“Tony brought her new clothes and then, presto, drove her away. They let her leave.”
Anna asked, “Do you mean Adele Saran?”
“How did you know?”
“I’m sorry, Susan. Be glad you didn’t go.”
Anna told Susan what she’d seen on the news, that Adele had been killed and hanged from a tree. Susan clapped her hands over her mouth and cried. Anna put her arms around her new friend, and they clung to each other, grieving without making a sound.
When she could speak again, Susan said, “I don’t know why I believed Tony. I thought if I was sweet to him … I was so stupid.”
“You had hope,” Anna said. “They hadn’t destroyed it.”
Anna wondered if it was safe to have hope now.
In the dark, while the men slept, Susan and Anna discussed what they had to do to escape. Nothing was off-limits—violence, tricks, charm.
Together they checked the front door, as Susan had done before. Maybe this time the bastards had forgotten to lock it. No such luck. The shuttered windows were also locked. Their search in the foyer for cell phones in jacket pockets turned up nothing. Knives were locked in drawers.
At six in the morning Susan and Anna went to their bedrooms and got into bed with their captors.
CHAPTER 94
At just before noon, Conklin and I paid a call on Taqueria del Lobo to let Mr. Martinez know that the lab had impounded his vehicle again.
Conklin opened the door and we walked into a shit-storm in progress.
Martinez was yelling at Lucinda Drucker in the front room, which was packed with customers.
“I told you, Lucy. I warned you. And now you gave my car to that asshole boyfriend of yours and the damned thing is still missing and now you’re fired. I’m calling the police—oh. Hola, Officers. Here they are.”
I handed him the warrant and told him the bad news.
“Mr. Martinez, your vehicle was found at the scene of a crime.”
“Another one? Son of a bitch. You see what I’m saying, Lucy? You are such a dummy.”
Lucinda Drucker was crying now. “Mr. Martinez, please, I need my job.”
Conklin interrupted the shouting and crying to say, “Ah, Ms. Drucker, I have to speak with you for a moment. Outside.”
He led the sobbing woman out of the restaurant, and I took Martinez behind the counter to the kitchen doorway. As I gave the same news to Martinez that Conklin was delivering to Lucy, I was watching the late Denny Lopez’s girlfriend through the plate glass.
I saw Conklin talking to her, saw her jerk away from him, a look of horror on her face. She threw up her hands, like Get away from me. My partner reached out to her, and she pushed him off and backed away. Then she turned and lunged off the sidewalk, directly into the stream of traffic.
I shouted “Noooooo” from where I stood behind the counter. She couldn’t hear me, but Conklin was also shouting and moving fast. But Lucy was faster. I ran through the doorway and out onto the sidewalk just as the event unfolded.
Horns blared. Someone screamed, “Watch out!”
Its brakes squealing, a northbound car hit the young woman in stride, flinging her high and onto the hood of a car parked across the street. The sound of the impact was horrifying. But it wasn’t over. Cars were out of control and crashing, piling up.
I ran out to our cruiser, got my hands on the radio, and shouted the address to dispatch.
“I need paramedics now at my location. And send backup.”
By then Conklin had reached Lucy, and as I tried to cross the street to join him, I heard him saying her name, comforting her. I was relieved when I saw her try to sit up.
But the chaos continued. The driver of the car that hit Lucy was frantic, and her children were screaming.
The bus arrived and paramedics climbed out. Cruisers rolled up and blocked off the street. I filled in the patrol officers on the three-car collision, then retrieved Lucy’s handbag from Martinez and handed it to one of the paramedics.
Conklin and I were standing together in front of the taqueria when Lucy’s stretcher was loaded into the ambulance.
“You know what she told me?” said Conklin.
“No idea.”
“‘I know Denny. He was a good man and he took care of me. Living without him isn’t worth it.’”
CHAPTER 95
Jake Tuohy was in Interview 2 under protest.
