Eleventh Hour (7 page)

He rang again.

There was still no answer.

“It’s pretty early,” Dane said. “She’s probably still asleep.”

“Yeah, well, we’re her wake-up call.” Delion pressed his thumb on the bell and kept it there.

Three minutes later, he rang the bell to 4C.

“Yes? May I help you?”

“Very polite, very discreet,” Delion said under his breath, then continued into the intercom, “This is Inspector Vincent Delion of the SFPD. I know I got you up, but I’m a cop and we need to talk to you.

This isn’t a bust, nothing like that. We’re not here to cause you any trouble. We just need to talk.”

A pause, then the buzzer sounded.

The entrance was old-fashioned, dripping with Victoriana, the dark red carpeting rich and deep.

Everything was indeed very upscale.

Dane glanced over at Nick Jones. She looked fascinated. Must be her first time in a hooker’s nest.

Come to think about it, it was his first time, too. Business, he thought, stroking his hand over the beautifully carved newel post on the stairs, was good.

They walked up one flight of stairs, turned right. The lush red carpeting continued. There was wainscoting along the walls of the wide corridor, and well-executed watercolors of the Bay were hung along the walls.

A woman in a lovely black kimono stood in the open doorway to 4C. She was young, with artfully mussed long black hair tossed over one shoulder. She wore almost no makeup. Delion looked at her, appreciated her, and guessed that five hundred bucks wasn’t out of the question.

“Ms. . . . ?”

“Elaine Books. What do you want? Hey, she isn’t a cop, she’s homeless. I know . . . Valerie told me about you, told me you sort of hid in the shadows whenever somebody came around, that you’d only talk to this priest. And you, you’re no local, just look at those wing tips; they’re a cut above what local guys wear. What are you, a lawyer? What’s going on here?”

Delion said, “They’re with me, no problem. You really think his shoes look more expensive than mine?

Nah, forget it. We need to speak to Valerie Striker, your neighbor in 4B, but she’s not answering her doorbell. You seen her this morning?”

“No.” Ms. Books frowned, tapped her lovely French manicure against the door frame. “You know, I haven’t seen Valerie in a couple of days. What’s going on with her?”

Dane said very slowly, “I really don’t like the sound of this, Delion.”

Delion said, “Right. Ms. Books, we’d like you to come next door with us, watch us open the door, okay?”

“Oh God, you think something’s happened to Valerie, don’t you?”

“Hopefully not, but we’d like you to verify that we’re concerned, and that’s why we’re going in.”

Delion knocked on 4B. There was no answer. He pressed his ear to the door. “Nothing,” he said.

Delion put his shoulder to the door of 4B and pushed hard. Nothing happened. “Well made, solid wood, I should have guessed,” he said. Both he and Dane backed up, then slammed their shoulders into the door. It flew inward, crashing against the inside wall.

A beautiful apartment, Nick thought, looking past them, all light and airy, so many windows, sunlight flooding in.

Where was Valerie Striker?

Dane stopped suddenly. He became very still. He turned, said very low, his voice urgent, “Ms. Jones, please stay right here. Thank you, Ms. Books. We’ll take it from here.”

“Hey, what’s that smell?” Elaine Books jerked her head back. “Oh God, oh God.”

“Stay back,” Delion said. He turned to Dane. “Keep them here, all right?”

But it was too late. Before Dane could force Elaine Books and Nick Jones back out of the apartment, Nick saw two white legs sticking out from behind the living room sofa, a really pretty sofa, all white with even whiter pillows strewn across it. All over that white were dark stains, as if someone had dipped a hand into a paint can and just sprinkled the paint everywhere.

“Oh no,” Nick said. “It’s not paint, is it?”

“No,” Dane said, “it’s not. Don’t move from this spot, you understand me?”

Delion went behind the sofa and knelt down. When he straightened, he looked hard, sad, and angry.

“I think we’ve found Valerie Striker. She’s been garroted. I’d say she’s dead a couple of days at least.”

He nodded to Dane, who herded the two women back into the hallway. He heard Delion on the phone, speaking to the paramedics.

Elaine Books leaned against the corridor wall and started crying. “I’m so sorry,” Nick said. “She was your friend. I’m so very sorry. I liked her. She was kind to me, despite—despite how I look.” Very slowly, Nick drew the woman into her arms and let her cry on her shoulder.

