Washburn crossed her arms. “She’d been seeing a married man, but that was over. She ended it about a week ago.” She seemed to shiver.
“Did you know who it was?”
Washburn nodded slowly. “David Kemp.”
Boom. Motive for murder. “Did you speak to Denise after Dr. Kemp was killed?”
“Briefly. We went to lunch on Monday. I wasn’t sure she’d heard. She didn’t mention it, but when I told her, she sort of shrugged it off. Said he had it coming.”
“Was that like her?”
“No,” Washburn said, wide-eyed. “She was crazy about him. He was going to leave his wife for her.”
“He said that?”
“Well, not to me. But to her. He said it all the time.” She shook her head. “Denise said he said it all the time—”
“And did you believe that was going to happen?”
Washburn rubbed the tissue across her nose. “Denise wasn’t stupid. He must’ve done something to make her believe it was true.”
“And what about the breakup? Was she upset?”
“No. That was weird, too. She just said it was over. Said she was going out with someone new.”
“Someone new?”
“Yes. She had a date with him on Friday. A nice place, too.”
“Do you know who he was?”
“She said I knew him, but she wouldn’t tell me. Didn’t want to jinx it.”
Hal shifted forward in his chair. “Did she tell you anything about him? Anything at all?”
Washburn worried the tissue between her fingers, leaving a trail of white cotton on the tabletop. “She said I’d be surprised, that he was someone she’d overlooked.” She glanced up. “She said she’d always thought he was boring.”
“Boring,” Hal repeated, and she nodded enthusiastically, as if it was a breakthrough. As though he could identify the killer by this new evidence. He’d met half of that office. They were all boring.
Maybe he should go back to the list of employees and narrow it down by men. And then what? There were a dozen men. A dozen boring men.
“Do you know where they went for dinner?”
“She told me. It was new, flashy.”
He had to resist rubbing his face. “Do you remember the name of it?”
“I know she said.” She began to cry again. “But I can’t think of it. It’s gone from my head. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. It might come to you,” he said softly. He wouldn’t have used his real name at the restaurant. Or would he?
“I have another question for you, Ms. Washburn.”
She looked up expectantly.
“Do you recall if Denise used a water bottle?”
“Sure. She always had a water bottle at work. We all do. There’s water in the break room, but there are never any cups.”
“Was there one she normally brought to the office?”
“She kept one there, I think. Clear with a straw. It had a sticker on it from her son’s school or something.”
“Not a blue metal one?”
“No,” Sarah said. “I have a blue one. And mine is metal. My sister gave it to me. One of those new ones. Keeps water really cold. I can fill it with cold water before bed, and it’s still cold the next morning.”
“You have a blue water bottle.”
She nodded.
Hal found a picture on his phone. “A bottle like this one?”
“That’s it. That’s my water bottle.” She squinted. “Is that at Denise’s house? I must’ve left it in her car. We filled it with wine for the movi—” She stopped.
“For the movies?” he asked.
She hesitated, looking worried.
“I don’t care about the wine, Ms. Washburn. When did you go the movies?”
She thought a minute. “It was a Wednesday. Not last week. Must’ve been the week before.” Her eyes grew wide. “It was the same night.”
“The same night as what?”
“The same night that she was in the pharmacy. We went to the movies, and she was going to spend the night. We made up the couch for her. Only when I woke up, she was gone.”
Hal studied Sarah Washburn. A woman whose friend had gotten her drunk in order to steal her access card and break into a pharmacy for a drug that she intended to use to kill the married man who had jilted her.
She’d brought the Adriamycin with her, which meant she’d been planning to kill him. But if she had killed Todd Posner, she would have known what it took to get him to drink it. So why not use the Taser she’d used on Posner? Or the horse sedative?
He thought back. “Has Denise missed other days in the office? Besides last week?”
“No. That’s why I was so surprised she didn’t show up to work yesterday. A group of us were saving up vacation days to go to Mexico. A group of us were planning to go down in the early spring, you know. When it’s rainy . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Ben Gustafson would have been killed while Denise Ross was at work. So were there two killers? Denise Ross and who?
He looked across the table at the weeping, red-faced woman across from him. Was she a killer? It was impossible to believe.
“Does Denise have other friends she’s close to? People she might have confided in?”
Washburn shook her head. “I don’t think so. She hates her ex, and she’s not real close with her son.”
“What about in the office?” Hal pressed. He wanted to know who the new man was. He had a gut feeling that they were on the cusp of finding this guy.
“Really only me,” Washburn said. “I don’t think she had a lot of friends.”
His phone buzzed across the scarred tabletop. The lab. He’d gotten all he could from her anyway. “I appreciate you coming in,” Hal told Washburn.
She was wide-eyed. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.” Though he doubted that was true. He walked from the room, lifting the phone to his ear. “Harris.”
“It’s Naomi. I found something on Gustafson’s phone.”
“What?”
“It’s an app called ProCall.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Pretty new, I think,” Naomi said.
“What does it do?”
