Expose

by Danielle Girard

  Schwartzman got in her car and headed for the department. She hadn’t gotten any closer to an answer about what had motivated Aleena Laughlin to wear a niqab on the night of her death. Hiding her identity seemed as likely a motive as a change in her religious practices.

  At this point, she wasn’t sure they’d ever know.

  36

  Monday morning, Hal was on the basketball court when he heard the familiar trilling of his phone. He held up a hand to pause the play and left the court. All weekend, he’d kept his cell close, waiting for some news, for something to click. Maybe this was it.

  “You ask someone to call you so you got an excuse to leave the game?” one of the guys razzed him as he ran off the court.

  “Harris,” he answered, breathless.

  “It’s Marshall.”

  Hal hung his head. His captain. This would not be a break in his case. “Good morning, sir.”

  “It sure as shit isn’t,” Marshall snapped back. “I’m not even out of bed, and the chief’s up my grill about some guy in Oklahoma whose wife’s gone missing. Says her college roommate was killed and the police didn’t tell him. That’s our police, Harris. SFPD. That’s you.”

  Tucker Wilson. Damn it. Hal hadn’t told Tucker Wilson about Aleena Laughlin’s killing for this exact reason. “Captain, we’re following every lead—”

  “We’re way beyond the ‘every lead’ line. This thing is national news—f-ing national news. They’re airing the story on three different morning shows, and the news vans are already lined up at the station. The chief called me, and I knew nothing about a missing woman. I couldn’t tell her one damn thing we’re doing to find her or solve the slaying.”

  Three killings, Hal thought. Shit, he was in a load of trouble.

  “We got a meeting with Mayor Epstein and Chief Romero in fifty-five minutes. You need to be here in thirty.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hal said, grabbing hold of his gym bag and jogging toward the shower, thankful he’d brought clothes with him.

  “And start planning how you’re going to explain all this, Harris, because you’re in deep.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hal took a three-minute shower and was on the way to his car four minutes later. Despite the cold air, his shirt stuck to his back. Beads of sweat collected on his forehead, and their cousins dripped off his chin. In the car, he blasted the AC and used a handful of fast-food napkins to pat his face dry. Damn. Damn. Damn.

  He’d meant to call Marshall on Friday after the prints on the Jeep had been matched to Tabitha Wilson. But then they’d discovered Parveen Yasmin’s body in the basement. And after that, his whole focus had been on locating Malcolm Wei and Tabitha Wilson, which he hadn’t. Then he’d fallen into the black hole of casework—tracking down the mothers of Kaelen Laughlin’s friends and going to Berkeley in an effort to hunt down the detective who’d worked the original case. Then there was a trip to the professor’s house and the assault file itself, which had consumed him all weekend.

  He was an idiot.

  It didn’t matter if he’d worked all weekend. He’d failed to give Marshall a heads-up on the case, and the captain had been blindsided. Marshall hated nothing more than finding out important developments in a case from someone other than the inspector in charge.

  It was rule number one.

  En route, he dialed Roger on his cell.

  “You’re up early,” Roger said in his regular cheery tone.

  “I’m on my way to be hung from the gallows,” he said, explaining to Roger what the captain had said. He drew a deep breath before he spoke again, wiping his face one more time. “We have anything new? Any lead?” The desperation in his voice made him cough.

  “I’ll make another call on her laptop today, but the computer team is swamped with the Scranton case.”

  Douglas Scranton was a child psychologist found with naked pictures of two children he’d been treating for trauma. Had the images been sold on the internet, the case would have gone to the FBI. But Scranton’s alleged customer was a local man, so both men were being tried in San Francisco. Documenting the correspondence between the two, as well as the images, would be priority number one.

  Stopped at a red light at Howard and Fourth, Hal pressed his shirtsleeve to his forehead, still sweating from the game. Roger’s news didn’t help. With the Scranton case on the docket, Aleena Laughlin’s computer would not be a priority. “When does the trial start?”

