The Breakers

by Marcia Muller

  Arthur Zizek: “There was a guy living up there. Studious looking, thick horn-rimmed glasses, always toting an armload of books. He was cordial enough, but he didn’t socialize. That’s all I remember.”

  Bruno Storch’s voice mail told me he’d call me back if I’d leave a message. I did, explaining what I was looking for.

  Sherman Kahn answered his phone in Walnut Creek, but he didn’t have anything to tell me either. “Sorry, but I don’t remember. That’s what shock therapy does to you.”

  I widened my search.

  Don Golden, Reno, Nevada: “I don’t remember anybody living up there.”

  Christopher Lubowski, Ojai: no answer.

  Jim Feliz, San Luis Obispo: “How’d you get this number? Don’t ever call it again!”

  Kimberly Woods, Pensacola, Florida: “There was somebody in that apartment, but he was quiet as a mouse. And ‘mouse’ is the right term—that building was ridden with them.”

  No answer at Tina Steinmiller’s number in Bakersfield.

  The same at Douglas Kemp’s in San Diego.

  I’d just broken the connection when the phone vibrated with an incoming call. No name, but the number was familiar. A deep male voice said, “Is this Sharon McCone?”

  “Yes. And you are?”

  “Bruno Storch. You left a message.”

  “Yes. I was calling about a building in San Francisco, the Breakers, where you lived—”

  “Ten, eleven years ago.”

  “Right. Was your apartment on the middle floor?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “In it, there’s a wall decorated with a collage of criminal—”

  “Is it still there?”

  “Yes. Do you remember who made it?”

  A long pause. Then he said, “I did.”

  Ah! I’d finally lucked out. “Can you tell me the reason?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “It pertains to an investigation I’m conducting.”

  Another pause. “Well, it’s a long story, Ms. McCone, and I’d rather not discuss it over my office phone. Can we meet somewhere later today?”

  “In public, yes.”

  “Where are you located?”

  “New Montgomery Street.”

  “I work at Embarcadero Center. How about I meet you at Lucinda’s after I get off, if you’re free.”

  “What time do you get off?”

  “Four thirty. But I can leave early. How about three thirty? I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “That’s not necessary. Dutch treat.”

  “How will I recognize you?”

  I described the black corduroy vest I had on.

  “Okay. I’ll be there by three thirty. See you then.”

  3:35 p.m.

  Lucinda’s was only a few blocks away on the Embarcadero. Once a shack serving fried seafood, it was now more upscale but still specialized in fried seafood. The grease from the fryers didn’t smell nearly as bad as the smoke haze from Marin that hung over the outside deck, so I took an inside booth near the windows.

  Wildfires. I shuddered. There’s nothing in nature that I respect and fear like fire raging out of control.

  I watched the entrance and the people who entered. At 3:35 a man came in alone. He was big, in his fifties, with an oversize belly protruding the front of his blue dress shirt. His eyes looked tiny in the flesh that pooched out around them, but they were kind. He looked around, spotted me, and waved.

  “Mr. Storch?” I said as he came up to the booth.

  “Yes. Ms. McCone?” I nodded, and he extended his hand; it was like a paw, its back hairy.

  “Thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”

  “Likewise.”

  Storch eased his bulk into the booth. A waiter appeared and he ordered a bourbon on the rocks. I already had my glass of white wine.

  “Now, Mr. Storch,” I said, “about the montage on the wall of your former apartment at the Breakers.”

  “Yes. You wanted to know why I put it there.”

  “A long story, you said on the phone.”

  He sighed. “I was going through a bad time. My wife had died—cancer—and I was between jobs and not in any shape to go out looking for work. Didn’t need to then because I had enough money to live on from her insurance. I read a lot. Brought home big stacks of books from the library every week. That’s when I got interested in true crime. Soon I was researching cases on microfilm, having the librarians make copies of the articles. And cutting clippings from the newspapers.” He shook his head, sighed again. “It got to be an obsession. That’s the kind of personality I have.”