“Instead of calling a company to fix your appliance or install something, you can use the app to hire someone. It’s cheaper and usually faster. There’s a bunch of these kinds of apps popping up.”
“You’re saying Gustafson stopped to install cable for someone else?”
“I’m not sure yet, but he had a ProCall Service Provider account and about forty reviews on his work, so it looks like he was taking calls. Maybe evenings or weekends.”
“Or maybe in between company service calls,” Hal said. In the middle of the workday, which would explain the gap in his schedule. “Can you find out where he was right before he was killed?”
“Roger’s got a call in to ProCall. He’s hoping to bypass the warrant stage.”
“Call me as soon as you get anything.”
“Always do.”
Hal left the building and walked down the street to Starbucks. He’d hoped to see Schwartzman. They’d left things badly the day before. Why wouldn’t she tell him what was in the plastic bag she had carried into Spencer’s house? Why would she have had a bag at all?
He tried to recall what he knew about the day she’d gone to Spencer’s house and finally confronted him. It was all such a blur. Him trying to reach her. Harper trying to reach her. When he’d heard she was okay, he was so relieved that he’d barely bothered with why she had gone there in the first place. Maybe she’d hoped to find something to prove his guilt. Had she brought gloves so that she didn’t leave prints? She could have kept those in a pocket.
From the video it looked like the plastic bag had some bulk, more than gloves could account for. She’d told him she’d brought tools, in case she needed to break in to the house. That was the story she’d given ADA Patchet
t, too.
What had she been planning? Was it really to break in? Or was it something worse? In which case, maybe he didn’t want to know after all.
The Starbucks was quiet, a rarity, so he decided to sit awhile. He splurged on a Venti Mocha and watched the barista top him off with extra whipped cream. She gave him a nice smile. Attractive.
He took a seat in the corner, his back to the window, and opened the file on Joe Strom. Strom had graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in ’66, gotten an MBA in ’72. Strom Inc. was started in ’76. All looked pretty clean. No arrests. No IRS audits. No complaints with the business bureau, no lawsuits ever filed against him. He had a few items that were settled in mediation—business stuff, likely. And then the suit that was filed in October 2002. Four months before he’d died.
The defendant was listed as Spencer Henry MacDonald.
Hal lifted the mocha and took a long drink. So there had been a lawsuit. That was a long way from linking Spencer to Joe Strom’s death.
The skin on Hal’s neck seemed to tighten, and he reached back to rub it. Spencer? The idea that he might have killed someone more than fourteen years ago? Or the fact that the odds were increasing that Schwartzman’s tormentor was not going to stay behind bars?
He felt it again and looked up. A blond man stood at the end of the bar, the same man he’d seen watching Schwartzman when they were in the coffee shop last week. His hands were shoved deep into his pants pockets, his head lowered on his neck like a turtle trying to retract into its shell. The expression on his face was pure hate. Hal followed his gaze, half expecting to see Schwartzman. Instead the man was focused on the barista who had given Hal the extra whipped cream.
Hal closed the file on Strom and tucked it under his arm, taking his coffee and walking to the end of the bar. He stopped and stared at the blond man, peering down on him from five or six inches of additional height. Barely a moment passed before the narrowed, angry eyes shifted to him. They went wide, then narrowed again.
“You have a problem?” Hal asked.
The man looked around like the question was an affront. “Uh, no. I’m waiting for my coffee.” He dragged the words between his teeth.
“You look angry.”
“I am. That ni—” He clapped his mouth closed, shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. Fists were balled against his thighs, the shape of his knuckles visible through the fabric. “It’s taking forever,” he spat.
Hal crossed his arms. No way this skinny white dude was going to call her that. Before he could ask, the barista set a coffee on the counter with a thunk, sending a little toss of foam up through the lid.
She walked away, and the man stared at it and then after her.
“That’s your coffee,” she called back from across the bar. “Says ‘Roy.’ That’s your name, right?”
Roy pulled a handful of napkins from the dispenser and wrapped the coffee in them before carrying it out the door. He skirted people, careful not to touch anyone as he used his foot to kick the door open and scuttle outside.
“Who is that guy?” Hal asked.
The barista shrugged. “Nut. Germaphobe or some damn thing. I’ve only been at this store for two weeks, but he’s always like that. He’s nothing,” she said, waving toward the door. “You shoulda seen the guys down on Market Street near Hyde.”
Market Street was home to a huge homeless population. Actually, San Francisco was home to a huge homeless population. And more coming all the time. But that guy—Roy—didn’t look homeless. And he didn’t look crazy—at least not mentally ill crazy.
He just looked mean.
And Hal didn’t like the idea that he was watching Schwartzman.
As if he didn’t have enough to worry about already.
32
Schwartzman finished work and left the morgue at three thirty on Friday. Her phone was in her pants pocket. They would be able to reach her if they needed her.
Three days until the final chemo treatment. Get through that and then decide about the house. Then she would deal with Hal.
