She’d written him a letter.
Meredith had written him a letter. The postmark was yesterday—the day her body had been discovered.
As he held the letter flat on his desk and slit it open, the image of his grandmother in her coffin returned, followed by the image of her collection of Dresden figurines. His mother had inherited the collection. She’d arranged the figurines on the top of her dresser. The first time he’d taken one of the small figurines in his hand, he’d felt as if his grandmother was touching him from beyond the grave.
Mindful of possible fingerprints, he carefully withdrew a single sheet of matching blue stationery. He opened the folded sheet, edged in white.
Dear Frank,
It was wonderful to have lunch with you yesterday, a wonderful surprise.
Could we do it again, Frank? Could we have lunch again next Tuesday, same place, same time?
I told you so much about myself, more than I’d intended to tell, really. I know it was probably boring for you, considering your work.
But now, Frank, I’d like to tell you more. Because I’m scared, Frank. I’m very scared. And you’re the only person I feel that I can tell about it.
Please call me, Frank. I don’t have an answering machine, so if I don’t hear from you, then I’ll call you.
Sincerely, Meredith
The handwriting had an unformed, uneven, uncertain quality—just as Meredith had been unformed and uncertain.
He read it again—and again. Then he slipped the envelope and the opened letter into a clear plastic evidence bag. He sealed the bag, dated the seal, and signed it.
I’m very scared.
She should have called him. If she’d called him, she might still be alive. He could have helped. If she’d given him a name, he could have helped her. A knock on a door, a flash of the badge, the threat of close surveillance, and she might still be alive.
Raising his eyes, he saw Friedman coming down the hallway from his office. Canelli was coming from the squadroom. They entered his office, took seats, placed matching manila folders on Hastings’s desk as he handed the letter in its plastic bag to Friedman. While Friedman read, Hastings looked at the two men. Physically, they were almost a match. Both weighed at least two hundred thirty, not all of it muscle. Their features were remarkably similar: dark eyes, faces broad and swarthy. Their hair was thick, Canelli’s dark, Friedman’s graying. Both men needed haircuts.
But the men behind the faces were utterly different. Canelli was the squadroom innocent; Friedman was Homicide’s gadfly, the chessmaster, the eternal devil’s advocate. Canelli’s eyes were perpetually anxious, in constant search of approval. Friedman’s eyes were inscrutable. Canelli’s emotions were always visible; Friedman’s were deeply buried.
In sympathy, Friedman silently shook his head, handed the note to Canelli. “Police work is bad enough,” Friedman said quietly, “without prepackaged guilt.”
As Canelli read the letter, his brow furrowed. When he finished, he looked at Hastings, spoke with deep feeling. “Jeez, Lieutenant—” Canelli waved the evidence bag helplessly. “Jeez, that’s terrible. It came just a day too late, I guess.”
Hastings made no response, but Friedman turned to Canelli, his favorite satirical target. “Canelli,” he said, “you’ve done it again.”
“Done what, Lieutenant?”
“You’ve stated the obvious.”
“Oh. Well—” Canelli broke off, frowned, began struggling to frame a reply.
“So what’ve we got?” Hastings spoke brusquely, his habitual first line of defense. “How about the lab and the coroner?” He pointed to Friedman’s folder.
“Well,” Friedman said, putting on a pair of heavy black-rimmed reading glasses and opening the folder. “There isn’t exactly a plethora. But there’s something, at least. And, for sure, everyone’s rushed this thing through.” He riffled the reports, finally found the one he sought. “She died of asphyxia. She was strangled, probably with bare hands.” As he spoke, he unconsciously lapsed into departmental officialese, concisely reciting: “From body temperature, not the contents of the stomach, they figure she’d been dead for at least eight hours, maybe more like ten, before she was discovered.”
Hearing “contents of the stomach,” a standard phrase, Hastings couldn’t shut out the image of Meredith on the coroner’s stainless-steel table, her stomach opened by a scalpel that could cause no pain.
