The Silenced Women
Page 25
“I’ll record Wheel of Fortune, so you don’t miss anything. You own a cell?”
“That one of those things you talk into?”
“Call me when he moves.”
Mahler slid a piece of paper toward Woodhouse. “Here’s his home and work addresses.”
“Am I supposed to eat this after I’ve read it?”
“I’ll leave it to you, Tom. You always were a man of discretion.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
(i)
(THURSDAY, 10:22 P.M.)
The team fell silent as Mahler walked into the VCI room.
“We didn’t know where you went,” Rivas said.
Looking chagrined, Mahler moved to the center of the room. “Sorry. I should’ve called you. I had to see a friend.”
Ken Holland, the detective transferred to replace Frames, sat at the extra desk. The young detective was dressed in flannel shirt, jeans, and wool cap. Mahler nodded silently at him and turned to Eden. “Did I leave you stranded?”
“No, no,” Eden said. “One of the units drove me back to my car. We just got the first report from the evidence techs on the break-in at your house. No signs of tampering on the entry alarm. The intruder must’ve used a passcode reader, like on the gate at City Lot 2, where Steve parked his car. Also no fingerprints on the doors, the sound system, or the bottle. Bailey says we might get DNA off the beer bottle, but it’ll take a few days.”
“Anything stolen?” Rivas asked.
Mahler shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“So this wasn’t a robbery?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“What does it look like?” Coyle asked.
Mahler considered it for a moment. “Hard to know. Some sort of stunt, maybe.”
“Was it just one guy?”
“Only one came out the back door. Male. We couldn’t get close enough to see him. He ran up the hill behind my house and got into a car. We didn’t get a make on the vehicle.”
Holland came forward. “Wait a minute. This guy was actually inside your house when you arrived?”
“Yeah,” Mahler said. “He was there.”
“You surprised him?”
“We don’t know.”
Eden tapped at the screen on her phone. “I don’t think so. Bailey spoke to the alarm company. They’re still running diagnostics, but they claim the alarm didn’t malfunction. It was hacked. That’s the only way the sequence could happen. Someone reprogrammed the alarm to call Eddie instead of the alarm company. So this guy was waiting for us.”
“Can we get a trace on the cell?” Mahler asked.
Coyle shrugged. “We’re working on it. But if the guy was smart enough to get in the house and hack the alarm, he probably used an untraceable phone or spoofing software to block the trace.”
Holland raised his arms. “Guys, guys. I know I’m new to this, but do you hear yourselves? You’re saying some bright guy takes all this trouble to bypass the house alarm, break into the house, drink a beer, and then hack the alarm to call Eddie. I mean, fucking come on. What’s the point?”
“Same as the dogs in Steve’s car,” Rivas said. “To screw with us, show us how smart he is.”
Holland rubbed his wool cap. “And tell me again, how do we know it’s connected to the park homicide?”
“The music,” Eden said. “The intruder put a song called ‘Für Elise’ on Eddie’s sound system.”
“Was it playing when Eddie arrived?”
“No. It came on as the intruder was leaving.”
“We think he controlled it remotely,” Coyle said. “Probably through his cell.”
“Can we trace anything on the recording?” Mahler asked.
“No, it’s a generic download. No digital fingerprints. Could have come from anywhere.”
Mahler looked across the room at the team and took a deep breath. “By the way, I’ve already told Daniel and Eden, but the rest of you should know. The chief has given us until one tomorrow afternoon to make an arrest.”
“Are you serious?” Coyle asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
The room fell quiet. Mahler turned to face a new display of photo enlargements taped side by side on the wall beside the whiteboard. In sequence, the photos showed three men carrying the victim’s body to the park bench, then climbing back up the hill. “What do we have on these photos?”
Rivas joined him at the display. “We showed the photos to Peña. He confirmed seeing these guys with the victim Saturday night.” Rivas pointed to one photo. “According to his earlier testimony, the guy in the front is the Asian, the guy in the middle is dark-skinned, and the last guy is taller and white.”
