The Silenced Women

by Frederick Weisel

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “About a week ago, but I spoke to her over the weekend. Sunday, I think.”

  “How was she?”

  “She was excited about some paintings she finished.”

  “Did she talk about anyone she was spending time with?”

  “Guys? With Elise, there were always guys. She tried to make herself available to men, and then when she got them, she was already looking at the next guy. Sometimes she became a caricature of the sexy girl because she didn’t really know what it meant. She had this thing where she wore short skirts and low tops because she thought guys liked that look. But afterwards, after another date with another lame guy, she’d complain to me about how stupid men are.” Alvarez smiled. “She told me once, even the smart ones are stupid.”

  “Was there one guy in particular?”

  “I never met any of them, except this biker kid a long time ago. For the last six months, she was with an older man. He was married, which seemed like a total disaster. And lately she told me about this new guy. I think she was doing some freelance work for him. She said he was really smart and had a lot of money. He made a fortune in computers or something, and now he doesn’t have to work anymore. He has this big house with a bunch of rooms. And a couple of guys were always with him.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “No. I saw his car once when he picked up Elise at a bar downtown. It was this new silver thing. I don’t know what kind.”

  “Do you remember the body type—SUV, sedan?”

  “Sedan, four-door.”

  “And you didn’t see the guy’s face?”

  “No, it was too dark.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “In the country somewhere. Must not be too far, because Elise would stay overnight and go to work.”

  “You don’t know his name?”

  “I don’t think she said.”

  “How about the two guys who were always with him? Did she ever describe them?”

  Alvarez shook her head.

  Coyle watched her. He wondered at this woman with her neat clothes, new apartment, and self-sufficiency. How did she have a friendship with Elise Durand, a woman struggling to find her ground, who gave Alvarez a window into an unrestrained life—and a murder? “Do you know the married guy’s name?”

  “She called him Chris. Told me she was tired of being with a guy who wouldn’t take her out in public. And she said he’d done this thing to her, and it was the last straw.”

  “What thing?”

  “She didn’t say. But I think he hit her. Last Tuesday I bumped into her at a bar downtown. She had something on her sweater, and I asked her what it was. She wouldn’t say, but it looked like blood. It freaked me out. I was like, ‘Is that blood?’ She wouldn’t answer me. She just laughed.”

  “You’re sure it was Tuesday?”

  “Yeah, Greg had to work, so I met up with Elise.”

  “Which bar?”

  “Becker’s. The other place she hung out a lot was the 1285 Club.”

  “Do you remember anything else she said in your last phone call? Any plans she had? Anything new in her life?”

  “She told me this thing about a street buy.”

  “A buy? Drugs?”

  “Yeah. Elise always did pills. Downers mostly, and some rave stuff—DMAA, that whole scene. Anyway, she starts talking about this buy she and her friends made. I was like…whoa. I mean, it sounded super sketchy.”

  “Did she say who her friends were?”

  “No. I think she was protecting them.”

  Coyle gave Alvarez his honest face. “If you know, you can tell me. We don’t care about the buy. But if it had anything to do with the murder, we want to know.”

  Alvarez looked back. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  “Was it local?”

  “I don’t know. But when you asked about anything new in her life, I thought of that right away.”

  “Did Elise happen to say where she was going or who she was going to be with Monday night?”

  “Monday? No, I don’t think so. Wait, I remember something else. She said she was breaking up with someone and was worried about how he’d take it.”

  “Was it Chris or someone else?”

  “I don’t know. She just said he was going to be pissed.”

  Coyle stood to leave.

  Alvarez wiped her eyes. “I hope you get whoever this is. You probably see these things a lot. But Elise never hurt anyone. She didn’t deserve this.”

  They never do, Coyle thought.

  (ii)

  (WEDNESDAY, 5:30 P.M.)

  Frames held up his phone for the rest of the VCI room. “This Christopher Bennett motherfuck is our guy. Just got a message. The evidence techs searched his car and found traces of blood on the front seat. Someone tried to wash it off but couldn’t get it all out of the seams.”

  Coyle watched Frames waving the phone. “Do we know it’s the victim’s blood?”

  “For chrissakes, man, they just got the car. But I fucking guarantee it’s hers. It’s like that scene in Pulp Fiction, you know, where Jules and Vincent have to clean the car because Vincent shot the guy in the back seat.”

  “What kind of car does Bennett have?”

  “Lexus ES. White exterior. Leather seats and bamboo trim on the dash. Man, I love it when it’s a guy with a car like that.”

  “So you figure Bennett strangles the victim in the front seat of his car, somehow cuts the back of her head, wraps the body in a blanket, drives to the park, and carries the body to the bench?”

  “Why not? Guy’s a dentist. They have strong fingers. Natural stranglers.”

  “But why’s he do all that?” Rivas asked. “Why go all the way to the park? Take some balls to drive through town with a dead woman sitting next to you.”

  “Techs find any blood in the trunk?” Coyle asked.

  Frames sighed. “I don’t know. I told you they just started searching.”

  “What about the old, dark-colored Mercedes in the surveillance footage and the guy in the hoodie?”

