by Rick Mofina
At the door, she jabbed the bell again.
Nothing. It was silent. Damn it. In frustration she tightened her hand into a fist and pounded on his door. She hit it once and gasped.
It swung open. “Ray?”
What’s going on? She tried to think. Go in? Or call somebody? Her head was throbbing. She couldn’t think.
“Ray?”
No answer. This was so stupid. He’d probably forgotten to lock it coming in or going out, she reasoned, then prayed as she stepped inside. Her fingers found the lights and she turned on as many as she could find.
“Ray?”
Molly detected something in the air, a trace of a burning smell. Maybe from cooking, or from working on the car. It was familiar, she thought, walking through the house, switching on lights as she progressed. Nothing seemed out of place. Beamon’s cell phone was on the kitchen counter. It was on, working. In the living room, the red light of the answering machine was flashing.
Molly swallowed. “Ray?”
It was so quiet, so still. Her stomach was beginning to knot as she moved down the hall, coming to his spare room, which had his barbells, bench, and stationary bike.
She moved on to the bathroom. Hit the lights. Nothing. She turned to leave, then stopped.
A yellow towel dampened with brownish stains was left on the vanity. The sink was filled with water. It was pink. Molly’s hand went to her mouth. Her stomach tightened.
“Ray!”
She backed from the bathroom and inched toward Beamon’s bedroom, an avalanche of dread thundering behind her.
The door was open.
Molly found the light switch.
In that first microsecond of realization, the first thought that registered in her brain was: Ray, get up, we have to talk. Then she saw the firework splatter pattern on the wall behind Beamon’s head. He was half seated staring wide-eyed at her like a macabre puppet with a black hole centered above his eyebrows. He was covered in goose down from the pillow used to muffle the blast. Feathers had adhered to his blood. His Beretta and police identification rested on his stomach.
Molly did not remember if she started screaming before or after seeing the message in blood pleading from the wall behind her.
Why, Molly?
THIRTY-FOUR
Startled by screams, Ray Beamon’s neighbors peered from their windows.
Molly had emerged from Beamon’s bungalow to the front doorstep, trembling and sobbing. Vivian Masters and Gertrude Lorimer abandoned their card game and hurried across the street to comfort her.
“Ray’s dead. Ray’s dead,” Molly whispered over and over. Masters and Lorimer were stunned. Their attention went beyond Beamon’s open door but neither entered his house. Lorimer stayed with Molly while Masters ran home and called 911.
Two of the district’s closest SFPD units and an ambulance responded with lights and sirens. The first officers secured the primary scene, escorting paramedics to Beamon’s body. They found no signs of life, thus setting in motion an investigation into the death of another homicide inspector.
The first responding uniformed officer had two years on the job. A stickler for procedure, he and his partner protected the scene, took quick careful notes, collected initial statements and information, then told dispatch to alert the homicide detail.
At the Hall of Justice, Inspector Jay Tipton and his partner, Jeff Vidor, were on duty. Tipton took the call.
“What? Repeat that address? Repeat the name? Who made the find? Right. Okay.”
Vidor’s jaw dropped and he cast a glance at Beamon’s desk when Tipton told him. Then Vidor jabbed the cell phone number for their boss. Lieutenant Leo Gonzales. He was at home watching John Wayne in The Searchers. Gonzales was sorting out their strategy to charge Beamon with Hooper’s murder when his phone chimed softly in his chest pocket.
“Leo, this is Vidor. Ray Beamon’s dead. At home.” Vidor heard nothing but a static hiss at the other end. “Leo?”
“Christ Almighty. Are you sure?”
“Just came in from the unit on-scene.”
“Goddammit. Did he off himself?”
“I don’t know. We’ll take it. We’re on our way.”
“No, I want Sydowski and Turgeon. You go, but you assist them.”
“But we caught it--”
“I want Sydowski on it.” Gonzales hung up. With fumbling between his glasses and his cell phone, he accidentally activated Turgeon’s number on his speed-dial menu. Hers was next to Sydowski’s.
