4th of July (11 page)

“You’re too modest, Bob.” I waved my hand, indicating the photos hanging on the walls of Bob shaking hands with the governor and other dignitaries. There were also some neatly framed parchment awards.

“Oh, those,” Bob said, shrugging again. “Well, I do some pro bono work as a guardian ad litem for abused or neglected kids. You know, representing them in court, making sure that their rights are protected.”

“Very commendable,” I said. I was starting to warm up to this very likable guy, and I noticed that he was getting more comfortable with me. He hadn’t stuttered since the coffee incident.

Bob leaned back in his chair and pointed to a photo of an award ceremony in the town hall. Bob shaking hands with someone who was handing him a plaque.

“See this guy?” he asked, indicating a dapper man sitting with a line of others on the stage. “Ray Whittaker. He and his wife, Molly, lived in LA, but they summered here. Murdered in their beds a couple of years ago. Lindsay, do you know that all these people were whipped and slashed to death?”

“I’d heard,” I said. I zoned out for a minute as my brain grappled with the fact of yet another set of murders a couple years ago. What did the whippings mean? How long had the killer been working?

When I tuned back in, Bob was still talking about the Whittakers.

“. . . folksy, real nice people. He was a photographer and she was a bit player in Hollywood. It makes no sense. These were all good people, and it’s tragic that the kids end up in foster homes or with relatives they hardly know. I worry about the kids.” He shook his head and sighed. “I try to leave this kind of stuff at the office at the end of the day, but it never really works.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “If you’ve got a few minutes, I’ll tell you a story that I’ve been bringing home from the office for the past ten years.”

BOB GOT UP AND walked over to a Mr. Coffee sitting on a filing cabinet. He poured us each a cup of coffee.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” he said. “I don’t like Starbucks prices.” He smiled over at me. “Or that whole yuppie-on-the-go scene.”

Over tepid coffee with powdered milk, I told Bob about my first homicide case.

“We found him in a squalid hotel in the Mission District. I’d seen corpses before, but I was unprepared for this, Bob. He was young—somewhere between seventeen and twenty-one—and when I walked into the room I found him lying spread-eagled on his back, decomposing in a congealed pool of his own blood. Flies were all over him. A shimmering blanket of flies.”

My throat closed up as the image came flooding back; it was as clear as if I were standing in that hotel room right now, thinking, Oh, God, get me out of here. I sipped at the terrible coffee until I could speak again.

“He was wearing only two items of clothing: an ordinary Hanes tube sock, which was identical to hundreds of thousands that were sold all across the country that year, and a T-shirt from the Distillery. You know the place?”

Bob nodded. “I’ll bet every tourist passing through Half Moon Bay since 1930 has eaten there.”

“Yeah. Hell of a clue.”

“How did he die?”

“Throat slashed with a knife. And there were stripes, like lash marks, across his buttocks. Sound familiar?”

Bob nodded again. He was listening intently, so I continued. I told him that we’d canvassed the city and Half Moon Bay for weeks.

“No one knew the victim, Bob. His prints weren’t on file, and the room he died in was so dirty, it was a classic case of instant cross-contamination. We were utterly clueless.

“No one ever came forward to claim the body. It’s not so uncommon; we already had twenty-three unclaimed John Does that year. But I still remember the innocence of his young face. He had blue eyes,” I said. “Light red hair. And now, all these years later, more murders with the same signature.”

“You know what feels really weird, Lindsay? To think that this killer could be someone who lives in this town —”

The phone rang, cutting Bob off midsentence.

“Robert Hinton,” he said.

In the next instant, the color drained from his face. There was silence, punctuated by Bob saying, “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” Then he said, “Thanks for letting me know,” and hung up.

“A friend of mine who works at the Gazette,” he explained. “Ben O’Malley’s body was found by some kids hiking in the woods.”

JAKE DALTRY’S PARENTS LIVED in a housing development in Palo Alto, a thirty-minute drive southeast of Half Moon Bay. I parked the Explorer on the street in front of their cream-colored raised ranch, one of a dozen like it on Brighton Street.

