23rd Midnight, page 5
part #23 of Women's Murder Club Series
As I passed his desk, I waggled my fingers “hello.” He waggled back. Our squad room is a no-frills, forty-by-forty-foot space lit by overhead fluorescent tubes, dampened by frustration, and lifted by the cohesion of our team, respect for our lieutenant, and the sparkling occasions when we closed cases and crossed them off the board.
I walked past the two rows of gray metal desks toward the workstation Conklin, Alvarez, and I had staked out as our own. Our three desks form a square U-shape with my desk bridging the other two. My two partners were on their phones, but Alvarez said “Hey” as I approached.
Inspector Sonia Alvarez is in her early thirties, a leggy brunette recently relocated from Las Vegas MPD, where she used her street smarts working undercover in Vice. She’s funny, brilliant, and can hold a tune. Now she’s with the SFPD, getting an on-the-job degree in Homicide.
Rich hung up and said, “Boxer, check your email.”
We three partners shared passwords to our work accounts so as never to miss a break in a case.
“Morning. Coffee first,” I said while stowing my handbag in my bottom desk drawer.
Alvarez had also ended her call, saying to me, “You’re going to want to see this.”
“Right after coffee.”
“Tell you what,” Alvarez said. “You open your mail; I’ll get the coffee.”
“Jeez,” I muttered. “What’s the rush?”
“You two, stay,” said Conklin. “I’ll get the coffee.”
Okay, then. Whatever. I booted up my refurbished Dell and hit “new mail.” I was skimming my inbox when I saw “Ralph Hammer” in a subject line.
I jammed on the brakes, tapped a key, and the email opened. It read, “See the attachment.” And it was signed, “Blackout.”
I was still reeling from kissing my family goodbye, my turbulent session with Dr. Greene, and now Ralph Hammer’s name was hauling me back to Saturday night.
It was a night I’d happily forget.
CHAPTER 15
RICHIE PUT A hotel-style china mug of black coffee and four packets of sugar on my desk.
“Who’s ‘Blackout’?” I asked.
“No spoilers,” he said.
I clicked on the video attachment and a window opened taking up the whole of my screen. It was as if I were sitting in the back seat of a car, my eyes inches from the back of a man’s head. Ralph Hammer’s head.
How was this possible?
A leather-gloved hand gripping a stun gun came into view. The man with the weapon spoke, his voice digitally enhanced, but clear.
“Your time’s up, buddy.”
The driver turned his head forty-five degrees and I recognized Cindy’s heckler in profile. And Ralph Hammer saw his would-be killer.
He pulled away, squealing, “No. Don’t.”
The hand pressed the stun gun to Hammer’s neck. I knew what was coming but couldn’t drag my eyes from the screen. I heard the electric burr of the weapon, saw Ralph Hammer go rigid before the stun gun disappeared and gloved hands slipped a loop of wire around his neck. It was a garrote, a wire affixed to two wooden handles; a cheap and efficient tool used by killers all over the world.
I was fixated on the gloved hands as they gripped the handles, pulling the wire tight, cutting off blood flow to Ralph Hammer’s brain. Hammer made inhuman sounds as he lifted off the seat, grabbing at his neck as he fought certain death.
The screen went black. I turned on my partners.
“Hey. Warn me next time, why don’t you?”
“It’s not over,” Alvarez said.
Damn. I like Alvarez, but this blindside pissed me off. I had more to say, but a gloved hand was back on my screen, this time gripping a Ruger Mark IV with suppressor. There were two quiet pops. Blood sprayed on the lens, but enough clarity between the streaks to see Hammer’s body slump out of sight.
The angle changed. I saw day’s end in the Bayside Shopping Center through the assassin’s eyes; cars and pedestrians streamed by singly and in groups, no one looking at the killer.
Then, he spoke—to me.
“Good form, right, Sergeant? A quick, bad, death. This is Blackout, signing off.”
The video went black.
I closed my mouth, looked at Conklin, turned to look at Alvarez, then, asked, “Has Brady seen this?”
