“We will,” I responded. “Thanks again for your help.”
Cara and I returned to my place after stopping at hers. She’d basically moved in, but she had held on to her other place until we figured out whether this was permanent. Since she needed some more clothes, we swung by her house to pick up her stuff.
Back at Avalon, as she rearranged our shared apartment, I started reading back over the Butcher’s latest letter, which I hadn’t paid enough attention to, having been busy with Dennis and Paddy.
I spoke aloud to Cara as she restructured my minuscule walk-in closet. It was going to be all hers by time she finished.
“What does he mean by this poker analogy?” she asked.
“It’s something that bridges the gap,” I said.
“What does that mean exactly?”
“So in poker, you can have a straight go from ten to the ace. Or from the ace to the five. The ace can be used for high or low. But you can’t have a straight that goes something like king, ace, two, three, four. Or queen, king, ace, two, three. So he’s saying if you could bridge the gap between the two, then you could have a straight. But that’s all I know. I’m not sure what exactly it has to do with his name.”
“How do your articles end?”
“With my name.”
“And how do they begin?”
“Usually with ‘Written By,’ followed by my name.”
“I don’t get how his poker analogy fits.”
“Neither do I. Well, I get the premise, but I don’t get how it’s meant to be interpreted.”
“Which he’s not going to tell us. He enjoys this mindfuck.”
“He does. But we’re making progress.”
“Let’s hope a lot more of it happens before his next set of murders.”
“Of course.”
“Here, can you grab me a Walnut Creek Times? Thanks.”
Cara had walked out of the closet and came near the assorted papers sitting in the baskets we’d set in the wall. She grabbed one and brought it over.
“These baskets might cost you a pretty penny from your deposit.”
“I’ll spackle the holes when this is all over.”
I grabbed the paper, an edition from 2018, probably ten pages in total, and looked at the top of the front page. And then the back of the last page. Based on what I saw, I tried to figure out any plausible explanation for the Butcher’s poker analogy.
It had to mean that something jumped from one thing to the next. Something which we usually didn’t acknowledge.
I looked at “Quint Adler.” I looked at “Written By.” I looked at “The Walnut Creek Times.”
But nothing stood out.
Maybe this was all some inside joke from the killer and not something I could figure out on my own. Or the creep meant to be intentionally vague.
“Anything?” Cara finally asked.
“No.”
I put the paper back in the basket, then jumped onto my bed, where Cara settled next to me with her laptop.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She tapped some words into the Google search bar.
“Trying to find out if any of the victims in San Jose have connections to the Langleys. Or the East Bay.”
I was exhausted and my mind was mush. Seemingly energized by hanging her clothes, Cara continued to work and I tried to get to sleep early.
30.
“Don’t forget to text the bookie’s guy!”
I was halfway out the door the next morning when Cara reminded me.
“I’m just getting a coffee and coming back up,” I said.
“Alright. I think you should tell him anyway. But when we’re going to be out in public, you definitely should.”
“Why don’t you come down with me? I’ll text him and we’ll have a coffee outside on the street.”
“Alright, give me five minutes.”
“You look fine,” I said.
“I asked for five minutes, not a half hour,” Cara said.
“Touché.”
I texted Dennis McCarthy’s guy, walked downstairs with Cara, ordered coffees, and saved a table sitting out on Treat Boulevard. All the cars sailing by made plenty of loud noise, but the sound was a bit soothing as well.
Cara brought the coffees out a few minutes later and set them down, taking a seat in the process.
As soon as we’d settled in, someone approached us.
The man, in his fifties, wore nondescript blue jeans and a white T-shirt. He had sunglasses and a hat on, making it hard to see his face.
Which I’m sure was the plan.
“This will be the first and last time I’ll say hi to you guys,” he said.
“Thanks for helping us,” I said.
“You’re welcome. And now I walk away.”
Which is exactly what he did.
“This is so odd,” Cara said a few seconds after he left.
“Just imagine him as your own paparazzi cameraman.”
“No, thanks. And that’s funny coming from the guy who didn’t like being approached at the grocery store after all his interviews.”
“That’s fair,” I admitted.
We each took a sip of our coffees, as if doing so could invoke an air of normality.
“You find out anything last night after I went to sleep?” I asked.
“I did.”
That surprised me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were asleep, and then you dragged me down here when I woke up.”
“Also fair. What did you find out?”
“As we know, a lot of these can mean nothing.”
“I know. We don’t have to preface that each time.”
“Okay,” she said, then cleared her throat. “I found a connection to the East Bay with two of the victims in San Jose.”
“What type of connection?”
“They had lived in the Easy Bay before moving to San Jose. Roger and Celia Tiller.”
“How were you able to figure that out?” I asked.
“The power of the internet: googling all of the victim’s names, and then trying to find places they’ve previously lived. It’s easier than you’d think. Lot of websites have that info.”
She was right, which helped our case but made me uneasy overall. It had become way too simple to get information on people these days.
