Every Move She Makes, page 7
Zim immediately filled the space Reid vacated.
"Heard you were a regular block of ice out there. Didn't even faze you to find your partner's wife dead." "Better watch yourself, Zim,"
Markowsld quipped from his desk. "She touches you, you won't even need a freezer like that guy she found in the warehouse." I opened my briefcase, shoved all the drug ODS and the Soma Slasher files into it.
Abruptly the laughter stopped. I looked up, expecting the lieutenant had walked in, putting an end to their fun. Instead I saw Torrance at the doorway, his expression unreadable. "Mind if I see you a minute, Gillespie?" I followed him from the office, only to hear Zimmerman say, "There goes the perfect couple. The ice queen and the polar prince."
"Slither back down to your basement," I said over my shoulder.
When I first transferred to Homicide a year ago, the guys waited to see me fall apart at the sight of my first floater. It was the rite of passage for every new inspector, but because I was a woman, it seemed my trial went on forever. I'd become expert at hiding my feelings, just as they'd all had to do. The male double standard. On them, it was masculine. Me, I was considered cold, unfeeling. I silently fumed as I accompanied Torrance to his office on the next floor. He held the door open, I stepped in. "Doesn't anything get to you?" I asked after he shut the door and took a seat on the edge of his desk. I remained standing.
"Zimmerman gets off on knowing he can make you angry.,,
I was mad that I'd let Zim upset me. "What do guys like you get off on?"
"Pantyhose," he said without missing a beat.
I shouldn't have asked such a question. More important, I couldn't believe he'd answered. The shock I felt must have registered on my face.
"Sorry," he said. "I couldn't resist." That dark gaze of his, usually so intense, reflected a sparkle of amusement, and I found myself smiling in return. "Is there something you wanted?" The hesitation that followed was palpable, the look in his eye unmistakable. Finally, "I wanted to go over the details of Scolari's call one more time. If you don't mind." He indicated the laptop on his desk, moving aside to let me read the screen. All amusement faded from his expression. He had it pretty much verbatim, and so I gave him my okay, for whatever it was worth. "You didn't happen to read the paper this morning, did you?" I asked. "Not to mention seeing you on the morning news." His face remained as impassive as his computer screen. I was beginning to wonder if he had Vulcan blood running through his veins.
"It doesn't look good," he said.
"That Scolari's considered a suspect?" "That the MO's the same." I watched the cursor on his screen blink on and off. "Hardly the same," I heard myself say. "Patricia Meadscolari was sitting in a luxury car blocks away from the Soma area." "You might want to read Dr.
Mead-Scolari's autopsy report." His words shocked me, and I met his gaze, but couldn't tell what, if anything, he was after. Was he telling me for my benefit? Scolari's? Or was he fishing to see what I knew? He handed me a manila envelope. "Figured I'd save you a trip to the morgue." I opened the envelope, wondering why he'd felt the need to give me the autopsy file in private. Inside was the report, as well as some black-and-white photos. I closed it, not wanting to look at the pictures just yet. Not ever, really. "Thanks, but I have to go there anyway." He regarded me closely, looking for what, I had no idea. I figured now was as good a time as any to discuss the surveillance he was conducting on my apartment. "How long are you planning on camping out on my doorstep?" "As long as necessary." As if I had a choice. "Have at it," I replied as I left, not meaning it in the least. I didn't bother with goodbyes, I didn't see the point. I headed back to Homicide, and my new partner. When I got there, Zimmerman was gone. "Zimwit told me to tell you he was on a detail that couldn't wait," Markowski said. "He'll get back to you when he's done." As fortuitous as that sounded, I still needed a partner to canvass the Twin Palms. "Either of you busy?"
"Sorry," Shipley said. "Me and Rocky got a couple of appointments that can't wait." Great. If I couldn't come up with a temporary partner, I'd have to take a uniform for backup. Which meant the luck of the draw, anything from slick sleeve rookie to jaded veteran. I'd try elsewhere.
Perhaps Narco. Might as well. I was working some of the same overdose cases. The only difference was the status of those involved. If the overdose victims lived, Narco got them, and tried to get the name of their suppliers. If the victims died, they came to me. The Narcotics detail was one of the few facilities not housed in the Hall of justice.
I could have called, but the truth was, I needed a break and decided that the drive would give me both. Outside, a light, salty breeze swept through the courtyard, and I took my time walking to the parking garage. As I drove, from the crest of a hill I caught a glimpse of the Bay Bridge crowned by cumulus clouds. Postcard perfect. A great day for camera-toting tourists who flocked here, ignorant and untouched by the crime, the death, the inner-city life that occurred beyond their wide angled lenses. I parked, and walked the half block to the Narcotics office. Betty Ramirez was sitting at her desk talking on the phone when I strolled in. She could have been a model, tall and thin with short, dark, wavy hair, but she had a thing for law enforcement. We were partners up until a year ago, when the mayor decided to make me Homicide's poster girl.
"Hey, Kate," she said, covering the mouthpiece.
