A Killing in China Basin

by Kirk Russell

  ‘Then they know where he is.’ Sanchez again.

  ‘They say it’s not unusual for him to hole up with his laptop and work on a problem.’

  Raveneau gave more back story on Stoltz and when the conversation moved to Jacie Bates there was no way to avoid the Oakland detectives’ interest in Bates. Everyone agreed more information was needed about the shooting of Becker’s brother and grumbled as the meeting broke up that the brass formed the task force in a knee-jerk response to the media.

  A few minutes later la Rosa tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Captain Ramirez and Deputy-chief Grainer want me to go to lunch with them.’

  She was gone an hour and a half. When she returned he guessed from her expression that they’d made her some sort of offer.

  ‘They want me to act as spokesperson for the task force.’

  ‘Are you good with that?’

  ‘I said I’d do it. Am I good with it, I don’t know. That’s a lot of cameras across the street. I’m a little scared.’

  She downplayed it, though sounding excited, and it was clear she’d been given a career pep talk and the point had gotten made that how she handled herself in the swirl of media attention would count for a lot later. Careers got made in crisis situations. Everything became larger than life. That’s what drew the brass this morning.

  Raveneau stayed at his desk that afternoon. He phoned a cop in Concord that he knew had friends on the Walnut Creek force. In 1988 an undercover San Francisco officer was killed in Walnut Creek and some strain remained ever since between the departments. He was hoping his friend in Concord had a route to the detectives assigned the Becker shooting. Turned out his friend didn’t know the detectives personally, but knew someone who did and made the call. He called back an hour later.

  ‘They’re looking at an ex-boyfriend neighbor of Alan Becker’s daughter because your lieutenant’s brother and the boyfriend got in a shoving match over the daughter two months ago. Alan Becker called the police and threatened the kid with a restraining order. And Sunday night a neighbor saw a man on a bicycle around the time of the attempted murder. Evidently, this kid is an avid cyclist, so they’ve taken his bike and all the associated clothing, shoes, helmets, everything. They also found his recreational drug stash and they’re holding him with that.’

  ‘They’ve questioned him?’

  ‘Sure. But he’s watching the same news reports they are about a mysterious killer targeting SF homicide inspectors and their families. He’s keeping his mouth shut. What’s it like where you are?’

  ‘We’re trying to connect the dots.’

  ‘Well, hang in there. I’ll call you if I hear anything more.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Stoltz family owned a small house in wooded hills west of the Napa Valley. The house sat well back from the road hidden from passing cars by a stand of oaks. Stoltz liked the house. He felt comfortable here. For hours he worked at the kitchen table with his laptop in front of him, and gave only occasional thought to the homicide inspectors. He was good at compartmentalizing things.

  When he turned the TV on and Raveneau’s partner, Elizabeth la Rosa, was saying they’d just like to talk to him, it was for a moment as if she was speaking about another person, not him. She looked poised in front of the camera. She looked like a natural and spoke as though personally to him, asking that he just come in and talk with them. After that, she took questions, and answered with the usual police evasiveness.

  ‘Do the San Francisco police believe he should be questioned regarding the Walnut Creek shooting?’ she was asked.

  ‘We’d like to talk to him about a number of things.’

  ‘Do you have proof the Walnut Creek shooting is connected to the two murders?’

  ‘We haven’t connected the murder of Jacie Bates to Inspector Whitacre’s death. We have ongoing investigations and many open questions. We need the public’s help in locating Mr Stoltz and convincing him to talk with us.’

  ‘Are you aware the Walnut Creek police arrested a suspect an hour ago?’

  ‘Yes, we’re aware they have a person of interest.’

  ‘Do you have any comment about that arrest?’

  ‘No.’

  The press conference ended and then his face was on the screen with the announcer saying, ‘Police are looking for help finding this man. Anyone who has seen him is urged to call—’

  He left the TV and walked to the window. He looked through the trees to the driveway, wondering if they knew he was here. This wasn’t exactly a secret site. His mother paid property taxes. The house was in her name.

