by Rick Mofina
Wyatt nodded, removing a notebook. “I know. I’ll try to be specific and quick.”
Her eyes went to the internal tarp protecting the display window.
“Do we have to do this here? I can’t stand being so close to where she was,” she said, taking him to the office. Chan dropped herself in a chair. “My business partner, Julie is under a doctor’s care. Told me she’ll never set foot in this shop again. Our staff’s been traumatized. One has resigned. Orders have been canceled. The Carruthers party is threatening to sue us. I just came from seeing our lawyer. She’s not certain if our insurance covers us. So who do I sue?”
Wyatt passed her a tissue. “I don’t know, ma’am.”
Chan touched her eyes, collecting herself. “On the phone you said you needed more information about the security system?”
“Just tell me about it.”
“We forbid shoppers to come in and photograph our gowns. The cameras remind them we’re serious.”
“Protection of your designs?”
“Exactly. Take a picture, then have a friend do a cheap knock off, almost an infringement.”
“Can you show me the control and monitor?”
Chan took him to a rear room, explaining there were four cameras, including one with a fish-eye lens for the rear entrance.
Wyatt monitored all perspectives from the device that had a small TV-like monitor and a recorder that resembled a high-tech VCR player.
“And it’s run on a slow speed seventy-two-hour loop? That is, all four cameras are recording nonstop?”
Chan nodded.
Wyatt opened his file folder and the report from Crime Scene. The system was operated by Digicamwatch. The company attributed the failure to suspected grit on the recording heads, but was doing further checks. Wyatt looked at the report and punched the number of Digicamwatch’s contact person into his cell phone.
“DCW, Tony Dekka.”
The guy sounded as if he were twelve. “Tony, Ben Wyatt with the SFPD. You’re the contact for the system at the bridal shop down at Union Square?”
“Yes, sir. Glad you called.”
Wyatt wedged his phone between his ear and shoulder, pulling the system from the wall. “Why’s that, Tony?”
“We did more checks at our end, sir, and just got some new information.”
Wyatt studied the web of wires and cables running from the security system’s controls.
“Sir?”
“Go ahead.”
“Seems there was a power burp in that area and we figure that might have been the cause. A few other clients in that area were hit too.”
Wyatt visually lined up every cable and wire to account for it. Camera one, Camera two, Camera three, four, direct power cord, alarm…
“But, Tony, isn’t there auxiliary? Every system’s got that because first thing bad guys do is cut power.”
“Yes. Are you near the system now, sir?”
“Yes.”
Wyatt tapped his finger to a small power pack on the rear.
“At the rear is an auxiliary power source. It’s got tiny cadmium batteries, takes over if the direct source fails.”
“Which you are telling me happened, Tony? So why did the system record no activity in the shop when clearly there was?”
“Sir, unfortunately when the power burped, there was a two-second delay, before the auxiliary took over.”
“I know.” This was not rocket science, Wyatt thought as he continued his inventory of all the wiring.
“Well it appears that …”
“What is it, Tony?”
“Legal just told us we’re supposed to refer this stuff to them.”
“Tony, do you want to face an obstruction of justice charge?”
A long heavy silence passed; then Tony dropped his voice to a whisper. “I told them you’re going to find out. Sir, we think the auxiliary failed to kick on.”
Wyatt flipped to Crime Scene’s report. They had already checked the auxiliary system and found it functioning.
“That could be a problem,” Wyatt said just as he found one line that disturbed him and not a word about it in the report. It ran from the security system to the shop’s telephone box.
“Tell me something, Tony, is this particular system monitored by your office by computer through the phone line?”
“Oh, sure. All of our systems are,” he said. “But they’re one hundred per cent secure. No one from the outside can penetrate them.”
Wyatt’s jaw muscles tightened. “You got today’s Chronicle handy, the front page, Tony?”
He heard him grunting.
“Got it.”
