“Barber and Associates. Offices on Sansome downtown.”
“You have the agent’s name?”
“No, but I can get it.”
“Do that. I’ll make a second canvass of McManus’s neighbors, too-have another talk with Selma Hightower.”
Tamara favored me with a satisfied grin. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about,” she said.
Alex Chavez had come and gone, fully briefed, and I was on my way out when the third piece of news arrived. This one came in a text message from Felice Johnson, Tamara’s friend and contact at SFPD. Tamara had asked her for a personal BOLO for David Virden’s Porsche Cayman, and the car had just turned up-or what was left of it had-in an alley out near the Cow Palace. A couple of message exchanges later, we had the details.
Found abandoned, stripped down to the frame. The officers who’d spotted it were regulars on that beat; their report said it hadn’t been there when they made their first pass through the area shortly past midnight. Driver’s window smashed, the ignition hot-wired. No signs of blood, interior or exterior. Nothing to indicate what might have happened to Virden.
I said, “The ignition hot-wire pretty much rules out a carjacking.”
“Tells me it was abandoned twice,” Tamara said. “First time on some dark street near the projects. Wouldn’t’ve lasted more than an hour after midnight. Sweet set of wheels like that’s a prime target for car boosters. Then hot-wired and driven over to that alley and stripped.”
“McManus and Carson again.”
“Who else? One of ’em drove it out of Dogpatch sometime Tuesday; the other one followed in the SUV to bring her back.”
“That’s one explanation,” I said. “Another is that the first boost was by somebody in Dogpatch or elsewhere.”
“Car thieves don’t hang on to a ride three days before they strip it.”
“Nonprofessionals might. Joyriders, gangbangers.”
“Then what happened to Virden?”
“Hit over the head, robbed, the body dumped where it hasn’t been found yet.”
“By joyriders or gangbangers? I don’t buy it. McManus and Carson whacked him, all right.”
“How do you suppose they managed it? Big healthy guy, mad as hell, and two smallish women.”
“And one killer dog. Sicced that Rottweiler, what’s his name, Thor, on him, ripped his throat out.”
“Uh-huh. Which would mean blood all over the place. One hell of a job cleaning it up.”
“Not if it happened outside.”
“Where his screams could be heard a block away.”
Tamara made a face at me.
I said, “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Time to call Judith LoPresti, let her know about the Porsche being found. Police probably wouldn’t have notified her yet and it’s better if she hears it from us.”
“You going to say anything about McManus and Carson?”
“That we might be dealing with a couple of identity thieves who also happen to be Madam Bluebeards? Not hardly. She’ll be upset enough as it is.”
16
JAKE RUNYON
When he left the agency he drove down to the Hall of Justice to have a talk with Bryn. Only he didn’t get to do that because they wouldn’t let him see her. She’d been put into Administrative Segregation for her own protection the night before, which meant no visitors except for her attorney. Why the hell would they AdSeg her? Nobody would tell Runyon the reason.
Maybe Dragovich could. Runyon wanted to talk to him anyway, in person, to get his take on her legal situation. He called Dragovich’s law office to make sure he was in before driving downtown.
The doubts about Bryn’s story still plagued him. He’d been over it and over it and still he couldn’t quite put his finger on what rang false. Part of it had to do with the sudden shift in her emotional makeup: frantic, nearly hysterical, when she’d called him, calm when he’d arrived at Darby’s flat. The twenty-five minutes it’d taken him to get to the Marina was time enough for her to regain control, yet her calm hadn’t had the residue of shock and terror in it. What he’d seen, sensed, was a mixture of resignation and determination, as if in the interim she’d made some sort of accommodation or decision. Possible he’d read her reactions wrong, but his cop’s instincts said he hadn’t.
There were other things, too. Her account of what’d happened seemed a little too pat, as if some or all of it had been quickly made up and then gone over and refined several times before his arrival. And why had she volunteered information to the homicide inspectors when she’d been warned not to? There was something else, too, something off-key she’d said or done before Darby and the police showed up that kept eluding him.
It all came down to a measure of premeditation: Bryn had gone to the flat to confront Francine, lost it when she saw Bobby hurt again, and in the heat of the fight that followed picked up the kitchen knife and stabbed the woman. That would explain Bryn’s near hysteria when she called; the aftermath of violence, even anticipated violence, throws most people into a panicked state. It would also explain the calm: resignation once she gathered herself, then the decision, the determination, to alter her account to protect herself.
But the problem with that was, Bryn was neither a liar nor a violent person. He couldn’t see her willfully taking anyone’s life, even a woman she hated as much as Francine Whalen. Or fashioning a net of lies to cover up a homicide. Totally out of character.
Or was it? How well did he really know her? Only a short time since they’d met; only a few weeks since they’d become intimate both physically and emotionally. She was complicated, high-strung, damaged by the stroke, her husband’s betrayal, the custody loss of her son. He wasn’t a shrink, couldn’t probe down into the psyche of a woman like Bryn. Just wasn’t equipped. The trouble he’d had dealing with his own demons was proof of that.
He could be wrong about her. Didn’t want to believe he was, but the possibility was still there. Wouldn’t go away until he knew exactly what had happened in Robert Darby’s flat yesterday afternoon.
Dragovich’s law office was on Grove Street close to City Hall. As successful as his criminal law practice was, he didn’t believe in spending money on jazzing up his workplace. His private office had the usual shelves of law books and an oversized desk, but there were none of the expensive trappings-leather furniture, polished wood paneling, mirrors, paintings, wet bar-that some high-powered attorneys went in for. Strictly functional. Runyon didn’t much like lawyers as a general rule-too many of them were self-promoting, profiteering sharks-but Dragovich was an exception. A man as straightforward and businesslike as his surroundings.
In his late forties and small in stature, not much more than five eight and a hundred and forty pounds; even with his chair jacked up high, the desk dwarfed him. Thinning sandy hair, a beak of a nose, a pointy chin. Habitually he wore a gray suit, a pale blue shirt, and a striped red tie, a kind of signatory outfit like the TV lawyer Matlock. Except that no matter what time of day you saw Dragovich, his shirt collar was unbuttoned, the knot in his tie was loosened, and his suit had a rumpled look. The compensation for all of that was his voice-deep, booming, commanding. He used it to maximum effect in a courtroom.
Runyon was admitted promptly to the attorney’s private office. Dragovich shook his hand, waved him to a client’s chair. As soon as they were both seated, Runyon said, “I just came from the Hall. Do you know why they AdSeg’d Bryn?”
“Yes. It happened after I consulted with her last night-I saw her again early this morning. I wish you’d told me about her stroke.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Badly agitated after she was booked because she wasn’t allowed to cover the damaged side of her face.”
“Why wasn’t she?”
