A Killing in China Basin

by Kirk Russell

  She stood up but Raveneau remained sitting.

  ‘One more thing, we also believe you’re hiding information that could make you a suspect in the murder of Alex Jurika.’

  Raveneau waved the stack of papers he’d brought in.

  ‘It’s all here.’

  ‘That’s preposterous.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Lafaye snorted and said, ‘You answer a question for me. I swam in and survived, and you caught him and he was the cop killer. Why is it not enough for you that I’ve given most of my adult life to trying to save lives? Why doesn’t that buy me any credibility?’

  When he’d had lunch with her she’d told him she did for overpriced medical supplies what Amazon had done for books. She found a way to get cheap bandages and staple generic drugs delivered to third world countries for pennies. She had alliances with firms producing drugs in China and India and her foundation worked out methods to teach doctors and dentists on a massive scale, webcasting dental and medical procedures as they were performed live. Those watching could email their questions. People called her a visionary.

  ‘We don’t question that you’ve done good deeds on a large scale, but none of that has anything to do with this investigation. What’s the real reason you went to the boat?’

  Lafaye got up and walked over to the windows. She looked out at the park as she answered.

  ‘I went to buy Erin Quinn’s home address for ten thousand dollars.’

  ‘And do what with it?’ la Rosa asked.

  ‘Give it to my attorney who would work quietly with law enforcement authorities to build a case against Erin Quinn for extortion. You have to understand that this woman has threatened me. She’s a nightmare to me. And I had no idea that the man I was going to meet at the boat was Cody Stoltz. I thought that he was an individual like me that Quinn had cheated or was extorting. For separate and unspoken reasons we were both looking for her. But of course I didn’t know who I’d been chatting with all those years. You can imagine my shock when he took off his disguise and said he was Cody Stoltz. He tricked me.’

  ‘How did he know to be at Lake Merced the next day?’ Raveneau asked.

  ‘Ask him.’

  Her foundation was everything to her. It was her life, her ego, her everything, and so he played that last, after she’d ordered them to leave.

  ‘You’re going to force us to go public with this.’

  ‘I don’t see why that would be, but I’ll take it as the threat you intend it as, and I have some advice for you, don’t do anything until you talk to my attorney. He’ll call you this morning.’

  He did.

  ‘What can I do to help solve this misunderstanding?’ the attorney asked.

  ‘We have information that could cause us to view your client as a suspect in an unsolved murder in China Basin. We need her to fill in some gaps in her account to us. That may clear her of any suspicion.’

  ‘I know that she would like to clear this up.’

  ‘She needs to tell us how Cody Stoltz knew to be at Lake Merced.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it, right now. We’ll give her the rest of the day and I’ll give you another phone number you can reach me at this afternoon.’

  ‘After all she’s been through, do you really think you can twist her arm this way?’

  ‘Use my cell number, that’s going to be more reliable. Are you ready for the number?’ Raveneau waited a beat and then read the number off. After the lawyer repeated the number, Raveneau said, ‘I’ll talk to you this afternoon,’ and hung up.

  SIXTY-THREE

  In the mid afternoon la Rosa called him over to her computer.

  ‘This Lafaye’s foundation website – look at this. She’s supposed to be in Seattle tonight at a dinner honoring the most significant donors to her foundation. They’re giving her an award at the dinner.’ La Rosa threw him a wicked smile. ‘Think she’d pass up an award?’

  The award was to be given at a restaurant Raveneau vaguely remembered reading about as cutting edge with a rising star of a chef, a dinner more likely to draw wealthy donors, the type of people she wouldn’t want to disappoint.

  ‘What do you think?’ la Rosa asked.

  ‘I think you’re on to something here.’

  At four thirty that afternoon a driver showed up at Lafaye’s house and took her to SFO. They watched her check in and pass through security, and waited until United was ready to board the first class passengers before approaching her. Raveneau pulled his homicide star and made sure the people nearby could read it. Her face reddened with embarrassment and humiliation. One of her aides, a young blonde woman with heavy black glasses, stood dumbfounded nearby. La Rosa turned to her and said, ‘Better board or you might miss your flight. Your boss won’t be coming.’

  ‘You can’t do this,’ Lafaye said.

  ‘Step away from the line, Ms Lafaye,’ la Rosa said, and Raveneau just watched her, saw her fumble with her phone and call her lawyer, who demanded to speak to him and then told Raveneau he had two choices, charge her with a crime or let her on the plane.

  ‘Do you really want us to charge her?’

  ‘Let me talk to my client.’

  He handed the phone back to Lafaye who sat down now, her face pale, her worried aide hovering nearby as the plane boarded.

  ‘Please don’t do this. You don’t know how important this dinner is.’

  She pleaded and Raveneau asked, ‘Do you want to come downtown and tell us what happened? Your lawyer can meet us there.’

  The warning about unattended luggage drowned out what she said next. The United Seattle flight finished loading and a gate near them streamed passengers unloading.

  ‘If we had more information it might look different, but I’m afraid where things stand right now, we’re very close to charging you,’ he said.

  ‘Do that and you may ruin your career, Inspector.’

  ‘I don’t need your help to ruin it.’