“I want you to look into the face of Iris Wood and repeat out loud what you just told me. That no one from the outside can penetrate your system. Got that? You stare into that face and you keep repeating that.”
SEVENTEEN
Turgeon was losing her patience with Sydowski as they drove to American Eagle Federated Insurance, downtown on Montgomery.
“We’re in this together so you better talk to me.”
Sydowski rubbed his face, thinking. “I just have a bad feeling about this one. I can’t find the handle on it.”
“It’s early yet.”
“I always get a sense of where to go on a file. But not here. And to top it off, you want to bring Wyatt in closer. I am trying to keep that disaster out of the way and you want to bring him in.”
“Walt.”
“Christ, Linda.”
“Walt, I know you and every cop in the department have a vendetta going with this guy. But push it aside.”
“Why?”
“Because we need him. He is the best body we have to put on her computer.”
Sydowski said nothing.
“Walt, before I came to homicide he helped me on a case. He got us a lock on some suspects who were operating on-line. It took some time but he was good. He did stuff in the valley with some of the early testing of the FBI’s Internet crime boys. Did you know that?”
Sydowski didn’t know.
“Walt, you’re an old bull. When you started investigating murders, state-of-the-art technology was a typewriter. It’s a new millennium and this case is shaping up to be a backbreaker. We have to come at it hard from all sides. Maybe her computer will be a dead end but what the hell else have you got right now?”
Sydowski nodded to a car exiting a parking space on Montgomery. “Maybe I’ll talk to Leo after we’re done here.”
The dark polished floors in the lobby of American Eagle Federated Insurance gleamed against the stainless steel desk where the receptionist sat. A silhouetted eagle, its wings outspread over the company name, graced the wall behind her.
“Can I help you?”
Sydowski told her who they were.
“I’ll let Mr. Fairfield know you’re here.”
She did not smile and Sydowski could not decide if she was saddened by the murder of a company employee or indifferent. They waited near the sectional couch. Standing, staring at the landscape paintings, the palms in the floor planters. Turgeon was flipping through a glossy travel magazine featuring Peru and treks through the Andes on the cover when a tall man with distinguishing white hair, dressed in a well-cut charcoal suit, greeted them.
“Tim Fairfield,” he shook Sydowski’s hand warmly, then Turgeon’s, before escorting them back to the elevator. Fairfield’s face was etched with tiny lines.
“Didn’t sleep much after your call, Inspector.” The doors opened. Fairfield pushed the button for the tenth floor.
“We’re the national headquarters, five hundred offices nationwide. I have nine hundred people in my division. Two hundred of them here. Iris was one of mine. I am ashamed to admit that I did not know her at all.” Feeling the need to explain, he added. “I am on the road quite a bit.”
“What can you tell us?” Turgeon said.
“I’ve gone through her personnel records. She was a fine employee. Six years with us. Perfect attendance. Neve
r took a sick day. No complaints. Very shy.”
“Anything on family?” Sydowski said.
“Afraid not.”
The elevator doors opened on the tenth floor and Fairfield led them down a long, wide corridor.
“I did more checking on her policy. She had no other relatives. Her parents passed away when she was a child. We’ll handle funeral arrangements, according to her wishes.”
“What are they?” Turgeon was making notes.
“She had a plot down in Colman and wished to be interred there. We’ll have a small service. We’re still making arrangements.”
“At her age -- she thought about a plot?” Turgeon shook her head.
“Many people who work for us do think about it.”
“Any disturbing calls or behavior in reaction to her death?” Sydowski said.
“Just the press, wanting to know more about her. We’ve said we’re not commenting. I’ve instructed all employees to refer press calls to me. I’m making a statement at a news conference this afternoon.”
“We’d like to know in advance what you intend to say,” Sydowski said.
“Of course.” Fairfield extended his hand to a blue-carpeted ocean with scores of low-walled blue cubicles, people wearing telephone headsets, working at computers that hummed with their typing. “This is one of our major claims-processing areas. She worked on a far corner of this floor.”
