“No,” he said, flopping over.
“We have to talk, Z. This is serious.”
He mumbled something she didn’t hear.
“Z,” she said louder.
Still no response.
Jamie rose and crossed his room, flipped on the light switch, bathing the room in bright light.
Z grunted. One arm emerged from the heap of sleeping teenager to draw the blankets over his head.
“Z, we have to talk.” She shook him again.
Z groaned. “What time is it?”
The stairs creaked and Jamie froze. Listened. Someone was climbing the stairs. Damn it. She crossed the room and flipped off the light switch as the door cracked open.
Tony started at the sight of her. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“Everything okay?” Tony asked.
“I was telling him he needs to clean this room before practice.”
Tony stared across the room, shaking his head. “He’s dead to the world. He probably didn’t hear a word you said.”
Jamie stepped out of Z’s room. “No, I’m sure he didn’t.”
“Don’t worry,” Tony said. “I’ll get him out of bed in time to clean up.”
*
Her head was throbbing, and she was wired on caffeine as she drove to work. She’d spent the morning at home reviewing the case file and her notes. At least, she reviewed the case file between the time she spent worrying about that damn mitt and about not getting to talk to Z.
What could she do? Take the mitt to the lab, fess up, and have Roger work on it? She couldn’t do that. Not to Z.
It was only 9:00 a.m. and she was exhausted. She’d been up for three hours already. On a Saturday. It wasn’t that she minded working the weekends. She didn’t. In her pre-Z life, she worked most of them. She’d pull out the evidence and spread it out around the house. She’d leave case notes and tox screens and fingerprint cards and rap sheets across counters and the coffee table and couch.
As she moved from place to place, she’d read snippets of one thing or another until the case literally filled the air in the house.
Then something would click.
The pieces would fall into place, and she’d know the answer.
Living with a ten-year-old boy and a recovering alcoholic made the old process impossible. Certainly, any photographs had to be kept out of sight. She’d tried using her room instead, but early on, Z had spent many a night shuffling between his room and hers and she had gotten out of the habit. Maybe she’d lost her edge.
Too much thinking. Today, she wanted to immerse herself. She needed to. If she could find a way to get inside the case, maybe she’d find the piece that would pull it all together. If she knew Z was involved, she had to confront him.
As she pulled into the department parking lot, Vich was there. She steeled herself against the questions he would surely ask. Fortified, she emerged from her car, crossed to Vich’s, and slid in beside him. Grunted.
“Good morning,” he said. “Brought you coffee. Splash of milk, one sugar.”
She stared at the cup in his hand until he pressed it toward her. “I don’t deserve coffee.”
“Sure you do.”
“I’m a miserable person today, Vich.”
“Okay.”
She took the coffee.
“Thanks for the warning, anyway. Where to first?”
“Bordens,” she said. “Any news on Charlotte?”
“Same,” Vich said. “They released the little girl, though. The one from the hit-and-run.”
Her pulse kicked up a notch. “Did she see—”
“She doesn’t remember anything,” Vich said. “Not the car, not getting hit, not playing right before.”
Jamie blew out her breath. Damn it. “The Bordens know we’re coming?”
“I left messages for Gavin and Sondra at the house and on their mobiles.”
She took a sip of the coffee. “We ever get a response from the building manager on the request for information on Gavin’s parking pass?”
Vich nodded. “Came in last night. Gavin had a late lunch meeting the day of the attack. We confirmed that he met two clients at Boulevard at 3:00. It’s that fancy restaurant at the corner of Mission and Steuart…”
She knew the restaurant. In a thinly disguised attempt at bribery, the deputy chief of the department had given her a gift certificate a few years back.
“So, after lunch, Gavin arrived back in the building parking lot before 5:30 and didn’t leave again until 8:07. That would have been about the time the call came in on Charlotte.”
“So, he’s got an alibi, but Sondra doesn’t. You see Sondra Borden throwing her daughter down the stairs?”
