Yuki hooked her glossy black hair behind her ears, dialed the phone, and spoke to several people before she got Judge Stephen Rubenstein on the line.
Yuki explained to the judge precisely and urgently that a credible tip had come in referring to a suspicious location adjoining the Ellsworth house. She told Rubenstein that this location had not been included in the original search warrant because the authorities hadn’t realized that the two properties were connected.
Yuki stopped talking and listened. She spoke, apologized for interrupting, and listened some more.
She signaled to me to bring my chair closer, which I did, then Yuki held out her phone so that I could hear the judge.
“Let me get this straight. You want me to expand the search warrant because you got an anonymous tip that there’s some evidence — you can’t even tell me exactly what. And based on that, you want to go rummaging around in this other house, which isn’t even the crime scene?”
“Yes, Your Honor, but a person of interest owns the entire property. Number six is in close proximity to the crime scene, almost touching it.”
“Oh, that’s supposed to make a difference? Ms. Castellano, go Google the Fourth Amendment and brush up on it. Highlight the part about unreasonable search. No warrants shall be issued without a probable cause.”
“Okay, Your Honor. Thanks anyway.”
Yuki put down the phone and said to me, “So maybe if I’d told him about the numerology, it would’ve helped us,” she said.
“You never know.”
Yuki laughed. “I’m sorry, Linds.”
If I wanted to get into 6 Ellsworth Place, and I did, I had to call Harry Chandler and ask permission.
I used Yuki’s phone and got him on the first try. I stopped short of begging, but I was extra nice. At first.
Chandler said, “Why should I let you track your gum-shoes through my property again?”
“Mr. Chandler, it’s no accident that those heads were buried in your backyard. Someone wants you to be tried for murder again. But until we find that someone, you’re our primary suspect. Do you understand?”
Chapter 76
THE FOG FRIZZED my hair as Conklin, Cindy, and I huddled together on Ellsworth Place. The street was short and narrow, kind of romantic, and unusual in that it met up with Pierce at one end, Green on the other, forming a right triangle.
The west side of Ellsworth was lined with newer houses in various styles. The houses across the street, the ones that were part of the Ellsworth compound, were all no-frills brick, built as servants’ quarters in the late 1890s at the same time the main house was constructed. I could almost hear the sound of horses pulling buggies up the street.
While I gazed around, Conklin tightened the straps on Cindy’s Kevlar vest, helped her into an SFPD windbreaker.
I waited until Cindy was cinched up, then gave her a summary of Harry Chandler’s minor houses.
“Nicole Worley, the caretakers’ daughter, lives in number two. She’s in her midtwenties, works in animal rescue. Stays here to keep an eye on her folks. Harry’s driver, T. Lawrence Oliver, lives in number four, rent free. It’s an employment perk. Numbers six and eight had tenants at one time but are empty now.”
Conklin added, “Three of these houses don’t have any windows facing the garden in back; one of them has a single window facing it. Number six. When I was in the garden the first time, I noticed that window. Nicole Worley told me that the building was boarded up. If someone is squatting there, he could be our perp.”
As we talked, the fine mist turned to rain.
We discussed who was going to do what. Conklin asked Cindy to get back into the car until we could clear the scene. She reluctantly agreed, then Conklin and I went up the steps to the front door.
I knocked, Conklin called out, and then I rapped on the door with the tarnished brass knocker. When no one answered, Conklin tried turning the knob, but it was frozen solid, the door possibly bolted from the inside.
After a few words with Cindy through the car window, we headed for the backyard and bushwhacked through the waist-high weeds and thistles that had grown thickly between numbers 4 and 6.
The rear aspect of the brick houses was forbidding. Each blind, windowless wall had a back door and a set of steps descending from it, and only a few feet in front of those steps was the looming ten-foot-high brick wall that blocked the view of the garden.
The back doors of 6 and 8 were boarded up, but as I neared number 6, I noticed that weeds had been pulled from around the steps and thrown off to the side. I poked around a little more, saw that the sheet of plywood at the door wasn’t nailed to the frame. It was simply leaning against it.
“Someone’s been in and out of here recently,” I said.
Conklin went up the steps and pulled the plywood away from the door, then banged on the door with his fist.
“Police. Open up,” Conklin said. “Or we’re coming in.”
Chapter 77
NO SOONER HAD Conklin opened the door than I heard someone coming through the weeds behind me. I whipped around to see Cindy, her chin stuck out, rain streaming off her face.
“I need to be here. I can’t cover this story from the car.”
“This story could be nothing,” I hissed to my bulldog friend. “Despite your breaking the da Vinci code, this could be an empty house and a dead end —”
“I know.”
“— or it could be dangerous,” I said.
“I’ll watch my step.”
“Could be a gang of crackheads living in here.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gone into a crack house. Anyway, you’re both armed.”
It was futile, but I looked at my partner and said, “Please tell her, Rich.”
He put up his hands. “Not me.”
“If anything happens to you,” I said to Cindy, “Rich and I are going to be fired. Me first, of course. And then we’re both going to hate ourselves forever.”
