21st Birthday

by Patterson, James

  When it was over, as the overhead lights came on, Yuki glanced over to Gardner. But the defense counsel was leaning back in his chair, his face bare of expression as if to show her his contempt. Is that all you’ve got?

  He knew it wasn’t.

  Yuki walked to the whiteboard and, after wheeling it around, pointed to the photo of Misty.

  “Inspector Conklin, you were at the scene of Melissa Fogarty’s murder.”

  “Yes, I was. Correct.”

  “Can you tell us about that?”

  Conklin removed a couple of sheets of stapled and folded pages from his inside jacket pocket, flattened them, skimmed them, and said, “This is my report for the task force and our Lieutenant three days after Lorrie Burke’s body surfaced at Baker Beach. Tara Burke was still missing and Ms. Fogarty’s body had just been found in her car that morning by school security.”

  Yuki said, “Please go on.”

  “Well, Ms. Fogarty was killed on Friday night, discovered on Saturday morning. Like I said, we searched the Burke house the next day. Because of this rash of murders, our squad was working round the clock. On Saturday, Mr. Burke and his ex-wife, Alexandra Conroy, showed up in our squad room. He was in a rage, waving a newspaper with the picture of Ms. Fogarty on the front page.”

  Richie rested his arms on the railing surrounding the witness chair, and spoke directly to Yuki.

  He said, “Okay. So, we know Melissa Fogarty is — was — Lucas Burke’s girlfriend. Sergeant Lindsay Boxer and I separated Mr. Burke and Ms. Conroy so we could interview them individually.

  “Burke tells us that he and Ms. Conroy had been in Carmel until early that morning. Now, they’ve returned back to confront the police and to find out the truth about Ms. Fogarty’s murder, instead of getting it off a tabloid.”

  “Were you able to confirm Mr. Burke’s whereabouts at the time of Fogarty’s murder?”

  “Much of it,” Conklin said. “The drive to Carmel-by-the-Sea is confirmed. That the two shared a room in the resort is also confirmed. The missing piece is a big one. We cannot confirm whether Mr. Burke left Carmel and returned to San Francisco on Friday evening.

  “These are critical hours.

  “Ms. Fogarty was murdered at eight o’clock. Mr. Burke and Ms. Conroy state that this is when Ms. Conroy was occupied at the spa.”

  Yuki said, “Inspector, at the time Mr. Burke and Ms. Conroy came to the Homicide squad, did you have reason to doubt Mr. Burke’s timeline?”

  “Well, that Ms. Conroy was otherwise occupied at the precise time Ms. Fogarty was killed is a little pat as an alibi. This was a conflict we could not resolve. We checked out all the information we had, and I couldn’t prove Mr. Burke’s whereabouts when Ms. Fogarty was killed.

  “That Saturday morning when Burke appeared in our squad room, he was a suspect in more than one murder, and the victims all had close association to him.

  “Still, we had held him for twenty-four hours, we had searched his premises, and CSU had gone through his devices. We had reasonable suspicion that he had killed at least two people. At that time we had no direct evidence against Lucas Burke for anything.”

  Newt Gardner stood to cross-examine Inspector Conklin.

  He made it short.

  “So you’re still prepared to swear that the man on the parking lot video, the man who presumably killed Melissa Fogarty, is in fact, Mr. Lucas Burke?”

  “I am, now,” said Conklin.

  “Well,” said Gardner, “I’m equally sure that he is not. Ms. Castellano, let’s go to the tape.”

  CHAPTER 90

  YUKI TURNED THE whiteboard around so that it was again a plain white screen. Behind her, Nick Gaines pulled up the parking lot video on the laptop. And then there was the sea-spray sound of static as the tape rolled.

  Yuki said, “Inspector Conklin, will you please describe what you see on the screen.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Conklin said. “It’s the typical low-quality video we often see from retail-type cameras. It was dark in a virtually unlighted lot. There’s Ms. Fogarty getting out of her car. She’s standing, then pacing, unmistakable because she’s in the one beam of the one light in the lot.

  “Now, if we can fast-forward …”

  Nick skipped to the part where a man entered the lot on foot.

