We don’t have much of a choice. Besides, banks have a lot of money, they aren’t gonna miss the few bucks we’re gonna take.” He reached over and brushed back Henry’s dirty blond hair. “And I’m gonna buy you a birthday present. Tomorrow, as soon as we get to a safe place.” What was safe, MacNally didn’t know. But he didn’t want his son to be nervous. “What do you want?”
“I don’t want nothing.’”
“
“Okay. Sorry.”
“So c’mon. What would you like?”
Henry looked around a moment, thinking. “An Elvis record.”
“Nah, we’ll get you something better than that. It’s your tenth birthday. How about a bike?”
Henry sat up straight. “Really?”
“If we do this right. Yeah. I’ll get you a bike.”
“I never had a bike. Can it be a Royce Union?”
“Sure.”
“A black one?”
MacNally smiled. “If that’s what you want. Black it is.” He looked at his watch, then leaned forward in his seat and let his eyes roam the street ahead and behind them. “I don’t know how long we can sit around in this car. And I don’t know how good the cops are in this city. We’ve just gotta do it and get as far away as fast as possible. You ready?”
“Ready.”
MacNally pulled his gaze over to his son. “Okay then. Just like we planned. I’m going to pull up in front and when I get out, you move behind the wheel.” He got a nod from Henry, then he drove a block east and took an open curb spot in front of Township Community Savings Bank. He shoved the gear into Park, then looked out the window at the blue and black TCS logo on the brick building.
MacNally took one last glance at Henry, gave the boy a smile and a wink to mask his own building apprehension, and then popped open his door.
8
Vail followed Inspector Burden into the Hall of Justice, home to the SFPD Homicide Detail. They passed through the metal detectors, then walked across the vast seventies style lobby, which was appointed with green marble walls and a thirty-foot ceiling.
After reaching the fourth floor, they hung a right toward Room 400. Above a set of opaque glass doors, anachronistic metal Helvetica lettering spelled out Bureau of Inspectors.
Inside, Burden led Vail through the administrative area, where several blue-walled cubicles were arranged behind a maple countertop. Mounted over the entryway that led to the office space where the inspectors worked, a hand-carved wood sign, with irregularly shaped letters, read Bureau of Investigation.
“The facility is tired but the people are topnotch.”
“Tired,” Vail said. “That must be California-speak for ‘old and desperately in need of renovation. Ten years ago.’”
Burden chuckled as he led her to his cubicle. “No argument from me. Money’s tight, so we put it into stuff that helps us clear cases.”
“Money well spent, for sure.”
“Have a seat.” He motioned to a black fabric chair, then sifted through the messages on his desk. Off to the side sat a thick paperback book of sudoku puzzles.
Vail picked it up and thumbed through the pages. “Don’t tell me you’re into this.”
Burden moved a file, then found an envelope and pulled it out. “Some people are addicted to cigarettes. Drugs. Booze. Me? I’m addicted to sudoku. Keeps my mind sharp. Maybe that’s why I wanted to be a detective. What we do, it’s like solving complex puzzles, right?” He handed Vail the envelope. “Your copy of the case file.”
Vail took it and removed the folder. “Thanks.”
Burden’s phone buzzed. He consulted the screen and said, “Mrs. Anderson’s waiting for us. And she’s getting cold.”
“To quote Twain, it’s summer in San Francisco, right?”
“That’s not the quote, Karen.”
“Yeah, whatever. I got the gist, didn’t I?”
VAIL AND BURDEN WALKED INTO the morgue and met the medical examiner, Dr. Beth Chow. She disposed of pleasantries with a wave of her hand, then pulled back the sheet on the chilled Maureen Anderson.
Anderson looked surprisingly good for her age. That is, if you could get past the severe bruising and wounds.
“The discoloration, the ecchymoses all over the face,” Vail said. “Would you agree that indicates Mrs. Anderson was still alive when the trauma was inflicted? And that she lived for a bit after the beating?”
“That’d be correct,” Chow said.
The ME was a stout woman, thick in the neck with the puffiness of adipose tissue smoothing out the normal age-induced facial wrinkles.
“Inspector Burden tells me she was tortured. With the electrical cord.”
“Yes. I think it may’ve caused the heart attack that ultimately killed her. Disrupted her heart rhythm, which wasn’t good to begin with.”
“How do you know that?” Vail asked.
Chow moved back a step and pointed to a bulge below the woman’s left collarbone. “Implanted pacemaker.”
“I thought it was a multiple COD,” Burden said.
Chow flexed her gloved fingers. “Yes and no. We’re splitting hairs, really. The blows to the head were so violent that the trauma caused a great deal of bleeding between the surface of the brain and the bony skull-which obviously can’t expand. So the bleeding compressed the brain tissue, causing massive dysfunction. And all that was happening around the time that her heart stopped. Regardless, the damage to the cortex from the pressure it was under would’ve been deadly on its own.”
“Brain damage,” Burden said.
“Rather severe.”
Vail leaned over the body to view the head wounds. “And the penetration?”
“The sexual penetration came first. Condom, no semen. And she was sodomized, rather brutally. Substantial injury to her internal organs. It was an angry attack.”
Vail looked up at Chow. “I think we should refrain from classifying it as emotional, or not, for now.”
Chow chuckled. “Her uterus was torn to shreds. All her sexual organs, for that matter. And the liver, too. I don’t think it was a friendly act.”
“The liver was damaged?” Vail asked, straightening up. “That’s like…what, a foot up into her abdominal cavity?”
“He used an umbrella, Agent Vail.” Chow said it with disdain, then shook her head. “Whether anger was involved on the killer’s part, you’re right. I can’t say. I’ll let you people determine that. But what I can tell you is that for Mrs. Anderson it was, unequivocally, an extremely unpleasant death.”
Vail clenched her jaw, trying to wipe the violent image from her brain. A moment passed before she asked, “Which came first? What did he do to her first?”
