Elaine Books leaned against the corridor wall and started crying. “I’m so sorry,” Nick said. “She was your friend. I’m so very sorry. I liked her. She was kind to me, despite—despite how I look.” Very slowly, Nick drew the woman into her arms and let her cry on her shoulder.
Nick looked up at Dane. “He killed her. He must have seen her, worried that when she found out about Father Michael Joseph’s murder, she’d remember seeing him. He either knew who she was or he found out, came here sometime during the night on Sunday and killed her. That’s exactly what happened, isn’t it?”
Dane nodded. “Yes, that’s probably right.”
Elaine Books continued to weep, softly now, her head still on Nick Jones’s shoulder.
Valerie Striker was dead. Chances were that she hadn’t seen a thing, but that hadn’t mattered. She couldn’t tell them anything now. Nick closed her eyes as she rocked Elaine Books against her and thought, I’m the one who’s supposed to be dead, not her. If only she’d waited for the cops, she would have remembered to tell them about seeing Valerie Striker, and they would have come here, maybe before the killer did, and they could have saved her.
It was her fault.
EIGHT
“She can’t stay in the shelter,” Dane said. “Do you have a safe house where we can stash her?”
“Yeah,” Delion said, “but I don’t know if the lieutenant will approve it for her. There’s no real threat of danger here.”
“You’re wrong, Delion. When our guy sees this description—and I bet he will—he’ll try to find out about the person who gave it, knowing that if he’s ever caught, she can identify him. She’d be a sitting duck at the shelter.”
“If she would just tell us her real name and address, we could send her little ass home.”
Dane looked over toward the small kitchen where Ms. Nick Jones stood waving a tea bag in a paper cup of hot water, the frayed cuffs of her thick red sweater falling over her fingers. He could still see the tear streaks on her cheeks.
“Look, Dane,” Delion said, “you’re a cop. You know that since she isn’t a teenage runaway, it means she’s running from something or someone. That, or she’s a druggie—that’s the most likely. You notice she’s wearing all those sweaters? She’s probably hiding needle tracks on her arms.
“Maybe she’s wearing them to keep warm. Whatever, it’s unfortunate because our Ms. Jones seems bright and speaks well. She’s well educated. It was just her bad luck that she was in Saint Bartholomew’s on Sunday night, that is, if you believe the story she told us about why she was actually there.”
Dane didn’t say anything, kept looking at Nick Jones. “She has very nice teeth,” he said. “Good dental hygiene.”
“Yeah, I noticed. And that means she hasn’t been on the street all that long. What? A couple of weeks? Not a month, I’ll bet. She doesn’t smell and her clothes aren’t stiff with dirt.”
“No.”
“All right, Dane, I’ll ask the lieutenant. Now, we’ve got four murders, all possibly committed by the same perp. We have a pretty fair description of him. Now we need to figure out why he did this.”
“Well, we think he meant to do the first three—the old woman, the gay activist, and finally, my brother. Valerie Striker was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Yes, and once we have the why, we’ll have him. Let’s go meet with the chief, tell him about Valerie Striker. It could have been one of her johns that killed her.”
“You don’t believe that for a second.”
“All right, I don’t.”
“If the ME pins her murder down to sometime Sunday night, then we know with about ninety-eight percent certainty that the same guy killed her,” Dane said. “You go see the chief. I’ll speak some more with Ms. Jones.”
“You know, I’ve always wondered why folks can’t come up with better aliases. Jones, for God’s sake.”
“Nick is her real first name though,” Dane said. “But it’s not short for Nicole.”
“You picked up on that lie as well, huh?”
“Oh yes. I wonder what it really is.”
A few minutes later, Dane strolled over to the small kitchen. The single donut was gone. Finally tossed? Or was Ms. Jones so hungry that she ate it? He hoped she hadn’t. From the looks of that critter, it would have given a buffalo food poisoning.
“Would you like some peanuts? Inspector Delion tells me that’s the snack of choice here.”
