18th Abduction

by Patterson, James

  “I. Do. Not. Know. Look, I wasn’t attached to her. At all. We talked baseball, football, and especially soccer. We screwed. Once in my place. Once in hers. I didn’t buy her a Valentine. I didn’t introduce her to my mother. The relationship was casual. What don’t you get?”

  After an hour of this combative back-and-forth, I thought I’d wrung everything out of Thomas Barry that he had to give; not only his work schedule but also the name of a woman who could vouch for him the night Carly, Susan, and Adele went missing. He gave us names of two other women he’d rolled with on the two nights after that. Thomas Barry was a player. We would send his prints to the lab, my thought being that maybe his prints would be found on Carly Myers’s car.

  It was quarter to two in the afternoon.

  Barry said, “Can I go now? I don’t want to get fired.”

  I said, “I’ll have an officer give you a lift.”

  “Okay. Finally.”

  He stood to put on his jacket and gave me a peculiar look, which I read as a sign he was about to do us a favor.

  “Sergeant, I had nothing to do with Carly being missing. Or any of them. If I were you, I’d be looking into Carly. My take is that she’s no angel. She has a dark side. That much I can tell you.”

  There was a knock on the door and Jacobi came in, looking stricken.

  He said, “Mr. Barry, I’ve got you a ride. Thanks for your help. Boxer, Conklin, I need to see you right away.”

  I handed Barry off to Officer Mahoney and headed back to Jacobi’s glass-walled office at the back of the squad room.

  He and Conklin were waiting for me.

  I pulled out a chair, saying, “Waste of time. We don’t have enough cause to get a warrant—”

  Jacobi cut me off.

  “We’ve got a body. Might be Carly Myers. Big Four Motel, room 212. Call me when you get there.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Richie lost the coin flip, so I drove.

  We reached Ellis Street in record time, then closed in on the Big Four, slowing only for the aimless druggies wandering down and across Larkin.

  I pulled into the parking spot at the front of the seedy, rent-by-the-hour, no-tell motel, switched off the engine, and took a breath. We weren’t alone. A dozen homeless, impoverished, drug-dependent residents of the Tenderloin were camped out on the macadam between the parked cars.

  They were about to lose their campground.

  The parking lot was a secondary crime scene and would have to be vacated and taped off from the street.

  Conklin and I got out of the car. My mind was racing with questions, none of which would be answered until we got into room 212.

  Question one: Was the dead woman Carly Myers?

  Questions two and three: If the DB was Carly, what had killed her? And why here?

  A handful of the motel’s guests stood under the awning outside the manager’s office, complaining loudly that they needed to get into their goddamn rooms.

  The manager said just as loudly, “Cops said when they’re done, they’re done. Nothing I can do.”

  I interrupted the dispute to get the manager’s name, Jake Tuohy, and to tell him to stick around. We’d be back.

  Room 212 was at the rear of the motel. My partner and I rounded the corner of the three-story stucco building and saw a small fleet of first responders: two cruisers, an ambulance, and two CSI vans, all empty.

  We badged the uniform at the foot of the stairs, ducked under the crime-scene tape, and headed up to the second floor, where Nardone, another uniformed officer, was waiting for us. At that time, Officer Robert Nardone was a beat cop with ambition and promise. He told us that he was the first officer on the scene.

  “Tell me what you know,” I said.

  “Housekeeper, Nancy Koebel, went to clean 212 at twelve thirty or so and found the DB hanging by the neck from the shower head. She reported the body to the manager, Jake Tuohy, who took a look in the bathroom, closed the door, and called it in.”

  “Where is Koebel?”

  Nardone said, “By the time I got here, she’d taken off.”

  Conklin asked him, “You checked out the room?”

  “I was very careful not to contaminate anything. It was dark. I flipped on the light switch with my elbow and stepped into the bathroom. Saw the victim and went to check her vitals. She wasn’t breathing. I touched her leg. She was ice cold.”