Mahler peered at the photos. “The faces of the first two are pretty clear. If we can ID them, we can put them in the park with the victim’s body. This last guy—can the lab do anything on the resolution?”
“Not according to the techs.” Coyle sat back in his chair. “Something about the image lacking information. Anyway, the photo was taken in the dark, and the camera lens was focused on the foreground, a few hundred yards away. But we do know the Asian is also the hooded guy in the surveillance film taken at the park gate. Analysis of that film showed he was five feet four and left-handed.”
“The middle guy’s about the same size,” Eden said. “So these are the ‘little men’ the homeless guy talked about.”
“Maybe this dark-skinned guy isn’t Latino,” Rivas said. “Maybe he’s East Indian. The owner of the vintage Mercedes in San Francisco you’re trying to track down is named Victor Banerjee.”
Holland tapped one of the photo enlargements. “See this thing? On the Asian guy’s jacket?”
“It’s a shadow,” Rivas said.
“No, that’s what I thought, too. But look—it’s in all the photos, no matter which way he’s facing.” Holland picked up a black pen and circled the shape in each photo. “Look. Here and here and here. It’s something on the jacket. A picture or a letter.”
“It’s like a ball with a line coming out the top,” Eden said.
Coyle bent close to his laptop. “I’ve seen that somewhere else.” He swiveled the screen toward the others. “Yeah. Look, it’s the logo the victim had on her computer. It’s that startup down in the city—DivingBell.”
Mahler walked back to Coyle’s desk. “So, up to now, we were looking for a connection between DivingBell and this guy Thackrey, the name in the victim’s book of poetry. But maybe the connection’s with one of his friends. What’d the company say when you called?”
“I only asked about Thackrey, and the company’s representative said Thackrey was not associated with them.”
Mahler looked across the room to Rivas. “Daniel, you and Ken go down to the offices of this startup first thing tomorrow. Ask about Victor Banerjee and the Asian guy with the hoodie.”
“Speaking of these guys,” Coyle said, “get this. Remember this morning I said I was getting weird messages on my computer? The IT guys did some poking and figured out someone hacked my fucking computer.”
“When?” Eden asked. “How? Someone came in here?”
“Yesterday,” Coyle said, “and, no, they didn’t come in here. They did it remotely, from well…anywhere. Probably broke through the city’s online firewall.”
“Oh, man,” Holland said. “What happened to the days when we just walked around and shot the bad guys?”
Rivas laughed. “Really? In what universe?”
“The thing is,” Coyle said, “whoever hacked me planted a keystroke logger on my operating system.”
Mahler rolled his eyes. “Martin, what’s that mean, in English?”
“It means they’re tracking literally every keystroke I type and intercepting what we’re doing.”
“Who is it?” Mahler asked. “Can we trace it?”
“Can you remove this…keystroke logger thing?”
“Yeah, but instead I thought I’d leave it there and screw with them. From now on, I’m using this new computer, with different online access, for the investigation.”
Mahler gestured again toward the photographs. “What about Thackrey? Is this Benjamin Thackrey? Have we found him yet?”
Coyle looked at his screen. “Maybe. When Thackrey was questioned in the disappearance of Reggie Semple, one of the online articles mentioned a law firm called Walker and Prince. In the Sonoma County tax records, I found a property in Dry Creek Valley with that name listed as the owner. On Chiott Road. Eight thousand square feet. Fits the description Alvarez gave us.”
“All right.” Mahler looked at Eden. “Let’s go pay a late-night visit to Mr. Thackrey.”
The phone rang. Rivas picked it up and listened. When he turned to the others, his face looked stricken. “Something’s been found up in Spring Lake. It’s a mannequin made to look like a homicide victim.”
(ii)
(THURSDAY, 11:18 P.M.)
