If Angels Fall (19 page)

“Did you also take ten years off of this guy for us?”
he said.

Beth sighed. “I did. Wasn’t easy. Took two days. I’d
rate it at thirty-five to forty percent. Here goes.” Her keyboard clicked.

“Why make the guy ten years younger?” Turgeon asked.

“That’s when Franklin Wallace was doing his time in
Virginia.”

Slowly, from top to bottom, the display terminal gave
birth to a new image of the suspect. His face had fewer lines, was less heavy
set. His eyes, while droopy, were somewhat more buoyant and his hair was
thicker. Beth split the screen and presented two pictures of the younger
suspect, one showing him bearded, and one showing him clean shaven. The printer
hummed, offering crisp, perfect color pictures of both composites. “There you
go.”

The gold in Sydowski’s teeth shined as he gathered
copies of Beth’s work into a file. “I owe you, Beautiful.”

“Just close these cases, Walt.”

Waiting for the elevator at the Hall of Justice,
Turgeon studied Beth’s color computer pictures. “So this is our guy?”

“One of them anyway.”

“Tanita Donner’s killer, or have we got two different
suspects?”

“Don’t know, Linda.”

“We going to call a press conference? Splash the
composite?”

“Nope.”

“No?” Turgeon closed the folder.

“Beth only rated it thirty percent. We’d be bogged
down chasing hundreds of useless leads. We’ll try a few other things.”

“You want me to send the younger composite to Virginia
prison authorities?” They stepped on the elevator.

“First, we’ll see Rad.”

Rad Zwicker was a skinny, hyperactive bachelor who
worshiped computers and lived alone with his mother near the Castro. He was not
only sensitive, he was the master analyst of the SFPD’s computerized records.
His department at the hall continually droned from the sound of huge, new,
powerful data storage banks. Give him a morsel of information and he would stun
you with what he could pull out. Rad annoyed many cops because he rode a
perpetual caffeine high and was overeager, but he was lightning fast and
brilliant, virtues the SFPD did not overstock, Sydowski thought, putting Beth’s
fresh composites into Rad’s hands.

“You guys want a coffee, just made a fresh batch?” Rad
pushed back his glasses and burrowed into the file.

“No thanks,” Turgeon said.

“I’m fine, Rad,” Sydowski said.

“Super! Let’s get going!” Rad plopped himself before a
terminal and entered Beth’s calculations. He then sipped coffee from a
gargantuan mug, darted to another computer, fed each of Beth’s composites into
it, then entered various commands. The fans to cool the computers whirred. Rad
turned and smiled.

“Be ready in a few moments.”

One of the computers beeped. Rad turned, telling his
guests to pull up chairs beside him.

“Super! Now, here’s what I’m doing. I’ve entered Beth’s
physical description of our target, with tolerances, into the California
Department of Motor Vehicles drivers’ and registration records data bank. I’ve
narrowed the search to the greater Bay Area, eliminating race, sex, age, etc.
That being said, I would estimate a potential suspect pool of two hundred
thousand. Now if we had a suspect vehicle, it would narrow the search
considerably.”

“What we’ll do is call in volunteer criminology
students and cadets from the academy to help us sift through the pool. Here,
I’ll show you what we’ll do. I start with our first guy here.”

Rad pulled up on a large video screen the driver’s
license picture of an Oakland man whose age and physical description fit Beth’s
composite. Rad punched a command and Beth’s composite of the suspect appeared
in matching scale and perspective beside the Oakland man. Rad then superimposed
the suspect’s photo over the Oakland man.

“Not even close,” Turgeon said.

“Before we get started in this needle-in-a-haystack
grunt work—do we have fingerprints?” Rad asked.

“No, just the tattoo fragment,” Sydowski said. “But we
could be dealing with two separate suspects.”

“Yes, I remember. We’ll do what we did last year, run
everything through NCIC and VICAP. We struck out then. Now, we have a physical
description to possibly tie it to. And, for what it’s worth, we’ll sift through
the dreaded California sex crimes registry again. And I’ll rattle the Bay Area
data banks.”

“Anything you can do, Rad.”

He ran the description through the state and federal
prison systems, and the Western States Information Network. Last year, early in
the Donner, Rad had Virginia’s prison records checked for the time Franklin
Wallace was an inmate to see if any of his old prison buddies were with him at
the time of the baby’s murder. “Let’s try it again now that Beth’s done a
Dorian Gray for us.”

“Dorian Gray?” Turgeon whispered to Sydowski.

“Computer aged the picture,” He answered.

Rad’s fingers danced over his keyboard as he entered
the data bank for the federal prison system in Virginia for the years Franklin
Wallace served his time for sex crimes against children. The screen showed a
list of 621 male inmates Wallace could have met there. The list included social
security numbers, birthdates, and file numbers from the National Crime
Information Center’s computers. Rad sensed Sydowski’s skepticism.

“Walter, please bear in mind that data are fluid and a
lot of new information has likely been entered since we last did this.”

Sydowski bore it in mind.

“Although it is tempting to go with descriptions,
let’s go with circumstance first in narrowing our search,” Rad said.

“Molesters tend to stick together on the inside.”
Turgeon said.

“That’s right. So how many of our first number were
doing time for sex crimes against children?” Rad worked the keyboard.

