Everyone Pays (16 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

DONNER

We got to the apartment on Montgomery as fast as we could find a semilegitimate place to park our car. Police don’t have to worry about the street signs, but half of San Francisco sidewalks are driveways—ones you never know when people will need in or out of. It’s not good PR to block people in or out. We want to avoid impeding the flow of traffic too, so we do our best to find a fire hydrant or some other semireasonable spot. On these tight streets in North Beach, that wasn’t easy. But it wasn’t as hard as finding civilian parking either.

We buzzed our way in the front door of a three-story unit with six apartments, one of many in the area. When we got up to the third floor, a man with a beard and curly pulled-back hair greeted us. He wore green khakis and a striped shirt tucked in with a tan leather belt.

“Jimmy Weber,” he said, extending his hand.

I shook it and explained who we were, asked him if he wouldn’t mind answering a few questions.

“The other officers were here already,” he said. “I really just called this in to file a police report for insurance. Like I told them, nothing was taken.”

“Don’t you think that’s odd?”

He twisted his face like I’d surprised him.

I kept on. “We know you already gave a statement, but we think it’s possible this break-in might have a connection to another case we’re working.”

“I don’t understand. You said you’re homicide. Can somebody breaking in our door have to do with a murder? Is my family safe?”

I came up the last stairs. “Do you mind if we come in? We’d just like to ask you a few questions. This will only take a few minutes.”

He stepped aside, showing us the open door, now hanging limp on its hinges. “There’s the door. You see it?”

I gestured farther into the hall. “May we?”

“How does this connect to a murder? How could it? Do you think my children aren’t safe?”

“Do you?” I asked. “Because I would hate for you to have that weighing on you. Believe me, we want to keep everyone in this community as safe as possible.”

He sighed. “Okay. But I’m trying to feed my kids their after-school snack, so let’s make it quick.”

Inside his door, the hallway led us to white walls and bright spaces. Off to the left, a living room opened to reveal a large fireplace and painted mantle lined with photos in ornate frames. I saw pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Weber from their wedding, several pictures of their two kids, and a few family shots all together. In the middle of the row was an open space like a missing tooth.

“That’s where the picture was that went missing?” I asked. “What was it of?”

“Daddy? Who’s here?”

I turned and saw two small faces peeking out of a kitchen up the hall: a boy and a girl, somewhere in the vicinity of eight or ten.

“Go back to your homework, guys. Please?” He waved them away, and they went. His voice wasn’t hard or harsh. He struck me as possibly a good dad.

“Is your wife home?”

“No. She’ll be back later. I got home at three thirty with them, and that’s when I found the door was broken.”

Hendricks was fingering the splintered wood. “And nothing wrong with the outside door downstairs. That seem strange? You don’t think one of your neighbors would—” He gestured at the frame. “Do you?”

Weber waved it off. “No. Nobody suspicious living here. We’re all
good enough
friends.”

Hendricks stepped back into the hall, pointed up at a skylight above the stairs. “Could be that,” he said.

I walked out into the hallway, looked up to what he saw. There was an iron-mesh glass hatch that was shut but could’ve been opened from the roof.

“Looks like the latch isn’t locked. You see?”

Weber checked it out. “Yeah, the other officers said the same thing. I’m going to latch it up as soon as we’re done with dinner.”

“Why don’t you let me do that for you?” Hendricks said. “I’ll check it out at the same time. See if I notice any signs of entry.” He headed for the black metal ladder bolted into the wall.

I went inside, guiding Weber by his elbow. “He’s good with these things. Don’t worry about him.”

In the living room, I went back to the mantle and ran a finger along it. No dust. “You have your place cleaned often?”

He talked about his cleaning lady, how weekly visits had become a necessity since having kids, while I checked out the rest of the room: more shelves, straight-backed chairs with arms and fine upholstery, a mahogany coffee table. These were the type of people who didn’t have a TV in their living room, probably sent their kids to a special private school to learn problem-solving skills. I didn’t see any connection to the rest of the johns, but enough time on the force had taught me never to judge a situation by its appearance.

Beyond the surface, that’s where the truth lies. I started to scratch the veneer.

“Tell me about the missing picture.”

“It was one of my wife. The only one we have of just her from the wedding. A gift from her father, actually.”

“His little girl.”

“And don’t I forget it.” He laughed like he knew the joke was on him.

I heard his kids call him from the kitchen.

“Do you mind?” he asked, heading for the hall. “I need to keep an eye on them.”

He left with that, and I lingered for a moment. In the hallway, I could see Hendricks’s legs, still on the ladder.

“I’ve just got a few more questions,” I said, coming into the kitchen.

The son had a book open on the table, the daughter eating pasta while thumbing messages into her phone. Weber took the phone away and told his kids to sit up straight. “No texting before dinner, Frances.” He smiled at me, an awkward grin.