  “Maybe he had a friend and switched cars. I don’t know.”

  Rivas leaned back in his chair. “Always risky involving a second person, and now you’re moving the body twice.”

  “Maybe he knew about the surveillance camera,” Frames said. “Didn’t want his car seen.”

  “Nobody knows about the surveillance camera,” Coyle said.

  Frames looked back and forth at the other two. “But Alvarez said Elise Durand was afraid of breaking up with someone. This has to be the guy.”

  Coyle shrugged. “We don’t know that.”

  “What? So now you think she’s breaking up with two guys in one week?”

  “Even if it’s the victim’s blood, we don’t know it got there Monday night. Alvarez told me she saw blood on Elise Durand’s sweater a week earlier, last Tuesday.”

  Frames turned to Mahler. “Help me out here, Eddie. Aren’t we making this too complicated?”

  Mahler, who had been leaning against his spot on the squad- room wall, straightened and moved to the center of the room. “Bennett has an hour unaccounted for Monday evening. Ten to eleven. When you asked him what it was, he called his lawyer.”

  “So, Sherlock, is an hour enough?” Coyle aimed the question at Frames. “Is it possible to meet up with the hoodie guy, switch the body, drive to the park, and get back home to kiss the wife goodnight?”

  Frames shrugged. “Everything goes right, it’s not impossible.”

  “What’d his wife say?” Mahler asked.

  Rivas looked at his notepad. “Confirms he was gone at that time. Doesn’t know where.”

  “Woman’s definitely going through some changes,” Frames sa
id. “We start asking questions about her husband’s affair, which, of course, is news to her. And then we get to the part about the victim, and she freaked. Kids are home from school in the next room. In three minutes, she’s rethinking her life. Whole dentist-wife-thing down the toilet.”

  “We asked if she had a red blanket,” Rivas inserted.

  Frames waved his arms. “This insults her. Goes off on a riff about color schemes. A dead body is one thing, but a red blanket in her house—”

  “I’ll talk to Bennett once his lawyer gets here,” Mahler said. “What else do we have?”

  “We’ve got Arturo Peña’s statement to the DA.” Rivas read from the screen of his laptop. “In exchange for this information, the DA agreed to release Peña’s cousin and give Peña immunity on the drug-dealing evidence that was part of his testimony. Peña says he was approached on Saturday night by four individuals who wanted to score some speed. Tall white man, an Asian, a dark-skinned male, and a white female. All well dressed. The female’s height, weight, and hair color match our victim’s. They drove up in a silver Jaguar sedan. The white guy was in charge. Peña described him as gallito, cocky. Had a semiautomatic in his belt that he made sure to show Peña. Bought five grams, paid with hundreds. As they leave, Peña heard one of them call the woman Elise.”

  “That matches what Alvarez told me about a drug buy,” Coyle said. “And it also sounds like one of them might be the new boyfriend who drives a silver car and lives in the country.”

  “If these three are involved,” Mahler said, “they could be the ‘little men’ our witness, Donald Michael Lee, saw. If one’s Asian, he could’ve used the Cantonese word, faideela, that Lee heard.”

  Frames held up one hand. “Okay. A minute ago, you guys are jerking me around about the old Mercedes? How’d these guys get from a silver Jag to a 1960 Mercedes?”

  “The uniforms are still processing the DMV search for the Mercedes owner,” Coyle said. “Lot of phone calls.”

  Rivas went to the whiteboard. Across the top, the countdown to another possible homicide now said thirty-one hours. Rivas pointed to a timeline written in marker. “Here’s what we know. According to Alvarez, last Tuesday, Elise Durand meets her at Becker’s downtown and has something that looks like blood on her sweater. On Saturday night, our victim is with three men making a drug buy. According to the roommates, on Sunday night, she’s home.

  “Monday morning she drives to work. Security camera in the parking garage shows her arriving at 8:53 a.m. Her boss, Craig Lerner, and the admin confirm she’s in the office all day. Lobby camera shows her leaving the building about noon and returning ten minutes later with some takeout. Admin says no one visits her all day, but she does receive phone calls. We’re still processing calls received on the office line, but she could also have taken calls on her cell, which we never found. Martin’s also going to go through her office hard drive to look for emails. Then at 5:40 p.m., the office lobby camera shows her leaving the building.”

  “So she leaves out the front door, not to the parking garage to her own car?” Mahler asked.

  Rivas nodded. “That’s right. Someone picked her up or she walked downtown. In any case, she left her car in the garage.”

  Coyle looked at his laptop. “Trish says the bruising around the cut on the back of the victim’s head indicates that wound was made not by a weapon but by striking a sharp surface, probably post-mortem, after she was strangled. By the way, she also says the cause of death was compression of the larynx and fracturing of the hyoid bone by manual strangulation. The area and angle of the attack indicate it was administered from the front of the victim. No evidence of ligature marks, indicating no use of a rope or cord.” Coyle looked up at Mahler. “So the cause of death is different from the girls two years ago.”