  Nardone looked sad, maybe ill. I pictured him in that bathroom, hand against the wall as he reached out to touch the victim. His prints were likely on the wall and definitely on the doorknob. Doorknobs had also been handled by the housekeeper and the manager, probably smearing whatever the perp had left behind.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  “I looked into the main room from the hallway. The curtains were closed, but I could see a little bit by the bathroom light. No one was in the room, living or dead. I called the lieutenant.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Good job, Bobby.”

  We talked protocol for another few minutes.

  I directed Nardone to get plate numbers of every car in the lots front and back, clear and seal off the parking lots, and set up a media liaison post on Ellis.

  “No one but law enforcement goes in or out of here until I say okay. I’ll get you some help to collect the guests and sequester them in the reception area.”

  “They’re like crazy people,” he said.

  “They’re going to object. Be nice but firm. This is a police investigation into a possible homicide, okay?”

  “Got it, Sergeant.”

  I called Jacobi.

  “I need uniforms and investigators, boss. We have to question guests who are not going to volunteer.”

  Jacobi said he was on it.

  Then Conklin and I headed to room 212 and the scene that was waiting for us.

  CHAPTER 19

  I was very glad to see Charles Clapper standing outside room 212, thumbing his phone.

  A former homicide lieutenant with the LAPD, Clapper was a hands-on criminalist, ran a great shop, and was neither a showboater nor a politician. He was rock solid and I called him a friend.

  We exchanged greetings, and then Conklin asked Clapper if there was security footage.

  “Wouldn’t that be a treat,” said Clapper.

  “I take it that’s a no,” said Conklin.

  “It’s a maybe. The customers here don’t like cameras, but I’ve got two guys checking the ATM across the street. I’m curbing my enthusiasm.”

  The door to room 212 was open, and LED lights blazed in the small room beyond the doorway. Clapper talked as we gloved up and fitted booties over our shoes.

  He said, “I could teach a university course in forensics on this scene. But then, don’t take that to mean I’ve got a handle on it.”

  We followed him over the threshold and got our first look at the room. In many ways 212 was typical, about eighteen feet long from the door to the window at the far end, nine feet wide, the width largely taken up by the bed. The bathroom was to our immediate left, right off the entrance.

  The Big Four Motel had been a fixture in the Tenderloin for thirty years and, during that time, had aged disgracefully. The carpet was dirt gray, original color indeterminate. The curtains were threadbare, and the spread was all that plus stained and soiled. The double bed was still made, but the pillows were disturbed.

  Conklin and I stood inside the doorway, watching the CSIs taking photos of everything, sketching the layout, and dusting for prints, the last being a fairly futile activity given the three decades of accumulated splooge. But it had to be done. Maybe one clear print or even a partial would find a match in AFIS.

  The CSIs had put markers down next to folded items of female apparel on the floor: a dark garment, either pants or a skirt; a lacy top with long sleeves; an underwire bra. High-heeled shoes stood next to the bed, a light coat hung over a chair back, and at the foot of the chair was a large handbag of the tote bag variety. It was unzipped and looked plenty
big enough to hold electronics, books, and the kitchen sink.

  As crime scenes went, this one was tidy. But we hadn’t seen the body yet; the two techs in the bathroom were blocking our view.

  I asked Clapper, “Did you find a note?”

  “Not yet. I opened her bag to check her ID. Her license says Carly Myers, and her face matches the photo. We’ll take the bag back to the lab and let you know what we find.”

  If the bag contained a phone and a computer, he’d also check her incoming and outgoing calls, get her text messages and emails, too. A phone could crack open everything from before she went missing. Pray to God it would lead to Susan Jones and Adele Saran.

  Noting that, Clapper said, “We’ve only been in here for twenty minutes, so this is still a prelim. What I can tell you is that the victim is a Caucasian female found hanging by her neck by an electric cord noose. The other end of the cord was wrapped a number of times around the stem of the shower head and the curtain rod for added support. The cord was cut from a standing lamp in the other room. Scissors are on the floor.”

