By the time Beth and Ike got back to the Hall of Justice at a little before five o’clock, dusk creeping in, the Homicide detail had received two more calls—a robbery had gone south down in the lower Sunset when the store’s owner had taken three bullets in the chest as he’d reached for his own gun behind the counter; and a young man, possibly a tourist, had succumbed to a mugging after he’d been thrown to the ground and beaten as he’d been strolling through the Tenderloin.
These four, of course, were in addition to the suicide of Theresa Boleyn earlier in the day.
Though Beth and Ike’s original plan had been to apply to the weekend magistrate judge and get a warrant to search Geoff Cooke’s sailboat down at the marina in the hopes that they would have something incriminating to show him when they confronted Cooke himself, no sooner had they shown up on the fourth floor than their lieutenant appeared at their desks and assigned them to the Sunset robbery and fatal shooting. Twenty minutes after they had arrived at the Hall, they were back on the road again, this time in a city-issued vehicle.
Beth, in the passenger seat, was on the phone with her daughter, explaining the all-too-familiar scenario: “. . . so bottom line, Gin, is if you come home, don’t wait up. It’ll probably be awhile. Are you still down at Laurie’s?”
“All day. We’ve been having a blast, bingeing on Blue Bloods.”
“Ah, cop glamour. You don’t get enough of that, living with a cop and all?”
“Well, no offense, Mom, but you don’t do much of the glamour part.”
“Hey! That hurts. Every day I’m immersed in glamour. Just ask Ike. You want to talk to him? He’s right here. He’ll tell you. Here, listen up. Ike, tell Ginny how glamorous is our day-to-day life.”
She held out the phone and Ike bellowed, “Way glam.”
Beth brought the instrument back to her ear. “See? And meanwhile,” she added, going serious, “how’s Laurie doing?”
Ginny’s voice went to a near-whisper. “Popcorn and gelato all day. It’s like she’s not even thinking about it. Like eating suddenly is more or less normal.”
“Don’t get her sick.”
“She’s already sick. This is making her better.”
“Good point.”
“Besides, she’s developing a major crush on Danny.”
“Danny?”
“Donnie Wahlberg? Tom Selleck’s son on Blue Bloods?”
“Ah.”
“Which, believe it or not, might be doing her some good on the Frank Rinaldi front. At least theoretically, she’s definitely finding another man attractive, and that’s got to be a plus.”
“It can’t hurt.”
“No, it can’t.”
Beth paused for a second. Then, “Is Alan over there with you guys?”
“No. He left around noon. He said he was going to see you for lunch. Did he do that?”
“He did.”
“And how’d it go?”
“We had a nice lunch.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s plenty at this stage, Gin. He seems like a good guy.”
“He is a good guy, Mom. Cute, too, as you might have noticed.”
“Not really. I don’t do that superficial stuff. So listen, are you planning to come home tonight?”
“I thought I’d play it by ear. You’re gone anyway, right?”
“ ’Til late at least.”
“So I wouldn’t be abandoning you?”
“No. Not even a little.”
“How about if I let you know then, one way or the other? Meanwhile, if Alan comes by here again, should I tell him you had a great time at lunch?”
“Thank you, but not necessary. He knows what kind of time we had.”
“Are you seeing him again?”
“He said something about dinner sometime, but nothing is carved in stone. If he calls and asks, we’ll see what happens, if anything.”
“You’ve got to rein in that enthusiasm, Mom.”
“I know,” Beth said. “I’m working on it.”
* * *
The Ulloa Super was anything but. It wasn’t even on Ulloa Street.
A mom-and-pop market at the corner of Taraval and Nineteenth Avenue, essentially unchanged in forty or fifty years, it sported an entire aisle of cheap wine, another of food staples and snacks, mostly from the high-calorie, heavily preserved end of the spectrum, a cold bin with beer and soft drinks, some questionably fresh fruits and vegetables, candy, toiletries, paper products, and hard liquor behind the counter.
Also behind the counter, on the floor, lay the body of Emil Yarian. His assailant had shot him three times in the chest, probably from two or three feet away, across the counter. He still held the handgun that he’d grabbed to defend and protect himself, a strategy that hadn’t worked out so well. Four patrol officers and the sergeant from Taraval Station had secured the scene by the time Beth and Ike pulled up. After fifteen or twenty minutes, it became clear that due to the crush on the city’s resources, neither the Crime Scene Unit nor the coroner was going to be making an appearance anytime soon.
Beth cocked her head toward Ike, and the two of them moved away from the other cops and under the yellow crime scene tape to the sidewalk outside. Fog was starting to reappear, swirling in from the west. A couple of TV vans had pulled up outside, and the inspectors turned and walked away in the opposite direction. “I’m going way out on a limb now,” Beth said when they were out of earshot, “but my gut tells me nothing new happens here for three or four hours minimum.”
Ike cast a woeful glance back toward the market’s door. “Looks about right,” he said. “Maybe five or six.”
“And even then, what? The surveillance camera’s not working. No witnesses saw anything. There’s nothing in the future here but paperwork, wouldn’t you say? So here’s my idea. You and I get back in the car right now, and I drive you to your lovely home in the Richmond, not two miles away.”
