Pregnant. So that was what Anne had meant by some interesting news. And why she’d told Kali she was in a quandary. Pregnant with a baby she’d always wanted right when she and her husband were deciding whether or not to split.
Kali didn’t want Jerry to be their killer. To die at the hands of someone you’d loved seemed the ultimate betrayal. On the other hand, if Jerry had been the one who killed Anne, then Owen, and Kali, were off the hook about dealing with a serial killer. That would be welcome news.
“What does he say about the night she was killed?” Kali asked.
“That he spent the evening alone in his apartment.”
Kali took a moment to think. Jerry would know about the Bayside Strangler case because Anne had worked on it. But he’d also have known to dress her in an article of clothing that was her own. Or would he? It had been a number of years since the trial. It might be something he’d overlooked. And he had been the one to make sure she knew about the yellow rose. Was he capable of killing Anne? Kali realized she had no idea.
“At this point,” she said, “we don’t know anything for sure. We’re still feeling our way.”
“You may be,” Fortune grumbled. “We’re working on a homicide. And as far as I’m concerned, we’re wasting our time here. We about finished?”
She’d wanted to ask more about what they’d learned so far, but maybe that was better handled one-on-one. “For now.”
Fortune pushed back his chair, scraping the floor loudly. Keating was still looking at her. Looking through her, maybe. His eyes were so dark, it was hard to tell. Whatever he was doing it made her uncomfortable. She busied herself with some papers, and when she looked up again, he was gone.
The district attorney’s offices were laid out along a narrow corridor. Kali had been assigned an empty office at the end, near the stairwell. She was busy trying to make it feel like her own when there was a knock at her open door.
“Got a minute?” Jack Jackson didn’t wait for an answer before coming inside and sprawling onto an empty seat. Except for the addition of a beard, he hadn’t changed much in the five years since she’d last seen him. Jackson was only a little taller than she was, maybe five-nine, and pleasantly rounded, like a medieval friar or one of Santa’s elves.
“I dropped in to see Owen,” Jackson said, “and he told me you were working here again. On Anne Bailey’s murder.”
“I hope he also told you that my lips are sealed.”
Jackson laughed. “He didn’t have to tell me.” He was suddenly serious again. “Terrible, what happened to Anne. I ran into her just last fall, at the Rockridge BART station. She looked great, sounded very upbeat. As usual.”
“Yeah, things were going well for her.” If you didn’t count a crumbling marriage.
Jackson tugged at one of his socks. “So how’ve you been? You look great too, by the way.”
She smiled to acknowledge the compliment, even if it was something of an afterthought. “I’ve been good.”
“I’ve seen your name in the paper. I tried to get assigned to the Harper case you tried last summer, but there was big stuff happening elsewhere. Man, that was something, the way it ended.”
It had been something all right, but not the sort of something Kali liked to think about. She’d had nightmares for months afterward, and she still had moments when the tears seemed to come out of nowhere.
“Owen said you got the same note he and the cops did.”
“Yeah. That’s a new twist.” Jackson seemed almost pleased. “Guess it’s because of the book.”
Perfect Stranger. Jackson and Owen’s commercially successful account of the Bayside Strangler murders, the investigation and the ensuing trial. It had been enjoying a surge of renewed popularity because of Davis’s recent execution.
“Did the note come to the office or your home?” Kali asked.
“Home. Why?”
“Just curious.” Owen’s had come to his home address as well. The Bayside Strangler had limited himself to sending notes to the cops, at work.
“Pretty intriguing stuff, huh?”
“Pretty awful, too.” Kali thought Jackson seemed to be overlooking that part.
“You think maybe Davis had a partner?” he asked.
“I’m not talking to you about this, remember?”
“There was some talk at the time about his brother being involved. I interviewed the guy for the book.” He paused, giving Kali a chance to respond. When she didn’t, he said, “The guy really looked up to Dwayne.”
