Nightlife (6 page)

8

R
achel Sturbridge emptied the vacuum cleaner bag into the garbage dumpster outside her rented house. She went inside, put on disposable rubber gloves, and walked one last time through her house with a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. She stood at the window that faced north. Between two apartment buildings she could just see the taller office buildings along Market Street. She stepped to the side, sprayed the glass, and wiped it once more. It was important to be sure that she had not missed any surface as smooth as a windowpane.

She sprayed and wiped all of the handles, knobs, and latches, then took broad swipes over all of the flat surfaces where she might have rested her fingertips in the past few weeks. If David Larson had been lying about calling off his detectives, the least she could do was to deny them the gift of her fingerprints.

Rachel took a final look at the furniture that Mrs. Halloran, the landlady, had supplied with the house, trying to find any hairs that she might have left on a cushion. She wrote “Eve Halloran” on an envelope, slipped her house key into it, and left it on the mantel. Then she picked up her suitcase, went out the door, and pressed the lock button. Only after she was outside the house and in her car did she take off her thin rubber gloves.

She was out on Highway 101 by noon, driving south, away from the city. San Francisco had been a terrible disappointment to her, and she wanted to get away, but she had no destination in mind. Today it seemed to Rachel that the world was a cold and treacherous place, and the only act that was appealing was to keep moving.

For a few hours she drove and thought about her dissatisfaction with David Larson. He was a foolish man, one who had no idea what a wonderful future he had thrown away when he had betrayed Rachel Sturbridge’s trust. He really deserved to die, and it bothered her that she had been forced to let him go. It didn’t seem fair.

When she began to feel hungry, she looked at the clock on the dashboard and noticed that it was five o’clock. She stopped at a restaurant in Pismo Beach and stared out at the highway while she ate, wishing she could see the ocean.

She refilled the gas tank and drove all the way to the Los Angeles County line before she stopped again. She found a hotel off the Ventura Freeway in the west end of the San Fernando Valley and registered with her Rachel Sturbridge credit card. When she awoke in the morning, she showered, ate, and dressed, then settled her bill in cash. It was time to begin making herself safe from whatever problems David Larson might have caused.

She needed to be anonymous for a time while she rested and decided what she wanted to do next, and the nondescript neighborhood where she had stopped looked like a good place for that. All of Los Angeles seemed featureless to her, a vast sameness. A young, white middle-class woman could avoid notice for a very long time if she paid attention and didn’t do anything stupid. She rented an apartment in Woodland Hills not far from the Topanga Canyon shopping mall by putting down money for the first month, last month, and security deposit in cash.

She went to a copying store, just as she had in San Francisco, rented a computer and printer, and took out the CD where she had stored the blank birth certificate. During the long drive from San Francisco she had been thinking of using the name Veronica, but the girl who waited on her was pretty and energetic, and she was wearing a badge that said, “Nancy Gonzales, Sales Associate.” The name Nancy seemed cheerful, so that was the one that she chose. She filled in the blank with the name Nancy Mills.

Next she bought a hair dye kit and lightened her hair again, then went to a salon to have it cut. She had worn it long and loose as Rachel Sturbridge, so now it had to be shorter. Long hair gave her an advantage with men, but she had decided it would be better if she didn’t attract any more of them for a while. On the way home, she went to an optometrist’s shop in a strip mall and bought some nonprescription contact lenses in different eye colors.

Two days later, when she went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to apply for a new driver’s license, she wore the brown contacts, so in her license picture she had brown eyes and shoulder-length, light brown hair. She thought of the look as drab and ordinary, which was exactly what she wanted.

She sold Rachel Sturbridge’s car through the
Pennysaver
to a woman she told she needed money to pay off a credit card debt. She could walk to restaurants, movie theaters, and even a grocery store from her apartment, so she decided that she could do without a car for the moment. Nancy Mills needed quiet and anonymity and solitude. She was disillusioned by her experience with David Larson, and had no desire to go anyplace where men might see her and talk to her, so she stayed away from health clubs, restaurants that had bars, and other spots where she had found men before.

After her first week in Los Angeles, Tanya Starling and Rachel Sturbridge had been erased. Nancy Mills was already nearly invisible. She would wait and watch and see if something troublesome had followed her from San Francisco.

9

C
atherine Hobbes and Joe Pitt walked down the hall of the San Francisco police station, watching the numbers over the doors until they came to 219.

The door was open, so Catherine stepped inside. There were several desks in the room, where plainclothes officers gazed at computer screens or talked on telephones. She approached a group of three who were leaning over to look at a file opened on a desk, and said to them, “I’m looking for Detective Crowley.”

“I’m Crowley. Welcome to San Francisco,” said a tall, thin cop with a bald head. He straightened and held out his hand. “Are you Sergeant Hobbes?”

