The Devil's Breath

By Richard Hicks

IN THE FOOTHILLS OF SAN DIEGO, A SERIAL ARSONIST AWAITS THE WIND


Eddie DeSilva, San Diegos ex-chief of police, is asked to take on a cold case that turns out to be anything but cold. Its the height of the dangerous fire season and a raging wildfire, believed to have been set by an arsonist, has rained ashes on the city for five days, causing massive evacuations. Three years earlier, in nearby Diablo Gorge, three fire-fighters died when they were encircled by a raging wildfire and the calcified bones of two others were found in the ashes, their deaths the result of an apparent unsolved arson-homicide.

Now an arsonist, who calls himself Moonlighter, is backwriting poems about his feats of fire on internet chat rooms frequented by pyromaniacs. When neither the state fire authorities nor the FBI are willing to join forces to catch the serial arsonist, DeSilva forms his own team that includes his former partner, detective Fisher Wells, psychologist (and currant main-squeeze), Pauline Graham, and Sunny Szabo, a recovering meth addict suffering from agoraphobia. As the Santa Ana windsthe devils breathblow hot out of the mountains, the sociopathic arsonist spins out of control, in this taut police procedural, the third in the Eddie DeSilva mystery series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483620916

Richard Hicks

Richard Hicks is the author of seven novels, including the award-winning Eddie DeSilva mystery, Crossing Borders. A former trial attorney and avid sailor, he resides with his wife in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, just north of San Diego, California. www.richardhicksauthor.com

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An Eddie DeSilva Mystery

By

Richard Hicks

Copyright © 2013 by Richard Hicks.

Cover Photo: Richard Hicks

Author Photo: Tess Kimber

Cover Design: Xlibris

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4836-2090-9

Ebook 978-1-4836-2091-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 05/30/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Author’s Note

For

My three sons—

Greg, Jeff & Stephen

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As usual, I owe thanks to various people. Dave King, whose editorial advice over the years has taught me much of what I now know about writing and whose line-editing has made all my novels better. Joe Kresse who has an eye for detail and catches the proofing errors that I miss. Pat Weil, for helping me with Pauline’s wardrobe. Her daughter, Kit-Victoria Wells, for suggestions on current teenage behavior, a world of which I know nothing. Dr. Debra Burnett, for insight into the ethical issues involved in the practice of modern day psychology. And my wife Phyllis, who has read all of my manuscripts, including this one, multiple times, and always improved the final product. Any mistakes that linger in this novel are mine alone.

Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California

April, 2013

PROLOGUE

It was still technically dark, but against the emerging morning light, white smoke escaped from the eaves of a ranch-style dwelling in the back country of East San Diego County. The house stood alone atop a hill, surrounded by neglected fruit trees and brush-covered slopes that hadn’t seen rain in over a year. A moderate wind was blowing out of the northeast. Perfect fire weather.

Chet Rankle, out of breath and sweating, was helping two firefighters deploy a one and a half inch hose. Lieutenant Frank Guevara, the team leader, was doing most of the work. There were no fire hydrants on the nearby country road, but the house was supposed to have a swimming pool. Two other firefighters had taken a portable pump and disappeared behind the house. As he struggled with the hose, Rankle saw the smoke escaping from the eaves of the house turn dark. Unless they got water on it quickly, they wouldn’t be able to save the house.

But then Rankle’s primary goal wasn’t to save the house.

He was looking for a man—the arsonist he believed had set this fire. Or at least some evidence he’d been here.

The two firefighters emerged from behind the house, their faces grave.

It’s been drained, one man yelled. There’s no water in the goddamn pool.

Guevara grimaced. Get some axes and shovels, whatever we’ve got. We may have to fight this by hand… And leave the engine running.

The three firefighters took off in the direction of the fire truck parked at the top of a long driveway. Guevara put his hand-held radio up to his mouth. IC One, IC One, this is Engine Six Three.

There was a crackle, and then Rankle heard over the speaker: Go ahead, Six Three.

