“What can I do for you?”

“We’ve got a body down here. Female, early thirties. She didn’t have a purse or cell phone or any ID. The vehicle she was found in is registered in Washington to Charity Spritz, address in Riggs Crossing.”

He went cold inside. “You sure?”

“We pulled up Ms. Spritz’s driver’s license, and it’s obvious that she’s the victim. Her address is Riggs Crossing, and after a little digging, we found out she’s a reporter. She had your name and number written on the inside of some papers I found in the van, so I thought I’d call you.”

“We’ve met. Most recently, she was all over a missing woman case we’ve got going.” Briefly, he filled in Tanaka about Megan Travers’s disappearance.

“Why do you think she was in San Francisco?”

“No idea,” he said, then corrected himself. “There’s a loose connection. James Cahill, the boyfriend I told you about, his family hails from down there.”

Tanaka knew all about the Cahills; her ex-partner, a retired cop by the name of Anthony Paterno, had dealt with a couple of bizarre cases involving members of James’s family.

“So what happened?” Rivers asked, but he already knew, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.

“Not sure. She was registered in a motel in Oakland and had been there as recently as two days ago, according to a clerk at the motel who had seen her going into her room. Her body was found at the airport in the 2006 Hyundai minivan that was registered to her. It’s a little odd; she had surveillance equipment in the vehicle, and we’re checking that out too. Anyway, her body could have been left for days or weeks before she was found, but whoever drove the van there used her credit card to prepay for the space, then did a lousy parking job, boxed someone in, and that someone complained. Airport security checked it out, saw the body, and called nine-one-one.

“Looks like she was killed somewhere else—not enough blood in the van, and we’re working all that out, piecing it together. This much is certain: Ms. Spritz didn’t drive herself to the airport, and she damned well didn’t die of natural causes. Definitely homicide. She was attacked, has all kinds of defensive wounds. We’ve bagged her hands, hoping to get some scrapings, hopefully DNA from beneath her nails, trace or fingerprints or DNA in the van, but it’s still early on. We’ll know a lot more in a day or two. The only thing we’re sure of is that, for whatever reason, random or targeted, she was murdered.”

* * *

It was now or never.