He dragged Rivas down the hallway to a utility closet. Using a passcode reader app, he unlocked the door. Inside the small room, Victor heaved Rivas against a floor polisher. Rivas groaned. His broken leg was bent under his body. Victor removed his belt from Rivas and fastened it around his own waist. Unsnapping the detective’s gun from its holster, Victor jammed it into his waistband behind his back. Finished, he climbed over Rivas and closed the door.
As Victor turned away from the utility closet, he noticed a young woman coming toward him from the end of the corridor. She was texting as she walked. Victor smiled and nodded. “How’s it going?” The woman didn’t look up.
At the elevators, he stood with his back to the wall to hide the gun. He waited until the young woman took an elevator down. Victor took the next one up.
On the thirty-seventh floor, he opened his phone to see the condo webcams. He flipped through images until he reached the living room. He saw Detective Holland lying still on the floor. Russell was not in view.
He tapped the screen to call Russell’s cell. The phone rang four times and went to voicemail.
Victor went back to the webcam screens for the other rooms in the apartment: kitchen, dining room, master bedroom, guest bedroom, office.
All empty.
Where the fuck was Russell? He stared at his screen.
Did he leave the apartment? Why didn’t he answer his cell?
Victor checked the webcam screens for the remaining rooms: Guest bathroom empty. Laundry room empty. Balcony.
The image for the balcony was missing.
(ii)
(FRIDAY, 10:57 A.M.)
Eden led Gina Cipriani up the stairs of the apartment complex, where they found Lorin Albright on the third-floor landing smoking a cigarette. Eden watched Albright’s attention focus on the larger, uniformed officer.
“This is Officer Cipriani,” Eden said.
Albright took a deep drag, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth. “You bring her along to arrest me for something?”
“No. We have some questions.”
“What if I don’t answer? You going to have this one lay a beating on me? Win says you people like to beat on folks.”
Defiance flashed in Albright’s eyes, the practiced toughness of someone used to getting hit. But Eden saw something weak in the gesture, too, and the surrender waiting behind it. She recognized in Albright’s face, old at thirty, and in her ragged, half-bleached hair, the woman’s sadness, her concession to what she had learned to be her place in the world. “The last time I was here, Ms. Albright, you said you’re from Fresno and you go there on holidays to visit your mother and grandmother.”
“What of it?”
“You said sometimes your boyfriend, Irwin Partridge, goes with you. Is that right?”
“Sometimes. Win and me go lots of places.” Albright flicked her cigarette ash against the railing.
“We want to ask you about Fresno,” Cipriani said.
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“Can we go inside and talk?” Eden asked.
Albright lifted her chin. “Tell me what you want right here.”
“It’s about a young woman who was killed in Fresno in 2017. Sandra Avelos.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I’m not going to talk about it, neither.”
“She was strangled. Her killer was never found.”
“I got nothing to say.”
“Day after the murder, the Fresno police set up a phone tip line for the public to call in information.”
“So?” Albright dragged again on her cigarette.
“The following night a young woman called the tip line and said she had information about the killing. She told the officer her boyfriend came home the night of the murder and was acting funny. He was wild and angry.”
“You’re making this up,” Albright said.
“The caller said her boyfriend hit her and cut her with a knife.”
“I don’t know anything about this. You all have no right coming here and talking to me like this.”
“The cut was a single mark at the bottom of her back. The caller told the officer her boyfriend cut her there. She was afraid of what he’d do.”
Cipriani stepped toward Albright. “I’m the one you spoke to. I was the officer on the line.”
Albright looked up at Cipriani with confusion. “That…thing was in Fresno, not here.”
“I was a police officer in Fresno then. I was on the tip line that night. You spoke to me.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“We didn’t,” Eden said. “Until now.”
“You shit-bastards.” Albright threw her cigarette down to the parking lot. “All you cops. You’re shit-bastards.”
“Tell me what your boyfriend did that night,” Cipriani said. “He’s involved in other murders. You know that now, right?”
“I don’t have to tell you nothing.”
“The mark he cut on your back, the same mark was on Sandra Avelos,” Eden said. “It was on two girls killed here in Santa Rosa and one in Vallejo.”
Albright backed away from Eden. “Those things weren’t my fault. Don’t make it sound like they were.”
Eden could see the woman’s fight was gone. “All right. But you need to tell us everything you know. Right now.”
“Win’ll find out,” Albright said. “He’ll know I told you. He said if I opened my mouth about him cutting me, he’d off me. He knows things. Even if I don’t say, he looks at me and knows things.”
“Then come with us,” Cipriani said. “We’ll take you someplace safe.”
“He’ll find me, wherever I go. Win finds girls. That’s what he does.”
“We can get a court order,” Eden said. “Do you know what that is? A judge’ll sign a piece of paper that says you have to tell us what you know. And you’ll have to let a medical examiner see your back. If you refuse, you’ll go to jail.”
“He was drunk. He said he made a mistake.” Tears rolled down Albright’s face. “He didn’t mean to kill that girl. He said…if I told anyone he’d kill me, too. I didn’t know where to go or who to tell. I called that night, but then he found me. I lied to him. I was so scared. Every day I was scared. He said he’d choke me like that girl and put my body somewhere my mom would never find it. My body’d be alone in a hole. Nobody would ever know.”