“And what do I do there?”
“Get some of that sleep we’ve been talking about. I’d rather have you rested on Peter Ash tomorrow or Monday than wiped out doing nothing here. And trust me, I can handle things here, whatever they might turn out to be, which isn’t likely to be much. I’ll be back before they even know we left.”
Ike considered for all of five seconds. “Twist my arm,” he said.
“I just did.”
He nodded. “Let’s roll.”
* * *
When Beth returned to the Ulloa Super twenty-five minutes later, nothing had changed.
She checked back in with the sergeant to make sure, but he and the officers were engrossed in a college football game on the store’s television over the vegetable bins, and none of them appeared to be aware that she’d been gone for a while or that Ike was suddenly missing in action. She told him that she’d just be outside in her car following up on some other cases and she’d check back in at the arrival of the Crime Scene people or the coroner, whichever came first.
Back in the car, she locked the doors behind her, leaned back against the headrest, closed her eyes and though she tried to focus, her thoughts tumbled about in her brain—Ginny, Geoff Cooke, Theresa Boleyn, Laurie Shaw, Eric Ash, Peter, Kate, Alan.
She dozed.
Coming to with a start, she didn’t know where she was. The fog, now in with a vengeance, rendered the Ulloa Super as little more than a fuzzed-out neon glow from her parking space half a block down the street. Her watch read ten after eight. Retracing her steps back to the market, she grabbed a bottle of water from the cool bin and noticed that two of the officers had gone. She told the sergeant that he could get back to the station and suggested he dismiss the guys who’d been here all along and send out two other squad cars with fresh troops to hold the fort with her until the cavalry arrived.
He didn’t need to be told twice.
When the rest of the police contingent had gone, Beth closed the front door after them, turned off the television, and gave it a few minutes to
make sure they weren’t coming back. Clearing a spot on the vegetable bin from which she couldn’t see Emil Yarian’s cooling body, she boosted herself up, pulled out her telephone, and punched up her best friend’s number.
Fresh in her mind was the bluff—the lie—that she and Ike had played on Carol Lukins. They hadn’t yet gotten any DNA results from Peter Ash’s room, but she and Ike had led her to believe that they had. Meanwhile, in all the detritus floating around in her brain, while she’d dozed out in her car, Beth had retrieved the fact that there must have been one other call from the mystery woman to Peter—the very first one. And if this woman was calling Peter, maybe Peter was also calling her. And that would mean that those calls were in the still-unobtained records from Peter’s cell phone. Either way, though, the mystery woman might be persuaded that in fact, Beth had been able to run that trace.
And, on further reflection, Beth realized that she didn’t need the actual phone records at all. She could just pretend she had seen them, tell another lie, and run the bluff.
“Hello?”
“I don’t know if I can still call you ‘girlfriend.’ ”
“Of course you can,” Kate said. “I’m glad you called. I’m so sorry about the other night. I don’t know what got into me.”
“It was me, too. I forget how ugly homicide investigations can be when you’re not used to them. I really didn’t mean to upset you.”
“That’s all right. Every little thing seems to upset me lately.”
“Well, you had socialized with someone who was murdered. Even if you weren’t close. That’s upsetting enough by itself. And then your best friend starts peppering you with all these intrusive questions.”
“Well, that’s your job, Beth, if I’m not mistaken.”
“It is.” She paused. “And let me just say right at the outset here that not for one second do I think that you had anything to do with the death of Peter Ash. Really, really, really.”
“I realize that now. Of course. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. But Kate, I’m afraid I am still on the job and I’ve still got a couple of questions.”
Kate’s voice seemed to break up. “About me?”
“Yes. And especially kind of one big personal one.” Hearing Kate’s sigh through the line, Beth pressed on. “Given that I hope you know that I couldn’t think you had killed anybody—ever, ever—I don’t really know why you didn’t feel you could confide in me and tell me the truth about you and Peter Ash. After all, did you really think I wouldn’t remember?”
“Well, I don’t remember mentioning it after all. So why would I think you’d remember it if I didn’t?”
“There’s that job thing, coming up again, Kate. Somebody tells me something, especially a fact that might be related to a case I’m working, it tends to stay in my head.”
“But it wasn’t a case you were working back then.”
“It is now, though. And lo and behold, when it became a case, there it was, just sitting in my brain waiting to be plucked.”
Silence.
“I’m talking about you and Peter.”
The silence stretched out.
At last, Kate said, “The truth is I’ve got a huge blank spot in my memory on that day, Beth. I barely remember going to the Ferry Building at all, much less what we did or talked about, and absolutely nothing after I got shot. You’re saying I told you something about me and Peter Ash?”
Here we go, Beth thought, running the bluff. “How else would I know?” she asked.
Another beat. Two beats. Three.
And finally a deep sigh, then her voice barely a whisper. “It was one day six months ago, Beth. One day. A couple of hours. And nothing since then.”
Not true, Beth thought. There was at least one other call and whatever may have followed from that. But she let her go on.