“But I just saw one of the men snag a donut that looked like it died last week.”
Good, she hadn’t eaten it.
“At least the Medical Examiner is close. Peanuts?”
She shook her head and kept waving the tea bag in the water.
“It’s nearly black.”
“I like tea strong,” she said, but pulled out the bag and tossed it in the open trash bin. “It’s hard to get really strong tea unless you do it yourself.”
“You know I’m Father Michael Joseph’s brother, Dane Carver. There’s something else, something I don’t think you’ve caught on to yet. I’m also a special agent with the FBI.”
She dropped the cup. It splattered hot tea all over her, him, and the Virginia peanuts.
“Oh no, look what I’ve done. Oh no.” She was grabbing paper towels, wiping him down, finally on her knees, wiping up the floor. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he said, pulled off another paper towel and joined her. “It’s all right, Nick. I’m the one who’s sorry.”
“Not your fault,” she said, staring down at that towel wet through with tea now.
“Hey,” an inspector said, coming around the corner, “who took that last donut?”
Dane laughed, just couldn’t help it. She didn’t.
“No can do,” Lieutenant Purcell said, standing in her doorway. “No clear and present danger to her. You know that our budget’s stretched to the limit, Delion. I’m sorry, but she’s on her own.”
Dane wondered if it was because she was homeless, and had less worth than someone who had a job and a bit of standing in the community. He didn’t say anything. He’d already known the answer would be no and he’d also known what he was going to do.
He hadn’t let Nick Jones out of his sight. She looked, quite simply, like she was ready to run. After he left the lieutenant, he went back to the small kitchen. She was still wiping up tea from the counter. “Enough,” he said, took her arm, and guided her over to Delion’s desk. Delion was in the lieutenant’s office. Dane could see him gesticulating through the glass windows. He sat her down, came down beside her on his haunches. “Okay, tell me why you freaked out when I told you I was FBI.”
“It was just a surprise, that’s all. Your brother is a priest. You’re at the other end of the spectrum.”
She’d had time to come up with an answer, not a bad one either.
“That’s true. What’s your real name, Nick?”
“My name is Nick Jones. Just look in the phone book, you’ll see there are tons of Joneses. Lots more Joneses than Carvers, that’s for sure.”
“How long have you been in San Francisco?”
“Not all that long.”
“Two, three weeks?”
“Something like that. Two and a half weeks.”
“Where did you come from?”
She just shrugged. “Here and there. I like to travel a lot. But it’s winter, so it’s best to stay in cities that don’t get all that cold.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Where’d you go to school?”
She didn’t say a thing, just looked down at her hands, chapped and dry, and her ragged fingernails. Dane sat back in the side chair, crossed his arms over his chest. Finally, she said, “We had a deal here. No questions about me. You got that, Agent Carver? No questions or I’m out of here. I figure you need me, so leave it alone. All right?”
“It’s too bad you feel that way,” Dane said. “I have the F
BI behind me, and you knew my brother. If you’re in trouble, I can help you.”
Her head came up with that. She seemed stiff all over, but it was hard to tell with all those layers she was wearing. She said, “It’s your choice, Agent Carver.”
“All right.”
“What you need to do is find this man who killed Father Michael Joseph. Is there a death penalty in California?”
“Yes.”
“Good. He deserves to die. I was very fond of Father Michael Joseph, even though I only knew him for a short time. He cared about all of us, didn’t matter if you were rich or poor or a basically shitty person, he still cared.”
Delion came up, shaking his head at Dane. “I had to try again. No go.”
Dane said, “Inspector Delion means that there isn’t a safe house for you. Given that I firmly believe you need to be kept out of harm’s way, I’m taking you with me, back to my hotel. You’ll stay with me until we find this guy.”
“You’re nuts,” Nick said. “I’m homeless. No hotel would even let me through the door. Look at me, for God’s sake. I look like what I am. Besides, I don’t want to stay at a hotel. I’m just fine where I am.”