Cipriani bent close to Albright. “He’s not going to hurt you. You understand? We’re going to get you somewhere safe, and we’re going to arrest your boyfriend. But you have to tell us what you know.”
Albright wiped her arm across her nose. “I’ll tell you, but I won’t be safe. It don’t matter where you hide me or where you lock him up. And he’ll come after you, too.” Albright looked at Eden. “He don’t like you. He told me.”
At the words, Eden felt herself stiffen. She took a breath. “We’re going to arrest him, Lorin. He won’t bother anyone.”
“It won’t never be over with him,” Albright said. “Never. There’s ones he’s killed the police don’t even know about. When it comes to killing a girl, Win’s smart. He’s smarter than all of you put together.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
(i)
(FRIDAY, 11:15 A.M.)
Victor ran down the corridor of the thirty-seventh floor, past the front door to his condo, to the end of the hall and the rear entrance. He tapped his phone and looked at the webcam feed for the space just inside the rear entrance, a laundry room. It was empty. He scanned his keycard in the lock and stepped inside.
Moving noiselessly across the small room, he stopped at the inner door and listened. Music played inside the condo—Imagine Dragons, blasting “Radioactive.” He pulled Rivas’s gun from behind his back and flipped off the safety. In
his other hand, he held the phone. The webcam feed showed the next room, the master bedroom, was empty.
Victor silently opened the door and walked onto the bedroom’s thick carpeting. The vertical blinds on the floor-to-ceiling glass windows were turned to reveal a view of blue sky and the top of Renaissance Tower a block away. He remembered the first time he had looked out this window. Cressida, their boozy Realtor, giving them the pre-bid tour. “Here’s what you’ll see, boys, when you wake up each morning,” she said, with a sly wink at the sleeping arrangements. The view from the window was like looking out of a plane. Some days Victor stood in front of the glass for half an hour, watching the clouds change, following one car after another on Mission Street.
On the bedside table, Russell’s coffee mug sat with his own teacup, left there an hour earlier—a lifetime ago. Was their plan unraveling? If the cops showed up, he and Russell had agreed to escape if they could. Packed bags and fake passports waited in the living room. Flight from SFO to Bangkok. Be on the beach in Ko Lanta in two days.
He could run now. Back down the elevator to the car. But where the fuck was Russell? He felt the urge to call out for him, but some caution warned against it.
Looking down at his phone, he saw the webcam feed for the living room. The cop Holland was lying still beside the sofa. The rest of the room was empty.
Victor walked into the living room. The sofa had been pushed a few feet from its usual spot, the chair beside it overturned. Signs of a struggle. He examined the cop. Holland was breathing but unconscious. A red welt was visible on his forehead; a path of dried blood ran under his nose and across one cheek. Victor pictured Russell’s head kick, a sudden backward spin that Holland saw too late.
Imagine Dragons were on to “Demons.” Victor tried to listen for other sounds. He thought of turning down the music but decided to let it play.
Any moment Russell would call and say he was in the Mercedes, engine idling on Spear, telling Victor it was time to go.
On his phone Victor viewed the dining room, guest bedroom, and office. All empty.
Victor raised his gun and walked to the kitchen. He leaned over the counter to see into the room’s blind spot, the galley space in front of the stove and refrigerator. Nothing.
He checked the time. Twelve minutes since he’d left Rivas’s body in the utility closet. How long before someone found the cop or he regained consciousness? How long before someone noticed the blood on the elevator floor?
Victor looked back the way he had come—through the living room, where he and Russell had spent fifty grand decorating to impress their guests. A lot of good it did now. Soon the cop on the living-room floor would regain consciousness, and Victor would have to make another decision.
The emptiness of the condo was a puzzle. He remembered Ben, sitting behind his own house in Dry Creek Valley two nights earlier, saying how much he hated people who solved puzzles. The real creativity was in making the mystery, not solving it. Fucking Ben. Why had they helped him? All he cared about was showing how smart he was.
Suddenly, Victor saw something. At the far end of the kitchen countertop lay Russell’s phone. He stared at it. Why was the phone there? Russell never went anywhere without his phone. At least now he knew Russell would not be calling.
Only one part of the condo remained to check—the balcony. Victor walked to the balcony door and looked at his phone. The webcam feed for the balcony was missing. It had happened once before during a rainstorm, when the wind dislodged the camera’s wiring.
Victor shoved his phone in his pocket and reached for the door handle. He felt tired. The nights without sleep, the things they had done—all of it settled on him.
He pointed his gun ahead of him and opened the door. A cold wind blew across the waist-high glass wall. The curving superstructure of the Bay Bridge was visible in the distance and, across the bay, the low hills of Oakland.
Russell stood in the corner of the balcony, bracing himself against the wall. The wind whipped his hair and billowed his shirt. He faced Victor but didn’t speak. His eyes were open wide, frozen.
