Mike was lying as still as he could, his head slightly raised and his heart pounding as he strained to hear anything else that would confirm he had an unexpected visitor. It was close to a minute before he allowed himself to relax, having half convinced himself that the thump had probably come from outside, most likely from the street behind the house. Sometimes a car door being slammed could be heard through even a closed window on a quiet night, he told himself as he allowed his head to fall back onto the pillow once again.
But he continued to stare up at the ceiling he really couldn't see, still listening intently, the cop part of him not quite buying the car door hypothesis. It was another sound that caught his attention once more, revving his heart up again. This time it was the distinct sibilant sound of a whisper.
He froze and, unable to stop himself, swallowed heavily. A whisper meant that whoever was in his house wasn't alone, so that ruled out Steve coming back early or Jeannie making an unannounced and expected return home, which he knew she wouldn't do under the present circumstances.
So that meant there were strangers in his house.
He lay unmoving for several long beats, trying to figure out who it could be, and weighing his options. He discarded the notion that it was Nicole Sanderson come back to finish him off; that just didn't make any sense. If she had wanted to kill him, she could have do so in the garage; what would be the point now, especially as she was succeeding in ruining Steve's life already. Besides, as far as he knew, she always worked alone.
Taking another deep but silent breath, he closed his eyes. His money was now on someone triggered by the article in that trashy tabloid Steve had shown him. Granted, that was a week ago; maybe it had taken someone that long to figure out which Potrero Hill house belonged to Steve's partner and, if they had been watching for any period of time, would've seen Steve leave just after dinner and not return. Whether or not they knew the house was still occupied was something he couldn't be sure of, but the fact that they were whispering told him that they did.
In the dark, he looked over at the bedroom door. He had left it open, and as he stared into the gloom, the staircase out of sight at this angle, he thought he saw the very brief reflection of a flashlight beam bouncing off a wall.
His eyes travelled in the direction of the bedtable, where he knew the phone was sitting. He could make a call, he thought, request back-up then just wait for it to arrive, hoping the intruders didn't come up the stairs before it did. But the sound of the rotary dial would echo out into the hallway. And closing the bedroom door was out of the question; it had a distinctive squeak when he closed it, no matter how slowly, a squeak he kept threatening to spray into submission with WD-40 if he ever remembered to do it.
But he couldn't just lie there, he thought. There were strangers in his house, uninvited people who most likely did not have his welfare in mind, and he was damned if he was just going to keep quiet and hope they stayed on the first floor.
He closed his eyes and took as deep a breath as he could without pain then pushed the blankets away and, as slowly as he could, sat up. Wincing, he pushed himself slowly to his feet then, deciding he could move more soundlessly barefoot, started towards the door, his head cocked, listening for any sound that would tell him where they were on the first floor.
He stepped into the hallway, trying to slow the triphammer that had become his heart, and moved quietly to the top of the stairs. He gritted his teeth in frustration; his .38 was in the drawer of the table near the front door. But he knew every inch of this house he had lived in for so many years; he knew exactly how many steps it would take to get from the bottom of the staircase to the table. If whoever was in his house was in the kitchen or even on the far side of the living room, he had a good chance of getting to the table before they even knew he was there.
Moving ever so slowly, he started down the carpeted stairs.
# # # # #
"Well, she had a lot to do," Healey offered as they all stood near the LTD, now parked in front of the garage after the recreated phone call to Mike. From what we could figure out, she had to remove the chair from the pallets, put the pallets back where she found them, then take the chair apart and start the fire in the barrel behind the building. And she had to pull the block-ad-tackle back up."
"Yeah, and I'm thinking she must've stayed a bit with that fire to make sure it did what she wanted it to do, which was to burn the chair down to ash, just leaving the hardware… hardware that could've been in that barrel for weeks… years even," Haseejian chipped in.
"She had to plant the knife too, if she hadn't done it already," Steve offered and the others nodded. A brief silence fell over the group then he continued, giving voice to what they all had been thinking. "She could leave Mike alive… he hadn't seen her and wouldn't recognize her. But Linda was another story." He paused and took a deep breath. "Linda had to die…. If she wasn't dead already. I think…" He stopped and closed his eyes. "I think that's when Nicole killed her."
