A Killing in China Basin

by Kirk Russell

  But now it clicked it was the computer geek calling about Stoltz’s encryption. They must be through the second firewall.

  ‘You said call you no matter what the hour.’

  ‘Yeah, and thanks for calling. Did you get through?’

  ‘We got through but I’ve never seen anything like this. We can read stuff, but it doesn’t stick. It’s like the program is a living thing and it adapts to us. We’re reading sentences and then they start scrambling, you know, going away again.’

  ‘What have you read?’

  ‘Things that are like observations of people and feelings he had, maybe after killing someone. We can only get it to hold for five seconds or so and then the program takes over again. I need somebody better than me to look at this.’

  ‘I’ll come in.’

  ‘No, I mean someone that understands encryption.’

  ‘I mean I’m coming in to read what I can.’

  Streetlights blurred a syrupy yellow-orange in fog and his car climbed from shadow into light and the streets were empty as he drove toward Bryant. He called la Rosa.

  ‘They’re through the firewall, but there are problems still.’

  And maybe it was the fog, but as he waited briefly for la Rosa downstairs at the Hall, the dream returned and Donny and the new girlfriend, Elena, came out of the trees. He told them about the heavyset guy who’d run when the motorcycle cop drove up and Elena put her arm around him and said, you’re so cute. He closed and with Donny leading and Elena behind him, they dropped down off the Heights, hugging the rock wall, staying on the Presidio side.

  Raveneau shook the dream off but remembered how it had gone. The next day, Sunday, there’d been news about a cab driver murdered at the corner of Washington and Cherry Streets. He’d heard it first on his clock radio, on KFRC, before watching a TV report. Whoever the cab driver had picked up had probably killed him, and later that night after their dad got off his shift he told them that the police were initially given the wrong description, which was why the killer had gotten away. They’d been looking for a NMA, a Negro Male Adult, when they should have been looking for a Caucasian.

  He’d debated telling his dad about the guy who’d come into the Julius Kahn playground, but he and Donny weren’t supposed to be out and they’d just gone a month of being grounded for a six-pack of Hamm’s beer their mom had found in their room. He would have grounded them for another couple of months, so Raveneau had written an anonymous letter to the homicide detail. He mailed it Monday morning before school and years later realized that was the moment he’d started toward a homicide career.

  The next day, Tuesday, October 14, 1969, a different letter had arrived, this one to the San Francisco Chronicle, and Raveneau didn’t hold that letter in his hand until after he had his homicide star and his father had retired and Donny was dead. The envelope had been addressed with blue felt tip. Where the return address should have been was a crossed circle. That letter was still with the Zodiac binders. Raveneau had pored over all of them, but knew that particular letter word for word. It started this way:

  This is the Zodiac speaking

  I am the murderer of the

  taxi driver over by

  Washington St & Maple St last

  night . . .

  FIFTY-FOUR

  ‘This is the most recent entry,’ the tech said. ‘Ready to question her.’

  As Raveneau read the phrase vanished and reassembled as numbers.

  ‘Wild, huh, look how it morphs, weird,’ the tech said, and his fingers went rapidly over the keyboard. He glanced up several times at the screen and then was in the file again and quickly scrolled.

  ‘I’ll come back for her. I’ll come back when the time is right. She’s unfinished business.’

  Raveneau read the date of the entry as it began to fade away.

  ‘That could be you he’s writing about,’ he said to la Rosa. ‘This is a recent entry.’

  La Rosa had just walked in. She stood behind him reading over his shoulder.

  ‘I get that, but what’s up with it fading away?’ and the tech launched into the spiel he’d given Raveneau about living encryption.

  ‘Like an organism reacting to stimuli,’ he said and chuckled, adding, ‘we’re causing it pain.’

  He seemed more interested in that than what he’d found and Raveneau cut off the riff and asked, ‘Can you keep getting us in?’

