The Medical Examiner

Inspector Richard Conklin was conducting what should have been a straightforward interview with a female victim. The woman was the only known witness to a homicide.

But Mrs. Joan Murphy, the subject, was not making Conklin’s job any easier. She was understandably distraught, traumatized, and possibly a bit squirrelly. As a result, she’d taken the interview straight off road, through the deep woods, and directly over a cliff.

She’d seen nothing. She couldn’t remember anything. And she didn’t understand why she was being interviewed by a cop in the first place.

“Why am I even here?”

The question made Conklin immediately wonder: What is she hiding?

They were in a hospital room at St. Francis Memorial. Mrs. Murphy was reclining in a bed with a sling around her right arm. She was in her mid-forties and was highly agitated. Her face was so tightly drawn that Conklin thought she might have had too much cosmetic surgery. Either that, or this was what the aftereffects of a near-death experience looked like.

Currently, Mrs. Murphy was shooting looks around the hospital room as if she were about to bolt through the window. It reminded Conklin of that viral video of the deer who’d wandered into a convenience store, then leapt over the cash register and the pretzel rack before finally crashing through the plate-glass windows.

“Mrs. Murphy,” he said.

“Call me Joan.”

A nurse came through the door, saying, “How are we feeling, Mrs. Murphy? Open up for me, please.” She stuck a thermometer under Mrs. Murphy’s tongue, and after a minute, she read the numbers and made a note on the chart.

“Everything’s normal,” she said, brightly.

Conklin thought, Easy for you to say.

He turned back to the woman in the bed and said, “Joan, it kills me to see you so upset. I fully comprehend that getting shot, especially under your conditions, would shake anyone up. That’s why I hope you understand that I have to find out what happened to you.”

Mrs. Murphy was not a suspect. She was not under arrest. Conklin had assured her that if she asked him to leave the room, he would do it. No problem.

But that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to understand the circumstances that had victimized this woman and had killed the man who had been found with her.

He had to figure out what kind of case it was so he could nab the culprit.

“Don’t worry. I’m not afraid of you, Richard,” Joan told him, looking past him and out the window. “It’s everything you’ve told me that’s upsetting me. I don’t remember having a dead body beside me. I don’t remember much of anything, but I do think I would remember that. Honestly, I don’t think it even happened.”

She shook her head desperately and the tears flew off her cheeks. She dropped her chin to her chest and her shoulders heaved with sobs.

Conklin reached for a box of tissues and offered them to his disconsolate subject, who was melting down in front of him.

He inched his chair closer to the bed and said, “Joan, please try to understand. It did happen. We have the body. Do you want to see him?”

She plucked a tissue from the box, patted her eyes, and blew her nose.

“Must I?”

Conklin said, “I think it would be best. It might jog your memory. Look, I’ll stay with you and you can lean on me.”

“And then you’ll drive me straight home?”

“I sure will. I’ll even put the sirens on.”

Cindy Thomas, senior crime reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, breezed through the front door of Susie’s Café. She threaded her way through the raucous crowd in the front room, past the steel drum band and the crowded bar, and headed down the corridor to the back room. It was packed to the walls with the Saturday-night dinner set.

She saw an empty booth and a recently vacated table, and asked a busboy for help as she shoved the table up against the booth.

“How many people are coming?” he asked her.

“Six,” she told him. “I hope the kitchen doesn’t run out of the mango chicken. That’s our favorite.”

Four of the six were herself and her closest friends in the Women’s Murder Club. The other members were Lindsay Boxer, Homicide, SFPD; Claire Washburn, chief medical examiner; and Yuki Castellano, assistant DA. Tonight, the two additional seats would be for Lindsay’s husband, Joe Molinari, and Cindy’s own beloved fiancé, Rich Conklin. Rich was also Lindsay’s partner on the job.

It had been a joke when Cindy dubbed the four of them the Women’s Murder Club years ago, but the name had stuck because they liked it. The girls regularly gathered at Susie’s, their clubhouse, in order to vent, brainstorm, and fill up on spicy Caribbean food and draft beer. It was nice to go with the “don’t worry, be happy” flow every once in a while.

Laughs were definitely on the menu tonight.

Lindsay had been pulling double shifts at her high-stress job, and recently had been put on a harrowing assignment with the antiterrorism task force. Her husband, Joe Molinari, was still recovering from injuries he’d received in a terrorist bombing related to that very case.

That was probably why Lindsay’s sister offered to take their little girl, Julie, home with her and her own little girls for the week. Everything was all set. Lindsay and Joe were leaving in the morning for a well-earned vacation in Mendocino, a small-town escape 150 miles north of San Francisco.

Cindy was excited for them. She ordered beer and chips for the table and had settled into the banquette when Lindsay and Joe arrived. They all hugged, and then the tall blond cop and her hunky husband slid into the booth.

Lindsay said, “I think I’m going to fall asleep in the car and then stay in bed for the entire week. It’s inevitable.”

Joe put an arm around Lindsay, pulled her close, and said, “If that’s the case, there will be no complaints from me.”

“All righhhht,” said Cindy. Beer was poured into frosted mugs, and Cindy made the first toast. “To rain,” she said. “Gentle, pattering rain and no Wi-Fi reception.”

“Let’s drink to that,” said Lindsay.

Glass clinked, Lindsay gulped some beer, and after setting down her mug, she asked Cindy, “You sure you’re up to taking care of Martha? She’s used to being the boss, you know.”

Lindsay was referring to her family’s best dog friend, an aging border collie who had pulled a tendon and was under doctor’s orders for bed rest.

“I think I can handle it. After all, I, too, am used to being the boss,” Cindy said with a wink.

“You? Bossy? You must be joking,” said Lindsay.

Cindy was known to be more pit bull than pussycat. She and Lindsay were still snickering about it when Claire Washburn arrived.

Claire emphatically endorsed Lindsay’s upcoming week of R & R. She slid into the booth next to her, saying, “I know I’m going to miss you to death, but I’m not going to call you. And I mean, no way, no how, not for any reason. Seriously. This week, nothing but radio silence, okay?”

Before Lindsay could answer, Rich Conklin arrived tableside, stepping on Claire’s laugh line. He said hey to his friends and bent down to give Cindy a kiss as Yuki danced into the room, singing along with the Caribbean tune. Rich gave her the seat next to Cindy and pulled up a chair for himself.

Yuki ordered her first margarita of the evening, and the dinner orders went in after that. Even though the upbeat music was plinking loudly and laughter and applause made conversation challenging, Cindy felt a tremendous pleasure in this gathering of close friends. The gang was all here and the evening felt like a group hug. It was the kind of night out that she wanted to soak up and remember forever.

She wouldn’t change a thing.