  Clapper went on.

  “She’s wearing an extra-large men’s shirt. Looks new.”

  “What do you make of that?” I asked.

  “Nothing yet. We’ll test it. I saw no defensive wounds on the victim’s arms, but I haven’t checked her hands. Her wrists were bound in front with a pair of panties. The ME will take her liver temps, but I can tell you she’s just coming out of rigor. So I’m estimating that she died twenty-four to thirty-six hours ago.”

  Bodies were different. Environments were different. But it was safe to use Clapper’s guesstimate for now.

  Carly was last seen on Monday night. So she’d died probably late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.

  Clapper said, “We’re just beginning to process the bathroom, but you can have a look. Are you ready, my friends?”

  He knocked on the doorframe. The techs came out with their kits, and Clapper toed the door wide open.

  Conklin and I went inside.

  CHAPTER 20

  I entered the small tiled room knowing that I was about to see something that I would never forget.

  Clapper moved the shower curtain aside with the back of his gloved hand, revealing the body of a woman wearing a men’s white shirt large enough that the tails hung to her midthigh.

  As Clapper had said, the ligature was an electric cord wrapped around the stem of pipe between the shower head and the wall, and knotted under the victim’s jaw. Her wrists were secured in front of her with pink ladies’ underwear. A few twists of stretch lace could not withstand even Carly’s feeblest thrashing to get her hands free. Her feet hung over the drain, just below the spigots.

  There’d been no sign of a struggle in the main room, and I didn’t see signs of disturbance here, either. The curtain hadn’t been pulled down, the bath mat was flat to the floor, lined up with the tub.

  I tried to picture Carly Myers, a woman who was well liked, attractive, successful, and athletic, getting undressed, putting on a men’s white dress shirt, making a noose with an electric cord, and slipping that noose over her head and pulling it tight. She would have had to secure the other end to the shower head and then loop her panties around her wrists in a couple of figure eights.

  And then what? She’d stood on the lip of the tub and jumped a couple of feet toward the drain?

  No way. She would have reflexively kicked at the tub rim and the wall, pulled at the cord, and the shower apparatus would have pulled out of the wall—no, no, no. She’d been murdered first, and very likely after that, her killer had strung her up. This was a staged suicide. The panties were a flourish. I’d bet my badge on it.

  Conklin edged in for a better look.

  “There’s a bite mark on her neck,” he said.

  “Good catch. And it looks like two bath towels are missing,” I said.

  Conklin said, “He used the towels to clean up and took them with him.”

  My partner took snapshots of the body and the rest of the small room. When he was done, Clapper asked us to back out, and he summoned Hallows, his number two, to help him cut the body down.

  Hallows laid a clean white sheet on the floor between the tub and the wall. Clapper supported the body while Hallows leaned in and cut the electric cord at the midpoint to protect possible DNA on either end.

  I was guessing Myers weighed 115 pounds. She fell heavily when the cord was cut, but Clapper took the weight, Hallows grabbed her legs, and the two of them laid her down on the sheeted floor.

  Hallows bagged Myers’s bound hands to preserve evidence that might be under her nails, and Conklin and I stepped outside to the walkway for some air.

  I said to Conklin, “You okay?”

  “Not really. You?”

  We leaned on the railing and watched squad cars slow and pull up to the curb. Cappy McNeil and Paul Chi, two of the best homicide investigators in the state, got out of a gray Chevy and ID’d themselves to the uniform at the tape. Bystanders and looky-loos crowded the Ellis Street side of the line.

  I wanted to talk with the manager, Jake Tuohy. Now. I had questions.

  Who had checked into room 212? I wanted to see the register and run the names of the guests. I wanted to talk to the housekeeper who had found the body.