Cindy laughed. “Give me a break.”
This was Cindy: no gun, no training, no official status, and yet the only way to stop her was to get a circus elephant to sit on her chest.
I wasn’t kidding about the consequences of letting Cindy into the house, but I was done arguing. Conklin pulled his gun and went in through the doorway. I let Cindy follow him and I brought up the rear.
The hallway was lit by the dull light coming in through the open back door. There was a narrow wooden staircase just ahead of us, and the floor above us was dark.
Conklin and I turned on our flashlights and began to climb. The stairwell was clean, odor-free, and I didn’t see graffiti, rags, needles, or any sign of squatters or druggies. In fact, it looked as though it had recently been swept.
We kept moving onward and upward, and when we got to the third-floor landing, I heard the faintest of sounds.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“Beethoven,” said Cindy. “Sixth Symphony.”
“How do you know that?”
“Sixth. Get it? Another six. And this particular symphony — I think it’s about gardens. Don’t you hate it when I’m right?” she said, grinning.
I said, “Shhh. Keep your eyes open.”
We rounded the next flight, and the next, the music getting louder as we climbed. We came to the sixth-floor landing and faced the three doors on that level.
One was marked F, for front, I assumed. One was marked WASHROOM, and the third door had a note taped under the letter R, for rear.
Conklin shone his light on the door and I moved in so that I could read the handwritten notice: Genius at Work. Do Not Disturb.
Chapter 78
I’M NOT SUPERSTITIOUS, but seriously, there were too many sixes in this deal. Number 6 Ellsworth, Beethoven’s Sixth, and now the trail of sixes that ended on the sixth floor.
Six-six-six was an unlucky number, right? So what kind of nightmare was this “genius at work”?
I put Cindy behind me as Conklin
knocked on the door and said, “Open up. This is the police.”
The music was turned off, then heavy footsteps came toward the threshold. A dark eye stared through the peephole.
A chain rattled and the doorknob turned, and then, standing in the doorway, actually filling it, was a very tall white woman, maybe six two, apparently unarmed. She was wearing a long and well-worn black velvet skirt and a knit gray top with batwing sleeves. Her gray-blond hair was twisted up in a topknot. She smiled broadly.
“Oh, hello! I know who you are. I’m Connie Kerr. Come in.”
I think maybe my mouth actually dropped open. I knew her. I didn’t know her personally, but about twenty years ago, Constance Kerr had been a kind of celebrity on the pro tennis circuit. She’d been a lanky girl with a powerful serve and a very long stride.
Conklin said his name and mine, introduced Cindy Thomas without identifying her role in this escapade, and all three of us stepped into Constance Kerr’s home.
It was a garret, a hidey-hole under the eaves of this Victorian house. The room had odd angles, and a closet and a small kitchen had been sectioned out of the ten-by-twelve-foot room. A fold-out bed was put up against the center of the longest wall, and there was a desk under the one window. A laptop computer was open on the desk and a three-foot-high stack of yellow manuscript boxes stood on the floor.
A heavy gray blanket was affixed to the top of the window frame and hung down over the glass, making a dense, light-blocking curtain.
I moved the blanket aside.
I could see the trophy garden and the back of the Ellsworth mansion, including the door that led from the kitchen and out to the brick patio where six days ago I’d seen a pair of skulls displayed like a monstrous art project.
The former tennis star was speaking to Conklin. “I watched you take charge of the crime scene, of course. I enjoyed that very much. I know you’re trying to help Harry.”
There was standing room only in Connie Kerr’s little flat, but she had the air of a Nob Hill dowager holding a tea party.
“May I get you refreshments?” she said.
Chapter 79
WE TURNED DOWN the offer of refreshments and arrayed ourselves around the small room.
I leaned against the kitchenette counter, Cindy grabbed the only chair, and Conklin took up a position against the door. Connie Kerr stood like a flagpole at the center of the room.
“How can I help you?” she said.
“Harry Chandler,” I said. “How do you know him?”
“Oh, well. Harry. I was his girlfriend a long time ago. He was a star and I was blinded by his light. It was just a fling,” she said, laughing, “but I really had fun and I have no regrets.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Don’t hold me to the exact day, but I’m sure I haven’t seen him in twenty years or more.”
“But Harry lets you live here?”
“He doesn’t know that I’m here. But he wouldn’t mind. I’m no trouble. I live like a little mouse.” She laughed again, a shrill, crazy kind of laugh. “I’m working on a book, you know. I’ve written ten novels so far and I’ve just started another. They’re thrillers. Murder mysteries.”
“Do you use your real name?”
Cindy asked. “Cindy, is it? I’ll use my name when I’m published. I think the story I’m working on now has a real chance of getting into print.”
Connie Kerr took us on a tour of her fairly wild imagination, showing us loosely connected plot diagrams that she’d drawn on brown butcher’s paper and taped to the walls.
As she talked about her characters, she used broad gestures, did pirouettes, clasped her hands to her chest as though she were still a young girl and not a fifty-year-old squatter in someone’s abandoned digs.
Had this eccentric mystery writer witnessed a crime through her window? Or had she gone beyond writing about murder and actually committed it?