Yeah, Scotty, we’ve got a house with a fully-involved fire at 2068 Pinewood Road, in the Diablo Gorge area—

You’re in Diablo Gorge on Halloween?

Yeah, it’s a bitch. The house is about to go and we’ve got no water. The pool is empty. The house pressure’s too low.

What about the pumper?

We drained it on a brush fire just before we got the call. We were the closest unit.

What have you got?

Axes and armpits. The house is at the end of a long, narrow, dirt road, on top of a hill. We’ve got a crew of four—five if you count the ride-along—but without water, there’s not much we can do here. Can you provide air support?

Negative. CAL FIRE choppers are engaged in another area. We’ve requested air support from the Marines, but nothing so far.

So what do you want us to do?

Clear what you can to keep the fire from spreading, then get the hell out of there.

Copy that. Engine Six Three out. Standing by on One Four. Guevara turned to the crew members who had returned with fire axes, shovels and a chain saw. Okay, we have to clear around the perimeter of the house. Take your hand tools and spread out. I’m going to survey the area. Rankle, you’re with me.

They followed the driveway around to the back of the house. Rankle saw a row of windows and ran up to one of them. He framed his hands around his face and eyes as he attempted to peer inside. He could feel heat coming off the glass. It was dark, so he shone a flashlight into the room and could see that it was a kitchen.

He moved the light around the room.

There was a male body on the floor near the stove.

Probably overtaken by smoke. But then maybe not. It was hard to see, the windows hadn’t been cleaned in a while and were partially blocked by curtains.

Could he safely extract the body from inside the house? He would need an air-pack to protect against the flames and smoke. But if even if he was alive—

Another man appeared in the kitchen. Alive, and looking straight at him.

And then a vertical fireball shot into the dark morning sky, like a volcanic eruption.

The blast knocked Rankle back like a rag-doll, and his head slammed into the concrete driveway. He lay there, half conscious, until he felt a hand pulling at his arm. He looked up and saw Guevara yelling at him, but Rankle could not hear a thing he was saying. He tried to frame a response, but words would not form. All he could do was blink.

And then Chet Rankle’s eyes closed and he slipped into darkness.

*     *     *

Frank Guevara looked at the man at his feet, but only for a second before his training kicked in. He checked Rankle for a pulse. He was unconscious, but alive. Guevara had three other firefighters under his command and he was about to search for them when they all appeared, worried looks on their faces, but apparently unharmed.

You okay, Frank? one of them yelled.

Yeah, but Rankle isn’t. He was trying to look through a window when the house went. He’s alive but out. We’re going to need a gurney. There’s one in the truck.

One of the firefighters took off in the direction of the engine at the front of the house.

Guevara took a minute to take in the surroundings. The wind from the northeast was intensifying, and black smoke was rising into the sky. He could hear something popping and exploding in the distance, and the noise merged with the sound of the crackling flames and the swirling wind. And there was an odor emanating from inside the firestorm that he’d smelled before: burning flesh. The homeowner who’d waited too long to evacuate… Another stupid attempt to hold onto something less valuable than life. He’d seen that before too.

Then the men, standing by Chet Rankle, heard another blast—this one from around in front of the house. Guevara knew immediately what it was.

Their fire engine had gone up.

They all ran to the front of the house, fearful of what they would find. But the other firefighter had not reached the truck when it exploded. She’d been knocked back by the blast, but was okay. The canopy of trees lining the dirt driveway leading up from the road was blazing, turning their escape route into a tunnel of flame. Guevara wondered how the flames from the house had been able to ignite the surrounding area so quickly, but there was no time to consider this question. The wind was blowing the fire through the brush and foliage, eating up fuel as it moved in two directions, threatening to burn everything in its path.

Guevara had a reputation for never giving up a fight. But this time his experience overcame his stubborn persistence. The noise from the out-of-control fire was deafening. It was a scene from hell, and he knew what he had to do.

