by Alec Peche
He savored a cup of tea sitting at his kitchen counter, looking outside at the bay with the sounds of his cats chowing down the fish stew he’d made them. Peace at last.
Chapter Thirty Six
Natalie was on the phone with Detective Shimoda and she did a little happy dance when he indicated that the crime scene techs had gone back through the hair samples to find those with follicles attached. After all the time and people in and out of the car, there were just three samples with the follicles attached. One hair was thought to be a dog or cat. The state lab was putting a push on the remaining two. Debbie Altman had been a natural redhead, so the DNA in her hair was not damaged by peroxide. They would have the results back in about two days as the specimen preparation with hair was much quicker than dragging DNA out of someone’s fabric. If it came back positive, the ADA indicated it was enough to arrest John Avery and hold him for more testing.
As for Barbara Watson, the police were bringing Greg Watson in for an official interview to talk with him regarding his wife’s cold case. Natalie and Detective Shimoda were flying down to Phoenix for a joint interview with the local police department which was supplying a police psychologist for observation and analysis on Wednesday. Finally some progress on these cold cases!
They still didn’t have enough information on either suspect to convince a jury, but they were moving closer. She felt one of the two would confess during the interview process. She’d never talked to either, one on one, so she didn’t know why she had that feeling that one of them would confess, but she did and she was looking forward to it.
She spent some time detailing the questions that she and the detective would ask. It was important to work through the flow as on rare occasions it would trip up a suspect. She looked back on Damian’s question about the luminol results from the Watson house. She confirmed what he suspected, their house was never checked for blood as she started out as a missing person and years later when her remains were finally identified, they didn’t go back and check the house as Mr. Watson was not a suspect at the time.
She looked up the property records for the county to see if she could find the owner. Even some thirty years after the murder they could use luminol to find blood traces. If she could walk into the interview with information that blood was found in his house it might be enough to flip him into a confession. Natalie had two days to convince the owner and Detective Shimoda to allow her to have the house tested with luminol. She could eventually get a court order, but that would take time. The owner of the house might not want it confirmed as they had to notify potential real estate buyers in California that a death had occurred in the house.
Natalie contacted the property owner and thought all of her luck was raining down on her in one day. The man used it as a rental and he was between renters at the moment so she could send in the crime scene team as long as they would clean up after themselves. Natalie knew the crime scene folks didn’t clean up after they examined a scene, so she would hire a cleaning service to clean up. If it led to solving this case, she’d submit it as an expense and see where she got with that.
An hour later, she met two CSI techs at the scene anxious to see what they could find. Detective Shimoda was detained elsewhere and couldn’t be on scene with them. When they sprayed Luminol it only showed areas where there was blood for thirty seconds. Then the biochemical process ended and so a tech had to take photos quickly after spraying. Mrs. Watson was stabbed to death, so if it occurred in the home, there would be copious amounts of blood likely in several rooms as the body was moved to a vehicle for transportation and dumping.
It was a nice home, about 2500 square feet with two stories and four bedrooms on a quiet street in the Almaden Valley region of San Jose. No wonder the owner wanted to keep it a rental; she bet he was charging about five to six thousand a month to rent. Natalie also bet that the cleaning service would be a little more expensive than she expected given the size of the home.
They discussed which room to start in and Natalie was in favor of the kitchen. The knife with Greg Watson’s prints on it was a kitchen knife and so if they had a domestic dispute that turned into a crime of passion, then it might have started in the kitchen. Natalie discussed the house’s layout with the techs theorizing where she might have been stabbed and then discussing what would have happened next to dispose of the body.
She took a guess on where a knife block or knife drawer might be and started the techs there. The kitchen slowly lit up ever so briefly as the luminol did its thing. There were patches of quick phosphoresce but that was a reaction to bleach or other cleaning chemicals. Blood had a much slower reaction to the stuff. Just finding Barbara Watson’s blood in the kitchen wasn’t enough to throw suspicion on Mr. Watson. A small amount might be from little nicks that might routinely occur in a kitchen. They needed to find copious amounts of blood like that from a stab wound. They also needed to find enough to sample, not an easy task after nearly thirty years. Over that time period, the house likely had new flooring as tastes changed and flooring wore out. They might find a splatter pattern on a wall, but blood was nearly impossible to get out of drywall.
Several hours later, they had it. Natalie was wrong; the murder hadn’t occurred in the kitchen, it occurred in the master bathroom. It was in the plaster and the tile grout. It was like the classic scene from Psycho with a woman stabbed in the shower. Keeping her fingers crossed, Natalie pulled up the carpet next to the shower enclosure and the plywood had a large old black stain. Bingo, now she had something to question Mr. Watson with in advance of DNA test results being available. She really wanted to high five the CSI techs, but all that would do was contaminate the scene with their DNA. She called Detective Shimoda to discuss their findings and since he was wrapping things up at headquarters, he decided to stop by the house and look at what they found. Someone had been murdered in the house, it was just too early to confirm that it was Barbara Watson.
