Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  “The day before yesterday.”

  “A whirlwind romance?”

  “You could say that.”

  Ellen kept her back to the table as she stirred the oatmeal with perhaps more intensity than was strictly required and experienced the absolute impossibility of explaining someone like Tregear.

  “I thought you didn’t much care for casual sex.”

  “There’s nothing casual about it.”

  Ellen brought out a bowl of oatmeal for Tregear and placed it on the coffee table, since Tregear seemed to be deeply involved in playing with Gwendolyn. He made feinting movements with his hand, as if to grab her, and she was dancing back and forth on the sofa cushions in excitement.

  “I haven’t seen her do anything like that in a year,” Ellen said. “I thought she was getting old, but maybe she was just bored. You seem to be good for her.”

  Tregear picked up the bowl of oatmeal, and Gwendolyn, sensing that the game was over, climbed onto his right shoulder and stared at Mindy accusingly.

  Breakfast conversation stumbled along, with occasional compliments on the quality of the oatmeal and the odd, faintly probing question for Ellen’s new beau.

  “Have you lived in San Francisco long?”

  “No. Only a few months.”

  “Do you work here in town?”

  “I work for the Navy.”

  “Oh.” Mindy took a moment to absorb the fact that Tregear said he worked for the Navy, which implied he was not in the Navy. “What do you do?”

  “I create mysteries.”

  Tregear smiled in a way that suggested there wouldn’t be any further explanations.

  Finally Mindy decided it was time she adjourned to the bathroom.

  “Will you come to my place tonight?” Tregear asked, as soon as he and Ellen were alone. “I promise I won’t come unstuck again.”

  “Sure.” She looked around her for a moment, as if measuring the room. “You know, if this is going to become a regular deal, maybe I should bring a change of clothes.”

  “That’s a good idea, but maybe a better idea would be if you just moved in.”

  “It’s a little early,” she answered—and then immediately recognized that it was the wrong answer. “Would you like that?”

  “Oh yes. I’d like it fine.” And then his face darkened. “But it’s probably a bad idea. We won’t have a lot of time.”

  “Before you go on the hunt again?”

  She smiled, just to let him know she understood. Events were not in their control.

  “Well, if we don’t have a lot of time maybe we should make the most of what we do have. If you like, I’ll pack a suitcase tonight. Can I bring Gwendolyn?”

  “By all means, bring Gwendolyn.”

  “Then can you give me a ride to work? I left my car in the police garage.”

  * * *

  When she got to the department, she was greeted by a rare sight. Sam was in front of the computer.

  “I can’t use this goddamn thing,” he said, without looking up from the screen. “They’ve been at it all night down in Half Moon Bay, and the data is coming in faster than I can get this fucking machine to show it to me. You take over.”

  “Only if you get me some coffee. I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  There was the ghost of a smile on Sam’s face, instantly suppressed.

  “Steve was having a very bad time,” she said. All at once it seemed desperately important to make Sam understand. “I think being inside that house wasn’t easy for him.”

  “That doesn’t come as much of a surprise.”

  “No. No, it doesn’t.”

  They seemed to have exhausted the subject, so Ellen smiled and said, “Get out of my chair.”

  “Okay.” Sam stood up. “I’ll go around the corner for the coffee. Nobody’s made any fresh here since yesterday.”

  “Good. Good plan.”

  By the time Sam came back and set a cup of Ralph’s Finest Columbian on her desk, there was a blizzard of paper coming out of the printer.

  “It’s a bonanza,” Ellen announced cheerfully. “They’ve got prints galore. Walter seems to be losing his hair, so the bathroom was full of it. They’re bringing in blood samples from the basement. They think, but they’re not sure, that it’s from two individuals.”

  “Maybe Kathy Hudson died down there too.”

  “Maybe so.” She smiled. It was such a pleasant subject. “And there’s more. They found what they think is vomit in the bathroom. Walter is a clean freak, but he seems to have missed a spot around the back of the toilet bowl. I wonder what they can tell from that?”

  “Maybe only that somebody threw up.”

  But Ellen seemed to have missed the joke entirely—possibly because she hadn’t been listening.

  “Steve showed me a bottle of pills in the medicine chest. Painkillers. I wonder what’s wrong with him.”

  “Usually the prescribing physician’s name is on the bottle. Or we can get it from the pharmacy.”

  “That’s what Steve said.”

  For a moment Ellen was silent, staring at nothing. Then she looked up at Sam with the rigid intensity of a bird dog.

  “I think we should work that angle,” she said. “I think we should do that right now.”

  Sam nodded. “I’ll phone and get somebody to hunt up the bottle.”

  In five minutes they had the name. Mark Fairburn, MD. In another two minutes they found him in the online edition of the California Medical Directory. There was a telephone number and an address in San Mateo.

  When Sam phoned, he got the doctor’s exchange. The lady who answered seemed annoyed.

  “The office isn’t open on Sunday,” she announced, with considerable asperity.

  “Then what’s his home phone number? This is the San Francisco police.”

  “Sure.”

  “Lady, I’ll bet you have a San Francisco phone book. Look up the number and ask for Sergeant Tyler in Homicide. I want to hear from you within the next two minutes. And when you call, give me the emergency number for the building.”

