by John Flynn
“It’s rather late,” she interjected, and ushered him to the door. “We should both try to get a good night’s rest.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said, dejected. He snapped the baseball cap back on his head and moved towards the door. “I’m probably going to go back to my lab tonight and try running a few simulations. I really do think we could track and ultimately catch your killer with the right set of algorithms. You know, I was thinking—”
“Knock yourself out. If anybody can make this work, you can.”
“Thanks for saying that, but aren’t you giving me more credit than I deserve?”
“No, I’m not,” she said, leaning forward to reassure him with a touch of her hand to his chest. “Deep inside here, where it counts, you have this amazing drive to find the truth in all things, and I suppose that I’m a bit envious.”
He took her hand in his and looked deeply into her eyes. The brim of his baseball cap brushed too close to her forehead. “No, you’re the one who’s so amazing.”
“Why thank you,” she said, again cutting him off short of a marriage proposal or some other inappropriate action. Kate shook free of his grasp and opened the door for him. “Well . . . good night.”
Deflated, Lenny staggered towards the door like a zombie from a low-budget horror film. “There’s just one thing that still bothers me,” he said over his shoulder.
“And what is that?”
“You say you’ve got a boyfriend, and yet I’ve never seen the two of you together. In fact, I’ve never seen any guy at all, except that stranger who keeps leaving you gifts and watching from the shadows.”
“He’s just a little shy,” she replied, with a lie.
Lenny bobbed his head. “But doesn’t he know what a wonderful woman you are? I certainly do.”
“Good night, Lenny,” she said at last, closing the door behind him. She leaned back against the door and pondered his question. She spent the rest of the night thinking about it.
KATE RECEIVED the call about another homicide at 3:00 a.m., and got dressed to wait on the patrol car that would pick her up en route to the crime scene. The sedan picked her up thirty minutes later, and drove her to another, quiet residential street in the Pacific Heights. She rubbed a hand across her face, and yawned. Kate had not gotten nearly enough sleep. She had been up part of the night, worrying about what would happen to her partner. But most of the time, she had been thinking about the bane of her existence, John Monroe.
Lightning filled the night sky, and thunder boomed overhead. The wind whipped the rain furiously against anything in its path, and snapped a top branch off a tree. The severed limb fell across the road to block traffic. September storms were the worst in the San Francisco Bay Area, and this was a bad storm.
At the end of the street, several police cars with their lights flashing were parked in the driveway of a hundred-year-old Victorian. Kate’s ride pulled up on the grass, and she stepped out into the rain. She didn’t bother to open her umbrella or raise the collar on her trench coat. She just stood there in the rain, looking around, waiting for Miller to climb out of the driver’s side of the sedan. But of course he was not there. A look of sadness filled her face.
Detective Clark ran out to greet her. “Looks like we’ve got victim number four. Howard Funderburk.”
“Yeah, I heard,” she replied. “Who found him?”
“His secretary. Kristen Littleton.”
“She was here?”
“No,” replied Clark, without notes. “She stopped by to drop off some papers.”
“On a Friday night?”
“Come on,” he said, starting for the door.
Alone, on the rain-swept street, Kate continued to look around, still waiting for Frank. He should have been there to lead the investigation like he had dozens of times before. Lightning flashed overhead, and for a second, the house juiced bright white, then dimmed to semi-darkness. If she hadn’t known any better, she would have thought the Victorian house was haunted. But the only real haunting was that of Kate’s thoughts of her missing partner.
After a few moments, she stopped waiting for him.
She opened the front door, and trudged in, her trench coat soaking wet from the rain. She walked through the beautiful living room, her mind totally consumed with memories of the last time that she and Miller had worked a crime scene together. She remembered him kidding her about how sick she had gotten, and how she had lied to him about drinking the night before. She also recalled how smitten Miller was with the Collins mansion.
“Hey, Dawson,” Jawara called, waving.