We’re leaving, he yelled. We’re going to have to rig a gurney to carry Rankle. Use the emergency blankets. He still called them blankets, even though they were now silver protective tarps that could be employed in an extreme emergency to cover their bodies and protect against heat and flames. They used two of them to provide extra strength and carefully lifted Rankle onto the makeshift litter, then each of them grabbed a corner and lifted. Rankle was a big man and his body dead weight, but—except for Guevara—the four firefighters were in their twenties and adrenaline was on their side. And there was no choice.

They would never leave a fellow firefighter to burn to death.

They started back toward the edge of the property, looking for an escape route. But as they moved around the house the wind picked up, and flames leapt across the tops of the fruit, oaks and pinion trees that surrounded the property. From the edge of the two-acre property, Guevara could see down the canyon that formed the sides of the sloping hill. The howling wind was blowing hot embers out in front and, as he watched, the fire jumped the road below, burning a path up both sides of the adjacent canyon.

Then, faster then Guevara could possibly have imagined, their tiny outpost was encircled by a firestorm of immense intensity. Even though they wore insulated protective clothing, it felt as though they were standing next to an open blast furnace.

Guevara quickly called out on his hand-held. "May Day, May Day, May Day. This is Engine Six Three. There are five of us at 2068 Pinewood Road. We need air support immediately."

He listened for a response, and he thought he heard one, but the transmission was breaking up. The other three crew members stood by, watching and trying to hear what was happening.

I think someone heard me. But I don’t know what they’re saying… Let’s get out of here.

Guevara moved further around the north side of the house, where he remembered the hillside led upward and away from the house. Heading for the higher ground was his only option at this point. The steep hillside, covered with brush and chaparral, should have been cleared months before the fire season began. Now it only served as a highway for the fire.

Shit, Guevara said. Dumb-fucking homeowners.

He led the group—awkwardly carrying the unconscious Chet Rankle in their improvised litter—further along the lot, parallel to the house, looking for some open terrain they could follow to the top of the hill, and perhaps to safety. He picked a trail upward, taking the best of a number of bad choices, but the flames were now moving faster then they could move uphill with Rankle in tow. And the smoke was making it difficult to see where they were, much less where they were going.

Guevara forged ahead, knowing that the others were trusting that his experience or instinct would get them to the top of the hill. They were all having trouble breathing and hunched over in an effort to get below the carpet of smoke.

In what seemed like a lifetime, but in reality was only ten minutes, they reached the top of an incline and found themselves on a granite outcropping. They put Rankle down gently, as they tried to catch their breath in the smoke.

And then the wind shifted.

In an instant, Guevara and the crew from Engine 63 were surrounded by wind-whipped flames converging on their rocky shelf—caught in the vortex of a fire fueled by bone-dry trees and chaparral, and stoked by the intensifying Santa Ana wind.

Guevara made a snap decision and activated the automatic distress signal he carried with him.

Blankets! His voice boomed over the roar of the fire. Deploy the blankets.

Two of the emergency fire-protective silver tarps were already being used to carry Rankle, and they took one away from him and enclosed him, face down, in the remaining one. Guevara and another firefighter pulled out their own protective tarps and shook them out. They all knew the drill from their training. Drop to the ground and enclose yourself, face down, inside the insulated silver dome and hope that the fire passes quickly over you. It had saved lives before, and this was exactly the situation the tarps were designed for.

Except that Rankle—who was not a regular member of the crew—was not carrying the standard equipment. He hadn’t brought a protective tarp, which meant they had four tarps for five people.

Rankle and I can share one, Guevara yelled. He reached out to hand his own tarp to one of the other firefighters. But when the firefighter grabbed for it the wind caught it, and it blew away like a wildly-flapping sail. Surprised, the firefighter immediately gave chase, but the tarp was airborne, dancing like a silver dervish, in swirling winds. He lunged for it, grabbed a corner, and wrestled it to the ground.

Guevara, watching helplessly, felt the heat of the flames on his face which was being showered with burning embers. The tarps would only protect one person; there was no way he could share a tarp with Rankle. He beat at his body and face, trying to shake the embers away. He’d always assumed he could outfight or outsmart any fire. But now, as he felt his face burning from the intense heat, his eyelids being singed, he knew this had just been superstition, a kind of magical thinking.

