Chi grinned. A rare occurrence. Like a blue moon in June.
“What’s funny?” I asked him.
“I like this about you, Lindsay. You never give up. But you know, Brady doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
“I’ll deal with him when I have to.”
Chi shrugged and said, “So what did Bernard St. John tell you?”
“That Dennis Martin was sleeping with Ellen Lafferty. Lafferty confided in him.”
“Whoa-ho. Well, there’s your motive, Sergeant. You’re making the case against Dr. Martin even stronger. Candace found out her husband was sleeping with the nanny, so she shot him. Motive as old as the history of mankind.”
“Or — what if it was the other way around?”
“You think Lafferty was the shooter?”
“It’s not so crazy, Paul. I want to talk to you about that contract killer. Gregor Guzman.”
Chi just shook his head and sighed.
“Doggedness suits you, Lindsay. Okay, what do you want to know about Gregor Guzman?”
“Tell me everything you’ve got.”
Chapter 57
AS CHI TAPPED on the computer keyboard, he told me, “Eleven hits are attributed to Guzman — that’s eleven unsolved that match his MO.”
I scooted the chair so close to Chi’s desk, I could see my reflection in the monitor.
“It’s a very elegant MO,” Chi was saying. “First, he’s stealthy. He’s never seen and he leaves no evidence. Two, he always uses a twenty-two and his kill shots are head shots. His first shot does the job. His second shot is almost on top of the first. I’d say that second shot is just for insurance. He’s a hell of a marksman.”
“Dennis Martin took two shots to the chest.”
“That’s correct.”
Chi hit some keys on his computer and brought up a series of photos of the elusive hit man. The first was a grainy black-and-white still shot that had been lifted from a video of a man leaving Circus Circus, the famous casino in Vegas.
The next photo was of a balding man in a car, taken by a tollbooth surveillance cam outside of Bogotá.
The third picture was of possibly the same man in a dark suit, standing beside an advertising kiosk, watching the crowd enter a public building. The picture was titled, “Lincoln Center, New York.”
The last picture was the money shot.
It was taken at night with a long lens pointed at the passenger-side window of a dark SUV, time-dated September 1 of last year. Candace Martin was in profile in the passenger’s seat. The way her hair fell obscured part of her face.
Next to her in the driver’s seat was a balding man who had turned to face her. His features were difficult to make out because of the shadow inside the car’s interior.
It was hard to say if the man pictured was Gregor Guzman or even if the woman in the passenger seat was Candace Martin.
“How sure are you that this man is Guzman?” I asked Chi.
“All pictures of Guzman are educated guesswork. We have no official photos to compare them to, but the face-recognition software found an eighty-three percent correlation between the four photos I just showed you.”
“Paul, if your case hung on this picture in the SUV, Candace Martin would walk.”
“The DA wanted to use it. It shows premeditation. I gotta admit something to you, Lindsay.”
“I’m right here, Paul. And I’m listening.”
“Apart from this piece-a-crap picture with Candace Martin, no one in law enforcement has reported seeing Gregor Guzman in the past three years. Who knows if he’s even alive?”
Chapter 58
CINDY STOOD AT the windy corner of Turk and Jones just before six that evening. The Tenderloin was a rough neighborhood, arguably the worst in San Francisco.
As a light rain came down, the homeless pulled up their hoodies, hunched over their shopping carts, crouched under the eaves of the rent-by-the-hour Ethel Hotel and Aunt Vicky’s, the down-and-dirty gay bar next to it.
Cindy buttoned her coat and pulled up her collar, staring at the cab company across the street that took up the northeast corner of the intersection. There were two plate-glass windows at the street level, each with a flickering neon sign, one reading QUICK EXPRESS TAXI, the other, CORPORATE ACCOUNTS WELCOME. There was nothing welcoming about that storefront.
Rich had told her to meet him in a coffee shop a couple of doors down, but Cindy couldn’t wait. She called Rich, and when she got his voice mail, she left him a message and then crossed Turk against the light.
As she approached Quick Express, Cindy noticed the cab company’s vehicle entrance on Turk: a cave of an opening that sheltered a ramp down to the lower parking levels. Yellow cabs were lined up at the curb. Men stood in the drizzle, smoking on the sidewalk, taking swigs from paper bags.
Cindy walked up to the window and saw the dispatch office on the other side of the glass, much like a ticket office in a movie theater but bigger. She knocked on the glass.
The man in the office was regular height, in his forties, with dark hair and a pale moon face. He was wearing a rumpled plaid shirt and khakis. He looked agitated as he worked the phone lines while delivering blunt instructions into a radio mic.
Cindy had to speak loudly over the sound of incoming radio calls.
“I’m Cindy Thomas,” she said into the grill. “Are you the owner here?”
“No, I’m the manager and dispatcher, Al Wysocki. What can I do for you?”
“I’m a reporter at the Chronicle,” she said. She dug her press pass out of her handbag and held it against the window.
“What’s this about?”
“One of your drivers might have saved someone who was having a heart attack. The person who called the paper only remembers that the driver was in a taxi minivan,” Cindy lied.