She waved absently, shuffling past.
“We’ve got another bad one,” Ramirez informed her.
“Yeah, sex crimes are always the worst,” Kate said, then grimacing when she realized she’d repeated her partner’s words.
She moved through the living room and headed to the bedroom. Kate opened the door without knocking, and slammed it shut behind her. She walked through the Forensic and Medical teams. Anything she felt about the gruesome sight, she hid behind a mask of professional indifference. That was, at least, the one important thing she had learned from her partner.
The police photographer snapped several pictures of victim number four, Howard Funderburk. His arms and legs were tied to the bedposts of his king-sized bed. Like the previous victims, he had been severely beaten, his throat was cut and the shaft of his penis was jammed into his mouth. Dr. Brogan was examining the body.
Lt. Roberts stood in the background with several uniformed officers, while Clark circled the room with his notepad, taking notes. He was soon joined by Detectives Ramirez and Jawara, and several scene-of-the-crime boys. Captain Aguilar was conspicuously absent.
“How long?” Kate asked Brogan.
“About three hours.”
“Cause?”
“Same as the others. Massive hemorrhage,” the medical examiner replied. “When the victim’s throat was cut, he bled to death in a matter of minutes.”
Kate nodded in agreement.
“I suspect he was probably drugged,” Brogan added, “but I won’t know any more until I run a complete toxicology screen down at the lab.”
“Take a look at this,” Clark said, pointing to the nightstand drawer which had been left half open. Together, with Dr. Brogan, they carefully opened the drawer to reveal a small mirror with white powder laid out in lines.
“Looks like Christmas came earlier,” Jawara said.
“Cocaine,” Clark revealed, tasting a sample with his pinkie finger.
Kate had seen enough. She walked toward the bedroom door, and then signaled Clark to follow. He looked at her, uncomprehending, and then the realization they had been partnered appeared on his face as if a little lightbulb had been turned on over his head. He scrambled to keep pace with her.
In the home office, the two detectives found Kristen Littleton sitting on a chair next to a uniformed officer, her long legs stretched out onto a stool. She was thirty-five years old, very attractive, and had the appearance of a woman who had spent most of her life in corporate boardroom meetings. Her red hair was pulled tightly into a bun on the left side of her head.
“Miss Littleton, I’m Detective Dawson, and this is my partner, Detective . . . ,” she stopped a moment, and had to think. Finally, she said, “Clark. I’m sorry about your loss, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
“You arrived at what time tonight?” Kate asked.
“A few minutes after two a.m.”
Kate glanced at Clark, and then back at the woman. “That seems awfully late, Miss Littleton. What was the purpose of your visit?”
“I had some documents to drop off,” she replied.
“And these ‘documents’ couldn’t have waited until morning?”
/> Kristen Littleton rolled her eyes and sighed loudly, folding her arms across her chest. “No, Mr. Funderburk needed them immediately. He was leaving on the early morning shuttle for LAX, and needed the documents for a private stockholder’s meeting in Century City at eight a.m.”
“On a Sunday?” Kate added.
“Detective Dawson, how much do you know about the Global Market?” asked Littleton with a smirk.
“Not that much.”
“Well, in less than five hours, the Monday morning market will be opening in Japan and most of Asia,” she answered. “Sundays do not exist in the Global Market. They are just one more day in the week. Fortunes are made and lost in the time it has taken me to explain the world economy to you.”
The two women glared at each other.
Looking through his notes, Clark asked, “Do you know who Mr. Funderburk was meeting this evening?”
“No, I don’t know,” replied Littleton, taking her eyes off Kate. “He kept his private life private.”
“Is there anyone you can think of that would want him dead?” Clark asked.
“No.”
“Do you know the extent of his interest or involvement in bondage, sadomasochism, kinky sex?”
“No. As I said, he kept his private life—”
“. . . private,” Kate finished her sentence with a smirk.
