Authors: Alan Jacobson
After spending the two-plus weeks’ earnings MacNally had made working for Flaherty, and then dipping into their savings—from the bank haul—MacNally was becoming increasingly frustrated at his inability to land another job. Flaherty had kept his word, and had let it be known that MacNally had nearly cost him a customer that was vital to his company’s survival...and that he had stood trial for murdering his wife.
In a small town, MacNally did not stand a chance of escaping the wrath of a well-liked and established business owner who had been burned. And killing your wife was...well, frowned upon, even if no one bothered to ask about the details of something remotely important like a jury’s verdict. He was guilty in the municipal court of public scorn.
With no other work history MacNally could lean on for references—even the school would freely tell a caller he had left them without notice—he realized he needed to use a bogus identity to prevent a prospective employer from finding out about his prior arrest. The truth and disposition often did not matter; he was a marked man and would be so for a long time, if not the rest of his life. Not having experience with such things, he didn’t know what to expect—how long it’d remain an albatross, or if someone would be willing to invest the time and thought to truly evaluate his particular situation.
Flaherty’s retort that a not guilty verdict did not mean innocent was a distinction MacNally did not fully grasp at the moment, but in the subsequent days, as he thought about it, he saw where the man was coming from. But seeing the difference did not matter. No amount of talking was going to persuade Flaherty, he knew that. Going back to the man was out of the question. And he did not dare attempt to speak with the mayor.
MacNally was also concerned about getting Henry an education, as he was certain his son was falling behind in his schooling by now.
MacNally did his best to work with Henry on his reading and math skills using the local library’s resources. But he had to be careful not to call attention to themselves—one person had already asked Henry where he went to school, which led to a very uncomfortable silence while MacNally stammered something about being new to town and there being a delay in getting him “signed up.”
Three weeks after losing his construction job, MacNally explained to Henry that unless things changed soon, they would likely have to leave and find a more affordable city where, even if he couldn’t land a decent paying job, their money would last longer.
Days passed, yet they did not discuss it again. MacNally figured it was easier to stay where they were than to move into a new place with more unknowns than they had now. For the time being, it was better to remain in Alabama and continue trying to better their situation.
He resorted to going door-to-door, offering to do odd jobs as a handyman for cash. This worked at times, and at times not. His tax-free pay was less than it had been when he was working at the school, forcing them deeper into their savings.
One day, MacNally came home to find Henry sitting on the floor against the wall with his mother’s brooch in one hand—and a bar of soap pressed to his nose. It was round and tinted pink, with a beveled, decorative edge. The soap they used was a plain white square bar.
“Where’d you get that?” MacNally asked.
Henry’s brow furrowed. He moved the soap behind his back. “Somewhere.”
“Somewhere?” MacNally moved closer. “Where’d you get the money?”
“I didn’t need no money. I took it. From a store. That one in town, Chuck’s Five and Dime.”
MacNally knelt down in front of his son. “Henry. Taking things from stores without paying for them isn’t right.”
“We took money from the bank. No difference.”
“There is a difference.” MacNally thought a moment, searching for a way to explain it. Was there really a distinction? He sat on the dirt floor beside Henry. “We stole that money because we had to. We need to eat, we need a place to sleep. There was no choice. I don’t want to steal. But...” He did not know if Henry could comprehend the concept of having an unfair and soiled reputation hung around your neck without the ability to remedy it.
He flashed on the irony of being a handyman—with the capability of fixing a variety of things—yet being unable to repair his own reputation.
“Son, we had to rob that bank. You didn’t need to steal that soap. We’ve got other soap. And even if we didn’t, you could live dirty. But you can’t live without food. You understand?”
“I needed the soap.”
“No, you wanted the soap.” Could a ten year old comprehend the difference between “need” and “want”?
“No. I needed it.”
MacNally extended a hand. “Give it to me. I’m going to bring it back to Chuck’s.”
“No!” Henry scooted away. “You’re not takin’ it from me.”
MacNally leaned back. What was going on with his son? His body language, the constriction of his pupils—over a bar of soap? “You said you need it. Why? What’s so special about it?”
