by Kirk Russell
Raveneau called la Rosa from Salinas as he got back to 101 and turned north. He worked through Stoltz’s chronology on the drive home.
Checked in at La Playa at 6:15 p.m.
Dinner at Anton & Michel 7:30 p.m. reso, paid by Visa, first drink at bar 7:21, bill rung out at 8:50.
Checks out of La Playa at 7:00 a.m. next morning.
Gas at Sand City Chevron 7:42 a.m.
Maid cleans room at La Playa, 11:00 a.m. Remakes bed. Replaces shampoo and soap samples.
Two of the times mattered: when the dinner bill was closed out and when he checked out of La Playa the next morning. The window between was a little under twelve hours, more than enough time to leave the restaurant, drive three hours north, murder Whitacre, and return to the hotel to check out at 7:00 a.m. So the alibi was valid, but not solid and digging deeper would have to wait.
He drove home and didn’t walk in the door until two in the morning. He ate a sandwich and drank a flat half bottle of beer sitting in the refrigerator. He left his notes on a counter in the kitchen. He showered. As he lay down he reached for his phone and sent a text to la Rosa, ‘I’m back.’
THIRTEEN
The next morning Raveneau and la Rosa put on the booties, spacesuits, caps, masks – the whole get-up – before going in to watch their Jane Doe autopsied. The medical examiner quietly catalogued female, five foot four, one hundred twenty-three pounds, of mixed race, likely Asian/Caucasian, black hair, brown eyes, significant large black-colored moles high on the right side of her back, a tattoo of a diamond on the heel of her left foot, two inch scar on her left knee, another small tatt low on her back and one on her scalp inside the hairline. Approximate age: thirty. A tiny stud piercing in her left nostril was removed. Wounds: ligature marks at neck, hemorrhaging at eyes and tongue, scalp wound at right temple, bruising at the back of the neck, another bruise, two inches by one inch, on the right thigh just above the knee. An abrasion on the right elbow that likely occurred shortly before death, possibly from a fall. There was more bruising where ankle and wrist restraints had been removed.
Raveneau listened to the medical examiner’s quiet progress, heard him say ‘no evidence of sexual assault.’ He looked at the gray skin of her face and tried again to guess the reason she was in the China Basin building. There weren’t any needle marks, nothing indicated drug use. Prostitution or a sexual liaison was possible, and his guess was still that she came in through the gate with her assailant. One of them had a key. He and la Rosa would need to interview Heilbron again, as well as the realtor.
As they cut her open he and la Rosa left the room. They’d get the rest from the report. They didn’t need to watch her liver weighed.
‘What do you make of the tattoo on her heel?’ he asked after they’d stripped off the suits and were outside in the cool breeze of the corridor leading back to the Hall.
‘I don’t make anything of it.’
‘Maybe we can track down her name through the tattoos.’
‘That seems like another goose chase.’
‘Another one?’
‘Well, like one.’
Their Jane Doe’s sketch had run in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, but how many people read the newspaper any more? Still, at Homicide they had new calls, new tips. In the late morning an email tip on a different case arrived via the ‘Contact Us’ link on the SFPD website. The tip named two kids who’d allegedly witnessed a stabbing outside a club in the Mission several weeks ago. Raveneau called the high school and confirmed that both young men were seniors and at school today. At noon they drove over, met with a dean first, and then one of the two young men, who immediately denied having been at the club that night.
La Rosa took the lead with the second young man and impressed Raveneau. She was soft spoken and easy with the boy, a sixteen-year-old named Robert Fuentes. She was more relaxed and confident than with Heilbron. She’d also changed her look, cut her hair short this weekend, turning her proud face more handsome and mannish, something she told Raveneau on the drive here that she regretted. She told him something else this morning, that her roots were upper middle class. Her father was a knee surgeon, her mother in marketing, and both tried and failed to talk her out of police work, arguing that she could do better for herself.