  ‘I can get you in no problem, but it’s getting faster at getting me out. I don’t have a clue how it’s learning.’

  He got them in forty-two times over the next two and a half hours and they experimented, tried printing out when the screen held letters, but the paper came out blank. The tech called friends of his and they didn’t seem to be able to help, and he mumbled something about needing the government guys.

  They drank more coffee, read more, and dawn came. Some of the entries were only a few words and it was hard to make sense of why he even bothered. ‘Tomorrow is go night,’ read one entered the day before Whitacre died. They read ‘He will be the last,’ and Raveneau wondered aloud, ‘Who gets the honor?’

  ‘You’re the one he missed,’ she said. ‘I think it should be you.’

  ‘For waking you up tonight?’

  ‘For that and other reasons.’

  ‘To take care of that retirement problem.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it, and then I’ll catch him and bring him in. From there it’ll be an easy rise to chief.’

  ‘What if you find out you want to stay on the homicide detail?’

  She didn’t answer that. Another entry read, ‘It’s probable she knows something about where she is.’

  Was he talking about Jurika? That entry jumped out at him. He copied down each as they read them. More techs arrived and Raveneau and la Rosa broke from the computer and put together a new search warrant app. They expanded it to all vehicles owned by Cody Stoltz and listed computers in both his and his mother’s house, citing the encryption as a reason he might commandeer his mother’s computer without her knowledge. They faxed it to the judge on-call this weekend.

  Later that morning, Walnut Creek police got the DNA match they were looking for and charged the ex-boyfriend with Alan Becker’s murder. Raveneau phoned the Walnut Creek detective who’d called SF Homicide with his news.

  He asked, ‘How strong is your DNA connection?’

  ‘It’s not the best but we’ve got him either way.’

  ‘Did you get a confession?’

  ‘No, but we will. Becker humiliated him in an argument over the daughter. He admits to that and to taking a swing before Becker decked him.’

  ‘We have some new information that plays in.’

  ‘We’ve already got our guy, but whatever you have I’d like to hear it.’

  ‘You may have the wrong guy. You may want to go slow on it.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, but I’m all ears.’

  ‘It won’t be until later today, but I can tell you we found a laptop yesterday and what we’ve seen so far suggests it was Cody Stoltz in Walnut Creek.’

  ‘Like I said, show me.’

  ‘What’s a good number to reach you at?’

  He copied down the detective’s cell number and then drove over to Lafaye’s office to re-interview her. Her office was one block off Sacramento in an upscale area down the hill and west of Pacific Heights. A gray redwood gate faced the street. On it was a brass plaque listing the businesses inside, and beyond the gate was a shady brick courtyard with a koi pond and a garden of succulent plants. Lafaye’s office was up a flight of stairs in the back. He knew from their lunch together that her office wasn’t in the main foundation building. This office was a perk the foundation directors allowed her and the main foundation headquarters on Mason were considerably more austere. She had talked about the garden here and how it calmed her.

  When he saw the splintered door jamb he didn’t bother to knock. He pushed the door open and stepped into a carpeted reception area with
a lot of maple paneling and cabinets. Nothing looked out of place and he walked through into a conference room, and then what he guessed was Lafaye’s office, where a computer lay on its side, panel off, hard drive missing. Two file cabinets had been pried open and when he tried calling her house and cell both went to voice mail. Then he called it in as a burglary and took several photos as he talked with la Rosa.

  ‘I’ve got to wait here for the burglary guys,’ he said. ‘And I called her foundation. No one has talked to her since yesterday afternoon. We need to swing by her house. Why don’t you go by there and then meet me here? Get a patrol unit to back you up.’

  ‘They’re going to be waiting for us in Los Altos.’

  ‘We can leave from here.’

  ‘OK, but we’re tight for time and I’m not sure I need to see a break-in. I worked Burglary for three years and I’m looking at the photos you sent. I’ll go by her house, call you, and if she’s home, I’ll drive down to Los Altos ahead of you.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. One of us should be on time.’

