“Go on,” I said.
“I held out my ticket to the driver. She was looking at me—and that’s when I heard a cracking sound. A shot. I saw the blood come from her forehead. I was staring at that hole in her head and her brown eyes were locked on mine. Locked.
“This was something out of this world, Inspectors. To see someone’s eyes just full of life—and then go utterly blank. I couldn’t have made this up. It has to be a premonition. It has to be foresight. I’m telling you, I’ve never had dreams like these.”
“So she was shot dead,” Conklin said. “You’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“What did the shooter look like?” I asked.
“People panicked,” said the professor. “The driver dropped and people jumped back, screaming. The streetcar was stopped and everyone rushed out onto Market.”
“Professor Judd,” I said. “Be there now. Look into the corners of your mind. What did the shooter look like? Male? Female? Old, young? You should have seen someone if you were there.”
“I never saw the person with the gun. I woke up. I was shocked to find myself in my own bed. I thought I had gone to sleep in my chair.”
“And when is this shooting supposed to happen? Today? Tomorrow? This week?”
“I don’t know,” said Professor Judd.
I stepped into the hallway with Conklin and the two of us talked about the professor’s dream. Then I went into the standing-room-only observation room and asked Inspector Paul Chi to join us outside.
Chi is not only smarter than all of us put together but he can also slip almost unseen into a crowd, observe minute details of behavior, put two and two together, and come up with forty-four.
“What do you make of Professor Judd?” I asked him.
“He’s enjoying this too much,” Chi said. “Someone should shadow him. I should go to the SFMTA, see if I can pull up the name and schedule of a thin, blond-haired conductor on the F line. And then I should be her bodyguard.”
“Do it,” I said.
BOOK III
103 IN THE SHADE
Chapter 48
I’VE BEEN MERE yards from the epicenter of a bus bomb. I’ve been a target in a shooting gallery in the ‘hood, and I’ve taken bullets and almost died.
But nothing was as scary or as emotionally devastating as my tiny daughter having a fever of 103.
The second I got home and read the thermometer, I called Julie’s pediatrician and insisted that she be paged, because I wasn’t getting off the phone until I spoke with her.
Dr. Gordon was very patient. She said that Julie’s fever meant that she was fighting an infection—that she could have an earache, for instance—and to give her a lukewarm bath followed by liquid Tylenol every four hours.
I made an appointment to bring Julie in to see the doctor in the morning. Then I sat in the bathtub with my baby in my lap. I desperately wanted to bathe away her fever without letting her know that I was scared out of my freaking mind.
Joe sat on the toilet seat, singing “Oh! Susanna” in the soft, slow way James Taylor recorded it. His singing was like a lullaby, but it didn’t soothe the baby.
She cried. She was limp. I wanted to take her to the hospital right then, but Joe said no.
“It’s too risky. She could pick up a worse infection in the hospital,” he said. “Let’s do what Dr. Gordon said.”
I sponged Julie down with the tepid water and when we were both wrinkled, Joe helped us out of the bath and we took her with us into bed.
Her temperature had dropped to 102. It was a change in the right direction, but still outside my comfort zone. I called Dr. Gordon again and she phoned back at just before ten that night.
“It’s probably nothing. Try not to worry,” she said.