so 6:15 a.m. local. A little less than two hours ago. If true, the writer had emailed his or her findings to that infamous New York City tabloid in the time it took a second hand to sweep around a clock’s dial.

Why had Anonymous sent this letter to the Flash ? To take credit? To win a bet? To get revenge? To get published? One thing was sure: Whoever wrote and sent that smut to the Flash knew something that she did not.