A small television set on a shelf showed
Friends
, volume low. His daughter dutifully pulled out a thick math textbook and found her page. I almost wanted to leave him alone, let the family find its own harmony, but I had one more thing to do.

“May I?” I came around the counter to stand next to Weber, angled away from the kids so I could show him the pictures. They thought I was about as interesting as the paint on the walls.

“Have you ever seen this man?” I showed him a four-by-six of Father Michael I’d had the Hall’s photo/ID section print up. “Does he look familiar?”

Weber shook his head. “Should he?”

“No. Not necessarily.” I would have hoped for a smoother transition into my next set of images, but there wasn’t much I could do. If we were down at the station, I’d have prepared sheets for the occasion with unknowns thrown in, but here it was straight to the meat.

I showed him a picture of Dub. In all his glory. “How about this man?”

Weber squeezed his forehead at the gold teeth and ratty dreadlocks, shook his head. “Definitely not.”

“Her?” Going to Debbie Shine next was my way of easing him in, such as it was.

“I don’t know where this is going, Officer.”

“And how about her?” I showed him the picture of Emily I’d had Photo/ID print up: not a photocopy of the picture from the priest’s room and Jay Piper’s, but an intake picture of her taken at SFGH.

“You ever seen this face? Her first name is Emily. Sometimes people call her Silver.”

Something changed in his face. I thought,
Bingo.

“No. And I have no idea where you’re going with this. Excuse me.” Weber brushed past me to get to the stove, where a steaming colander of spiral noodles sat inside a pot. He picked up a wide ceramic bowl off the counter.

Hendricks appeared in the open doorway to the hall. “I latched that skylight for you. It’s locked tight now.” He brushed off his hands. “And I can’t say it looks like it had been broken into.” He turned his attention to the kids, who’d suddenly woken up at his entrance. Hendricks had a way with kids—kids and dogs. “You two don’t ever go up that ladder to the roof, do you?”

He gave them a serious regard, and they both denied ever going up there.

I wanted to get back to Weber, more on the picture, and gave Hendricks our special nod, meaning there was more work to be done. He got my message, asked Weber to come with him into the living room for a moment.

“Then we’ll be going right on our way,” he said. “Right, partner?”

“Yeah, we’ve wasted enough of your family’s time.”

Weber put down the empty bowl. “Best news I’ve heard all day.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

I followed Hendricks and Weber into the hallway and to the living room. Hendricks said, “You really should check that thing more often. And not leave it unlocked.”

Weber stood just inside the entrance. He shifted his weight. “We
never
leave that unlocked. I’m sure of it.”

“Okay. Well, that’s good to hear, then. I wouldn’t.”

“I hear you, Officer. Thanks for that.”

“Investigator,” I said, coming up behind them. “Or Sergeant, actually.”

Weber spun like I’d surprised him. “Excuse me?”

“We’re with homicide, like I said, so my rank is sergeant. Not officer.”

“Okay, sorry.” Weber tried giving Hendricks a look, something like
women
, but Hendricks stone-faced him.

“Let me try this again,” I said. “I’m going to show you a picture of a girl.” I wagged my finger at him. “I know you know her. And you’re going to tell me how. Is that clear?”

“This sounds like maybe I should call my lawyer.”

“Lawyering up now?” Hendricks hooted. “That is
definitely
not a good play.” He settled a heavy hand onto Weber’s shoulder. “Since you’ve done nothing wrong here. Right?”

“What are you implying,
Investigators
?”

I shook my head. “Let’s all stay calm. We’re just talking, us three, no lawyers involved, nobody goes down to the Hall.” I watched his reaction, and his fight-or-flight instinct did not kick in. That was best.

“We keep this simple. Believe me, as a matter of consideration for your own safety and your family’s, this is the best route. You haven’t committed a crime.” I gave him my hard, steady stare. “So you want to be completely honest with us right now.”

“What my partner hasn’t told you,” Hendricks said, “is that a very bad man is out there and might have come into your house. If you can help us put him on the business side of a jail cell, that will keep you and your whole family a whole lot safer. But we need real help.”

All of this landed with significant weight on Jimmy Weber’s shoulders. He sat down on one of the high-backed chairs.

“Maybe I should offer you a drink,” he said. Then he saw our all-business reactions and added, “Or make one for myself.”

“Let’s make this painless. We talk, then we get out of your hair.” I pulled another one of his chairs up close and sat.

“This girl,” I said, showing him the picture of Emily. “Where have you seen her?”

He wiped a hand over his face like the memory wasn’t pleasant. “Listen,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea. None of it was.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

The kids were still in the kitchen as the closing theme from
Friends
played on the TV. James Weber sat in a high-backed chair beside a cold fireplace. Above it, the single picture was missing from the mantle—a picture of his wife.

“This isn’t about Diana,” he said, almost pleading. “Please just tell me this isn’t about Diana. I want her to be okay.”

“Your wife is fine, Mr. Weber,” Hendricks said. “As far as we know, she’s at work. You can call her as soon as we’re done.”

