Authors: Christopher Valen
“There’s a tape from the garage?”
“Course there is. I gave it to the detective that night.”
“Detective Kehoe.”
“That’s right.”
Santana began to put it all together now. How it had gone down the night Rafael Mendoza was murdered.
He said, “You tell anyone else there was a security tape for the garage?”
“No one asked except for Detective Kehoe.”
That’s because everyone else figured Córdova was good for Mendoza’s murder, Santana thought. Only Kehoe knew for certain that Córdova was innocent. That whoever killed Mendoza came in through the garage and not the main lobby door.
Williams licked his lips, let out another sigh. “Look, Detective Santana. I don’t want any trouble. Six months and I’m out of here. I got a good pension. You understand.”
“I do.”
“But I think I could get you a copy if it’d help. You see we’re using two systems now. Just got the new digital one up and running a couple of days before Mendoza was killed. The video is recorded directly on a computer hard-drive. Detective Kehoe just took the VCR tape. Don’t think he knew we had a new digital system.”
“Could I get a CD copy off the computer hard-drive?”
“I believe you can. You’d have to talk to the security company about that. But it’s kinda curious you haven’t seen that tape, Detective Santana. Maybe a little department politics going on,” Williams said with a smile. “It wouldn’t be the first time. You know how it is. Can’t help but feel sorry for Mendoza’s family though.”
“I don’t believe he had one.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. Man all alone like that. Everyone should have family.”
Santana didn’t reply.
“Seems like nowadays there’s more bad than good in the world. Man my age, well, I’m not gonna be around much longer, so I guess it don’t really matter a whole lot. But for you, workin’ Homicide, it must be kinda depressing. I mean, you put ‘em away one day, and there’s two more the next takin’ their place.”
“We have a saying in Colombia, Reggie.
Mala yerba no muere.
Bad weeds never die.”
“Man, ain’t that the truth.”
S
antana sat behind the steering wheel of the Crown Vic and stared out the driver’s side window at the cold, dark face of night. He was thinking that there was one remaining piece to the puzzle of this case, and it might be found in the Ranch style house where James Kehoe lived.
The house was dark behind the windows and sat on a corner lot near Lake Phalen on St. Paul’s East Side. Santana was counting on the fact that Kehoe would be attending the five hundred dollar a plate dinner tonight at the University Club where the mayor was scheduled to announce his bid for a second term. Still, he had parked a half block down from the house where he waited and watched the neighborhood for twenty minutes before deciding it was safe.
He took a miniature flashlight from the glove box of the car, stepped out and closed the car door quietly behind him. The night air was sharp with the scent of wet pine and spruce. Ice smothered the bare branches of the oaks, glistened like a steel blade under the harsh glare of the streetlights.
He moved quickly down the driveway to the garage where he cleared the moisture from a side window with a sleeve. Turned on the flashlight and aimed the beam through the glass.
Kehoe’s car was gone.
Santana clicked off the light. Staying in the shadows, he jumped over the three-foot high chain-link fence that enclosed the yard and crept along the back of the house until he came to a door. He paused a moment and shined the light over the back windows, searching for any evidence of a security alarm. Then he pointed the beam toward the backyard, looking for dog droppings or a doghouse.
When he was satisfied Kehoe had not installed a security system and that there was no dog to contend with, he retrieved a pair of latex gloves from one coat pocket and slipped them on. In another pocket he found the leather pouch containing his picks. He turned on the flashlight again and held it in his mouth as he worked the picks in the lock. In less than a minute he was able to push the pins and open the back door.
He stepped into a small kitchen that smelled like something had recently been burned on the stove. He closed the door and locked it behind him. Paused a moment until his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
He had little time. The mayor’s dinner was over at 9:00 p.m. and, according to the clock on the microwave, it was 8:50 now.
Following the narrow beam of light, he went through the house quickly until he located a bedroom at the end of a hallway. It appeared that a wall had been removed between two smaller bedrooms, creating one expansive master suit. A king-size, four-poster bed sat in the center of the room. A wrinkled white shirt and black trousers were tossed on the unmade bed. Leather straps were tied around each of the posts. A 35 mm Nikon camera and tripod were set up about five feet from the foot of the bed.