“You got a name?”
“No.”
“And what’s the driver look like?”
“All this person remembers is that the minivan had a movie ad on it.”
“Gee. A movie ad,” Wysocki said. “Okay, look. We have six vans in the fleet. Three are in. Three are out. But you understand, none of the drivers has a call on any of these cabs. They drive what’s here when their shifts start.”
“May I take a look anyway? It shouldn’t take long.”
“Knock yourself out.”
Wysocki told Cindy that the garage had three levels — the main floor, which she was on, and two subterranean levels. Two of the vans were on the first floor down, and the third was on the second floor down.
Cindy thanked the man and began her tour of the parked taxis in the dark, grimy, stinking-from-gas-fumes underground garage. Twenty minutes later, she’d located all three vans, none of which had a movie ad on its side.
She took the stairs back to the main floor and left her card with the dispatcher, taking his card in return.
“Okay if I call you again?”
“Feel free,” said Wysocki, who grabbed his microphone and barked a street address to a cabbie.
Cindy left the garage through the front door on Turk and found Richie waiting for her on the street corner.
“You were suppposed to wait for me in the coffee shop,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Rich. I was a bit early so I thought I’d follow up on something. Honey, this is just legwork. And this is just a cab company.”
“A cab company, and you suspect a cabbie of being the last person to see a woman who was drugged and raped.”
“Well, none of the cabs here is the one.”
“I don’t like the chances you take to get a story, Cindy,” Rich said, opening the passenger-side door for her. “This is mugger’s alley. I’m dropping you home. Then I’ve got to meet Lindsay.”
Cindy looked up at her fiancé, stretched up onto her toes, and kissed him. She said, “You’re very damned overprotective, Richie. And this is the weird part: I kind of like it.”
Chapter 59
CONKLIN AND I met with the Richardsons once again i
n their pricey suite at the Mark Hopkins, with its billion-dollar nightscape of Nob Hill and Union Square. The view embraced the Transamerica Pyramid and skyscrapers of the Financial District, San Francisco Bay, and the western span of the Bay Bridge, reaching to Treasure Island.
I’ve lived in San Francisco my whole life, and I’ve rarely seen the city from a vantage point like this.
I stared out at the lights while Conklin told the Richardsons that we needed an uninterrupted hour with Avis. He said it would be easier on Avis if we talked to her here rather than down at the Hall. And he said that being with her alone might produce more truth-telling than talking with her while her parents were present.
Sonja Richardson said, “I don’t think she has anything left to tell,” but both parents agreed to let us talk to Avis alone.
Now the parents were having “light dining” upstairs at Top of the Mark, and Avis was in the kitchenette, looking at me over her shoulder with fierce antipathy.
“How many times do I have to tell you,” she groused. She opened the refrigerator and took out a bowl of dip, then rummaged in the cupboard and put her hand on a bag of chips. “I told you everything I know.”
“Come over here and sit down, Avis,” Conklin said.
She looked surprised at the tone Conklin had taken with her, which was actually mild compared with the images I was having of grabbing her by the scruff of her neck and throwing her against a wall.
Avis took a defiant minute to gather her snack, along with a bottle of soda, and bring it into the sitting area, where she spread everything out on the coffee table.
“Tell us about your English teacher,” I said.
“Mr. Ritter?”
“You’ve got more than one English teacher?”
“Mr. Ritter is okay. Not my favorite, but I get good grades in English. I have a talent for writing.”
“Is Jordan Ritter the father of your child?”
“That’s insane! I hardly know him.”
I was sitting in a chair at her level, my hands clasped, my elbows resting on my knees. I leaned over the coffee table and said to the teenager, “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“What?”
“I said, Do you think I’m stupid?”
“What difference does it make who the father is anyway?”
I said, “That’s it. Avis, stand up. Inspector Conklin, cuff her. Avis Richardson, you’re under arrest for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and child endangerment. If we find his body, we’ll change that charge to murder.”
“Oh my God, what are you doing?” she said as the cuffs closed around her wrists. “My baby’s not dead. He’s not dead.”
“Tell us about it at the station. Let’s go,” I said.
“Here. I’ll talk here,” she said.
I nodded to Rich and he took off the cuffs. The girl threw herself back onto the couch, and then she started telling a version of the story that I hadn’t heard before. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth.
But truly, her story was taking a turn for the weird.
Chapter 60
“IF YOU TELL ME A FIB,” I said to Avis Richardson, “or a half-truth or even an exaggeration — if you tell me any kind of lie at all — I will know it. And when that happens, you’re going to jail.”
“I’ll tell you the truth,” she said. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I can’t stand it anymore.”
“Start talking,” I said.
“You’re right about Jordan. He is the father of my baby. He has great genes.”
Genes? Jeans? This kid was criminally deluded. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, I’d lash out at her.
I put my hands through my hair and took a moment to get a grip on my anger. I couldn’t remember when I’d felt so frustrated, but I didn’t want to shut this kid down by letting her see the fury in my eyes. It was the time to let Conklin work his magic with women.
Conklin said, “Is the baby alive, Avis? Do you know where he is?”