  When he returned to the TV the report was over. They’d moved on to sports. Stoltz sat down and closed his eyes. So he was their prime suspect just as he’d known he would be, and they were trying him in the press because that’s the way the system works. Later, he’d sue them and win, and wasn’t that what he’d wanted? It had to end the way it was supposed to, which had nothing to do with the San Francisco police.

  He listened to a branch scraping the roof and tried to think it through. The growing media presence was a factor that he needed to adjust to. If the media stayed with this story she might become aware. She might figure it out. She might know he was coming for her.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The next morning a partial toxicology report on Alex Jurika came in. Full screen would take another four to six weeks. Raveneau read through it and then handed the report to la Rosa. Jurika had a common date-rape drug, a horse tranquilizer, Ketamine, in her system. That was the most significant finding.

  La Rosa read and stated flatly, ‘Heilbron,’ and Raveneau didn’t respond. Ketamine was in her system but she wasn’t raped. Was a sexual assault interrupted? Did she asphyxiate too soon and Heilbron lost interest in sex as he’d described, or was it a mistake to connect Ketamine to its usual companion, rape?

  ‘Here’s a different angle,’ Raveneau said. ‘Let’s say there’s no sexual element and the Ketamine was for a different purpose entirely.’

  ‘For what, then?’

  ‘To loosen her up and get her to talk about the credit fraud and identity theft businesses. Suppose someone wanted to gain control over her and in a drugged state get her to answer questions. So they brought her there, drugged her, and questioned her before killing her. Money as a motive.’

  ‘There are all kinds of other places easier than that building.’

  ‘True, but what if whoever wanted the information also planned to kill her afterwards? Then the building works well, or well enough. A filthy mattress used by junkies and whores puts a different spin on it.’

  ‘I like Heilbron,’ she answered. ‘I see him masturbating rather than raping her, and not leaving DNA evidence behind. He’s a voyeur. We know that about him already. It’s not hard to picture him getting aroused watching, same as he probably does driving around and filming. And he’s weirdly fixated on that building. I’m back to believing it could be him and he purposely misled us with the wrong room and wire instead of rope. He’s played us.’

  They continued the debate on the drive over to Jurika’s apartment. Gloria was out front when they arrived. Her sister’s body was released to her this morning and she had asked to meet at the apartment. Raveneau wasn’t sure what that was about, but once they got inside she confessed, ‘I knew more than I told you last time. The cousin I told you about, Julie, she told me that she and Alex have used other people’s credit cards for years. She bragged about it when I confronted her in Phoenix. She said she didn’t think it was wrong since the cardholder doesn’t get stuck with the bill. She thought it was OK to cheat the credit card company.’

  ‘You more or less did tell us that,’ Raveneau said, ‘and we figured out the rest.’

  ‘Last January, Julie showed up in Los Angeles in a new full length leather coat, and I mean a really nice coat, light, high quality leather, a really pretty black – a five thousand dollar coat. I threatened her with all kinds of things and that’s when she told me her part
was to keep an apartment rented where the credit card bills came and to pay them online under an account opened in a false name. She also told me the cards all came from older people with money. They had some way of getting them. If you want me to, I’ll call her right now.’

  Now she had their attention. Raveneau was quiet waiting for more when la Rosa said, ‘Why don’t I call her? I’ve talked to her already. She knows me.’

  She pulled her phone out and sat down on a kitchen chair. Raveneau watched her punch the numbers in, heard a faint ringing and la Rosa asked, ‘Is this Julie? It is, good, because this is Inspector la Rosa in San Francisco.’