Santana probed the darkness once more with the flashlight beam, watching as it flared off the mirror behind the dresser near the bed where there were three framed pictures of Kehoe dressed in hunting gear standing proudly over dead deer.
Santana walked to the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed. On top of it was an A.G. Russell catalogue on knives. The headline across the front cover read: KNIVES SUPPORT U.S. TROOPS IN WAR ON TERROR. Underneath the catalogue was a newsletter on photo developing entitled Formulating.
Inside the nightstand drawer Santana found a box of Trojan condoms, a prescription vial of Viagra, an address book, and a 5 x 7 colored photo. The woman was younger and her hair darker, but there was no mistaking Janet Mitchell. Apparently, the divorce decree had not severed the matrimonial bonds that still held Kehoe to his ex-wife.
Santana took the address book out of the drawer. Alphabetical tabs divided the book into sections by last names. On a hunch, Santana flipped open the “S” tab. Halfway down the page, he found the name he was looking for. Richard Scanlon. Feeling lucky, he flipped open the “M” tab and quickly found Mendoza’s name. When he tried “P” for Pérez, however, his luck ran out. He put the address book back and closed the drawer and went to the closet. Behind the louvered doors were Kehoe’s dress and casual clothes and shoes along with a one-piece King of the Mountain wool suit and a two-piece Bug Tamer suit, both in 3D camo, a fluorescent orange cap and vest, a Springfield 30.06 rifle with a telescopic sight, and a box of 150-grain cartridges.
He went to the dresser and opened drawers. The top two drawers contained underwear, socks and T-shirts. The bottom drawer held a rectangular cardboard box. Santana removed the cover. The beam of light revealed a stack of magazines. Santana pulled out two of them. The magazines were titled UNZIPPED and FRESHMAN and featured muscular, naked men in various sexual poses.
Underneath the magazines Santana found a videocassette with a label on which was written in large block letters: RIVERVIEW LOFTS. Adrenaline shot through his veins as he held it in his hand. He was certain that this was the tape Reggie Williams had given Kehoe the night Rafael Mendoza was murdered. It was evidence that could possibly link Kehoe and Scanlon to Mendoza’s murder. Still, he had no search warrant and no excuse for being in Kehoe’s house. If he took the tape with him, he couldn’t prove that it came from Kehoe’s house.Worse yet, if Kehoe caught him here, he could claim Santana was attempting to plant the tape in order to frame him for Mendoza’s murder.
Santana checked his watch. It was 9:12. He was pushing his luck. He set the magazines and videocassette back in the box and left the bedroom.
Halfway down the hallway he found a door that led to a basement. He went down the creaking wooden stairs slowly, the narrow stream of light from his flashlight cutting through the darkness like a laser.
He stopped on the bottom step and scanned the skeleton of two-by-fours and conduit with the flashlight. At one end of the basement were two barbells of free weights and a bench for presses. At the other end nearest the stairs was an unfinished room with plasterboard walls.
He walked across the concrete floor into the unfinished room and pulled the cord on the overhead light, which revealed a counter with a sink and trays for developing photos, a photo enlarger, timer and safe light. Shelves full of chemical containers of amidol, glycin, silver nitrate and ferric oxalate lined the wall behind the counter. Behind him was an 11 x 14 print easel. There were four color prints on the easel. The prints were taken in sequence and showed a bare-chested man wearing a dark head mask and holding a whip. The masked man stood near the head of a four-poster bed Santana recognized as the one upstairs in Kehoe’s bedroom. In the first print, he was bending over a second man who was naked and lying spread-eagled on the bed. Leather straps attached to the posts bound the second man’s wrists and ankles. In each of the next three prints the masked man was bending farther over until in the final print he was clearly kissing the man tied to the bed. Santana could not see the face of the second man because his head was tilted back on the pillow, away from the camera, but based on his muscular physique; he guessed that it was Kehoe.The first man was easier to identify. The mask concealed his face, but not the appendectomy scar on Scanlon’s abdomen. It appeared that Kehoe, like Julio Pérez and Rafael Mendoza, was another one of Richard Scanlon’s victims.
