CHAPTER 19

NED MAHONEY WAS NOTIFIED of the murder shortly after midnight, East Coast time. He called me. Leaving thoughts of Professor Whelan’s obsession with the late Judge Franklin behind for the moment, we were on an FBI jet at six.

That was what happened when two judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals system were murdered in cold blood within days of each other. According to Mahoney, our case had gone from a top priority of the Bureau to number one with a bullet.

Mahoney was feeling the heat, fielding calls from Director Hamilton and her deputies for our whole trip across the country. I drank coffee and read everything I could find about the late judge.

When Ned at last hung up, he rubbed his forehead and said, “Any parallels to the Franklin case?”

“Quite a few, actually,” I said. “They knew each other when she clerked for Justice Rolling and Pak clerked for Justice Mayweather.”

“Huh,” Mahoney said. “I heard Mayweather’s cancer has come back.”

I made a note of that, then gave him the other similarities in the two dead judges’ backgrounds. They were both ethnic minorities: Pak was the son of South Korean immigrants, and Franklin was the great-granddaughter of sharecroppers in Georgia.

Both had lost spouses. Pak’s wife, Leigh, had passed three years ago after a long bout with breast cancer. Franklin’s husband had died in a plane crash the previous spring.

“They also both had impressive careers early,” I went on. “Pak was editor of the Law Review at Boalt Hall. Franklin ran it at Harvard.”

“And both clerked for Supreme Court justices and at the same time,” Mahoney said, rubbing his chin.

“Decades ago.”

“Still.”

“Any controversial cases Pak was working on?”

“There were a dozen big cases brought before the Ninth in the past year, but I’m not enough of a legal mind to know which ones we need to be looking at.”

We landed around eight a.m. local time and were met by San Francisco FBI supervising special agent Claudia Hinkley, a tall redhead who’d played volleyball for USC. As we drove to the scene, she brought us up to date.

“A food delivery driver spotted Pak’s body on the sidewalk in front of the symphony hall around ten minutes to ten last night,” she said. “Took an hour for San Francisco’s homicide unit to respond and identify him.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

“They didn’t know who he was until they got there,” Hinkley said. “But SF homicide? Not exactly a stellar bunch.”

Mahoney nodded. “Less than fifty percent homicide solve rate.”

“Kind of a disgrace,” Hinkley agreed. “But at least the two detectives called to the scene were savvy enough to contact us when they realized it was Pak.”

“Cause? Time of death?” I asked.

“The ME says stab wounds to both kidneys around nine forty.”

“And no one saw him get stabbed? The streets should have been crowded.”

“The concert hall was closed. It was pouring rain. Cold. He got unlucky.”

“We know why he was out walking in the rain?”

“Rather than calling for a ride? I don’t know. He lived in Hayes Valley, which is four or five blocks from here.”

“CCTV?”

“Thankfully, yes. We’ve got Bell and Ponce, the local homicide team, gathering it for us, trying to backtrack Pak between the courthouse and here.”

We arrived at the scene at a little past nine in the morning. The wind was raw coming off the ocean. The sky overhead was gray and spitting chill rain as we showed our identification and crossed through police lines.

Judge Pak’s body had been removed already, a pity because I found it helpful to see the victim in situ. But Hinkley had access to crime scene photographs taken overnight. She sent us copies.

I studied them on my phone. The judge had fallen on a San Francisco 49ers umbrella. He was on his right side, head facing south, right arm extended back and fingers slashed, as if he’d tried to grab the knife that killed him.

“The stabber came up behind him,” I said, backing up a little. “Probably right here?”

Hinkley pointed at a security camera mounted on the far corner of the symphony hall. “That should give us something.”