Delion said, “The FBI undoubtedly has a safe house in the area.”
“Nope, I don’t want to involve them in this. Trust me, Delion, you don’t either.”
“The camel’s-nose-under-the-tent sort of thing? That’s fine by me. We don’t want Ms. Jones to end up like Valerie Striker. I’m heading to a meeting with the chief now. We’re organizing a task force, then we’ll have more than enough manpower of our own to catch this creep.”
Dane waited to say anything else until Delion was out of earshot. “You’re safe for the moment. But, Ms. Jones, when the guy who murdered my brother and three other people realizes his description is out there, you know as well as I do that he’ll try to hunt you down. You want to be in that shelter when you hear his footsteps coming up the stairs? There isn’t anyone there who could help you.”
She went nearly as white as his shirt. “I’ll leave San Francisco, go south.”
“No, going on the run isn’t the answer. If you force us to, we’ll arrest you as a material witness.”
But evidently Delion wasn’t out of earshot. He stopped, said over his shoulder, “You’ve obviously got a lot of crap going on in your life, Ms. Jones. I’d go with the big Fed if I were wearing your shoes. Let him watch out for you.” Delion fanned his hands. “You don’t have to worry about our asking you any more questions about your past, okay?”
“No,” she said. “I’m stupid for staying this long. I’ve told you what I know. I’m outta here.” She was out of her chair and heading toward the door in a flash.
Delion made a grab for her, but missed.
Dane sighed, said over his shoulder, “She moves fast.”
One of the inspectors called out, “She must have learned that in the Tenderloin.”
Dane stomped after her. He saw a flash of her red sweater as she ran past the elevator toward the stairs. He caught her just before she made it to the third-floor exit.
He didn’t know what he expected, but she fought him like her life depended on it. She kicked and punched and didn’t make a single sound while she was trying to kill him.
Why didn’t she yell at him?
He finally managed to get behind her and force her arms against her sides. He pulled her back hard against him so she couldn’t move.
“Hold still, just hold still.”
She was breathing hard, but still she struggled and tugged and heaved. She was strong, workout strong. He simply held on as tightly as he could. She couldn’t gain enough leverage to hurt him, but she tried.
A couple of cops came out onto the third-floor landing. “Hey, what’s going on here?”
“I’m Dane Carver, FBI,” Dane said. “She’s trying to escape. Go ask Delion up in Homicide.”
“You need any help?”
“No,” Dane said. “I wish you’d come about five minutes ago, though.”
“Yeah, I can see how you’d have trouble with a perp who’s fifty pounds lighter than you. You want us to get Delion? Tough guy, Delion. He can stop a perp, no matter how big.”
“Nah. I’ve finally got her pinned.”
She’d quieted, just a bit, but he’d no sooner got the words out of his mouth than she went wild again. She took him by surprise this time, twisting sharply inward, and his hold on her loosened just a bit. She drove her elbow into his belly and was off again, as the air whooshed out of him.
“Yeah, you’ve got her, all right,” one of the officers said, laughing.
Dane caught her again on the second floor just before she ducked into the women’s room. “Okay, enough.”
He pressed his back against the wall and jerked her back against him. “Let’s try this again. That was a good move, that twist. Where’d you learn that?”
She was heaving, panting. She didn’t say anything, just stood there, her head down, breathing hard. She didn’t say anything for a very long time, but Dane was patient; he’d learned to be. Finally, he said, “Are you afraid the media are going to catch up with you and there’ll be a photo or a video?”
“Another word about me, and, believe this—I’m gone. You have no right to question me, no right at all. No more, Agent Carver. No more.”
He didn’t want to drop it, but he knew he had to. They needed her. Dane sighed. “There just isn’t anything easy in this life, you know? Why couldn’t you have sold lingerie at Macy’s? Something nice and normal?”
“I was nice and normal,” she said, realized she’d let something out, and seamed her lips together.