  He was forty minutes behind la Rosa when he left for Los Altos. La Rosa was inside with Mrs Stoltz and had already let her know that they had new evidence, and that her son could be facing multiple murder charges. That was a pretty big exaggeration given where they were right now. But it was the way they had agreed to play it.

  As Raveneau arrived and sat down, he realized Mrs Stoltz didn’t know any more than they did about where to look for Cody. Neither did the SID team. SID guessed that after dumping the car and crawling into the storm drainage pipe he’d exited through some fallback escape route.

  Stoltz’s mother looked much older this morning. She rose now from her chair and asked her housekeeper for a coat. When she returned she said, ‘He was a gifted child, really very, very gifted, the kind of child everyone marvels at. He had the gift of music as well as math.’ She turned to Raveneau. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

  ‘Not of everything, but enough to put out an All Points Bulletin and make an arrest. We’re going to charge him, Mrs Stoltz.’

  She nodded and said, ‘I want to go alone to the guest house.’

  ‘We can’t let you do that,’ la Rosa said and Raveneau added, ‘We should go with you.’

  ‘It means a great deal to me to go alone. I’m seventy-five years old. If what you’re telling me is true, I won’t see him again outside a jail or prison.’

  La Rosa shook her head but Raveneau knew there was almost no chance Stoltz was home. He touched la Rosa, said, ‘I think we can do this.’

  Mrs Stoltz had already stood. Along the back of her house was a wall of eight glass doors that folded open to expose the garden. They allowed Raveneau and la Rosa to watch her follow the brick path through hundreds of roses to the portico and entry at the guest house. She unlocked the front door and went in. Fifteen minutes passed before she came out and then invited them to search.

  He wasn’t home and a broader search was underway in the hills behind. By the time he and la Rosa got there, they’d lowered a handler and a dog into the storm drainage system and were snaking video cameras down the smaller pipes.

  Now Raveneau’s cell rang and he learned that half a mile away one of the SID team and a Public Works foreman had found sheared bolts on a storm drain grate. When he and la Rosa got there, he ran his thumb over the cut thread and drew blood.

  ‘You could use a battery-powered Sawzall and a metal cutting blade,’ the foreman said.

  ‘How big is that tool?’

  The foreman held his hands apart maybe a foot and a half, and said, ‘That’s with the blade.’

  ‘How often do you inspect these?’

  The man smiled as if Raveneau had just told a good joke. ‘We do fire drills, not inspections. You only see us when there’s a problem.’

  An hour later Lafaye’s car was found in the lot adjacent to the marina where Stoltz’s boat was berthed, and then someone put that together with a report of an unidentified naked Caucasian woman suffering from hypothermia found by two fishermen early this morning along a stretch of rocky shoreline east of the Richmond Bridge. That woman was airlifted to John Muir Hospital in Walnut Creek, where apparently she was now in a stable condition. Raveneau called John Muir. He gave a description of Lafaye and waited for the head nurse to finish telling him for the third time that they didn’t have any way to identify the unknown woman.

  ‘You said she’s middle-aged.’

  ‘Yes, I would guess early fifties.’

  ‘Is she able to talk?’

  ‘She’s not coherent.’

  ‘Do you have a phone with a camera?’

  ‘Of course, do you want me to take her picture?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s allowed. I’ll have to call you back.’

  ‘How about if you transfer me to who it is you’re going to ask?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, our privacy policies are very strict.’

  He was driving back up the peninsula toward San Francisco behind la Rosa when the photo came through from John Muir. He forwarded it to la Rosa and then called her.

  ‘Let’s drop a car in the city and head out there.’

  They dropped Raveneau’s car outside the Hall and la Rosa’s tires squealed as she roared up the on-ramp. Raveneau didn’t look up as they crossed the bridge. He studied the image of Lafaye on his phone screen and tried to make it all connect.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  On the way there la Rosa took a call from her roommate. She listened a moment and then said, ‘Karin, I’m going to put you on speaker phone. My partner is in the car with me. I want him to hear this.’

