The boat was fast, and the alibis could have been manufactured, but I strained to find a reason why Harry Chandler would come back to San Francisco during his cruise, dig up a couple of skulls, and then leave them with a cryptic message in his backyard.

It would be crazy, and I didn’t see any crazy in Harry Chandler.

I complimented the couple on the boat, and before the conversation could devolve into chitchat, I said that I’d be going and gave Chandler my card.

Chandler said, “I’ll walk you out.”

I started down the gangway and this time Chandler’s hand on my back was firmer, more forceful. I stepped away and turned to give Chandler a questioning look.

“You’re like a butterfly,” Harry Chandler told me, fixing his gray searchlight eyes on mine, “with steel wings.”

I was taken aback for three or four reasons I could have spat out right away. Had Harry Chandler’s crazy just surfaced?

What had Nigel Worley told me?

Harry Chandler would like you.

I said, “I hope you’re not coming on to me, Mr. Chandler. Because when a suspect in a murder investigation hits on a cop, you know what I think? He’s desperate. And he’s trying to hide something.”

Chandler said, “You actually think of me as a suspect, Sergeant?”

“You haven’t been excluded.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

I said sharply, “Stay anchored. If I were you, I wouldn’t draw attention to myself by leaving town.”

Chapter 24

JASON BLAYNEY MOVED PURPOSEFULLY through the large open space with the supersize bar and the high ceiling, the main room of the yacht club.

The reporter was twenty-seven years old, an average-to-nice-looking guy, and, along with his more intellectual talents, he had a trick left arm. When he was a kid, he had learned how to pop his shoulder so that it looked deformed, and this little sleight of arm gave him an edge in certain situations.

Right now, for instance, the arm made the security guy decide not to confront him. Blayney said, “How ya doing? I’m with the O’Briens. Mind if I use the bathroom?”

Guard said, “Sure,” and pointed the way.

Blayney went to the men’s room, washed his hands, finger-combed his hair, and straightened the camera hanging from his neck.

Then he left the club through the back door that opened onto the wide deck fronting the marina. He was imagining the smoking interview he was about to have with Harry Chandler.

Blayney had grown up in Chicago, and after graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, he had gotten off to a fast start at the LA bureau of the New York Times. Six months ago, he got the offer from the San Francisco Post to aggressively report on crime, and he’d moved up the coast and into a job that fit him like the cover of darkness.

Now he had a prominent platform to do whatever it took to crush the Chronicle’s dominance in crime reportage and establish himself as a player on the national stage.