by B K Johnson
Gina lived in a yellow, two-story brownstone in the Sunset district of the city. It was not a palatial residence, but rather looked quite homey with its potted geraniums hanging all around the porch. Yellow gingham curtains draped the windows, and a bright red door beckoned welcome into the interior. Not at all what Tommy would have expected from a doyenne of the gay nightlife of San Francisco. Tommy had called ahead to make sure Gina would receive her, and told her it was regarding Samantha’s murder. Gina responded that she would be more than happy to help in any way she could.
The gingham curtains parted while she was parking her car right out in front of the house. The Sunset was a comfortable, single-family residential area, which had more parking than other areas of the city during the workday. Tommy didn’t even have to knock on the red door, when Gina, dressed in a gray sweat suit, opened it to her as soon as she’d reached the porch. Tommy made small talk about how lovely the geraniums were, and what a nice home Gina had made for herself. Gina just laughed jovially and invited Tommy in. “Would you like anything to drink? she offered. Tommy declined, saying she’d just had tea with Michaela. Gina poured herself a glass of orange juice in the sunny kitchen and pulled out a cushioned chair from the little table for Tommy to sit in.
They spent the next hour talking comfortably at the table, positioned in front of a sliding glass door that looked out into a vegetable garden. Tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, dill, and a host of other herbs grew gaily in little patches throughout Gina’s backyard. Tommy asked, “How have you found the time to cultivate such an amazing garden?”
“When you work at night,” replied Gina, “the daytime is yours to spend doing what you love.” Tommy was totally charmed by Gina’s wholesomeness, and her intention to grill the bar owner over any illegality in serving minors was easily deflected by her hostess.
Gina freely admitted allowing young women under the age of 21 into her establishment. She served food and offered live entertainment, so her license allowed her guests to bring underage company in. But she spurned any idea that she didn’t check ID’s carefully prior to serving them any liquor. “I know that some women buy booze and pour it into some drinks when I’m not looking,” Gina opined. “But I don’t believe it is my job to search my customers for booze stashed legally in little purse flasks. And as far as I know, Daniella’s not much of a drinker anyway, from what I’ve heard both Samantha and Michaela say.”
Michaela and Gina had been friends for years. Gina was not gay, but had been happily married to Mark, a plumber, for the last 18 years. They had two children both in high school, and Mark made sure they toed the line doing homework while Gina was at her pub. She had a host of heterosexual as well as homosexual friends, married, single or committed to monogamous relationships. “I’m equally comfortable with one segment of the population as another. I’ve never been very judgmental, and I truly believe in the predominant “live and let live” motto of San Francisco,” admitted Gina.
Gina continued, “My clientele frequent my place because they mostly want freedom to enjoy an evening without male interference. The great majority of the women who come to Gina’s are in committed relationships. There are a few here and there who are looking to hook up, but generally everything is very low key. Women in relationships are far more likely to be monogamous than men, I’ve found.”
The most important information gleaned by Tommy in their discourse was that Michaela had been blindsided by the affair between Samantha and Daniella. Michaela prided herself on knowing everything that went on with her daughter, and while she was not upset that Daniella had a lesbian lover, was totally taken aback by the fact that it was Samantha. Michaela had expressed her shock and dismay that a woman who had been her lover had taken her daughter to bed without any hesitancy. Not only did this jeopardize the long-standing relationship Michaela had with Samantha, but it also belied their friendship. She told more than one person at Gina’s place that she was angry as hell at Samantha, for a multitude of reasons.
When Tommy asked Gina if she thought Michaela capable of murder, Gina didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. Rather, she rested her head on her hand and gave it some serious thought.
“Michaela is certainly capable of murder,” she said thoughtfully. “She is a domineering, determined, and accomplished woman who takes offense at her opinion not being valued enough that I could see her strangling someone who vehemently opposed her. She has had a hard life, with her husband fighting her for custody and losing Daniella to him. That made her very angry at men in general, and her ex-husband in particular. She had to fight in court just to have visitation with her daughter, She paid dearly for her outspoken support of the LGBTQ community. However, taking a gun to a former lover, even one who’s compromised her own daughter sexually, is a stretch. Her character is more tempestuous than calculating, I think. From all I’ve heard, Samantha’s murder had to be staged quite expertly in order to implicate Geoff. Isn’t that true?”