“No,” Vich said. “But I’ve been wrong before.”
Arriving at the Bordens’ house a second time was still a jaw-dropping experience. Built mostly of red brick, the house had three levels with four pop-out windows on the upper two levels, making it extravagant even in its silhouette. At the street was a heavy wrought iron gate that had been open on their first visit but was now closed.
As Vich rang the bell, Jamie spotted another thing she’d missed on the first visit. Two almost life-size lion statues sat inside the gate, facing one another across the wide brick walkway, as though ready to pounce on the uninvited guest.
The gate buzzed open, and Vich and Jamie made their way past the lions. Sondra Borden answered the door, dressed in a simple navy blue wrap dress with navy sandals. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail and, although her skin had the flawless texture of women in Botox advertisements, she wore no makeup. As with the other times Jamie had met her, she was elegant in the way that rich people were.
She led them into the same room where they’d sat before. Gavin Borden was at the window, his back to them. “Gavin,” Sondra said softly. “The police are here.”
Gavin turned without looking at his wife. He appeared to have lost weight in the days since Charlotte’s attack. His face had a greenish tint around his eyes, as though he’d spent a week or two in a dungeon enduring some intense physical torture. In Jamie’s experience, mental torture worked much faster than physical in breaking down the body.
Jamie caught Vich studying something on the floor. She saw a circular machine on wheels. A self-propelled vacuum cleaner. She couldn’t remember what they were called.
Was it someone’s idea as a hostess gift? Or something Mr. Borden bought for his wife?
“We won’t take much of your time,” she told the Bordens.
Sondra took the cue and perched on the edge of the couch while Gavin crossed the room to take a chair across the room from her. They made no eye contact at all. Vich was probably having the same thoughts.
Was there more to the cold shoulder Gavin was giving his wife than blaming her for letting Charlotte dress too provocatively?
“Mrs. Borden, I met with Ms. Remy yesterday from the opera. She said you canceled your appointment with her on Wednesday evening.”
Gavin watched his wife.
“It’s true, I did,” Sondra confessed. “Our anniversary—Gavin’s and mine—is the first week of May. Twenty years,” she said with a glance in his direction that Jamie couldn’t read. Sheepish or maybe coy. “I had the idea of putting together a sort of getaway night for us, so I went over to Union Square to look at the menus at a couple of restaurants and to try to find a dress. I didn’t want to ruin the surprise,” she said, shaking her head. “That seems so silly now.”
If anything, Gavin looked slightly more tortured by the news.
“Did you see anyone there? Or have lunch with a friend?” Vich asked.
“No,” Sondra said. “I didn’t find a dress. I had one on hold at Saks but then, at the last minute, I changed my mind and told them not to hold it.”
Jamie made notes. “Do you remember the salesperson’s name?”
“I’m afraid not,” Sondra said.
“What did she look
like?” Vich asked.
“Oh, my,” Sondra said, shifting on the couch.
Jamie glanced at Vich. Sondra was lying.
“She was petite. Dark-haired,” she added as though choosing traits out of a hat. “I don’t remember much else.”
Jamie hadn’t ever been to Saks, but the description Sondra gave probably fit ninety percent of the Saks sales clerks.
“Would you mind if we looked at Charlotte’s room?” Jamie asked, changing the subject.
Gavin sat up straighter. “Why?”
“Anything we can learn about your daughter will help us,” Vich said.
Gavin and Sondra exchanged a glance. “I went through Charlotte’s room after our last conversation. I didn’t find anything,” Sondra said.
Jamie and Vich waited.
“I don’t understand why you’d need to see our daughter’s bedroom,” Gavin said. “She’s the victim. Whoever did this is out there—” His voice cut off. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth to muffle the sob that choked loose.
“It’s okay, Gavin,” Sondra said. “I’ll show them.” She rose from the couch. “It’s down this way.”