“Jack, when we get ready to make a statement to the press, you’ll be the first to know.”
“I’d better be. And it’s going to have to be soon. Like I told Owen, patience is not a virtue of mine.” He tossed a business card onto her desk. “Home and cell numbers are on there too. Call me anytime. Day or night.”
Kali knew Owen would have both numbers as well, but she filed the card carefully in her new, and largely empty, Rolodex.
CHAPTER 11
Lou Fortune took a long gulp of his beer. It was ice cold and satisfied some elusive craving deep inside him. “How long’s it going to be, you think, before word gets out?”
Keating was watching a basketball game on the television behind the bar. “Word on what?”
“Bayside Strangler, Part Two.” It sounded like the title of a miniseries, which was what it just might become. “There’ll be a frenzy of media attention. We’ll have public hysteria. Public outrage too.”
“Probably.”
“The death penalty opponents will be up in arms. They’ll milk it for all it’s worth.”
“I imagine so.”
Lou gave his partner a sideways glance. They’d gotten together in the evening after work like this only about half a dozen times, and Lou remembered now why he’d promised himself every time would be the last. Keating was a lousy conversationalist.
Lou took another swallow of beer. “It’s bad enough the victim being a lawyer and all. High profile from the start. Case like this, it’s going to be a pain in the ass.”
Keating nodded, his eyes still glued to the screen.
“I mean, everybody’s a critic, right? And they’re all watching, eager for results.”
“Yeah.”
“Serial killer cases are tough even without all that attention.”
“The worst.”
Lou was getting tired of carrying on a conversation with himself. “That doesn’t bother you?”
“Not much we can do about it.” A banking commercial came on the screen, and Keating turned his attention to his partner. “Besides, we aren’t dealing with a serial killer yet. We’re not even sure there’s a connection to the Bayside Strangler. Like the DA woman said, we’re just feeling our way right now.”
The DA woman. Trouble enough having any lawyer breathing down their necks, much less a woman.
“Must be hard, the victim being a friend of hers,” Keating said.
“She better not let it get in the way of her doing her job.” Lou hunched forward, eyeballing the amount of beer left in the bottle. “What did you think of her?”
“The assistant DA?”
“Right.”
“She seems okay. At least she’s easy to look at.”
“Is that all you ever think about?”
“Not by a long shot.” Keating punctuated the remark with a lewd laugh.
“See, you’ve proved my point. You oughta get yourself a hobby, Bryce. Something to think about besides your next lay.”
“Gardening’s not my thing.”
“Doesn’t have to be gardening, for God’s sake.” Nothing relaxed Lou like puttering in his garden. He loved watching barren branches become sprays of lacy foliage, and tiny sprouts push their way through the soil into the sunlight. It was an interest he and Jan had shared since the early days of their marriage when they lived in the tiny duplex near the freeway. When Nikki came along, working in the garden became a family experience. Lou still smiled at the memory of h
is daughter’s chubby fingers patting the soil around newly planted seedlings. Now in her twenties, Nikki lived in Los Angeles and grew nothing but the mold in her refrigerator.
“Could be woodworking,” Lou suggested, pushing the memory of happier times from his mind, “or fishing.” Two other pursuits he enjoyed. “Anything, really.”
Keating’s beeper went off. He pulled it from his belt, checked the number, then reached into a pocket for his cell phone and returned the call.
“Yeah,” he said by way of greeting. “Good. Where?” He returned the phone to his pocket and addressed Lou. “A friend from the old days. Says the two guys he mighta seen with Anne Bailey’s car are in the neighborhood again. You want to take a ride with me?”
Lou would have preferred a second beer. But the sooner they got a handle on this case, the better. “Sure. Let’s go.”
Keating drove. He turned on the lights and raced at speeds Lou thought excessive. Which was why Lou usually jockeyed for the position behind the wheel.