The moment Victor stepped toward Russell, he felt the tip of a gun barrel pressed against the back of his head. “Right about now,” a voice behind him said, “I’ll bet you’re thinking, ‘Who–the–fuck–is–this?’”
Victor looked straight ahead at Russell watching him. “First things first,” the voice instructed. “Let’s put that gun on the floor so no one gets hurt.”
Victor bent slowly. He placed Rivas’s Sig on the balcony floor and stood up. The man behind him kicked the Sig out of sight. The whole time, the gun barrel remained pressed against his head. “Now, to answer your question,” the voice said, “I’m the asshole with the Charger, the one where you put the two dogs. Remember that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Victor croaked. His mouth was dry.
“Dogs on speed,” Frames said. “Funny stuff. We all had a good laugh about that one, didn’t we?”
Victor felt Frames lean close. “But now, bright boy, it’s time to be serious for a minute. Your friend Russell and I were just discussing whether it’s better to be shot trying to avoid arrest or take your chances jumping off this balcony. I told him any dope can be shot, but how many times in your life do you get to jump off the thirty-seventh floor? I mean, how do you really know you can’t fly?”
“You won’t shoot us,” Victor said, trying to sound firm. “We’re unarmed.”
“Seriously? Man, you were armed until ten seconds ago. So was your little buddy. That means I have guns with your prints. Besides, Russell showed me how to disconnect the security camera out here. So who’s to know? It’s you, me, and the fucking seagulls.”
Frames’s voice in Victor’s ear was dead calm. “But before we watch Russell over there test the laws of gravity, I’ve got another question for you, bright boy. Since you’re carrying a gun belonging to Sergeant Daniel Rivas, I have to ask, how is he?
“Reason I’m asking, sport,” Frames said, “I’m trying to decide where to put this gun when I pull the trigger. See, if Rivas is just unconscious, like, say, Kenny Holland back inside there, I’m going to put the end of this gun between your legs and shoot your balls off. Trust me, you’re not going to need them in prison. But now, if Rivas is dead, I’m going to leave the gun where it is and pull the trigger. I’ll be honest with you. You take the Glock’s caliber and being this close up, the round’s going to set your hair on fire going in and make a hole the size of a baseball on its way out.”
The gun barrel pressed harder against Victor’s head. “So let me ask you again, bright boy. How’s Daniel Rivas?”
(ii)
(FRIDAY, 11:28 A.M.)
Mahler drove into the parking lot of Creekside Apartments. A police unit was parked at the base of the stairs. A tall female officer stood next to a young woman and two other uniformed officers. At the far end of the lot, Eden sat in her car.
Mahler parked beside Eden and climbed in next to her. “That Lorin Albright?”
“Yeah.” Eden stared ahead. “The female officer is Gina Cipriani, the one I was telling you about. Albright gave up Partridge. Told us about Sandra Avelos, the girl in Fresno.”
“She knew Partridge killed her?”
“Partridge told her. Said it was a mistake…an accident. Told Albright he followed Avelos in the park. Got angry she wasn’t cautious. Wanted to show Avelos how vulnerable she was, but when he put the cord around her neck, she fought back. According to Partridge, the whole thing was Avelos’s fault.”
“What’d Albright say about Partridge cutting her own back?”
“After he killed Avelos, Partridge went back to Albright’s mother’s house. The mother and grandmother were watching TV in the living room, and he found Albright alone in her bedroom. She asked him a few questions about where he was, but to Partridge, this sounded like
an interrogation. He hit her on the side of the head with a closed fist. She lost consciousness. When she woke, she was facedown on the bed and he was on top of her. He cut her back, like the women he strangled.”
Mahler raised his eyebrows. “He did all this with mom and grandmom in the next room watching TV?”
“Apparently. But at some point, Partridge had enough awareness to know he couldn’t kill Albright without being discovered. He told her about Avelos and said she’s next if she tells anyone. He said he’d find her wherever she hides.”
“She believed him.”
Eden nodded. “She believed him.”
Mahler studied the group across the lot. His migraine had eased. The scotoma was gone. But he knew the relief was temporary. “We’ll need to get her full testimony,” he said.
“What’ll happen to her?”
Mahler shrugged. “Depends what she tells us.”
“Can we arrest Partridge now?”
“I sent Martin to do it as soon as I got your call,” Mahler said. “He’s making the arrest where Partridge works, a big box store called Brenners, off the freeway. Couple more units’ll be behind him.”
“You know Partridge’s there?”
“I’ve had Tom Woodhouse keeping an eye on him. Since last night.”
“Tom? Why since last night?”
“After we met Partridge in the parking garage, I wanted to keep track of him.”
Eden studied Mahler’s face. “You mean after he threatened me?”
“Okay, yeah, after he threatened you.”
“Would you have done that if he threatened Martin or Daniel?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. The point is, Detective Somers, you’re the one who pissed him off, because you worked the case.”
“Yeah, Albright just said Partridge would come after me.”
Mahler shrugged. “See what I mean?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Woodhouse watching Partridge?”
“I don’t know. I should have.”
They watched Cipriani help Albright into the unit.
The Silenced Women Page 29