“Conklin, a dead body was found in an apartment building in West Portal. Welky was the first one on the scene, and an ADA just brought him a search warrant. Welky found two IDs in the room and a wallet that belongs to Samuel J. Alton.”
Seriously? There was no way Samuel J. Alton had died twice.
So who was this dead man with his wallet?
Conklin made the excruciatingly slow drive to the middle-class, family-oriented neighborhood. He got stuck at the lights at both the entrance and exit of a three-block shopping district, and then, once he’d gotten free of that, he hit another traffic snarl on a block filled with homey bars and restaurants. Twenty minutes after leaving the Hall, he parked in front of an apartment building on West Portal Avenue, between a cruiser and the coroner’s van. He hopped out of his car and headed toward the crime scene.
The building was a classic midcentury San Francisco–style home with five stories of gray stucco, arched windows, and a view of the West Portal Muni. A half dozen trees out front softened the lines of the building under a clear sky overhead. A light-rail car rattled by as Conklin entered the building. If he hadn’t been summoned there on police duty, he would have never guessed that there had been a murder inside.
The old man behind the front desk pointed to the elevator behind him, then raised four fingers.
Fourth floor. Got it.
Conklin was met upstairs by the two beat cops who’d arrived on the scene first. Their names were Officers Calvin Welky and Mike Brown. Conklin signed the log, put on booties and gloves, and then walked into a clean, bright three-room apartment.
Welky said, “The manager, Mr. Wayne Murdock, said the apartment belongs to one Arthur O’Brien, an actor and probably a junkie. Murdock got a call from O’Brien’s mother. She hadn’t heard from her son in a couple of days. She said he wasn’t returning her calls. Murdock went to the young man’s residence, found his body here, and called it in.”
Conklin looked around the living room. It was dominated by a fifty-two-inch TV. Across the room from it sat a nondescript brown couch. A set of weights took up one corner of the space. It looked to Conklin like this was a single man’s apartment. There were no knickknacks or sentimental items breaking up the uniform brown color palette. But the most telling detail of all was the drug paraphernalia that was scattered across the coffee table.
Conklin noticed a stubby candle, a scorched spoon, a box of matches, and a flock of opaque glassine envelopes that were coated with white powder.
Conklin walked to the bedroom, stood in the doorway, and nodded to the two CSIs who were photographing the dead man. His body was lying in the center of the unmade bed.
Conklin said hello to Claire and Bunny, and then he took in the whole of the room. There were movie posters on the walls, a laundry bag by the window, a desk with an open laptop computer, and a knapsack up against the wall. His eyes went back to the dead man lying in a relaxed fetal position.
If you squinted, you could almost imagine that Arthur O’Brien was sleeping.
Conklin wished that he could shake the man to ask him some questions.
Who are you, bud? Why do you have Sam Alton’s wallet?
CHAPTER 20
CLAIRE WASHBURN PHOTOGRAPHED the deceased from every angle with her old Minolta camera while she and Bunny waited for Rich Conklin to arrive.
The dead man’s real name was Arthur O’Brien. He was white and in his thirties, but since that’s where his similarities to Samuel J. Alton ended, it was a wonder that he was in possession of Alton’s identification.
Arthur O’Brien didn’t have a double chin or love handles. He was as thin as a rail, and had spiky blond hair and a square diamond earring in one ear. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved blue knit shirt. One of his sleeves was rolled up, almost to the shoulder, revealing a length of rubber tubing knotted around his left biceps. The track marks that ran down his arm showed that this had not been his first time at the rodeo. The syringe was lying on the sheets about three inches from his right hand, and there was a puddle of vomit on a pillow.
Probable cause of death: suicide, most likely unintended.
Conklin came through the door. He pushed his hair out of his eyes, then checked out the room and the body. Then he said to her, “Don’t commit yourself, but what are your thoughts?”
She said, “I’ll send out the blood sample in the morning and do the post, but he’s cold. On the face of it, he OD’d and I’d say he’s been dead at least twenty-four hours.”
