Over the course of their professional relationship, they learned that each loved to run and that they often ran some of the same rugged trails. Mike had decided to do the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon, which he was surprised to learn May had done the previous year. In fact, she did multiple triathlons every year and was training for her first Ironman. She agreed to help Mike with his training and on their first meeting kicked his butt on both the run and bike legs. And now, a few years later, she was doing multiple Ironmans each year and was in truly amazing shape. Quite frankly, Mike had no desire to keep up. And, in fact, even if he did, the demands of the SFPD homicide division didn’t give him the kind of time required. But yeah, he was a bit intimidated by his amazingly fit wife.
“Rough day?” May asked as she served him what he thought of as an overly healthy meal.
“It really shouldn’t have been. I mean this serial murder case is supposed to be wrapping up and now I just have a straight forward drug deal gone wrong, and an inter-spouse murder to investigate.
“But I gotta tell you. I’m struggling with this Mark Johansen case. All the evidence is there but I can’t convince myself he did it. The hard part is I have no leads pointing to anyone else and nothing to exonerate Johansen.”
“So you think he’s being set up? If so, given how tight the evidence is, it’s got to be someone pretty close to him, right?”
“Yeah. But at this point, he really doesn’t have many close friends. In fact, I can only think of two.”
“And?”
“Well, one is this guy Jack Trageser. They have known each other for years but I can’t see any links that would provide a motive, other than the fact that they both knew the other victims and their husbands. But as big as the Silicon Valley is, I still see this particular group of tech gurus as pretty close-knit. I’m ninety-nine percent sure it couldn’t be him.”
“And the second?”
“That would be his business partner, Richard Hatch. They’ve been friends for decades and founded three companies together. From what I can see, Hatch has been incredibly supportive of Johansen and was there for him after the psychotic break that landed him in the psych ward. I’m not seeing a motive here either. The guy has plenty of money since the two were equal partners in the company, and as I said, they’ve been best friends for years.”
“Maybe some internal rivalry? Control of the company?”
“I’ll try to look into it, but I don’t know…”
“Hey, something will pop up. It always does.”
“You mean like in our serial murder case?”
“Come on. That was the first time in my career that we didn’t find the perp. I can’t imagine there have been too many of those for you either.”
“Maybe I’m just losing it. Maybe I’m getting too old for this. Maybe my cop’s nose is completely out of whack about Johansen.”
May stood up, came around the table and plopped herself in Mike’s lap, throwing her arms around him. She held him for a minute then took his hand and led him to the bedroom.
“Feel better?” she asked forty minutes later.
“Quite a bit!” Mike replied with a big grin.
“Okay. What’s next then?”
“How about a pizza?”
May smacked Mike with a pillow.
“Okay. I’ll agree to pizza if you can come up with one thing you’ll follow up on.”
Mike thought a minute, his mind cleared of the self-pity that had brought him to a dead end.
“All right. Here are two: I’ll talk to Richard Hatch and will press him on who could want to frame Johansen. And, I’ll see if I can get a waiver to talk to Johansen’s psychiatrist. Maybe she knows something that will give me a lead.
“And I guess there’s one more that I’ve kind of overlooked. Brittany Spangler, the first victim’s daughter claims to be good with computers, knew the victims and knows Mark Johansen. I need to rule her out.”
May kissed Mike, grabbed the phone, and called in an order for the deep dish pizza that Mike missed so much.
They fell asleep a few hours later on the sofa sated with pizza and beer just before the final scenes of Gaslight played out on the television.
9
It was their last full day in Tahiti. Moorea had exceeded all their expectations, but after several days in the somewhat populated tropical paradise, they had craved more solitude. Four days earlier, George and Janey had taken the one-hour flight to Tikehau, one of the Tuamotu atolls a few hundred miles north of the main islands of Tahiti. From the air, they got a real sense of what an atoll was. Tikehau had no island. It was just a giant, almost circular, ring of sandy motus with a huge lagoon in the middle. From the brochures, they knew the lagoon was eight miles across, but as they landed, it seemed much larger.
And the landing. A motu is just a spit of sand atop a coral reef. It seemed almost impossible that a plane could land on one. But all had gone smoothly. Twenty minutes later, the hotel shuttle had dropped them at a resort that was even more elegant than the one on Moorea. And this time, they learned that they were the only guests. They were given the largest over-water bungalow at the furthest reach of the walkway into the lagoon. The set up was almost identical, with private deck, luxurious appointments, and of course, the glass window in the floor.
George and Janey had spent three days paddling to nearby completely deserted motus. True to his promise, George scaled coconut trees and broke open the coconuts on sharp coral formations protruding from the pink sands. They swam and snorkeled naked in the crystal clear waters.
Most amazing were the oysters. Easily twelve inches across, these exotic multicolored shellfish bore no resemblance to anything either had seen before. And from underneath the dramatic blue, gold, red, and purple oysters, coral formations pushed up towards the surface. When snorkeling, George and Janey were surrounded by schools of fish that had Tahitian names longer than they were. And of course, they had become comfortable with the black-tipped sharks that seemed to be everywhere.