Raveneau spoke decent Spanish but la Rosa was fluent and hip to the language the kid used. Forty minutes into the interview Fuentes gave up a name, H Man, Hector Jimenez, a gangbanger, and told them where to look for him.
They picked Jimenez up off the street in the mid afternoon and brought him in. He was a big man, coffee-colored, half-Puerto Rican, half-Mexican and muscled, wearing a canary-yellow shirt that came down to mid thigh. Jimenez knew to say nothing and lawyer up but inexplicably did the opposite: confessed to the shooting, saying he was high and the victim had come on to the girl he was with so he had no choice. They were hours with him in the small interview room and after he signed a confession they booked him.
Then they went to see Heilbron who was hostile and unwilling to talk to them at all. The thrill of confessing had passed and he made no attempt to answer Raveneau’s questions. Instead, he said, ‘I made up the whole thing, I didn’t kill her. I got everything from one of the cops outside. He’ll remember me. Ask him.’
Raveneau and la Rosa knew they’d have to kick him loose, but that didn’t mean they weren’t conflicted about it. Then, as they were leaving, Heilbron called to la Rosa. She glanced at Raveneau and then went back, demanding as she got close, ‘What is it?’
‘I know you’re not married. I want to ask you out. I’d like to spend time with you.’
‘Would you?’
‘Last night I kept waking up thinking about you. We should get together.’
‘Let’s do that. Let’s do it in an interview room tomorrow morning and we’ll talk about San Jose. How does that sound?’
She didn’t wait for his answer. Outside, Raveneau turned and said, ‘Let’s get a drink and celebrate our first week on-call together and you getting the Jimenez confession today.’
In the old days Raveneau drank Scotch and when somebody wanted to buy the homicide inspector a drink he usually accepted. He’d get warmed up and entertain a small crowd with stories as Angie waited at home. That was back when he thought it meant something to appear on TV answering questions about a homicide investigation at a press conference. It was also when he thought an eighteen-year-old Scotch meant the whiskey had been in a barrel for eighteen years, as opposed to the truth, which was that just a fraction of the barrel had. He hadn’t known anything more about Scotch than he’d known about homicide investigations. Now he ordered a glass of wine, la Rosa a margarita.
‘The homicide dick who drinks white wine,’ la Rosa said after the waitress left.
‘When I was the Great Inspector I drank Scotch. In those days I couldn’t find a hat big enough to fit my head.’
‘How do they fit nowadays? They must be tight still.’
‘Not as tight.’ He studied her a moment and said, ‘I should have asked you this weeks ago. Everyone calls you Liz, but what do you prefer?’
‘Oh, I don’t care.’
‘No, I’m asking, I mean it.’
‘I like Elizabeth but no one uses my full name.’ She smiled a warm smile. ‘I’m OK if you just call me Inspector. I’m still getting used to it and I love the sound of it.’
‘I’m going to call you Elizabeth.’
Raveneau finished his wine and as la Rosa downed her margarita they ordered another round. It felt like they got somewhere today and maybe also crossed a generational gap. Getting the Jimenez confession made it a lucky day, but that was before they knew what had happened across the bay in Oakland.
FOURTEEN
Charles Bates’s wife, Jacie, routinely took an evening walk, mostly when there was still light and often with CD, the D for Charles’s middle name, Douglas. Tonight she was walking alone. Not even their old dog, Chief, was with her. With his back legs Chief was
too slow. She left the house a little after five, knowing it would get to dusk as she came through the end of the walk. Even so, she stopped to chat with a neighbor before starting for the dead-end street that turned into the park.
She picked up her pace. Jacie heard that she could lose weight at her hips by walking faster and she wanted to be down five pounds before she and CD went to Hawaii. They had a condo rented on Maui, same one they went to last year on their thirty-second anniversary. She looked forward to going there more than anything else right now.
