“This is all hers,” he said, pointing to a pile of humble clothes and toiletries on the bench. The most lethal object in the pile was a Danielle Steel paperback. I emptied St. Germaine’s handbag, finding a worn wallet, a plastic pouch of cosmetics, a purple comb, an overdue phone bill, and a soft wool doll the size of my thumb.

The doll was crudely made of black yarn and colored plastic beads.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s for good luck, only.”

I sighed, dropped the doll back into St. Germaine’s handbag. “Ready to go, Ms. St. Germaine?” I said.

“I’m going home?”

As Jacobi and I drove to the Hall with St. Germaine in the backseat of the car, I started thinking ahead to the next forty-eight hours, wondering what Claire’s autopsy of young Jamie Sweet would show, hoping the killer had made a mistake, wondering if St. Germaine had a connection to Dennis Garza.

Most of all, I was hoping for a confession.

Hot damn. We’d finally gotten a break.

We had a suspect in custody.

Chapter 120

Chapter 120

CINDY’S SENSATIONAL FRONT-PAGE story about the MYSTERIOUS MARKERS OF DEATH had already hit the newsstands by the time we escorted Marie St. Germaine through the front doors of the Hall of Justice.

The chief had something to feed to the press, but as the day wore on, I started to feel the kind of nausea that comes from going around in circles. Jacobi and I had been in the box with Marie St. Germaine for four hours. The room behind the mirrored glass was packed to the walls with homicide inspectors as well as the chief and the DA.

For at least an hour, the mayor of San Francisco was back there, too.

St. Germaine told us she’d been born in Haiti, that she wasn’t a U.S. citizen, but that she’d lived in the United States for nearly twenty years.

Beyond that, she had little to say. Hunched over in her chair, she cried repeatedly, “I didn’t kill anyone. I did nothing wrong. I am a good person.”

“Stop that damned crying,” Jacobi said, pounding the table with his fist. “Explain these fricking death buttons so that I understand you. Or I swear to God, INS will have you in shackles on a flight to Port-au-Prince by the end of the day.” That certainly wasn’t the case, but I let Warren do the interview his way.

St. Germaine’s shoulders started to shake. She covered her face with her hands and blubbered, “I don’t want to talk anymore. You won’t believe whatever I say.”

If her next words were “I want a lawyer,” we were screwed.

“Okay, okay, Marie,” I said. “Inspector Jacobi didn’t mean to scare you. We just need to get at the truth. You understand that? Just tell us what you know.”