Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  “He’s not involved. I can guarantee that.”

  “Can you? From what I’ve heard from you, he’s smart enough to get around the Shore Patrol—and don’t tell me you watch him all the time, because the Navy has a budget just like the SFPD, and I know what full-time surveillance costs. At best, you keep a loose watch, now and again, when you have the personnel.”

  Hempel stood up and held out his hand, making Roland scramble to rise and take it.

  “It’s been nice talking to you, Commander,” he said, smiling his wintry smile. “We’re not giving your Mr. Tregear a free pass, but I’ll tell you what we will do—we’ll give him a very close look. That way, provided he’s clean, we’ll be out of his life as quickly as possible. I’ll see to it that you receive a copy of Inspector Ridley’s report.”

  And that was that.

  * * *

  Stephen Tregear was sitting on the left side of the sofa in his living room, his cell phone resting on the coffee table, within easy reach. He was waiting for Hal Roland’s call.

  The living room was sparsely furnished. Against the opposite wall there was one chair and above it hung a print of one of Renoir’s river parties left in a closet by the previous tenant, nothing else. The truth was that Tregear hardly ever used this room. He never entertained. He ate in the kitchen and worked in a spare bedroom. Once a week he came to dust the living room and to vacuum the carpet, which for the rest was undisturbed by his footprints. Tregear spent most of his time by himself, but here, in this room, which bore almost no trace of his life, he truly felt alone. Here he felt like Robinson Crusoe.

  Today he didn’t mind. It seemed appropriate. He hadn’t thought it out—hadn’t thought about it at all—but here he was, waiting to hear if Roland had played his part as expected.

  He discovered that he wasn’t frightened, which surprised him a little and made him worry that perhaps he was becoming arrogant. If you guess right too many times you begin to confuse probability with certainty, to underestimate difficulties, and that was a weakness. Tregear was afraid of weakness.

  He was also afraid of indifference. He was frightened of not being frightened because he needed, above all else, to stay alert. Indifference was a natural consequence of weariness, either physical or emotional, and he couldn’t afford to grow weary. He was involved in something that he preferred to think of as a game because games were abstract things with rules which were at once absolute and arbitrary. Spades were higher than hearts. A pawn could go forward two spaces with its first move but after that only one. Seven was a winner only on the first roll of the dice.

  The rules of this game were not of his choosing, but he was bound by them. The game had absorbed his whole attention until there was almost nothing outside it. He had not won yet, but neither had he lost. One loss and the game was over, and with it his life. He needed to concentrate, so that he would make no mistakes.

  Right now, the correct move was for Hal Roland to give the police a little prod. Nothing big, just enough to annoy Inspector Ellen Ridley into prodding back. Tregear hoped that Hal could tell him something more about her, so he could have some sense of whether his instinct had been correct.

  He knew she was intelligent. She had graduated from Berkeley with honors and from the San Francisco Police Academy with the best record of any cadet in the last ten years. She was on the fast track within the department. They expected great things from her.

  Well, so did he.

  Tregear’s cellular service package with Pacific Bell included caller ID, and the number on his display screen indicated that Roland was phoning from his office at Treasure Island.

  “Yes, Hal.”

  “I told them you’re a government asset and a model citizen, so they’ll get finished with you as quickly and unobtrusively as they can. You haven’t been carving up hookers in your spare time, have you, Steve? Hah, ha!”

  “Is that what they think, that I’m the Zodiac?” Tregear didn’t laugh out loud, but he allowed himself a smile. What could be more perfect?

  “I’m sure it’s only routine. Just be your sweet, cooperative self and they’ll see for themselves what a choirboy you are and leave you alone. Promise me you’ll be good? Come on, pal—for the Navy.”

  Naturally Hal would invoke the Navy. He was ever the team player.

  “The Navy is supposed to protect me from things like this, Hal. You messed up.”

