Five O’Clock Twist

1 It was midnight, and San Francisco Homicide Inspector Rebecca Mayfield stood alone on a cold, desolate beach. The biting wind off the Pacific Ocean hit hard. Earlier the fog had rolled in, heavy, thick, and wet. She hugged her black leather jacket tight against her body. Rebecca and her partner, Bill Sutter, were the current “on-call” team which meant they were the first detectives sent to any suspicious death in the city. Tonight’s call from the police dispatcher directed Rebecca to Baker’s Beach. The beach was nearly a mile long, edging what had once been a U.S. Army base, the Presidio of San Francisco. It was now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. She had driven onto its parking lot which was the only area where the street was level with the beach. Past it, the street rose quickly following cliffs that skirted the beach all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. The lot’s street lamps, blanketed by fog, cast an eerie glow over the deserted surroundings. No squad cars with uniformed police secured the scene. Also absent were the medical examiner’s team, the crime scene unit, a photographer, and all the myriad others who always showed up at potential homicides. All was quiet except for the sound of waves against the shore, and the strong, persistent wind. She couldn’t even hear traffic noise, which was particularly unnerving for a city cop. Rebecca was sure she had been sent to the wrong place. Although she was often the first detective to arrive, the uniforms were always there. This was crazy. She took out her phone and was about to call the dispatcher when she saw a flashlight. “You from Homicide?” a male voice called. She looked, but could barely make out the figure holding the large bright light directed at her. “Mayfield.” Rebecca identified herself and held up her badge. “You are?” she asked, trying to shield her eyes from the bright light to see at least an outline of the person she was speaking to. “Officer Garcia. Crime scene’s at the far end of the beach. Just walk north. You’ll find it.” “Where is everyone?” she asked. Garcia took a few steps backwards. “The officers are parked at the top of the cliff. There’s a pathway down, a shortcut, so they took it. But the fog is even thicker now, so it might be making the rocks we took kind of wet and slick. It’s a longer walk to take the beach, but probably safer. They sent me here to tell you and the others the best way to find them. Sorry that you got here before I did. Must have confused you a bit. Anyway, we’re all on the same page now. I’m heading out to the entrance to the parking lot. I’ll wave the CSI and others in here.” This was just plain weird, Rebecca thought. The beam from the officer’s flashlight continued to blind her. She turned her head away from him. “Okay. Guess I walk,” she said. “You can’t miss it,” the officer called. He was already some distance away, heading towards the street. “Just before the rocks.” Almost the entire beach lay “just before the rocks.” No wonder the uniforms had taken a shortcut. Her boots sank into the sand with each step, making the going slow. She had been out here a couple of times at a beach party, times when the evening was warm, when moonlight cast a glow over the water, and stars filled the night sky in a sparkling array. But tonight was different. No light made its way through the fog, and even the lighthouse out on the Farallon Islands might have been extinguished. The briny smell of the sea was so thick it seemed to attach itself to her skin, hair, and even her lips. She flicked on her small pocket flashlight. Droplets of fog turned everything in the light’s path into a shimmering halo. She had to direct the beam downward simply to see where she was stepping. Something about all this felt “off.” She paused. Maybe she should wait for the others and walk out there together with them. But Officer Garcia had most likely radioed the other uniforms that she was on her way. They would be looking for her. Was she supposed to say she was too “scared” to walk on a beach alone, given her training and the powerful weapon she carried? No way. She’d never live it down. She squared her shoulders and trudged on, her jeans-clad legs taking long, purposeful strides. While the southern beach area, near the parking lot, was popular on warm, sunny days, especially since nude bathing—typically “San Francisco”—was allowed, the northern portion was a different story. The sandy beach ended at a low-lying wall of rocky outcrops. Climbing over the boulders led to several small, secluded cove-like areas butting up against steep cliffs, and separated one from the other by massive, slippery rocks. She couldn’t help but chuckle to herself as she thought of how her partner, Bill Sutter, was going to react when he was told to walk down a dark, freezing beach at midnight to find the crime scene. He’d swear a blue streak over getting sand in his shoes, and that was just the start of it. He hated anything