And then he heard the WHOP, WHOP, WHOP.

He looked up, but the smoke was so dense he could barely see the outline of the chopper.

Semper fi, he thought.

The next thing Guevara knew a wall of water had flattened him, like a small sailboat caught by a rogue wave.

For some reason, as he lay on top of Rankle’s tarp-enshrouded body, and felt himself slipping in and out of consciousness, Guevara remembered what his grandfather had called them… the Santa Ana winds.

El aliento del diablo. The devil’s breath.

CHAPTER ONE

(Three Years Later)

Smoke.

Eddie DeSilva had watched it spread across the eastern skyline for the last six hours. It started as an isolated plume rising straight up from the horizon. Then, as the fire jumped from one ridge to the next, the cloud of smoke stretched out across the skyline, like an oil slick in the ocean, until the edges were no longer defined.

The offshore wind powering Make My Day had also grown in intensity. What began as a leisurely sail home from Dana Point, where they’d anchored for the night, was now a challenge in seamanship. He’d shortened sail and was concentrating on keeping the 36-foot Island Packet from plowing into the troughs formed by the rising swells.

He looked over at his passenger to see if her color had changed. She’d been quiet for longer than usual. How you doing, Pauline?

I’m okay as long as I keep looking at the horizon. But I’m worried about the fire.

It looks like a wildfire. I doubt it’s reached La Jolla.

It’s not my house I’m worried about.

She was right. A fire of this magnitude, spread by the Santa Ana winds, could destroy entire neighborhoods. As San Diego’s former chief of police, he knew what a fire this size meant to the first responders. Firefighters, of course. But also helicopter pilots, paramedics and hospital emergency rooms. The sheriff and police would help with traffic control, maintain the peace and protect the property of those forced to leave their homes or businesses. As a former cop he had a special disdain for the creeps who took advantage of other people’s misfortune, but he knew they were out there. They always were.

Look, Pauline said. Helicopters. DeSilva saw them off the port side, heading south, probably coming from Camp Pendleton on their way to help with the fire. They had Bambi Buckets hanging from their bellies on long, heavy-cable umbilicals. Normally, at this distance, he could hear the familiar whop, whop, whop of their blades, like a scene from Apocalypse Now. But today they moved across the sky in apparent silence, engulfed by the howl of the Santa Ana winds.

A half-hour later they’d sailed past the kelp beds off Point Loma, and he steered the boat between the red and green channel markers that designated the entrance to San Diego harbor. To the north, on top of the promontory, stood the old round-turreted San Diego lighthouse—now a museum—that had served as a beacon for ships entering the harbor in the eighteen-hundreds. Some of his own relatives had been on those ships—Portuguese fishermen who’d immigrated to San Diego near the turn of the twentieth century and settled on Point Loma where DeSilva had grown up. He still lived there, up the hill from the house he’d grown up in, just minutes from the San Diego Yacht Club where he was headed now.

The house, the boat, and the expensive cars he’d driven over the years, had all been the subject of a standing joke at the police department. Dirty cop. On the take. He’d heard it all. But they all knew the truth: he’d married well. He would never have been able to buy the boat or the house—not even on the top cop’s salary—if it hadn’t been for his wife Vivian’s family trust.

Just to the south-east of the jetty was the quiet stretch of the Pacific where he’d spread Vivian’s ashes two years ago this month. He listened for her voice as the boat moved down the channel, but all he heard was the wind. She wasn’t talking to him today. In fact, he hadn’t heard from her in some time. And he had mixed feelings about that. In the early months after she died she’d spoken to him frequently, driving him crazy to the point that he stopped sleeping in his house. But now that she’d stopped, he found he actually missed their conversations. Even if, according to Pauline, his mind was just making them up. As a trained psychologist, she didn’t believe in ghosts, doppelgangers or apparitions. It’s a conversation you’re having in your head, Eddie, she’d said. "You’re not sailing The Flying Dutchman."