  Conklin said, “There. That’s Burke. He’s in black, keeping to the shadows as he comes toward Ms. Fogarty. She says something to him, but there’s no audio on this security camera. But we can see that Ms. Fogarty’s last living acts were to turn her back on the defendant and get into her car. She starts up the engine and turns on the headlights,” Conklin said, “but her assailant opens the back door of her SUV and gets inside. A minute later, out he goes. Watch as he sticks to the shadows as he leaves camera range. The car remains in place until the next morning when Ms. Fogarty’s body is discovered. I witnessed her slashed throat and evidence that she bled out in the front seat of her car.”

  Yuki asked “How did you determine that the killer was Mr. Burke from watching this video?”

  “As I said, it was dark. The man in the parking lot was wearing dark clothes and a hat. That big tree, right there, is growing on the adjacent property, leaning over the fence, throwing shadows over everything. But on the eighth viewing of this video, a member of our task force pointed out an odd movement on the part of the assailant.”

  Yuki asked, “Can you demonstrate that movement?”

  “Like this,” Conklin said, brushing at his forelock of hair, moving it a little off his forehead.

  He said, “I couldn’t quite make out if he was touching his hat or brushing leaves away, but when it was suggested that this individual may have been flicking something over the fence and that it was perhaps the murder weapon, we asked for those particular frames to be enlarged. Our facial rec couldn’t match the man in the lot to Mr. Burke because the video quality sucked. Sorry. So CSU brought in a forensic photographic analyst to examine and compare this enlargement with Mr. Burke’s photo. There was a 90 percent match even with the crappy quality of the video.

  Yuki said, “Mr. Gaines, could you back up the video to the point where the man in the frame makes a motion with his hand?”

  Nick did it and Yuki said, “Pause it right there. Thanks.”

  Conklin said, “See, the fence divides the school parking lot and an overgrown, largely vacant lot behind an old gas station. Weeds are four feet tall and old car parts hidden by weeds are a hazard. Well, it isn’t school property. We didn’t have a warrant for that field of weeds. We searched every inch of the school parking lot, took the Subaru down to the tires at the crime lab, but it didn’t occur to anyone to search the lot earlier.”

  “And why was that?”

  “Because we had a new body.”

  Yuki said, “Please tell the court about that.”

  “Sure,” Conklin said. “It was a Sunday, and at Chief Clapper’s request we were working through the weekend. Tara Burke’s car and body rose up in the ocean around China Beach, and we were all over that.”

  “Was the weedy vacant lot eventually searched?”

  “Yes. Not until a couple of months later, but the murder weapon was waiting for us, four feet deep in weeds about an arm’s length from the base of the tree.”

  Yuki showed him an array of photos taken during the search of the field: ten men in white hazmat suits, and last, the photo of a gloved hand holding up a razor.

  Yuki asked, “Is this the murder weapon?”

  “Yes, a hundred percent.”

  Yuki looked at the faces of the jury. She had every bit of their attention. The picture of the razor was entered into evidence and then shown to the jury. Yuki also entered Rich Conklin’s report on the meetings with Lucas Burke and his ex-wife.

  She thanked Rich and told Gardener that the witness was his. Yuki would bet her IRA that Gardner wasn’t going to ask Conklin how the razor could be linked to his client.

  Lucas Burke was innocent until pr
oven guilty.

  Yuki had every intention of doing just that.

  CHAPTER 91

  OUR MEAL AT LAGO was wrapping up.

  The dessert plates had been cleared and our waiter brought Berney the check.

  I said, “Let us expense this, Berney.”

  He declined the offer and read the tab carefully, almost as if he was decoding a message. For all I knew, he may have been.

  His plan, as I understood it, was to leave Burke’s capture to Alvarez and me. He’d help us transport the SOB to San Francisco for questioning. After thanking us for our assistance, he’d fly Burke to Quantico, all softened up and ready to admit to innumerable crimes he was suspected of committing.

  Alvarez looked very comfortable on her old turf. I was uneasy. The plan was mostly “make it up as you go.” Alvarez and I didn’t have much history together, and Berney and I had none.