I touched the man’s knee. “Nothing would lead us to believe that she’s in any danger. Please just focus on what I’m asking.”

“Right,” he said. “Right.”

He looked at two pictures of Emily. In the newer one, her hair was cut short, her cheeks drawn in like they were hollow, her skin pocked. In the other, she looked younger, healthier by a few years. In reality it was barely ten months in between.

Life on the streets: the disease eating her alive.

“When I saw her, she looked more like this.” He touched the earlier picture, the one our priest had taken from Jay Piper’s, the one we found tucked into his Bible. “But a little like this too.” He tapped the other. “She was heading in this direction.”

He checked my face. “These are the same girl, right?”

I nodded.

“Her father—I can’t imagine.” That stopped him. His boy and girl were right in the next room.

I said, “Your daughter’s going to be fine, Mr. Weber.”

“Okay,” he said. “Right.” He nodded like he had just considered some bad options and come back to the present. “I want to help you. This isn’t easy.”

“Just tell us what happened.”

“Okay. This guy. I don’t even know him that well. He’s a friend of a friend.”

Hendricks and I exchanged a quick glance. We’d need their names, eventually.

“We got together a few times to party. Play some poker. We did some drugs. You know, nothing big, right?”

He waited for some confirmation, so I nodded. We were
not
here to bust him for using drugs.

“This one time he brought in a girl. Youngish, you know, but definitely legal.” He looked back and forth between our faces. “I mean. Well, you know. So far as age is concerned. She took her clothes off.”

Hendricks patted his back, man-to-man. “It’s all right. Just tell us what you know. Nothing is going to happen. We’re looking for information.”

“I was on the side. Not my deal, right? But then it happens a few times, let’s say. Couple of poker nights. I mean, shit. Diana and I were in therapy. She was telling me I had to get out more and find other ways to socialize. Make friends. That’s all it was. What was I supposed to do?

“This girl.” He tapped the picture again. “Sometimes it was her. They’d take her in the other room, this guy and one other. Sometimes I heard—”

He stopped, then leaned his head from shoulder to shoulder, equivocating, unable to get it out.

“They hurt her,” I said.

He nodded. “I could hear screams. But then I’d see her after, and she didn’t seem upset about it. I just figured—I thought it wasn’t any of my business. But I didn’t do anything to stop it either. That’s something I still think about. I mean, she has a father somewhere. I know that.”

He rolled that around in his mind while we waited.

“I stopped going.” He stared at the rug, deep into the memory. “Just like that. I needed to find something else. Started going to the gym instead. Picked up spinning.” He shrugged. “Who cares, right? Just something to get out of the house.”

I knew exactly what he meant.
Exactly.

“But I knew.” He tapped the newer picture of Emily, the one with her hollow cheeks. “I know what they did. Dan told me.”

Hendricks had written down the name. “You knew what?”

He nodded, touched the picture. “I had no idea they would get like that. Or how it happened. Dan just said it did.” He swore, closed his eyes. “That’s all I can tell you. I’m sure it was a lot of blood. I swear I wasn’t there.”

I said, “We’re going to need their names. Dan and the others.”

“Dan Steele,” he said. “He was the one I knew from before. We worked together in Boston, before any of us came out here. The others I was just introduced to.”

“Their names,” I said. “Then we leave, and you can go back to your kids.”

“Dave something. I didn’t know him that well. Heyes, maybe. He was a friend of Eric’s. That was another guy, Meaders. That’s what everybody called him. Maybe once I heard him called Eric. But everyone always called him Meaders. He was the one who brought her. Him. Mainly it was those two guys, Meaders and Heyes. They were the ones.”

I exchanged a meaningful look with my partner. This was pay dirt, these names. Weber was giving it all.

He looked at the picture of Emily again and his lips curled like he had something sour in his mouth, something he needed to spit out. “Maybe I need that drink.”

Hendricks and I got up, and Hendricks patted Weber on the back. “That was good what you just did here. It’ll help us a lot. It’ll help us help these guys.”

I was guessing Weber hadn’t heard about the others’ passing. This wasn’t a tight-knit group, I supposed, and that was best. He had moved on, made the smart choice, but our priest wasn’t going to let him forget. Not unless we could find him first.

Weber would need protection: an officer or two at his apartment and maybe someone to watch over his wife until she got home.

“Listen. How would you feel about going out of town for a few days? You have any family that’s close?”

He scrunched up his face. “No way. I’ve got too much going on here. At work. The kids have school.”

“What if I told you that David Heyes is now dead?”

“What?” He stopped still, holding a glass tumbler in one hand and a bottle in the other. Then he put the bottle back down. “He’s
dead
?”

Hendricks said, “Earlier this week. We’ve got a spree of murders on our hands. And I think you’d better be real careful.”

“I can put officers on you full-time, if you need to stay in town,” I said. “But obviously . . . things would be much simpler if you could go away for a few days.”