Claire lifted up the dead man’s shirt and pushed a thermometer into the skin above his liver. Then she waited a minute before reading it.
She said, “I’d estimate that this man’s death occurred more than thirty hours ago. That means it happened early Monday morning.”
“The wallet’s over there,” Welky told Conklin, pointing toward the dresser opposite the bed. Conklin walked over, picked it up, and took a look at its contents. Claire had already seen the wallet. It was good quality and was made from tan-colored calf’s skin. The initials SJA were embossed in one corner.
Inside was Samuel Alton’s driver’s license. The photo on the identification card matched the face of the man who had been found dead in Joan Murphy’s embrace.
“One twenty in cash in the billfold,” said Welky, “along with four credit cards and a dozen business cards. Everything seems to belong to Samuel Alton, Avantra Insurance, San Bernardino. Inspector, there’s also a backpack you’ll want to see here.”
Brown picked up the backpack that had been leaning against the wall and set it down on the desk. Claire left the deceased and went over to watch Conklin go through the contents of the bag.
He hefted it, undid the zipper, and said, “Call me crazy, but I’m feeling lucky.”
Conklin put his hand into the backpack and removed the first item: a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson, small, what was known as a .38 Special. It held six bullets. He showed Claire the chamber. There was only one bullet left inside.
She thought, The first three went into Alton’s back and arm, and the last two went into Joan Murphy’s shoulder and hip. That adds up.
Conklin handed the weapon off to a CSI, saying, “That goes to ballistics right away, Boyd. It looks like it could be evidence in an active homicide case.”
A few more items came out of the backpack, including a bag of chocolate chip cookies and an empty liter-sized Coke bottle with a hole in the bottom. Conklin held up the plastic bottle. He knew that on the street, this sort of thing was used as a suppressor. If a killer screwed the gun into the mouth of the bottle and fired, the bottle would silence the gunshot.
The next item in the bag was a gray T-shirt. Richie sniffed it and said, “Gunpowder.”
He handed the shirt and the bottle off to Boyd. Then he put both hands into the bag and took out a red-patterned kerchief that was neatly folded into a bundle. He said, “This is so heavy, it almost feels like it’s alive.”
Claire saw that the object inside that kerchief was jointed and pointy. Maybe it wasn’t one item, but a number of many small pieces wrapped up together. Conklin set the makeshift package down on the desk and turned to Wallace, the CSI who was holding the camera, saying, “Please shoot the hell out of this.”
Rich opened the kerchief one fold at a time, exposing a pair of very sparkly earrings, two chunky rings, three diamond encrusted cuff-style bracelets, and a twenty-two-inch white metal chain necklace with a large diamond pendant.
He stared at the glittering array for a long moment. Maybe he was dazzled, thought Claire. Because it was dazzling.
“What do you think of this?” he said to her. “Is it a million dollars’ worth of diamonds?”
Claire said, “If it all came from Cartier or Harry Winston, that batch could be worth multiples of that. But I know one thing for sure: those are Joan’s jewels. I recognize most of it from that second honeymoon photo that was in her wallet. I’ll bet she never expected to see these pieces again.”
Conklin dug around
in the main section of the backpack some more but came up empty-handed. Then he opened a zippered pocket in the front and took out a wallet. This one was slim, holding only one credit card and a driver’s license. He showed Claire the photo on the license. It belonged to the man on the bed, Arthur O’Brien.
Claire said, “There’s another pocket on the side there, Richie.”
The pocket was tight and the fabric seemed to resist the insertion of his gloved fingers. Conklin persisted. At last, he pulled out a green plastic hotel key card.
He showed it to Claire and put it down on a corner of the desk. He asked Wallace to take a couple of shots of the card. On the center of the card were the words Warwick Hotel.
“Beautiful,” he said to Claire. “Assuming the gun in the backpack killed Sam Alton, Arthur O’Brien has tied up all the loose ends and wrapped up the case against himself.”
Claire nodded curtly as she handed off the pillowcase with the vomit on it. That’s when she found the cell phone in the bedding. She held it up to Rich and said, “He might have even tied up that package with a bow on top,” she said. “I wonder who Mr. O’Brien had been calling in the weeks before he died.”