  La Rosa caught Raveneau’s eye and speaking to Julie Candiff said, ‘You remember me. That’s wonderful. What’s your day like tomorrow, Julie? We need you to fly out here tomorrow unless you want to come here this afternoon. We’re standing here with Gloria and she’s just told us what you told her and that means you lied to me, which really makes me angry. We’re trying to solve the murder of your cousin and you’re obstructing justice. We can contact the Phoenix police and ask them to help us, or you can book a flight and call me back and tell me what time you’re going to get in. What do you want to do?’

  Raveneau didn’t have to overhear much conversation to realize Julie wasn’t going for the idea of flying here.

  ‘OK, then should I ask the Phoenix police to pick you up and hold you for us?’ la Rosa asked. She was still on the phone with her when Raveneau moved into Alex’s bedroom with Gloria, who sat down on the bed and started to cry.

  ‘I always thought it would be OK in the end. I thought she would eventually come home and somehow she’d turn back into the sweet little sister I used to have. I really don’t understand what happened to her.’

  She pulled hair back from her face. She wiped her eyes.

  ‘There’s something else. I told you she emailed me and asked to borrow money, but I didn’t tell you that she also called me. That was two days before she died. She called me at work and I wouldn’t take her call.’

  Now she wept, her face in her hands, and Raveneau sat down on the bed alongside her. For several minutes he didn’t say anything. He just sat with her. Then as she got a hold of herself he spoke.

  ‘I had an older brother named Donny and we went everywhere together as kids. He was two and a half years older and I was always trying to keep up and compete with him. Donny got drafted and sent to Vietnam when he was nineteen. Before he went to boot camp he was this happy go lucky, handsome young kid the girls fell all over because he could also play the guitar like nothing else and was in a band. When he came back from Nam he was completely changed and had a heroin habit. He’d become an addict, or was well on his way to becoming one. That was right about when I decided I was going to travel around the world alone. I’d saved my money and took off. I left and traveled for three years, working some places and getting along. I lost touch with him, probably because I wanted to.

  ‘When I got home in 1979 Donny was strung out on dope, skinny as a rail, filthy and wearing dirty rags. He didn’t have a job or money, and our dad wouldn’t let him in the house any more, which killed my mother, and I mean, I think it really did kill her. I was still talking to Donny, though he called me Officer Pig by then. I’d signed up with the San Francisco Police Department. He’d tell me it was an affectionate term but there was nothing affectionate in it, and the brother I’d grown up so close to, I could hardly stand to be around any more.

  ‘Then over a period of about three weeks, I got five or six desperate calls from him. I was working graveyard at the time, just trying to figure out how to be a police officer and where I fit in. My hours were messed up, so I used that as a reason why I didn’t get around to calling him back. Besides, it wasn’t the first time he’d been desperate. Most of the time what he was desperate for was money so he could buy a fix. And it’s not like I hadn’t tried hard to get him into a program where he could break his addiction. Either way, I didn’t return his calls.

  ‘It was his last call that haunted me for years. I had an answering machine and saved the tape with Donny’s call and I’d get drunk and replay it over and over, trying to hear what I should have heard. He made that call one night before driving out to the Golden Gate Bridge and parking on the Marin side. Then he walked out just past the north tower and jumped from a spot where he and I once saw a businessman from Cleveland jump off when we were kids. There were witnesses, and I know he did that to communicate with me that he hadn’t lost his mind and that he still remembered everything. He parked his car in the same slot that guy had so long ago. That was his message to me.

  ‘Donny’s body washed up on the Marin side and I was the one to identify it. It tore me apart for a long time, so I know something of what you’re feeling.’

  When she lowered a hand he took it in his, something he never would have done a decade ago. Her body shook and Raveneau sat next to her as she wept for the way things had turned out, for the sister she’d lost, for everything that hadn’t been the way she had dreamed it would be.

  THIRTY-NINE

  When they left Gloria Jurika, la Rosa and Raveneau were talking. They were getting somewhere. A theft ring inside an elderly care business, Alex Jurika with a history of credit theft and a sudden need for substantial money from her sister – more things were going together if not fitting together. It felt like they were brushing along the edge of solving this case.