  Mahler looked back at Coyle for a moment. Then he walked across the room and leaned against the far wall. “Daniel, check to see if the victim’s car has been towed to our garage. Martin, when you go through the victim’s hard drives, look for anything on this boyfriend with the silver Jaguar. If she’s doing freelance work for him, there’s bound to be files with a name.”

  Mahler turned to leave and then called back for Frames. “Come on, hot shot. Let’s see if your favorite suspect has a lawyer.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  (i)

  (WEDNESDAY, 5:37 P.M.)

  Eden stood in front of the apartment door as a woman opened it just wide enough to peer out.

  “Detective Somers, Santa Rosa Police Department.” Eden held up her badge. “Does Irwin Partridge live here?”

  The woman gripped the door. “This is Win’s place, but he’s not here right now.” She was short, with unevenly bleached hair. A thin scar traced a line above her left eyebrow.

  Eden nodded. “What’s your name?”

  “Lorin Albright. I’m his girlfriend. What do you want?”

  “Just routine. May I ask you a few questions about Mr. Partridge?”

  “You have any papers that let you come in here if I don’t want you to?”

  “Papers? You mean a warrant? No, I’m not here to search your house.”

  “I guess it’s okay.” Albright let the door swing open. She turned and walked back into the apartment.

  Eden followed her, entering the living room, a dark space with curtained windows and a stained brown carpet. A TV stood on a pedestal table at one end, playing an episode of Law & Order. Arranged around the TV were a high-backed sofa, two mismatched chairs, and a coffee table. The room was warm and smelled of mildew.

  Albright sat on the sofa and picked up an already burning cigarette from an ashtray. She inhaled deeply, blowing smoke toward the ceiling. “Win’s coming home soon. And just so you know, he doesn’t like the police. He told me that. It would be real good if you weren’t here when he gets home.”

  Eden made a space for herself on one of the chairs by pushing aside a pile of clothes. She took a pad from her jacket pocket. “I understand. Was Mr. Partridge home on Monday evening?”

  “Most nights he goes out to drink. I watch the TV, and he doesn’t like the TV.”

  “So on Monday evening, he wasn’t at home? He was out…drinking?”

  “I don’t remember exactly, but I guess he was. That’s what he usually does.”

  “And you weren’t with him?”

  Albright took another long draw on her cigarette. She blew out the smoke. “No. Mondays, there’s the Idol program I like to see.”

  Eden wrote on her pad.

  “What’d you just write? Are you writing what I say?”

  “Just taking notes.”

  Eden wondered at the apartment’s ordinariness. The sofa was covered in a print of faded dahlias. The wall behind the sofa held a framed winter landscape and a clock with a painted rooster. Was this the house of a serial killer? What did she expect? Body parts on the bookshelf? “When Mr. Partridge goes out, does he go by himself or with a friend?”

  “Alone, I guess. He never says. I don’t care for it myself. I worked at a bar for a while and saw enough of those people. On Fridays, Win and me go to Applebee’s. The other nights I have my programs.”

  “Do you remember what time Mr. Partridge returned Monday evening?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t keep track like that.”

  “Were you still awake when he returned?”

  Albright drew on her cigarette and shrugged. “I think I was. I was watching the news, so it must’ve been around eleven.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Pretty sure. What’s this about anyway?”

  Loud voices suddenly erupted on the TV, and both women turned to watch. Briscoe and Green were questioning a teenage suspect on a street corner. Green shoved the suspect against a wall, and Briscoe tried to restrain his partner.

  Eden looked back at Albright. “It’s importa
nt we understand where Mr. Partridge was that night.”

  “Are you trying to say he did something?” Albright jabbed her cigarette into the bottom of the ashtray. “Lady, you really ought to get out of here before he comes through that door. He’ll be real mad at me just for letting you in.”

  Hearing the other woman’s suspicion, Eden thought of her own mother. Madeline Somers of Ridgefield, Connecticut, lived under one guiding principle of upper-middle-class manners—other people’s private lives are their own affair. Here was her oldest daughter poking into a couple’s life. “Did Mr. Partridge say anything when he came home Monday night?”

  “He said he saw the Giants game at the bar.”

  “What was his mood like?”

  “His mood? How the hell should I know? You’re just like Win said. He told me law enforcement has it out for him. They’re always after him for something.”

  “How long have you known Mr. Partridge?”

  “A long time. Twelve years or so. Win’s an honest man. He has a job and works hard. He made a mistake years ago, is all. He told me all about it.”

  Eden looked at a poster on the living room’s other long wall. It was a colorful, ornate print of a man sitting cross-legged, hands in his lap. “That’s an unusual picture,” Eden said.

  Albright turned to look. “Creepy, if you ask me. But it’s kind of a big deal for Win. Something called Kundalini. When Win got out of prison, a friend started him on it. Gives him power, Win says.”

  Eden wrote on her pad.

  “Now what’re you writing?”

  “Just some notes.”

  “Listen, Detective whatever you are, I wouldn’t be here asking all these questions and writing stuff when Win comes home. I already told you he doesn’t like you cops. It’s just the way he is.” Albright walked to the door and opened it.

  Eden stood. “I notice, Ms. Albright, you have an unusual accent, not like the other Californians I’ve met. May I ask where you’re from?”