Okay, but then he wondered: Had Vivian stopped talking to him because of Pauline? Their relationship, which had started out as purely professional—she’d been hired by the department to counsel him after he’d shot and killed a suspect—had turned, well… more personal. That’s for damn sure. Thinking of their night together off the boat brought a smile to his face. People have romantic notions about boats that don’t necessarily correspond to reality. For the most part, small sailboats like his offered very limited sleeping accommodations, and the older you got the more you appreciated a king-sized bed in a room where you could stand up without hitting your head on the ceiling. Depending on what use you intended to make of the bed, the higher ceiling could be very important. That’s why he’d opted to surprise her last night by reserving a room at the Blue Lantern Inn, an elegant boutique hotel on a cliff directly above the Dana Point Yacht Harbor. He’d told her he was giving himself a birthday present. There was a Jacuzzi in the room and they served a sumptuous breakfast buffet. There’d been a couple of times last night when—

Penny for you thoughts?

Docking.

Docking?

Right. We need to get ready. Fenders down. Dock lines in place.

What about the sails?

Time to bring them down… here, you take the helm, and I’ll handle the sails.

Okay.

As he turned the boat into the wind, she got up from the cockpit seat and maneuvered behind the wheel. As he moved forward to furl in the jib, she said, But I don’t think I got my penny’s worth. You were smiling about something, and I don’t think it was docking.

Well, Pauline, you know docking is the act of carefully putting a boat into a slip. Think of it as a metaphor.

She blushed, then threw a cockpit cushion at him.

*     *     *

The truth was that having sex with Eddie DeSilva was pretty much all Pauline could think about these days. It had started four months ago—on this very boat—when they’d both had too much wine and decided to top off the evening with cognac, and then, fully lubricated, they’d taken the plunge. He’d docked the boat, so to speak, and she’d been a willing—okay, eager—participant. It had been a long time coming, and neither of them, she found out later, had been to the wellspring for a long time. In DeSilva’s case, three years, since he and his wife Vivian, who died of cancer two years ago, hadn’t had sex in the year before her death.

Before she met DeSilva, Pauline had been pursuing a variety of activities, none of which had led to any serious… docking. She’d been focused on her practice as a psychologist—she had an office in La Jolla—her involvement with a New Age church, her service on the board of directors of a shelter for battered women, her weekly yoga classes, and studying and teaching the Enneagram, a psychological typing system.

Surely, somewhere in that mix, there’d been room for dating, if not romance. Well, she’d had a few dates, but for whatever reason the romance hadn’t happened. Maybe it was her expectations. She liked feeling special. When DeSilva had shown up in her life sixteen months ago he had made her feel special. He’d taken her sailing on Flag Day, then fixed her dinner back at the yacht club. The wine had flowed freely, loosening them both up, and when he brought out the cognac, there wasn’t any doubt where they were headed.

He’d been a client once, and not a willing one. He’d been forced to meet with her—standard procedure where an officer was involved in a shooting. But the fact that the officer was also the chief of police was anything but usual. From day one he insisted he had no unresolved issues. Which she now thought was probably true… at least about the shooting. But oh, did he have issues! His wife had died at a young age—sixty certainly seemed young to Pauline who was almost fifty-seven—and he’d been forced to resign from a job he loved and was very good at. He’d been a cop for thirty-one years and San Diego’s chief of police for seven years before his fall from grace.

And, if that wasn’t enough, when his dead wife started talking to him, he’d taken to alternately sleeping in his office, boat, or at his eighty-four-year-old mother’s house just ten minutes from his home on Point Loma.

His mother’s house!

So, yeah, the guy had issues.

Thinking back, she realized she’d probably been mesmerized by his charisma—and, okay, his sexuality—from the first time he came to her La Jolla office to talk about why he didn’t need to talk about the shooting. He was charming as hell. No wonder she hadn’t been much help to him as a psychologist.