We’d brought him in so he could give us a statement as to what he knew about the death of Dennis L. Lopez and the discovery of his body. He let us know that he’d pretty much had enough of all of us, civic duty be damned.
“We’re not going to extract your fingernails, Jake. We just need a statement for the record,” Conklin told him. “Tell us what you saw, did, and said. You’re being recorded. This is as good as being under oath.”
“I wasn’t planning on lying to you, Officer Con Job.”
“Inspector,” said Conklin, “not Officer.” He smiled. Unruffled as always.
Tuohy ran his fingers through his horseshoe-shaped fringe of hair and stared up at the ceiling.
“I’m asleep in the recliner in my office,” he said. “The bell rings. I say, ‘Aww, shit.’ I say it to myself, for the record. I was alone.”
“Then what?” I asked.
Tuohy had a way of making everything around him feel dirty. Even this plain, no-frills little interview room that got scrubbed every night felt greasy and covered in germs.
“Then,” he said, “because no one said, ‘Go back to sleep. I’ll get it,’ I got up and went out to the office. This whore was outside ringing the bell. I’ve seen her around with Denny. She goes by the name of Daisy Cakes or something. I don’t ask women of her persuasion for ID.”
“Go on,” Conklin said. “The bell rings. Daisy’s at the door.”
“She looks worse than usual,” Tuohy said. “She’s been crying. She tells me that Denny is dead. She insists I come with her to see, and I go and there’s his body.
“I figure, if she killed him, she’s not bringing me to see the evidence, okay? So I tell her I’m calling the police and go wait in my office. She says okay. I go look at the loser pimp’s body and call 911 and tell the operator to call you. Officer Boxer. And don’t bother to ask me did I kill the guy. I had no reason to, and besides, I was asleep.”
“Did Daisy offer any explanation for what happened to Lopez?” I asked him.
“Just what I already told 911 and what I told you. She was finished with her date. She calls Denny’s cell. He’s supposed to be waiting for her in the taco truck. He doesn’t answer. She gets dressed, waits near the van. Then she calls him again and hears his phone ringing. Goes to the vending area, finds his body. She runs to the office and there’s your full circle. She tells me all of that. I call and ask for you. And now here I am.”
Conklin said, “Any idea who might have wanted to kill Lopez?”
“No.”
“Did you see anyone suspicious-looking hanging around?”
“All of them. Everyone in or around the place. But nobody’s going to have Jake Tuohy to kick around anymore. I quit my job. I’m moving to Ireland. I got people there. Letting you know officially, so you don’t get bent out of shape. I can’t stand this job, never liked it, but it’s getting to be too many bodies and trips to this place.”
Conklin asked for Tuohy’s forwarding address.
“Somewhere in Dublin. I’ll send you an email.” With that, he stood up from the aluminum chair, said “Good-bye and good luck,” and made for the door.
Conklin said, “Just one thing, Tuohy. And this is important. You’re not going to Ireland. Not until we say so.”
“Oh, I’m a suspect now? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying don’t quit your day job. Night job, either.”
Tuohy snorted and walked out.
I said, “Good one, Richie. Love to hear you explain that to his lawyer. Or anyone.”
My partner laughed.
“I liked the way it sounded.”
I liked it, too.
CHAPTER 96
When Conklin and I returned to the squad room, Jacobi was waiting for us with a woman he introduced as Susan Jones’s sister Ronnie Hooks.
“Ms. Hooks,” he said, “Sergeant Boxer’s the primary investigator on this case. She’s the best.”
I shook the woman’s hand, then introduced Conklin, and the three of us walked back to Interview 2.
Ronnie Hooks looked to be in her early forties. She was perfectly manicured and coiffed and smartly dressed in a crisp red suit, with some bling around her neck and a wedding ring.
Conklin pulled out a chair for her, and when we were all seated, he asked her how she was doing.
“No good,” she said. “No good at all.”
“Talk to us,” I said.