  “It’s murder, Steve. Mur-der. They seem to think you’re involved. San Francisco Homicide isn’t a branch of the Department of Defense. What did you expect?”

  “Did you talk to Ellen Ridley?”

  “No. I talked to her lieutenant.”

  Of course, he would. Hal was a politician.

  “Fine, Hal. Then I guess I’ll have to take care of it myself. Just try to stay out of the way.”

  Tregear pressed the “end” button, cutting Roland off in mid-syllable. He had nothing against Roland, but the man had no aesthetic sense at all. Roland could never appreciate this. They seem to think you’re involved. It was delicious.

  6

  “So. Who is this guy Tregear and why are you following him around like a bitch in heat?”

  Sam and Ellen, who had been summoned into their lieutenant’s office almost the instant they walked into the building, exchanged a perplexed glance. Sam even managed a faint shrug, as if to say, Well, I didn’t tell him.

  The lieutenant waited. Obviously he wasn’t feeling collegial. He hadn’t even asked them to sit down.

  “Am I going to get an answer here, or what?”

  When he was unhappy, Hempel’s face had a way of narrowing down until it resembled the blade of an ax. Today he was not happy.

  “Has he filed a complaint?” Ellen asked blandly.

  “A complaint? As in an official complaint?” Hempel shook his head, almost as if it grieved him to have to deny it. “No. There was no official complaint. But this morning I received a friendly little visit from a lieutenant commander in the Shore Patrol. And the lieutenant commander told me you accessed Tregear’s DMV files yesterday and that—Sam, you’ll love this—our Girl Scout here followed him around Fisherman’s Wharf last night. Ellen, what were you thinking about?”

  “She wanted a closer look at him,” Sam answered, discreetly saving his partner the trouble. “So what? It isn’t a violation of anyone’s civil rights if Inspector Ridley decides to hang around the Cannery for a little while. She was off duty.”

  Apparently having decided he’d had enough of this nonsense, Sam dropped heavily into a chair. You could almost hear the legs buckling.

  “How did the sailor boy know about the DMV search?” Ellen asked, still standing in the doorway.

  Sam was in the middle of lighting a cigarette and seemed not to have heard, but Hempel actually grinned.

  While she waited for an answer, Ellen sat down in the one remaining chair.

  “Tregear told him.”

  “And how did Tregear know?”

  “That’s what he does for the Navy. He’s a computer whiz. According to Lieutenant Commander Roland, USN, he’s just about a national treasure.

  “Now. I’ll ask again: What is your interest in this guy?”

  Sam, having taken a long drag on his unfiltered Camel, and having found it to his liking, reached across and touched Ellen on the arm, which was his way of telling her to shut up and let him do the talking.

  “It was a hunch,” he said, as if he expected this answer to be completely satisfactory.

  “A hunch?” Hempel actually shook his head in disbelief. “A hunch, you say? Excuse me, is this the SFPD or the back lot at Paramount? Sam, Bulldog Drummond has hunches. Policemen work the evidence.”

  Sam made a dismissive little gesture with his right hand, dropping cigarette ash on the lieutenant’s floor.

  “Normally I’d agree with you, but Ellie didn’t like the look of Mr. Tregear and she talked me into spending a few hours on him.” He glanced at Ellen and smiled faintly, then turned hi
s attention back to Hempel. “Would you care to hear the results?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he took a notebook out of his inside jacket pocket and flipped it open with his thumb. This was pure theater, as Ellen knew perfectly well, because Sam hadn’t had a pen in his hand all day.

  “You remember the hooker they found in a bathtub at the Marriott? Mr. Tregear signed his current lease exactly four days later, so he was probably in town for the occasion. Further, we have him in the Fan Club for both the Hudson and the Wilkes killings. He pays his rent with checks drawn on a Seattle bank, so we phoned the Seattle police. They know all about him. He’s listed as a person of interest in a string of very polished homicides there, although he was never even questioned. The guy seems to have a ‘Don’t Touch’ sign hanging around his neck. Convenient if your hobby happens to be cutting up women.”