“What can you tell us about the heads we found in the garden?” I asked.
“I know that they make a whopping good mystery,” she said.
She was grinning and clapping her hands when my partner broke her mood.
“We don’t like mysteries,” Conklin said. “Ms. Kerr, here’s the thing. We’re going to need you to come with us down to the Hall and make a statement. Officially.”
Kerr’s radiant smile left her face. “Oh no. I really can’t leave the house. I never do.”
“You never go outside?” Conklin asked.
Kerr shook her head vigorously.
“How do you get food?”
“A friend brings me what I need and leaves it for me on the back steps.”
“Who is this friend?”
“I don’t have to say.”
“Let me put it another way. Can this friend vouch for your whereabouts last weekend?” I asked her.
“You don’t understand. I live alone. Nobody ever sees me. You’re the first guests I’ve had here — ever.”
Conklin said, “We’ve got seven dead people, Ms. Kerr. Not fiction. Truth. I think you know what happened to them.”
“I did nothing. I saw nothing. What can I say to make you believe me? I’m the last person you should ever suspect, Mr. Conklin.”
Conklin said, “Do you have a coat?”
“A coat?”
“Here,” he said, taking off his jacket and putting it over her shoulders. “It’s raining outside.”
Chapter 80
CONSTANCE KERR SAT at the table in the interrogation room. She was tense, had her arms wrapped across her chest; she seemed like a trapped cat waiting for the door to crack open so that she could dart the hell out.
We knew very little about Kerr. She’d left the world stage long ago and could be anybody now: a certifiable dingbat, a witness, a killer, or all of the above.
I didn’t believe that she knew nothing about the crimes committed at the Ellsworth compound, and we were going to try to hold her until she told us something we could believe.
Conklin had a rapport with Kerr, so I just sat back and watched, thinking what a good guy he was and also that he was a really good cop.
He said, “Connie, look at me. I know you want to help us find out who did this heinous stuff at the Ellsworth compound.”
“If only I could. Honestly. The first time I knew anything was wrong was when the police showed up. But, Inspector Conklin, I read on the Internet about the index cards and I was struck by the number. Six hundred thirteen!”
“Did you write that number, Connie? If you did and can tell me what it means, that would be tremendous.”
“No, no, but six hundred and thirteen is verging on a Guinness world record for a serial killer. Elizabeth Báthory, the bloody lady of Cachtice, had over six hundred girls killed in her castle in Hungary. The exact number is uncertain. Well, it happened in the early sixteen hundreds …”
“Interesting. But I’m thinking four-hundred-year-old murders aren’t that relevant to our current investigation.”
He gave her a nice smile and she responded earnestly.
“No, really. This could be the clue you’ve been waiting for. Please check it out.”
I couldn’t get a handle on Kerr’s mental state. Was she crazy? Or crazy like a fox? I needed to know.
I told Conklin that I’d be back in a minute, and when I was outside the room, I called psychologist Dr. Frank Cisco. Cisco answered his phone, said he was in the building and that he’d come upstairs. A few minutes later, we met in the stairwell.
Frank Cisco was a consultant to the SFPD, on call when a cop was in trouble, and he advised the DA’s office as well. He was a big man with a lot of thick white hair. Today he was wearing a busy plaid sports jacket, gray slacks, and pink orthopedic shoes.
Frank was a sweet man, gave you the feeling you could say anything to him in confidence. He hugged me and said, “What’s new, Lindsay?”
“A ton,” I said, hugging him back.
A few days ago, I had called Cisco
and asked him to review our short list of cops who were considered possible suspects in the vigilante-cop case. I didn’t ask him to leak confidential information, just to look at the personnel files and let us know which cops, in his opinion, were likely to go on a shooting spree.
He’d said it would be unethical for him to finger suspects based on a hunch. Fine. I got it.
Now I said, “Frank, this isn’t about the shooter cop. I need your help on a different case altogether.”
He looked relieved, and as we walked back to the interrogation rooms, I told him what little I knew about Constance Kerr.
Chapter 81
I KNOCKED ON the door to Interview 1 and when Conklin stepped outside, I asked him to get Kerr to go through the whole story again for Frank’s benefit.
Frank and I went into the observation room and watched the interview.
Connie asked Conklin, “When can I go home?”
Conklin said, “I just want to make sure I’ve got your story straight.”
Kerr told the story again, but this time she added new details about the morning the heads were found: her routine on awakening, her rituals and habits, how she’d made up the wall bed and brewed a special Manchurian tea. Finally she got to the part where she heard the sirens and peeked through her back window.
Then, weirdly, she began telling the story from the third-person point of view.
“She saw the caretakers and the police standing outside the back door and the skulls were there and she thought, Mercy. This is a day like no other.”
“What are you doing, Connie?” Conklin asked her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who’s the she who thought the day was like no other?”
“I was trying it on as if Emma had seen it — you know, Inspector, the character in my current work. Emma is very perceptive, but naturally she doesn’t know any more than I do. I would love to hear your theory of the case. I think you could really help me with my book.”