The Silenced Women

by Frederick Weisel

  “I’d like to assist with Partridge’s arrest,” Eden said.

  “It’s not necessary. Martin’s got it. Like I said, more units are on the way.”

  “You don’t trust me after the way I pulled my weapon in the garage?”

  “Nothing to do with that. If anything, I trust you more. You did this.” Mahler gestured toward the unit across the lot. He felt the smallness of his answer. Should he tell her, as Woodhouse suggested, how good an investigator she is—how she had broken through the Partridge case? He couldn’t get the words out of his mouth.

  “What about Thackrey?”

  “Rivas and Holland are in the city, arresting Victor Banerjee and the other suspect from the park photos. My guess is, those guys’ll turn on Thackrey once they’re in cuffs. We just need to wait for the call before we go back to Dry Creek to pick up Thackrey. I have an arrest warrant for Thackrey and a search warrant for his house. We might actually meet Truro’s deadline after all.”

  “Can I go with you?” Eden asked.

  “Not much to do. We put him in cuffs, read him his rights. He asks for a lawyer.”

  The unit with Cipriani and Albright drove out of the parking lot.

  Eden turned to Mahler. “So this is it? It’s over? The thing with Partridge and the girls two years ago?”

  Mahler looked at her. “We get Partridge, it’s over.”

  “You told me Wednesday night all the public wants is that it doesn’t happen again. Putting Partridge away does that, right? He won’t kill another girl.”

  “Mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  “Stuff like this doesn’t go away. You have homicides in a small town, people don’t forget.”

  “You mean the family?”

  “The family, the community, the officers involved.”

  Eden watched Mahler. “But our finding the guy makes it less painful, doesn’t it?”

  Mahler looked out the window. “Doesn’t bring back the girls. But, yeah, things change. Over time, memories definitely change.”

  They were both quiet.

  “I keep thinking—” Eden said. “Lorin Albright lived with Partridge for more than a year after the Avelos killing. Shared a bed. Had sex.”

  “She thought she couldn’t escape,” Mahler said. “Staying was better than running.”

  “I want to think I’d run.”

  “Maybe she wanted to. But fear’s a real thing. Makes people believe all sorts of stuff. We’re all afraid of something, Eden.”

  Eden heard him use her first name. Her face reddened. “There’s something I wanted to tell you the other night when you were talking about my thesis and my FBI work. When I was in college, writing that paper, I had this experience. I don’t know how to—”

  Mahler put his hand on her arm. “Hey, listen. Stop. Okay?”

  “I need to tell you.”

  “I know, but another time. Go home now and get some sleep. It’s been a long week. We’ll have lots of time to talk.”

  Eden drew a long breath. “Sure,” she said. “Lots of time.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  (i)

  (FRIDAY, 12:16 P.M.)

  Frames sat on a kitchen stool, watching the EMTs, Tomas and Jesse. The two had arrived with a gurney and knelt now on either side of Holland. Frames admired their efficiency. Tomas bent close to Holland, while Jesse examined the head wound. “Can you hear me, Ken?” Tomas asked. “Can you open your eyes?”

  Holland grunted, and Tomas repeated, “Can you hear me, Ken?”

  Jesse’s phone buzzed. He read a text. “Your colleague on the twenty-ninth floor is conscious. Concussion, broken nose, and possible broken fibula. He’ll survive. Off his feet a while.”

  “What’s a fibula?” Frames asked.

  “Bone on the lateral side of the lower leg.” Jesse pointed to his own leg. “Breaking it would hurt a lot.”

  “Really?” Frames studied Victor, who sat handcuffed beside Russell on the sofa a few feet away.

  Frames pulled out his Glock and laid it on the kitchen counter. “So Tomas, my man, how’re you guys at treating gunshot wounds?”

  “Depends.” Tomas looked up. “Where’s the wound?”

  Frames shrugged. “I haven’t decided.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Never mind. Just…letting my mind wander.”

  From the floor, Holland yelled, “Fucking motherfuck.”

  “Signs of intelligent life,” Frames said.

  “Your friend here took quite a blow to the back of his head,” Jesse said.