Up ahead, joggers, hikers, mountain bikers, parked their cars in the rough dirt lot between the trees near where the park trails started. Lately, there were two small construction remodels in the neighborhood and those workers were still figuring out that the road didn’t go through, so when a white pickup passed her going fast toward the dead-end she figured it was another construction worker about to make the same mistake.
The man driving the pickup glanced at her as he passed. Where she was she wouldn’t see him turn around, but she knew it wouldn’t be long. It wasn’t. She heard his truck rattling back down the narrow road, coming faster making up for the lost time, and she moved over to the side, close to the edge but not in the mud. When he got closer she might step off, but because he had come by her slow on the way in she wasn’t much concerned.
Now the truck rattled around the corner, frame floating toward the crown of the road and Jacie frowning disapproval. She heard it accelerate. In the cool gray light of dusk she made out his white face and dark hair, but not his features. She raised a hand, meaning to say slow down, but not waiting, getting out of the way as he swerved, either losing control or coming on purpose. She was once a very good dancer and was on her back foot turning and two steps off the asphalt before the gap closed. She heard the sound when it hit her, but that was all.
She didn’t know that afterward he wrestled the truck back on to the road, straightening the wheel to keep it from rolling, or that his bumper carried dry grass and dirt from where it gashed the hill. She didn’t know that the old pickup’s glove compartment had popped open or that he’d recovered from his near crash and backed up over her body, resting the truck with a foot on the brake as the wheel rose up on her chest.
The impact crumpled the right fender and broke the headlight. A chrome headlight ring was left up on the slope. Pieces of headlight glass were all over the road shoulder. Neighbors heard tires squeal. But the whole thing took less than ninety seconds from start to finish. What the driver worried most about was his right headlight. If traffic was bad it would be nearly dark when he got there. Last thing he wanted was getting pulled over for a blown light.
But, hey, no worries, everything went fine. He parked under the freeway among the empty warehouses in drug city and moved quickly, emptying five gallons of gas inside the truck cab, coughing blindly at the surge of fumes as he backed away. He was in the car, engine on, headlights off, when the flash of light came and the faint tinkling sound of windows breaking came from well down the street. Warehouse windows caught the light and made the fireball bigger. So big that as he drove away the street radiated a cheerful orange-yellow light.
FIFTEEN
‘It was a hit-and-run. Bates is at home right now. Some neighbors are with him and his daughter is on her way,’ Becker said. ‘I want you and la Rosa to go to the scene. We can’t ignore the possibility of connection.’
Raveneau stepped out into the street to wave la Rosa down before she drove away and asked, ‘What do we know so far?’
‘White pickup truck, male driver, and that Oakland PD is treating it as a hit-and-run.’
‘We’ll have to tell them why we’re there, and level with them. That may put it out to the media.’
‘I know, but ask them to hold tight.’
Jacie Bates’s body lay on the street under a blanket. Raveneau saw Oakland PD collecting debris and it wasn’t hard to spot the detectives. He and la Rosa introduced themselves to a detective named Hendricks, a tall, thin, taciturn man, and a second detective, Pete Stalos, who questioned them and took notes after Hendricks returned to the gash in the slope.
‘Does this Stoltz drive a pickup?’
‘If he does, we don’t know about it. We know about a white Lexus and we know he’s got other cars registered to the same corporation, but I’ve also got to say we don’t have anything at all on him. This all comes from the inspector who died, Whitacre, believing that he was being tailed by Stoltz.’
‘So you literally have nothing?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Yet you’re here, so I gather you’re not telling me what you do have.’
‘What we have is an improbable series of events.’
‘What is an improbable series of events? What we have here is an apparent hit-and-run and I’m not sure what an improbable series of events is. Your inspector probably ate his gun because he was given a fatal diagnosis and was distraught and in pain. That’s probable, right? What’s improbable? Fill in the gaps for me.’
Raveneau understood where Stalos was coming from, but was unfazed.