She was at home struggling to take her worried mind from Hooper’s case. It had been keeping her up nights. She was trying to reread Crime and Punishment when Gonzales broke the news.
“Oh God. No. I can’t believe this,” she said.
“You call Walt. I’ll meet you there. I’ve got to alert the brass.”
Sydowski and Turgeon arrived together, parking amid the district black-and-whites. Their radios crackled and emergency lights strobed, making the entire neighborhood pulsate in red. Residents gathered at the yellow tape the uniforms had stretched around Beamon’s yard, concern drawn on their faces. Beamon’s house stood alone against the twinkling lights of the city he’d served.
Sydowski and Turgeon talked with the responding officers, started their own notes, tugged on latex gloves and shoe covers, then ducked under the tape at the entrance to the house and went to work. They barely spoke, proceeding methodically, clinically, for at times it was as if they were underwater struggling in slow motion against a current of horror. For a deafening moment, all Sydowski could do was pray that Beamon had committed suicide. But it was evident by the scene that such prayers were in vain. Someone was killing San Francisco’s homicide detectives. Killing his friends. Rage and pain swirled in Sydowski’s heart, pushing him to the edge.
It was as if he’d stepped into the deepest darkness. Hours ago he’d braced himself to charge Ray with Hooper’s murder. And now Ray was dead. The same way as Hooper. They were partners in death. It nearly brought Sydowski to his knees. He reached deep into his gut, scrambling for anything he could cling to, clawing for the strength he needed to see this through.
He took several deep breaths.
Righteous investigation was his only weapon.
He would break this case down into the tiniest parts and analyze each one until he found the truth. God, he had to.
He had to.
In Beamon’s bedroom, Turgeon turned to Sydowski as she inspected the scrawled message to Molly on the wall.
“She’s the obvious link.”
“Or the obvious suspect.”
Turgeon waited for Sydowski to elaborate. “We’ve got a whole new case now,” he said.
After they were done in the murder room, Sydowski talked to the medical examiner’s people and the criminalists at the scene about recovering a range of evidence, cell phone, answering machine, phone records, e-mails, the fatal round to compare with the rounds in Hooper’s case. He wanted them to test Beamon’s gun, scour the house and neighborhood for any other evidence. Go through his cars, his garage. None of them took offense that Sydowski was telling them to do what they were trained to do. None of them were insulted. They knew he was raging against the violation. They understood. They were hurting too.
Sydowski had requested a residue test whereby an investigator would rub a cotton swab with a nitric acid solution on a person’s hands. Analysis could detect gunshot residue that stuck to hands that fired a weapon, or were close to one that was fired. Sydowski approached one of the crime scene technicians.
“Did you swab Molly Wilson like I asked?”
“I did. It’s going to Hunter’s Point along with much of everything else we’ll pick up here.”
Turgeon pulled him aside, dropping her voice. “You don’t seriously think it’s her?”
“I don’t know what to think. Maybe we should have swabbed her from the get-go in Hooper’s case. Get a warrant for her apartment and car.”
“In Hooper’s case
she was alibied solid from the cabbie, the calls, the witness. Hell, Ray practically put himself at Hooper’s apartment. We had a lock on him. He was our suspect.”
“And now he’s dead,” Sydowski said. “Wilson’s the person who found both of them. Wilson’s the person who screwed both of them.”
“What about the blood messages, the gun placement, the IDs?”
Sydowski shook his head as Gonzales had arrived and signaled them to join him outside in a private corner of the yard where they were out of earshot. “This is bullshit,” Gonzales said. “Did Ray do himself because we were fixing to go at him?”
“No. It doesn’t look that way at all,” Sydowski said.
“Christ, what then?”
“Looks like he got the same deal Hooper got. Same pattern with his gun and ID set out on the body.”
Gonzales removed his unlit cigar and spat on the ground.