  “Monday after Thanksgiving.”

  Another week.

  “Naomi should have some time today. I’ll send her out to some of the buildings around the hotel,” Roger said, dashing his hopes. “See if she can find some better footage of the people leaving the loading area of the hotel. Get a better look at your guy.”

  “Yeah,” Hal said, trying to sound enthusiastic. He was grateful. “That would be great. Thanks, Roger.”

  “Oh, I did talk to my friend who deals in antiquities and asked about the sword.”

  “And?”

  “It’s most likely from the Song dynasty. There were several weapons from that time referred to as ji, developed from spears. He doesn’t recognize it specifically, but he’s reaching out to a few friends who deal with ancient weapons. I should know something in the next few days.”

  More waiting.

  Hal ended the call and drove into the department parking lot. Pulling into the first spot, he put the car in park and took a moment to calm down, letting the AC blow full-force on his face.

  Then he shut off the engine and started inside to face his screw-up.

  When Hal reached the hallway, Marshall was pacing outside the chief’s office. His captain looked haggard, which meant he’d already been dressed down. When he spotted Hal, his jaw clenched, hardening his face into a square shape, while his brow lowered to shadow his eyes.

  “Captain—”

  “Don’t,” Marshall said, cutting him off. “The only words you utter in that room are yes or no, ma’am or sir. You hang your head and eat crow, or you’ll be at Fisherman’s Wharf writing parking tickets from a ten-speed. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hal said.

  Marshall eyed him as though he suspected Hal was being a smart-ass. Seeming satisfied, the captain opened the door and marched into the chief’s office.

  Hal drew a deep breath and followed.

  Hal had met the mayor only once before, and the circumstances had been vastly different. It had been a celebration, and the mayor had worn a navy suit with a bold blue tie—not a crease out of place. Hal had been impressed by both his calm and his confidence.

  The man who now stood before him in the chief’s office wore pants that looked like they’d been on him all weekend. He’d rolled his shirtsleeves past his elbows carelessly, and evidence of a major coffee spill stained the back of one arm. His tie, if he’d been wearing one at all, was gone, and his face glowed an unhealthy shade of scarlet.

  For her part, the chief appeared to be holding herself together, but she gave Hal a glare that could have paralyzed smaller men.

  Hal sank into a seat. In moments like this, his stature tended to make his superiors angrier. He’d found it was better to take lower ground and let them shout down at him.

  “Elections are in three months, Inspector. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m the incumbent. That gives me an advantage. You know what doesn’t give me an advantage?”

  Hal did not answer the rhetorical question.

  “Being the mayor with a killer on the loose. That does not instill confidence. Especially since I can’t tell the public what I’m doing about it. Because I. Didn’t. Know. About. It.” The mayor went on about the election for a few more minutes. Then, rather abruptly, he stopped talking. He paced for a moment while the room remained silent and then sat in a chair and began unrolling his sleeves, buttoning the cuffs, and straightening himself. As the red started to drain from his face, the mayor nodded to the c
hief.

  “Update us on the situation,” the chief said. “And don’t omit anything.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Hal drew out his notebook and used it as a guide to report the events as succinctly and completely as possible. He started with the discovery of Aleena Laughlin in the park and finished with details from the assault file he’d reviewed the day before.

  The chief kept her eyes on Hal and wrote nothing down. When he was done, she asked only a handful of questions. “This office is to be informed of every discovery made in this case. Immediately.” She lifted the phone. “Connect me to the computer forensics team,” she instructed the person on the other end.

  The chief’s call got Aleena Laughlin’s laptop moved to the front of the line. Hal would have the results by the end of the day.

  Returning the phone to the desk, she nodded to Marshall. “You make something happen here.” She waved a hand at Hal.

  Marshall nodded to Hal, who rose and followed his captain out of the office. Hal wondered if there would be another lecture in Marshall’s office, but the captain looked almost as exhausted as Hal felt.