  “And that’s where the idea for the wall came from?”

  “Yes. It already had a collage of pretty San Francisco pictures that a former tenant had put up a long time before and that I didn’t much like. The city had begun wearing on me; I’d looked beneath its surface and realized it wasn’t as pretty—in any sense—as it pretended to be. So after I started on this true-crime kick I thought, Why not a killers’ wall? Let it show how things really are. And there you have it.”

  His bourbon on the rocks arrived, and he took a long pull of the drink. When he set the glass down, I asked, “Were you familiar with all the cases you posted there?”

  “Some. Others I just posted because I had a space to fill.”

  “The reason I ask, there were cases I couldn’t place, and I’ve been investigating in the city for many years.”

  “Which cases?”

  “One in particular with illustrations of a symbol that resembles an eye with an arrow through it.”

  “Oh, sure. I know that one, all right. A funny kind of evil eye, different from any of the other signatures—criminals’ individual marks—I’ve studied.”

  Now maybe I was getting somewhere. “You’ve made a study of such things?”

  “Yes. The evil eye for good reason.” He fumbled with his briefcase, looking faintly embarrassed, and produced an oversize paperback book. He pushed it across the table at me. The title was Where Are They Now?

  “It’s not much,” Storch said. “Unsolved cases from the Central Coast area, where I lived in the early two thousands. I published the book myself a few years ago because no mainstream publisher would bother with it. Not enough scope, they said. Small towns, low concept. But the victims’ families appreciated them. Somebody’s got to acknowledge the victims and their suffering. Where Are They Now? incorporates a chapter on the Carver.”

  The Carver?

  I picked the book up. A cover blurb, from a newspaper I’d never heard of, said, “Tense…riveting…one of a kind.” Another praised “the clarity of the writing” and professed to have “loved pages fifty to sixty.”

  Storch said, “Those quotes aren’t exactly raves from the New York Times, but they made a few people crack the covers.” He grinned self-consciously. “I ought to appreciate them; I wrote both.”

  “You struck the right tone.”

  “Well, the crimes didn’t get much play in the media up here—four killings occurred in and around San Luis Obispo. The victims were all men, stabbed viciously. The killer left his signature carved on the bodies.”

  “Where on the bodies?”

  “Their shoulders.”

  “Carved after the victims were dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was the killer ever identified?”

  “No.”

  “Suspects?”

  “None.”

  “What about a motive for the crimes?”

  “None that the police could figure. Had to be some sort of homicidal rage. The Carver’s victims seem to have been picked at random. That’s my theory, anyway.”

  “When was the last of the murders?”

  “Seven years ago, as far as anybody knows.” Storch swallowed more bourbon. “Why are you interested in that symbol, Ms. McCone? Do you have reason to think the Carver’s active again, by any chance?”

  Yes, but I wasn’t about to reve
al that to him. I dodged his question by asking, “May I have this book?”

  “Sure, it’s all yours. I’ve got a garage full.”

  “Thanks. Did you write it while you lived at the Breakers?”

  “No, after I moved to my apartment in the Inner Sunset, on Ninth Avenue.”

  “Why did you leave the Breakers?”

  “I’ve got arthritis, and the damp got into my joints. Besides, a new element had moved in out there, and I didn’t much like it.”

  “What sort of element?”

  “Violent scumbags—you know the type.”

  Like the ones who had tried to pick me up at the seawall.

  “Have you ever been back to the Breakers?”

  “Nope. No reason to. I didn’t have much to do with the other tenants while I was there, and like I told you, that collage was part of my obsessive-compulsive period. I sure didn’t want to revisit that.”

  Well, who would?

  5:10 p.m.

  The first thing I did when I returned to the agency was to run a search to find out if there was any new information on the Carver murders. The office was quiet, most of the staff gone for the day. A light shone under the door of the cubicle shared by Mick and Derek, and I heard the tapping of keys. Had to be Mick, still hard at work, and I didn’t want to bother him with a relatively simple task. Derek was still tending to family matters in southern California.

