The window that Nelson Bush was staring out had a startling view of the bay, but he didn’t really notice the sights. He was lost in his thoughts. It’s finally started. Everything is in play, he was thinking. The City on the Bay will never be the same will it? I will never be the same. This was complicated- not what it seemed to be but beautiful in its own way.He had closed his office door, as he always did when he was absorbed in research. Lately, he had stopped catching lunch with his coworkers. They bored him. Their lives were filled with petty concerns. The stock market. The Giants and 49ners. Where they were headed on vacation. They had such shallow, simple middle-class dreams. He was soaring. He was like the moguls thinking up their new, new things over in Silicon Valley.Anyway, that was all in the past. Now he had a secret. The biggest secret in the world.He pushed his business papers to the corner of his desk. This is the old world, he thought. The old me. The bore. The work

The story about The Harry’s business deal with the Russians had broken. It was on every newsstand: bold headline reading, “GROOMS FATHER MAY HAVE TRIGGERED RUSSIAN WRATH.”The chronicle reported that the FBI was seriously looking into the matter. Great.Two half-liter bags of hemoglobin-enriched blood were pumping through me as I finally reached my desk at about ten-thirty. It took everything I had to push from my mind the image of the thick, crimson blood slowly dripping into my vein.Kalistus called my Name- the usual disgruntled glower was all over his face.” Chronicles says it’s the Russians. The FBI seems to agree,” he said as he leaned over my desk. He pushed a copy of the morning’s paper at me.I saw it. Don’t let the FBI in on this.” I said.” This is our case,”I told him about last night, my going back to the crime scene. How I was pretty sure the sexual rings added up to a single, obsessed killer. It’s not some Russian professional. He put his fist inside her,I reminded hi

When Dorothy Noah looked at herself in the full splendor of her wedding dress, she knew that she was no longer her mother’s little girl.You are my baby. She had heard those words from her first days on the planet.With three older brothers, it wasn’t so hard to imagine why. Her mother had always wanted a girl. Daddy, too; but as the years went on they had assumed their time passed. The oldest- Lucas the daredevil had been killed before she was born. Her parents were crushed. They couldn’t think of more children. Then, miraculously, Dorothy came.My baby,” she heard her mother exclaim from where she stood behind Dorothy.“Oh, mom,” Dorothy sighed, but also smiled.She continued to look at herself. She was beautiful. In her long, white, strapless dress, an avalanche of tulle, she shone like the most lovely and beautiful thing in the world. Elijah would be so happy with all the arrangements—in the hotel in Napa, the flowers, the last minute alteration to the dress, she thought the day w

That sunday morning, I woke for the first time all week with a sense of hopefulness, it’s the way I am...or was. It was clear and beautiful outside; the bay was shimmering as if it were thrilled, too. And it was the day of my brunch with Fatimah, myconfession to her. Sunday morning’s I had this place I always went to. My favorite place, I had told Gebriel. First I drove downtown, to the marina Green, in my tights and jogged in the shadow of the bridge. Morning like this, I felt infused with everything that was beautiful about living in San Francisco. The brown coast of Marin, the noises of the bay. Even Alcatraz, standing guard. I ran my usual three-plus miles south on the harbor, then up the two hundred and twelve stone stairs into fort Mason park. Even with Negli’s I could still do it. This morning it seemed to be letting me free. I jogged past yelping dogs running loose, lovers on a morning walk, gray-clad, bald-headed Chinese men bickering over mah-jongg. Always to the same spo

Either you have got the sharpest nose for a story I have ever seen,” I said to Alice Barry angrily,” or I may start to think of you as a murder suspect.” This was the second time she intruded in the middle of a possible crime scene. “Don’t tell me I’m stepping on some inter office romance?” She quipped. That made me steaming mad. We have a developing situation here. If it got into the news prematurely, it would hurt any chance the department had to control this case. I could just imagine the nightmare headline: BRIDE AND GROOM KILLER STRIKES AGAIN. And Kalistus would be livid. This would be a second time I called to control the crime scene with the same reporter. “Who’s you friend?” Gabriel asked. “Alice Barry,” she announced, extending her hand. And you?” “Alice’s with the chronicle,” I alerted him. Gebriel did a startled double take, left in the mid shake like a fired worker holding the hand of a replacement. “Listen very well, Ms Barry I said firmly.