If Angels Fall (13 page)

“The game, anything there?” Tipper asked.

“Working on it with guys across the bay,” Sydowski
said.

“We’ve got, hold it”-Milkelson checked his notes-“at
last count, one hundred sixty phone notes to sort through, about the same
number of E-mail tips. We expect it all to go up because of the news
conference. We’ve dozens of re-interviews and we have to go over the family’s
background again.”

“Let’s hear it, Gord.” Gonzales wanted Mikelson to
offer what his gut told him. “Give it up.”

“The Beckers stuck to their routine in the twenty-four
hours before the kidnapping. The impulse on Nathen Becker’s part was to take
Danny to the game on public transit and not to drive his BMW on the weekend,
which he loves doing. That was an impulse. Only someone who was stalking them
would know. I think our guy is a stalker.”

“That’s what you think?” Gonzales said.

“I believe our guy knows the Beckers inside out.
Probably studied them for weeks, months even.”

Gonzales wanted checks for any strange vehicles near
the Becker home and a run through parking citations for the area.

Okay, Walt”-Tippet turned to Sydowski-“is the guy who
took Becker our missing link in the Donner file?”

“Wait. For the benefit of everyone coming to this
fresh, walk us through Donner, Walt,” Deputy Chief Kennedy said.

“I want to measure Becker against Donner from square
one.”

Sydowski knew the case history by rote. “Angela Donner
is a single, young welfare mother. She puts her daughter, Tanita Marie down for
a nap in the playpen of the fenced rear patio of their ground-floor suite in
Balboa almost one year ago. When Angela goes to answer the phone, someone grabs
Tanita, unseen. No witness, no physical evidence at the scene. No ransom call,
no letters. No demands. Nothing. Three days later, two girls on a science trip
find her about eleven a.m. in Golden Gate, in a garbage bag, under a tire.”

“Time of death and location, Walt?” Inspector Bruce
Paley asked.

“Coroner puts it at eight hours before she was found.
She was killed the night before about three in the morning.”

“At the park?” Paley asked.

“No. Her stage of rigor indicates she was not killed
there. She was held for three days, then killed and dumped.”

“What about the baby’s farther?”

“Checked out clean. Her throat was cut with a small,
tooth-edged knife. Some details of her death are hold-back,” Sydowski said. “We
had nothing, no weapon, no witnesses. Nothing, except suspicions about Franklin
Wallace. We lit the ‘hood, ran everybody in a twelve-block radius of the girl’s
home. Wallace came up, among others. He was a short-order cook, married, and
had a four-year-old daughter. He lived near Tanita, read Bible stories to her
and kids at his Sunday school day care, He also had a ten-year-old conviction
in Virginia for molesting a five-year-old girl. He made our suspect list, along
with others in the area. We questioned Wallace superficially through a routine canvass.
We never went hard on him. He was alibied and we had nothing at the time, which
was days after the case broke.

“Quantico’s profile leaned strongly to a two-person
team, which was bang on when we got a break later. A patrol officer chasing
drugs in Dolores found Tanita’s plastic diaper and these two Polaroids hidden
under some bushes.” Sydowski passed around enlarged copies of the two
snapshots. “This material is also hold-back.”

One picture showed Tanita alive, naked, being held by
a man wearing no shirt. The man’s head has been cut out of the picture. The
second photo showed a different man with tattoos on his forearms, wearing a
black hood and gloves, holding Tanita, her little eyes open wide.

Turgeon covered her mouth with her hand.

Sydowski continued.

“We’re still working on the tattoo’s. Looks like he’s
done time. The man in the first picture is Wallace. His prints were on Tanita’s
diaper. We’re certain two men were involved with Donner. Fits the profile. I
suspect the diaper and picture were trophies they kept.”

“Why’s that?” Tippet said.

Sydowski nodded to the FBI agents. Rust answered.

“Because the killer is usually aroused by reliving or
fantasizing about any aspect of the act. Look, the material is not in and
residence. Our boy is smart to hide it in a public place. Makes it tough to
link him to the crime. He can return to the pictures and enjoy them. He likely
savored the baby’s scent from the diaper, it was a clean one. The killer was
the dominant team member who literally cut Wallace out of the fantasy by
removing his head from the picture.”

“Didn’t the guy try to set up Wallace somehow?” Paley
said.

“Yeah, he fucked us over good,” Sydowski said.
“Everything happened at once. Right after we found the stuff in Dolores and
before we could nail Wallace, Tom Reed at the
Star
got an anonymous call
saying Wallace was the killer, that we had pictures of him with the girl and
that he had a record in Virginia. We figured the killer must have seen our guy
find the pictures. How else would he know? Reed called Virginia, which
confirmed Wallace’s record for child molesting. Reed confirmed from neighbors
that Wallace lived near Tanita and had her in his toddlers’ Bible classes. Then
he called me for confirmation that Wallace was our suspect. He got nothing, I
assure you.” Sydowski stared at Ditmire. “then Reed went immediately to
Wallace’s home, confronted him with what he had. Wallace never knew we had the
pictures, the diaper, his prints, his records, until Reed told him. He denied
to Reed that he was involved, then blew his brains out with a shotgun when Reed
left. We never got to question Wallace hard about the diaper, the pictures, his
partner.”

“We fucked up there,” Rust jumped in. We are going to
surveil Wallace, wire his phone, watch his mail, hoping it would lead us to the
masked man. Tom Fucking Reed got in the way.”

“What about Reed’s tip? Did he tape it?” Paley asked.

“No. It was cold, out of the blue,” Sydowski said.