They pulled up to a darkened street corner two blocks from where Anne Bailey’s car had been found. A young Hispanic male dressed all in black approached the driver’s side. Keating rolled down the window.
The kid muttered to him in Spanish. Keating responded in the same language. Lou didn’t understand a word of it.
“Gracias,” Keating said at last.
That, Lou understood.
Keating grinned at the kid. “Keep clean, Paco. You’re doing good.”
Paco said a few more words, delivered with a laugh. Then he disappeared into the night.
“What was that all about?” Lou didn’t like being out of the loop.
“The pizza place,” Keating said. “Assuming they’re still there.” He parked a block farther on, in front of a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint with windows so dirty it was impossible to see through them.
The minute they pushed through the door, four young men seated around a table at the back looked up and froze. Lou had seen it before. Street-savvy kids had a sixth sense. They could pick out a cop every time.
“Which one of you is Fadoul?” Keating asked.
No one spoke.
“All we want is information,”
The four shifted uneasily.
“If we don’t get some cooperation,” Keating said, leaning low over the table, “we may go looking for something besides information.” He paused for effect. “And make no mistake, we’ll find it.”
In unison, three pairs of eyes turned to the boy with his back against the wall. He was about nineteen, slender, with cue-ball eyes and a pointy goatee. Keating grabbed his shoulder. “Okay, Fadoul, let’s take a walk.”
The boy pushed back his chair angrily, gave his companions the finger and a look that spoke louder than any words, then followed Keating outside. Lou brought up the rear, positioning himself a few yards away. Close enough that he was part of the conversation, but with a clear view toward the restaurant in case the others decided to join them. The streetlight overhead was burned out, and Lou strained to keep an eye on both Bryce and the doorway.
“I’m interested in the silver Lexus you stripped last week,” Keating said.
“I don’t know nothin’ about no Lexus.”
“Yes, you do, Fadoul. People saw you.”
“People got me confused with someone else, then.”
“Not so. But this is your lucky day, Fadoul, because we’re not on car duty this week. All we want is answers.”
“Told you, I don’t know nothin’.”
“Where’d you pick up the car?” Lou said.
“You got no proof of anything.” The kid pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.
Keating stepped closer. “You carrying? Looks to me like a gun under your jacket.”
“What?” Genuine outrage. “No way, man, You think I’m stupid?”
So fast that it surprised even Lou, who knew what was coming, Keating knocked the cigarette from the kid’s hand, twisted his arm behind him, and pinned him against the wall face first. Careful, Lou cautioned silently. He’d never seen Keating actually cross the line, but he came close more often than Lou liked.
“Yes, I think you’re stupid,” Keating barked. “All I’m asking for is a little information, but you’ve got to turn it into something big. Tell me what I want to know and I’m outta here. But you keep making me mad like you’re doing, and I’m going to have to search you. Got that?”
The kid said something that got garbled by the pressure of the wall against his face.
Keating let up some of the pressure he’d applied. “What’s that, Fadoul? You have to speak up.”
“I don’t know for sure, maybe I found a Lexus.”
“Maybe?”
Lou saw Keating twist the kid’s arm again. The kid grunted. “Geez, man, you’re hurting me. Okay, so I took the stupid Lexus. It wasn’t locked or nothing. Just sitting there, like it didn’t belong to nobody.”
“Where.”
“Some parking lot.”
“Which one?”
“How should I know?”
“This ain’t brain science,” Lou said, growing irritated with standing sentry. “Simple question. Where was the parking lot?”
“I dunno. It was, like, dark out.”
Keating slammed the kid’s shoulder against the wall.
“Okay, okay. Shattuck, the other side of University. Near that drugstore there.”
The door to the pizza place opened, and two of Fadoul’s friends emerged. Lou unbuttoned his jacket, putting his gun in easy reach. The boys pulled out cigarettes and lit them, eyeing Lou warily.
“When was this?” Keating said.
“Friday night. Late.”