  Frames leaned on the bar to look down at Holland. “There’re worse places to hit him. I’ve never seen him without the stocking cap. Good to know there is a back to his head.”

  “Well, he’s got a large lump there now.” Tomas laid a blue ice pack under Holland’s head. “Can you hear me, Ken?”

  “I’ve got to go,” Holland shouted.

  “Suppose the gunshot wound was to the chest?” Frames asked.

  Tomas smiled, in on the joke now. “Not much for us to do really. Usually fatal. Chances are, you hit the lungs, the heart, major artery.”

  “Sounds promising. How about the abdomen?”

  “Lot of plumbing. Always a danger of bleeding out before getting to surgery.”

  “So many choices.”

  “What happened to you?” Tomas pointed to the glass cuts on Frames’s face.

  “Car trouble.” Frames looked at Victor and Russell. “Right, gentlemen? You two have anything to say? You’ve already been Mirandized.”

  Russell and Victor exchanged a glance.

  “Wait for the lawyers,” Victor said.

  Frames put the gun back in his holster. “Suit yourself. Whatever happens with Thackrey, you boys’ll be charged as accomplices in the murder of Elise Durand.”

  Russell shook his head. “She wanted to be laid near the water. Ben thought we had to do that.”

  “Wait for the lawyers,” Victor repeated.

  Frames shrugged. “We’ve also got you for assault on a police officer, with what you did to Rivas and Holland there. And don’t forget the dogs in the car. DA might call that attempted murder.”

  “You don’t have any evidence connecting us to the dogs,” Victor said.

  “Sure about that? Tell us what you know. It might help your side of things.”

  “What do you need? You’ve got the photo in the park.”

  “Tell me about Thackrey,” Frames said. “If he’s like every other mutt, he’s going to roll on you the minute we pick him up.”

  “That’s just it,” Russell grimaced. “Ben’s not like every other…mutt.”

  Victor sighed. “Russ, this cop’s playing you. He doesn’t have any authority to use what you say.”

  “I think I gave Ben everything I owe him.” Russell faced Frames. “Okay, here’s Ben Thackrey. Graduates Stanford in three years. Starts a company called StreetBox—grows 600 percent in two years—sells it for forty million. Starts another company, BluFish. Runs a public offering in the middle of the 2002 recession, when no one is putting money anywhere, finds a pool of investors. That’s where Vic and I come in.”

  “You worked for him?” Frames asked.

  “Work?” Russell laughed. “We’re running fifteen, twenty hours a day. Sleeping on cots in the break room. Pizza for breakfast. But it’s worth it to be around Ben. He’s in his element. He’s this kid, literally a kid, in front of a roomful of programmers, drawing diagrams on a whiteboard. He’s got…vision. The product launches massive. Everybody wants a piece. Three years in, and the company’s got fifteen hundred employees, offices in Milan, Beijing, Mumbai. But Ben’s bored. Makes one call to Yahoo and sells the whole thing. Turns twenty-four, he’s worth four hundred million. Flies us to Macao for his birthday.”


  “I get it, the guy’s rich.”

  Russell shrugged. “The thing is, it’s not really the money. Ben’s fun to be around. He can make stuff. You say, it’d be cool if we could do something, a couple days later he has a program. It’s like he invents his world. And he could be the sweetest, most generous guy in the world. Four years ago, he helped me out of depression. Literally kept me alive. I owe him everything for that.”

  Holland looked across the room, focusing on Frames. “What the fuck?”

  Frames saluted him. “Russell here coldcocked you. Take a few minutes. It’ll all come back.”

  “So here’s a question.” Frames sat back on his stool and looked at Russell. “How’d your boy Thackrey get from doing startups to carrying a dead body through a park?”

  “After BluFish, there’re more companies—NetPort, Stinger, Drift. All of them hit big. At some point, Ben’s no longer just an entrepreneur. He’s the face of something. People in Silicon Valley discover it’s good to have Ben on your side. He’s invited everywhere. He’s a celebrity, known for just being Ben Thackrey.”