Tommy agreed that killing Samantha in the Gate master bedroom, with Geoff’s own weapon still retaining some very clear fingerprints of his, while he was away on business, would have required a cold, analytical mind and determined personality. There would have been no room for sloppy emotionalism. And premeditation, stalking, and careful attention to detail were prerequisites to the unsolved murder.
“But, exempting the household staff,” Gina summed up in one salient sentence,” who else had access to the gun, bedroom, Samantha, and Geoff’s schedule except for Geoff, Samantha, Michaela and Daniella?”
“Who indeed,” mused Tommy. “Thanks for your hospitality,” she thanked Gina, and left to go grab a late lunch before the meeting with Geoff and Clay.
Returning to her vehicle, she had yet another staccato message from Dave. It was simply, “Tommy, I’m being followed.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Loke looked down on Dave’s still naked body in her bed and lamented the fact that she’d had to bring their lovemaking to a close in such a final way. She knew that Dave would never be able to forgive her for what she was about to do, and she’d developed quite an affection for him. He was the most attentive lover she’d had in a long time, and although she was a bit turned off by his chauvinism, there was a part of her that had enjoyed being treated like a queen instead of an equal. “If it weren’t for Tommy,” thought Loke, “Dave and I might have been able to cement a relationship that would grow with the years, instead of its having to end in such a dramatic fashion.”
With one last sigh, she turned from the comatose Dave, threw on some shorts, an old T-shirt that advertised Hula Hattie’s, and some flip-flops. She went into the kitchen and grabbed a power bar, then headed into the garage munching on it. She would definitely need her strength for this next task. Loke prided herself on planning every move well ahead of time, so it was with determination and ease that she rolled the wheelbarrow, loaded with a few heavy rocks, out of the garage, through the kitchen, and finally to her bed. Now came the hard part.
She used the small boulders to brace the wheelbarrow in place by the side of the bed closest to Dave. Then she crawled onto the other side next to him, and tried rolling Dave over, first starting with his shoulders, then hips, and finally his legs. She had to roll him over twice before his whole length was balanced precariously on the very edge of the mattress. Loke drew his legs up toward his chest and bent his head and shoulders, trying to get his arms around his legs. All of this was in an attempt to make him a shorter object to roll into the wheelbarrow.
Loke debated tying him up in that fetal position, and actually had brought the rope in to accomplish that task. However, she correctly determined that his limp body might be easier to fold into the wheelbarrow, rather than trying to dump all of him into the center. At last, satisfied with her preparations, she walked to his side of the bed, and rolled him off of it completely and into the wheelbarrow. Though it tilted and threatened to spill Dave onto the floor, the rocks and her feet were enough to keep it balanc
ed while she used her hands and arm muscles to get his midsection centered. His legs dangled over the edge of the wheelbarrow and his head lolled to one side, so she had to tie his legs up to his arms and pushed his head down between them. She giggled aloud, thinking that he looked like he was trying to give himself a blowjob.
“Stop it!” she chided herself. “No more humor and no more thoughts of sex from here on in,” she said, shaking her head.
Loke took a deep breath, focused on her chi, and summoned all of the strength she had. She grabbed the wheelbarrow’s handles and began pushing it back into the garage. Step by step she labored, now ruing Dave’s long and lanky physique. What had been enticing at the beginning was now a major impediment to her success. She was so thankful she’d removed all of the carpeting in the house, and redone all of the floors with a smooth parquet that did not hinder her progress.