Inside a counter drawer, Santana found strips of negatives. He wondered if one of the strips contained the negative of Scanlon and Hidalgo taken at the archbishop’s cabin near Two Harbors. It was difficult to decipher the black and white images even as he held a strip up to the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. He would need to enlarge the images, but time was his enemy now. He glanced at his watch. It was 9:23. He had to go.
He turned off the light and went up the stairs. As he reached the top step and opened the door, headlights swept across the living room indicating a car had pulled into the driveway.
Santana stepped into the hallway and then into the darkened living room, moving carefully around the shadowed furniture, keeping the narrow beam of light low to the ground so that it could not be seen through the slits between the drapes and blind. He moved quickly to a window to his left that faced the driveway. Peered between the blinds. The garage door was open and the light on. If he went out the back door he would run straight into Kehoe.
He waited until he saw Kehoe come out of the garage and through the gate along the fence. Then Santana went to the front door and slipped out of the house. He went across the front lawn and down a sloping hill to the sidewalk and headed toward his car. The urge to run was strong, but he suppressed it, knowing that running might draw suspicious looks from prying neighbors.
The clandestine visit had been worth the risk. In Santana’s mind he had established a definitive link between Kehoe and Scanlon. He needed to convince Ashford to issue a search warrant before Kehoe destroyed any evidence that connected him to Scanlon and to the murders. Yet, he was still troubled. He had been unable to lock the front door from the outside without a key. He hoped that Kehoe would think he had forgotten to lock it when he left for work this morning.
Chapter 29
DAY 10
S
ANTANA WAS SITTING ON A STOOL
next to Tony Novak in the crime lab. On the counter in front of them was a PC with a seventeen-inch monitor.
“Most everyone is switching to digital systems now that the price has come down,” Novak said. “Plus, you get better resolution with digital.”
“Then why keep using tapes?”
“Because computer hard drives have been known to crash. If that happens, all the data is lost. So most security outfits that install a digital system also install an analog videotape system as a backup because it’s still more reliable.”
Novak turned on the computer and pushed the CD Santana had gotten from the security company into the CD-ROM drive on the computer.
“You’re looking at another reason why digital is used more today, John. We’d have to fast forward a tape until we found the right time. With a CD I just type in the date and time we want. Sort of like you do with a remote for a track on a music CD.”
On the monitor, the security camera appeared to be mounted above the garage door and showed a full view of the large rectangular parking area under the building. At 15:02 the camera focused and panned toward a late model Lexus sedan as it entered the garage and parked in an empty space near the elevator. A blond woman got out carrying a bag of groceries. She pointed a remote entry transmitter at the car and the lights flashed on and off indicating that the automatic door locks were activated. As she headed for the elevator, the camera followed her.
“Looks like an automatic focusing and tracking system,” Novak said. “That’s good news. Tough to recognize anyone who parked at the far end of the garage without it.”
Santana said, “Type in nineteen hundred hours.”
Novak complied and seconds later they were looking at a motionless garage.
“Keep your eyes on those two empty parking spaces on the left of the screen, Tony, about half way between the elevator and the garage door. Mendoza owned both spaces.”
At 19:02 a couple came out of the elevator and walked to a Lincoln Town Car and drove out of the garage.
Three minutes later Santana said, “I recognize Mendoza’s Mercedes. I checked it out after I talked to the security guard.”
“There’s a car right behind it, John,” Novak said. “It’s pulling into the space next to the Mercedes.”
Santana noted the time was 19:05.
“Looks like a light-colored Honda,” Novak said.
Mendoza got out of the Mercedes, closed the door, bent down and looked in the Honda’s passenger side window. Then he straightened up and headed briskly toward the elevator.
The Honda’s driver’s side door swung open and a man in a flat-top hat and overcoat got out, shut the door and hurried after Mendoza.
“He’s got his back to the camera,” Novak said. “I can’t get a look at his face.”