The Dirty Secrets Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

should look at the similarities. Which we'll get to."
    She nodded. "Who's Maki Prichingo?"
    "The burning boat."
    Jo looked at her, blank.
    Tang's forehead furrowed. "Maki, the fashion designer. He and his lover were found dead on his sailboat off the coast last week. You've never heard of Maki . . . ?"
    Her voice trailed off and she gave Jo's clothes another look. Un-familiarity with fashion designers seemingly made sense, and she let it go.
    "You knew Dr. Yoshida?" she said.
    "Knew of him. He headed cardiothoracic surgery at UCSF." And cardiac surgeons thought they were, if not God, then archangels. Their reputations soared above them. "Word is, he had a heart attack."
    " 'Word is' just means speculation. You'll get the files."
    "Lieutenant, why the urgency?" Jo said. "What's the link between the deaths?"
    "We don't know. But I think it's there, and you can help find it. We're attacking this on multiple fronts simultaneously."
    "Why?"
    With a chilled hand, Tang took Jo's elbow and pulled her along as she walked across the street. "This is the city's third bizarre high-profile death in the last week."
    That wasn't what had the cops twisted. "Murder-suicides?"
    "Sounds peculiar, I know, but this could be some kind of organized killing spree." She nodded at the city scene. "Something's out there."
    It was a weird time in the city. Full moon, Halloween on the way.
    The recent swarm of earthquakes had jarred the dishes and people's nerves. Jo looked at Tang and saw the twitchiness she'd observed on the street all week. Everybody was spooked.
    So was Jo. Something seemed odd, out of place.
    "We want you to figure it out," Tang said. "And I mean right damned now."
    "There isn't right damned now with psychological autopsies."
    "This time there is."
    "That's not how it works. I interview the victim's family and colleagues, review the accident report and the victim's medical history— it can take weeks. The report's credibility in court is at stake. Even more, so is the truth about the victim's life."
    "You've heard of the first forty-eight?" Tang said.
    "Yeah. And I'm not FedEx. I rush, I could do even less than a harassed job."
    Tang tightened her grip on Jo's elbow. "That's not my point. In this case, we have forty-eight hours maximum."
    "Why?"
    "That's how often people are dying."
    Jo blinked. Tang turned to look at the wreckage.
    "Victim, perpetrator, we don't know who Callie Harding is. But people are going down and taking others with them. Yoshida last Thursday. Maki Saturday night. Now this."
    "You think there's going to be another one."
    "Unless we stop it."
    The medical examiner had finished. The fire crew was now digging into the coital vehicular mess with a skill saw.
    "We need to know why Callie Harding died, and we need to know yesterday. Don't worry about protocol or court proceedings. Cut any corners you need to. You have two days."
    Jo watched the firefighter saw into the metal. Sparks hissed, white and fevered. Her spooky feeling returned. Something about the wreck was out of kilter.
    "Give me everything. I'll run with it," she said. "Good." Tang released her grip. "And you won't have to start from scratch. If you move fast you can talk to our eyewitness." "Who?"
    "The patrolman involved in the vehicle pursuit. Officer Cruz." Tang gave her a cool glare. "Welcome to the front line."
    4
    Straight up crazy, that's what I thought at the start. Then the
    rest of it happened and I thought—yeah, straight up crazy."
    Officer Pablo Cruz drew a breath and licked his lips as though they were dry, as though he'd been drawing a lot of sharp breaths. His eyes shone brightly. A blocky young man, he seemed both eager and anxious about telling Jo the story of his first-ever vehicle pursuit.
    She spoke gently. "So you turned onto Stockton and saw her put the BMW into reverse. What happened?"
    "It got wild weird." He looked at the hill above the tunnel. "I hit the brakes. You can see the street up there—those vehicles parked along