  The coverage on the Carver case was sketchy, as Storch had said. The victims had been stabbed with some kind of long-bladed knife, then marked with the crude symbol—not described in the press as the evil eye but as “an eye pierced by an arrow.” After four slayings in the San Luis Obispo area and one loosely attributed to him in Santa Maria, he dropped off the media’s radar. No new information had surfaced in the past seven years.

  I picked up the book Bruno Storch had given me, took it to my armchair, and read the chapter about the Carver and his crimes.

  The Carver must have acted alone. The police found no evidence at the crime scenes to suggest a second killer, and no one came forward to identify him in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Either he had avoided incarceration on other charges or he wasn’t a talker; there were no jailhouse rumors or other talk about him. One can imagine a quiet individual with no outstanding physical features, a Walter Mitty without a nagging mother to quiz him about his every move.

  Did he set out to kill or was he motivated by impulse? Why were his victims all men? Four of the murders happened in the San Luis area, indicating a strong connection there. The weapon, never recovered, was the same in all cases, according to police lab reports.

  In seven months, this unknown man murdered at least four people, butchering them with a knife and carving his signature symbol on their bodies.

  What is this symbol’s secret meaning? What cult claims it as its own?

  How many more Carvers are out there awaiting their chance to wreak mayhem?

  Conspiracy theory mixed with a true-crime approach, I thought, shaking my head. And not very well written.

  My approach to investigation has always been to look for the obvious first. Too many of us search for the complicated solution, only to find out that the motive for and commission of a given crime are actually quite simple.

  I skimmed through the rest of the book. Psychological profiles of serial killers; details of various killings; investigative leads/lines; principal investigators; false/unproven leads; suspects; outcomes of suspect interviews; reports; conclusions.

  Bruno Storch had done his homework, but there was nothing but weak, unsubstantiated speculation as to what the Carver’s motive might have been. Even when he slipped into passages that attempted to describe what kind of man the killer was, they contained very little insight.

  Seven years since the last known Carver killing was a long time. The authorities would have back-burnered the case when no new leads appeared. But now one had, Zack Kaplan’s murder, and the authorities seemed not to be following up on it.

  Well, it was a cold case. And police departments are overburdened; the connection to the Carver likely hadn’t been made yet. Plus there was the fact that Zack hadn’t been anybody important. The body of an underemployed man tossed in a vacant lot wasn’t a priority. Never mind the cryptic symbol carved into his shoulder, which somebody should have remembered having seen before. Never mind that my agency—well known to the police—had reported him as a missing person.

  If Zack Kaplan’s killer was the Carver, what was the connection between them? Had Kaplan somehow figured out who he was and foolishly gone to confront him? Was that why the clipping had been removed from the wall montage? And then there were the seven years of inactivity; what had the Carver been doing all that time? Common sense said the most likely explanation was that he’d been in prison or some kind of mental health facility.

  I wondered if anyone connected with Chelle had ties in the San Luis Obispo area, and paged through Will Camphouse’s reports. No mention of the college town or other Central Coast communities, but I’d interrupt Mick after all and ask him to dig deeper on a priority basis. For a moment I debated calling Jamie Strogan, but decided against it. I had no solid evidence of a connection between the Carver killings and Chelle’s disappearance. It was too soon to take unfounded suspicions to the authorities.

  5:55 p.m.

  There was nothing more to occupy me at the office. And Hy had a business dinner, so I was in no hurry to go home. For want of anything better to do, I decided to return to the Breakers, check through Zack’s effects again on the off chance I’d missed something linking him to the missing clipping.