“There weren’t any other traumas to the body,” Friedman continued, “except for the bruises at her throat. There was, ah—” A momentary pause. Then, carefully objective, he said, “There was semen present.” As he said it, he kept his gaze resolutely focused on the report. “The coroner figures she probably died soon after the, ah, semen entered her body. We’ll send the sample to the FBI, and try for a DNA profile. That’ll take awhile, though.” He cleared his throat, riffled more pages. “That’s about all the coroner’s autopsy shows. Their report from the scene—” He adjusted his glasses. “They don’t think she was killed where she was found, which pretty much makes it unanimous. As for the lab reports, there’s a little more, since yesterday. In fact, they turned up a couple of surprises.” More papers were shuffled, more notes were consulted. Watching the other man, drawing on the years they’d worked together, Hastings suspected that, yes, Friedman was building the suspense, his favorite game.
“The lab found,” Friedman said, “that tire marks at the scene match the tire marks of her car.”
Excited, playing his straight man’s role, Canelli sat up straighter. “No kidding?”
Plainly pleased with the on-cue reaction, Friedman gravely nodded. “No kidding, Canelli. Plus they found traces of both feces and urine in the trunk. Indicating, it seems to me—” Once more, Friedman took refuge in objective officialese. “It seems to me that she was wrapped in something, probably, and she was carried in the trunk of her car to the park, where she was dumped. I say that because, if she wasn’t wrapped in something, there would’ve been more waste matter present in the trunk.”
“So if we find the guy,” Canelli said eagerly, “and he left prints in the car, and seeing that we can put the car at the scene, and if the guy’s blood type fits the semen, and if the feces and urine are a match with the victim’s blood type, then we’re home free.”
“Very good, Canelli.” Elaborately Friedman nodded encouragement. “Very good indeed.”
“And her clothes and effects were probably dumped somewhere,” Canelli continued, “maybe along with whatever it was she was wrapped in when she was put in the trunk.”
“I think you’ve got it, Canelli. I really think you’ve got it.” Friedman’s voice was gently ironic. Leaving Canelli, as always, unsure of Friedman’s true meaning.
“What about the rest of it?” Hastings asked, speaking to Friedman.
“I got a current address for her father from the Social Security people. And a phone number, too.” Friedman looked at Hastings. “Do you want me to contact him?”
“No. I’ll do it.”
“Right.” Friedman wrote on a sheet of notepaper and passed it across the desk. “I made a fake phone call and got the feeling that the phone was in the hallway, not in John Powell’s apartment. You might want to keep that in mind.”
“I will. Anything else? Printouts?”
“Not much yet,” Friedman answered. “I’ve got a request in to get her bank records and hopefully gain access to her safe-deposit box. I’ve got Ferguson working on the ownership of her apartment, or condo, or whatever it is. He should have something pretty soon. I checked out the car, which was registered to her. Consolidated Casualty carries the insurance, according to the paper in the glove compartment, and I’m trying to find out whether the policy was in her name. So far, I’ve got zero. I checked her out in Los Angeles.” Once more Friedman adjusted his reading glasses, consulted his notes. “Apparently she was a perfectly respectable citizen. Nothing but parking tickets, good credit, all that stuff. However, ten y
ears ago, approximately, she married Gary Blake, who had—has, I guess—a string of restaurants and bars, a real high roller, a real swinger.” Friedman consulted his notes. “He’s had three drunk driving convictions, and he’s been sued a total of five times. There was an assault charge, too, that was dropped. And a paternity suit, also dropped.”
Canelli shook his head sympathetically. “It sure sounds like she picked a shitheel.”
Again, Friedman studied Canelli for a long, quizzical moment before he finally nodded, mock-sagaciously. “Yes, Canelli,” he said, “I guess you could say that.”
Canelli nodded tentatively, then smiled tentatively.
