by Kirk Russell
The water of the reservoir reflected the sunrise and was crimson and Raveneau turned in his head the idea of poisoning the water. It was the damming of the Hetch Hetchy that brought water from the Sierras and allowed San Francisco to grow and fulfill the dream of western expansion. The Pulgas Temple that marked the place where the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct terminated one hundred sixty miles from its source was close by.
He studied the hole in the chain-link fence. After 9/11 the water district was more careful about allowing public access, but with the acreage of a watershed how could you stop anybody? It would take an army posted and on guard every day all day. But if poisoning the water was the goal it wouldn’t be the storage water they’d want to empty radioactive material into. They would want water already in the distribution system, and that was harder to do.
Raveneau found Coe, and the citizen who had reported it was there and still getting thanked every few minutes. No one knew what the transponder was for other than sending a signal marking its location, but you would have thought this guy had brought home a gold medal from the Olympics.
Raveneau left Coe and drove north with a map of the pipe distribution system the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency emailed him. He stopped at the last major distribution point and studied the layout of the plant, walking the perimeter before continuing on to the Hall.
Now he was with la Rosa crossing Seventh to get to Café Roma where she would order a double cappuccino and a croissant and Raveneau a medium coffee with an inch of milk foam on top. It was a ritual and a way to get out and talk things through, often bouncing from one idea to the next. It had worked for them before. La Rosa usually took point, asking the questions, as she did now.
‘So what do you think about both things?’
‘The water threat and Hugh?’
‘Yes, but first the water.’
‘I think the water is a bluff and they don’t have a way of making it happen. My guess is John Royer got a hold of a little bit of nuclear waste from the medical equipment maker he worked for. He knew the combinations. He was cleared. He was able to get in and out and all this about him having trouble getting a lead-lined vessel is nonsense. It’s not hard. You can buy them online. He got enough to poison Lash and there was some left over and that’s what he swallowed.
‘But enough waste to poison a city water supply, I doubt it, though that doesn’t mean that’s not what they have in mind. They may well. Throwing radioactive waste into the water supply is similar to setting the fires. I doubt the fires were started to kill people. They were more about creating panic and fear and leaving a mark, and radioactive water would get a pretty good reaction, especially if some got sick before the cause was discovered.’
‘It would shut the city down.’
Raveneau agreed and she asked, ‘Are you saying Royer drank his own brew?’
‘I’m guessing yes.’
‘Does Lindsley have access to the radioactive material?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s using Siles, and Siles is very aware. I think Lindsley is close to giving us Siles, but he’s also afraid Siles might come for him or has enough dirt on him to take him down with him.’
‘Siles will be apprehended in the next twenty-four hours.’
‘You’re on, I’ll take that bet. I think they planned ahead and did it well. That’s why we can’t find them. I also think they’re taking a page from the jihadis. They’ve decided to give up their lives. It’s a suicide pact, but that doesn’t say everybody is on-board with it. Maybe Royer was or maybe he was helped along after he committed to placing the incendiary devices. Maybe Siles wanted to eliminate the risk of him confessing later. My guess is Royer drank his own brew and missed a little with his timing.’ Raveneau paused before throwing his idea at her. ‘It’s Latkos who’s making me think it’s a suicide pact.’
‘Why?’
‘Coe told me she did do cyber work for an unnamed agency and in a loose way they protect her. But she also has enemies. His sources back up the idea she ripped off Russian mob money and then got the hell out of Berlin. That was before the sex reassignment operation. That’s when she was still male. Lindsley told me the gender change wasn’t anything Latkos wanted to do. It was about hiding and staying alive.’
‘I don’t believe that. No one switches sex because they’re being hunted.’
‘That’s why it might be true. No one does it. So maybe it would work. It’s a lot different than cross dressing. At any rate her face has gone national so it’s gone international and she let that happen. If there’s someone out there seriously looking for her, they’ll put it together.’
Raveneau held the door of Café Roma for her but she hesitated.
‘I’ve got one last question before we go in,’ la Rosa said, and Raveneau let the door fall shut. He stepped back from the entrance and she asked, ‘Are the Feds being straight with us?’
Raveneau let a gust of wind blow through before answering, ‘Not completely.’
‘That’s what I think too. So what do we do about it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I want to get in Coe’s face.’
‘It’s coming from above him.’
‘I don’t care where it’s coming from. He’s the one standing in our office talking about sharing everything. If radioactive material gets in the water system it’s never going to be the same here. We need everything they have.’ Her voice got louder. ‘This is home. This is ours. Some goofus sitting in FBI headquarters back east can’t know what that means. We need to know everything.’
She glared at Raveneau. Then her eyes softened and as the wind gusted again, she pulled open the door to Café Roma and they went in. There, she said quietly, ‘We live here. We have everything at stake. We need everything they have.’