  He came close to saying, you went to Alex Jurika’s apartment and she lied to you, and the next night you killed her. Almost said it, but held back, and she seemed to read his mind.

  ‘You know very well I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘We know that you’ve been lying to us. That much we’ve figured out, and that’s what we’re operating off right now, and you’re gambling you can back us down and that you’ve got the juice to keep us from pressuring you. Maybe you’re right, then again, maybe you’re not. This is our offer. Security here at the airport is under SFPD, so if you want we can go to a room and you can tell us the truth, and maybe we can work this out and you still catch a flight. Otherwise, your lawyer can meet us at Bryant. It’s your call.’

  She didn’t make that call for a long minute, and after she did they led her to the airport security office, got her a chair, and shut the door. In that room she finally gave it up.

  ‘I didn’t go to her apartment for a drink the Wednesday before she was killed. I went because she was a thief and a liar and I needed to talk alone with her. And I don’t care that she’s dead. Good riddance, and as to the bitch who sold me her identity, Erin Quinn, she was a friend of Jurika’s and she’s been extorting me with Jurika’s help for too many years.’

  ‘You’ve paid Erin Quinn money.’

  ‘You need to carry your notebook more often. I’ve been telling you that Quinn has extorted me. Those payments were made through Jurika. I’ve paid her more money every year since the foundation became more successful. At first it was another twenty thousand. She said she hadn’t been given enough for her identity and then it was more, and so forth.’

  ‘And why didn’t you go—’

  ‘To the police and tell them I’d bought someone’s identity and there are places where I travel under a false passport, and that I’ve paid money to keep the woman whose true name is Erin Quinn quiet. The mistake I made was paying anything in the first place, but at the time I thought the alternate identity would have very negative
repercussions. Besides, Quinn let me know through Jurika that she considered her identity stolen and that’s what she was going to go out with. Jurika, of course, would deny having ever sold it to me. How do you think my board of directors would react to that in this age we live in, where no one has the patience any more to wait for the truth?’

  She paused, then added, ‘The day I met Jurika at her apartment she asked for another twenty-five thousand. I stalled and hired a private investigator.’

  ‘Give us a name and a way to reach this investigator,’ la Rosa said, and Lafaye pulled a card from her purse as Raveneau asked, ‘Why did you lie about what happened on the boat?’

  ‘I told you the God’s truth.’

  ‘Stoltz knew when to be at Lake Merced.’

  ‘I set up a meeting through Jurika. I was to meet Quinn there, pay her the twenty-five thousand, and the private investigator was going to follow her when she left, and then with the help of the authorities we were going to go after her. But I was in the hospital. I didn’t make it to the meeting.’

  ‘Was the investigator there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Raveneau studied her a moment and then stepped out of the room with la Rosa.

  ‘Let’s get her to call the investigator and we’ll go talk to him. She can go on to Seattle with the understanding this isn’t over.’

  La Rosa’s answer was, ‘If we do that we may never get the answer.’

  ‘I’ll try her one more time after she calls this investigator and gives him the go to talk to us.’

  Lafaye was very willing to do that as soon as they got in the room. Her aide had already found another flight. There was still time for them to make the dinner. Raveneau sat down next to Lafaye and la Rosa steered the aide away. He spoke quietly.

  ‘Jurika’s murder is still an open question. That’s where this investigation started and where it’ll finish. So nothing I’m going to say to you now clears you on that.’

  ‘I would never kill any—’

  ‘Just listen. In order to go forward I need to know how Stoltz knew to be at Lake Merced. If you told him about the meeting with Quinn, tell me now. If it was on the boat you were under severe duress and maybe you weren’t coherent enough the next day to put it all together.’

  ‘But if there’s a trial I’ll get called to the stand.’

  ‘There won’t be a trial. I got a call from a doctor an hour ago. Stoltz’s kidneys and liver are shutting down. He’s not going to make it. It’ll stay with us. But I have to know.’

  Lafaye looked down at the carpet. She looked saddened, as if disappointed in herself.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m truly sorry. But, yes, that’s what happened. He frightened it out of me on the boat and I didn’t tell you when I had a chance. Is that what you needed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I really am sorry.’

  Raveneau nodded. ‘We’ll still have questions,’ he said. ‘There’ll be plenty of questions about how it worked with Jurika and Quinn and you.’ He stood. ‘We’ll talk when you get back.’

  The private investigator had a few things for them, not a lot but a few things that mattered. The Quinn woman – his words – he believed lived in the Bucks Lake area, was only seeing a trickle of the payments made through Jurika. His client, Lafaye, had paid over two hundred thousand dollars in six years, an amount he considered foolish and unnecessary. It was also enough money to give Lafaye motive to kill Jurika and hope that Stoltz killed Quinn at Lake Merced. But that wasn’t the conclusion Raveneau was coming to.

  When the private investigator finished, Raveneau left a message for Erin Quinn at the motel on Lombard, and when she didn’t answer a second message they drove over to the motel and the manager opened her door, showed them all her things were still there, so they decided to wait. When Celeste phoned he left la Rosa and stood outside in the cool air talking to her.