“How late?”
“More like Saturday morning, probably. ‘Bout three. Place was mostly empty, which is how I seen the car.”
“You’re doing good, Fadoul. Now this next one’s real important. Besides parts, what did you take from the car?”
“Nothin’.”
“Come on, Fadoul. I said it was important.”
“I’m telling you the truth! I looked, man, there was some papers and stuff, that’s all. Nothin’ interesting.”
“No purse or wallet?”
“I swear on my mother’s grave.”
Lou was willing to bet the woman was as healthy as a horse. It was all part of the act.
“You think of anything else,” Keating said, “you let us know, okay? Might keep me from remembering about that gun of yours.”
“I ain’t got no gun.”
Keating still had the kid pinned against the wall. Lou stepped closer. The beer was taxing his kidneys and he was anxious to be gone. “Let’s go, Bryce. We got what we came after.”
“Put your hands on the wall,” Keating told Fadoul, “and count to twenty before you even think about turning around.” He glared at the two friends. “You too. No one moves until we’re gone.”
<><><>
By the time they reached the pharmacy on Shattuck Avenue, Lou was ready to pop. For once, he was glad that Keating drove fast. Bryce asked to speak to the manager while Lou went off in search of a restroom. If he’d been thinking, he would have gone before leaving the bar, even though he hadn’t felt the need. A curse of advancing years.
When Lou returned, he found Bryce showing Anne Bailey’s picture to a small gathering of clerks. One of them, a coffee-skinned woman with a headful of tiny braids, was telling Keating she was fairly sure Anne Bailey had been in the store Friday evening.
“She’s a regular customer,” the woman said. “She likes almond M&Ms, same as me.”
“Did you wait on her?”
“Not that evening. But I remember it was Friday ‘cause I was thinking she probably had the weekend off and I had to work.”
“Any idea of the time?”
The woman started to shake her head, then seemed to remember something. “I don’t think it was late. That’s why I thought of the work connection. Must hav
e been around six or seven.”
“Was she alone?” Lou asked. Now that he wasn’t fixated on finding a toilet, he was able to think more clearly.
“I don’t remember anyone else.”
“What about a surveillance camera? Does the store have one?”
Although he’d addressed his question to the woman, it was Keating who answered. “Twenty-four-hour loop. I already checked.”
If the tape had caught anything, it was gone now. Lou and Keating pressed the other employees, but no one had anything further to offer.
Outside, they made a sweep of the parking lot, not expecting to discover anything helpful. And they didn’t.
“Let’s have Maureen Oliver make up flyers,” Keating said.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and find someone who remembers seeing Anne Bailey in the company of a stranger.”
Maybe, but Lou wasn’t going to hold his breath. Still, they had a pretty good idea where she was taken. And a pretty good idea what had happened. “Looks like she must have stopped here on her way to meet Kali,” Lou said. “And her killer either caught her by surprise or enticed her into his car.”
“Assuming he didn’t get to her in her own car,” Keating pointed out. “He could have returned it to the lot after killing her.”
“Why return the car, though? Wouldn’t he just leave it on a street somewhere?”
“Not if his own car was here.”
Lou shoved his hands in his pockets and surveyed the parking lot. The lighting was uneven, and none of it very bright. On a dark, rainy night, it wouldn’t be hard, he supposed, to slip into the shadows. Still, you’d think he would worry about being seen.
Unless, of course, the killer was someone Anne had known. There was no better cover than familiarity.
CHAPTER 12
Jane Parkhurst studied the house from the outside. She couldn’t imagine what it was about the place that had appealed to Mr. Smith. It did offer privacy, but at the price of a level yard and sunshine. Tucked in among the trees quite a distance from the main road, the building was nothing but a tar-and-gravel-roofed box, painted an ugly lime green, no less. And it was in a sad state of disrepair.
Cold Justice (Kali O'Brien series Book 5) Page 7
