Twenty minutes later, we had crossed the Bay Bridge, woven through the drab, antiquated skyline that was downtown Oakland, and pulled up in front of the Police Administration Building on Seventh. Oakland's police headquarters was a short gray panel-and-glass building in the impersonal style of the early sixties. On the second floor was Homicide, a cramped, dreary office no larger than our own. Over the years, I'd been here a few times.
Lieutenant Ron Vandervellen stood up to greet us as we were led into his office. “Hey I hear congratulations are in order, Boxer. Welcome to the world of sedentary life.”
“I wish, Ron,” I replied.
“What brings you here? You looking to check out how the real world works?”
For years, the San Francisco and Oakland homicide departments had maintained a kind of friendly rivalry, they believing all we dealt with across the bay was the occasional computer parts salesman found naked and dead in his hotel room.
“I saw you on the news last night.” Vandervellen cackled.
“Very photogenic. I mean her.” He grinned at Jacobi.
“What brings you celebrities out here?”
“A little bird named Chipman,”'I replied. Estelle Chipman was the elderly black woman Cindy told me had been found hung in her basement.
He shrugged. “I got a hundred unsolved murders if you guys don't have enough to keep you busy.”
I was used to the Vandervellen barbs, but this time he sounded particularly edgy. “No agenda, Ron. I just want to look at the crime scene, if that's okay.”
“Sure, but I think it's gonna be tough to tie it into your church shooting.”
“What's that?” I asked.
The Oakland lieutenant got up, went out into the outer office, and came back with a case file. “I guess I'm having a hard time putting together how a homicide as obviously racially motivated as yours could be committed by one of their own.” “What are you saying?” I asked. “Estelle Chipman's killer was black?”
He donned a pair of reading glasses, leafed through the file until he came to an official document marked “Alameda County Coroner's Report.”
“Read it and weep,” he muttered. “If you'd called, I could've saved you the toll... ' specimens found under the victim's fingernails suggest a hyperpigmented dermis consistent with a non-Caucasian.' Slides are out being tested as we speak.”
“You still want to check out the site?” Vandervellen asked, seemingly enjoying the moment.
“You mind? We're already here.”
“Sure, yeah, be my guest. It's Krimpman's case, but he's out. I can take you through. I don't get out to the Gus White projects much anymore. Who knows? Riding with you two super cops, I might pick something up along the way.”
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 13
THE GUSTAVE WHITE PROJECTS were six identical redbrick high-rises on Redmond Street in West Oakland. As we pulled up, Vandervellen said, “Didn't make much sense... The poor woman wasn't ill, seemed to have okay finances, even went to church twice a week. But sometimes people just give up. Until the autopsy. it looked legit.”
I recalled the case file: There were no witnesses, no one had heard any screams, no one saw anybody running away.
Only an elderly woman who kept to herself, found hanging from a steam pipe in the basement, her neck at a right angle and her tongue protruding.
At the projects, we walked right into Building C.
“Elevator's on the fritz,” Vandervellen said. We took the stairs down. In the graffiti-marked basement, we came upon a hand-painted sign that read, “Laundry Room - Boiler Room.”
“Found her in here.”
The basement room was still criss-crossed with yellow crime scene tape. A pungent, rancid odor filled the air. Graffiti was everywhere. Anything that had been here - the body, the electrical wire she was hung with - had already been taken to the morgue or entered into evidence.
“I don't know what you're looking to find,” Vandervellen said with a shrug.
“I don't know either.” I swallowed. “It happened late last Saturday night?”
“Coroner figures around ten. We thought maybe the old lady came down to do her laundry, that someone surprised her. Janitor found her the next morning.”
“What about security cameras?” Jacobi asked. “They were all over the lobby and the halls.”
“Same as the elevator--broken.” Vandervellen shrugged again.
It was clear Vandervellen and Jacobi wanted to head out as quickly as possible, but something pulled at me to stay.
