Worth checking out. And right away.
Shar would have to wait for him a little longer.
He called Ted Smalley at home and then set his course for Pier 24½, where Ted could access the records from the office computer
system.
I
was expecting Hy but it was Mick and Craig who came into my room. They were arguing in the soft voices that this place seemed
to bring out in people. Well, most people. Not Ma and not me; she shrieked and I had no voice.
Mick said, “
This
is the secure location where we’re gonna talk?”
“As secure as they get, man.”
“But what about Shar? She’s sick, she needs her rest.”
Stop talking about me as if I weren’t here!
“She also needs to hear this, and I don’t want to go over it twice.” Craig came around the bed, looked me in the eyes. “Shar?
You okay to listen to a long story?”
I blinked. Damn right I was. Maybe my body wasn’t spearheading the investigation this time, but my mind was as sharp as ever.
Both of them sat down, Craig in the armchair and Mick in a folding chair he dragged in from outside.
Craig said, “Amanda Teller, president of the Board of Supes, and State Representative Paul Janssen were shot to death in a
motel near Big Sur early this morning.”
I wanted to exclaim, “What? Why?” All I could do was rivet my gaze on his and wait.
“It was set up to look like a murder-suicide, but I don’t think it was. More likely a double homicide.”
He went on to tell me what he and Mick had witnessed at the Spindrift Lodge, ending with, “You know I’ve been investigating
possible malfesance at city hall for the mayor’s office. I think these killings are connected to that.”
I remembered the case. One of the mayor’s closest aides and confidants, Jim Yatz, had summoned me to his office in early June
and asked me to take on an undercover operation. He didn’t specifically know what the mayor was looking for, but there was
some concern about certain confidential documents going missing. Yatz provided me with a list of them; they seemed innocuous
enough to me: drafts of general plans for city land use, an updated rent control proposition, budget proposals. Some of the
documents had been handwritten in draft, others were computer files that had subsequently been deleted. I offered the services
of our computer forensics department to recover them, but Yatz turned that down. Find out who was doing it, that was all the
mayor wanted.
Yatz, a burly, dark-haired man in a well-tailored blue suit, had struck me as poorly informed about the missing documents
and the mayor’s concerns. And he was a gatekeeper—no way I was going to get in to see the mayor personally, even though I’d
met him a number of times at environmental fund-raisers Hy and I had attended. Finally, though, I decided we’d take the case,
if for no other reason than to protect the city’s administration, which, for the most part, I supported.
Since I was too well known around the Bay Area, I suggested to Yatz that Craig handle the investigation. But after he and
I met with Yatz, we decided Craig had too many contacts in city government to go unrecognized either; he would supervise and
send in someone else to do the actual fieldwork. Diane D’Angelo, our newest hire, was his choice because of her polish and
business background.
For two weeks Diane worked in the mayor’s office as a temporary replacement for his executive secretary, who was on vacation.
She saw nothing out of the ordinary, and no documents disappeared until her last day there. This one was classified as a confidential
communication between Amanda Teller and the mayor; no details of its contents were given to us. I ended my direct involvement
at that point, though I’d kept myself apprised by reading Craig’s reports, which basically posited that someone was playing
political games of no consequence.
Well, games or not, this one had had monumental consequences. Amanda Teller, a forty-year-old woman with an impressive record
of service to the community, and Paul Janssen, age fifty-two, a maverick who was challenging the status quo in our mired-down
state government, were both dead. And under circumstances that could destroy their legacies.
Craig went on, “Do you recognize the name Harvey Davis?”
Amanda Teller’s campaign manager and a close aide. I blinked.
“Three weeks ago he contacted me. He’d heard I was working for the mayor and said that he had information that would shake
up local government. He didn’t want money for it and he didn’t want to be named as the one who blew the whistle. He passed
along minor details about Teller—with whom he seemed very disillusioned. Frankly, I thought he was getting off on acting like
he had important inside information. Then on Friday he told me Teller and Janssen were scheduled to meet at Big Sur yesterday.