Clark thumbed through the pages of his notebook, presumably looking for the prompt for his next question, but Kate waved him off with a tilt of her head. “Thanks for your cooperation, Miss Littleton,” she said flatly. “We’ll be in touch with you if we have any additional questions.”
Kate and Clark left the home office, and walked back toward the bedroom. Clark looked upset as they moved through the house.
“I wasn’t finished questioning her,” Clark whispered to her, angry.
“She doesn’t know anything, Clark,” Kate replied. “Dead end. Move on.”
“You don’t know that,” he persisted.
Kate reached for the handle to the bedroom door. “Okay, you want to go back in there and talk to Miss Wall Street, go ahead. I’m telling you that she doesn’t know anything.”
“Listen, Dawson, I don’t presume to know how things were between you and Miller—”
“That’s right, you don’t know how things were,” she exploded, her shrill voice breaking the concentration of nearly everyone in the room. They had stopped what they were doing and were looking right at her. Kate straightened, brushed some of the water from her trench coat, and tried to pull herself together.
“We all miss him, Kate,” Clark said.
She nodded. “C’mon, let’s see what else they’ve found.”
She and Clark entered the bedroom, and joined Lt. Roberts, Ramirez and Jawara at the back of the room.
With the help of three uniformed officers, Dr. Brogan had managed to roll Funderburk’s three-hundred-and-fifty-pound body to the side and was checking the back of the victim for anything unusual. Meanwhile, two forensic technicians were using the Leica Scan Station C-12 to capture trace evidence on the bed sheets with the three-dimensional laser scanner.
“I think I’ve got something,” said one of the forensic technicians.
“I see it,” the other replied.
Kate and her fellow detectives had stopped breathing, and were looking onto the crime scene from next to the bed.
“Beautiful,” the first technician observed.
“Outstanding,” the other added.
Lt. Roberts didn’t see anything. “What have you got?”
“Two hair fibers,” the first technician replied.
“From the cortex, it looks like the pigment is red. Female,” the other added.
“So our killer’s a redhead,” Jawara declared.
Kate shook her head. “I wouldn’t get too worked up about it, Jawara. Just because we’ve found a couple of hair fibers doesn’t mean we’ve found a match for our killer. For Christ’s sake, Funderburk’s secretary is a redhead.”
“This may be the first break we’ve gotten,” Ramirez said, igniting a round of high-fives and well wishes.
Clark looked at his notebook. “I think we should have another chat with his secretary, Miss Littleton.”
“Knock yourself out,” Kate replied, with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
“Follow every lead,” Roberts ordered. “Don’t leave any stone unturned.”
“We’ll run the hair fibers through CODIS, and see if we can come up with a DNA match,” the first technician said.
“Put a rush job on it, boys,” the lieutenant added. “This may well be the break we need.”
Everyone seemed pretty excited, but Kate just stood her ground, shaking her head in disbelief. As far as she was concerned, the murderer was far too clever and disciplined to have left any evidence behind. Unless, of course, she or he had purposely planted the evidence to throw them off. Either way, Kate knew that she was dealing with a very dangerous and diabolical psychopath.
ON SUNDAY afternoon, Kate relied on public transportation to reach Miller’s two-bedroom apartment at 2000 Post Apartments. The small collection of aging apartment buildings, nestled in the lower Pacific Heights area, had once been one of the San Francisco Bay area’s premier apartment communities. But age and neglect and the urban squalor of nearby Japan Town had turned the area into a low-rent district for aging hippies, displaced middle-class families, and foreign-born nationals. Select apartment homes had been remodeled with granite countertops, stainless steel and black appliances, new cabinetry, and modern track lighting, but most of them had been left to deteriorate on their own. The apartment that Miller occupied, and had lived in for twelve years, had been left to deteriorate.