“Reed’s tip had to be Wallace’s partner,” Sydowski
said. “I think it was the killer. I think he panicked when he saw us discover
his trophies and, fearing Wallace would finger him, tried to set him up.
Something like that. Wallace’s widow told us Wallace got a call about an hour
before Reed arrived. The call scared him, but he refused to tell her who it
was, She thought it was Reed saying he was coming over, but Reed told us he
never made an advanced call. Wallace and the other likely plotted to grab
Donner for a day or two with the aim of returning her. It’s been done before.
But it goes wrong and she ends up in a garbage can with her throat cut. Our
tattooed guy is likely a hard-core skinner who manipulated Wallace, then trips
up the case.”

“We never publicly said Wallace was a suspect?” Paley
said.

“No Wallace was dead,” Gonzales said. “We want to
leave his partner in the dark. So we publicity doubt Reed’s story. It may not
be nice, but we’re chasing a child-killer.” He paused. “Merle, Lonnie, you got
anything?”

Ditmire leafed through his notes.

“Nathan Becker is a computer systems engineer with
Nor-Tec in Mountain View, head of a project for the U.S. military. The CIA told
us this morning that it would not rule out a terrorist act as one plausible
scenario here.”

“But we have no demands,” Sydowski said. “And doesn’t
tradition show that responsibility for acts of terrorism is usually claimed
within twenty-four hours?”

“Not in every instance, Walt,” Rust said.

Ditmire continued with the results of a VICAP check.
“Two recent child abduction-murder cases around Dallas-Fort Worth in the last
three years. And for the same period, there has been one in Denver, Seattle,
Detroit, Memphis, and Salt Lake City. We’re getting files on them. We’ve got
agents posing as kids and agents posing as pervs, baiting whatever is out
there. That’s it for now.”

Gonzales nodded. “Claire, any hint of cult, our human
sacrifice?”

Inspector Claire Ward an expert on cults, had been
taking notes.

“Too soon to say, Lieutenant, I’d like to look at the
evidence from the Donner case again.”

“Walt will help you there,” Gonzales said. “All right.
We are going to chew up every shred we’ve got on this, understand?
Every-fucking-thing. The heat on this one is intense.” Gonzales stood up,
looked at his watch, then ended the meeting. “You’ve got your assignments. You
all know the words to the song. This is a green light. All overtime is
approved. We go hard into the backgrounds. We re-create the day. We check and
recheck every tip.” He tucked his unlit cigar in his inside breast pocket.
“Questions?”

None.

“Turgeon, please see me in my office,” Gonzales said.

Papers and reports were collected as the investigators
filed out of the room. Turgeon followed Gonzales to his office several doors
away, where he fished through a top desk drawer, then placed her new
identification in her hand.

“Sorry, Linda. I should’ve gotten this to you last
week.”

Turgeon looked at the laminated photo ID which read:
Inspector Linda A. Turgeon. San Francisco Police Department. Homicide Detail.
She ran her finger over the shield bearing the city’s seal. It depicted a
sailor, miner, and a ship passing under the Golden Gate. Above it, a phoenix
rose from flames. Below was the city’s Spanish motto.
Oro en paz, fierro en
Guerra
.

“You know the jingle,” Gonzales said.

“Gold in peace. Iron in war.”

Turgeon’s heart swelled. Her father’s gold shield was
home in a jewelry box, with her favorite picture of him smiling in uniform at
her. She was eight, wearing his cap, smiling up at him. She blinked several
times. I did it, Dad. I did it, she thought.

“Welcome to the dark ride,” Gonzales said”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Gonzales cleared his throat. “I knew Don in the early
days.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, we walked the Mission together. For a spell.”

Turgeon nodded.

“Linda?”

“Yes.”

“You done him proud, real proud.”

Vassie Laptak
, the choirmaster for Our Lady Queen of Tearful Sorrows Roman
Catholic Church, tapped his baton crisply on the podium’s edge, halting “The
Lord is Risen.” He pushed aside his wild, maestrolike strands of ivory hair and
studied his sheet music.

The North American Choir finals in San Diego were
three months off. Our Lady was a contender and with God’s help they could win.
Victory would mean an audience with The Holy Father in Rome. Vassie lay awake
nights imagining how it would be. Our Lady’s singers were spiritually dedicated,
but today his number-three contralto, the dwarfish spinster who cleaned the
church, was off.

“Florence, dear, you are not feeling well today.” He
reviewed his sheet music on the dais.

Florence Schafer flushed. “Why I’m fine, Vassie.
Really.”

Agnes Crawford, the choir’s star soprano, put her hand
on Florence’s shoulder. “Are you sure, Flo? You look pale. Would like some
water? Margaret, fetch some water for little Flo.”

Florence loathed that name. Standing at four feet, six
inches, she was, in the clinical sense, a dwarf.

“Please don’t bother. I’m fine.”

Vassie regarded her sternly through his fallen locks.

“I wasn’t concentrating, I’m sorry.”

“Very well.” Vassie sighed, nodding for the organist
to resume. Pipes and voices resounded through the stone church, but Florence’s
attention wandered again.

She admired the statue of the Blessed Virgin in the
alcove behind Vassie. The Queen of Heaven, in the white gown with a golden hem,
arms open to embrace the suffering. She was beautiful, mourning the death of
her child. As she sang, Florence recalled her own grief and the part that died
so many years ago. Philip, the young man she was going to marry, was killed in
a house fire. She had wanted to die too. The night of his death, she visited
her parish priest. He helped her find the strength to live, she never love
another man. For years, she considered becoming a nun, but instead devoted
herself to her church and her job as a city hall clerk before retiring after
forty years.