"Have a seat. Be done in a sec." I took the chair at the desk next to hers, watched the goings-on, not really missing it. Like Betty, I'd been assigned working the street dealers, a dirty business, dayin and day-out with the scum of society. If you stayed too long, it rubbed off on you, as evidenced by many of the officers who worked there. If not for the necessity of photo IDS hanging around their necks while they were in the building, one wouldn't be able to tell them from the hookers and crack dealers on the street. George Jamison wandered through the door, brown hair down the middle of his back, a scraggly beard and mustache. He looked much different now than when he had taken on the role of my brother when we went after Paolini. He patted me on my shoulder.
"Gillespie. You aren't really thinking Sam Scolari's the Soma Slasher, are you? Word ho killed Doc Scolari." "Let me know when word on the street gets me a viable witness. Then I'll listen." Betty hung up the phone and turned to me. "Haven't seen you down here in a while. What's up?"
"You got anything substantial on the drug ODS?"
"Nothing new." "Andrews wants a full report. Press conference tomorrow.
If you're not busy, I need to go out and do a few knock-and-talks."
"Busy isn't the word," she said, nodding toward several file boxes on the floor, each filled with manila folders. "between the ODS and the Scott Forrest cluster, we're all running around with our heads cut off.
Makes me wish I was back on patrol." Cluster, a cop euphemism for major mess, was putting it mildly. Forrest, a lab tech, had recently been arrested by the Narcotics detail for falsifying evidence and stealing drugs sent in for testing. To the city's embarrassment, his case was brought to light by an investigative reporter for the Chronicle. The reporter, Maxwell Cameron, had already made his claim to fame over the exposure of scandal in the mayor's office. "We have to go through every one of those," Betty continued. "See if Forrest was involved in any way.
There's gonna be a lot of dismissals coming up on appeal. The DNS
screaming, and I'm due in court in ten minutes." She looked at her watch. "A prelim for the city manager's kid on a possession for sales.
His father's hired some attorney from LA. He could have saved the money.
Forrest tested the drugs. It'll be dismissed, just like the rest of them." She pulled a case folder from her desk, then motioned for me to accompany her out. "You do realize what this means?" She handed me the folder. It contained the case I'd worked against Paolini. I met her gaze. "Tell me you're kidding." "DA called right before you got here.
Paolini's attorney got his appeal moved up on the calendar. Less than a week." The renewed phone threats I'd received now made a lot more sense.
I told Betty about them. "It's got to be the reason why they've started up." Betty gave me a searching look. "You seem sort of nonchalant about the whole thing." "I've got enough crap to worry about besides Paolini."
Actually, I couldn't dwell on it. Not with everything else going on. I'd go crazy. "So, how about it? Can YOU go?" Betty knew me well enough to let the matter drop about Paolini and the calls. "I'll be in court all day. Jury trial. I don't suppose it could wait till tomorrow morning.
"Tomorrow's fine. Let's say, nine?"
"Nine's good. We'll meet in front of the bail room."
"Thanks. I'll be there," I said.
After I got my latte, I made my next stop the morgue. I wanted every coroner's case that might fit the Slasher profile. As I pushed open the door, I thought how odd it was to be there and not see Patricia, and I couldn't help thinking about my partner as a result. Did he do it?
Where was he? And why? Simple questions, but no simple answers.
"Hey, Inspector." Mary Whitman offered something close to a smile. A black woman in her forties, she was Patricia's secretary. She stood on the other side of a long counter that separated the lobby area from the Coroner investigators' work area. Their desks were empty, the office deserted by all but us.
"Thought you might take a few days off. You holding up okay?" I asked.
"Damn place would fall apart if I weren't here." Patricia had said so many times. I tried not to glance into her office, but I looked just the same, shivering at the images of the last time I'd seen her, in her car.
Mary saw the direction of my gaze. "Keep doing it myself. It's like I expect her to say,'Mary! Where the hell's that toxicology report I asked for?" Lab was always late, for all they're in the same damn building.
Used to grate on her nerves." She turned around, her dark eyes filled with sadness as she eyed Patricia's door. Her voice cracked as she said, "Can't seem to get around to emptying her things. Won't let nobody else touch it, neither. Bad enough your guys searched through everything after her murder. None of their damn business. At least wait until the funeral." "You know they couldn't," I offered, though it was of little consolation. Death did not end the violation of the victim. Every person they saw, every move they made, every breath they took would be scrutinized, picked apart, reassembled piece by piece until the final appeal of the suspect was over and done. There was no peace for the dead by homicide. She opened the top drawer of her desk, looking for something I suspected wasn't really there. When she seemed in control again, I asked her for the autopsy reports.
"How far back did you want to go?"
"Six months-no, make it a year."
"A year?"
"I'm working on a hunch. A shot in the dark, but what the hell." "Better be a good one. It'll take me a while. In the meantime, I've got that hit-and-run you were looking for the other day," she said, digging the report out of the current file to let me read. I scanned over it.