  “That’s when women play a larger part in his life. Thackrey always dated beautiful girls, even at Stanford. Once he becomes a celebrity, he moves in a new orbit. He meets wealthy women, a lot of them smart in their own rights. But Ben’s easily bored. He’s already smart. Why’s he need more smartness? He’s always looking for something else. Something he can’t find. He’s addicted to adrenaline. He’s like a shark moving through the water, picking up women, dumping them.

  “He has enough money and enough status that he throws things away. He drives cars until he’s tired of them, literally leaves them by the side of the road. He furnishes houses and condos and never lives in them. He lives in a disposable world, casting off things when he doesn’t want them anymore.

  “Then he meets Reggie.”

  “Reggie?” Frames asked.

  “Reggie Semple. She was famous for a while.” Russell adjusted himself on the sofa, trying to get comfortable with his hands cuffed behind his back. “Youngest daughter of Gregory Semple. Old San Francisco family. Reggie grew up in Hillsborough. Had her coming-out at the Cotillion Club in 2008.”

  “Are we getting to Elise Durand?”

  “Be patient. Reggie’s at loose ends. Spends a year at USF, drops out. Tries modeling but finds she can’t keep appointments. What she likes are parties. That’s where she meets Ben—private party in Pacific Heights. The girl’s flat-out gorgeous. She and Ben are attracted to each other. But she’s a loose cannon. Big fan of Hangar 1 on the rocks and never says no to coke or weed. And she’s got other boyfriends besides Ben. Guy named Tyler Morris, son of another old-money family and full-time heroin addict, and P. J. Weston, a new forward for the Golden State Warriors.”

  “I love the Warriors,” Holland shouted.

  Jesse held the cold pack against Holland’s head. “Take it easy, Ken.”

  “For a while Reggie and Ben are a couple,” Russell said. “She moves into his place in Los Altos. But she’s gone a lot. Ben figures she’s doing other guys, and she is. Photos show up on Instagram of Reggie partying with Morris or Weston or a dozen other guys. A story goes around about an abortion. When Ben and Reggie are together, they go at it pretty hard, the full ten rounds. He hits her, she hits him back. They come to our place, and Reggie has a bruise on her cheek or a split lip. They break up, get back together, break up, get back together. Then she’s gone for good.”

  “Where’d she go?” Frames asked.

  “You never heard this? She’s gone-gone. Like, disappeared. Morris watches her get into a cab outside his place in Pacific Heights, and she’s never seen again. San Francisco cops can’t find a record from a cab or an Uber of a pickup at that location. Her father offers half a million for leads. The cops question her boyfriends—Morris, Weston, even Ben. Morris is too strung out to know anything, and his family hires the best lawyer in the city. Ben has an alibi—he was seen at a party that night seventy miles away in Healdsburg. The cops figure the whole thing has something to do with Reggie’s heroin habit. In the end, Reggie Semple just falls off the face of the earth.”

  Frames leaned forward. “So why’s this a story?”

  “Because Ben’s different after that. He’s got this thing…this—”

  “Look,” Victor said, speaking for the first time.

  Russell turned toward him. “Yeah,” he said. “First time we saw him after that weekend, we knew he did it. No doubt.”

  “He killed this woman, Reggie whatever?”

  “Semple. Yeah.”

  “And he knows you know?” Frames asked.

  “Sure, but he also knows we’re not going to do anything about it. And something changes in his head. He kills this woman and doesn’t get caught. It’s like he crosses this great divide where rules don’t exist. After that, he falls in love with risk-taking for its own sake.”

  Holland listened to Russell. “I remember you. You’re that guy.”

  Russell stared back at him. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Then Ben starts doing drugs. Big-time,” Victor said. “He always did weed and coke, but now he needs something to keep him on his toes, in case you guys come after him. He discovers Modafinil and mixes it with Adderall. But Ben always wants more. He empties the capsules, grinds the contents into powder, and snorts it. He’s got no job, no responsibilities. He does sixty…a hundred and twenty milligrams a day. Pretty soon he’s mixing Adderall with crank. With the drugs, he figures he can beat anybody. He can beat you cops at murder.”