She had not heard from him other than one e-mail to ask a follow-up question on Denise Ross’s murder. An e-mail. Hal never e-mailed. He was lucky because she’d been sitting at her computer at the time. She replied within minutes.
Then nothing. No thank-you. No updates.
She had worked four homicides this week and not a single one with Hal. Walking past the department, into the morgue, she was always on the lookout for him. She considered calling. But what would she say? She couldn’t tell him what she’d done at Spencer’s. That would only jeopardize his job. And he wasn’t going to let it go.
And she didn’t know what business it was of his if she bought a house. No, she did know. It was none of his business. She had a right to move on, and she didn’t need anyone’s permission.
That morning she had arrived to two autopsies—both unattended deaths, both natural causes. She felt disjointed from the case that had been on her mind for weeks. After four related murders, there should be a flurry of action around her. But instead she’d heard nothing. Her part was done. Unless there was another body.
From the department, she drove to meet Ken at a bungalow-style house for sale in Noe Valley. It had been under contract—briefly—but the contract had fallen through on the pest report. The water damage to the tune of $65,000 probably didn’t help.
She followed the directions to a tree-lined street fewer than four miles from the station. The trip took under fifteen minutes. Guerrero Street got backed up sometimes, but there were always side street options.
A good distance from work. A good neighborhood. She liked the street.
Ken was already parked in front of the house, but he pulled away when she showed up, waving her into the one-car parking spot on the curb. He returned a few minutes later from down the street where he had left his car.
He gave her a single-armed hug and a kiss on the cheek, and they stood in the street, looking at the little house.
“It’s a little like a jungle,” he teased.
It was true. The front of the house was a sea of overgrown fern plants and a half dozen Japanese maple trees of different sizes and ages. A camellia tree hung over the ferns on one side, and the block of bougainvillea on the other was so dense the front door was hardly visible. It reminded her of something Alice in Wonderland might enter with one of her pills. The other houses on the block had been rebuilt, expanded to the edge of their lots. This was the only one that was set back from the curb. And the only single story.
The listing advertised it as a “future four-bedroom home.” A teardown. Maybe for some, but Schwartzman had no need for a four-bedroom house. The two bedrooms and den in this one, thirteen hundred square feet with two bathrooms, was already almost twice what she currently occupied.
She liked it immediately. There was a window seat with a built-in desk in the small back den, and its rustic surface reminded her of her father’s desk. Was his law book still sitting on the side table in the glass case? She wondered if her mother would let her have it. Her mother had been so desperate to get rid of certain things—the rest of the Evan Williams bourbon, her father’s work papers that had been stacked in the kitchen and beside his bed, the files on his desk that she knew had to go back to his office—any reason that someone from the outside might have to enter that room.
And then his clothes went—not all of them, just the casual things he wore around the house—T-shirts, pajamas, socks, and underwear. After that she wanted the older suits and more casual work clothes gone. Then, maybe a year after his death, it was the suits he’d worn around the time of his death.
Other than the active files, her mother had left his office untouched. Although it had been more than seven years ago since Schwartzman was there, it was hard to imagine the office would look different. Or that her father’s tuxedo—the one her mother had so loved him in—wouldn’t be at the far back of her mother’s closet, still hanging behin
d the row of her long dresses. The tuxedo, his office—her mother cherished those items. Schwartzman herself had felt an intense desire to touch her father’s tuxedo when she’d seen it hanging there. In the coat she’d found a clean white pocket square and the ticket stub from a fund-raiser at the country club.
Ken was standing at the back of the house, studying the garden through a window. There, three crossed poles had been tied like a teepee for snap peas, and boxes had been built into the ground where something still grew.
“It’s garlic,” Ken said, pointing to the green reeds along one row.
She’d had a garden when she was married to Spencer. Flowers mostly. It was not yet trendy to grow your own food, and Spencer would have worried what others might think, that it made her look too hippie, too alternative. Or that it made some statement on their financial security.
She tried to imagine herself out in the dirt, weeding, planting. She would have liked to be that kind of woman. She wasn’t certain she was.
“Come look at the porch out back.” The Realtor’s voice broke through her daydream.
Schwartzman and Ken followed Sharon to the back door and down the steps into the afternoon air. It was starting to feel more like fall, and she welcomed the cool.
The plants were similar to those in the front yard, but here the concentration felt in proportion to the space—cozy rather than claustrophobic.
The entire yard was fenced, and it occurred to her that she could have a dog here. She thought of Posner’s dog, an Australian shepherd–retriever mix, the vet had guessed. A dog was a huge commitment, and she was surprised at how much the idea appealed to her.
“The porch is over there,” Sharon said. “The door is off the master bedroom,” she added.
Schwartzman and Ken walked along a path of large flat stones and up three steps to the deck. Overhead was a lattice gazebo covered in wisteria. The vine was dormant, but a few dried flowers between the planks of the deck told her that the vine’s flower was white. The vines ran along the deck and down to two similar lattices on the far side.
Excise (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 2) Page 25