Now they’re both dead, Davis, too.”
Craig continued his narrative, telling me about the Davis hit and his subsequent visit to the man’s condo. When he detailed
the explicit sexual content of the DVDs he’d found there my senses reeled and I went into a kind of brain lock.
Craig said, “I don’t know where he got those DVDs, but I suspect Teller had copies, too. The conversation between her and
Janssen that I recorded reeks of blackmail.”
I just stared at him.
Mick said, “She’s exhausted. Let’s come back in the morning.”
I’m not exhausted, just shocked. Because of that investigation I did for Amanda Teller a year ago, I may have set this thing
in motion. And I’ve got no way of communicating what I know.
“… Right,” Craig said. He stood. “Tonight Mick and I will go over the DVDs and my surveillance tapes. We’ll be back tomorrow
with a more detailed report. We’ll also play the videos for you.”
I blinked, then closed my eyes. I needed time to process this.
Feet clanging on metal—my feet going up the catwalk at the pier. Echoes resonating off the flat roof.
Elusive, flickering light. Sudden motion.
Collision with a strong body. Falling, reaching out.
Fingertips grazing metal.
Flash!
Chains?
Pain. Darkness.
Now. A life without speech or motion.
The silent scream welled up, and I cursed what I’d become.
F
lashing lights disturbed the dusk as she drove along Twentieth Avenue in the city’s normally peaceful Richmond district, going
to her appointment with Haven Dietz. She felt a prickling at the base of her spine as she realized the emergency vehicles
were congregated at Dietz’s three-story brick apartment house.
People milled around outside the police barriers. Julia pulled her car into a red zone near a fire hydrant and ran down the
sidewalk, pushed past gawkers, then stopped when she saw a gurney with a body bag being loaded into an ambulance. A young,
heavy-set cop was standing guard behind the yellow crime scene tape. She went up to him, and… oh, shit.
Matthew Griffin. He used to work out of the Mission district precinct, and he’d busted her two times for prostitution.
He recognized her at once. “Julia Rafael. What’re you doing here?”
She took out one of her agency business cards and extended it to him. “Working. A woman who lives in that building is my client.”
Surprisingly, he took a long look at the card. “I heard you went straight. That’s a good agency. McCone has always been somebody
who takes a chance on people. How’s she doing since the shooting?”
“About the same. She’s aware, but can’t move or speak.”
“Jesus, what a shame.”
He didn’t know the half of it. Shar had given her the chance of a lifetime, had stood by her when she almost blew it. She
owed her—and then some.
Julia let out a deep breath, asked, “Who’s the victim?”
“Woman named Haven Dietz.”
“Oh, no…”
“She your client?”
“Yes.”
He raised the tape. “That man over there in the black coat is Lt. Dave Morrison. Tell him what you know about this.”
She ducked under the tape, moved forward. Griffin said, “Julia?”
“Yes?”
“I’m glad you turned your life around.”
“Thank you. I am, too.”
Lt. Morrison knew nothing of her history and treated her as a professional. He glanced curiously at her scabbed-over nose
and blackened eyes, but instead of commenting he listened to her account of the Haven Dietz case and then took her up to the
apartment. It had been searched, Dietz’s belongings dumped from drawers and hurled around, and there were bloodstains on the
carpet and a spatter pattern on the wall. Shot by an intruder, the lieutenant said.
Looking at the bloody wall made Julia gag, and Morrison gave her a concerned look.
Well, Shar would have gagged, too, maybe, but she wouldn’t’ve thrown up, and Julia wasn’t going to either.
She swallowed hard, asked, “Did she surprise a burglar?”
“On the surface it would appear that way. But experience tells me someone was looking for something specific.”
The hundred thou hidden in the Peepleses’ tack room?
She said, “I had an appointment with Dietz for eight o’clock.” She checked her watch. “Right about now. I wanted to make it
earlier, but she said she was having someone over for dinner. Any sign of that?”
