Jacobi buzzed down the window, gave the doctor a bored look.

“Hang on, Inspector. I’ll be right back,” Garza told him; then he crossed the street over the cable car tracks and entered the beige stucco building with the red neon sign overhead, the Buena Vista.

Jacobi could see Garza through the plate-glass windows, giving an order to the counterman.

“What was that?” Conklin asked, incredulous. “He didn’t just make us, he’s calling us stupid. This is pretty bad.”

Jacobi felt a headache coming on. Garza getting over on them hadn’t been in the plan. What to say to the kid?

“Well, it’s a kick in the teeth, Richie,” he said. “But it’s early in the game.”

Jacobi stared grimly out the car window as Garza left the café, waited for the light, then crossed the street, coming up to the squad car. He knocked on the window again, handed Jacobi two coffee containers in a cardboard holder.

“It’s black and strong,” Garza said. “You’re in for a long night.”

“Thank you. Very considerate,” Jacobi said. “I hope to return the favor sometime soon.”

Jacobi watched Garza get back into his Mercedes, signal as he pulled back out into traffic. Jacobi called Dispatch, saying, “We need a car to pick up a surveillance. Suspect’s going south on Hyde, obeying all the traffic signals.”

Jacobi hung the mike back in its cradle.

“He’ll make a mistake,” he said to Conklin with more conviction than he felt. “These smartass pricks almost always do.”

Jacobi opened one of the coffee containers, shook in a packet of sugar, and stirred. He took a cautious sip.

Chapter 101

Chapter 101

IT WAS QUARTER TO 9:00 in the seamless, bright night of the hospital corridors. Garza had left his office many hours before, waving to me as though we were old friends, smirking as he slithered out through the pneumatic doors to the street. He’s having fun with this, isn’t he?

As I haunted the halls between the ER and the ICU, I’d expanded my view.

Maybe Garza wasn’t a killer.

Maybe he just smelled like one.

But if it wasn’t Garza, who could it be?

I’d been stalking this same path for so many days, I’d blown my own cover.

I sought fresh ground, took the stairs up to the third-floor oncology ward.

I’d just stepped out of the stairwell when I saw something that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck bristle.

A white male, about thirty, five eleven, 165 pounds, sandy hair under a blue baseball cap, a gray hoody, and black cargo pants, was talking to a weathered-looking white nurse in the hallway.

The man’s posture felt wrong—the furtiveness as he exchanged conspiratorial looks with the nurse, an exchange that jarred me, my instincts saying, this is wrong.