She dropped an email to Damian updating him on what they were finding at the prior Watson home. His response described what had happened at his house the previous afternoon, asking if she found anything unusual about Angus Lewis. He was fed up with the attacks on his house and ready to cause outright civil war within the gang by releasing all of the emails to all of its members. Hopefully that would cause the current leadership to be overthrown and in the midst of the gang chaos for them to forget about him and Natalie. He really wanted to discuss the idea with Angus, but he needed to be able to trust that he wouldn’t tell the gang of the pending email release. Natalie hadn’t heard back from her sources; she would see what she could do to light a fire under her ‘friends’ in the next hour or so. She described the attack on his house and the urgent need for an answer, then she went back to work on the Watson’s former house just as the detective arrived.
“So we likely have a murder in this house; we just don’t know whose murder,” Shimoda said.
“Yeah, since it was a cooking knife, my money was on the kitchen, but it’s more like the Psycho movie set with a large amount of blood in the master bathroom in the sub-flooring. Wood’s a good surface to get blood samples from so we’ll have the results in a few weeks to validate if it’s a match for Barbara.”
The detective walked through the house and then stopped to observe the work of the techs. Several decades of the plywood’s life had passed and it still looked like it had a lot of blood imbedded in it.
“Too bad we can’t test how long the blood’s been there.”
“Perhaps someday we’ll have that analyzer. It will be long after I’m done investigating cold cases.”
Natalie and the detective discussed their approach with Mr. Watson, given the information they were seeing in the house. After formulating a progression of questions they left the house along with the techs, now finished with collecting evidence from the house. Natalie mentioned to the detective on the way out, “Do you think the department would pay to clean the house since the owner was cooperative; we didn’t
have to get a warrant which in theory saved the department time and money?”
“Let me check on that and I’ll get back to you.”
“Thanks, I know the owner has a renter ready to move in within the next few days, so we’ll need an answer soon,” Natalie said making up this last piece of fiction.
“I’ll get an answer soon,” and the detective waved as he got in his car.
Natalie did another check on her email, hoping her friends had come through on Angus and finally they had. Just as Damian said, every comment checked out on the guy and he seemed legitimate. She decided to call Damian and see what his next steps were.
“Hey, did you find any information on Angus Walsh?”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m calling. He seems to be everything he says he is according to my sources. What are your next steps?”
“I was going to contact him to arrange a meeting tonight at Pete’s in Oakland. Can you join us?”
“I thought that might be your plan and yes, I’ll meet you there. What’s the address?”
“You’ve never been to Pete’s? Don’t have dinner; you can grab it there as he makes the best cheeseburgers!” Damian said after he gave her the address; then he ended the call.
He then tried to contact Angus and was pleased when he responded to his email and they set a meeting time of 8. He knew what he wanted to do; he just wanted confirmation that he had his thoughts in the correct order. Oh well, it was time to speed across to the marina and grab his truck to head to Hermione’s swim meet. He’d go from an after meet celebration to his meeting with Angus. He shook his head at the extremes he was experiencing; from high school swimming, to an ex-member of a notorious jailhouse gang.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Damian was sitting in the bleachers next to Ariana waiting for Hermione’s heat. She was swimming three different races and there were two semi-final races that dumped the winners into a final.
“Have you met any of the other students’ parents?” asked Damian in a soft voice.
“Yes, but none of the swimming parents. Usually it’s at Starbucks, where all the cool kids go to start their day.”
“Sounds like you mean all the rich kids go there. I don’t recall drinking $4 and $5 lattes at their age.”
“Yeah, me either, in part because back then there wasn’t a Starbucks on every corner and if you went to the corner store, then you were harassed by the neighborhood gossip who managed to tell everyone your business. It just wasn’t cool to hang out there.”
“Here she comes,” Ariana murmured.
Hermione lined up on the starting block with seven other girls. They took their sprint positions bending at the hips and with a starter’s horn they were off. The color of their swim caps helping to distinguish the swimmers. Ariana and Damian found themselves standing and cheering their kid on. After several laps the group separated and it appeared she would come in second. Good enough to advance to the final heat. She exited the pool and gave them a shy wave and found four thumbs up in return. It was all her surrogate parents could do to stop themselves from embarrassing the girl by calling out her praises. She swam her other semi-finals to advance to those finals as well.
“I hope she has something left in the tank,” Damian said. “Although the kid doesn’t look like she’s dragging at all.”