A portly, unkempt man with gray flyaway hair, wearing a flannel shirt and blue drawstring pants, answered the door.

“Mr. Richard Daltry?”

“We don’t want any,” he said, and slammed the door. I’ve come back from bigger slams than that, buster. I took out my badge and rang the bell again. This time a small woman with hennaed hair and gray roots, wearing a bunny-print housedress, opened the door.

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer, SFPD,” I said, showing her my badge. “I’m investigating a homicide case that’s been in our cold-case files.”

“And what’s that got to do with us?”

“I think there may be similarities between my old case and the deaths of Jake and Alice Daltry.”

“I’m Agnes, Jake’s mother,” she said, opening the door. “Please forgive my husband. We’ve been under a terrible strain. The press is just awful.”

I followed the elderly woman into a house that smelled of Lemon Pledge and a kitchen that didn’t seem to have changed since Hinckley shot Reagan. We sat at a red Formica table, and I could see the backyard through the window. Two little boys played with trucks in a sandbox.

“My poor grandsons,” said Mrs. Daltry. “Why did this happen?”

Agnes Daltry’s heartbreak was written on her deeply lined face, her stooped shoulders. I could see how much she needed someone to talk to who hadn’t heard it all before.

“Tell me what happened,” I urged her. “Tell me everything you know.”

“Jake was a wild child,” she said. “Not bad, you understand, but headstrong. When he met Alice, he grew up overnight. They were so much in love and wanted children so badly. When the boys were born, Jake vowed to be a man they could respect. He loved those boys and, Lieutenant, he lived up to that promise. He was such a good man, and he and Alice had such a good marriage—oh.”

She put her hand over her heart and shook her head miserably. She couldn’t go on and she hadn’t talked about the murders at all.

Agnes looked down at the table as her husband came through the kitchen. He glared at me, took a beer out of the refrigerator, slammed the door shut, and left the room.

“Richard is still angry at me,” she said.

“Why is that, Agnes?”

“I did a bad thing.”

I was almost desperate to know. I put my hand on her bare arm, and at my touch, tears rose in her eyes.

“Tell me,” I said softly. She grabbed tissues out of a box and pressed them to her eyes.

“I was going to pick up the boys at school,” she said. “I stopped off at Jake and Alice’s house first to see if they needed milk or juice. Jake was naked, lying dead in the foyer. Alice was on the stairs.”

I stared at Agnes, urging her on with my eyes.

“I cleaned up the blood,” Agnes said with a sigh. She looked at me as if she expected to be whipped herself. “I dressed them. I didn’t want anyone to see them that way.”

“You destroyed the crime scene,” I said.

“I didn’t want the boys to see all that blood.”

I WOULDN’T HAVE DONE this a month ago. I would’ve been too busy thinking about the job I had to do. I stood and I opened my arms to Agnes Daltry.

She put her head against my shoulder and cried as though she would never stop. I understood now. Agnes wasn’t getting the comfort she needed from her husband. Her shoulders shook so hard, I could feel her pain as if I knew her, as if I had loved her family as much as she did.

Agnes’s grief moved me so much that I was thrown back into the loneliness of losing people I had loved: my mom, Chris, Jill.

I heard the distant sound of the doorbell. I was still holding Agnes when her husband came back into the kitchen.

“Someone’s here to see you,” he said, his anger coming off his body like a sour smell.

“To see me?”

The man waiting in the living room was a study in dung brown: brown sport jacket and pants, brown-striped tie. He had brown hair, a thick brown mustache, and hard brown eyes.

But his face was red. He looked furious.

“Lieutenant Boxer? I’m Peter Stark, chief of police, Half Moon Bay. You need to come with me.”

I PARKED THE EXPLORER in the “guest” spot outside the gray-shingled barracks-style police station. Chief Stark got out of his vehicle and crunched across the gravel toward the building without once looking back to see if I was following him.

So much for professional courtesy.

The first thing I noticed inside the chief’s office was the framed motto behind his desk: Do the right thing and do it well. Then I took in the mess: piles of papers over every surface, old fax and copy machines, cockeyed, dusty photos on the wall of Stark posing with dead animals. Half a cheese sandwich on a file cabinet.

