After leaving Lori, Cindy drove back to the Chronicle, taking a few chances with the speed limit.
She parked in the garage across the street from the newspaper building, made a dash for the entrance against the light, and took the elevator to the second floor.
Once in the newsroom, she stopped at McGowan’s cube and filled him in on what she’d learned from Lori.
“I saw the coverage. Pretty gory. That poor kid. I’ll bet he was Kreisler’s son. I predict he’ll be in therapy for about forty years.”
“Jeb, have you gotten anywhere with the Baltimore victims?”
“I’ve got one name. Robert Primo was twenty-nine, killed while walking toward a gay club called Occam’s Brain. He was picked off about twenty feet from the entrance, and a bullet fragment cracked the front window. I’ve got pictures.”
He stood beside her and held up his phone, swiped his thumb across the screen, showing her snapshots of Primo. First one, he was with a group of people his age, and they were all laughing. Next there was a shot of Primo’s body lying on the sidewalk outside the club, followed by a close-up of the crack in the front window. The last was a photo of innumerable bottles of Xanax on a tabletop in what looked to be a police station evidence room.
“Tell me this is an exclusive,” Cindy said.
“Sorry, Cindy, as fantastic as I am, I got this off the net. The Baltimore Sun ran it. But I’ll keep trying,” he said. “I have faith.”
Cindy said, “Hand this off to the new intern. I want you on Kreisler. Everything you can find on him, his family, his greatest hits, and if you can get the names of his body men, that would be a plus.
“If this was a Moving Targets hit, where’s the drug connection? This happened in San Francisco. If we work fast, Henry will want this on the front page,” she said.
Cindy went to her office and opened her computer. Her email inbox was full. She scrolled from top to bottom, hoping to see an email from Kill Shot, but he still hadn’t written to her.
She opened a file and called it “Jazz Center Homicides.” Her readers checked her blog several times a day. Accordingly, she started a new thread and planned to update it as news broke. At the same time, it could run as a major story on the Chronicle’s front page.
Cindy was off to a fast start with Lori Hines’s quotes. She gave attribution to Lori and KRON4, and added incoming notes from McGowan on Neil Kreisler’s career.
She asked the question, “If Kreisler’s murder was part of the ‘new war on drugs,’ where are the drugs?”
She let the question hang and then closed the piece with her take on the triple homicide.
She wrote: “In addition to the execution of Neil Kreisler and two men who worked for him, two men were killed in Baltimore before sunup by the same method. A precision kill shot to the head. No sign of a shooter.
“The Chronicle has been running biographies of the previous single-shot victims, and even when the victims were killed in different cities, the times of death were synchronized.
“But today’s crimes differ.
“Item: The men killed in Baltimore were shot at approximately midnight and 3 a.m. The three men killed in San Francisco were executed at some time prior to the morning rush hour.
“Are the ‘new war on drugs’ snipers going rogue? Or has the original pattern changed and is now encompassing a wider area and a looser time frame? If so, what’s the battle plan?
“The San Francisco Chronicle wants to hear from you.”
Cindy entered her blog post, wrote a note to Tyler that she and McGowan were on the story. She copied McGowan, too. She packed up to go and was standing at the elevator when her cell phone rang.
Richie said, “You still love me?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I love you. I want to take you out to dinner tonight. I need your company while we’re both awake.”
Cindy said, “Great idea. Stupendous.”
The elevator doors opened and Cindy left the building, looking forward to seeing Richie over a restaurant dinner. She crossed Mission to the garage, walked down the ramp to her spot, and was unlocking her car when Jeb McGowan appeared.
“Everything okay, Cindy?”
“I’m absolutely fine. What about you?” she said.
She organized her bags and the radio on the passenger seat and closed the door. She was walking around the back of her car to the driver’s side when McGowan blocked her path.
“What’s this?” she said.
McGowan put his hand behind Cindy’s neck and pulled her toward him. Then he kissed her.
Cindy could not believe what had happened, but she had to believe it. McGowan had put his lips on hers and stuck his tongue into her mouth, and now he was grinning at her.
He said, “Wow, I’ve been waiting a long time to do that. Admit it, Cindy. You liked it.”
“Let me be clear. If you ever do that again,” Cindy hissed, “I will have you fired.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said McGowan. “Are you imagining things, Cindy? Because absolutely nothing happened.”