CHAPTER 21
CONKLIN MADE PHONE calls from his car as Claire supervised the transport of Arthur O’Brien’s body and belongings into her van.
First he called John Sackowitz, and then he patched Brady into the call and told both of them what he knew.
He said, “It looks like O’Brien died from an accidental drug overdose. The deceased was in possession of a backpack that was a forensic lab’s dream. There’s a recently fired .38 with one slug left in the six-chamber cylinder and a street suppressor. Also, get this, we found a key card from the Warwick. I’m going to take a wild guess and say it opens room three twenty-one.”
Sac and Brady were suitably impressed and excited.
Conklin kept going. He was on a roll.
“How’d he get the card? This, I don’t know. But we have his cell phone. Maybe his call history will give up the other players in this thing. Oh, and to really seal the deal here,” Conklin said, “Joan Murphy’s diamonds were also in O’Brien’s backpack. All of them, and they were nicely wrapped in a bandana. CSI found O’Brien’s prints on all of it.”
Brady said, “Good work, Inspector Conklin. Take a bow and the night off.”
It was a quarter to six, so Conklin called Cindy and said, “I’ll pick up a pizza.” Then he sent her a phone kiss.
After that, he called Joan Murphy’s phone and left a voice mail. “Joan, this is Rich Conklin. We’ve recovered your jewelry. There are about three pounds of diamonds here, including that pendant that I think belonged to your mother. Call me, please. We’ll need you to identify it.”
He clicked off and then spoke to the disconnected phone, “And by the way, Joan, I also need to talk to you about Sam Alton and Arthur O’Brien, both of whom are now deceased. You’re starting to look like the center of a category 5 storm to me.”
His phone buzzed.
It was Joan.
It was almost as if she’d heard him.
She said, “Hi, Richard. I’m doing all right. Keeping it together. I want to remind you that someone tried to murder me. I don’t want to give this person another shot at it. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
“Where are you? Everyone’s been worried about you. Robert called you in as a missing person.”
“Never mind that. Look, Richard, the important thing is that I think I know who was behind all of this.”
But then the phone went dead in his hand.
Conklin hit the Return Call button. He listened to the ringtone and got Joan’s outgoing voice mail message.
“This is Joan. You know what to do.”
Conklin said, “Call me back, Joan. Call me.”
He got out of his car and walked over to Claire. She was shutting the back doors to the van.
“Joan just called me. She won’t tell me where she is, but she said that she’s staying out of harm’s way. Then she hung up on me.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” said Claire.
“Do you get the feeling,” Rich asked Claire, “that she’s making things harder for us on purpose? Why would she do that?”
CHAPTER 22
THAT NIGHT CINDY and Rich got into bed before ten. It was an early night for them and that was a kind of blessing.
It was good to be home. Their apartment on Kirkham Street was small and cozy. They’d decorated it together so that it fit them like a hug.
Richie’s arm was around Cindy, and she was wrapped around him with her cheek pressed to his chest. Streetlights sliced through the blinds, striping the walls and ceiling. Their alarm clocks were set. They each had glasses of water on their nightstands, and she had the extra blanket. Rich had the king-sized pillow behind his back.
And they had the luxury of these quiet hours to talk about their days. She loved listening to the sound of his voice.
Rich was telling her about Arthur O’Brien, the shooter who’d killed Samuel J. Alton and wounded Joan Murphy. He explained how Arthur had been the one to steal her jewelry, expose her affair, and then step off stage into the shadow of death.
“And after all this craziness about whodunnit and why,” said Rich, “he keeps all the evidence in his backpack and leaves it for us to find.”
“Careless,” said Cindy. “It’s basic hit man 101. The first thing you do is get rid of the gun.”
“That’s the thing, Cin. He was not a pro. Not even semi. Still, he got a key card, got an unregistered gun, shot two people, and ditched with the jewels. He got out of the hotel just like that. Shazam.”