Mahler and Rivas took the western entrance into the park. Two units sat on the shoulder at the gate, lights flashing. A uniformed officer leaned toward Mahler’s window. “Down near the boat launch.”
At the end of the parking lot, they found three more units. A cluster of uniformed officers stood beside the forest’s edge. Yellow caution tape was strung across the entrance to Fisherman’s Trail. Mahler parked his car and walked slowly toward the uniforms. In the middle of the group, Mahler saw Hadley, the park guard, from two days earlier.
Hadley held a notebook and a large flashlight. “This isn’t part of our route. It’s not wide enough for patrol. We take the road through the picnic area to the West Saddle Dam.” He pointed up the hill.
“All right.” Mahler watched him. “You’ve covered your ass. Tell me what happened.”
Hadley looked at this notebook. “About twenty-two hundred, Office Templin and I saw a vehicle near the boat ramp and lights moving on Fisherman’s Trail. We immediately left our station and came down here.”
Hadley glanced up to see if Mahler was listening. “At the parking area, we observed an older-model pickup truck driving at a high rate of speed out the west gate. We called 911 and reported it. Officer Templin and I proceeded on foot onto Fisherman’s Trail. About two hundred yards inside, we found the…thing. It was covered with a tarp. At first we thought it was a body. But when we opened the tarp, we saw the mannequin. We called 911 again and secured the scene.”
In the group of officers nearby, Mahler recognized Sergeant Ray Alcott. “Ray, you know what happened with the BOLO?”
Alcott approached Mahler. “Yeah. We had two units at the park—one at the Violetti Gate on the east side, the other at Oak Knolls on the south side. Both responded. Looks like the truck went into the neighborhood. We’re going street by street now. Copter’s on the way.”
Mahler nodded. “How’d they get past the gate?”
“Busted the deadbolt,” Alcott said. “Idiots probably used a sledge. On the way out, their truck hit the gate and left some paint transfer.”
Across the parking lot, Mahler saw Bailey climb out of the evidence van.
“I can show you where the mannequin is, if you like,” Hadley said.
Mahler took the flashlight from him. “Stay here.”
Hadley gestured toward the caution tape. “This trail follows the lake’s edge to the loop road. It’s where they found the girl two years ago.”
Mahler looked into the dark woods. “I know where it is.” He ducked under the yellow tape and waited for Rivas and Bailey to join him. On the trail, Mahler took the lead, shining the light ahead and stepping carefully around rocks and tree roots. At a point where the trail veered abruptly away from the lake’s edge, he saw a manzanita fronting a wide patch of flat earth. A dark shape lay in the center of the clearing. Mahler shone his flashlight past the bush and onto a blue plastic tarp. At its top edge lay a mass of brown hair.
Mahler paused, aiming the light around the tarp.
Behind him, Bailey pointed to indentations in the dirt. “Footprints on the near side.”
Mahler stepped aside. “Get some pictures.”
Bailey went closer. The others waited while she shot a dozen photos from different angles.
Next, Bailey took a small flashlight from her jacket and approached the mannequin, stepping around the footprints in the mud. She pulled on latex gloves and put her equipment case on the ground. Then, kneeling close, she shined her light where the hair protruded from the tarp.
The flashlight’s beam caught the long, straight strands of a woman’s wig. Bailey looked behind her at the others. No one spoke.
She peeled back the tarp to reveal a life-size fiberglass mannequin. The thing lay facedown, unclothed. The torso was smooth and pink-colored. Its limbs were flung out stiffly on either side. A sticky red paste was smeared over the back.
Bailey backed away. “Who the heck does this?”
“Take pictures.” Mahler blocked her path. “Process it—all of it, footprints, prints on the mannequin and tarp.”
Rivas looked at Mahler. “You think these are the same guys who went after you and Steve? They’re fucking with us again?”
“No.” Mahler handed him Hadley’s large flashlight. “Those guys wouldn’t have broken the lock at the gate and left a mess like this.”
