A Killing in China Basin
Page 25
‘You’re right, I got the Ketamine from a vet I know. When did you figure it out?’
‘Last night.’
‘I just wanted to question Alex. I didn’t mean for anything else to happen.’
Having seen the marks on Jurika’s neck he didn’t believe her.
‘Where is the rope you used to strangle her?’
‘I threw it in a garbage can at a rest stop on the drive back home.’
As bridge traffic slowed to a crawl and her brake lights came on she described the room and the mattress, and moving a chair over and Alex convulsing on the mattress.
‘We were going to go out and celebrate after she showed me through the building. That’s why she was dressed up.’
Raveneau decided to close in and radio for backup. He carried a second phone, an emergency phone, and used that to text la Rosa, ‘Quinn confessing to Jurika murder. Call for backup.’ La Rosa could see him but probably not Quinn, but she’d figure it out.
‘Are you still there?’ he asked, and Quinn wasn’t. He tried calling her back and didn’t get an answer. He tried again as he reached the first tower of the Golden Gate. At this hour there were four lanes running into the city. Later, they’d move the cones and the other side would have more lanes for the reverse commute. Up ahead, the right-hand lane stopped moving and Raveneau changed to the cone lane, the center lane.
It was Quinn holding up traffic in the right lane, her car barely moving forward, cars bleeding out of that lane and honking. When she came to a stop Raveneau forced his way over, hitting his horn hard. He came close to an accident and then just stopped his car and got out. He ran toward her and he almost got there.
He got within ten feet. ‘Erin, no, Erin wait!’
She turned. She looked at him and then went over the rail before he could grab her. Raveneau saw her tumble, clothing fluttering, flapping, and the ocean foaming as she hit. Then he could barely keep his hand from shaking as he called for help. A Coast Guard rescue team from Fort Baker was there within minutes and they found her, but she was dead when they pulled her out.
Raveneau and la Rosa drove down to Fort Baker and identified her after the guard brought her into the dock, and in the car they found a written confession.
‘I should have known,’ Raveneau told la Rosa later. ‘I saw the open motel door and had a feeling when I came out of the Waldo Tunnel that I needed to catch her. I just didn’t put it together fast enough.’
‘We did everything we could.’
He didn’t answer that. He knew he should have seen it. He could have kept her from killing herself and the feeling stayed with him through the night.
Cody Stoltz died that same morning and late in the afternoon Lafaye’s lawyer called, and she and the lawyer came to the homicide office. There, she recounted the extortion in detail and told of her anguish and suffering, explaining that the risk to the foundation’s credibility had been too great for her to come forward.
She brought a record of almost all the payments she’d made.
‘I don’t have the very earliest,’ she said. ‘I paid those with cash I had saved.’
‘How much were they?’
‘Too much, and I don’t like to think about those first ones. I’ve blocked them from my memory.’
‘Do you think an audit of the foundation’s books would turn them up?’
She smiled at him. She said, ‘You and I are alike. You say just what you’re thinking, but to answer your question, no, I don’t think an audit will ever turn up anything.’
Raveneau didn’t either, but he held her gaze for a while. It rained most of that night but by dawn, when Raveneau went out to the Guadalcanal Memorial, the rain had stopped. He laid flowers at the base of the memorial for the men his father had served with and for Chris, and then stood near the front of the bow section looking out at the ocean. When the sun broke through the water turned from gray to green-blue. He watched a line of pelicans fly from shadow into sunlight and work their way south.
He knew the city would remember the story of Cody Stoltz and those he murdered, but few would remember Alex Jurika or Erin Quinn. Lafaye’s star would continue to rise. She was already walking with celebrities and showing up on bigger TV talk shows. But there was a reason the boy pushed from the helicopter haunted her and maybe her missing fingernails were to remind her not of the evil out there but within, and to keep her focused on what she wanted to be.
And maybe that’s where redemption lies, in what we someday could become. He touched the flowers, felt their soft petals between his fingers, then pressed his palm against the cold steel of the memorial and held it there a long moment before walking back to his car.
Table of Contents
Cover
Further Titles from Kirk Russell
A Killing in China Basin
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four