  As they got back to the Hall, Raveneau fielded a call from Deborah Lafaye, the woman with the charity foundation. She wanted to go to lunch with him and him alone, pointedly saying, ‘Without your partner.’

  He talked that over with la Rosa; then he met Lafaye at Slanted Door in the Ferry Building. She had already sat down at a booth. He slid in on the other side. From the booth they could look out across the bay. With the clouds the water was a gray-green and then bright again where the sun broke through.

  ‘I wanted to have lunch with you because I didn’t get the impression you understand how much information is out there and how easily it moves around now.’

  ‘Will that help us solve Alex Jurika’s murder?’

  ‘It might. She was very tuned into the online world, and I don’t mean to offend you but I got the impression when we met that you might not realize how easily information about other people can be gathered now. So to make a point I’ve learned some things about you. I spent half an hour alone on a computer to do this. Do you want to hear what I learned?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Your ex-wife lives in New York and has severe osteoporosis. I know some of the drugs she’s taking, and you do as well. You’ve paid over twenty thousand in the last eighteen months for drugs for her. I found that out searching medical resources we’re dialed into at the foundation.

  ‘I know you like wine. You belong to two local wine clubs. It turns out certain types of wine drinkers tend to donate to foundations like mine so we track the club lists. We pay a fee and get their lists.’

  The waiter arrived and after they ordered she started on the interconnectivity of the Internet again. She was accustomed to having people listen to her, but Raveneau wasn’t that interested in a lecture today. He glanced out of the windows and followed the gray suspension span of the Bay Bridge.

  ‘I’m boring you.’

  ‘There’s a lot going on today.’

  ‘And you think I’m full of myself. You don’t know why I’m going on about Internet connectivity. You think I suggested lunch to make sure you don’t suspect me.’

  ‘I think you’re smarter than that.’

  Raveneau ate Vietnamese rice cakes with rock shrimp and mung beans. Other than a glass of a Sauvignon blanc, Lafaye had ordered next to nothing.

  ‘I invited you to lunch because I’ve known Alex longer and better than the impression I left you with. When she worked for me she was on the computer looking for that connectivity I was boring you with. I didn’t know it at the time but Alex was already looking for that same conn
ectivity in the market for identity theft.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘Actually, it came up in a joking way one night when I said that I needed another identity, including a passport for traveling in countries where my real name could put me in danger. I’ve been very active trying to shut down illegal trade in human organs and other things like aid dollars that end up buying Mercedes instead of medicine for poor children. Things that could get me killed. My name is known some places and combined with the foundation website and the growth of the Internet I wasn’t as anonymous traveling as I used to be. Some areas became dangerous to go to with the reputation I’d started to get.’

  ‘So Alex got you a false identity.’

  ‘Yes. She knew someone who wanted to shed their current identity. I bought that identity so I could use it when I traveled in certain countries, and I only did it after there’d been an attempt to kill me. Mind you, this was quite a few years ago.’

  Lafaye held her hands up, showed her fingertips, the scarring and deformation.

  ‘I did a lot of things that seem crazy now, but one thing I knew was I didn’t want this to happen again because I got recognized in the wrong locale. If you want to travel with me I’ll introduce you to a man named Huarang. He did the manicure work on my hands, though we’re on speaking terms now.

  ‘Huarang deals in organs, mostly kidneys, but he’ll get you a young healthy heart if you need a transplant. He’s very computer literate, or the people who work for him are, and they’re adept at locating potential donors by scouring hospital records. They match donors to recipients via databases they’ve built up during the years he’s been collecting UN money to inoculate and do blood tests at his clinic. He also gets grants from the Red Cross. In fact, his clinics do many good things. With me, he’s happy to provide the names of competitors.’

  ‘Now you can lecture me; how does it work with a kidney?’