She said, “Susan and I are like twins. I’m ten years older. She’s my little sister. But we talk every day. Except last week—Marty and I just got back from Peru. It was a long trip, two weeks, in a remote area. Normally, I talk to Susie every day. I got back to an area with Wi-Fi, and I find out the worst news imaginable. How could she be missing?”
Her crazy eyes were switching from me to Conklin to the mirrored window to her folded hands on the table. I had a thought that she might be on the verge of some kind of breakdown.
I also had a good idea why she’d come in on her own and where this was going. She was going to ask why we hadn’t found Susan. She’d want to know if Susan was dead or if she should post a reward. She might get mad and threaten to go to the media with a heartbreaking story about her sister and SFPD’s incompetence.
Instead, Ms. Hooks threw us a curve ball.
“Susan was a good teacher, but she didn’t make enough money to pay her rent and own a car and have enough left over to get herself a decent haircut.”
I said only, “Uh-huh.”
“She did some freelance work,” said Hooks.
“Like tutoring and such?” Conklin asked her. “She’s a piano teacher, right?”
Hooks looked down at the table and spoke to her folded hands. “She’s also an exotic dancer.”
My jaw actually dropped. Susan Jones was a stripper? But Hooks wasn’t looking at me. She was inside her story and she kept going.
“Susan worked once in a while out of a club,” she said. “Never told me where, and I never asked for details because I didn’t approve. I was afraid for her, but she was strong-willed and it’s not for me to judge her. And she said this club was a decent place. Pfft.” Ronnie laughed with no joy. “The customers were businessmen, she said.”
Customers wearing jackets and ties wouldn’t have eased my mind if my sister were dancing, but Ronnie Hooks wasn’t done.
“The part that worried me,” she said, “was the owner of the club was some kind of drug dealer posing as a father figure. Or the way Susan put it, ‘He helps out girls who are trying to make new lives in America. Or girls like me, who need the money.’ Some of those girls danced in the shows with Susan. But some of them …”
She flipped a hand. I interpreted that to mean she didn’t want to say that they were prostitutes.
I said, “Ronnie, I want to be sure I understand. You’re saying you think Susan was dancing as a second job?”
I saw yes in her very frightened eyes.
“The big boss advanced her some money, and she was supposed to work it off. That’s what she told me. But now I think … he controlled them.”
“Ronnie, this is important. Did Susan ever describe him, or anyone at the club?”
“I think he’s from the Balkans or something. She just called him ‘the big boss,’ sometimes the nickname Mr. Big. But I heard her use the name Marko once, on the phone.
I said, “Might the boss’s name be Petrović? Did Susan ever say that?”
She shook her head no.
“Susan was afraid of him, and she said she wanted to keep me out of it. But she really couldn’t. She swore she wasn’t having sex with him or anyone, and so I gave Susan money to pay off this criminal before it came to that. I guess it wasn’t enough.”
I told Ms. Hooks that the department had assigned every available resource to finding Susan and that I would call her myself as soon as we had any information.
It wasn’t what Susan Jones’s sister wanted to hear. She grimaced as she grabbed her bag. Conklin opened the door for her. She was halfway down the hall when she turned and came back to the doorway with tears streaming down her cheeks.
Hooks looked straight at me and said, “Look. I don’t want to say this, because Susan warned me when I saw her last. She said, ‘Don’t go to the police.’ But she’d heard a rumor that really scared her. She heard that Mr. Big had killed a couple of girls who didn’t pay up, or who couldn’t perform—drugs, I assumed. Susan heard him joking about it.
“I think …,” Hooks said, “I think Susan’s friends were murdered.”
Susan’s sister bolted from the room. I heard the elevator bell ding. And she was gone.
CHAPTER 97
Conklin and I were filling out our reports when Jacobi stopped by our desks and rolled up a chair.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
I said, “We need another couple of teams, Jacobi. We’re nowhere on Myers and Saran. We’re nowhere on Lopez. I’m afraid Susan Jones is either dead or about to be. We did just get some very interesting background on Jones from her sister, and maybe a fuller picture of what Petrović is up to, how he’s making money, how these women fell into his trap. But still, we’ve got nothing but ghost sightings of Petrović.”