  They got their answer in a minute and a half. But no one was answering at the Fairburn residence.

  “Jesus. Who isn’t home at eight-thirty on a Sunday morning?”

  “Some people go to church, Sam.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  At nine-thirty, Sam called again. The phone rang and rang, but nobody picked up.

  Sam swept his hat from his desk.

  “You want to take a drive?”

  On the way Ellen phoned the building number. “Can you have someone there to open up Dr. Fairburn’s office?”

  “You’ll find it open, lady. You’re not the first to call.”

  Three-quarters of an hour later they were in the parking lot of a medical building on El Camino Real. When they went inside, of course Dr. Fairburn’s door was locked.

  The upper half of the door was frosted glass, but one could see shadows moving around inside. Sam rapped at the glass.

  “Come on, open up,” he muttered. “Come on.”

  He kept at it until someone came to the door.

  It was one of those moments of species recognition. Nobody had to tell Ellen that the guy who opened the door was a cop.

  “What are you doing here, Sam?”

  The man was in his middle forties, heavily built and bored-looking. He held out his hand and Sam took it.

  “We want to talk to the doc,” he answered.

  “Well, you’re a little late. He went jogging last night and ran into a bullet.”

  “No kidding.” And then Sam remembered his manners. “This is my partner, Ellen Ridley. Ellen, Pete Castaldi. We go back. Can we come inside, Pete?”

  Rather than answer, Detective Castaldi simply moved out of the way.

  “So what did you want to talk to him about?” Detective Castaldi seemed only mildly interested.

  “We wanted to know why he’s prescribing painkillers to our prime suspect in three
homicides.”

  “So who’s the suspect?”

  Sam appeared to find the question amusing.

  “Well, he’s been a lot of different people. Yesterday his name was Walter Stride, but I imagine he’s somebody else by now.”

  “Walter Stride.” Castaldi wrote the name down in his notebook. “Well, we’re going to have to go through all of the good doctor’s records, on the off chance he was killed by a dissatisfied customer. I suppose we can start with Walter Stride. I’ll let you know if we find anything.”

  “He’d probably stick with Walter, but he could have been using one of his other aliases. Look for somebody who became a patient within the last six months.”

  “You think your Walter may have killed Fairburn?”

  “I think it would be an enormous coincidence if he didn’t.” Then he shook Castaldi’s hand again. “We’ll get out of your way, Pete. Nice to see you.”

  When they were back in the parking lot, Sam took off his hat and looked into it, his fingers moving along the inside of the band.

  “You know, I think I’m getting senile,” he said, putting his hat back on. “They put the patient’s name on prescriptions and I forgot to have them check it when I phoned. Probably it doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “Why wouldn’t it matter? We can save those guys some work.”

  Sam just shook his head.

  “They’re not going to find Walter’s records, under any name. He already had them when he killed the doctor. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

  Ellen was mystified, and she must have looked it.

  “Didn’t Tregear say his father had worked as a locksmith? He came here last night, picked the lock and stole his file. Then he shot Fairburn. Why kill the doc when everything anybody would want to know is in his files? Do you see?”

  Yes, Ellen saw.

  “Then the question becomes…” She paused as the idea jelled in her mind. “The question is, what doesn’t he want us to know?”

  “That’s my girl.”

  21

  The lab was very busy. The blood samples from the basement were established to have come from two different individuals. A match with Sally Wilkes was made late that afternoon, but the second sample would take longer because it was more degraded. Hair samples from the suspect’s bathroom were a DNA match with the semen found in Sally Wilkes.

  The police had their case. They just didn’t have Walter.

  The secretary at Allied Heating and Cooling was their one tenuous link, so Sam phoned the owner, who gave him a Burrows Street address. They drove down and invited her to come back to the station for a conversation. Walter’s cell phone had been found in Half Moon Bay, and the last call received had been from Allied. Thus it was made clear to Mary Plant that her refusal to cooperate would guarantee a charge of obstructing justice.

  She was left in a holding room while Sam and the lieutenant debated the wisdom of letting Ellen conduct the interview.

  “The current theory is that the secretary’s got a letch for our suspect,” Sam explained. “I think she’ll be more likely to open up about it if she’s talking to another woman.”

  “Ellen doesn’t have the experience. I want you in there.”

  Hempel, who had never demonstrated any particular flair for interrogation, sat behind his desk with his arms crossed, apparently convinced that he had made his point.

  “Come off it, Dave.” Sam lit a Camel, suddenly filling the room with blue smoke. “She’s never going to get any experience if we don’t let her try. Besides, she’s clever. She’s the best choice.”

  Hemple, two beats behind as usual, suddenly looked suspicious.

  “What makes you think the Plant woman was having it on with…” He took a moment to consult the case file. “… Walter Stride, if that’s his real name.”

  “It almost certainly isn’t. Besides, I said it was a theory, not a proven fact. It appears to be the way Walter works.”

  “You seem to know an awful lot about this guy.”

  Sam managed a tight smile. He felt not the slightest temptation to let Dave Hempel in on the secret of Stephen Tregear’s involvement.