“Did they live in Walnut Creek?” I asked.
“Better,” she said.
“How could it be better than that? I wrote for the Walnut Creek Times, after all.”
“They lived in Pleasant Hill.”
And I immediately knew she was right. Surfer guy Bradley Marks said the Langleys had lived in Pleasant Hill as well..
“I’m intrigued,” I said.
“That’s it?”
“It’s great work, Cara, no doubt. But the Bay Area is relatively small. It’s not crazy to think that two sets of his victims, out of many, might have both lived in Pleasant Hill at some point. Are you even sure they lived there at the same time?”
“That’s what we are going to find out today,” Cara said.
“Let me guess. You want to talk with a few of their neighbors?”
“You know it!”
I gave Cara a quick kiss, and as I did the man who was tailing us walked by us for a second time. It was all so odd.
“Great,” Cara said sarcastically. “Our paparazzi. Maybe by the end of this we’ll have a greatest hits album of us kissing.”
“I’d buy it,” I said.
Cara smiled.
“Should we go upstairs?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “We should be out in public as long as we can. Let’s finish our coffees down here and give the guy a chance to record all the people who hover around or walk by us.”
“You’re more of a natural at this than I am,” I said.
“Thanks, Quint.”
Even I wasn’t sure whether it was a compliment or not, but I let it stand as one.
We s
tayed outside at Starbucks for a half hour longer. A great many people walked by, but I didn’t recognize anyone, except a few of my longtime Avalon neighbors. Not that I expected to. It was a huge long shot that I knew who the Butcher was. Although Paddy suggesting it could be a cop certainly upped those odds. I’d met several in the OPD, after all.
The goal wasn’t for me to recognize the Butcher, anyway. It was for the video to find someone who appeared in our vicinity one too many times.
We headed back to my place. Cara and I spent a little more time getting ready for our visit to Pleasant Hill. Sweats were fine for a Starbucks trip, but if we were going to be knocking on doors, we needed to be presentable. By ten a.m., we had become just that.
I texted the man the address we were headed to. But I told him to be subtle, given we might go door-to-door to ask questions.
Pleasant Hill bordered Walnut Creek for several miles. Many of us in Walnut Creek viewed it as a younger brother, not quite as much to do, but not exactly a slouch either.
It was home to Diablo Valley College, one of the better junior colleges in California. If you knew more than that about Pleasant Hill, you were probably a local. It didn’t exactly make a huge impression.
Avalon Walnut Creek, although technically located in Walnut Creek (thus the name), connected right to the Pleasant Hill BART station, so it’s not like we had to venture far. Pleasant Hill actually lay less than one hundred yards from my apartment.
On Google, Cara brought up the address of the Tillers when they lived in Pleasant Hill, and we headed off that way. We only had to go a few miles.
As I pulled out on the street from the Avalon parking garage, I saw a black Honda Civic pull out a few cars behind me. It followed from a distance, and I wondered if it was our guy. It remained behind us the whole way, keeping a car or two between us, but didn’t follow me onto the final street. It had to be him, not wanting to keep the tail too close.
I parked the car. “Okay,” I said. “Who should we approach first?”
“Let’s try the Tillers’ old house.” Cara pointed to it. “Then we can hit a few neighbors and see if they remember anything more."
That sounded fine with me. I nodded.
The home was painted a burgundy red you didn’t see too often. It looked like a rectangular glass of Cabernet. Judging by the size, it probably had only two bedrooms. Potentially three, but it certainly wasn’t extravagant.
Everyone gives the Bay Area shit for their home prices, but I imagined on this block they were actually pretty reasonable.
Our knock was answered before Cara had time to knock a second time.
The woman who answered wore jeans and a casual yellow blouse. She must be smack dab in the middle of her thirties. If I was a betting man, I’d confidently take 34/35/36 and give someone else every age there is. Her appearance was that uncannily on the grown-up side of young.
“Can I help you?” she said.
Since my acquisition of my investigator’s license was still off in the near future, Cara thought we could use my “celebrity” to our advantage. She said if I introduced myself as Quint, a sizable percentage of the Bay Area would know who I was. Otherwise, they might ask questions like whether we were affiliated with a police department. Questions we didn’t want to answer.
So I took the lead.
“Hi, I’m Quint Adler. We had a few questions about the people who owned the house before you. The Tillers.”
The woman shook her head. “Quint is standing on my front porch,” she said in a low voice, as if to herself. “So weird.” In a louder, friendlier tone, she told us, “Nice to meet you, I’m Victoria.”
I shook her hand, and she held on a little long. it seemed I’d met the female version of Bradley Marks.
“This is my associate, Cara,” I said.
They shook hands. Briefly.
We’d decided to continue with the co-worker/associate angle, making it sound more official than boyfriend and girlfriend.
“What questions did you have?” Victoria asked, her eyes in my direction only.