  And I wanted Chi and McNeil to interview the motel guests sequestered in the lobby. A guest’s name could light up the criminal database. Someone may have seen something—a questionable person, an altercation, a license plate. It crossed my mind that whoever had strung up Carly Myers in the shower was staying here at the Big Four.

  Despite my feeling of urgency, it was well worth the time spent to kick around theories with Conklin.

  “Let’s play it out,” I said to my partner.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Rich, do we agree that this was not a suicide?”

  “Agreed. Her tongue wasn’t protruding,” he said. “The panties and the shirt are someone’s idea of a joke. She was dead when she was hanged in the shower.”

  My turn to agree.

  “If she was suicidal, she wouldn’t kill herself in this hole. She’d do it in her apartment. She’d take pills. She doesn’t want her parents to picture what we saw in that bathroom. So let’s back up to the beginning.”

  “Right. Starting with where she was last seen,” he said. “Killer sees her walking back to her car after she and her girls leave the Bridge on Monday night.”

  I said, “He comes up behind her with a gun and forces her into his car.”

  “Or she knew him,” said Conklin. “She gets into his vehicle and he drives her here. There’s a fight and it all goes wrong for Carly. But what about her two friends? Where were they?”

  “Let’s focus on Carly for now,” I said. “Most likely, the guy picks her up, and class act that he is, he checks them into this dump. That was his plan all along. He kills her in the room Tuesday night or Wednesday morning and strings her up. He figures when she’s discovered, the cops will think that her death was self-inflicted.”

  “That works,” said Rich. “The killer washes up and gets into his car. He could be in Vancouver by now.”

  I said, “But there will be evidence of the murder in 212. What about the shirt?”

  Conklin shrugged. “Let’s just say this freak likes a woman in a big man’s shirt. Maybe he left some of himself on that shirt.” He nodded at the road. “Look. We have company.”

  Press trucks and a satellite van had double-parked along Ellis, and reporters hoping for quotes were crowding the line.

  I saw Cindy. She waved. I waved back but made no move to let her through.

  She would hold that against me.

  Conklin said, “We should notify Carly’s parents before the press does.”

  “Right. But first we talk to Tuohy.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Conklin and I were with Jake Tuohy in his grubby office, sitting across the room from his dump site of a desk.

  He
looked to be in his sixties, a heavy bulldog of a man with black tufts of hair sprouting in a horseshoe pattern around his balding scalp. His hands were calloused, his clothes were baggy, and his general appearance was consistent with the entropic ambiance of the Big Four Motel.

  He also had an aggressive, one-note personality.

  While his demeanor and appearance didn’t make him a murderer, I tried him on as a suspect.

  He looked physically strong. He had access to the rooms. His prints and DNA would be all over 212 and could easily be explained away. Would the bite mark on Carly Myers’s neck match an impression of Tuohy’s teeth? Was the saliva his?

  Tuohy gave us the registration book—he had to. It was the law. But I had no right to demand a bite impression or a cheek swab, and we had no probable cause to arrest him.

  Time was speeding by and our investigation was stalled. I drummed my fingers on the narrow plastic arm of my chair as we waited for Tuohy’s boss to call and give him a go-ahead to talk to us without a lawyer present.

  The silence was killing me.

  I stared over Tuohy’s head at the large sepia photograph hanging behind his desk, a reproduction of the four railroad tycoons who’d built the Central Pacific Railroad, funding their endeavor with what was widely described as questionable means. They were called the Big Four.

  Also hanging on the wall was a photo of a younger Jake Tuohy in some wooded section of Northern California. He was standing beside a deer that had been strung up in a tree by a hind leg. Tuohy was grinning. He had a knife in his hand and was about to gut his kill.

  That photo of the dead animal and the pleasure on young Tuohy’s face gave me a very bad feeling.

  His phone vibrated.

  He read a text, tapped the phone, read another text, then put the phone down.

  “All right,” he said. “The dead woman checked in on Tuesday night with cash.”

  “Tuesday,” I said. “Not Monday night? You’re sure.”