‘Nothing connects to anything yet, but it was Whitacre and Bates who took Stoltz down. Stoltz wrote a number of angry letters from prison and Whitacre believed Stoltz was following him in the days before he either shot himself or was murdered. That was last Thursday night. The victim here was the wife of Inspector Charles Bates.’
Stalos looked down the street at his partner and then back at Raveneau.
‘What else?’
‘I’m working on an alibi that Stoltz gave me.’
‘So you believe he followed your inspector?’
‘I’m not one way or the other yet.’
‘You’re here and you want cooperation, and so do we. Where do we find this Stoltz so we can talk to him?’
‘Why don’t you let us help you with that?’
‘Right, except that this is an Oakland investigation and whereas Stoltz may have stalked Whitacre, there’s no proof. Isn’t that what you’re saying? Whitacre believed he was being followed, but it was never determined.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Whereas this, at a minimum, is manslaughter, that is to say, it’s an active investigation and it doesn’t sound like you have one, unless there is more you haven’t told me.’
Raveneau glanced at la Rosa. He was going to leave her with Stalos, guessing she’d have better luck with him.
‘Is it OK if I take a look first and then we can talk about how to work together on this?’
‘Go ahead, but watch out for my partner. He doesn’t like people and he hasn’t had any good inter-departmental experiences.’
Raveneau walked up to the gash in the hillside where she was hit. Under the lights the grasses on the hill were brown and thin, and the road narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass, so maybe it was accidental and the driver fled. Driver figures out the road is a dead-end, turns around, and then races back making up for lost time. It could easily have been that. He walked up to the other detective, Hendricks.
‘Can I look at her?’
‘What?’
‘I’d like a look at her body.’
‘Did you know her?’
‘Socially.’
‘You work with her husband?’
‘Yeah, but he stepped off the desk several years ago.’
‘What do you know about the marriage?’
‘They also struck me as close. Married a long time.’
‘Follow me.’
Hendricks lifted the sheet and Raveneau registered that Jacie’s neck was broken and that her right arm and side may have taken the impact. He saw something else he couldn’t make sense of until he asked Hendricks to move the sheet just a little so he could see more. Then he could read the marks on her neck, collarbone, and across her sweatshirt. One of her running shoes was missing. He realized she faced the truck at an angle as it hit her. But that didn’t fit with these other marks. Then he got it.
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br /> He stepped back and looked at Hendricks. ‘The driver wanted to make sure or it was personal, or both.’
‘You are good,’ Hendricks said. ‘Yeah, he drove over her again. He crushed her chest. I think he let the truck rest on top of her.’ He added, ‘I’m going to find this guy.’
Hendricks draped the sheet carefully. He didn’t drop it. He watched Raveneau study the flattened grass and tire marks on the slope, then added, ‘We got a decent casting of his tires. He lost control, bounced up on the slope and cut into grass. Those marks there are his tires. What we have so far is we may be looking for a late model white pickup and a male driver, possibly Caucasian. Could this Stoltz do that?’
‘I don’t know. Doesn’t really fit. This guy is from a well-to-do family and a bright light in some computer coding circles.’
‘You said he wrote threatening letters.’
‘Threatening, yeah, but the kind of stuff meant to seem threatening without being overt. Cautious.’
‘Have you been to see him?’
‘I have.’
‘Did you tell my partner that?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You got sent over here. Would you have come anyway?’
‘Probably.’
Raveneau and la Rosa were still there when word came that a 2009 Ford 150 pickup was torched between warehouses just west of 880. They left the Oakland detectives and drove there. Fire vehicles and two police cruisers sat close to the burned chassis. Heat still radiated off the truck. The air stank of melted plastic, gasoline, and burning rubber, but they saw the crumpled right front fender and they left there with the name of the registered owner, a Thanh Nguyen with a Van Nuys address in southern California.
Later they’d learn that address didn’t exist when Nguyen or someone using that name bought the vehicle. The house address had existed but was demolished for a road expansion project in 2008. What that meant Raveneau didn’t know yet.
