I laughed, introduced McCorkle to Conklin, and they gripped paws like long-lost brothers of the shamrock, and pretty soon we were telling St. Jude about the case of the deceased millionaires, an investigation that was driving us crazy.
McCorkle said, “That’s why I’m here, girl- o. When I saw Sara Needleman on the tube this morning, I added it to the Baileys — and guess what, Boxer?
“It rang a bell.”
Chapter 54
MCCORKLE REACHED BEHIND his chair with one of his massive, heavily tattooed arms and pulled a backpack onto his lap.
“I brought you a present,” he said, winking at me.
“I can’t even guess, but I’m hoping for chocolate.”
He took a murder book out of his backpack, a three-ring binder thick with notes and documents from a homicide case. The book was lettered across the cover with a broad-tip marker: PANGORN, 1982.
Two more murder books followed the first, one marked GODFREY, 1982, and the other, KENNEDY, 1982.
“What is all this?” I asked as McCorkle shifted the three binders to my overflowing desk.
“Patience, my pretty. This is the final one. Christopher Ross. He was the last to go, died in December nineteen eighty-two.”
“McCorkle, my man, fill me in.”
“I’m going to tell you everything, and maybe you, me, and Conklin here are all going to get some closure.”
I leaned back in my chair. There were people in the world who lived for an audience, and Simon McCorkle was one of them.
It partly came from being in that lab all the way out there on Hunters Point. It also came from obsessing about cold cases and colder bodies.
But there was another thing. Whether he solved the crime today or next month, St. Jude was always sinking free throws, scoring points that wouldn’t have been made without him. His job made for excellent storytelling.
“Here’s what these victims all had in common.” McCorkle leaned forward in his chair, put a beefy arm across the folders so that I was staring at a hairy, half- naked hula girl on his personal tattoo beach.
“The victims were all high-society types. They all died showing no signs of foul play. But the last victim, this Christopher Ross — the killer left the murder weapon at the crime scene. And a very distinctive weapon it was.”
I was just out of school when this terrible killing spree ended, so I hadn’t fastened on the particulars of this case — but it was coming back to me now, why those cases were unsolved.
McCorkle grinned as he watched the dawn breaking inside my poor, tired brain. I did remember.
“It was a distinctive murder weapon, all right,” I said to my Erin go bro. “Those victims were killed by snakes.”
Chapter 55
RICH CONKLIN had dinner that evening with Cindy at a Thai restaurant across the street from her apartment.
It was not a date, they’d both been very clear about that, but she was twinkling at him as she passed him the files she’d printed out, all the stories on the “high-society murders of nineteen eighty-two” that had run in the Chronicle before the personal computer was as common as the telephone.
“I’m trusting you,” she said. “If you tell anyone I gave you this stuff from our ‘morgue,’ I’m going to be in the soup.”
“Wouldn’t want any soup on you,” Conklin said.
“So fair’s fair,” said Cindy. “I share, you share.”
Cindy had a rhinestone clip in her hair. Very few girls older than eight could pull off rhinestone barrettes at the same time they were wearing pink, but Cindy somehow looked 100-percent delicious.
And Conklin was absolutely mesmerized watching her strip the meat from a chicken wing with her lips, so delicately and at the same time with such pleasure.
“Rich,” she said, “fair’s fair. It’s clear that you see a connection between the Baileys and Sara Needleman and the nineteen eighty-two society killings. But are you thinking that the killer from all those years ago has gone back into the murder business?”