“Oh? Maybe you were in real estate? Advertising? Maybe you were married and your old man knocked you around? All right, you got it, there won’t be another word out of me.”
“You’ve got words just waiting to spill out of you. Forget it.” She leaned down and bit his hand, hard.
Dane yelled, just couldn’t help himself. There were a good dozen folks on them then, half of them cops. She was homeless. There was no question who the good guy was. One uniformed officer grabbed her hair and yanked her head back.
The officer said, “She didn’t draw blood, but it was close. You want some help here?”
“Yeah, could I have a pair of cuffs?”
The officer handed them over without even asking for an ID and Dane knew it wasn’t because they were careless. He looked like a cop. He pulled her arms behind her and cuffed her wrists. “There,” he said. “Now my body parts are safe. Thank you, ah, Officer, ah, Gordon. I’ll leave the cuffs with Inspector Delion, up on four.”
“No problem. You gotta watch yourself with these people. You might want your hand checked out, you never know what diseases she might be carrying around.”
“Yeah, thanks, I will.”
He barely understood Nick say “bastard” she had her jaw locked so tight.
“I’m not a bastard. I’ve got a pedigree. Now, what are we going to do with you?”
“Let me leave. I’ll come back, I swear it.”
“Nope. Let it go, Ms. Jones. You’re with me now. Think of me as your own personal bodyguard. Just let it go. Can you do that?”
As he spoke he turned her around to face him. There was a line of freckles across her nose he hadn’t noticed before, quite visible since she was so pale. But what he really saw, and hated, was defeat. She looked crushed, flattened.
He clasped her upper arms and shook her slightly. “Listen to me. I won’t let anyone hurt you, I promise.”
“You look so much like him.”
“Yes, I know, but my brother and I were very different people. Very different. Well, not in all things, but in many.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe not. He promised he wouldn’t let anyone hurt me either.” She bit her lip. “But he’s dead. Please, I wasn’t responsible for his death, was I?”
She stood there, her arms pulled behind her, her wrists handcu
ffed, tears streaking down her cheeks.
“No,” Dane said. “You weren’t responsible. I do know one thing for certain—Michael’s murder had nothing at all to do with you. Believe it.”
“Oh shit,” Delion said, coming to a dead stop about three feet from them. “I don’t need this.”
NINE
“What size do you wear?”
“I don’t want any new clothes. Listen to me, Agent Carver, I just want to stay the way I am now. I have to, don’t you understand?”
“You’re going to be safer if you look like a reasonably dressed woman rather than a bag lady. This is a very ordinary, inexpensive store, Inspector Bates told me. She said we could get you a couple of things here that look like what everyone else is wearing. Don’t give me any more trouble, Ms. Jones. I’m so tired I could sleep leaning against that taxi sign, and I know all the way to my wing tips that I need your help. Don’t think of it as a favor to the cops. Think of it as a favor to my brother, you know, the man you really liked and admired. I need you to help me catch his killer.”
He knew then that, finally, he’d touched her. He’d made her feel guilty, made her feel beyond selfish if she ran away. She wanted to catch the monster who murdered his brother. Good, whatever worked. It had taken him long enough. Maybe it would help her get over the idea that she was responsible.
What made it even better was that it was only the truth. He did need her.
“All right. Let’s get some inexpensive things, then.”
“And then some better things.”
“I thought you said you were really tired.”
“I am. But I’m staying at a good hotel, the Bennington, just off Union Square. I’d like to remain low profile. Having a bag lady on my arm would make everyone think I was some sort of pervert.”
“They’d think you didn’t have much money, that’s for sure.”
Dane didn’t know where it came from, but he smiled.
Thirty minutes later, they walked out of The Rag Bag, a woman’s retread clothes store just off Taylor and Post, not far from the Bennington Hotel. Of course in San Francisco, nothing was very far from anything else. She was wearing a decent pair of jeans, a white blouse, and a dark blue pullover V-necked sweater. The cap was gone from her head, her hair ruthlessly brushed back and clipped at the back of her neck.
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