  Karin the roommate, Raveneau knew only by name. He knew also she was an X-ray tech and someone la Rosa had known for years. She sounded level-headed.

  ‘Can you hear me OK?’

  ‘We can hear you,’ la Rosa answered.

  ‘You told me to watch, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So there’s a white van two blocks down the street this morning – the same one I saw two days ago and I know, so what, there are a lot of white vans, but it did the same thing as two days ago. It pulled out as I walked toward it.’

  ‘How far away were you when it pulled out?’

  ‘That’s really why I’m calling. You know how I walk to the bus, right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I go down a block and then cross the street. Two days ago as I crossed the street it pulled out and drove away. I know, that’s a big so what, except that it did the same thing today and the way it pulled out was the same.’

  ‘Was the van alone or did it have a driver?’

  Karin laughed. She had a light cheerful laugh and la Rosa chuckled.

  ‘That’s why you’re the cop,’ Karin said. ‘I couldn’t see.’

  ‘What kind of van?’

  ‘I went online and looked at vans. I think it’s a Dodge van, the kind with two doors in the back.’

  ‘Could you tell if it was a man or woman driving?’

  ‘No, it was faced away from me.’

  Raveneau cut in. ‘Karin, this is Ben Raveneau, Elizabeth’s partner.’

  ‘Oh, hi, I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  ‘Yeah, but Elizabeth probably exaggerates. She’s builds me up too much.’

  That got even more laughter.

  ‘I want to ask you about how the van pulls away and how far you are from it when it does.’

  ‘Well, that’s the whole thing, that’s why I called. It’s this weird thing where it’s about a block away facing down the street not toward me—’

  ‘So, on the right side of the street?’

  ‘Yes, and it does this kind of hitching motion, pulls out part-way and sort of stops and waits, and then goes forward.’

  ‘The camcorder,’ Raveneau said. ‘The hitch is so he can film down the street.’

  ‘What?’ Karin asked, and la Rosa answered her, saying, ‘Karin, we have an idea about who it might be.�
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  ‘So I’m not crazy?’

  ‘Oh, you’re still crazy. This doesn’t change that.’

  Karin laughed again, though this time much more subdued, and la Rosa said, ‘I’ll call you later.’

  As the connection broke, Raveneau voiced it. ‘Heilbron is stalking you. You’re why he came in to confess. It wasn’t just to taunt us. He wanted to meet you. Remember how he knew it was your first week and all; you’re his target.’

  ‘We could be getting ahead of ourselves here.’

  ‘True.’

  FIFTY-SIX

  Three hours earlier, Lafaye didn’t know her own name. Now she spoke in a forceful if hoarse whisper, her eyes fixed on Raveneau.

  ‘I’m not afraid of anyone. I publish the names of known traffickers on my website and push the police, and lobby the UN and aid groups. Young men in poor areas are selling their kidneys for eight thousand dollars and I go after those buying.’

  Sunlight slanted through the window to her right. High on the wall beyond her feet a TV blared. A nurse came and went. She went on about her foundation and Raveneau read it as stalling, as obfuscation. She didn’t want to talk about how she came to be on a boat with Stoltz. She was fine talking about how he tried to kill her, but not why she was there in the first place.

  He found the TV remote and killed the sound as la Rosa went to retrieve a photo of Stoltz they’d left in their car. She shut the door and Raveneau was alone with Lafaye. Until they’d arrived Lafaye hadn’t given the hospital staff her last name, and as he asked her about that she coughed hard and brought a knee up as she rolled away and reached for Kleenex. The sheet slid off exposing her naked back and ass. When she rolled on to her back again she looked at his eyes, gauging him as she said, ‘Sorry, somewhere in the night I lost my clothes.’