FIFTY-ONE
In the late afternoon a dry north-east wind rose. Gusts straightened flags and rattled the dry leaves of the plane trees along the sidewalk in front of the Hall of Justice. Forecasters predicted strong winds that would peak in the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours and not reach the strength of those that drove the fires. That did little to reassure people. Two of the three suspected arsonists were still at large.
In San Francisco winds of twenty-five to thirty miles an hour were predicted, and as Raveneau walked to his car the wind felt that strong already. He drove toward a meeting with Lash at the hospital. When he got there Lash was sitting up and wearing a device around his neck that was studded with tiny microphones. The microphones Bluetoothed to the computer on a chair in the corner and anything he said ran through software trained to his speech patterns. Fragments became words. Words sentences. The software program corrected, completed, and amplified. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good. As Lash exhaled his answers in a whisper his voice came out of two speakers alongside the computer. His voice sounded normal and that was strange.
‘Easier to leave some words out,’ Lash said. ‘Straight to point.’
‘OK.’
‘Knew Brandon well, never trusted him. Knew his past.’
‘He told you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did it attract or repel you? I’m asking because I want us to speak truth to each other.’
‘Understand.’ Lash closed his eyes as he debated how he wanted to answer.
It was a hard-edged question but Raveneau didn’t want to hide anything. He waited and thought about what the doctor told him before he walked in here. Lash’s breathing problems had worsened and he needed oxygen to sleep. A tracheal intubation was scheduled pending his white cell count coming back up. The doctor added, ‘His count is never coming back up. Your announcement of his death isn’t false it’s just a few weeks premature, nothing like four months. He’ll never have the tracheal intubation.’
Raveneau glanced down at the bed a moment and when he looked up Lash was staring at him, his eyes a startling blue.
‘Saw I could use him.’
‘
You could use his past to control him.’
‘Yes.’
‘Lindsley told me he combed through everything you owned looking for your secrets. He did that when you were asleep. He and the caregiver colluded and slipped you Valium after you were first diagnosed. Were you aware of that?’
‘Yes.’
Of course he was. People like Lash didn’t miss anything. He was hypersensitive, hyper-aware.
‘Despondent.’
‘You stopped caring what happened?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it possible he found the key to the bomb shelter lock?’
‘Yes.’
The software missed a follow up word there, and as Lash frowned, Raveneau tried a couple of phrases to get at what he meant.
‘His ambition was transparent. He wanted to co-author the three books you talked about doing with him and after you died step into your shoes.’
‘Yes. Strange man.’
‘And unrealistic in thinking you would ever write a book with him.’
‘Yes.’ Lash smiled a sad smile. ‘Never going to write a book with him. My legacy. Standalone. Pride.’
‘Did you ever tell him that?’
‘No.’
‘But he figured it out at some point.’
‘Became very angry.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Started writing book with him.’
‘Why didn’t you tell him you weren’t going to be able to write any more books and ask him to leave? Tell him the collaboration idea was mistake.’
‘Needed him. Useful. Good researcher. Liked talking with him.’
Raveneau wasn’t sure he believed that. ‘You kept him for that or because he was in on some of your secrets and you couldn’t risk alienating him.’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
‘I – was – afraid – of – him.’
‘Afraid he might do bodily harm to you?’
‘Became vulnerable. Look at me.’
‘As your physical condition declined you felt vulnerable and you were afraid he might harm you even if he was locked out of the house.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he ever physically threaten you?’
‘Yes.’
Lash’s software stopped working as well as he described Lindsley leaving his wheelchair too near the stairs and then edging it closer and closer one night after an argument. It didn’t ring true to Raveneau. It might be true. It might well be true but underneath was something else and who knew if there would be another chance with Lash. He hesitated a moment and then decided to just put it out there.
‘You probably know when he first got into the bomb shelter. I don’t. We’ve got DNA matches with items of Ann Coryell’s we removed from the shelter. We also have other blood of varying types that soaked through a mattress on a steel cot that is old enough to rule out Lindsley, Siles, or anyone we’ve discussed. Some of that blood may be twenty years old. I think when Lindsley got in there he found that and he left it just as he found it. He didn’t move anything. He didn’t touch anything, and they were careful when they brought the Missouri skulls in. Why was that?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘You don’t have an answer, Albert, but I think I’ve got one. Lindsley was thinking about DNA and evidence and what he had over you. We know that John Royer took skulls from caskets the Mississippi floods uncovered and that those skulls made their way to the bomb shelter, and once they got there they were carefully moved in and leaned against a wall and no one went near the cot. We could tell that from the dust and some other things. Maybe it was just Lindsley or maybe it was all four of them, but I’m betting it was Lindsley who said, “Stay away from the cot. Don’t walk in that area.”
‘A good defense attorney would still argue that’s a contaminated scene, but the blood on the cot, the age of the blood, the suspicion of you a decade ago, it would all work against you. So I’m guessing he let you know what he found and at that point you were tied to him. Is that what happened?’
Lash didn’t answer.
