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both hands. She was getting a rush from linking two facts that had never been linked before.
    She imagined interviewing Morales. She could see the small gray room, gray table, Morales in orange with handcuffs and chains. She would sympathize with the woman, get her to open up about Randy Fish. Cindy would write a double exposé of Fish and Morales thatcould very well become a crime classic, like the interviews of Bundy, Gacy, BTK, and Dahmer.
    Fish and Morales put Bonnie and Clyde in the shade.
    First, she had to get a go-ahead from her boss,
Chronicle
publisher Henry Tyler. Tyler liked her, but this story would take her out of state and away from her regular assignments.
    She would have to be damned convincing.
    Cindy put her laptop into sleepmode, then went to bed. She hugged the king-size body pillow that used to be Richie’s.
    She lay awake for more than an hour, organizing her pitch, refining it. When she woke up in the morning, she was invigorated—fired up and ready to go.

CHAPTER 10
    CINDY WAS READY for her 8:15 a.m. meeting with Henry Tyler when she entered the old Gothic Revival–style
Chronicle
Building at the intersection of Mission and 5th. She went directly to her office and put down her bags, then took the elevator to the executive floor.
    When the doors opened, she said “Hey” to the receptionist, who buzzed her in through the double glass doors.
    She walkeddown the carpeted corridor to Tyler’s office. She was five minutes early. Which was perfect.
    Tyler was behind his enormous glass desk in his many-windowed corner space, furnished in pewter-colored leather with enormous abstract canvases on three walls.
    He was a handsome man in his fifties, a Harvard graduate and former reporter for the
New York Times
, formerwar correspondent for Reuters, andnow corporate honcho.
    Tyler put down the phone and beckoned to Cindy to come in, saying, “I haven’t seen you in a while. Is everything okay?”
    Cindy’s pitch had to be both comprehensive and concise, and she had probably two minutes to sell Tyler on her idea.
    She took a seat across from his desk and said, “I’m fine, Henry, thanks. Listen, I’ve kept an open file on Mackie Morales. You rememberher—”
    “Sure. She was attached to the SFPD—and to Randy Fish. His love interest, right? She shot three people dead.”
    Cindy nodded and said, “Morales is a pretty spectacular killer, Henry. She’s beautiful and cold. Killed three people that we know about—and she’s only twenty-six. Her relationship with Fish was symbiotic. I think he was her mentor and she inspired him. But there was love and sexinvolved, highly unusual for a sexual sadist like Fish to love someone who fit his victimology. And they have a child.”
    “Huh,” said Tyler. “Interesting. So you want to do some kind of Sunday-magazine piece on this killer couple?”
    “I want to get an interview with Morales.”
    “You’ve lost me.”
    “Well, I saved the kicker. I’ve got a hot lead, an authenticated sighting of Morales that I’d like tofollow up. I connected that lead to a location—and I think I’m the first and only person to have done so.
    “If I’m right, and I find Morales, I’ll turn the cops ontoher, provided I’m in at the takedown. I’ll negotiate with them for access beforehand. And then, as long as that falls into place…”
    “A lot of big
ifs
.”
    Cindy laughed.
    “You know I love to turn big ifs and cold maybes into ‘git ’erdone.’”
    Henry treated her to a generous smile.
    “Keep going,” he said. “I’m enjoying this.”
    “Morales has never been interviewed,” Cindy went on. “Even the SFPD didn’t get to interrogate her before she escaped. I know a ton about Morales. I know people she knows. I think I can flatter her into a tell-all about her love affair of the century with Randolph Fish.”
    “You’re saying you’re that good.”

    Cindy grinned. “Exactly.”
    Tyler said, “Do I need to remind you that on a danger scale