Conklin said, “We agreed you should be the one to do it.”
Brady’s office is a small glass-enclosed space at the far end of the bullpen. Looking down the center aisle and the length of the room, I could see Chief Clapper sitting across the desk from Brady.
I typed a message to my boss: “This is a video of Hammer’s murder. Urgent.” I attached the murder tape and pressed Send.
CHAPTER 16
I WAITED FOR Brady to read my note, look at the hellacious clip of cold-blooded murder, and give me a sign. But five long minutes after I’d sent him that appalling video, he and Clapper were still deep in conversation.
I was about to go to his office when Claire texted me. “Important, Lindsay. Can you come down?”
Instead of rapping on Brady’s door, I buzzed Brenda, Brady’s assistant, who is stationed outside his office.
“Bren. I’m going to the ME’s office for a few minutes. Call if you need me.”
Brenda said, “You got it.”
Conklin and Alvarez had accessed the video from our shared account and looped it on their screens. I asked them to scour all databases for anything on Hammer and on the alias “Blackout.”
“We’ve already run Hammer through VICAP and AFIS crime databases,” said Conklin. “Nothing to add to what Fama told us. Hammer was a small-time loser. ‘Blackout’ comes up a hundred different ways; end of a scene, loss of consciousness, power outage—all are apt, but not a name. I have a computer tech who can take a deeper dive.”
“Good. If possible, we want to trace the video to a phone or an ID and ask if he can figure out how this sick footage was recorded. I’ll be back in a few.”
Leaving the squad room, I jogged down the fire stairs, exited the lobby through the rear door, then fast-walked along the breezeway that connects the ME’s office to the Hall. I pulled open the door and stepped up to the front desk. The new receptionist was about twenty, wearing amber-tinted glasses and a very serious look. I badged her, told her that I was expected.
She said, “Please take a seat.”
An elderly woman sat in one of a line of chairs, her hands over her eyes, her shoulders heaving with sobs. Someone she cared about was inside with Claire, before, during, or after the autopsy. The door beside the receptionist opened and Claire waved me in.
Dr. Claire Washburn and I have been close since I was on patrol and she was a junior pathologist with the coroner’s office. Best friends through all those years, there were no secrets between us. Now, I was burning out in Homicide and Claire was at the top of her game.
“I’ve got something for you, girlfriend,” she said.
We walked down the inner corridor to the cold storage room. There, Claire pulled out a drawer and turned down the blue drape uncovering a seventy-something man with a bullet hole in his forehead. There were two more holes in his chest.
Claire said, “Name is Jacob Johnston.”
She filled me in: that the body had been found on Taylor Street yesterday, that Central Station was turning the case over to Southern Station. Central’s homicide department was thin, and only took night-shift homicide cases. I guessed that even their night shift—from eight to eight—was shorthanded.
Claire was saying, “You’d kill me if I didn’t bring you in on this.”
My attention was on Johnston’s body. He’d been physically fit for his apparent age and the bullet to his forehead sure looked like it had been the kill shot.
“Look here,” Claire said.
She pointed to two holes in his throat. I leaned in to get a better look. Adrenaline lit me up but it took a few more seconds for my brain to connect Johnston’s stun-gun burns to the video of Ralph Hammer’s murder.
Claire was saying, “Theory only. Stun gun knocked him down but not out. I’m guessing Johnston fought back.”
Re-draping his neck, Claire continued.
“Hypothesis. Mr. Johnston refused to die so his attacker shot him. First to the head and then to the chest.”
“Reminds me of someone else,” I said, then filled Claire in on the video of Ralph Hammer’s murder, that the killer put two gunshots into Hammer after he was dead.
The receptionist pushed through the swinging doors.
“Doctor. Mrs. Johnston says she must speak with you. She’s hysterical.”
Same time, I got a text from Conklin: “You’re needed up here.”
I said goodbye to Claire and made the return trip to the squad room, fast. As I walked, my mind circled a widening ring of questions. Were Johnston and Hammer murdered by the same killer? If so how were the three of them connected? And why had that killer sent evidence to me, evidence that would be exhibit one in a murder case against him?