  The two men walked to the elevators, and Marshall hit the down button. Hal felt a wave of nausea at the thought of getting in the tiny steel box. “I’ll expect an update at noon,” Marshall said. “And another at five o’clock. And another at ten o’clock. And . . . you get it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The bell rang, and the elevator doors slid open. Marshall stepped inside, leaving Hal in the foyer.

  As the doors slid closed, Hal turned and strode toward the stairwell. He pushed through two sets of doors and ran down three flights of stairs, not pausing until he reached the building’s exit.

  Outside, he drew long, deep breaths in an attempt to fight off the onset of a pounding headache, grateful Schwartzman wasn’t there to witness his humiliation.

  37

  Schwartzman took a call from Dispatch as she was walking to her car outside Tartine. A body found in a dumpster in the Tenderloin. “Young,” Dispatch said.

  “Send me the address,” she responded, without asking for more detail. The ME who had preceded her at the department had requested that Dispatch provide as much information about a victim as possible before she headed to a scene. When Schwartzman had started, Dispatch would call with a case and report the victim’s race, age, social status, and often try to guess at cause of death.

  Because the two women had never met, Schwartzman didn’t know exactly why this was the former ME’s preference. It was not hers. She preferred to create her own impressions and draw her own conclusions. But she understood the one-word warning. Young meant the victim was a child. They were always the hardest, and she didn’t mind the forewarning, as it gave her an opportunity to steel herself. Even after she’d worked more than a hundred cases, seen hundreds of bodies mangled and dissected and shredded or bludgeoned, the children still took her breath away, created a sharp ache in her chest.

  En route to the scene, she called Hal to tell him about her conversation with Najah Mian, but he didn’t answer his phone. She didn’t leave a voicemail. Lately, he had taken her missed calls as a message to call her back, and she’d started to do the same. It kept their voicemail boxes from filling up too quickly.

  Schwartzman arrived at the scene twenty minutes later. O’Shea was there, talking on his phone and pacing in front of the two patrol cars, which blocked the view of a dumpster behind a big-box store. The Tenderloin district was well known for its homeless population, and the evidence was all around them—cardboard laid out into beds, pieces of plastic tarp strung along a section of metal fence, and an abandoned shopping cart with only three wheels. Schwartzman carried her ActionPacker past O’Shea and the patrol cars toward the tiny shape hidden under a cheap gray blanket, the kind they gave out at shelters.

  Kneeling with her back to the cars in order to protect the victim from the view of nosy onlookers, she did an initial exam of the infant. The child was a girl, and Schwartzman estimated her age to be between five and ten days old. No visible signs of abuse. Although she wouldn’t know what had happened until autopsy, it was easier on the police and the EMTs that the infant looked like she might have died naturally. The odds were she hadn’t.

  When Schwartzman returned to her car, she realized she’d left her phone on the console. The screen showed three missed calls from Hal. She called him back without starting the car.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I—” He groaned. “I’ve just come from meeting with Chief Romero and the mayor.”

  “That doesn’t sound fun,” she said.

  “It wasn’t. Did you hear about the press meeting?”

  “No. I’ve been at a scene. Press meeting on what—Aleena Laughlin?”

  “Yes. And Tucker Wilson’s been making a fuss from Oklahoma about his missing wife.”

  “Any news on her?”

  “Nothing. And still no sign of Malcolm Wei.”

  “I’m sorry, Hal.”

  “Thanks, but it’s not your problem. What’ve you got over there?”

  She thought about the tiny baby girl, possibly smothered or shaken, though she’d seen no bruising on the ribs, which often accompanied shaken-baby syndrome. Even if the death wasn’t natural, there was a good chance it had been accidental. Accidentally smothered by someone who slept too soundly or drank or used drugs? Perhaps. Or had she been smothered to keep her quiet, to hush her voice? The idea of ending that tiny life . . . “An infant.”

  “Oh, Schwartzman.”