“He’s alive. I don’t know where he is, though.”
Conklin said, “Okay, Avis. Let’s see if we can figure it out together.”
“A lot of what I said before was true. I hid my pregnancy. I didn’t even tell Jordan about it for five months. Then I told him, and he started to go asshole on me. ‘How do I know it’s even mine?’”
“Men can be jerks,” Conklin said.
Avis nodded. “I went out to Prattslist and found an ad.”
“There was no ad,” I said.
“It wasn’t the ad I told you about,” Avis said. “It was a different ad and it was only three weeks ago. I contacted these two women. A couple. They were looking for a baby and they would pay twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Names?” I said.
“Toni and Sandy.”
“That’s it?” I said.
“You contacted two women,” Conklin said to the teenage idiot on the couch. I looked at the door. With luck, the kid would tell us everything we needed to know before her parents came home.
Right now, Jordan Ritter was facing jail time. Avis Richardson was looking at juvie. And the last thing we needed was a thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyer sticking his fingers in the pie.
“They picked me up a block from the school, but — but they didn’t drug me or anything. They said they had a place where I could give birth in peace. I fell asleep in the back of the car.”
“When you woke up,” Conklin said, “did you know where you were?”
“Not at all. It was dark. It was remote. I was in labor. I got into bed and for about six hours, I screamed my head off. I gave birth to the baby. I held him. He was absolutely the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And then I gave him to Toni and Sandy. They were nice and they really wanted him.”
I’d reached my limit. Did this child care at all about her son? No.
I shouted, “That’s the last you saw of that baby? You have nothing else to tell us? Is any of what you told us true? If you gave birth with these nice women in attendance, explain to us why you were found bleeding out near the lake.”
“That part was all my fault,” said Avis Richardson.
Chapter 61
HALLELUJAH. Avis Richardson was finally about to take some responsibility. If she admitted something that led us to her baby, I thought I could possibly forgive her for driving us crazy for the past week.
How about it, Avis? Gonna give us a break?
I went to the fridge in the kitchenette, brought back a bottle of soda, and poured three glasses, no ice.
“Toni said she and Sandy would stay with me until I felt well,” Avis told Conklin and me. “Then they were going to take the baby home.”
“Did they say where home was?” Conklin asked.
“Nuh-uh,” Avis said.
I was still comparing and contrasting Avis’s new story with what she’d told us before, and the two versions hardly matched up.
The French-speaking man was on the cutting-room floor. The kidnapping was history. The father of her baby was her English teacher. Avis had answered an ad from two women, and now Avis said she had given up her baby voluntarily.
Was she capable of telling the truth? Toni and Sandy. I wondered if she’d made up those names on the spot.
“When I was in that house, right after I had the baby, Toni gave me her phone so I could call Jordan and tell him to come and get me,” Avis said. “But when I handed the phone to Toni so she could give him directions, Jordan hung up.”
Incoming phone calls would show up in Jordan Ritter’s phone records. So maybe we would yield something.
“I just wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want to be around the baby, so I waited for an opportunity and sneaked out the back door. I hitched a ride as far as Brotherhood Way, but the people who gave me the ride were going east, so I got out.
“What kind of car, Avis? Did you get the name of a person or a plate number? We’re trying to connect the dots. Get me?” I said.
??
?I wasn’t thinking of anything like that. I’d just run away, and I was still in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t have my handbag, my phone, nothing, and I was starting to bleed again. And then I was bleeding really hard. I didn’t expect that.”
Finally the girl was starting to show signs of distress. She was sweating, wringing her hands. Thinking of her own pain.
Conklin said, “Can you go on, Avis? Or do you need to take a break?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “There’s not much more to tell. I found a rain poncho in the weeds near the lake, so I took off my clothes and put it on. I was feeling faint as I walked and I fell down a few times. A car stopped for me and took me to the hospital. I met you,” she said, trying to give me an evil eye.
“Is Jordan in trouble because I’m underage?”
“Jordan will be fine,” I lied. “The most important thing, Avis. More important even than Jordan Ritter, is to find out where your baby is and if he’s okay.”
That was the truth.
Where was that baby?
If these women were real and not more characters from Avis Richardson’s creative-writing workshop, had they kept him?
Was he in a warm room somewhere covered with a little blue blanket? Did he have a full tummy? A teddy bear? Was he safe?
Or had he been smuggled out of the country with heroin in his colon, gutted as soon as he reached shore?
“How did they pay you?” I asked.
Please, God, let them have given this naive little girl a check.
“They didn’t pay me. I didn’t want the money. That would’ve been illegal, right? To sell my baby? I didn’t sell him. So, what are you going to do now?” Avis asked Conklin.
“Everything is going to be all right,” Conklin told her.
Really? For whom?
Chapter 62
WHEN WE LEFT the Mark Hopkins, Avis was being comforted by her parents. They barely looked up when Conklin said we’d call later, and we left their suite.
My partner and I had a little confab outside my car — or rather, he listened to me rant about the stupidest, most morally challenged girl on the planet — and then we headed out to our respective homes for the night.