Nothing stood out other than the usual sorts of injuries one might expect from a hit-and run victim. Crushed skull, blunt force trauma to his entire torso, some brown paint transfer on his Levi's. Not a lot to go on. "And toxicology came back on your last OD." She dropped that file on the counter as well. "Say hello to victim number nine. Same tainted stuff as the other eight. Patricia was pretty upset. She made sure the lab ran it twice. Sort of strange, like she was getting personally involved." "How could she not," I said. "He was just some clean-cut kid.
Things like this aren't supposed to happen to kids like him." "You're probably right. This one got to her. She wanted Doc Meyers to finish the case for her." I didn't open the file, since I recalled it well.
Freshman at University of San Francisco. Frat party. No one admitted where the drug came from, no one recalled him taking it. Parents well-to-do, not knowing where they went wrong, mourning the loss of their only son. Their devastation, my helplessness, promises to find the killer, not knowing if I could, knowing I never wanted to bring a child into this world. Not to face that. "How about that last case Patricia worked?" I asked, putting the file beneath the others. "The frozen john Doe?"
"Ice Man? Waiting on toxicology."
"There's a surprise. Any changes? When I left her, she didn't have any idea about the cause of death."
"That's how it was when I typed it. just a frozen guy.
Could have been in there a week, could have been a month," Mary said, as if that were commonplace. I guess in the morgue anything was possible.
"I sent the preliminary report to you about ten minutes ago."
"I was out of the building. Must have missed it.
Thanks, Mary," I said. I turned to leave, stopped, and eyed her. "Did she talk to you about meeting Sam that night?"
"Your folks from IA asked me that. I told them no.
Can't remember the last time she talked about Sam."
"She never mentioned about Sam cheating on her?"
"Honey," she said with a laugh, "that woman couldn't have cared less.
Their marriage was for appearance's sake only.,,
Appearance sake only? What on earth did she mean by that?
"They-" She stopped when a group of doctors walked in, young, scrubbed fresh and clean, in surgical greens. "Oh, hello," she told them as they lined up along the counter. "Doctor Meyers is tied up, but asked if you wouldn't mind waiting in his office." They filed past, all five.
"Teaching class," Mary whispered. "Get back to me later when we won't be overheard." "Sure," I said, leaving her. I was curious to find out what she knew. Why would Scolari buy Patricia a Range Rover to get back in her good graces if their marriage was one of convenience? And what about the records clerk he'd dated, and gotten booted out of the house for?
What
was her name, Allison? Was that for appearance's sake, too?
No time like the present to find out. I still had half an hour to kill before lunch-not that I had plans-but what better way to spend the time than talking to the little number Scolari had dated in Records? The Records division of the San Francisco Police TDEPARTMENT was a hub of activity, filled with officers and citizens alike. I couldn't simply walk in and say, "Hey, Allison, mind if we talk?'-mostly because I didn't want anyone to know I was going to question her about Scolari's case. IA didn't take kindly to anyone stepping on their toes. After considerable thought, I knew I needed a good cover. Cops are great at adlibbing. We have to be. Like car salesmen and politicians, we law enforcement officers are in a profession where we must make people believe we know what we're talking about, even if we haven't got a clue.
"Hi," I said to the clerk in the window, thinking I was off to a great start. Ready for an Oscar. "I've been waitin for a report on a homicide I'm working." The clerk, Sue by her ID badge, smiled. "You have a case number?"
"Um, no. I called it in, though. It's pretty confidential.
The press and everything. I think I spoke with Allison?" She looked around the counter. "No, I don't see anything. How long ago did you call for it?" I shrugged. "Maybe an hour or two?" Sue looked under papers, thumbed through a few file folders. "Not here. Hold on, I'll go get Allison. You can ask her yourself I kept my Cheshire cat smile to myself A few moments later, Allison strolled up to the window. The second she saw me, she immediately turned away.
"Wait. Please." She hesitated, her back to me.
"It'll only take a minute." She didn't move.
"For Sam?" I continued softly.
Slowly she turned. Her voice was low as she approached the window. "I've already given a full report to IA." "So have I. But what I'm looking for is answers that might be overlooked." Allison regarded me as though she wasn't sure what to believe. I stared right back, trying to see what a woman like her saw in a man like Scolari. Allison was in her early twenties, petite, with a face that might grace the cover of COSMOPOLITAN. She could have her choice of any man. Why him? "Okay," she said. "But I'd rather not be seen talking to you out here. Meet me in the locker room by the showers in five minutes."
"I'm there," I said.
She leaned down, grabbed something from a drawer under the counter, then handed me an empty routing envelope, I guess to make it look as though she were turning over the nonexistent report I'd asked for. "Thanks," I said. She didn't respond, just gave a harried glance side to side, then got back to her station. That was a girl with something on her mind.
Something I definitely wanted to know. Five minutes later she appeared in the locker room, motioning me to the showers. Following her, I was surprised when she turned one on, then peeked into each of the stalls to make sure we were alone. Now I was truly curious.
"Well?" she asked.
"Isn't this sort of overkill?"
"Sam told me this entire place is bugged."