‘I’m not saying Ann Coryell died in there. There’s less of her blood than the other blood types. She may have been in there awhile but may have been alive when she was moved. When her remains were found and before she was IDed the Marin coroner examining her torso concluded she was shot through the heart before she was beheaded. That may have happened up on the mountain, but it’s our conclusion that she was in the bomb shelter. I know we interviewed your gardener and some other employees and maybe we missed something, but does that throw suspicion on your gardener, your cook, or the handyman who worked for you for years? It could but I’d say at this point it’s not likely, and if the cot got used and used again at least four times, and at least two victims lost in excess of a quart of blood, there’s a pattern.’
‘Gave Brandon a key.’
‘You gave him a key? That’s different than what you said earlier.’
‘Gave him key after conversation about Cold War.’
‘You were talking about the Cold War and you remembered, hey, I’ve got a Cold War era bomb shelter right here in my backyard. Brandon missed that whole era because his mother hadn’t given birth to her killer yet, so he’d probably never been inside an old fallout shelter, so what did you do? Did you point at a key on a peg on the back of a door and say, “Grab that key and go get yourself a look at a real one. You’ll have to dig around on the floor a little before you figure out how we disguised the hatch cover, but don’t give up. It’s down there in the garden shed. Make sure you bring a flashlight because it’s spooky dark in there and there are things in there too, so don’t touch anything the police can tie to you later.” Is that what happened? Give me some help here, I’m having trouble understanding why you would give him a key. When was this?’
‘Two thousand and two. Didn’t know.’
‘You didn’t know what was in there. Right, I get the idea. I’m just not seeing it, and it’s not only 2002, but before Ann disappeared.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then later you learned he was using the bomb shelter. You put it together.’
Lash claimed that one night years later just before he put the house up for sale he was looking out the window toward the Presidio and the ocean and saw a flashlight come on near the garden shed door. Lindsley was staying at the house and he believed it was Lindsley he saw going into the shed. The next day when he asked him, Lindsley denied it. Later, Lindsley said he’d found tracks leading up from the Presidio.
Lash’s eyes closed and for several moments Raveneau was unsure whether this was the end of the conversation. He was back briefly and then gone again for close to twenty minutes as Raveneau sat thinking it through.
When Lash opened his eyes he said, ‘I changed nothing. Not insightful, took ideas of others, but good teacher. I – made – students see. Ann was brilliant.’
‘Was Brandon Lindsley jealous of Ann?’
‘Envious.’
‘And you’re telling me he knew about the bomb shelter before she disappeared?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want me to believe it was Lindsley who killed her, but you’re not really giving me what I need, and there’s the cot and what happened before Brandon. We’re not quite getting there. Let me ask a different question. Were you in love with Ann Coryell?’
‘Yes.’
The answer and the speed of it surprised Raveneau. That was new. Many questions about their relationship were asked in 2003 but Lash never admitted to being in love with her. He told Hugh Neilley and Alcott that he and Ann slept together a couple of times and then it became uncomfortable and she avoided him. It was unresolved at the point she disappeared. It was another reason why he thought she had fled.
‘You were in love but she wasn’t?’
Lash nodded and said, ‘Told others.’
‘You did or she did?’
‘She.’
It continued like this and Raveneau learned tha
t Brandon left on a trip a week before she disappeared and it’s why he was never interviewed. That wasn’t new news, and Hugh and Alcott had checked on the trip.
Lash made another claim now. The last time he was in the bomb shelter was 1984, the year his father died. He was inside it only for a moment and didn’t look around. That was the day he locked the hatch cover and the key sat in a locked compartment in his desk after that.
Raveneau summarized, ticking off what Lash had said. ‘You were in love with Ann. Lindsley was envious of her. Siles and Lindsley were both at your house often and much earlier than we had realised. You gave Lindsley a key to the bomb shelter before Ann disappeared. That’s what I’ve gotten so far, though I’m not sure yet how it helps.’
Lash talked now about himself. He couldn’t accept the disease when it was first diagnosed. He drank too much and tried to ignore the onset. The onset came with some good and some bad days, but mostly bad days. There were times in the beginning when the cramping in his legs was such that he couldn’t walk, and Lindsley helped him get around. Lindsley gradually took advantage of his illness, inserting himself more and more. That was all long after Ann Coryell became an unsolved cold case, but Lindsley did have complete access to the house and grounds.
The caregiver would help him get out of bed in the morning but he was awake in the middle of the night and saw lights flickering outside more than once. He guessed there were others that Lindsley invited over as recently as a week before the house sold. He talked and then threw a twist in just as it was clear he was exhausted and couldn’t talk anymore. He said when Lindsley first went into the bomb shelter he found the bloody mattress and skeletons on blankets on the floor. He took photos and asked Lash what had happened and Lash told him he didn’t know, told him he hadn’t been inside since his father had died.
‘Did he believe you?’
‘Said he should go to police.’
‘But he didn’t.’
‘Thought he would.’
‘Why didn’t he?’
‘We traded. Why I agreed to co-author. Worried – every – day.’