Jamie followed Sondra down a long hallway with rich wood floors and ceilings that were easily ten feet high. Paintings hung on the white walls. An oil portrait of a woman in a chair, a single flower, a watercolor of a country landscape with a barn, and something that was mixed media and abstract. She gave the paintings a wide berth and instead scanned the painted walls. The white walls were spotless. Her walls were white, too, but forever covered in fingerprints.
Sondra stopped at a dark wood door. It was oversized, the kind of door you expected to lead outside. Sondra pressed down a heavy-looking handle and opened the door. The walls and ceiling of Charlotte’s room were painted a light purple. The bed was freshly made; nothing on the floor. On the walls were two poster-size pictures of Charlotte standing with people Jamie had seen in magazines.
“Is that Bono?” Vich asked, pointing to one that was taken when Charlotte was maybe eleven or twelve.
“Yes,” Sondra said without explanation.
“Huh,” Vich said and took a slow walk around the room.
Charlotte’s makeup and bottles of perfume were lined neatly on a dressing table built into an alcove of the room. Lights lined the mirror but not like the big bulbs in the cheesy dressing rooms of movies. These were some sort of light panels. High-end, no doubt.
“I assume someone cleans the room?” Jamie asked.
Sondra nodded.
“Do they do that daily?”
“Yes. The staff tidies up after the girls go to school. They have a schedule where they clean certain things each day. I’d have to check my book to be certain. I believe they’ve dusted and done the floors since Wednesday.”
Jamie opened the top drawer of the dresser. Sondra made a soft choking sound. Paired socks made neat rows. Beside them was cotton underwear, folded into little pastel cubes. Nothing similar to the outfit Charlotte had been wearing when she was attacked. Touching nothing, Jamie surveyed the contents and slid the drawer closed. She reached for the second drawer when Sondra stepped in front of her and pressed the drawer closed, avoiding contact with Jamie’s hand. “I think Gavin’s right. We shouldn’t be in here.”
“We understand that Charlotte had an argument about her art lessons.”
“An argument? With whom?”
“That’s what we were hoping you could tell us.”
Sondra shook her head. “I have no idea. I don’t know why she would have been arguing about that. She doesn’t take lessons anymore.”
“Perhaps the argument happened before she quit?” Vich suggested.
Jamie walked to the window. The entire Golden Gate Bridge was visible from Charlotte’s window. Not only the bridge, but also the land peninsulas on either side. She’d seen this view before, or one almost exactly like it.
Sondra had said something, but Jamie wasn’t listening. “Where is your bedroom, Mrs. Borden?” Jamie asked.
Sondra looked slightly stunned.
“I don’t want to see it,” Jamie assured her. “I’m just curious.”
“It’s down the hall,” Sondra said, pointing.
“You have this same view?” Jamie asked.
“Almost.”
The pieces fell together. “Thank you for your time.”
“Of… of course,” Sondra said, a little surprised when Jamie started for the door.
Vich followed. They didn’t speak as they made their way back through the house and down the brick path to the car. Jamie slid into the passenger’s seat and called the department. “Traffic, please,” she said to the operator.
The phone buzzed twice. “Traffic. Roland here.”
“Roland, Jamie Vail. I need you to pull all records for any recent parking or traffic violations for a Sondra or Gavin Borden.” She recited their street address. “Citations on any vehicle.”
Jamie put the call on speakerphone and set it in her lap, then lifted her coffee cup in a cheers motion toward Vich. “I’ve got a theory about why Sondra is lying about where she was.”
“You going to share it?” Vich asked.
“As soon as I find out if I’m right.” She drank from the lukewarm coffee. Even tepid, coffee tasted good. The one vice she hadn’t given up completely.
They waited in silence until the clerk came back on the phone.
“Inspector Vail?”
“I’m here, Roland. What’ve you got?”
“I found four violations—one on a 2011 Jeep and three on the 2014 Mercedes.”
“Can you give me the addresses?”
“One is on 301 Van Ness.”
“That’s close to the opera house,” Vich said.