  I wished he’d said there were a few dozen undercover FBI agents disguised as porters and housekeepers ready to grab the presumed killer, chopper him back to the Hall, and leave him with us for a few night interrogations that would result either in a bulletproof confession or believable deniability.

  Berney glanced at his phone while reaching for his wallet. The mild, satisfied look on his face was gone.

  Joe asked what was wrong and Berney said, “My signal from Burke’s GPS is down.”

  So, Berney was in the dark with the rest of us.

  Was Burke’s signal down temporarily?

  Or had he deliberately pulled off the road, turned off the engine, and let his GPS signal go dark.

  He could be right here.

  Right now.

  Berney said, “You all have my number. Emergency calls only. Thanks.”

  He put a stack of bills on top of the check, and as quickly as he’d arrived he was gone.

  Joe said, “I should be going. Got a message for the Bugster?”

  A Neil Diamond classic was playing, “Cracklin’ Rosie.” I walked Joe to the escalator, and asked him to bring Julie a few bars of the song if he could sing it.

  “I can sing it, Blondie, but I’m not sure how to explain, ‘Cracklin’ Rose, you’re a store-bought woman.’”

  I laughed. “Can you hum it?”

  “May-bee. How do you feel?”

  “Mixed. I want to get Burke, badly. Berney has said, ‘Be very careful,’ but I’m not really getting the plan.”

  “You’ve got this, Linds. You backed Burke down on Mount Tam, and Berney respects that. Alvarez is a great asset. Berney will have eyes on you. And bringing down bad guys is what you do. Get Burke in your sights, throw him down. Call Berney to help you get Burke to Clapper. That’s the plan.”

  Hunh. I didn’t love it.

  Joe asked, “Where’s your piece?”

  I patted my handbag.

  He kissed me, told me he loved me and to call him when I could. He waved as he went down the escalator. I think he was singing along with Neil Diamond.

  CHAPTER 92

  ALVAREZ AND I WERE in our fancy duds and had loaded guns in our handbags.

  It was still early in the evening so Alvarez took me for a tour of the Bellagio’s cavernous main room.

  We started with a peek in at the baccarat table in an alcove off the casino. It was quieter by far than the dinging, ringing of the slots and the ten-decibel excitement of the players popping the lids off their everyday lives to sounds of Sinatra’s greatest hits.

  Alvarez explained to me how baccarat was played as we strolled through the marble-floored playground with its convex glass ceiling over the huge ground floor, the conservatory, the lobby with forty tons of Chihuly’s glass flowers clustered at the ceiling dome. We window-shopped the high-end boutiques; Dior, Prada, Chanel, where Alvarez was connected enough to get big discounts on last season’s evening clothes.

  That was very cool.

  But I never stopped thinking about Evan Burke.

  At nine, we stood around the baccarat table with our backs to the wall and watched Berney clean up. Either he was in his wheelhouse or the dealer was in his pocket because all eyes were on Berney. The other players were in jackets, but Berney was wearing his pink sweater. If Burke was looking for Berney, he really couldn’t miss him. When the spectators were two or three deep behind the players, I signaled to Alvarez that I was going to step outside the room and have a look around.

  Berney flicked his eyes toward me as I was leaving and then shot the dice. I didn’t wait to see how his throw landed. I was already in the main casino, checking out the rows of slots, the poker tables, the chandeliers and swag pendant lights above it all.

  And then I saw Evan Burke. At least I thought so.

  He’d scrubbed up since I’d seen him on his porch staring down his barrel, aiming at me. Now, Quicksilver was sitting at a tall stool around an oblong table, with five other players stacking their chips, watching the dealer. The man was dressed for a night of fun, wearing a gray dinner jacket over an expensive-looking open-collar shirt, also gray.

  He watched the cards, but there was a cute young girl with long curly blond hair standing behind him, touching his shoulder, murmuring into his ear. After each winning hand, they hugged like it was true love. He had winnings and a girly girl less than half his age pressing her young body to his. Looked to me like the highly trained former Green Beret, the Ghost of Catalina, had plenty to keep him busy in Vegas.