“I knew that of course our . . . dalliance . . . had nothing to do with his death, but I thought if it came out that we’d been together, somebody might think that it did. Then when I saw that you were the inspector on the case . . . this sounds stupid . . . but I didn’t want to disappoint you somehow.”
“How would you do that?”
“By being involved in a murder, even in the most tangential way. I didn’t want you to think of me that way, as anything like the kind of person you investigate.” She hesitated again, then said, “I should have told you the minute I found out he’d been killed, shouldn’t I have?”
Obviously, Beth thought. Of course.
But she said, “I’m not going to judge you, Kate. You’re telling me now.”
“It’s why I was so defensive last time. I didn’t want you to find out. I was so embarrassed that I’d been so stupid.”
“I know that, Kate. And it doesn’t mean I’m any closer to thinking you’re any part of Peter’s death.”
“That is so good to hear. And I’m really not, Beth. I made a mistake, okay, sleeping with him, but I had no reason to want to hurt him. I’ve just been trying to put things back together here with Ron.”
“And how’s that going? You seemed almost all the way back to healthy to me.”
“I am, but it’s not just that.”
After a beat, Beth said, “He knows about you and Peter?”
“Apparently so.”
“How did that happen?”
“It’s a long story. He’s a smart guy and he put it together. It’s still a little bit the elephant in the living room.”
“Poor you,” Beth said with real empathy.
“No. I deserve it. I just want to have us put all of this behind us. And I’m afraid it’s going to take awhile.”
“You’ll get there.”
“Let’s hope. In any event, I’m glad you called and we got this out in the open.”
“Me, too, girlfriend,” Beth said. “Me, too.”
* * *
Beth put her phone in its holster and eased herself off her perch on the vegetable bin. She grabbed a Snickers bar from its place next to the cash register, tore it open, and took a bite. Still chewing, she then went over to the cool case, removed the night’s second plastic bottle of water and, unscrewing the cap, drank about a third of it in one slug. She went around and put money in the register.
Cop glamour.
She glanced down behind her for another look at her victim.
Still dead, she thought. Cop humor.
Going around to the front and hoisting herself up onto the checkout counter, she had another bite of Snickers and sipped again from her water bottle.
All in all, she realized that she felt pretty good about the results of the day—she had gone from a wild-ass universe of suspects in the morning and now, twelve hours later, had whittled that number down to a reasonably probable two—Eric Ash with his lies, his motive, and his missing handgun, and Geoff Cooke with his Scotch, his cigars, and his boat.
Ike might harbor the thought that the tragic Theresa might still be in the picture as Peter Ash’s killer, but from Beth’s point of view, this was no longer a possibility worth considering. And if, in fact, that’s what had happened, the case would never be solved anyway, since the only two people who really knew the truth were dead.
Likewise, after their lovemaking, after Peter had told Carol Lukins that they could not spend the night together, Beth with all her heart believed that Carol did not then in jealousy or frustration spirit Peter away in her car and shoot him. Her reluctant statement that he was meeting a close friend on a boat to drink and talk and smoke cigars rang absolutely true. It was not something she had made up on the spur of the moment, or even made up at all. She had repeated to Beth and Ike precisely what Peter had told her.
Most particularly, and to her great relief, Beth had bluffed Kate into undeniably identifying herself as the “mystery woman” in Peter Ash’s past. Ever since Kate’s reaction to her softball queries the other night, Beth had felt forced to consider the possibility that Kate was guilty of something serious, and possibly more invo
lved in the actual murder of Peter Ash than she was letting on.
At the very least she was hiding something. And then, tonight, Beth had discovered what that something had been—one clandestine encounter with Peter Ash six months before. This was something that Kate wasn’t proud of, true, but it was a very far cry from murder. And it also explained her defensiveness the other night—Kate had been legitimately embarrassed and perhaps afraid that any interaction she’d had with Peter Ash, at whatever remove in time, would involve her in the investigation of his murder.
Ironically, her confession about the affair had the opposite effect. At least on Beth. Whether or not it was entirely rational, Beth believed in her heart that the reason Kate had been defensive and even deceptive was the affair.
Possibly, of course, but probably not the murder.
All of which, she thought, left a relatively clear path for her and Ike to follow tomorrow. When the homicide cluster had begun tonight, they had been on their way to get a warrant to search Geoff Cooke’s boat. Whatever happened with that, they also needed to follow up on the discrepancies surrounding Eric Ash’s alibi and his missing gun.
After that . . .
A patrolman in uniform banged on the front door, interrupting her thoughts.
Boosting herself off the counter, she came around and saw that there were two of them, the first backup team, their squad car parked across the sidewalk right out front. She opened the door to a cold gust, let them in, flashed her ID, and asked if they’d gotten any word about how long it would be before the coroner’s van or any of the Crime Scene people showed up.
“Not really,” one of them told her. “They said it could be a while.”
29
“MOM?”
“Mmm?”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m sure I am. Where am I?”
“Home. In your bed.”
“I’m so comfortable. Do I have to . . . ? What time is it?”
Fatal Page 23