The list was reduced to fifty-four.

“Remove the number who were in jail when Tanita Marie
Donner was taken.” Sydowski said.

The list shrank to eighteen.

“How many were alive at the time of the Donner case?”
Sydowski asked. Rad nodded and worked the keyboard.

The list was reduced to fourteen.

“Let’s go to identifiers now,” Rad said. “I’ll narrow
that list to Caucasians.”

The computer beeped and the number now was eleven.

“How many at that time had tattoos on their right
arm?” Sydowski said.

Rad prompted the computer and it answered nine.

Four tattoos had the names of women, three men had
Harleys on their biceps, one had a screaming eagle, and one had a death’s head.
Not one had flames on their forearms.

“Shit,” Sydowski muttered.

“Tattoos can be removed Inspector,” Turgeon said.

“It’s only our first run, Walter, and it was quick and
definitely unscientific.” Rad was reaching to switch the computer off.

“Wait!” Turgeon said, startling the two men. A few
clerks nearby looked up. “We forgot another aspect.”

“There are thousands of possible equations to try,”
Rad said.

“I know. But we went through this looking for somebody
to fit our suspect’s description. My reading of the file is that two people
were involved in Tanita Marie Donner’s kidnapping and murder.”

“Right. We used that last year without a description,”
Rad said.

“Many of these cases are partner crimes,” Sydowski
said.

“We know someone took the pictures in the Donner case
maybe there were other, peripheral partners?” Turgeon said. “Try this: how many
of our suspects who were Virginia skinners with Franklin Wallace were living in
the Bay Area at the time of the Donner abduction and murder?”

“Sure.” Rad pounded in the command.

Turgeon bit her bottom lip and waited.

The computer beeped. Zero.

“Damn,” she whispered.

Sydowski grunted, and checked his watch. Maybe they
should pass Beth’s composites to Rust and Ditmire and let the FBI play with
them.

“Wait, one more thing.” Turgeon had not given up. “How
many of the Virginia cons are now living in the Bay Area?”

“We got zilch when we tried that last year.” Rad
shrugged.

“But a lot of new information has likely been entered
since the last time you did this,” she said.

“True,” Rad said, catching Sydowski’s subtle nod.

The computer bleeped and answered one.

Turgeon’s heart quickened.

Rad bolted upright. “Amazing!”

“Call him up,” Sydowski said.

PERRY WILLIAM KINDHART.

His name and file appeared on the screen. Caucasian,
thirty-nine, five feet, eleven inches tall, medium build, red hair, blue eyes.
Death’s head tattoo on left shoulder. Convicted molester. Mugs were recent. No
resemblance to Beth’s composites.

“Last known address?” Sydowski said.

“I’m getting it,” Rad typed. The computer beeped.
“SoMa. He lives South of Market. I’ll print out the address. Looks current.”

“Record?” Sydowski said.

Rad prompted the computer, complimenting Turgeon for
her hunch.

“I don’t know how we missed this guy last year,” he
said.

Kindhart’s criminal history appeared on the screen. He
had served time in the same Virginia prison as Franklin Wallace when Wallace
was there. They could have met. Kindhart was convicted in Richmond of
photographing children in lewd poses, and served one year. His federal sheet
had charges and acquittals in half a dozen Midwestern states over the last
decade. He seemed to be making his way west. His last known beef was in San
Francisco. The full details of his case were only recently entered into the
system, according to the data date, explaining how he was missed the first
time.

“I don’t believe this.” Turgeon read the screen
quickly.

Right about the time Tanita Marie Donner was kidnapped
and murdered, Kindhard was up on charges of exciting the lust of a child in San
Francisco. He supposedly took obscene pictures of two five-year-old girls he
enticed into his apartment in the Mission. Evidence was shaky so the judge gave
Kindhart two years probation with terms that he stay away from children, not
own any type of camera, and not possess any type of pornographic material.

“This is weird.” Turgeon wanted a printout.

Sydowski said nothing. His breathing grew intense, his
stomach tightened, the way it tightens when a Homicide cop knows,
knows
deep in his tired gut that he’s got a solid break.

Sydowski searched Kindhart’s eyes.

He knows, Sydowski felt it. He knows things about Tanita
Marie Donner. About her murder. And maybe he knows about Danny, too. He knows
something. And with the exception of Danny and Tanita’s parents, nobody had
invested more in the right to that knowledge than Sydowski had. The time had
come to collect on his investment.

Calm and confidence washed over Sydowski.

“This is good,” he said.

Lois Jensen
poured water into the cafeteria-sized coffee urn and clicked her tongue at Dr.
Kate Martin fussing for the third time over the spread of fruit, cheeses, and
crackers.

“Don’t fret, Kate, Its going to be fine.”

“I need a written guarantee, Lois.” Martin bit her
lip.

During the year her study group had been meeting, she
had always been in control. The pain exposed in this drafty old campus study
room remained here, eventually evaporating like the tears that accompanied it.
But that was going to change. She had relinquished command of what she
cherished in order to save it.

She and Lois had arrived early to set up refreshments.
Both were dressed more formally than usual-Lois in a peach, summer-knit sweater
set and white skirt, and Martin in a silk blouse, hound’s-tooth-check blazer
and matching skirt.

“Lois, are we doing the right thing?”