  Sam closed his notebook and restored it to his inside jacket pocket. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit a fresh one. He looked bored.

  For about ten seconds Hempel seemed to consider the matter, and then his eyes narrowed.

  “My question is, do you have probable cause?”

  “No. Just an interesting series of coincidences.”

  “Then either put together a case against this citizen or forget about him. I give you three days.”

  * * *

  “You lied to the lieutenant about the Seattle police, Sam. I’m ashamed of you. That was very naughty.”

  Sam never raised his eyes from the menu, which he was studying like the signed confession of an ax murderer. The interview with Hempel had delayed his lunch.

  “By now he won’t remember whether it was Seattle or Spokane or Topeka. I once partnered with him for two years—he’s not one for follow-up.”

  “Still, you took a chance to cover for me. Thanks.”

  This was ignored. Sam glanced up, but only to search for the waitress. Only when he had ordered a bacon cheeseburger, medium, with steak fries, did his mind return to business.

  “We’ve got three days, Ellie. How do we build a case against Tregear in three days?”

  “We could go ask him if he’d like to volunteer a semen sample.”

  “Very funny. Hilarious.”

  They were in a diner about half a block from the police department, and many of the other patrons were cops. With an expression of envy, Sam watched them eating.

  “However, we could pay him a visit,” he said. “If only to apologize. A social call, as it were. It would get us in the door.”

  “Hempel would have a stroke.”

  “No, he wouldn’t. How could he object? It’s good public relations.”

  The waitress arrived with their orders, restoring Sam to a more philosophical temper. Ellen let him finish about a third of his hamburger before asking the inevitable question.

  “Are you by any chance serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  She seemed ready to rise from the table in that instant, but Sam shook his head.

  “Don’t you dare. The first rule of good police work is never question a suspect on an empty stomach.”

  An hour and ten minutes later they were parked directly in front of Stephen Tregear’s door. They got out of the car and Sam rang the bell. Within fifteen seconds the door swung open and their suspect was before them, dressed in a blue, long-sleeved sweatshirt and a pair of tan shorts. He didn’t appear at all surprised to see them.

  “Mr. Tregear, this is Inspector Ellen Ridley and I’m Inspector Samuel Tyler.”

  “Inspector Sergeant Samuel Tyler.” Tregear corrected him, even as Sam was reaching to produce his badge. He smiled pleasantly, as if to affirm that he had intended a courtesy. And then his attention shifted to Ellen. “Would you care to come in?”

  A short hallway led to the front room, which had the rather sterile atmosphere of a place reserved for company that never came. Tregear directed them to the sofa but remained standing.

  “Can I offer you anything?” he asked, the perfect host. “Coffee? Tea? Lemonade?”

  “No, nothing. We’ve just had lunch.”

  Sam smiled. He had a gift for interrogation, and he was downshifting to the proper gear. On occasions like this he could fall in with the mood of his subject and charm him half to death. At other times he could be ferocious.

  Tregear seemed to take the bait and sat down on a leather chair that looked as if it had just been delivered.

  “We’re sorry to trouble you, Mr. Tregear. Our office has already received a visit from the Navy and we realize that you’re an important and busy man, but we’re investigating a homicide. We just have a few points to clear up and then we’ll be out of your life.”

  “So soon?”

  With marvelous self-control, Sam ignored the interruption.

  “Do you own a shortwave radio, Mr. Tregear?”

  “Set to the police frequencies? No.”

  He let his gaze settle on Ellen in a way that suggested he had already lost interest in the conversation, and then he smiled and his eyes softened.

  Then he turned back to Sam.

  “But I have software that can achieve the same effect with greater precision. It involves voice printouts and code classifications, along with street mapping.”

  “And are you interested in police calls, Mr. Tregear?”

  “As a general rule, no.”

  “But there are exceptions?”

  “Yes. There are exceptions.”