“She told me before the meet that she was aiming just to advance in the semi-finals, and she wanted to place in the finals. The kid has goals,” said Ariana proudly.
“She sure does. Kudos to her for so quickly handling this terrible situation with her parents and fitting into this new life we’ve built for her,” Damian replied. “Kudos to you for taking on a strange child in a twenty-four seven role. You’re doing an awesome job.”
“You’re not so bad yourself; she feels your support on a different level than mine and I know that if I have anything crop up I can count on you to take care of her in my absence. I haven’t tested you yet, but it’s just in your core.”
“I was thinking of taking a short vacation to Mexico after she’s scuba certified. We could take her diving every day in warm water with something better to see than murky San Francisco Bay.”
“We could celebrate her end of school and teach her the new skill of scuba. I like that idea.”
“Give me some dates that work for you and I’ll arrange to rent a house or condo for the three of us. We could take Miguel as well. I’ll use a private charter jet and he can just ride in the cabin with us.”
“That sounds like an awesome idea. She can get certified in a day. Let’s have a conversation with her after the meet on that idea and let’s find out what she’s done previous summers to entertain herself. We don’t need to tell her about scuba diving or Cozumel yet.”
“Good idea,” Damian said and then they focused on Hermione as she stepped up for the second race.
After she came out of the locker room with her hair in the process of drying they congratulated her on the meet. She’d placed in two of the three events including first place in one of them. Not a bad start. They headed over to a restaurant to chat. As this was an away meet, the team members and their parents were not having a post meet group dinner.
“Awesome job in the pool, kiddo,” Ariana said. “I competed in field hockey and never once played on a team that placed.”
“I changed high schools frequently in foster care and never stayed in a school long enough to join a sports team. Congrats,”
“What high school sport would you have played?” asked Hermione.
“I’m not a great team player so it would have had to be an individual sport like swimming, track and field, or tennis, perhaps. I’m not tall enough for basketball, and not wide enough for football. I could have done the running for soccer, but I’m not coordinated with my feet. So maybe I wouldn’t have even made a team,” Damian said, finishing his thought processes. “Kiddo, I’m content to live out my high school athletic dreams through you.”
Hermione just smiled happy with the world for a few moments and her place in it. Then, as usual, she got the wistful look that made Damian think she was at that moment remembering her parents. Soon they broke up for the night. Ariana had asked if he had any more attacks on his house and he lied and said no. There was no point in having the two of them worrying about him needlessly.
Soon he was on his way to Oakland for the meeting with Angus and Natalie. He was going to arrive half an hour before the two of them which was good as he wanted the right table in the bar. If need be, he’d get Pete’s help getting it. There was a table in a dark corner that would allow them to have their backs to the wall and they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone overhearing their conversation unless they were standing in front of the table. When he arrived he told Pete of his request for the table and he watched as Pete smoothly moved the couple there to another part of the bar. Damian took a seat and withdrew his computer tablet. He had it connected to his own WI-FI spot so he didn’t have to worry about someone hacking into his tablet. He had the perfect microbrewery beer and his thoughts and data were organized and ready to go, he just needed Natalie and Angus to walk in the door.
They walked in together apparently having met in the parking lot. Natalie would have known him from the criminal background check; it would have included a photo. Damian stood up and waved them over.
“I see you two have met perhaps in the parking lot?”
“Yeah,” was all they both said.
“Pete will be over to take your order in a minute,” Damian said. “Before we get started, is there anything you want to know?”
“So you both did checks on me and my story was the truth?” asked Angus.
Damian thought that it was a weird question and replied, “Angus, I told you I was going to check your background. Are you upset that I did?”
“No, I just wondered if the government expunged my record to the degree that they said they would when I was exonerated.”
“The story that you told Damian
is what I found when I looked at every available law enforcement source,” Natalie said.
“Good - I’m happy to hear my record was expunged like promised,” Angus replied. “Okay we can move on. How can I help?”
Damian refreshed Angus and Natalie on the current series of attacks.
“What happened to the guys in the copter?” asked Angus.
“Three got away and the rest of them are dead. The pilot that was hijacked is in critical condition as the gang shot him.”
“My ever so violent ‘friends’”, Angus commented holding his hands in quotations around the word friends.
“Angus, congrats to you for surviving their system and despite the grave injustice done to you, getting your life back on track,” Natalie said with evident sincerity. “I don’t know that I have the strength of character to survive and thrive as you have.”
“I was raised Catholic and you can choose to believe that it’s all bunk, or you can gain huge amounts of emotional solace by deciding that God has a greater purpose for you. It didn’t take me long after my conviction to choose the latter path. An added benefit was that the guys left me alone when I was praying. So it was a win-win all the way around.”