that caused him to feel less than absolutely in charge. Sometimes he was fine, but other times, he acted as if he was afraid of his own shadow, let alone the dark. He was often referred to as “Never-Take-a-Chance Bill” because of it. Richie Amalfi, the man she was currently dating, swore that if she wasn’t careful, Sutter was going to get her killed. Richie said she needed a partner who had her back, not one who’d cut and run first chance he got. She thought he was wrong about that, and perhaps, wrong about a lot of things. Including their relationship. She had given Richie a lot of thought lately; too much thought, in fact. It made her heart heavy to think about him, and all that would never be between them. But she was nothing if not practical, and the practical side of her nature told her it was time to move on. Yet, trying to put him out of her mind was difficult, if not impossible. In fact, he had phoned her a couple of times as she drove out here tonight. They were working on a case together. Not that she should have been involving him in her homicide investigations, but as usual, he seemed to know the people who had gotten caught up in a murder, and she found his knowledge of them helpful. She didn’t answer his calls. Given the time of night and all that had happened earlier between them, his calls couldn’t be anything but personal. For the moment, she needed to concentrate on where she was going and her reason for going there. Not on Richie. As she continued along the beach, the hill that edged it grew higher and steeper, resulting in a cliff-like edifice that trapped the fog and made it increasingly thick. Now, swirling billows of mist hugged the ground, and the aura of light her flashlight created was so blinding she could scarcely see beyond her hand. There had been a time when Rebecca enjoyed the heavy San Francisco fog. "Pea soup," the old timers called it. But that was years ago when she first came to the city, and before she had seen an eternity of ugliness on her job that muted the city’s charm. As she continued towards the rocks, the silence bothered her. She should be hearing something from the secured crime scene by now. Instead, the only sounds she heard were the lapping of ocean waves against the shore and the occasional, mournful call of a foghorn. Up ahead, she could just make out the rocks. And no crime scene. The unwanted thought struck that there was never a crime scene out here. Her breathing quickened, and the skin on her arms prickled. How could that be? The police dispatcher … The dull worry that something was dreadfully wrong turned into a thunderous roar. Every fiber of her being told her to run. She dropped the lit flashlight to the ground, escaping into the fog. Then, instead of heading back down the beach in the direction she came from, she ran as fast as she could in the loose sand towards the cliffs. As she did, a hail of gunshots went off directed at the light. She heard the sound of metal and glass exploding as her flashlight went out. She forced herself to keep going as shots flew all around. She hurtled towards the cliffs; only there might she find some kind of shelter. The rapid-fire roar of the fusillade told her that her adversary was using a semi-automatic rifle, a serious killing machine. The shooter was firing blind—even a night scope was useless in the dense mist. She didn’t shoot back, thankful for the shielding fog, and knowing her chance of hitting a shooter she couldn’t see was nil. When she reached the cliff, she all but hugged it, trying to find some boulder, some crevice, anything that might provide shelter. A shot pinged near her and she saw a flash. The shooter must have realized she was searching the cliffs for shelter rather than trying to return to the parking lot. Finally, she located a spot where a bit of the cliff face curved inward, eroded by the constant pummeling of wind and surf. She hugged the inlet, her back against it, standing as straight and flat as possible. Another hail of bullets, one after the other, cut a swath across the cliff face where she had been standing just seconds earlier. When the shooting stopped, she returned fire, again and again, aiming in the direction of the flash from the firearm. There were no other cops around, and now she knew there wouldn’t be. She’d been set up and directed out here to get her alone. To kill her. She was scared, more scared than she’d ever been. She didn’t want to die. More shots came her way, and she fired back again and again, even though she recognized that, just that as she had done earlier, her attacker kept moving. She made a mental count of how many bullets she had used, and how few she had left. She knew the way this was going, all the attacker had to do was to wait until she was out of ammunition. She lay flat on the ground. With both hands on her SIG Sauer, her arms outstretched, she waited for the shooter to move closer. One on one. Whoever saw the other first, she believed, would be the one to live.