Free Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) by Julie Smith Page B

no one really knew, but it wouldn’t be completely off-base to say that parts of it—Fisherman’s Wharf, for instance—would resemble a ghost town. And that the economic damage would be devastating.
    I had to give Rob credit for doing his homework. If the Trapper really was a serial killer—someone as dangerous as Zebra or Zodiac—the impact on the city’s economy was the real story, and the Trapper knew it. I certainly saw nothing to contradict the shrinks’ opinions that he was a very angry, vindictive person with a grudge, and that the grudge apparently was against the city. “Ever since I came here,” he had written, “I’ve had nothing but trouble and now the whole city is going to pay.” He might be a fruitcake, but there was a clean, taut logic about his current project.
    But I still wasn’t convinced that the Trapper was the person who had killed Sanchez and done the poisonings; he (or she) might be a person who read the newspapers and liked to write notes. The person who did the poisonings probably had written the notes, I admitted, because he knew where the Eastern mussels were. But how could we be sure he’d killed Sanchez? I thought Rob was making too much of the whole thing—terrifying people who could be going about their lives in blissful ignorance. And yet, I’d told him I myself would rather know than not know if there were a homicidal maniac about.
    But all those screaming headlines were so needlessly fear-inducing! So
tacky
. And all the doomsaying could very well be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. I knew Rob had considered all that. Had spent a horrible day in meetings with cops and editors and city officials who were all very seriously considering all that; who had arrived, probably, at a mutual decision to break the Trapper story. But knowing that didn’t make me like it any better.
    The phone rang. “Your boyfriend,” said Jeff Simon, “went a little overboard, didn’t he?”
    My first impulse was to protect Rob. “Jeff, you’ve got to remember, San Francisco is different from New York. We don’t have the good gray
Times
.”
    “Just the San Francisco
Chronicle.
”
    I was starting to feel crummy for associating with someone on such a rag—an absolutely disloyal attitude. I wished I weren’t so ambivalent; I could hardly defend Rob, feeling the way I did.
    “Miss Schwartz, you need some fresh air. Let me take you out for a walk tonight.”
    “A walk?”
    “Dinner and a walk. To clear your head.” If I understood him correctly, he was saying that no one in her right mind would dream of going out with such a churl as Rob. It made me mad, but I had the nagging feeling he might be right. Really, what I needed to clear my head was an evening at home playing Scarlatti.
    “Sorry, I’m booked,” I said. “And you’re going back to L.A. tomorrow, aren’t you? Listen, I really had a terrific time last night. I’d love to see you again, but maybe next time you’re here.”
    “I could stay over an extra day.”
    “You could?
    “Sure. I’ll pick you up at seven tomorrow.”
    I had certainly outsmarted myself, but having dinner with Jeff Simon wasn’t the worst way in the world to spend an evening—and it looked as if my evenings were all mine for the time being, anyway. I wished Rob had taken time for a hello call, at the very least.
    Since I had a hearing at nine, I didn’t get to the office until the noon recess. No calls from Rob. Being a modern woman who wouldn’t dream of playing the passive role in a relationship—certainly not!—I picked up the phone. And promptly put it down again. First, I’d have a sandwich.
    When I got back from the deli, Kruzick was there, eating his own sandwich. “Hey, Rob’s rockin’ out, huh? Reeeeal tasteful. Did you love it the way they ran photos of the notes and everything? Mickey was so scared she almost lost the baby.”
    “What?”
    “Hey. Little joke, you know? She’s fine, honest. The baby’s fine. But listen,