“What about you, Canelli?” Hastings asked. “Anything?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Always uncomfortable in the company of both his commanding officers, Canelli sat up straighter. First he frowned, then shrugged, then spread his hands, palms up. “Well, there were three of us, out at Golden Gate Park. We stayed there all day, asking around. Except for a couple of places where some homeless were holed up, we didn’t come up with anything. If we got more TV coverage and more in the newspapers, I bet that’d help. I mean—you know—if anyone saw anything, they were probably neckers, something like that. So the only way we’d know, probably, was if they—you know—came forward. But, just in case, I left Phil Toll out there till midnight last night. But he’s in court this morning. So I haven’t heard anything. Except that I think I’d’ve heard from him. You know—a message, or something—if he’d turned up anything. So—” Canelli spread his hands again. “So I didn’t get much.”
“Someone, though, phoned us,” Hastings said. “Whoever found her phoned. Anonymously. Him, we want to interrogate.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll sure keep at it, Lieutenant.”
“What about her residence? Anything? More witnesses?”
“Well,” Canelli said, “I tried there last night. I took Asher with me, and we talked to everyone in the building, including that kid you talked to, Lieutenant.” He consulted his notes. “Lee Persse. And everyone seemed to agree, pretty much. She was quiet, kept pretty much to herself. They all agreed she came and went pretty much at random, so she probably didn’t work. I asked about visitors, naturally, and a couple of them agreed that, a few times, a middle-age guy in an expensive car came to visit. But then, of course, nobody could agree on what the guy really looked like, or what kind of a car he drove, or anything. You know—” Canelli shook his head, heaved a dolorous sigh. “You know, the usual. I’ll keep trying, of course. But so far I don’t know whether the guy was fat or skinny, or bald, or whatever. Just middle age, whatever that means.”
“So Lee Persse’s statement is all we’ve got that a young, dark-haired guy left the garage after she drove in on Wednesday night.”
“Afraid so, Lieutenant.” Canelli spoke regretfully, apologetically.
Friedman turned to Hastings. “This kid—Lee Persse—did he see how many people were in her car?”
“No. I don’t even think he was sure she was driving.”
“I think that’s right,” Canelli offered. “I took Lee Persse down to the street and had him show me where he was parked. That was about nine o’clock last night. I had two kids, in fact—Lee Persse and Jack Thiede, who was there Wednesday, with Persse. We sat in my car, the three of us, just like they did Wednesday night. Persse was sitting in the passenger’s seat, in front. And the other kid—Thiede—he was driving, Wednesday, so he sat in the driver’s seat. I sat in back, like the third kid did. So then I had Asher drive toward us and turn into the driveway, like she did Wednesday, going into the garage. Asher has a Honda, which is about the same height as her Mercedes, so the angles were just about the same. And it was nine o’clock—dark, like it was Wednesday, but not raining. But anyhow—” Canelli drew a breath. “Anyhow, all we could make out was that there was someone driving, that was it. I mean, if it was raining, she’d sure have her windows up, which Asher had. And with the windows up, if there’d been a passenger, we couldn’t’ve seen him. So—” He spread his hands. “So it was all pretty much a zero, I guess you’d say.”
“How long was it,” Friedman asked, “between the time she entered the garage and the time this guy came out?” He looked at Hastings.
“The impression I got from Persse,” Hastings said, “was that it was just a little while, maybe two minutes.” He looked at Canelli, who nodded.
“Because I’m wondering,” Friedman mused, “whether she might’ve been strangled inside the garage. Maybe it was—you know—a sex thing. They entered the garage together, in her car. They started to fool around, whatever. She denied him, and he lost control. God knows, it’s a standard scenario, especially if they were drinking.”
“Or maybe he was waiting for her inside the garage,” Canelli offered. “Maybe it was robbery, which would account for her missing effects.”
“Or he could’ve been outside,” Hastings speculated. “He could’ve gone in with the car, when the garage door went up. He could’ve been on the far side of her car, so Persse wouldn’t’ve seen him going in. He killed her, and took her purse, and left.”