Fairfield led them to an empty work station. It was no different than others. It was isolated by several planters and a table with a printer, fax machine and trays layered with documents. At the nearest cubicle Sydowski noticed a familiar-looking woman in her thirties. She was wearing a red sweater and doing a poor job of trying not to watch the detectives looking at Iris Wood’s desk.
“Excuse me. Mr. Fairfield?” She approached them. “I’m Melanie Tate.” She was dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “I’m Iris’s supervisor. Jan’s on her way in.”
Fairfield introduced Sydowski and Turgeon, who were ready to interview her. They went across the claims-processing area into an empty conference room with dark-paneled walls, a large polished table, with nearly twenty cushioned high-backed chairs around it. Sydowski was relieved to see a tray of fresh coffee waiting for them. Fairfield left them alone with Tate. She sat, her eyes glistening in the quiet. After removing his jacket and helping himself to a cup of coffee, Sydowski switched on a portable tape recorder, tested it, opened his notebook, and began the interview.
“This is a nightmare,” Tate said, “One day she is here working near me, then, my God. The papers, the news -- a wedding gown -- who would do this?”
Sydowski and Turgeon took it slow with Tate.
“We didn’t know her at all, really. She was shy, mousy. She never went out for lunch or after work with us. Much of the time you didn’t even know she was there. Do you know what happened?”
Sydowski said they were working on every possibility.
“It’s just so horrible and frightening.” Tate studied her crumpled tissue. “Guess her new boyfriend is taking it hard, huh?”
“Boyfriend?” Sydowski said.
“Yes, not long ago she told me she had this new guy living with her. Jack.”
“She told you that.”
“Yes.”
“What’s Jack’s full name?”
“I don’t know.”
“You ever see her with him, or meet him?”
“No.”
“You’re sure though?”
“Yes. She told me once, something like, ‘I have to get home to be with Jack.’ Did you talk to him?”
“What else did she tell you about him?”
“Nothing. I was surprised and happy for her because it sounded like she finally had somebody, was coming out of her shell, you know?”
Tate was concerned that Iris was not getting the most out of her life.
“She just worked on her files, researching the latest information, preparing new agents on death claims, how to comfort our clients during times of tragedy, loss, and illness, and now this. My God, how horribly ironic, how sad.”
After half an hour, Sydowski and Turgeon passed Tate their cards.
Ten minutes later, Jan Jenkins arrived, accompanied by her husband. The detectives requested he wait outside as they interviewed. Jan was eight months pregnant and apologetic as she positioned herself into a chair.
“I am so sorry, I can’t stop crying. I just don’t know why this happened to such a gentle soul.” Jenkins was in her twenties, upturned button nose, big eyes. Her chestnut hair was pulled into a pony tail and had a satin-like sheen. She had worked with Iris for about a year, after coming from Claims. And, as was often the case with many people immediately after a homicide, Jenkins mixed her tenses.
“Iris is really a sweet shy woman. Would not hurt a soul. I was always telling her that she would meet somebody.”
“Did she have any boyfriends?”
“No. I don’t think she even had any dates. She told me once she was so afraid to even approach guys, so self-conscious because she didn’t know how to talk to them. Yet she wrote these beautiful guides on how to talk to grieving people.”
“Didn’t she recently start living with somebody, a man?”
Jenkins shook her head.
“Didn’t she live with Jack?”
“Jack’s her cat, if that’s what you mean.”
Sydowski and Turgeon looked at each other. Of course. They’d already met Jack.
Later, Turgeon went to Fairfield’s twelfth-floor office to collect Iris Wood’s personnel records while Sydowski went to her desk and sat in her chair.
