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Prologue INSPECTOR LINDSAY BOXER
IT IS AN UNUSUALLY WARM NIGHT in July, but I’m shivering badly as I stand on the substantial gray stone terrace outside my apartment. I’m looking out over glorious San Francisco and I have my service revolver pressed against the side of my temple. “Goddamn you, God!” I whisper. Quite a sentiment, but appropriate and just, I think. I hear Sweet Martha whimpering. I turn and see she is watching me through the glass doors that lead to the terrace.
PHILLIP CAMPBELL had imagined this moment, this exquisite scene, so many times. He knew it would be the groom who opened the door. He stepped into the room.
“Negli’s aplastic anemia. It’s rare. Basically, the body no longer manufactures red blood cells.”
There comes a point in everybody’s life
when you realize the stakes have suddenly changed. The carefree ride of your life slams into a stone wall; all those years of merely bouncing along, life taking you where you want to go, abruptly end.
The twelve of us who covered homicide for the entire city shared a twenty-by-thirty squad room lit by harsh fluorescent lights. My desk was choice—by the window, “cheerily” overlooking the entrance ramp to the freeway.
It was always covered with folders, stacks of photos, department releases. The one really personal item on it was a Plexiglas cube my first partner had given me. It was inscribed with the words You can’t tell which way the train went by looking at the tracks.
