“I’ll tell you this much,” Eddie continued, “This killer was no amateur. A whack job, for sure, but not a sloppy one. If his only aim was to kill Bradley, suffocation potentially leaves no telltale signs. Unless there was a struggle, there’s a reasonable chance he would have gotten away with it. The house shows no sign of a fight and no sign of forced entry. That being said, the hands were taken as souvenirs. Or, perhaps in a brief death struggle, Bradley scratched the arms of his assailant. Skin or fiber evidence can be hard to completely clean out from under fingernails, so you could argue that the killer wanted to walk away with what might have been critical evidence.”
“Maybe the hands were taken as a cult thing, or maybe it’s a warning,” Holly reasoned.
Rob and Eddie exchanged glances. They could tell Holly loved playing the role of junior detective.
“Or maybe someone was angry enough about some of the columns Bradley wrote that they cut off his hands as an act of revenge,” Holly continued. “Those hands of Bradley's could be hanging as souvenirs in someone's home at this very moment, right here in Sausalito," she added with an obvious sense of growing excitement.
“Let’s not forget that the killer took the time to make his victim quite presentable. He propped him up on the porch swing like a department store mannequin,” Eddie replied. “So unless the killer had someone else there to help, we’re dealing with an individual with a respectable degree of strength.”
“Wow. This is going to stir up some crazy stuff,” Rob declared with obvious excitement. “Just imagine, Holly, the increased ad sales for the paper if this case remains unsolved for weeks! This might turn out to be the best thing that blabbermouth ever did for this newspaper!”
“You’re right, Rob” Holly admitted with a mischievous grin. “But you probably don’t want to put that thought into print.”
Chapter Eighteen
It was increasingly difficult for Rob to keep his focus on news stories such as “Remodeled Children’s Section of the Mill Valley Library Announced,” or “Ross Common Landscaping Budget Dispute Enters Second Month.”
As he anticipated, Sausalito was in a twist over the Bradley murder.
By Friday afternoon, less than seventy-two hours after the discovery of Warren’s body, Alma sent a letter to The Standard, co-signed by each member of the Ladies of Liberty, demanding increased funding for the Bradley investigation.
“One of our community’s most distinguished citizens has been cut down in his prime,” she wrote. “We are bereft at the loss of a charming and gifted neighbor. Can we honestly believe that any of us are safe in our homes while this deranged killer remains at large? Dark and menacing forces must not be allowed to envelop our peaceful corner of a troubled world!”
Borrowing from Shakespeare, Alma concluded, “This case of murder most foul must be guided to a swift and satisfactory conclusion by the joint efforts of our police and civic leaders! Their actions now will reassure us, or deprive us, of the confidence and trust we have placed in them.”
“Wow,” Holly said to Rob while reading over his shoulder. “‘Cut down in his prime?’ He was over seventy! Maybe she meant prime in tortoise years. We’ve got no shortage of reader comments for the letters section this week. Half of our writers want to know why the cops haven’t arrested Grant Randolph.”
“I’ve probably got to go with a couple of them," Rob said. "But I don’t want to add to the hysteria by running a page worth of letters calling for Randolph’s arrest. The thing that worries me, even more, is right now we don’t have much of a story beyond what the dailies have covered over the past two days.”
Just about everyone in Sausalito—except the police—had a theory about Bradley’s slaying.
Eddie had theories as well. But because his job was to deal in fact, not mere supposition, he found himself on a frustrating ride that, at least to this point, was taking him nowhere.
As was their custom, every Friday after work, he, Rob, and Holly ended their week with a drink at Smitty’s. Together, they’d have a couple of drinks and toast the start of the coming weekend.
They weren’t in much danger of being overheard. It was a quiet time of day inside the poorly lit bar, which catered on late weekday afternoons mostly to ancient mariners and longtime Sausalito residents who preferred to share a drink in the company of familiar faces as opposed to the myriad of day visitors who patronized the few bars on Bridgeway. In every sense, Smitty's lived up to its reputation as a neighborhood dive bar, and its patrons liked it that way.
While Smitty’s was half empty in the late afternoon, in another four hours, it would be packed and pulsing to old-fashioned rock ‘n roll blaring from a jukebox. The place had the permanent scent of beer, sweat, cheap perfume, and aftershave.
Noting that Rob was already there but alone, Eddie asked, "Where's your partner in crime?"
"Told me she had a date and rushed out the door at four-thirty. I never complain when she wants out a little early on a Friday. Most days she's already at her desk working before I get into the office around eight."
"She's a keeper, Rob," Eddie said, lifting his Guinness beer in salute.
“Any progress with the Bradley case?” Rob asked as he raised his Guinness as well and tapped Eddie's.
“Not much. Some plausible theories about the time and sequence of the murder, but killer and motive, all pretty slim at this point.” Shaking his head, Eddie grimaced in frustration.
“I’d love to come up with something more than what the dailies had over the last week.”
As Rob anticipated, for the San Francisco media the story had already lost its allure. If not for the gruesome detail that the victim was missing both his hands, it would have died in less than twenty-four hours. But now, with nothing new to report, the story