Nick looked up at Dane. “He killed her. He must have seen her, worried that when she found out about Father Michael Joseph’s murder, she’d remember seeing him. He either knew who she was or he found out, came here sometime during the night on Sunday and killed her. That’s exactly what happened, isn’t it?”

Dane nodded. “Yes, that’s probably right.”

Elaine Books continued to weep, softly now, her head still on Nick Jones’s shoulder.

Valerie Striker was dead. Chances were that she hadn’t seen a thing, but that hadn’t mattered. She couldn’t tell them anything now. Nick closed her eyes as she rocked Elaine Books against her and thought, I’m the one who’s supposed to be dead, not her. If only she’d waited for the cops, she would have remembered to tell them about seeing Valerie Striker, and they would have come here, maybe before the killer did, and they could have saved her.

It was her fault.

EIGHT

“She can’t stay in the shelter,” Dane said. “Do you have a safe house where we can stash her?”

“Yeah,” Delion said, “but I don’t know if the lieutenant will approve it for her. There’s no real threat of danger here.”

“You’re wrong, Delion. When our guy sees this description—and I bet he will—he’ll try to find out about the person who gave it, knowing that if he’s ever caught, she can identify him. She’d be a sitting duck at the shelter.”

“If she would just tell us her real name and address, we could send her little ass home.”

Dane looked over toward the small kitchen where Ms. Nick Jones stood waving a tea bag in a paper cup of hot water, the frayed cuffs of her thick red sweater falling over her fingers. He could still see the tear streaks on her cheeks.

“Look, Dane,” Delion said, “you’re a cop. You know that since she isn’t a teenage runaway, it means she’s running from something or someone. That, or she’s a druggie—that’s the most likely. You notice she’s wearing all those sweaters? She’s probably hiding needle tracks on her arms.

“Maybe she’s wearing them to keep warm. Whatever, it’s unfortunate because our Ms. Jones seems bright and speaks well. She’s well educated. It was just her bad luck that she was in Saint Bartholomew’

s on Sunday night, that is, if you believe the story she told us about why she was actually there.”

Dane didn’t say anything, kept looking at Nick Jones. “She has very nice teeth,” he said. “Good dental hygiene.”

“Yeah, I noticed. And that means she hasn’t been on the street all that long. What? A couple of weeks?

Not a month, I’ll bet. She doesn’t smell and her clothes aren’t stiff with dirt.”

“No.”

“All right, Dane, I’ll ask the lieutenant. Now, we’ve got four murders, all possibly committed by the same perp. We have a pretty fair description of him. Now we need to figure out why he did this.”

“Well, we think he meant to do the first three—the old woman, the gay activist, and finally, my brother.

Valerie Striker was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yes, and once we have the why, we’ll have him. Let’s go meet with the chief, tell him about Valerie Striker. It could have been one of her johns that killed her.”

“You don’t believe that for a second.”

“All right, I don’t.”

“If the ME pins her murder down to sometime Sunday night, then we know with about ninety-eight percent certainty that the same guy killed her,” Dane said. “You go see the chief. I’ll speak some more with Ms. Jones.”

“You know, I’ve always wondered why folks can’t come up with better aliases. Jones, for God’s sake.”

“Nick is her real first name though,” Dane said. “But it’s not short for Nicole.”

“You picked up on that lie as well, huh?”

“Oh yes. I wonder what it really is.”

A few minutes later, Dane strolled over to the small kitchen. The single donut was gone. Finally tossed?

Or was Ms. Jones so hungry that she ate it? He hoped she hadn’t. From the looks of that critter, it would have given a buffalo food poisoning.

“Would you like some peanuts? Inspector Delion tells me that’s the snack of choice here.”

“But I just saw one of the men snag a donut that looked like it died last week.”

Good, she hadn’t eaten it.

“At least the Medical Examiner is close. Peanuts?”

She shook her head and kept waving the tea bag in the water.

“It’s nearly black.”

“I like tea strong,” she said, but pulled out the bag and tossed it in the open trash bin. “It’s hard to get really strong tea unless you do it yourself.”

“You know I’m Father Michael Joseph’s brother, Dane Carver. There’s something else, something I don

’t think you’ve caught on to yet. I’m also a special agent with the FBI.”