  Even sitting in his chair, hardly moving, Tregear seemed to possess the natural elegance of a dancer. Then he raised his left hand and touched his face, just beside the eyebrow. There was something graceful in the gesture, all the more so for its apparent unconsciousness.

  “There have been three homicides in this city that interest me.”

  He seemed to disappear inside himself, and then, when Sam was almost ready to ask the inevitable next question, Tregear shook his head slightly and frowned.

  “Actually two,” he said, almost to himself. “I haven’t made up my mind about the third.”

  “Which three—or two?” Ellen asked. She glanced at Sam, offering a mute apology.

  Tregear looked at her again, but this time he didn’t smile. He seemed disappointed.

  “You know which three.”

  “But tell us anyway.” Sam’s voice was not so much urgent as encouraging, so that he seemed to be inviting the man to unburden his soul. “Which three?”

  Tregear made a weary gesture, as if to say, Oh, all right!

  “The prostitute at the Marriott three months ago, then the woman who was found dead in a neighbor’s car trunk, then this latest.”

  “The woman on the coast road?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you haven’t decided about her yet?”

  “No.” Tregear shook his head, suggesting that the quest was futile. “I don’t know enough about her yet.”

  “When will you know?”

  “When you file the autopsy protocol.”

  It was the only time Ellen could recall when Sam appeared to have been caught totally off guard. He had been about to say something, but the words seemed to have vanished from his mind. He was stunned.

  “You have access to police files?” Ellen asked, if only to give her partner time to recover.

  “Yes. Through your computer system.”

  “But now that we know, we should be able to lock you out.”

  “That doesn’t follow.”

  There was absolutely nothing of triumph in Tregear’s manner. He seemed to be explaining a commonplace.

  “In any database system that can be accessed from the outside, there are always multiple ways in. In computer parlance they’re called ‘back doors.’ At present the SFPD uses a two-hundred-and-fifty-six-bit encryption system, with access codes that are changed weekly, but if you restructure the system I’ll be back inside within an hour. Computer security is an illusion.”

  “Hacking the polic
e system is a felony.”

  This seemed to amuse him.

  “You’d have to prove your case in open court, and the evidence I would offer in my own defense would compromise so many security systems that the Department of Defense will never allow me to testify. Thus, since I can’t be permitted to give evidence, I can’t be tried.”

  “But your life could be made very unpleasant. Police attention is always disagreeable.”

  “Are your threatening me, Inspector Ridley?” He shook his head yet again. He seemed on the verge of laughter. “I am of sufficient value to the Navy that they don’t really care what else I do. They just want to keep me happy and working. If someone were to get in the way of that, they wouldn’t take a very forgiving attitude.”

  “Then perhaps you could tell us about your interest in these homicide cases.”

  It was Sam who spoke, having recovered his poise. Tregear only glanced at him, and then seemed to dismiss him from existence.

  “I’m not ready to answer that yet,” he said, to Ellen. “It’s not a question of what I can tell you, but of what you can tell me.”

  “Then what can we tell you?”

  “Everything that you know, or guess, about the Wilkes killing.”

  Ellen turned to Sam, who merely shrugged.

  “First we should find out what he knows,” he said, exactly as if they were alone in the room. Then he turned to Tregear and smiled, not very nicely. “You claim to be able to read our minds—tell us what’s in the department files about the first two murders.”

  It was an impressive performance. For more than an hour, Tregear fed back to them everything on record about those two cases. The autopsy reports, the house-to-house interviews, the physical evidence gathered at the scenes, even the name and Social Security number of the cleaning woman who had discovered Rita Blandish at the Marriott. There were no mistakes and there were no additions. There was nothing to suggest that he knew anything more than the police about these murders, or any less.

  Ellen listened in awed fascination. She had been over the case files several times but, inevitably, some of the details had grown blurry in her mind. Tregear, apparently, did not suffer from any such intellectual weaknesses. His command of detail was perfect.