  “I’m fine,” she said quickly, for herself as much as him. “I was going to run by and let Buster out for a few minutes before heading over to the morgue.”

  “I’m going up to Parveen Yasmin’s apartment,” Hal said. “Roger’s team was there, but I want to see it myself. Maybe something will strike me. I almost called you last night after reading the case file on the assault in Berkeley.”

  “So Naomi was right. It was them.”

  “It was,” he confirmed. “I’m not sure what to make of it. I’ll have to pick your brain.”

  “Sure.” She paused a beat, wondering if it would be awkward to invite herself along. He could use her help. Hadn’t he just said so? “Where is Yasmin’s place?”

  “She’s in a little place off Twenty-Fourth, near the hospital.”

  “If you want, you can text me the address. I’ll swing by after I let Buster out.”

  “That would be great,” he said, blowing out a breath. “You sure?”

  “Positive. See you soon.”

  She drove straight to her house and let Buster out, waiting impatiently while he did his business in the yard before letting him back inside and giving him a treat. She locked up and drove to the address Hal had texted her.

  When she rang the bell for Apartment 3F, Hal buzzed her in. She’d somehow forgotten to bring anything with her—no gloves, no kit. Waiting for Hal to open the door, she shoved her hands in her pockets.

  “Hey.” Hal smiled when he opened the door, ushering her into the apartment.

  She was happy to see him. It had been only three days, but it felt like longer. She reminded herself that she hadn’t really talked to anyone most of the weekend. She’d spoken to the cashier and greeted a few neighbors on the walks with Buster. Usually that was enough. Usually.

  She wanted to tell Hal about the conversation with Najah, but it could wait. Parveen Yasmin first. She started to step past Hal into the unit when she realized that he already stood almost in the center of it.

  A twin Murphy bed came down from the wall on one side of the apartment. A tiny kitchenette with a single table and chair took up the other side. The entire place, minus the bathroom, would fit inside her bedroom.

  “Not much to go through,” he said.

  “Did they find her phone?”

  Hal nodded. “It’s one of those old flip phones, nothing fancy. No pictures, no internet search capability. She didn’t use
it much. There’s one call to the hotel’s main number, just before eleven a.m. on Friday, but there’s no way to track the call once it reached the main switchboard. We don’t know if she asked for one of the guests or someone in housekeeping.” He rubbed his face and motioned around the room. “I’ve looked around. There aren’t any notepads or notebooks—no sign that she wrote anything down.” Hal rubbed his head. “I should have known. If there had been something, Roger would have found it. I’m probably wasting your time,” he added.

  “It’s not a waste,” she said, still in the center of the room. “She didn’t mention the hotel when you saw her at the Johnsons’?”

  “No.”

  She scanned the room. “But something made her go there.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  Schwartzman approached the small kitchen table and scanned the short set of bookshelves behind it. Then she walked to the bedside table and slowly surveyed the room.

  “Schwartzman?”

  “There’s no computer.”

  “And?”

  “She’s got a bunch of library books,” Schwartzman said, her mind turning. “Two under the bedside table, one in the kitchenette, and another on the shelf there.” She pointed. “But what made her go to the hotel?”

  Hal stepped up beside her. “Maybe she learned something on that phone call. Or maybe she didn’t get any answer at all, and she decided she had to go in person.”

  “But how did she know to call there?” Schwartzman asked. “Where did she get that idea?”

  Hal made a slow circle in the apartment.

  “Do you have a glove?”

  He handed her an XL glove, and she pulled it onto her right hand, where it hung like an oversize plastic bag. She lifted the book off the table and, taking it by the spine, shook it.

  “You think she must’ve done research at the library.”

  “I don’t see anything else. Not even a newspaper.”

  Hal brought over the books from under the bedside table and lifted them one at a time, letting the pages flutter upside-down. As he swung the second book—a literary novel Schwartzman had heard was wonderful—a slip of paper about the size of an index card fluttered to the ground.