“And the others?” Jamie asked.
“Two are on Folsom—853 and 892. Same block. Wait. The third one is too. It’s at 315 5th, which is around the corner from the Folsom locations.”
Jamie smiled at Vich, who looked clueless. “What are the dates on the ones at the second address?” she asked.
“March 14th at 2:18 p.m., March 29th at 6:15 p.m., and the third is April 2nd at 4:58 p.m.”
“Bingo,” Jamie said. “Thanks, Roland.”
Jamie ended the call. “So, Sondra is spending some afternoons at the city condo complex over on Folsom street.”
“Who lives there?” Vich asked.
“Heath Brody.”
Chapter 26
Roger followed Hal and Hailey into the darkened bar and smelled corporate beer. That’s how he thought of this particular smell—thin, sour, acrid, the smells of beers made in huge plants. PBR or Old Milwaukee. Budweiser. Coors. To Roger, corporate beer smelled like the vat from whence it came and not unlike the urine that it would soon create. Not an opinion he shared all that openly. He knew it made him seem like a snob and although he had plenty of quirks—being completely hairless made you quirky whether or not you had quirks—Roger did not consider himself a snob.
He did not, however, partake in the average American’s indiscriminate love of any and all beer. Not only was the taste bad, corporate beer conjured images of frat parties rife with atrocious behavior and thickly sticky floors. He was thirty-two on his first visit to a fraternity. He’d missed the party by about eight hours. Instead, he had come to collect evidence on the death of an eighteen-year-old freshman girl who had been repeatedly raped and who, it was later determined, asphyxiated on her own vomit. They never did determine if she was being raped at the time of her death, but there was compelling evidence that suggested it was unlikely that she was alone at the time she choked and died. One of her rapists might have simply moved her onto her side and saved her life.
It wasn’t the fraternity rats that created Roger’s dislike of the particular types of beer served inside their walls. Rather, for him, good beer had substance, like good coffee. A porter or stout might smell like chocolate, an IPA might be crisp with light citrus notes. His favorite was the oatmeal
stout, made by Founders. Unless, of course, he could get his hands on a growler of the small batch ale by Sculpin from Ballast Point Brewing, but that was hard to come by. Sculpin normally sold out in San Diego within hours of being tapped and that was a bit far to travel for a beer.
As his eyes adjusted to the dim bar light, Roger scanned the room. The only natural light came from an eighteen-inch strip of window on the front of the building, maybe twenty feet long. The rest of the window had been painted black, although it was scratched enough that some sunlight leaked in through the tiny breaks in the paint. Hal and Hailey were there, so Roger crossed to where they stood at the bar.
Behind the bar was a man who appeared to have spent a lot of years in this room or one like it. Hal pulled a picture of Michael Delman from a folder and showed it to the bartender.
“You know this man?” Hal asked.
“Yeah. He comes in pretty regular.”
Roger watched the bartender whose belly was precariously balanced on an old brown leather belt. The notches to the right of the buckle were each stretched and worn as though, one by one, they’d simply given in to his growing girth.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Hal asked the bartender.
Roger watched as the bartender mopped up a puddle of spilled beer with his wet rag, wrung it out in the sink, then proceeded to wipe off the bar with it. Maybe he had dunked it into a sink of clean water that Roger hadn’t seen. Roger peered over the bar. Nope. The bartender worked the old beer into the bar. No wonder the place smelled so bad.
“Do you remember the last time you saw this man?” Hal repeated.
“Yesterday,” bartender said. “Around lunch time.”
“How long was he here for?”
“An hour, maybe a little less.” He stopped mopping. “I don’t really keep a timesheet.”
It took nerve to backtalk someone Hal’s size, especially someone with a badge.
Hal did not reply to the barb. “Anyone with him?”
The bartender shook his head. “Nah. He sat at the bar alone.”
“He usually come alone?”
“Almost always. Sometimes there’s a gal with him.”
Everything to Lose Page 18