As Kate climbed the stairs to her partner’s apartment, carrying a bag of groceries, she was struck by the odd inconsistencies of the 2000 Post Apartments. The marketing folks liked to boast about the community’s world-class amenities, including the lush garden and rejuvenating hydrotherapy spa and the lap pool. But she could see the chipping paint, the water-damaged carpets, and the broken air conditioning units through the bay windows of many of the units. At the very top of the stairs of the five-story apartment building, she paused to reach under a doormat that had not been swept in over a year. She extracted a key, opened the door to the apartment, and returned the key to its place under the doormat. She stepped inside, and was nearly choked to death by the foul smell of mold and mildew in the carpet. Kate walked over to the kitchen window, and opened it to clear the air.
Frank sat in a T-shirt and sweat pants on a sofa in the living room, watching a baseball game on the television set. His apartment didn’t look as if it had been cleaned in a month of Sundays. Dirty clothes were balled up in various corners of the room. Stacks of dirty dishes and glasses were in the kitchen sink, filling nearly every table top, and piles of forgotten newspapers and magazines littered the floor from one end to the other.
After a long pause, he looked over his shoulder. “You can turn your ass around and head back out that door if you brought me ‘lite’ beer,” he said, in a gravelly voice.
“Bitch. Bitch. Bitch,” she replied.
“That stuff tastes like piss.”
“Stop your complaining,” Kate said. “I brought you the ‘King of Beers,’ you old ‘bud wiser.’”
“Then make yourself useful, and bring me one,” Miller commanded, scratching his beer belly through the dirty T-shirt.
Kate put the bag of groceries down in his kitchen, and pulled two bottles of beer from the bag. She handed one to him on the sofa, and sat down on the chair next to him with the other beer in hand. For a few moments, they sat quietly, drinking, watching the San Francisco Giants playing baseball on the television.
“How many years have we been partners?” she
asked, taking a swig of beer.
“Two, maybe three years.”
“Try seven and a half,” Kate corrected him, with a look. “That’s longer than most marriages.”
Miller appeared to be surprised. “Maybe I should have married you instead of those two good-for-nothings I did marry. At least, you and me wouldn’t be fighting over my pension.”
They watched a couple more plays on the television, then took a couple of swallows during the commercial break.
Kate tried to appear as if she was watching the game, studying the plays as if she was the manager of the team and wanted to see how to improve the performance of each of her players. She was a big fan of the Giants, and had attended a few games at their new stadium. The truth of the matter was that she wasn’t seeing the game at all. She couldn’t have told anyone what the score was, or if the San Francisco Giants were beating the visiting team. She didn’t even know if they were playing out of town or at AT&T Stadium, so deep in thought was she. She had something to say, but was waiting for the right moment to say it.
“What do you miss most about being married?” he asked.
She had no idea how long her partner had been waiting for her to answer, and she scarcely batted an eyelash when she heard him repeat it a second time.
“What do you miss most about being married?” he repeated.
“Well, besides my daughter, I guess I miss intimacy the most.”
He shot a look sideways. “Sorry to disappoint you, Kate, but I’m fresh out of Viagra.”
“I’m not talking about sex, you old pussy hound,” she said, momentarily annoyed.
“Oh.”
“What about you?”
“Food,” he replied, slapping his belly. “I used to love coming home to a home-cooked meal when I got one. Nowadays it’s mostly take-out, if I have time to eat at all.”
They both had a swig of beer, and returned their attention to the game. During a commercial break, Kate leaned over, and caught Miller’s eye. He had been thinking about what she had said. As much as he hated to admit it, particularly to his partner and himself, Frank was a lonely man who missed having a good woman in his life. In the forty years that he had been a member of the San Francisco Police Department, he had been married twice. Once to Dorothea Welles, a cocktail waitress who rushed him into a quickie marriage in Las Vegas and then took him for everything he was worth, and once to Tamara Smith, a boozy barfly who had serious problems keeping her legs closed to other men and blamed him for it. Neither of them could have been mistaken for the “good woman” in Miller’s book.