The truth was she didn’t know where their relationship was going, and that bothered her. She wanted to know him on more then a Biblical level. What he thought about, well… just about everything. And above all she wanted to feel she was special to him for more reasons then her willingness to have sex. Although that probably wasn’t going to change. Not as long as she was feeling like a teenager in love. She was already thinking about how to get him back to her place tonight. She didn’t think candy corn or her traditional witch’s costume would do the trick. For the kind of birthday present she had in mind, she needed something with a short skirt and fishnet stockings.

Okay, we’re ready now. He’d brought the sails down and the fenders and lines were deployed.

I’m ready to dock, if you are Captain, she said, offering him just the hint of smile.

CHAPTER TWO

Ashes.

For five days they’d spread out across the county and south into Mexico, covering windshields and patios and backyard barbecues. The ash cloud had rolled in like a fog, blocking out the sunlight, casting a larger and larger shadow as it moved from the foothills to the edge of the Pacific and beyond. DeSilva’s gardner had hosed down the hard surfaces around his house, but with every gust of wind the ash continued to fall from his roof, leaving a chalky-white coat, like a thin layer of dirty, unmelted snowflakes, wherever it landed.

He wasn’t alone. The entire county was in a cleanup mode. And the ashes were the easy part. For some, whose homes had been burned to the ground, all they could do was sift through the rubble, hoping to salvage some small objects of sentimental value. Many of the victims—in particular those who could not return to their homes—lost animals. And, of course, there was the human toll: six known dead, and dozens more hospitalized with burns or suffering from smoke inhalation.

San Diego was not a place that came to mind when you thought of natural disasters. No one geared up for the annual arrival of hurricanes, tornados, blizzards or blistering heat waves. The city that proudly called itself America’s Finest City had little in the way of rain, and its year-round temperature was so mild it was a favorite destination for tourists and conventioneers. And while the event most feared by visitors to California was getting caught in an earthquake, it was wildfires that historically caused the most damage in the Golden State. They arrived every year, usually in the fall when the winds came out of the mountains, destroying homes, orchards, nature preserves, and vast areas of forest and the dry, chaparral-covered backcountry.

And every now and then—like the last five days in San Diego County—they reached into the suburbs, destroying houses and the dreams of the families who owned them. Tens of thousands had been put on an evacuation alert, and there were still over fifteen-hundred residents in the east county camping out in high school gymnasiums, church recreation rooms, or with friends and relatives.

DeSilva, like the rest of the citizenry, had been mesmerized by the media coverage of a county under siege. He’d gone back to the yacht club this morning to hose down the deck of his boat. It needed to be done, but it was also an excuse—as if he needed one—to stop for huevos rancheros at the Red Sails Inn on Shelter Island. He was sitting at a table on the outdoor patio overlooking the marina, drinking his second cup of coffee and reading the Union Tribune, when his cellphone rang. Should he answer it? People who talked on cellphones in public places annoyed the hell out of him.

But the call was from his boss. You didn’t ignore a call from your boss.

Good morning, Chief, he said.

Eddie, I need to see you. Her voice sounded stressed, but that was not unusual these days. Geena Bonzaro, who’d taken over his job as chief of police, used to be known for her sense of humor rather than her sense of urgency. He took some satisfaction in knowing that she could now appreciate the stresses he’d been under when he was her boss. What goes around—

Eddie, are you there?

"Yeah, sorry. What’s up?’

Like I said, I need to see you. When can you come in?

Okay, she wanted to see him and she didn’t want to tell him what it was about. Well, she was the one with the permanent parking space at police headquarters. He only parked in it these days when he wanted to piss her off.

Okay, Geena, I can be at your office in a half-hour, in my Dockers. Or in an hour, if you want me to clean up.

Come as you are, Eddie. You’re not going to want to wear good clothes for this job.

*     *     *

When she hung up he considered going home for a quick change into slacks and a blazer. But it sounded like she had some kind of dirty job in mind. And what the hell, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d walked into the San Diego Police Department headquarters in chinos and a T-shirt in the middle of the week. And since she was obviously in a hurry, he cranked up his Acura SUV’s V-6 engine to eighty-five mph on Harbor