“The best I could do is tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”
Damn. “Delaying tactic?”
“Partly. If I know the DA, his intention is to keep her segregated to give her time to think over her position now that she’s been caught in her lie. He also wants an ADA present during the interview. Neither his office nor the police are in any hurry-there are still forty-eight hours left before Mrs. Darby is scheduled for arraignment. I suggest you and I meet beforehand for a strategy conference. Eight thirty in the community room, third floor at Eight-fifty Bryant?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Is there anything else we need to discuss tonight?”
“Bryn’s son. I don’t suppose Darby returned your call?”
“He did, as a matter of fact. Professional courtesy.”
“How’s the boy?”
“Well enough physically, but he still won’t talk about the alleged abuse or what, if anything, he may know about Francine Whalen’s death.”
“Who’s taking care of him?”
“A nurse Darby hired. He seems to be in good hands.”
No, he wasn’t. Runyon found that out twenty minutes later.
When the doorbell rang, he almost didn’t answer it. The only people who came around while he was home were solicitors and, once, one of his neighbors looking to borrow something. But the bell kept up an insistent ringing, and when Runyon finally responded he found himself face-to-face with Robert Darby. A distraught and angry Robert Darby.
“Have you seen him?” Darby said. “Is he here with you?”
“Who? You don’t mean Bobby-”
“Damn right I mean Bobby. He ran away this afternoon and I’ve looked everywhere else. If you’re hiding him, Runyon, I swear to God I’ll make you wish you were never born.”
21
Tamara was beside herself over what she called “those two bitches’ escape.” Not that she blamed Alex Chavez for the lost tail. He was an experienced field man and he’d taken every precaution, but no op can maintain road surveillance when he’s been spotted and the subjects are bent on ditching him. The dangerous last-second lane change would have caught anybody in the profession by surprise.
Alex felt bad about it, though. He’d driven straight back to Dogpatch to stake out the 20th Street house in case McManus and Carson decided to go back there. Chances of that happening were nil now, but Alex had insisted. And Tamara and I both knew his professional ethics wouldn’t allow him to take any overtime pay for the extended stakeout, either.
What upset and frustrated her-me, too-was that we were still hamstrung by the lack of hard evidence necessary to convince the law to take immediate action. What I’d found in the house was plenty suspicious, but we couldn’t report it without admitting that I’d been guilty of illegal trespass and unlawful entry, and my uncorroborated testimony alone wouldn’t constitute sufficient cause for a judge to issue a search warrant. Cops and judges frown on private investigators subverting the law in any way. So does the state Board of Licenses. And never mind the rationale.
By the time I got back to the office, Tamara had used the information The Dog Hole barfly Frank Quarles had given me to run a deep backgrounder on Gregory Pappas. The name wasn’t all that uncommon, but she was sure she had the right man. Born in Athens, Greece, in 1929, immigrated to the U.S. in 1946. Worked for a San Francisco relative who owned a Greek restaurant. Opened his own place on Polk Street, the Acropolis Restaurant, in 1959 and operated it until 1992, when it was gutted by an accidental grease fire. Underinsured, so he hadn’t been able to rebuild or reopen elsewhere-but he’d gotten enough of a settlement, and apparently had had enough put away, to live comfortably in retirement. Married, no children. Wife deceased in 1998. Never owned a home; lifelong apartment dweller. After his wife’s death, moved from the apartment he’d shared with her in the Anza Vista neighborhood to a smaller apartment in the Potrero. Lived at that address for a dozen years until the building was sold and went condo. Residence after that presumably the house in Dogpatch, but nothing to confirm it. Present whereabouts unknown. And most significantly, no death record anywhere.
“They killed him,” Tamara said. “McManus and Carson. Just like they killed Rose O’Day and Virden and God knows how many others.”
“Murder for profit.”
“Murder factory. Rent that room to somebody with no close friends or relatives, somebody with money or other valuables. Victim doesn’t come to them soon enough, one or both of ’em go trolling for one in Mission Bay or SoMa or Potrero Hill. That’s how they found Rose O’Day, right?”
“According to Selma Hightower.”
“Then when they got everything they could from those poor old folks, they offed ’em. Probably been doing it the whole seven years they lived there.”
“The real Roxanne McManus doesn’t fit that victim profile,” I pointed out.
“Maybe she was how they got started, part of Mama Psycho’s plan to set up the dog-boarding front.”
“Here’s another possibility,” I said. “Mama Psycho, as you call her, needed a new identity because she has a criminal record somewhere. Might even be a fugitive warrant out on her.”
“Carson, too, I’ll bet. Thelma and Louise.”
“Who?”
“That’s right, the only flicks you watch are old black-and-whites on TV.”
“What do movies have to do with this?”
“Never mind,” she said. “So McManus and Carson are running this murder factory, nobody suspects anything for seven years, and then along come Virden and us investigating and they can see the whole thing starting to unravel. Virden thinks things over in The Dog Hole after his first visit to the house and decides maybe we didn’t screw up after all. Goes back to confront the impostor, threatens to go to the cops-and that’s the end of him.”
I agreed that that was a likely enough scenario, given the bloodstain I’d found in the living room.
“We keep investigating,” Tamara said, “and McManus tries to warn you off with the lawsuit threat. Smoke screen to buy them time-they’ve already decided to haul ass out of Dodge. We’re getting too close to the truth and they can’t afford to wait around. So they empty their bank accounts, dig up their cash stash, whatever, and start loading up their SUV. Man, I wish we had some idea where they took all that stuff of theirs.”
“Storage unit somewhere, maybe.”
“Come back for it later, after things’ve cooled down? That’d be pretty risky. Seems more likely they’d want to get far away from San Francisco and never come back.”
“Depends on what their plans are. They’re too shrewd to run blind-they’d have a hideout set up or in mind.”
“So they could be anywhere now.”
“Just about. One thing they’ll do before they go very far is switch that SUV for another set of wheels, make themselves even harder to trace.”
“We can’t just sit back and let them get away,” Tamara said grimly. “We’ve got to do something.”
I said, “I’ve already told the SPCA about the abandoned dogs. And I’ve got a call in to Jack Logan. When I hear from him, I’ll lay out everything we suspect. He knows I wouldn’t come to him unless I was reasonably sure I had good cause.”
“But will he do anything even if you fess up to unlawful entry?”
“Whatever he can. The abandoned dogs should give the police the right to inspect the kennels. McManus’s and Carson’s prints are bound to be in there, and if we’re right that the two of them are fugitives, that’ll be enough cause for a search warrant for the house.”
“All that’s gonna take a long time,” Tamara said. “Too long.”
“No use worrying about what we can’t control. Even if APBs were put out right away, it might already be too