She didn’t invite us in, so it looked like the conversation would be taking place on her doorstep. That was fine with me, even though in my experience as a reporter, people grew more wiling to talk if they invited you inside.
“Do you know why the Tillers moved?” I asked.
“Work. Mr. Tiller got transferred down to San Jose.”
“What kind of work was he involved in?”
“Real estate. He was a property manager and his company had bought a few rental units down in the South Bay. Made it easier if he lived down there, obviously.”
“No doubt,” I said.
And that’s when I realized the mistake we had made.
Victoria wouldn’t know if something had happened while the Tillers lived here. Obviously, she wouldn’t have lived here then.
As my mind wandered, Victoria pounced.
“So you are here investigating the Bay Area Butcher?”
We had really no reason to lie. And there was no lie that would truly make sense anyway.
“We are.”
“But I thought all of these murders were totally random. At least, that’s what the media is saying.”
“In all likelihood, they are. But we’re just trying to see if there was by some chance any connection we could find between the Tillers and the killer.”
“Oh, that rhymes,” Victoria said, delighting in her own observation. By the gleam in her eyes, she hoped I’d be impressed, too.
I wanted to turn and run.
Watching Bradley Marks hit on Cara had been preferable to this.
“Which neighbors have lived here the longest?” Cara asked, saying her first words in the entire conversation.
And as usual, she’d found the right question to ask.
“That would be the Dorias. They’re both around seventy and raised four kids on this street.”
“Which house are they?”
Victoria took a step outside and pointed to a pale brown house about three doors down.
“Is there anything you could tell us that might be helpful, Victoria?” I asked, hoping adding her name at the end might do the trick.
“I don’t think so.”
I guess not.
Victoria continued. “We met them like two or three times and once the house closed, we moved in, and obviously they moved to the South Bay. So we really barely knew them.”
“Sure. I understand,” I said. “Well, we’d like to thank you for your time.”
“I hope you catch him. We’re all scared. Especially with Walnut Creek being all over his letters.”
“But this is Pleasant Hill,” I said.
“Yeah, but they are contiguous. It’s not like bullets stop flying when they pass through city limits.”
It was both a funny image and a somewhat perceptive comment. I tended toward the latter.
“Well said. You be safe, Victoria. I think we’re going to ask the Dorias a few questions.”
Victoria and Dorias rhymed too, but luckily she didn’t point it out.
“Okay, thanks for stopping by,” she said, like it was something we did twice a week.
“Take care,” I said.
We walked three doors down, and once again, our knock on the door was answered almost immediately.
To be honest, the Dorias looked closer to their eighties than their seventies.
I just hoped their memory was intact.
The door had been opened by Mrs. Doria, and within seconds, her husband joined her.
I stuck to our plan.
“My name is Quint…”
“We know who you are,” he said.
This was too much.
Was I more well-known than I realized? Maybe my fame just extended locally. Or maybe Peter Vitella had forever screwed my chance to be anonymous.
“We have some questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course. Why don’t you guys come inside?”
The couple escorted us into a pristine home. Everything was immaculate. Even the pictures on the walls were all uniformly hung, with what looked liked exact spacing between each. The walls were white, and I mean lily white. Not a smidge of gray to be seen.
“Your house is beautiful,” Cara said.
“Thank you. My husband and I pride ourselves on cleanliness.”
I hadn’t even mentioned cleanliness, but they obviously equated it to beauty.
They escorted us into a room that had four chairs, two sets of two facing each other, with a glass coffee table sitting between them. It’s almost like the room had been decorated just for us. It was perfect for two visitors.
“Can I get you some coffee? By the way, I’m Sandy and my husband’s name is Terry.”
The husband gave a friendly wave. He seemed nice, but it was obvious that his wife took the lead.
“I’ll take a cup,” I said. “Black, please.”
“I’ll have the same,” Cara added.
Usually, I would have turned down the offer, but I had an unexplainable feeling that they had something to tell us. So I thought by ordering a coffee, we might extend the timeframe and possibly win a better chance to get more information.
“I’ll be right back. Honey, can you keep them company?” Sandy said to Terry.
Cara and I sat in the two chairs on one side while Terry sat in one on the other.
“So, how long have you lived here?” Cara asked, initiating the small talk.
“It will be forty-five years in December.”
“That’s amazing. And by the looks of your pictures, you raised a few children here.”
“Four of them. But we’ve been empty nesters for going on twenty-five years now.”
“We just talked to your neighbor, Victoria,” I said. “She said you’d been here the longest of anyone on this block.”
“By probably fifteen years. The Rasmussens have been here almost thirty. They’d have to be second longest. And after that, it’s a bunch of young couples.”
“Seems like a nice street to raise your kids.”
“It’s been almost exclusively families who have lived here. So yeah, it’s been great.”
Sandy Doria reappeared with our coffees.
“That was quick,” Cara said.
The Bay Area Butcher: (Quint Adler Book 2) Page 15