“And we got a similar blood message on the wall,” Sydowski said. “Only with this one, there was no attempt to wash it away. It was for Molly Wilson and telegraphed for our benefit.”
“What’s it say?”
“Two words: ‘Why, Molly?’ We should keep all that stuff as hold-back.”
Gonzales glanced at the crowd growing on the street. “I got Vidor, Tipton, Shrader, and Card canvassing now. The district’s given us every uniform and auxiliary they can spare to search the neighborhood.”
Sydowski nodded.
“The chief and the commissioner want an early morning news conference to assure the city that the Hooper-Beamon deaths don’t put the citizens in danger,” Gonzales said.
“Always have their eye on the big picture, don’t they?” Sydowski said.
“The chief has given us a blank check to assign more bodies to the investigation. Robbery, Narcotics, and General Works--just tell me who you think you need.”
“I need to talk to Molly,” Sydowski said. He ran a hand over his face, ignoring the TV news crews and the glare and flash of the news cameras. He and Turgeon blew off the reporters who were shouting questions to them as they strode along the crime scene tape to find Molly.
Sydowski felt someone tug his arm and he protested. Turning, he saw Tom Reed from the San Francisco Star. He’d elbowed his way to the front of the press pack where he’d strained the tape to reach Sydowski, who was glaring at him. Tom was making a phone call gesture to his ear. Sydowski shook his head. Tom vanished. Seconds later, Sydowski’s cell phone rang.
“Walt,” Tom said.
“I can’t talk now.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Molly sat in the ambulance staring blankly into the night as emergency lights streaked across her face. A paramedic and a uniformed female officer were with her while the investigators were inside Beamon’s house, working the scene.
The officer was praying for Sydowski to hurry up and take over. She’d been sitting here watching Molly for an eternity. She wanted to know what had happened inside Beamon’s home. But she didn’t dare ask. Sydowski had warned her only to listen and take detailed notes of anything Molly said. Relief washed over the officer when he tapped on the vehicle.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Some psychological trauma,” the paramedic said.
“Can she go with us to the Hall?”
“She should be fine.”
“Let’s go. We’ll talk at the Hall,” Sydowski said.
Molly had been shivering and was wearing the female officer’s patrol jacket. Brilliant light flashes rained on Turgeon and Sydowski as they helped Molly from the ambulance to their car. The imagery of the San Francisco Star crime reporter wearing a cop’s jacket at the scene of another dead detective would attract national interest. Newspaper photographers using long lenses banged off frame after frame.
At the Hall of Justice Sydowski and Turgeon escorted Molly through the homicide detail, passing by the empty desks belonging to Cliff Hooper and Ray Beamon. All activity ceased. Several detectives pulling duty on the case turned to stare.
She did not make eye contact with any of them. She was not handcuffed. She was not under arrest. And despite Sydowski’s anger, she was not yet a suspect. She was their number-one witness. The shuffling of Sydowski’s shoes and the whisk of Turgeon’s and Molly’s soft soles were the only sounds in the detail as they walked her to an interview room where they left her alone.
In the squad room, Sydowski removed his jacket, poured coffee, and got ready to take her statement as Gonzales approached him.
“Robbery and Narcotics are helping canvass around Wilson’s place. Neighbors say there were some sparks there earlier tonight, which is unusual. It’s a quiet community.”
“What kind of sparks?” Sydowski asked.
“Wilson took some kind of beef with a white male to the street.”
“Any description or details?”
“Just the sketchy kind. Maybe you can use that.”
When Sydowski and Turgeon entered the interview room he slapped his files down and rolled up his sleeves without removing his eyes from Molly. His face was cold.
“I’m going to need your help now. Understand?” She nodded.
“You’re going to walk me through everything that’s happened tonight. And you’re going to tell me everything. Every personal, intimate detail. Everything I ask, do you understand?”
Molly’s red-rimmed eyes met his as she nodded, then began telling Sydowski all she knew.