The chief took off his jacket, exposing a massive chest and monster-size arms. He hung the jacket on a hook behind the door.

“Sit down, Lieutenant. I keep hearing about you,” said the chief, riffling through a stack of phone messages. He hadn’t given me eye contact since the Daltry house. I took a motorcycle helmet off a side chair, put it on the floor, and sat down.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“Sorry?”

“What the hell gives you the right to come into my backyard and start poking around?” he said, drilling me with his eyes. “You’re on restricted duty, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”

“With all due respect, Chief, I don’t get your point.”

“Don’t screw with me, Boxer. Your rep as a loose cannon precedes you. Maybe you shot those kids without cause —”

“Hey, look —”

“Maybe you got scared, lost your nerve, whatever. And that would make you a dangerous cop. Get that?”

I got the message, all right. The guy outranked me, and a report from him that I had violated police procedures or disobeyed direct orders could hurt me. Still, I kept my expression neutral.

“I think these recent murders link up with an old homicide of mine,” I said. “The killer’s signature looks the same. We might be able to help each other.”

“Don’t use the we word with me, Boxer. You’re benched. Don’t mess with my crime scenes. Leave my witnesses alone. Take some walks. Read a book. Get a grip. Whatever. Just stay out of my hair.”

When I spoke again, my voice was so taut an aerialist could’ve cartwheeled across it to the other side of the room.

“You know, Chief, in your place, all I’d be thinking about is this psychopath wandering your streets. Thinking, How can I shut him down for good? I might even welcome a decorated homicide inspector who wanted to help out. But I guess we think differently.”

My little speech set the chief back a blink or two, so I seized the opportunity to get out with my dignity.

“You know how to reach me,” I said, and marched out of the police station.

I could almost hear my lawyer whispering in my ear. Relax. Keep a low profile. Nuts, Yuki. Why not advise me to take up the harp?

I revved the engine and peeled out of the parking lot.

I WAS DRIVING ALONG Main Street, muttering under my breath, thinking up several new things I wish I’d said to the chief, when I noticed that my gas gauge light was practically screaming, Lindsay! You’re out of gas!

I pulled into the Man in the Moon, ran the Explorer over the air bell, and, when Keith didn’t appear, walked across the asphalt apron into the depths of his shop.

The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” billowed out when I opened the door to the repair bay.

On the wall to my right was a calendar featuring Miss June wearing nothing but a wave in her hair. Above her was a splendid sight: rare and beautiful hood ornaments from Bentleys, Jags, and Maseratis, mounted on lacquered blocks of wood, like trophies. Curled inside a tire was a fat orange tabby cat having a snooze.

I admired the red Porsche parked in the bay and addressed Keith’s jeans and work boots in the pit below.

“Nice ride,” I said.

Keith ducked out from under the car, a smile already lighting his grease-streaked face.

“Isn’t it, though?” He climbed out of the pit, wiped his hands on a rag, and turned down the music. “So, Lindsay. You having trouble with that Bonneville?”

“Not at all. I replaced the alternator and the plugs. Engine purrs like this guy.”

“This’s Hairball,” Keith told me, scratching the cat under the chin. “My attack cat. He rode in on the carburetor of a pickup truck a couple of years ago.”

“Youch.”

“All the way from Encino. Burned his paws, but he’s good as new now, aren’t you, buddy?”

Keith asked if I needed gas, and I said that I did. We walked together into the soft afternoon sunshine.

“I caught you on TV last night,” Keith told me as high-test gurgled into the Explorer’s capacious tank.

“You did not.”

“No, I did. Your attorney was on the news, and they showed a picture of you in your blues,” he said, grinning at me. “You really are a cop.”

“You didn’t believe me?”

The kid shrugged winningly. “I pretty much believed you. But it was okay either way, Lindsay. Either you were a cop or you just had a great line.”

I hooted, and Keith’s face crinkled in laughter. After a bit, I told him about the Cabot case—just the overview, absent the grief and the gore. Keith was supportive and a damned sight more fun to talk to than Chief Stark. Hell, I was even enjoying his attention. Brad Pitt, right?