nervous. Raveneau listened and then his mind drifted to the country and something he had read about birthers going after the President today. What was that really about? It wasn’t about a birth certificate. More like they needed to make Obama an outsider. But why did they need to do that? Why was that so important to them? What scared him about the birthers was the quiet encouragement they got from people who carefully avoided acknowledging the birth issue was false.
Dark thoughts. He had to shake them off. He heard Ortega still talking too loudly, repeating a phone number back to the judge. He listened and then walked away from the car. He was stiff from crawling under the truck. He was cold and tired and the late night wore on him in a way it didn’t when he was younger.
When he walked back Ortega was on a call from a New York Times reporter. His door was open and his face had relaxed. Raveneau looked from Ortega to Drury’s house aware that they might be completely spinning their wheels here. He’d known truckers who moved drugs and in truth that’s what he was looking for underneath the vehicle, the storage compartment, the welded-on container. Drury getting out of his house fast after a call from a cop could have as easily been that as anything to do with the murders.
He was close to telling Ortega to take his interview outside or to his own car, and pictured driving from here to Celeste’s and having breakfast with her. He was hungry. He was tired and agitated to the point of anger. He had disliked listening to Ortega laugh at the reporter’s jokes.
He could reheat Celeste’s bread soup for breakfast, chicken broth, vegetables, and chunks of bread, olive oil, and good coffee. Good coffee was what he wanted now, and to focus on Krueger or have the room to run with this aspect of the cabinet shop shootings. He didn’t need Ortega’s help. He still didn’t get why Ortega drove down here.
From behind him, Ortega said, ‘You were right, the judge said no.’
‘Well, you tried.’
‘Yeah, it was worth it.’
Was it? Raveneau glanced at Ortega but saw bodies on the cold concrete of the cabinet shop floor. The shooter came up from behind. The shooter liked the feeling of getting close. Raveneau could sense that.
‘I’ll ask the locals to drive by every hour or so,’ Raveneau said. ‘Drury will come home. He’s supposed to drop the truck back at the yard tomorrow afternoon.’
Ortega said nothing and Raveneau knew he’d head back to the Homicide office. It was without question the biggest investigation he’d ever run. Raveneau drove slowly back up a quiet freeway and across the bridge to San Francisco. He didn’t wake until after nine that morning and stood at the roof parapet with his coffee and his phone, looking at the city and the bay, a habit. A cool wind blew this morning and the sky was a pale blue when he drove to the Hall.
He knew the captain and Lieutenant Becker would sit with Ortega this morning and decide who stayed on the Khan Cabinets murders and who didn’t. And that’s what happened. Ortega came to him and said they would work the Drury angle together, but that the rest of the investigation was covered and he could focus on his cold cases.
He was on the phone later in the morning with the storage company in Arizona that held United Airlines’ long term corporate records when the San Leandro police called. Drury was home but hadn’t gone into the house. He’d gotten out of his car and was in the truck and the engine was on. Raveneau asked if they could have an officer follow him and call if he got on the freeway and let him know what direction he was headed.
He had to apologize to the woman at the storage company for the interruption, but she was fine with it and he asked, ‘When was Jim Frank employed?’
‘1978 to 1995. He retired in 1995.’
‘I’m looking for contact information. Do your records show any supervisors or people he worked with?’
‘I don’t have any of that but there might be a way I could get it for you. To do that you’ll need to fill out a form we use with law enforcement and the IRS. I can fax it to you. You want to mark it urgent. There’s a box on the form that you need to check.’
‘If there’s a box, doesn’t everybody mark urgent?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
She laughed and he filled out the form, sent it back to her. He was still in the office when the call came to verify he worked as a homicide inspector for SFPD. That she was able to find a Jim Frank made him hopeful. He was on the phone when Cynthia buzzed from the front desk to tell him a San Leandro police officer was holding.
Raveneau picked up and the officer said, ‘He just got on the freeway headed north in the truck.’
FIFTEEN
La Rosa rode with him to the Branson Trucking Company yard in Martinez. She was rested and relaxed and looked a lot better than she sounded after the meeting with the elderly woman in Santa Rosa. Marsha Fairchild had rocked back and forth with her eyes closed and arms wrapped around her chest as sobs racked her. When it was over, La Rosa left feeling that she had done nothing for the woman other than to destroy her hope.
But now, la Rosa seemed to be rebounding, taking it on herself to determine whether he was helping Celeste enough.
‘What are you doing to help her get it open?’
‘The floor out in the bar is reclaimed wood that got refinished. That’s done and we’re moving chairs and tables around tonight. She finally passed inspection with the Health Department. That’s the one she’s been sweating.’
‘What about the thing with the flue? Weren’t you going to do something?’
‘No, with the flue she was forced to use the landlord’s contractor. He ripped her off but it got done.’
‘So she’s going to make it.’
‘There’s still a lot to happen, but it’s looking better.’
‘I’m sure she needs your help.’ When Raveneau didn’t answer that, she moved on. ‘So what about this Drury? Tell me again what he delivered.’
‘Forty-two pieces of finish-grade larch plywood.’
‘Larch?’
‘Type of tree.’
The delivery time was on the receipt. The receipt was in the second drawer down on the left side of Khan’s desk, though now it was in the Homicide office.
‘We know when he got there,’ Raveneau said. ‘We know when he left. Today we want details about the rest of his day. We want to know about his other deliveries. We want everything about what he did yesterday.’
They dropped off the freeway, the offramp dipping down to Highway 4. They were probably fifteen minutes from Branson’s yard. Raveneau turned to her.
‘He’s going to recognize me. He’s going to realize he was right last night in the bar. That’s going to unsettle him.’
‘OK, but let’s do the time frame once more. He delivered the plywood at 1:07 and the delivery receipt is signed at 1:15. He called his boss at 1:19 as he was leaving.’
‘That’s right, and we want to know about the rest of his day.’
‘And David Khan left the meeting where he was measuring kitchen cabinets at 1:21, give or take a few minutes, and that’s been verified by both the owner and the designer.’
‘Yeah, that’s what Ortega’s team says.’
‘We’re not part of the team?’
‘Other than with Drury he doesn’t want any help, and Drury only because I’ve already stuck my nose in.’
‘Did you and Ortega have a problem last night?’
‘No.’
‘OK, who checked out the route the cabinet shop owner says he took to come back to the shop?’
‘Hagen did. He drove it three times and thinks Khan would have gotten back right around 1:40, which fits with Khan’s story. He called 911 at 1:47, so that fits too. But if he got back sooner, say, 1:30 to 1:35, and he didn’t call for another twenty minutes or so, then that’s a little odd.’