She dropped the cup. It splattered hot tea all over her, him, and the Virginia peanuts.

“Oh no, look what I’ve done. Oh no.” She was grabbing paper towels, wiping him down, finally on her knees, wiping up the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he said, pulled off another paper towel and joined her. “It’s all right, Nick. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“Not your fault,” she said, staring down at that towel wet through with tea now.

“Hey,” an inspector said, coming around the corner, “who took that last donut?”

Dane laughed, just couldn’t help it. She didn’t.

“No can do,” Lieutenant Purcell said, standing in her doorway. “No clear and present danger to her. You know that our budget’s stretched to the limit, Delion. I’m sorry, but she’s on her own.”

Dane wondered if it was because she was homeless, and had less worth than someone who had a job and a bit of standing in the community. He didn’t say anything. He’d already known the answer would be no and he’d also known what he was going to do.

He hadn’t let Nick Jones out of his sight. She looked, quite simply, like she was ready to run. After he left the lieutenant, he went back to the small kitchen. She was still wiping up tea from the counter. “

Enough,” he said, took her arm, and guided her over to Delion’s desk. Delion was in the lieutenant’s office. Dane could see him gesticulating through the glass windows. He sat her down, came down beside her on his haunches. “Okay, tell me why you freaked out when I told you I was FBI.”

“It was just a surprise, that’s all. Your brother is a priest. You’re at the other end of the spectrum.”

She’d had time to come up with an answer, not a bad one either.

“That’s true. What’s your real name, Nick?”

“My name is Nick Jones. Just look in the phone book, you’ll see there are tons of Joneses. Lots more Joneses than Carvers, that’s for sure.”

“How long have you been in San Francisco?”

“Not all that long.”

“Two, three weeks?”

“Something like that. Two and a half weeks.”

“Where did you come from?”

She just shrugged. “Here and there. I like to travel a lot. But it’s winter, so it’s best to stay in cities that don’t get all that cold.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

She didn’t say a thing, just looked down at her hands, chapped and dry, and her ragged fingernails. Dane sat back in the side chair, crossed his arms over his chest. Finally, she said, “We had a deal here. No questions about me. You got that, Agent Carver? No questions or I’m out of here. I figure you need me, so leave it alone. All right?”

“It’s too bad you feel that way,” Dane said. “I have the FBI behind me, and you knew my brother. If you

’re in trouble, I can help you.”

Her head came up with that. She seemed stiff all over, but it was hard to tell with all those layers she was wearing. She said, “It’s your choice, Agent Carver.”

“All right.”

“What you need to do is find this man who killed Father Michael Joseph. Is there a death penalty in California?”

“Yes.”

“Good. He deserves to die. I was very fond of Father Michael Joseph, even though I only knew him for a short time. He cared about all of us, didn’t matter if you were rich or poor or a basically shitty person, he still cared.”

Delion came up, shaking his head at Dane. “I had to try again. No go.”

Dane said, “Inspector Delion means that there isn’t a safe house for you. Given that I firmly believe you need to be kept out of harm’s way, I’m taking you with me, back to my hotel. You’ll stay with me until we find this guy.”

“You’re nuts,” Nick said. “I’m homeless. No hotel would even let me through the door. Look at me, for God’s sake. I look like what I am. Besides, I don’t want to stay at a hotel. I’m just fine where I am.”

Delion said, “The FBI undoubtedly has a safe house in the area.”

“Nope, I don’t want to involve them in this. Trust me, Delion, you don’t either.”

“The camel’s-nose-under-the-tent sort of thing? That’s fine by me. We don’t want Ms. Jones to end up like Valerie Striker. I’m heading to a meeting with the chief now. We’re organizing a task force, then we’

ll have more than enough manpower of our own to catch this creep.”

Dane waited to say anything else until Delion was out of earshot. “You’re safe for the moment. But, Ms.

Jones, when the guy who murdered my brother and three other people realizes his description is out there, you know as well as I do that he’ll try to hunt you down. You want to be in that shelter when you hear his footsteps coming up the stairs? There isn’t anyone there who could help you.”

She went nearly as white as his shirt. “I’ll leave San Francisco, go south.”

“No, going on the run isn’t the answer. If you force us to, we’ll arrest you as a material witness.”