  The old building creaked and groaned in a strong offshore wind. Although, thanks to daylight saving time, it was bright and sunny outside, the interior was filled with gloom. The familiar pervasive odor of mold and decay filled the air. I tried the light switch in the foyer, but nothing happened; PG&E hadn’t received my request that the service be put in the agency’s name before terminating it. That was the utility’s modus operandi: slow on customer service but fast with the off switch. I turned on my flashlight as I went down the narrow hall to Zack’s room.

  A sweep with the flashlight showed nothing had changed there. Zack had been a loner, with no relatives to collect his belongings; the police hadn’t yet investigated here, and I doubted they would. I set the flashlight on top of a battered bureau and began going through it.

  Socks, most of them with holes in the toes. Jockey shorts, in similar disrepair. T-shirts, a summer-weight robe, and sweats. Jeans. An empty bottom drawer. A row of ragged athletic shoes lined up against the wall next to the bureau, outerwear hung on pegs above them. Some bricks and boards were stacked next to the bed—a combination bookcase and nightstand. The books were mainly textbooks or from the library, although there were some trade paperbacks that looked as if he’d picked them up at a thrift shop. The subjects were eclectic: astronomy, physics, philosophy; sudoku and crossword puzzles; mystery novels and police procedurals that bolstered my impression he might have considered himself an amateur detective; Westerns and science fiction. A reading light, an iPod and earphones, a Japanese bowl containing loose change, and a pair of binoculars sat on the top shelf.

  I picked up the binoculars and focused them through the single window. Nothing but a solid brick wall a couple of lots away. I trained them down at a weedy and junk-filled lot; a couple of small kids were rooting around in a pile of garbage bags. One of them came up with something valuable—to him—and ran off with it; the other followed, screeching, “Mine! Mine!”

  After a quick inventory of the bathroom—no drugs, prescription or otherwise, in the medicine chest, and mainly dirty towels and sheets stuffed into a hamper—I gave up my search. Zack had led a sad, depressing life, and its evidence made me grateful for all I had in mine.

  6:45 p.m.

  When I emerged from the building I found Ollie Morse sitting on the front steps. He looked depressed and was trying to uproot a weed from wh
ere it had taken hold in the grout between the bricks.

  “Hey, Ollie,” I said, and sat down beside him.

  He glanced at me, his eyes blank for a moment. “Sharon, right?”

  “Right. Okay if I sit here with you?”

  “Sure. I’m just waiting for Al so we can go get supper. We’ve got a small shop on Innes down near the shipyards where we keep tools and stuff for our construction jobs. He couldn’t find his wire strippers, thought he might’ve left them at the shop. Or maybe here, so he sent me over to check, but I couldn’t find them.”

  “Did you hear the news about Zack Kaplan?” I asked.

  “Who? Oh, yeah. Bummer.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t remember.”

  “You’ve been on the floor where Chelle was staying. Remember the wall with all the clippings on it?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  His replies weren’t combative or evasive; his blank stare and lack of inflection were the same as before.

  “When was the last time you were up there?”

  “I dunno. Al says—”

  He didn’t get to tell me what Al said, because just then a shabby white pickup truck rattled to a stop behind Ollie’s, and Al stepped out.

  “Hey, Sharon,” he said as he approached. He perched on the step below us. “Any news about Chelle?”

  “Nothing so far. I’m working on it.”

  “That why you’re here?”

  “Yes. Checking Zack’s apartment.”

  “Zack. Hell of a thing, what happened to him. You don’t think him getting killed has anything to do with Chelle?”

  I hedged on that. “I don’t know, it might.”

  “Sure hope not. What were you and Ol talking about?”

  “This old wreck of a building and the wall on the floor where Chelle was staying.”

  “Depressing subject.” He turned to Ollie. “Look,” he said, “why don’t you go home, clean up, change your shirt, and then meet me at the Inferno?”

  “Right.” Ollie stood, suddenly eager to get going.

  As he hurried along the sidewalk to his pickup, Al said to me, “We’ve got apartments in the same building on Forty-Seventh Avenue. He needs somebody to watch over him. PTSD, you know?”