It took her 25 minutes just to reach the garage door. She had to stop for breath and massage her arms twice along the way, and also grab a quick drink of water in the kitchen. She wasn’t exactly sure how long the chloroform would keep Dave unconscious. She’d obtained it from her pharmacist friend, but had been forced to kill him before she could get all of the pertinent information about it from him. Her searches on line had given her some guidelines, but everything depended upon the person’s size, weight and genetic structure, as well as the percentage of the solution used. And so Loke was not going to take any chances, but get this done as soon as she physically could.
Once in the garage, she dumped Dave out unceremoniously on the cement floor, close to the eyebolts cemented therein. Before she did anything else, she took the long, heavy chain welded into the bolt and wound it first around his neck, then his waist, over both wrists, and down around his feet. Then she drew it back up to the top eyebolt and ran the chain through it once more, fastening it at the bottom eyebolt with an expensive, heavy master lock. The lock itself could only be undone with the combination fixed in Loke’s mind, which was not written down anywhere. As of yet she had no idea how long she might have to keep Dave in this position, so she pulled the cache of Depends from the storage unit in the garage and diapered Dave, as if her were a baby. She’d been embarrassed when she bought them at the pharmacy, and was pleased with herself that she’d gone to one way out in Waipahu, where no one knew her. “I don’t want anyone thinking they’re for me,” she’d worried.
Exhausted now, she left Dave tied up in the garage and went back to her bed, where she slept the sleep of the righteous for the next 2 hours. When she awoke, she checked on him, and found him still unconscious and in the same position as when she left. She had a momentary fear that she’d overdosed him and he was already dead, which wouldn’t do at all. Loke leaned down close to his mouth and felt the breath coming out of it. She took that as a good sign, but just to reassure herself, put her fingertips on his carotid artery and felt the pulse beating strongly from it.
Still dressed in her shorts and T-shirt, which was now somewhat wrinkled and smelled of perspiration, Loke went into the linen closet of the bathroom and took out tape from Dave’s conversation with her at dinner. She took it with her into the spare bedroom and put two tape recorders side by side. Playing the conversation tape, she continually edited it, stopping and starting until she had exactly the words she wanted and in proper sequence on a blank tape in the second recorder.
Taking the completed masterpiece, she went back into her bedroom and fished through Dave’s pockets until she found the keys to his BMW and home, as well as his all-important cell phone clipped to the belt of his pants. These she put into her purse with the tape. Then she went back into the bedroom and stripped off her sweaty shirt, only taking the time to wash her armpits and use a little deodorant. She donned another t-shirt, this one a souvenir from the Arizona Memorial, grabbed her purse, and headed out the door, locking it firmly behind her.
Halfway on her way from her home in Kailua to Dave’s house in Haleiwa, Loke pulled off to the side of the road and tried to place a phone call to Tommy’s car phone. She had to drive a little further from the Koolau Mountains in order to get a good signal on Dave’s phone, and again dialed Tommy’s car phone. Since Loke had no intention of anyone ever seeing Dave’s cell phone again, she made no attempt to keep from leaving any fingerprints on it. She played a portion of her doctored tape into the cell phone, knowing Tommy wouldn’t be answering the phone at this hour, since Hawaii was a full 3 hours earlier than SF time.
Loke drove the rest of the way to Dave’s house, having scouted it out before when Dave was still teaching. She parked right in his driveway, since she was in Dave’s car and the BMW belonged there anyway. Loke checked to make sure there were no observers nearby. Using Dave’s keys and the bottom of her shirt to turn the doorknob, she let herself into the spacious, split level home. She went into the kitchen first and found a dishcloth, before searching the house for a phone. There hadn’t been one in the kitchen, where most women would have made sure to have an extension, but she found one in Dave’s study just off the living room. She used the dishcloth to pick up the receiver and dial Tommy’s car phone. She played another portion of the tape into the mouthpiece of Dave’s phone, and then replaced the receiver back on the hook with a self-satisfied smile. She wished she could have seen Tommy’s face when she listened to these messages.