I had just reached my desk when Lieutenant Jackson Brady and Chief Charles Clapper came up the aisle.
Brady said, “Boxer, you’re with me. Conklin, Alvarez, check out a car and follow us.”
Clapper said to all of us, “Meet you there.”
While we waited on Bryant Street for Conklin to sign a car out of the pool, I asked Brady where we were going.
“To the last place I ever expected to go again. Ever.”
CHAPTER 17
BRADY’S VOICE WAS barely audible over the crackling police band static and the rumble of traffic coming through my open window. I buzzed up the window and dialed down the radio.
I said to Brady, “Talk to me.”
He said, “This is what Clapper told me. Some kid on spring break was walking along the beach this morning at around nine. He saw something big riding the waves. Kid thought it was a seal or a bag of garbage.”
“Bodies? What do you mean?”
“A woman in her twenties with a baby in a carrier strapped to her chest.”
I clapped my hands over my mouth and kept them there, but Brady had finished talking. He drove and managed his job by phone and radio, while I unpacked memories that I’d put away but hadn’t forgotten. Baker Beach. A red-haired baby. Murdered. Her mother, dark haired and murdered, her body found on China Beach. Last names Burke. Evan Burke’s granddaughter and daughter-in-law.
Beside me, Brady turned the car first onto Bowley Street and then onto Gibson Road and slowed as we approached the parking lot on the bluff above Baker Beach. Several National Park Service cars had preceded us and two SFPD cruisers were restricting parking lot access to law enforcement only.
A uniformed officer handed Brady a clipboard. He signed the log as did Conklin, who’d just come up behind us. I didn’t wait for the team to come together. As soon as Brady set the brakes, I got out and walked to the edge of the cliff. The big surf roared. I took deep breaths and stared out at the panoramic view: the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, and the seamless sky and seascape rolling out past Lands End Lookout. But the beauty of the place couldn’t lift my mood.
It’s common for an unsolved case to haunt homicide detectives even after retirement. Those cops have framed pictures of those victims and bring their murder books home. They scrutinize current news wondering what they’d missed before the case went cold.
The deaths of Lorrie and Tara Burke were like that for me with one glaring exception: their case had been solved. Their killer was in prison. Still, the pain of their deaths had never left me.
I told myself to snap out of it and lowered my eyes to the mile-long crescent of sand below the ridge. Patrol officers and a CSU van had driven down to the beach. Police had cordoned off a large section of it and were standing by to protect the scene. Gene Hallows, our crime lab director, gestured as he briefed Clapper. CSIs in hazmat suits stepped down from the van. Beyond them, the tide gently shifted a body within the margin of foam between the sand and sea.
An officer who’d been stationed at the parking lot came up behind me and saw what I saw.
He muttered, “Jesus, God. It’s déjà vu all over again.”
I felt light-headed. Pin lights sparked in front of my eyes, but before I could drop, someone gripped my left arm and put a hand behind my back. Brady.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Let’s sit down.”
“I’m good.”
“I’m not,” he said. “When you’re ready, take a good look.”
This time when I stared down at the bodies I couldn’t miss it. Like Lorrie and Tara Burke, the deceased baby was a redhead, and her mother was a brunette.
Brady said, “We can’t go down until Hallows says so.”
I took Brady’s arm and returned with him to the chaos in the parking lot.
CHAPTER 18
FROM HER PREFERRED back-of-the-courtroom seat, Cindy watched Yuki question Barbara Sullivan’s neighbor Carol Linnert. She was making notes when a text came in from Henry Tyler, the Chronicle’s publisher and editor in chief. He’d written, “2 bodies on Baker Beach. Call me.”
“Stand by.”
Cindy grabbed her heavy carryall and edged her way to the exit, where a court officer opened the door. Once she was in the hallway, she called Henry on his private line.
“You’re going to want to check this out, Cindy. Baker Beach. Woman with child washed up two hours ago. Peretti is on his way to pick you up.”
