Unlucky 13 - James Patterson Page 0,6

while Conklin said, “I should tell you, Linds. I eat at Chuck’s twice a week. Maybe more.”

“I’ve had a Chuck’s bacon burger a few times and have to say, they’re pretty tasty.”

“Yeah,” Conklin said. “Might be time for a change.”

Twenty minutes later, we parked at the corner of Hayes and Octavia near the park known as Patricia’s Green and in the heart of the Hayes Valley commercial district, a strip with trendy shops, boutiques, restaurants, and cafés.

In the middle of the block was a big parking lot, and beside the lot, like a sunny seaside trattoria, was Chuck’s.

The outside tables were shaded by market umbrellas, and inside, a counter wrapped around two walls, and square wooden tabletops formed neat lines. Few people were eating burgers at this time of morning, but the serving folks were ready for the lunch crowd, smartly dressed as they were in aqua cowboy shirts with pearl buttons and tight white jeans.

I badged the girl at the cash register and asked to speak to the manager. Mr. Kent Sacco was paged and about thirty seconds later, a pudgy man in his early thirties came from an office at the back and greeted us with a sweaty handshake and a business card.

We took a table by the front windows and I told Mr. Sacco that the victims on the bridge last week may have eaten their last meal at Chuck’s.

I said, “We need to see your security tapes.”

“Sure. Whatever I can do for you.”

“We need contact information for your kitchen and serving staff.”

Sacco took us back to his office, where he printed out a list of personnel with copies of their photo IDs. He left us briefly and returned with security DVDs from the four cameras, two positioned inside and two outside the restaurant.

On the way out, Conklin bought burgers and fixings to go. In the interest of full disclosure, when we got back to our desks, I offered to take one of those sandwiches off Conklin’s hands. I was nearly starving. Still, I scrutinized the meat very thoroughly. Then I closed the sandwich and ate it all up. It was delicious.

Conklin and I watched videotape for the rest of the day, jumping a little when we found the gritty images of David Katz and Lara Trimble ordering hamburgers, sodas, and fries to take out. A young cowgirl behind the counter took their order and their cash, then handed them the bag of food. The victims took the bag and left with their arms around each other.

We looked at the footage forward and back, enlarged it, sharpened it, focused on every area in the frame.

No one but the girl behind the counter had spoken to Trimble and Katz, and there was no altercation of any kind.

I called Clapper and brought him into the loop. He asked me to forward the employee contact material to him and said he’d call his FBI contact.

“They’re gonna tear Chuck’s apart,” he said.

CHAPTER 6

IT WAS THE end of the day. We were nowhere on belly bombs and I was hungry. I was pulling on my jacket when Brady dropped by the double desk I share with Conklin.

“I just got a call from the FBI,” he said.

“Belly bomb bulletin?”

“Just open the mail I sent the two of you.”

Conklin and I both did that and saw a grainy black-and-white photo of a woman leaving a post office on a rural street. I almost recognized her, but not quite. Conklin, however, looked frozen. He looked shocked.

Brady said, “That’s our old friend Mackie Morales, in a one-stoplight town in Wisconsin.”

I got it now. Mackie had clipped her long, curly hair, a standout feature of her natural beauty. Now her dark curls were very short and she was wearing a canvas jacket to midthigh. Mackie was angular and thin. She could dress like a man and get away with it.

Along with recognition came images and chilling memories of Randy Fish, a savage serial killer who had fixated on me. Fish should be on death row, but instead he was serving out his eight consecutive life sentences in some extra-toasty corner of Hell.

Fish’s lady love was this woman, Mackenzie, aka Mackie, Morales, midtwenties, who had spent the summer right here at the Southern Station of the SFPD. Posing as an intern while working her way to her PhD in psychology, she had worked her way into Conklin’s heart and used information she gleaned from interning with us to commit some murders of her own.

Her plan had been to