  ‘What are doing tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘Watching a motel. So far it hasn’t moved.’

  ‘Will you be around later?’

  ‘I don’t know, but things are moving. I’ll see you soon.’

  At midnight they called in and got a combination of an undercover officer in an unmarked and a radio car to cover until six in the morning, when Raveneau said he’d be back. If she returned during the night a call would go to la Rosa and him. He returned just before six and brought coffees with him for the officers in the radio unit. He told them they could take off. Ten minutes after they did, Quinn showed up. She left her car running and the headlights on as she went into her motel room. She didn’t carry anything out of the room and left the motel room door open as she got back in her car. Later, Raveneau realized that the open motel room door was a signal that he should have seen. But he was finally seeing the Jurika killing. He was too caught up in that.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Quinn drove the San Francisco waterfront as though sightseeing or looking for someone on the street. She passed the ballpark, crossed the Lefty O’Doul Bridge over Mission Creek and continued south into China Basin. It didn’t surprise him that she drove past the building where Alex Jurika died, or that after passing the building she turned and went back toward the downtown.

  Raveneau gave her distance. In a separate car, la Rosa did the same. Morning commuter traffic fed into the city and at this hour many had their headlights on. Raveneau turned his off as the sky lightened and Quinn drove toward Golden Gate Park, and then to the apartment complex where her husband died. As she slowed there, he nodded to himself. He picked up his cell and called la Rosa.

  ‘Lafaye gave Stoltz Quinn and hoped Stoltz would kill her and that would be the end of her problem. I think her problem is bigger than she told us. I have a feeling it’s more than her board of directors disapproving of her using someone else’s identity to do good works. My bet is she used the Quinn identity for things other than saving the world. I’m guessing she made money with it in a way she now doesn’t want to admit and that’s why she kept paying the extortion money. She paid two hundred thousand dollars and didn’t call the police. Who does that without a solid reason?’

  Quinn led them through the Presidio and then on to the Golden Gate Bridge. As she started to climb up the steep grade into Marin County, la Rosa asked, ‘What do you think, is she starting to drive home?’

  ‘Let’s give her another few miles.’

  As he called her cell, Raveneau watched Quinn move over two lanes and take the next exit. When she picked up she said, ‘You want to meet with me, don’t you?’

  ‘We do. We’d like to meet this morning.’

  ‘And after that can I go back home?’

  ‘We can talk about that too. Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m in Marin in the car and close to the freeway. Can we meet at the motel?’

  ‘Sure, and we may take you back downtown.’

  ‘Are you going to arrest me?’

  ‘What we really want to do right now is talk with you.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  ‘Tell me more about Lafaye. Where did she get the money for those first payments?’

  ‘Where do you think? She took it from the foundation.’

  ‘Did Alex know that’s what would happen?’

  ‘Alex was very clever. Alex was a very good read of people.’

  ‘That’s what I’m gathering. I’m thinking Alex wouldn’t have gone into a rundown building in China Basin at night with someone she didn’t know.’

  Raveneau saw her get on 101 southbound back toward San Francisco and pulled back on behind her. He narrowed the gap between them and kept talking. She listened then abruptly interrupted him with an anxious edge in her voice.

  ‘A private investigator was asking questions about me in a town called Quincy not that far from where I live. He told people the woman he was looking for had extorted large amounts of money from his client. That’s what he was saying to people in Quincy and I knew he wouldn’t be there for just a couple
of thousand dollars, so I knew Alex had lied to me. I needed to question her. I had to question her. What else could I do?’

  ‘You called her and came down to visit and talk it out.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you get the Ketamine from a veterinarian up where you live?’

  She didn’t answer, and he thought again about Lafaye continuing to pay and not going to the police, but searching for Quinn on her own, and Quinn following the money trail back through the questions of the private investigator. Then she’d gone back to Jurika.

  ‘Alex wanted to show me a rundown building she was thinking of buying into. She wanted me to buy in also and made up a story about how we would own it together. She said she had a way to make it happen, so I said I’d come down and stay with her a few days and we’d go see the building. She was sleeping with the realtor and had a key, so we could go anytime.

  ‘She had a key and false papers to show me that I was half owner in this building. She had a whole new identity for me as the building owner: Alex and me, the credit thief and unemployed middle-aged woman buying a commercial building in San Francisco. She wanted me to sign these false papers and feel like I had two hundred thousand in equity. She claimed there was no mortgage. She got the realtor on the phone and he told me Alex had paid cash for the building.’

  ‘You must have been very angry.’

  ‘I wanted revenge. I needed to make things fair. I’ve lived very quietly and paid cash for everything, or done things for trade. I’ve lived poor. I never had one credit card. I cancelled everything when Cody went to jail because I knew what he’d do when he got out.’

  ‘Where are the papers Alex showed you?’

  ‘With me.’

  ‘I’d like to see them.’

  ‘You’ll see everything.’ She paused and then spoke too quietly for him to hear, but something passed along the edge of his consciousness, something he should realize, something missed. He was twenty seconds behind her as they went through the Waldo Tunnel. He watched her car going out the other side. As she started down toward the Golden Gate Bridge, her voice was much slower.