“It seems too neat,” said Cindy. “How did a drug addict and occasional film extra get onto Joan and her jewels? Someone had to have put him up to it. If I had to guess, someone gave him a playbook.”
“You’re right. We downloaded the call log on his phone. We found a lot of stuff there, but at first look, nothing was incriminating. He called his mother regularly. He had a few friends, none of whom connected him to Alton or the Murphys. But then we found several calls to a burner phone in his call history. If he was given instructions, I bet it went through that phone. I’m thinking that if O’Brien was the shooter, he was supposed to cash in the jewels. But he flamed out before he could collect his check.”
Cindy asked, “What’s your next move?”
“Wait for the lab reports. Sam Alton’s widow wants justice. The Murphys are out of it. Joan is alive. She has the jewelry plus a great story for all of her dinner parties, and a couple of decorative scars.
“I don’t understand her,” Rich continued. “I’d expect her to want me to catch the person who did this and killed Sam.”
“That might be the snag,” said Cindy. “Maybe she doesn’t want to admit to having an affair with Sam.”
“Sure. Maybe that would torpedo her marriage. But do you think that Robert doesn’t know? Is he really so clueless? Or is he grilling her when the cops aren’t there? Is that what’s making her stick to her story? ‘I was drugged and kidnapped and shot and I don’t know who that hairy fat guy was who was found naked on top of me.’”
Cindy laughed and Rich joined her.
It was all so crazy.
But it was just the kind of mystery Cindy loved to solve.
CHAPTER 23
THE NEXT MORNING, Cindy and Rich said good-bye on the street and got into their cars. Rich headed to the Hall, and Cindy set her course toward Seacliff.
She didn’t tell Rich where she was going. She knew what he would say. “You’re poking into a police investigation. It’s dangerous.” Or words to that effect. Either way, it wouldn’t be something she’d want to hear.
If she listened to Rich and some of her well-meaning friends, she’d be writing a fashion column. Or maybe pieces about local politics.
But she was a crime writer. Crime was not just her beat at the Chronicle, it was her passion. She’d written a b
estselling true-crime book, sold two hundred fifty thousand copies in paperback, and had a standing offer from her publisher that he’d entertain any book ideas she might have. So, yeah.
And then she laughed out loud at the realization that she was justifying her job to herself.
She drove from her apartment through Golden Gate Park on Crossover Drive and then continued into the Richmond District toward Seacliff. She checked the house numbers on El Camino Del Mar, a street populated with mansions and set back from the road. She slowed the car and took in the gateposts bracketing a stucco wall. This was the house. The iron gates were closed.
Cindy cruised past the house, slowing as she saw another break in the wall. This gate was also made of wrought iron, but it wasn’t as wide. Only one car could fit through it at a time.
Cindy saw that there was a driveway beyond the gate. It seemed to be a service entrance, and it looked to her as though the gate had been left open.
Cindy drove farther down the road, parked her Acura on the verge, and got out. Since it was eight thirty in the morning, she had the street to herself, though she could hear the distant sound of a power tool up the road. It was either a chainsaw or blower. When one car came toward her, a Lexus with tinted windows, she busied herself on her phone until the car passed by.
Then, she crossed the road and walked directly to the service entrance gate.
Cindy pulled on the handle and the gate swung open. She slipped inside and carefully closed the gate behind her. She stopped in her tracks, looking around at the grassy lawns beyond the drive. There was a barnlike machine or tool shed to her left and beyond that a pathway of beckoning stone steps cut into a steep upward slope in the lawn.
Right now, she was “snooping,” as it was called in the trade. But once she’d climbed those steps, it would no longer be fun and games. She’d have no believable excuse. It would be trespassing, plain and simple.
She stopped for a moment and put her game face on. Then she climbed up every one of those thirty steps. Technically, she wasn’t breaking in. She was looking for someone to interview about a pretty interesting story that centered around a murder and the robbery of an impressive jewelry collection. If she got lucky, she’d run into Joan while she was wandering around the premises. And if she got really lucky, Joan would remember her from Claire’s office.
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