After returning from their final motu trip, George and Janey showered and got ready for dinner. Janey deftly wrapped herself in a Pareo – a single piece of sarong-like fabric – and teased George that she’d be wearing nothing underneath.
“Do we really have to go home tomorrow?” he lamented.
“It’s been the best vacation ever, George. Will we come back?”
“I can’t imagine not coming back. Hey Janey, could you check email before we head over to the restaurant?”
“Sure.”
Janey started her computer and went through the laborious process of getting an internet connection. The connection itself was so slow that it was hard to know if it was actually working. Many of the times they’d tried to access the Net from Tikehau, it actually wasn’t working.
Janey downloaded George’s email she didn’t see anything urgent.
“It looks like just the daily update from Morris. Nothing terribly important.”
George wasn’t sure whether to be pleased that there was nothing to rush back to or disappointed.
He was just finishing shaving when Janey cried out, “George! Come see!”
George quickly applied a small piece of toilet paper to the nick on his chin and made his way over to Janey. Looking at her computer screen, all he could see was what to him looked like gobbledygook.
“And why did I cut myself to race over here to see this?”
“Oh George, I’m really sorry. I know this doesn’t look like much, but my bot found a source of the names in the emails you got from both the killer and the informer.”
“Are they both the same? Can you tell where they are?”
“Well sort of. Just a sec.”
Janey typed furiously for a few seconds, waited what seemed like minutes, then typed more. A few minutes later, she turned to George.
“Okay. I can’t tell if this is the informer or the killer. It’s possible that there are more sources out there. I was able to track down th
e location of this one and it’s in the SFPD. My guess is that this is Mark Johansen’s computer. It looks like he has the program that generates these random email addresses. I can hack into the computer, but since it’s with the police, it’s probably not the best idea. Maybe when we get back, they’ll let me have a look at it.”
George was disappointed. This pointed further to Mark Johansen’s guilt. It looked like Mike McKensey was wrong. Mark Johansen was guilty.
George decided to do his best to put this aside for their last evening in Tahiti.
“I love you Janey! Let’s look at this after we get back.”
“Ah, okay,” Janey replied reluctantly. “I’m pretty excited that my bot actually works, but I guess I can wait. It would be too slow to do anything from here anyway.”
Both disappointed but resolved to make the most of their last evening, George and Janey made their way to the restaurant where, as the only guests that evening, they were treated like royalty.
10
Mike McKensey swallowed the last bite of cream and pastry as he made his way up the stairs to Samantha Louis’ office. Since he’d arrived a few minutes early, Mike had made the mistake of stopping in at the French bakery. The attractive young French owner patiently explained what each pastry was and Mike succumbed to the chou. With his recollection and limited knowledge of French, Mike asked her if a chou was a cabbage. And after confirming that it was, she explained that the pastry was a chou a la crème, similar to what Americans called a cream puff. But it was like no crème puff Mike had ever tasted. The pastry was light, delicate, and was dusted with a layer of a cinnamon-sugar mix. And the cream! The cream was more decadent than anything he’d eaten in years. May would kill him.
Mike climbed the stairs and entered Samantha Louis’ waiting room. He’d just sat down and picked up a copy of Time Magazine when Samantha Louis stepped out of her office and greeted Mike, holding out her hand.
“Detective McKensey, I’m Samantha Louis. Call me Sam.”
Mike noticed the confident handshake and was pleased that ‘Sam’ didn’t seem intimidated meeting a police detective.
“I’m Mike,” he replied, following her into her office.
“Have a seat Mike,” Sam suggested. “Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea, juice? Something to wash down that pastry you just had downstairs?”
Mike was halfway seated and stood up suddenly.
“How’d you--?”
Sam pointed to her right cheek and her engaging smile brightened further. “Very few people can avoid the pastries downstairs.”
“Well please don’t tell my wife!”
“You look pretty fit. Do you have cholesterol problems or some other dietary issue?”
“No. May, my wife, is a triathlete. It’s rare we deviate from a really healthy diet. She’s incredibly disciplined. I tried to keep up for a while and realized that’s just not me. Still, I try.
“As for something to drink, I think I’ll pass. As you so astutely noted, I did just have a snack.”
“Sorry,” Sam replied. “I guess our fields aren’t so different. I’m trained to notice details and most of my work is investigative.”
Reaching into the folder he was carrying, Mike handed Sam the Authorization for Release of Medical Records.
“That’s why I’m here. I’m hoping you can help me with this case.”
Sam read the authorization then looked up surprised.
“It doesn’t say anything about the SFPD here. If I’m reading this correctly, this is a request by you as an individual.”
“Yeah. That’s the complicated part. Officially, I’m not supposed to be investigating this. The Lieutenant and the DA, and even my partner think we have our perp and all the evidence we need. So yes. It’s just me. I don’t need records. I just want to be able to talk about Mark Johansen. I can give you my word that nothing you tell me will get back to the DA or the SFPD. I want to use it for my own – ah – private investigation.”