  “Intuition, Dave. A lifetime of police work. Now. Does Ellen conduct the interview? Otherwise I’ll charge Mary Plant, and we’ll end up with a lawyer in the room.”

  When Sam came out of the lieutenant’s office, he smiled.

  “She’s all yours,” he told Ellen. “Go get her. The tapes are running.”

  * * *

  Ellen went into the holding room with a manila folder under her arm. She sat down across from Mary Plant and laid the folder on the table, and then seemed to forget its existence.

  She smiled at Mary, as if to say, No hard feelings because I understand.

  Then she was all business.

  “Let me tell you how Walter Stride spends his spare time,” she began. And then she laid out the case—the two homicides, the blood samples recovered from Walter’s basement, the DNA evidence, the semen sample taken from Sally Wilkes’ body.

  By this time Mary was in tears. She seemed to find the semen evidence particularly hard to bear.

  “Would you like to see the pictures of his victims?” Ellen asked, sounding like she was granting a favor. “Would you like to see what Walter does to women?”

  Mary shook her head. By then she was sobbing convulsively.

  But Ellen opened the manila folder and lined up the photographs so that they faced Mary Plant.

  “Look at them,” she said softly. “You need to look at them.”

  Ellen waited in sympathetic patience while Walter’s girlfriend stared in horror at his handiwork.

  After about one minute, Ellen put the photographs back in their folder. Then she offered Mary a box of tissues. She even offered to bring her some tea.

  “No, thank you.” Mary shook her head. Gradually she began to calm down.

  “Look, Mrs. Plant—Mary—you have to understand your legal position. Walter got away because you warned him. He’s still out there, walking around, sharpening his knives, getting ready for his next victim. We have you for obstruction of justice and as an accomplice after and, if he kills again, before the fact. We’re talking about prison time here.

  “But we really don’t want you. We want Walter. He played you. From all accounts, he’s an attractive man, and you’re just human like the rest of us. He made you feel good, didn’t he.”

  Mary nodded, as if the joints in her neck were stiff. She dabbed at her eyes, and it wasn’t just for effect.

  “Tell me about him,” Ellen said. It was an invitation, from one woman to another, to confess her pain.

  And that was what Mary did. At first she hardly mentioned Walter. She talked about her ex-husband and about the boss’s hands. She talked about loneliness and the desperation that assails a woman by herself in the years after she turns forty.

  And Ellen listened, making little agreeing noises the tape recorder never caught. Her job had never made her hard, and probably never would. She really did understand. She was not free from pity and the wish to comfort.

  Finally Mary began to describe the first time she met Walter, what a handsome man he was and how sweet. At that moment, knowing the evil he had done, and that she had been betrayed yet again, she was still in love with him.

  She told Ellen things she thought she would never tell anyone. She described what it felt like to have his hands on her, to know that someone could still want her and care about her.

  In a world of sad stories, this was the one Ellen knew she would always remember.

  And in the act of confession, Mary had accepted this policewoman as her friend. It was not the fear of prison that would move her, but the fact that at last one other person understood.

  “There’s something you can do for us,” Ellen said at last. “We need a description. There are no photographs of Walter. He could walk into this building right now, and we wouldn’t know him. He’s faceless, and that’s his prot
ection. We need to know what he looks like. Will you help us?”

  “Yes.” That was all she said, just “Yes.”

  “We’ll have someone in here in a few minutes,” Ellen said, retreating into her identity as a cop. “He’s called a sketch artist, although they use a computer these days. He’ll help you put together a likeness. Then you can go home.”

  “I hate doing this,” Mary said.

  “I know, but it has to be done.”

  * * *

  “That was masterful,” Sam told her. He was almost obscenely pleased. “That was goddamn good work.”

  Ellen really didn’t want to be congratulated. She felt too much kinship with Mary Plant to know any sense of triumph. After all, she was in love with Walter’s son.

  “Promise me, Sam. Promise me that if the sketch artist gives us something useful, Mary Plant walks.”

  “What does anybody care about Mary Plant? The prisons are overcrowded as it is.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  It was four-fifteen. The sketch artist was already at work. There was nothing to do except hook into his feed and watch Walter’s face come together on Ellen’s computer screen.

  Ellen wished she could go home. As of this morning, home was now a high-end apartment near Fisherman’s Wharf, where Walter’s son would pour her a glass of Pinot Grigio and listen to her troubles.

  Probably Steve was watching the same feed, seeing his father’s face take shape. What must he feel?

  * * *

  Almost as soon as she was out of police headquarters, Ellen’s cell phone rang. It was her father.

  “Your mother and I are in town for a matinee. We wondered if you might be free for dinner,” he said.

  Her first impulse was to beg off, but then she thought better of it. It would be an interesting experiment.

  In fact, she decided, it was a golden opportunity. The thing had to be done sometime or other, and perhaps it was better that the first shock took place in a restaurant rather than at home in Atherton.

  “Can I bring someone?”

  There was a slight hesitation, and then her father said, “Sure. A friend of yours?”

  “You could call him that.”

  The only remaining question was, how did she present this to Steve?