  Frames sat up straight on the stool. “Then he meets Elise Durand?”

  “Yeah, something about Elise captures him. She’s different from the trust-fund party girls. She has ideas, gifts. She understands philosophy, poetry, art in a way that Ben doesn’t. But she’s also impulsive, unpredictable. Ben says when he’s with her, it’s like watching a foreign film without subtitles.”

  “So why’s he kill her?”

  Russell and Victor exchanged a look. “Technically, that was my fault,” Russell said. “One night we’re all high on some new ganja. Elise and Ben get into a fight. I say something like, ‘Careful, Lisie. Ben’s girlfriends disappear.’ Elise doesn’t get it right away. But the fucking Internet being what it is, a few days later she figures it out. And Elise being Elise, she has to say something. She can’t help herself. She asks Ben if he killed Reggie. He tells her to fuck off. But she knows Ben did it. And now Ben knows she knows.”

  Frames nodded. “And, unlike you guys, he can’t trust her to stay quiet.”

  “No, he can’t. After that, she knew he was going to kill her. She just waited for it. The weird thing is, I think he actually cared for her. He felt something for her he hadn’t felt for other women.”

  “And Ben held us responsible,” Victor said. “Because of Russ’s slip of the tongue. In his mind, it was our fault he had to kill her. So he made us help him take Elise’s body to the park.”

  Russell turned to Victor. “We talked about leaving. We should have left.”

  “And the dogs in my car?” Frames asked.

  Victor shrugged. “What dogs?”

  (ii)

  (FRIDAY, 12:33 P.M.)

  Coyle drove slowly down the center lane of the parking lot at Brenners Home Improvement looking for Tom Woodhouse’s white Honda. The retired detective had called to say Irwin Partridge was inside the store. Coyle would meet with Woodhouse and then wait until two more units arrived before going inside to make the arrest.

  The parking lot was full of shoppers, everybody getting a jump on the weekend. Woodhouse’s car was supposed to be parked near the back of the center lane, but Coyle didn’t see it. Wondering if he misinterpreted the message, he took the next lane, and then the one beside that. Twice he spotted the tops of white vehicles, but they turned out to be different
models.

  Coyle called Woodhouse. No answer. He stopped and surveyed the parking lot. Doing the arrest in this crowd was going to be a nightmare. Behind him, a driver blared his horn.

  Coyle parked in the No Parking zone in front of the store. A unit pulled up beside him. Sergeant Dave Dietz rolled down his window. “You find Woodhouse?”

  Coyle shook his head. “We need to do this low-key, or it’s going to be a mess in there. I’ll talk to the store manager and locate Partridge. Once I have eyes on him, I’ll call you.”

  Dietz nodded. “Siefert’s on his way.”

  Inside the store, Coyle found the manager, a stocky, red-faced man.

  “What d’you need Partridge for?” he asked. “We’re a little busy right now.”

  “Police business.”

  The manager consulted a clipboard. “He’s supposed to be in Kitchens, last aisle. But on a day like this, he could be anywhere. You want me to call him to the office?”

  Better not to tip him off. “That’s okay. I’ll find him.”

  Coyle made his way through the congested checkout lines and turned into the last aisle. He passed a couple arguing about sinks and a contractor balancing an oven hood on a shopping cart. Midway down the aisle, he saw a clerk in one of the store’s green vests. The man was a hundred feet away, back turned. Coyle walked quickly, unconsciously touching his Glock.

  As Coyle reached the clerk, the man turned around to reveal himself as a twentysomething kid. The kid stumbled backward. “Whoa, man, take it easy.”

  “You seen Partridge?” Coyle asked.

  “Ir-win?” The clerk said the name mockingly. “I think he was here a few minutes ago, but, like, who knows?”

  Coyle walked the next aisle, past displays of kitchen cabinets. He peered around for another green vest. None in sight. He called Woodhouse again. No answer.

  Don’t screw this up.

  He saw he was on aisle Sixteen. He decided to make his way methodically down each aisle.

  Fifteen. Fourteen, Thirteen.

  Dietz called. “You found him? You need us to come in?”

  “No. Just hold on.”