Michael Peretti was Cindy’s favorite photographer and videographer. A foot taller than Cindy, Mike could both shoot over the heads of a crowd and muscle his way through them.
Cindy took the elevator down to the lobby and when she reached Bryant, she looked for Mike. A horn honked and she followed the sound with her eyes, leading her to spot a green Jeep Comanche double-parked on the far side of the street. Cindy crossed against the light, pulled open the passenger-side door and hauled herself into the Jeep. Cindy always kept her police scanner with her, and now she took it out of her bag and set it up on the dash.
“Mike. This is spooky.”
Peretti said, “Hang on, Spooky. Buckle up.”
She did it.
As Mike pulled out into traffic, Cindy flipped on the scanner and tuned it until she got a clear signal. SFPD dispatch was fielding an armed holdup in a liquor store on Mission.
Peretti said, “I’ll tell you what I know.”
By the time they’d safely reached their destination, Cindy was up to speed; a woman and infant had been discovered in the surf off Baker Beach, which was well-known for being unsafe at any time. Heedless daredevils had died in those waters.
She and Peretti discussed the possibility that this could be a drowning, but the word “baby” alarmed Cindy.
“It’s possible,” she said, “that a clueless young mother took her baby in for a dip, but my gut says ‘no.’”
Mike agreed for the same reason Tyler had pulled Cindy out of a trial that was being covered by reporters across the country. This incident on Baker Beach was too reminiscent of Lorrie and Tara Burke.
And these days no one knew their killer better than Cindy Thomas.
CHAPTER 19
IN THE BRIEF time I’d spent bracing myself for what was to come, the rowdy crowd that had gathered at the entrance to the parking lot had gotten rowdier. Patrol officers were holding the line, waving cars off. Some of those cars parked on the road, and mavericks broke free from the herd and made for the beach on foot. Patrol cars sped down the access road and cut them off.
I joined the police line behind the tape, but when Cindy stepped out of the jostling mob, I broke rank.
I was that glad to see my friend.
But she hadn’t seen me. She called out to Conklin and he shook his head, no, no, no. Meaning, no, he wouldn’t give her a quote. Rich was right, but I heard her say, “You want me to write something, Rich. I can help.”
Cindy had broken cases before.
Brady stepped up to the tape with a bullhorn in hand.
“Listen up, alla y’all. Quiet down.”
An imposing figure, muscular, with platinum-blond hair and the trace of a Southern accent, Brady spoke his name and rank. The crowd did quiet down, eager to hear what the lieutenant had to say.
“Everyone, this is a fresh situation and we do not know what has happened. Even if we did, we still would not comment on an ongoing investigation. Ladies and gents of the press, I’m asking you personally, kindly do not publish pictures of the deceased. They have not been identified. Families have not been notified. If someone has information, please call the tip line. We will get back to you promptly.”
Brady gave out the phone number and lowered the megaphone. He was heading toward me when Cindy called my name.
I reached her and grabbed her hand.
“Cindy, I can’t …”
“Lindsay, this is freaking me out.”
“Me, too.
“I keep thinking about Evan Burke. He confessed to killing Lorrie and Tara, right? We did get the right guy?”
“Of course we did,” I said to Cindy.
Cindy was the undisputed expert on Burke, but her confidence was shaken. I worried that she was grappling with the effects of her Burke-induced PTSD.
She said, “I can put out photos with a request for information in about ten minutes.”
“It’s too soon, Cin. They may have been reported missing.”
The police line parted and the ME’s van drove through, taking the service entrance to the beach.
“Cindy. I gotta go.”
Brady signaled to me, and together we headed down to the scene.
CHAPTER 20
BRADY, CONKLIN, ALVAREZ, and I stood on the beach watching the CSIs do their work. The area had been scoured for anything that could be related to the victims, and nothing had been found. And then, as he’d done when the victim on Baker Beach had been Burke’s granddaughter and he was the new chief of SFPD, Charles Clapper stepped into the undulating surf.