Mahler looked into the impenetrable darkness of the trees, struck again by how everything could appear normal and then fifteen steps down a dirt path it all came back, a blackness so dense you could lose yourself.
Susan Hart would come out of the trees soon—young and shy in her shorts and sweatshirt, drawn to their voices from the place on the trail where the killer had left her.
He thought of how little power the dead have.
He took a breath and waited. Closing his jacket, he shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. Homicides on television never got it cold enough, lonely enough.
He thought of Susan running her fastest time in Santa Cruz in the dark. What had she meant? He distrusted the darkness, knew what it harbored.
The work on the mannequin unfolded a few feet away in a cone of dim light—Rivas holding the flashlight, while Bailey moved slowly across the surface of the plastic skin with a brush and jar of latent powder. It was an echo, a farce of their real work to solve three homicides.
He suddenly felt all the tiredness he had ignored for the past three days. Every part of him, down to his bones, ached from exhaustion. Then he knew he didn’t want to be there any longer.
Mahler tapped Rivas’s shoulder and gestured behind him. Then he walked alone back on the dark trail toward the parking lot.
Part III
Chapter Thirty
(i)
(FRIDAY, 8:00 A.M.)
Mahler hung his shirt on a hook in the men’s restroom. He washed his face and took shaving cream and a fresh razor out of his kit. His cheeks and chin were smeared with foam when Rivas came into the room.
“How’d you make out last night?” Rivas asked. “I heard you picked up the guys who left the mannequin in the park. Three of them, was it?”
Mahler ran the razor across his cheek and dipped it in the sink water. “Yeah, the copter spotted the truck six or seven blocks from the park. One of the geniuses was passed out in the front seat. The other two were hiding in a backyard a block away. All three had jackets for small shit: drug possession, public intoxication.”
“You talk to them?”
“If you can call it that. They were pretty wasted. Said they smoked some crack and thought it’d be funny to plant th
e mannequin. The DA’s charging them with obstruction.”
“Truro there?”
“Yeah,” Mahler shrugged. “He was there. He’s doing a press conference at nine. Bailey get what she needed?”
“Fingerprints, shoe prints, even some fibers. More than enough. Is the forensics team letting you back in your house?”
Mahler felt his newly shaven skin with a fingertip. “After lunch. They’re still looking at the type of hacking used on the alarm system.”
“You’re welcome to shower at our place. Teresa’s at work all day.”
Mahler smiled. “Thanks. I’m okay for the time being. Anyway, Eden and I are headed up to Dry Creek in a few minutes to talk to Thackrey.”
“So, are we going to meet the chief’s deadline? Do we have enough to charge Thackrey?”
“No. Arturo Peña ID’d him in a drug buy with the victim two nights before. But that doesn’t connect Thackrey to the homicide, and Peña makes a terrible witness. Only other evidence is Thackrey’s name in the victim’s book of poetry and the note about someone killing her. I’ve written a search warrant for his house and vehicle. Maybe we get lucky and find a judge to sign it.”
Mahler finished shaving.
Rivas handed over a paper towel. “Your headache any better?”
“The pain’s still there and some…side effects.” Mahler looked at Rivas silently, as if considering something. He wiped his face with the towel. “You okay partnering with Holland for the time being?”
Rivas shrugged. “It’s fine. We’re going down to the city to talk to the owners of this company DivingBell. See if we can confirm the IDs of the suspects and get a line on their addresses.”
Mahler smoothed his hair and reached for his shirt. “Interesting to see how Holland handles himself in the field. Martin thinks he’s a good fit.”
They walked down the corridor to the VCI room. Holland stood at the whiteboard, peering at the victim’s timeline. “So, Eddie, can we discontinue the seventy-two-hour countdown? No actual body was found last night, right? Don’t we have to admit the Elise Durand homicide isn’t the same as the ones two years ago?”