Slowly, with the elaborate, long-suffering forbearance of a schoolmaster dealing with recalcitrant students, Friedman shook his head. “No, no, it wasn’t robbery. You’ve got it all wrong. Sex, maybe. But not robbery.”
Annoyed, Hastings said, “Robbery and sex, then. That’s a standard scenario, too.”
“If it happened within two minutes after she entered the garage,” Friedman countered, “then it sure couldn’t’ve been sex. Christ, sex takes time.”
“Not for a rapist.”
“And strangulation takes time, too,” Friedman pressed.
Canelli was nodding, saying speculatively “That’s true.”
“Then there’s the whole question of what happened next, after the murderer left,” Friedman said. “If we assume that she was murdered inside the garage, by either a rapist or a thief, or both, and if we assume that he took off, like Persse says, and if we assume that she was put in the trunk of her car and taken to the park, then the question is, why would the murderer come back after leaving on foot? It doesn’t make sense.”
Canelli nodded again. “That’s true, Lieutenant. I was thinking about that myself.”
In the short silence that followed, the three men speculated. Finally Friedman said, “One problem here is that all we’ve got is this kid, Persse. We’re violating the first rule, if we buy his story without confirmation. Christ, he could’ve killed her himself. He could’ve seen her coming in her car, and he could’ve accosted her inside the garage. I gather he’s a good-looking kid. Let’s say he’d been drinking, which’d be easy enough to check, probably. Let’s say they had something going, Persse and the victim.” Friedman threw Hastings a quick glance, acknowledging the other man’s sensibilities. But the force of his words was undiluted as Friedman continued: “It’s another standard scenario, the teenage stud and the sexy older woman. It’s almost a cliché, in fact.” He let a beat pass while the other two men considered the possibilities. Then Friedman briskly concluded: “Or he made a move on her, and she wasn’t having any. There was a struggle. Next thing, the kid is staring down at her body, wondering what happened. She’s dead. He panics. He gets something to wrap her in, drives to the park in her car, and gets rid of the body, which he’s stripped. He gets rid of her clothes and purse, maybe in a dumpster. He drives her car home, goes to bed, sleeps it off.” He shrugged. “Everything fits.”
Hastings shook his head doubtfully. “I got the feeling she was completely intimidated by someone—terrified of him. I just don’t see Persse like that.”
“She could’ve had both things going at once,” Friedman said. “The way it’s beginning to look, the picture I’m getting, some rich guy was—” He hesitated, to choose the least offensive phrase. “He was paying her bills. But he didn’t come around much, meaning that she had time on her hands. And right downstairs was this beautiful kid with his smooth
, supple body. It’s a natural.”
“Well,” Hastings said, “all we need is a few hairs from his head. If his DNA matches the semen, then we’ve got something.” He paused, looked at Canelli with questioning eyes. Then: “Come to think of it, though, when I talked to Persse about her, I thought I got a buzz from him. How about you?”
Canelli nodded promptly. “I was just thinking the same thing, Lieutenant. I really was. Except—” Plainly perplexed by a new thought, Canelli frowned. “Except that, if Persse did it, then his buddies are lying, too.”
In the silence that followed, they considered the possibilities. Finally Friedman said, “If we keep Persse in mind, which I think we should, we’ve got to remember that we’ve got a minor child with rich parents. And rich parents have expensive lawyers.” As he spoke, he glanced at his watch, began gathering up his papers. “So why don’t you two return to the field, or whatever, while I see what’s on the computers. I’m also going to put the arm on the media. What we need now is for people to come forward and tell us what they saw in Golden Gate Park, and also in the twenty-one hundred block of Hyde Street, Wednesday night.”
“We’ll get some crazies,” Canelli said.
“I’d rather have crazies than nothing,” Friedman said. “And that’s what we’ve got now. Nothing.”
3:40 P.M. As he heard the phone begin to ring, Hastings pulled a notepad closer, and clicked his ballpoint pen.
“Blake Enterprises,” a woman’s voice said. “This is Charlotte.”
A Death Before Dying (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 12