Healey and Budzinski looked down, the SFPD detective closing his eyes and biting his upper lip. Pollard stared at his client a sad nod. Haseejian took a step closer to the young inspector and threw his arm around Steve's shoulders in a brief hug that Mike would've been proud of before backing away to give the young man some much needed space.
Finally Pollard broke the silence. "So, ah, so how long do you think she left you alone in the car?"
Steve shrugged. "I'm not really sure. It felt like forever, because I knew what was going on in there, but at a guess I would put it between a half hour to forty-five minutes."
Nodding slowly, Pollard looked at the others. "Let's take forty just to be on the safe side and then we'll head out. How does that sound?"
The others nodded.
"Listen, ah," Healey said brightly, trying to lighten the mood. "Norm and I know this great little all-night diner just a few blocks from here. Why don't the two of us head over there and get us all some coffees and maybe a couple of sinkers?"
# # # # #
He stopped half-way down the stairs to listen. He could hear the slightest of sounds, like cloth against cloth, coming from the kitchen but nothing else. If he wasn't aware that there was at least one person in his house, he wouldn't have noticed it at all. But to his trained ear it was like Niagara Falls.
The sound abated and he froze, holding his breath, not moving a muscle. When the faint sound started up again, he took another step. Eventually he made it to the bottom then ever so slowly stepped onto the hardwood floor, silently wishing he had thought to put socks on so his footfalls would be even quieter.
His head slightly cocked in the direction of the kitchen door, where he could see a very dim beam of light bouncing off the tiled floor, he moved achingly slowly towards the small table near the front door.
He reached out and touched the table top then found the two small knobs for the long, shallow drawer underneath. Pulling slowly and evenly, he eased the drawer out in relieved silence.
He was just reaching for the .38 when he heard a noise from the closet behind him.
# # # # #
The sergeants had made it back to the garage in less than fifteen minutes. The coffee, better than the others had anticipated, was most welcome. And though Steve declined the offer of a donut, he appreciated the effort the others were taking to make this ordeal as easy for him as possible.
But, as yet, there had been no 'Eureka' moment, nothing that had caught anyone's attention as a flaw in Nicole Sanderson's seemingly perfectly executed plan. Each one of them could feel the pall of futility that was slowly beginning to fill the atmosphere around them.
Pollard looked at his watch. "Well, we better hit the road. We have to stop at the phone booth, right? Charlie, you have the transcript of that phone call?"
"The 'I'm a jogger' speech?" Budzinski snorted. "Yeah, I got it." He patted the breast pocket of his jacket.
"Good."
"Our car is around back," Healey said, gesturing toward the garage as Haseejian took the empty coffee cups and napkins from the others and stuffed them back in the paper bag. "Norm and I'll get it and meet you at the phone booth."
"Sounds good," Pollard said as he stepped to the passenger side back door of the LTD and opened it. With a heavy sigh, Steve crawled into the back seat and laid down as Budzinski got in behind the wheel. Pollard closed the back door then got in the front.
As Budzinski turned the key, he glanced into the back seat. "Radio on or off?"
"Ah," Steve hesitated, "ah, I don't remember hearing it so she must've turned it off."
After snapping the radio off, the investigator shifted into Drive, swung the car around and headed towards the phone booth again. They had just pulled to a stop in front of the booth and Budzinski was starting to get out when the hunter green Galaxie shot out from behind the garage and barrelled towards them, sliding to a stop in the loose gravel. Healey was halfway out before the car came to a standstill.
"Martin!" he raised his voice, beckoning urgently to the attorney.
Steve, wondering like the others what the hell was going on, had sat up and he exchanged a worried glance with Pollard before the lawyer got out of the car and hurried over to the Galaxie. Budzinski, who had been halfway to the phone booth, wandered back towards the LTD, sharing a quick frown with Steve through the open back door window as they both watched Pollard huddling with the two sergeants.
After about a minute, Pollard put his hands on his hips and dropped his head. They could see him take a deep breath then look up at the cops and nod.
Healey and Haseejian broke away and jogged over to the LTD. Healey nodded towards the backseat. "Steve, we need you to come with us."
Frowning, now more worried than ever, Steve fumbled for the door handle. "What's going on?" he asked as he got out.
Healey shot a look at Haseejian before he inhaled deeply. "There's, ah, there's been a break-in at Mike's house. He's been taken to the hospital."