“Nothing’s been cooked, and there’re no takeout containers. I’d say that kitchen hasn’t been used for anything other than
microwaving and coffee-making in quite a while. We’ll check it out more thoroughly. You have any idea what the perp might’ve
been looking for?”
Julia shook her head.
“Another theory I have is that her attacker returned to finish his job.”
“After a year?”
Morrison shrugged. “It was a vicious attack, indicating extreme anger or psychosis. In the minds of people like that… Well,
for a lot of them, it’s never finished until the victim’s dead.”
“He used a knife last time. Would he have been likely to switch to a gun?”
“You can’t predict what people like that’ll do.”
Julia looked around the trashed apartment, blocking out the bloodstains. The furnishings were old and worn; there were no
pictures or mementoes; it felt like the lair of an animal who had dug in and was waiting to die.
And now she had.
T
he Pro Terra Party. Founded in 2002 by environmentalists Cheryl Fitzgerald and Don Beckman. They’d had a falling-out in 2004,
and Beckman quit the party; Fitzgerald left in 2006, for unspecified personal reasons. Since then Pro Terra had been run by
a board of directors, of which Lee Summers, the dead woman’s father, was chairman. Their most notable political win had been
Paul Janssen’s election to the state house of representatives in 2008.
Rae Googled Cheryl Fitzgerald. The woman had been flying below the search engine’s radar since she left the party and took
an executive position with a Silicon Valley firm that developed alternative energy sources. Don Beckman had died of a heart
attack in 2005. Rae went to one of the search engines the agency subscribed to for more information on Fitzgerald. She was
still with Alternative Resources, whose office address was in Cupertino. Rae noted that down, then did a search for Lee Summers.
He had an impressive background: bachelor’s degree in prelaw from Stanford, law degree from Harvard. He’d made partner at
one of San Francisco’s prestigious appeals firms in record time. His personal life was unblemished: he’d been married to his
wife, Senta, for twenty-four years; was a regular churchgoer; was a member of two country clubs; served on the boards of various
charities. Alicia had been the couple’s only child. Five years ago Summers had cut back on his legal practice to devote his
energy to the Pro Terra Party, and had been instrumental in Representative Paul Janssen’s victory.
All squeaky-clean. Which made Rae uncomfortable. Everybody had something to hide. She certainly did.
Well, maybe that was specious reasoning. If she Googled herself, there would be no mention that in her teens she had been
the primo slut of her hometown, Santa Maria. But the details of her very public affair with Ricky would be duly noted.…
She moved on to another search engine and dug deeper.
Aha! In 2008 Lee Summers’s wife had filed for divorce, but withdrawn the petition two weeks later. Irreconcilable differences
had apparently been reconciled. Or a compromise—given that he was involved in an intense political campaign—had been made.
Just about the time Alicia had left home and become a prostitute here in the city.
Maybe that high-school counselor’s intuitions were wrong. Maybe Rae should rethink the abuse angle.
The phone rang. Rae grabbed it before the call could go to the office machine. Jane Koziol, the Acalanes High School counselor
she’d just been thinking of.
“I’ve been in touch with Alicia’s mother, Senta Summers,” she said. “She’d like to talk with you. Would tomorrow afternoon
at two be okay?”
“Of course.” Abuse, just as she’d suspected.
Koziol gave her directions to the Summerses’ house in the Lafayette hills and said she’d meet her there.
The timing was perfect. In the morning Rae could drive to Cupertino and appear at Cheryl Fitzgerald’s office first thing,
when the woman’s and her gatekeepers’ guards were apt to be low, and go from there to Lafayette for the meeting with Mrs.
Summers.
T
he file on the Teller investigation is gone,” Ted said to Hy.
“Shit.”
“I happen to know a very capable computer forensics expert who can retrieve it.”
“Mick? He’s been incommunicado since last night.”
“Derek’s almost as good as he is.” Ted was already on the phone, hitting the fast dial. “Hey, Derek, I need you at the pier…
Forensic job on our own system… Okay, see you then.” He replaced the receiver and said to Hy, “He’ll be here in half an hour.”
Hy was silent, distracted.
“You okay?”