“A short time before I found Ray, he’d come to my apartment. He told me you suspected him of killing Cliff. He said that on the night Cliff was killed he’d gone to his apartment to talk to him after Cliff had found out Ray and I had been together. They fought. Ray punched him. But Ray said that Cliff was alive when he left. Heartbroken, but alive.”
“What did they really fight about?”
“I told you, it was about Cliff learning that Ray and I had gone to Half Moon Bay. He’d learned it on the night he was going to propose to me.”
“Did you take your little talk with Ray to the street in front of your place?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What did you fight about?”
“Like I said, I feared Ray was involved in Cliff’s death. It didn’t go away tonight when he came to me. I wanted him to come to you. To give it up.”
Sydowski looked at her for a long icy moment.
Early indications from the scene suggested Ray’s gun was not fired. The murder weapon was missing. And it would take a long time yet to analyze the swab tests of Molly’s hands to indicate if she fired a gun. Moreover, the results could be challenged in court. But Sydowski tried pressing a few quick buttons.
“You know we took a residue test of your hands.” Disbelief spread over her face as she awakened to the implication and swallowed hard.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“The evidence will tell me if you did or didn’t.”
“I didn’t kill him.” Her voice broke.
“Who killed him then?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know!” Sydowski’s chair shot across the floor as he stood. “The guy’s leaving you personal love notes and you don’t know who it is!”
She covered her face with her hands.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry. I don’t know. Maybe it’s an ex-boyfriend, maybe some nut through the paper, or from the TV show. But I swear, I just don’t know who’s doing this. I swear to God. I don’t know!”
Sydowski stood over Molly, letting her words hang in the small room for a long desperate time before he picked up his chair.
“You’re not going home tonight.”
Molly looked at him, then Turgeon, before coming back to Sydowski.
“You’re arresting me?”
“We’re taking you someplace right now. For your own safety.”
Molly stared helplessly at the veneer top of the table.
“Where?”
“You’ll find out when we get there. And then you’re going to help me go
back and work on those names we got from you before. Everyone’s a suspect. Every old boyfriend and every whack job that’s ever contacted you, fantasized about you, or tried. Do you understand?”
Molly nodded.
Downstairs a handful of reporters were in the lobby waiting for another shot at Molly. Tom Reed was among them. But he knew Sydowski would call the security desk to check the presence of the press so he could bypass them. Tom slipped from the pack unnoticed to the fourth floor. He came upon Molly, Turgeon, and Sydowski as they were leaving by the stairs.
“Not now, Reed,” Sydowski said. “Go away.”
“Are you okay?” Tom called after Molly.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Who do you think did it?”
“Everyone’s a suspect,” Sydowski said before they went through the door.
Tom stood there, writing down Sydowski’s quote, then called it in to the Star’s night desk in time for the final edition. As sirens wailed in the distance he walked to his car, wondering, Who is preying on the detectives of San Francisco’s homicide detail?
THIRTY-SIX
Just after 11:00 A.M. pacific standard time, reporters from every newsroom and bureau based in the Bay Area jammed the Police Commission Hearing Room in the Hall of Justice for the first press conference on the death of San Francisco Homicide Inspector Ray Beamon.
Pictures of Beamon and Cliff Hooper stared from a corkboard on the far right.
All morning, running updates from the news wires intensified interest by hammering on the dramatic elements in the case. The victims: two detectives, partners, murdered in their homes within two weeks. No suspect had surfaced. The twist, according to unconfirmed leaks, was that the two dead cops were romantically linked to San Francisco Star crime reporter Molly Wilson. By the time the conference started, the story had rocketed near the top of national news lineups across the country.
Local stations and twenty-four-hour news networks went live when San Francisco’s police chief, flanked by grim-faced commanders and detectives, entered. All talk in the room ceased, still cameras flashed, notebooks were flipped open, tape recorders clicked on as the chief took his seat behind the microphones heaped on the table before him.
