Bones of the Barbary Coast Read Online Free PDF Page A

The elegant proportions and woodwork were charming, Cree thought, but in the end it was the light that made the space so agreeable. The windows of all the rooms on the downhill side framed views of the bay, the hills of Sausalito, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a huge expanse of sky that would no doubt bring light inside even through San Francisco's infamous fog. Just below, the garden terrace was a rectangle of cut flagstone, with benches and raised plantings laid out around a circular garden area. An iron railing and a rim of vegetation nicely isolated it from street traffic and neighboring houses.
    Bert grunted in appreciation as he joined her at the windows. "Doesn't come cheap, though. These people are doing all right to afford it."
    They toured the dining room and kitchen. At the back, a side hall led to the L of the house and opened to a rear stairwell, a bathroom, a small room that had probably been a servant's bedroom, and a room with built-in bookshelves that must have been the library. Cree listened inwardly for the tiny thrill or reverberation that would reveal the presence of an entity here, but all she got was a sense of a cheerful, pleasant house, full of golden light faintly tinged with the green of her own envy—this was exactly the kind of place she'd always wanted to live in.
    "You want to see upstairs? You think this is nice, they're almost done with the work up there, you can get a better idea. And the views, Jesus."
    "No. I get it. This is where people go when they die if they've been good all their lives. I'm jealous as hell. Let's go see the damned basement."
    She couldn't tell for sure, but she thought Bert was amused as he opened one of the doors in the rear hallway, fumbled for a light switch, and began stumping down the stairs.
    It was a long way down; even the basement had ten-foot ceilings. At the bottom, they stepped into a well-lit hallway that ran the full length of the house. Bert gave her a quick tour as they moved toward the room where the bones had been found. He slapped a light switch to reveal a gardening room, with brick floor and walls lined by redwood-plank potting tables; a dark stairwell led upward to slanted metal doors that Cree figured must open to the terrace. Next, a room with appliances, counters, cabinets, and a big wine rack, apparently used as a backup for the kitchen upstairs.
    "The new owners," Bert said, "I guess they like these well enough as is. It's the end room they're going to fix up."
    At the end of the hall, he took down a ribbon of crime scene tape, then went ahead of her into the dark doorway. He groped in the shadows and turned on a contractor's lamp.
    This was the biggest of the basement rooms. The light cast hard shadows that amplified its disarray: sawhorses, dangling wiring, clamp lamps, sledgehammers, a stack of two-by-fours. To the left, carving the room into an L shape, a subsection had been partitioned with a brick wall that was now partially broken down.
    Bert turned on another lamp and tipped his chin toward the gap in the bricks. "So the plan was to fix this up as a rec room for the kids. But then they get to wondering why that part's partitioned off. The contractor figures it's maybe a feature left over from some earlier configuration, like a root cellar, and is just taking up space that could be put to better use. So they knock a little hole and see that it's an open chamber, half full of broken masonry and boards, and figure, great, more space for the rec room. They knock down part of the wall and start removing rubble. And start finding bones. They call SFPD, it's human remains, so it goes over to Homicide. I caught it because everybody figures it's just paperwork, I'll tie it off before I go."
    Cree leaned into the broken-edged doorway. It was a simple, rectangular room about twelve feet square. The cement floor was clear now, recently swept. All four walls were brick, including the main foundation.
    "So you come and take a look. What then?"
    "You