She took the dishtowel with her and exited the house as quietly as she’d entered it, leaving no mark of herself behind. Though she’d been tempted to take a little tour of Dave’s house, she restrained herself, knowing full well that she did not want to take even the slightest chance of accidentally giving any investigating officer evidence with which to convict her should she ever be arrested. Loke had gotten very adept at covering her tracks over the years and had never even come close to being identified as the perpetrator of any of her crimes. Practice makes perfect, just as her dead sister Maile always used to say.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Precisely at 4 p.m. Tommy paced the waiting room in Clay Cox’s office. She wasn’t used to being kept waiting, and didn’t appreciate it when Clay’s receptionist told her to just take a seat. The young woman smiled grimly, the kind of smile you knew meant she was sick of looking at you, but for form’s sake plastered it on her face in a pretense of welcome hospitality. Tommy had to give the receptionist an A for effort, even though it offended her to be on the receiving end of such snide pity.
After exhausting herself with incessant activity, Tommy dropped into one of the extremely uncomfortable, but elegant antique chairs. She had to be careful not to break it and that only increased her irritability. Fifteen minutes later her mind had finally settled into acceptance, but her body had not. Trying to bring it in line with her outward composure was a major task. She kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, picking up and putting down a number of magazines without even looking through them. Every now and then she would hear an exaggerated sigh escaping the receptionist’s petulant, botoxed lips. Rather than being encouraged to calm herself, for some reason Tommy reveled in irritating the lovely young girl, as if she were responsible for her boss’s tardiness.
Finally, at 4:35 p.m. the great man came casually strolling into the office from the front door, with Geoffrey Gage in tow. Clay greeted Tommy effusively and apologized for not being there at the appointed time, and blamed Geoff for not being ready. Tommy looked over at Geoff to see if he would protest this accusation, and was shocked to see how changed he was. He had lost several pounds and his once customized gray suit hung loosely over his frame. His face was sallow and his skin sagged noticeably. There were deep blotches purpling his forehead and cheeks. His hair was long, lank and lackluster, as if combing or cutting it would be an effort beyond his ability.
But when she looked into his eyes, Tommy was mostly astounded to see how wounded the man’s soul was. He didn’t even bother to acknowledge her presence, and proceeded like a lamb to the slaughter as Clay led the way into his office.
Tommy took a se
at on the leather sofa, so much more comfortable than the antique chairs, and bluntly addressed Geoff by saying, “What the hell happened to you, Geoff?”
He looked up at her and pointed to Clay, without saying a word. Clay boisterously clapped his hands and said, “It’s not all bad news, you know, Geoff. Just because the Judge has revoked your bail doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be off to jail right away. We do have the right to appeal, and I’ve already filed the paperwork for a stay of the revocation pending the appeal.”
“Revoked his bail,” gasped Tommy. “Whatever for?”
“Well,” Clay responded in a voice like slick oil, “Geoff got a little drunk last weekend and some sleazy bastard called him a murderer at the bar. Unfortunately, Geoff took extreme offense and smashed his fist into the guy’s face. The bar they were in was the Alibi, you know, where the majority of the SF police hang out after work? Three off-duty officers were there and witnessed the event.”
“One of them cuffed him immediately,” continued, Clay, “and another shoved his face into the bar itself. The third one patted him down and instructed the bartender to call for backup. As if Geoff was a major threat to three cops who’d already controlled him. Geoff was transported to the city jail, where he spent a night until I could get him bailed out. Then the DA filed a request for immediate bail revocation, and the Judge agreed at the hearing today. We just came from it. He ruled that Geoff was indeed a threat to the community and needed to be locked up pending the trial. That’s why we were late. I had to prepare and file the paperwork right then and there, or Geoff wouldn’t be here now. None of his criminal attorneys was available at such short notice so I did the best I could.”
“I gather he hated the time in jail, being in a cell with rapists, muggers, pimps and accused murderers. It scared him quite a bit. Now he’s convinced he’ll be tried and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and he’ll have to do time with the scum of the earth. Even his money can’t buy him a better place to serve his sentence. And there you have it, in a nutshell,” Clay finished.