“Aren’t you putting yourself at risk?” Sam asked, concerned.
“Not so much. But I have to do this. There’s something wrong about this case. It just doesn’t feel right. My gut tells me that Mark Johansen is not our guy. The evidence all points to it, but sometimes the evidence doesn’t tell the whole story. I’m hoping you can fill in some pieces.
“So please tell me about Mark. I’ve interviewed him and I don’t think he’s lying when he says he doesn’t remember killing any of these women. He’s also almost too cooperative. And he’s confused. He did talk about memory lapses. Can you tell me about his condition, his medications, and possible side effects? Do you think he could have done this?”
Over the next twenty minutes, Sam took Mike through her treatment of Mark Johansen. And as she had explained to Sharon Katell, she said she didn’t believe that Mark was having memory lapses.
“To sum it up, I just don’t see any way that Mark could be a serial killer – in fact, no kind of killer at all. He’s one of the gentlest people I’ve ever met.”
Then, thinking about Liz, her former patient, she backtracked a bit, “Of course, as great a detective as I think I am, sometimes, people fool me. I don’t think it’s the case here, but I could be wrong. Still, Mark, serial killer. I just can’t see it.”
“Sam, this has been helpful. I think I understand Mark’s condition and it just confirms my suspicions that he might have been framed. But to frame Mark, it would have to be someone close to him. Can you tell me about his friends or family? Any thoughts on someone who might want to do this to him?”
Thinking about Jack and also about Richard, Mark’s closest friends, Sam answered hesitantly, “No. I don’t think so.” But her face gave her away.
“You have some whipped cream on your face,” Mike replied seriously, touching his cheek.
It only took Sam a second to get Mike’s subtle reference. He was a detective. He knew she was holding back.
“I’m really sorry. Ah. Okay. I really only know about two people who are close to Mark. He has talked about his coworkers, but even though they’re like family to him, from what he’s described, there’s a healthy distance between him and his team. So the two people are – “
“Richard Hatch, his business partner, and Jack Trageser.” Mike finished for her.
“Exactly. I met Richard early on. He’s been incredibly supportive of Mark and has helped him stay on his meds, off alcohol and drugs, and has encouraged him to get back to work.
“I know Jack socially.”
“So do you think either one of them could want to frame Mark for serial killings?”
Sam took a minute to think, then responded.
“Well, for Jack, I just can’t see anything. As for Richard, he has been there for Mark. Still, in one of our recent sessions, Mark did mention that he was concerned that Richard was jealous of him and might be sabotaging him. But I have to tell you that while violence and memory lapses are unlikely for Mark, paranoia is a classic symptom. It’s one of those things that we’ve been working on since day one.”
“Still, sometimes, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to get you,” Mike joked sardonically.
“Of course. But I can’t see Richard as a serial killer. But then again, I don’t have much experience with serial killers. Do you?”
“Well, In spite of what the press may have you believe, there really aren’t many serial killers. Most homicides are committed by someone close to the victims. If there weren’t multiple victims, I probably would have had an easier time believing that Mark Johansen killed his wife.
“Serial killers are a different breed. All that I’ve encountered are detached sociopaths – I don’t mean to use a technical term here. But yes. I’ve encountered a few in my long career. There are similarities and all have made mistakes that led to their capture. But not mistakes like Mark made. And then again, I have to admit that there was one case not long ago. You probably read about it. My wife May and I worked
on it and quite honestly can’t really let it go. It was a woman serial killer and she just disappeared. We never caught her – at least not yet.
Sam did her best to hold her composure. Hopefully, the ever-perspicacious Mike McKensey didn’t see that he had touched a nerve.
Apparently, he didn’t this time.
“I’ll be looking into Richard Hatch and Jack Trageser. I really thank you for being so open with me.”
Sam walked Mike to the door. They shook hands and agreed to keep each other up to date on any developments.
Closing the door behind Mike, Sam shuddered. She wasn’t ever going to tell Mike McKensey about a particularly dangerous patient she’d treated. And, it wasn’t just a question of patient confidentiality.
As she walked back to her desk, Sam asked herself if she should have mentioned Brittany Spangler. No. That would have been a real violation of patient confidentiality. What did she really know anyway? By law, she couldn’t reveal information about a patient unless there was evidence of imminent danger to someone.
The killer certainly wasn’t Mark. Richard seemed so supportive of Mark. He was doubtful as a suspect. Jack? There was something off there, but no. If she had to guess, of the three, it was Brittany who was the most dangerous. But Sam couldn’t say anything.
Sometimes Sam wondered if she was really up to this job.
11
Morris Levinberg approached his star reporter’s cubicle and found George staring dreamily at his monitor. Peeking around, Morris discovered a smiling Janey with a colorful drink in her hand and gorgeous turquoise water behind her.
The Misogynist Page 17