“It’s gotten too hot for him,” Conklin said. “He’s dodging us, playing a shell game with his car. He’s not at his usual haunts, and we don’t have enough eyes on the ground. And if we see him and pull him in for questioning, we don’t have any leverage. Unless we can follow some crumbs on what Susan’s sister told us, which could be something. Or it could be the TV-fueled theory of a desperate sister.”
“So,” I said, putting a lid on it, “that’s how it’s going.”
“It’s only been what, a week and a half since Myers?”
“More like two, Jacobi. Eleven days since Myers. Four days since Saran. Twenty-four hours, more or less, since Lopez. We cannot look under every rock, even with McNeil and Chi backing us up. Please. Get us some help.”
“I’ve turned out all my pockets, Boxer. But I’m here. Walk me through it. How do you see Lopez’s death linked to Tony’s Place?”
I said, “Guessing here. Lopez was some kind of witness. He may have seen Petrović buying drinks for the schoolteachers. He may have been seen talking to us.”
“So Lopez was put down before he could give up Petrović.”
I said, “Or maybe he was just a victim of circumstance. Drug addict needs some cash, strangles Denny for his wallet. Seems like a stretch, but that could have happened.”
Conklin added, “Either way, we still can’t put Petrović at any of the murders. Everything we think we know is pure speculation.”
Jacobi said, “I’m meeting with the chief tomorrow first thing. I’ll get on my knees and beg for more help on this case. And as you well know, the press isn’t giving us a break. But look. Two of you go get dinner and put it on my tab.”
I said, “That’s not necessary.”
“It’ll make me feel better, okay, Boxer?”
CHAPTER 98
Conklin and I walked our hunger pangs across the street to MacBain’s. We were putting down burgers and curly fries at a table near the jukebox.
Sydney refreshed our drinks and told us, “Take your time.”
Conklin said, “Mr. Big is Petrović. But try to pin a murder on him. It’s like harpooning a whale with a plastic fork.”
I nodded, opened my bun, and applied more ketchup.
Conklin and I had been partners for so long, a couple of words took the place of speeches.
I said, “Lopez. Petrović. Schoolteachers doing d
ouble duty as naughty girls.”
“You believed Tuohy?” Conklin said.
“He’s got an ugly personality, but I don’t think he’s stupid. Not stupid enough to leave bodies at his place of employment. What do you think?”
Conklin said, “I think Jacobi would want us to have beer.”
He raised his hand, and Sydney said, “Draft? Coming right up.”
Conklin said, “I haven’t seen Cindy in three days. It feels longer.”
“Me too with Joe.”
Conklin said, “Unless forensics ties Petrović to any one of our victims …”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I said, “Let’s turn it over again, look at it from a different angle.”
He said, “Okay. So here’s our new angle. Susan tells her sister that there’s a rumor. A foreigner with a no-name name killed a couple of women. We’ve got two hanged women and a pimp who was connected to one of the victims, turns up strangled.”
I had to lay down the details I’d been keeping back out of respect for Joe. It was time. I said, “Joe’s got pictures of Petrović in Bosnia. In one of them there’s hanged bodies of captives in Djoba. And apparently, he was good with throwing stars.”
Conklin stopped his burger just short of his mouth. I hadn’t told him about the photo of Petrović with his troops and the bodies hanging from trees in the background. It was Joe’s case. FBI intel. I hadn’t told my partner about Anna.
“Throwing stars? Okay, you’ve hooked me now,” said my partner. “Keep talking.”
“It wasn’t mine to tell,” I said. “But you need to know.”
“Speak,” Conklin said.
“A Bosnian war survivor, Anna Sotovina, came to the FBI because she saw Petrović in San Francisco.”
“She can tie him to the victims?”
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