Henry slowly brought the bar from behind his back, then wrapped it between two hands. He held it up to his father’s face.
MacNally sniffed. And he instantly understood. The scent was nearly identical to the perfume Doris had sprayed on herself every morning. “You smell Mom.”
Henry brought it back to his nose and closed his eyes.
MacNally fought back tears. He composed himself, took a breath and then said, “You can keep it. But we’re going to go over to Chuck’s and pay him for it.”
TWO MONTHS PASSED. ON AN uncharacteristically sunny day, Henry asked if they could go downtown to look at bicycles. Although MacNally had not brought up his birthday promise to Henry, it bothered him and he felt increasing pressure to make good on it.
Money was a daily concern, and the last thing MacNally was planning to spend it on was a bicycle—unrelenting guilt or not. “We move around a lot, Henry. Sometimes we have to get up and go, without a lot of planning. Having a bike isn’t a good idea.”
“But you promised. My birthday present. Remember?”
“We can’t take it with us if we have to leave.”
Henry looked down at his hands, where he was rolling a Bazooka bubblegum wrapper between his forefinger and thumb.
“You won’t be happy if we spend our money on a bike and then have to leave it when we go.”
Henry narrowed his eyes. “Then it’s about the money.”
“No. Yes. It’s both.”
“You didn’t say ‘if’ we had to go. You said ‘when.’ Are we leavin’?”
Henry was a bright kid—smarter than MacNally remembered being at this age. “I don’t know. But I think it’s likely we’re going to have to move on. I will get you a bike, just not now. Maybe when we settle down. When I find steady, good-paying work. We can buy one then. Okay?”
Henry twisted his lips, but did not reply.
Three weeks later, as MacNally and his son were finishing supper at the rickety wood table that served as both a dinner table and desk, MacNally set down his fork. They were going to move again, he told Henry—but before they left town, they needed some traveling money because their savings had nearly been exhausted.
“There’s a bank,” MacNally said. “First National—”
“I’ve seen it,” Henry said. “When?”
MacNally was surprised that his son was keyed in on their needs and the means for obtaining that which would efficiently deliver the solution. Henry was not only smart, he seemed wise—and practical—beyond his ten years. “I have to go by there to check it out. But maybe tomorrow night if it looks good.”
Henry thought a moment, then said, with a shrug, “If that’s what you say we gotta do, we’ll do it.”
MacNally had, indeed, decided that that was what they had to do. They lived and died by his decisions...it was a concept he found frightening. He was responsible for their well-being—for providing food. Money. And shelter.
He cleared the plates from the table, then began planning their next job.
Vail sat at the counter in front of monitors in the Photography Lab at the Hall of Justice. On-screen, a static camera angle displayed images of the Exploratorium parking lot. At its upper rightmost edge was the Palace of Fine Arts entrance.
“This gives us a pretty decent view of the area that leads down the path into the rotunda,” Burden said.
Friedberg stuck an unlit cigarette between his lips. “Assuming he came in this way.”
An hour later, Vail rose from her chair. “I used to have more patience for this. Let’s fast forward to the most likely times for him to have come by. If we don’t find anything, we can always rewind.”
“Fine,” Burden said. He pressed the remote and the digital tape sped forward to 2:00 am. “So just curious. Is boots-on-the-ground, grind-it-out police work below your pay grade?”
Vail focused on the screen. “You’re trying to pick a fight with me. Not a good idea. You’ll lose.” She pointed. “Look. One of those ice cream vendors.”
On-screen, a hooded man was pushing the multistickered carts into the entrance to the colonnade.
“Well that’s a bit bizarre, huh?” Friedberg asked.
Just a bit.
“Selling ice cream in San Francisco in the frosty cold of summer is strange enough. But at 2 am?”
“I think we got us a suspect,” Burden said.
They watched as the man disappeared off-screen.
“Devil’s Advocate,” Friedberg said. “So the guy’s an oddball, pushing around the ice cream cart at all hours of the morning. How does that make him a suspect?”
“It doesn’t,” Burden said. “Unless he’s got something of interest inside that cart. Like Mr. Anderson.”
