other. It’s a mess. How far away are you?’
‘Half an hour.’
‘See you here.’
When Raveneau arrived he was the fifth homicide inspector on the scene and Ortega didn’t need him. He walked the building. It was long, rectangular, an old wood frame resting on a concrete slab foundation. Two rolling doors opened on to trucking bays on Sixteenth Street. The truck that delivered the plywood backed into one of these bays just after one o’clock this afternoon. They needed to find the driver of the delivery truck.
One victim, possibly the first, was a young man who looked like he was shot while cutting a piece of plywood on a table saw. Two CSI teams were here but they hadn’t gotten to him yet. Raveneau saw the spray of blood along the length of plywood. His body lay on the gray concrete near the metal table legs of the saw. A pool of blood darkened near his head. The pool had spread and mixed with sawdust. He wore a black long-sleeved T-shirt with the sleeves slid up to the elbows. On his inside left forearm was a tattoo of a martini glass. His black hair was on the long side and tied. He wore jeans as did the next victim.
That victim was older, forty to forty-five, short hair, thick neck, thick shoulders, and looked like he’d worked with his hands all his life. The entry wounds at the back of his skull were close together. Raveneau guessed the shooter came right up behind him, and like the previous victim he was shot in the chest, then in the head, and probably in the chest first, Raveneau thought, one in the heart, one in the head. He had pitched forward on to the cabinet he was working on then slid down. A cordless drill lay nearby.
Raveneau checked out the space again, a long rectangle with rooms divided according to the work being done. At one end was the owner’s office. In the bay nearest it finished cabinets were stacked ready to deliver. Adjacent to that was the bay where this victim was. His name was Dan Oliver. He was the one who had signed for delivery of the finish-grade plywood. That meant he used the forklift to unload the plywood and then drove it down to the far end of the building where materials were stored and where the forklift was parked now. After parking the forklift he made it back to here and started work on the cabinet. All that must have taken several minutes and Raveneau turned to Ortega.
‘Where’s the delivery truck driver? Where are we at on him?’
‘We’re trying to locate him. He did his last delivery before we called his boss.’
‘He would know whether Oliver signed first.’
Ortega didn’t respond, instead asked, ‘What else do you see?’
The third victim was a woman in her early thirties named Amber Diaz. She was about five foot four, one hundred thirty pounds, a masculine look to her, and a bloody trail. After being shot she tried to escape and the shooter had stepped on blood droplets as he moved in. She was also chest shot and Raveneau wondered if she had then ducked her head. She made it halfway across the room and by then was bleeding badly from the trough a bullet plowed through her scalp. When the shooter caught up to her he put one through her skull, and yet it appeared from blood smears that after that she convulsed on the floor. Hers was the most affecting for Raveneau because though wounded she fought to live.
‘He shot all four but didn’t wait for the owner,’ Ortega said. ‘What do you make of that?’
‘I don’t know.’
What struck Raveneau most was the narrow window of time the shooter was operating with and the improbability of the coincidental timing. He talked with Ortega about that as they moved to where the last victim fell and the paramedics worked on him before taking him to the hospital. Pieces of alder trim were scattered. Ortega pointed at the bloody concrete where they worked on him.
‘He was sixteen, a boy. Wrong place, wrong time, should have listened to his mother and stayed in school. She arrived as they were loading him. They don’t live far from here.’
‘Where’s the owner?’
‘In his office down there at the end and his wife and lawyer are on the way.’
‘Let’s get him out of here. Let’s see if we can get him to go in with us right now.’
Raveneau knew Ortega didn’t really want his help. It was Ortega’s to solve with Hagen, Gibbs, and Montoya. With the new way of doing things they would all work as one team, and Raveneau had a reputation of liking to work alone. No one really believed that he and la Rosa got on as well as they did.
‘Why don’t I go find the plywood delivery guy and bring him in,’ Raveneau offered.
‘We’ve already talked to his employer. We’re working on that.’
‘But we should have heard something more by now.’
Ortega stopped on that. He wanted to say no, but knew it was true, and in the end Ortega probably liked the idea of getting him out of the building.
‘OK, Raveneau, go find him.’
THIRTEEN
Raveneau called the trucking company owner from his car while still parked down the street from the cabinet shop. He heard an edge of exasperation and pictured a man used to giving orders, not answering questions.
‘You are Inspector who?’
‘Raveneau.’
‘Look, Raveneau, I understand it’s a terrible situation, but I talked to another homicide inspector an hour ago. Don’t you people talk to each other? I gave him the name of the driver and his cell number. The driver’s name is John Drury. Tomorrow is his day off, so I’m not sure where he is.’
‘I’ve called the number you gave Inspector Ortega and I get voicemail. Will Drury answer if you call him?’
‘It depends.’
‘Put me on hold and try.’
Drury didn’t answer the call from his boss either, but Raveneau had a home address from the Department of Motor Vehicles. He was still talking to the owner as he started driving toward the Bay Bridge. The owner was explaining his system.
‘I have them report in when they reach a delivery site and as they leave. That way if there are any problems I know about it immediately.’
‘Do you record the time?’
‘It gets recorded automatically.’
‘Will you check and tell me what time he got to the cabinet shop and what time he left? Also, the deliveries that came after, you said he made two more and then he was off. Is that correct?’
‘It is. Hold on, while I get that for you.’
A few minutes later he gave Raveneau 1:19 p.m. as the time the driver left the cabinet shop.
‘So when he makes that call he’s on the road.’
‘Yes, or just starting to the next stop. My rule is don’t call me when you’re about to leave. Call me after you’ve made the delivery and are rolling toward your next one. I don’t care if you’re going one mile per hour, I just want to know you are done with the one behind you, you’ve got a signature for the delivery, and what the problems were, if any.’
‘Where does he usually go when his shift ends?’
‘Their personal lives are their own. Drury has a girlfriend. I’m not sure where she lives. He goes there nowadays, I think. Or he goes home. But when he gets off work it’s his life. I expect them to relax.’
‘Not today.’
‘No, I understand, Inspector, and I’ll keep trying him.’
‘He’s a critical link in our timeline. It’s important that we get to sit and talk with him while the day is still fresh in his memory.’
Raveneau gave the trucking company owner his cell number and thanked him several times before hanging up. By the time he reached the bridge and crawled up the onramp in traffic it was dusk. The bridge was slow and traffic heavier still as he worked his way south on 880. Drury’s address was in San Leandro. It was well after dark when Raveneau stopped down the street from a small stucco house with an asphalt roof and a bare front yard. Six