  Best thing about the tableau in front of me was that Burke hadn’t made me. I retraced my steps to the baccarat room and gave Alvarez and Berney a quick nod to say, He’s here.

  Alvarez moved quickly to my side and we went back out to the casino proper, blending in with the shifting good-tempered crowd. As we watched, a loud celebratory shout came up from Burke’s spot at the card table. He raked in a small mountain of chips and relinquished his stool.

  Before I could say, “Mr. Burke. We’d like to have a word,” the pretty young blonde opened her bag and Evan Burke dropped his chips inside. Together they headed toward the casino’s front doors.

  Alvarez and I followed at a distance while never losing sight of our man and his girl. I saw through the open doors that an empty cab, orange-colored and plastered with casino ads, had pulled around to the entrance and stopped. The valet opened the rear door for Burke plus one. They got in, and their tangerine ride looped around and merged into the Strip.

  I pushed ahead of the waiting crowd and flashed my badge. “Police business. Excuse us. Police.”

  Another cab pulled up and I also badged the driver.

  I hated to use the timeworn phrase, but after Alvarez and I were seated and belted in the back seat, I said it:

  “Follow that cab. And step on it.”

  CHAPTER 93

  THE STRIP WAS fully jammed with vehicular traffic even on a Monday at 9:30 p.m., and Evan Burke’s tangerine-colored cab was locked in place three cars ahead of us.

  Hotels came and went on both sides of the road, their hyper-bright icons leaving lingering images behind my eyes. The median planting between the north and southbound lanes of the Strip was a mesmerizing stretch of tall sabal palm trees. I processed it all peripherally, but kept my eyes glued to the orange cab.

  A logjam in the intersection up ahead broke apart and cars sped up, then bumped to stops at the next light.

  “Where’s Burke going?” I asked myself, but Alvarez answered as our cab turned left onto Fremont.

  She said, “Looks like he’s heading for the Golden Eagle Hotel. Used to be a big-time movie-star hangout, but now it’s mainly down-and-outers who stay there. It’s due for a renovation it will never get.”

  I saw the massive rectangular brick building three blocks away. It took up a whole block and was topped with a big gold eagle sculpture with its smaller twin perched over the marquis. Looked more like a wartime munitions factory than any of the other hotels on the Strip.

  I said, “Sonia. You know this place?”

  “Sure do. I know the layout, personnel, where to
find the ladies’ rooms. Spent a good part of the last ten years undercover here.”

  Up ahead, the traffic light turned red. The glowing orange taxi zoomed through. Horns honked, but there was no sound of crunching metal. Cars between us and Burke’s cab were at a standstill.

  I spoke to the driver through the partition, “The orange cab? Did you see him drop off passengers at the Eagle?”

  The driver said, “Looks like he stopped at the curb and, yeah. There he goes taking a turn at the next street over.”

  I would have asked him to run the light, but it was impossible. We were hemmed in by traffic on four sides.

  The driver turned to face me. “Want to get out here?”

  I calculated time and distance, found a twenty plus tip in my handbag, stuffed it into the Lucite cash drawer.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Alvarez.

  She was already half out of the cab.

  I followed her, wiggled around the lane of cars, reaching the sidewalk, and hit my stride with the Golden Eagle still a long block away.

  Every second counted. If we lost Burke, we might not see him again.

  Liveried bouncers opened the front doors for us. Sonia had Burke’s forty-year old army enlistment photo now updated with facial-aging software. She showed it to the bouncer, whose name tag read “Reynolds” and asked him, “Jamie. Is he here?”

  “He had a girl with him.” Jamie Reynolds made a twirling motion with a finger near his head, indicating “curls” or “crazy.”

  “Bet they’ll be in the casino.”

  We entered the air-cooled darkness and into a lobby straight out of the 1940s. There was an eagle motif in the mile of carpet and gold striped wallpaper throughout. The casino was to the right, the front desk just ahead. I swept both spaces with my own eagle eyes but did not see the young woman with golden ringlets. And I didn’t see Evan Burke.

  I said, “I’ll check out the casino.”

  Alvarez approached the front desk, where an elderly woman was counting out cash, filing the large bills under the drawer.