“Fast forward,” Vail said. “Let’s see if we can catch him coming back out. Maybe we’ll get lucky with a face shot.”
Friedberg grabbed the remote and seconds later the numerals on the digital readout were morphing faster than the eye could discern. He stopped when the front of the cart appeared again, then backed it up ten seconds.
“What’s the time code?” Vail asked. “How long was he there?”
Friedberg consulted the screen. “Nine minutes forty-nine seconds.”
“Nine minutes. Is that enough time to use that rope to raise the body up to that ledge?”
“Plenty of time—it’s a lot longer than you think. You can get a lot of stuff done in nine minutes.”
Burden gestured with a finger at the screen. “Run it in slow motion.”
Friedberg manipulated the remote. The image slowed to a jerky, nearly frame-by-frame progression.
“Face?” Vail asked. The hood of his sweatshirt covered the man’s entire head, except for the tip of his nose.
Burden leaned back, keeping his eyes on the screen. “I can ask if our guys can clean that up, lighten it. But it’s a grainy image. You know what they say.”
“Garbage in means garbage out,” Vail said. “That what you mean?”
“Right. We can’t create detail and resolution if it wasn’t there originally.”
“Sometimes if you play with the different exposure settings, things that were hidden suddenly pop out at you. I’ve seen it done with that photo software. Light-something.”
“Photoshop?”
“No, it was like Photoshop, but—Lightroom. That’s it. It had all these sliders. When the tech moved them, things appeared in the picture that weren’t there before.”
Burden cricked his neck in doubt. “I’ll see what they can do. This is video, severely compressed and shot in low light. And it’s not a jpeg file. I’m not sure the same image data is there.”
Friedberg backed up the tape to the point where the suspect entered their field of view, then froze the image.
“Forget about the technology for a minute,” Vail said. “What can we tell about the guy?” She took her seat again. “He’s what, over six feet? Can’t say much about his gait, because he’s bent over a bit pushing the cart and we’re only seeing a couple of strides before he moves off screen. Age?”
“Hard to figure,” Friedberg said. “Definitely not a teenager. Other than that, he could be thirty to eighty. It’s impossible to say because he’s pushing that cart. And if he’s already gotten rid of Mr. Anderson, that cart is empty and on wheels. It can’t weigh that much. With that bulky sweatshirt on, we can’t even really tell much about his build.”
Vail looked at the frozen image of their mysterious suspect. “You think this guy’s really an ice cream vendor?”
Friedberg set down the remote and pulled out his pad. “I’ll find out who these guys are—if they’re employees or if they’re franchisees, if they’re licensed...the whole deal. Then I’ll get a list of names and addresses. We can track ’em all down and eliminate the ones that don’t look like the guy on the tape—the fat ones, the short ones, the ones that limp. The rest we put in a room and sweat, see what we get.”
“When you’ve got your list of suspects, I might be able to help narrow it down further.”
“Good,” Burden said. “But I don’t want to wait. Let’s nail some things down right now. What can you tell us about the type of guy we’re looking for, based on Safarik’s research on the sexual homicide of elderly females? Maybe that’ll give us a foundation to build on.”
“Normally, it would.” Vail pushed her chair back. She was not looking forward to this discussion.
“I’m not sure I like the way you’re starting your answer.”
“That’s only because you’re not going to like what I have to say.”
“Karen,” Burden said, inching closer in his chair. “I need some valid direction for this case. When word gets out we’ve got an elderly couple murdered in the city—one savagely violated, and the other left in the Palace of Fine Arts...SFPD’s gonna come under intense pressure to solve this, and solve it quickly.”
“And that’s something you’re going to have to manage,” Vail said.
“We brought you in here to help us.”
“I get that. But with one rare exception, this case is unlike any of the cases Safarik studied and profiled involving elderly females.”
“How so?”
“There are distinct characteristics of the typical offender who sexually murders elderly women. And this UNSUB just doesn’t exhibit them.”
Even in the muted lighting of the video room, Vail could see Burden’s face shade red.
“Since this is my case, why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”