It was a neat, well-kept work area. A desk calendar highlighted deadlines, her upcoming vacation time. A pleasant fragrance evocative of her apartment. The soaps and creams of her bathroom. He slipped on his bifocals and studied the titles of reference books on the right side, dictionary, thesaurus, The Oxford Book of Death, Poems from the Greek, Epitaphs, Requiems, Comfort for the Living, Love and Death and Solace for the Bereaved.
Sydowski pulled Iris Wood’s snapshot from his pocket and looked into her face, then out at the sea of tedium in which she swam alone each day, living a quiet life of desperation.
In a matter of hours, he knew what she ate, what she wore, what she read, and that she was self-conscious about her feet. Despite several years, no one in her office knew her. They could not even distinguish between her cat and a boyfriend that never existed; between a life lived, or a life that never was.
He stared at Iris Wood.
Fear thou not; for I am with thee.
EIGHTEEN
Iris Wood is walking and talking with another woman in a well-lit parking garage. Iris waves as they part, then uses her keychain remote to unlock her car. She gets in, buckles up, turns the ignition, backs out and drives off the SFSU campus safely.
“Run it again,” Sydowski said.
The grim-faced detectives, gathered at the Hall of Justice for a case status meeting and brainstorming session, had lost count of how many times Sydowski had rerun the university’s security videotape.
It came from the cameras on level three of lot twenty near North State Drive. The university police had done superb work after the case broke. They had provided patrol logs, dispatch calls, a list of the students enrolled in the night astronomy course, and tips called in since the story became public.
On the night of the murder, sixteen people had attended the class, most of them women. The SFPD ran background on the students. No hits.
The videotape of Iris in the moments before her death was a solid piece of the puzzle, Lieutenant Gonzales said.
“Okay, Walt, so we’ve established a concrete foundation for narrowing the time she was last seen alive. The distance where we found her abandoned car is under a mile, which means she encountered her killer, or killers, a short time after her class. What do the campus cops have on recent unsolved sexual assaults, stalkings, and the like?”
“Nothing recent. So
me burglaries in the neighboring residential area. The district is checking.”
Gonzales planted an unlit cigar between his teeth. “So he grabs her there, near the Grove, on Crestlake. How? Through a ruse? Ted Bundy succeeded with that. Or, he drives up behind her? Somehow gets her to pull over? Maybe he was in the class, or another class and follows her, or disabled her car and followed her? How?”
An investigator from Crime Scene said they had checked her car. It was mechanically sound with two -thirds of a tank.
“So how then?” Gonzales pushed the group because he was being pushed from high places. “Can somebody tell me how he got her out of her car near Stern?” Gonzales was answered with silence, then said, “There were no witnesses. It was an isolated little area. We had fog. No tire marks. Crime Scene and the lab are still working on everything.”
Gonzales nodded to the TV monitor frozen on the grainy image of Iris Wood entering her car.
“On the last night of her life, she leaves her office, goes to her apartment, fixes herself a low-cal pasta dinner, according to the autopsy. Drives to SFSU for her first astronomy course, then leaves. How does she go from that” -- Gonzales points his cigar at Iris Wood, alive on the videotape -- “to a mutilated corpse displayed in a wedding gown in a shop at Union Square?”
“Maybe she was on her way to visit a friend near Stern Grove,” one detective said.
“No friends have stepped forward,” Sydowski said. “We’re still canvassing there with some help from the district. Zip so far.”
“Maybe it was an affair, or some sort of illicit meeting,” the detective said.
It was a good line, Sydowski thought. “We’ll crosscheck the company policyholders and employee list with residential addresses for the area, and those with her university class.”
They were checking parolees, complaints, any strange cult or underground stuff, beating the bushes for any rumors in the various sex trade communities.
Gonzales opened another file folder. “Toxicology results show no traces of alcohol, controlled substance, or medication, so no impairment. The Coroner’s confirmed she was not sexually assaulted. No tearing, no semen, no blood, no transfer, no hairs. No DNA. But he mutilates her.” He turned to Mike Boyd, the local coordinator for the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. “Mike, what’s your read so far?”
