morning.”
“Or a close copycat,” Kate agreed.
“So what was that question about the car?”
“It would appear that Ms. Curtis had the nerve to park in Matthew’s favorite though officially unreserved spot. His girlfriend said that he and Rachel may have had an argument over it about two weeks ago, after which he seemed to be, in her words, like, satisfied.” “
“Some argument,” Wiley mused, looking down three floors at the unimaginative condominium garden. “And now Banderas is dead. Are you thinking Rachel could’ve pulled it off? Because I can’t see what she has to do with your other case, assuming there is a link. And besides, look at her, she’s a basket case. I mean, she might’ve shot him if you’d put a gun in her hand, or run him down if she saw him walking down the street, but from what I heard, it wasn’t exactly like that, was it?”
“It certainly was not,” Kate told her. “If—and we don’t have any evidence so far except the record both victims have of crimes against women—if this killing is related to the murder of James Larsen, then this woman couldn’t have done it. Not with that arm and those injuries.”
“So you’ve maybe got somebody picking off the bad guys. Well, honey, better you than me. Personally, I’d be real tempted to look in the other direction for a while, maybe even offer a few names and addresses of my own, you know? Hey,” she said more seriously, “that was a joke. Let me know if I can do anything to help.”
But it had not been completely a joke, all three of them knew that, because any cop who had held a badge for more than a few months well understood the urge for a more simple and direct form of justice than the law could provide. Retribution, vigilante justice, call it what you would, it was a deep and powerful temptation, every so often when a known villain was finding a crack to fall through.
Well, here were two men who had run out of hiding places. And two detectives who had the job of finding the person or persons who had taken on the role of judge and executioner.
They talked for a few minutes with Wiley, the easy cop talk of a shared language and similar
Wiley was more than interested to hear of Melanie Gilbert’s reticence over her lover’s bedroom habits, and promised to pass on the word to their sex crimes detail that an interview there might be of value. Sure, Banderas was dead, but clearance rates were law enforcement’s bottom line, and the statute of limitations on that string of rapes was by no means expired.
Two young women carrying expensive tennis rackets came out of a door on the other side of the courtyard, talking loudly and happily until they glanced over and saw the three police detectives. Kate wondered idly if Rachel Curtis had been a happy tennis player two weeks ago.
Martina Wiley seemed to read her mind. “Rachel will be all right. She’s a strong person who’s been knocked for a loop by this, but I think she’ll find her anger in a couple more days, and that’ll help. I worked sex crimes down south before coming here,” she explained. “You get to have a feel for how people will react.”
“I hope you’re right,” Kate told her.
“We’ll see. Good to meet you two. I’ll be talking to you soon.” They shook hands and, thus dismissed, Kate and Al made their way down the stairs, dodging a man with a bicycle coming up, a man with a dog going down, and the postman with an Express Mail envelope, special Sunday delivery, also heading up the stairs.
They let themselves back into the Banderas apartment. It smelled unoccupied already, of dust and stale air despite the lingering scent of yesterday’s coffee, and would in a few days be cleared for removal of the victim’s effects by his family. Kate had wanted to check a couple of the files in his laptop, but before she had gotten any further than booting it up, someone pounded on the door, bypassing the winsome-voiced doorbell for the sake of directness.
Kate opened it to Martina Wiley. She was holding an opened Express Mail envelope in her rubber-gloved hands, the envelope they had seen in the postman’s hand five minutes before.
“It’s for you,” said Wiley. She carried it over to the dining table and, using the tips of her gloved fingers, she turned the envelope over above the table to allow a folded piece of paper to fall out. Touching only the extreme corners, she pulled it open, and they read:
—
“Oh, shit,” said Kate.
Al Hawkin, looking over her shoulder, could only agree.
Chapter 7
INVESTIGATING THE LIFE OF the dead man took up the rest of that day and several of the following. The department in Los Angeles sent someone to notify the Banderas family of the death, and on Sunday evening a brother flew up to identify the body and make funeral arrangements, and to begin the process of clearing out the apartment. The brother was a devout and conservative born-again Christian, a lay preacher in his church, and was so offended by his black-sheep brother’s video collection that he had to arrange for the complex’s gardener to come in and remove it from the premises. Some of them were a little rough even for the gardener.
The videos offered them a tentative and theoretical link with the Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement, since the group’s first victim, Barry Doyle, sold several of the same titles, but credit card receipts at catalogues and video places closer to home accounted for most of them, and the frail link dissolved.
The note received by Rachel Curtis was duly transported to the lab, which told them precisely nothing: dropped in a mailbox in Oakland, the stamp wetted by bottled water rather than someone’s revealing saliva, by a person wearing gloves, on paper produced by the ton, both paper and printer different from that used by the Ladies on their victims. They spent a fruitless hour debating why, if the two murders were linked, Emily Larsen had not received a note, telling her that she was safe. Was the murderer’s technique becoming more refined? Or was it simply that Emily knew who her abuser was, and would know that she was now safe, but Rachel, who had known only a faceless rapist, did not?
They did not find what had called Banderas away from his date with Melanie to end up at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. He had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge just at dusk, when the tollkeeper took his money and reminded him cheerfully to turn on his headlights, and he flipped her the finger before laying rubber in his acceleration. Not that he seemed to be in a rush; he was just being a jerk, she said, adding philosophically, people were, some of them.
Two people might have seen Banderas enter the park around the Legion. One elderly woman, cursed with failing night vision and hurrying to get home before full dark, thought she might have seen the flashy Banderas car parked next to a light car, white or tan, but it was neither of the two makes she knew—Volkswagen and Volvo— although it was closer to a Volvo sedan in shape. And it might have been light blue, or that metallic gray.
The search went on, their steps continually dogged, or preceded, by reporters covering the same ground.
It was all very frustrating and grueling and normal, and Kate dragged herself home each night worn-out but unable to sleep. Finally on Tuesday, trudging through the front door to yet another warmed-up meal, Lee met her in the front hallway with a pair of running shoes in her hand.
“You going jogging, love?” Kate asked, dredging up a joke.
“No, you are.”
Kate moved around Lee and began to unload herself of what felt like a hundred pounds of briefcase, handbag, Beretta with its holster and two magazines, handcuffs, and assorted loose folders, heaping them precariously on the small many-drawered desk next to the stairs. “Not tonight, Lee. I’m tired.”
Lee had somehow moved around to block Kate from the rest of the house. She held out the shoes, practically shoved them into Kate’s chest, and said, “Go.”
“Oh Christ, Lee, don’t do—”
“Go. Now.”
Kate glared at her determined lover, slapped the drawer shut on her holstered gun, snatched the shoes out of Lee’s hand, and stormed angrily upstairs to change into shorts and sweatshirt. Several slammed drawers and loud curses later she pounded resentfully down to the main level and out of the house into the cold night air. The crash of the heavy front door was probably felt by the next-door neighbors.
Red-faced and too worked up to bother stretching, Kate shot down the precipitous side of Russian Hill, in and