She flashed a smile and shook his hand. Crowley looked over her shoulder expectantly, and she remembered Joe Pitt. “This is Mr. Pitt, who is conducting an investigation for the victim’s family. Do you mind talking to both of us?”

Detective Crowley shook his head, then reached past her, his arm almost touching her shoulder, and shook Pitt’s hand enthusiastically. “Not at all. I’ve known Mr. Pitt for about a hundred years. How you been, Joe?”

Pitt said, “Can’t complain, Doug. I hear you’ve got Tanya Starling’s car.”

“Well, we’ve found out where it is. We haven’t impounded it. She sold it here about four days after you lost track of her in Portland. There was an ad in the
Chronicle.
The man who bought it is named”—he picked up a written report and scanned it—“Harold Willis. He bought it for fifteen thousand.”

Pitt asked, “Was that a good deal?”

“It was close to the high blue book price, so it wasn’t a steal or anything. She wasn’t just unloading it fast.”

“And did Harold Willis recognize the photographs of Tanya Starling I sent to you?” asked Catherine Hobbes.

“Yes. He said it was definitely her. She went on a test drive with him, took his check, made out a bill of sale, signed over the registration, and wished him luck. That took maybe two hours, so he had plenty of time to look.”

“Where did the sale take place?” asked Hobbes. “Her place?”

“No. Her ad just had a phone number. She called Willis and brought the car to his house.” He anticipated the next question. “She was alone with him all that time. She wasn’t kidnapped or under duress. If she had been in trouble, she could have told him about it, or driven to any police station.”

Pitt said, “How about the bank account where she deposited his check? Do you have anything on that yet?”

“It was a business account at Regal Bank.” Crowley handed Pitt a piece of paper. “Here’s the address of the branch where she deposited it, the account number, and her home address.”

“Great,” said Pitt. “Thanks.”

Hobbes calmly reached over and took the piece of paper from Joe Pitt.

“Could be better,” Crowley said. “We called on her and found that she’s moved on again. She had signed a lease for a house with a roommate named Rachel Sturbridge. They paid three months’ rent in advance, according to the owner, a Mrs. Eve Halloran. She says they moved out about a week ago. The date is vague, because they left without telling her.”

“Did she have a job while she was here?” asked Hobbes.

“I’m not exactly sure,” Crowley said. “The two of them had run a d/b/a announcement in the paper and took out a license for a business called Singular Aspects. It lists a newsletter, which I assume was a catalog. If it was a store, they didn’t stay long enough to open.”

“That’s what you think it was—a store?”

“I don’t know. That’s my guess, from the sound of it. I defer to you, though, Sergeant Hobbes. Doesn’t it sound like a women’s clothing store? Anyway, less than a month later, the bank account was closed and they had both moved on.”

“That’s the part we need to know,” said Hobbes. “Where did they move to?”

“We’ve got nothing on that yet,” said Crowley. “Neither of them left a forwarding address at the post office or with their landlady. Before they left, they closed their account at Regal Bank, so there’s nothing there, either. They might easily have found a good location somewhere nearby, like San Mateo or Richmond, and moved. By now they could also be in China.”

“Either way, Tanya Starling doesn’t seem to be in any danger, and she certainly isn’t dead,” said Hobbes. “But she’s still our only potential witness on why Dennis Poole is.”

Pitt said, “Did Tanya buy another car before she left?”

“No. Rachel Sturbridge has one, and maybe they drove off in that.” He handed a piece of paper to Pitt. “Here’s the DMV printout on it. A six-year-old Nissan Maxima, black. License plate and VIN are supplied. It’s registered to the address they rented here. So until she gets wherever she’s going and reregisters it with a good address, we won’t know where she is. If she’s in-state, she probably won’t get around to it until next year.”

“Keep us in mind, will you, Doug?”

“Sure,” said Crowley. “When we get anything more, you’ll have it.”

Catherine Hobbes said, “Thank you very much, Detective Crowley. Here’s my card. There are numbers for my direct line, the homicide office, my cell, and my home. It doesn’t matter what time of day it comes in, I would appreciate it if you’ll call.”

“Of course,” said Crowley.

She and Pitt walked out of the police station, and Pitt drove the rental car to the house where Tanya Starling and Rachel Sturbridge had lived. As soon as Pitt found a parking space at the foot of the long, inclining street, Catherine Hobbes got out and began to walk. Pitt locked the car and trotted to catch up. By the time he’d succeeded, he was winded.

“What’s bothering you?” asked Pitt.

Catherine Hobbes walked along the street, her quick strides keeping her a half pace ahead of him so she wouldn’t have to look at his fake concerned expression. “Nothing.”

“Come on,” he said. “You’re going to give me a heart attack walking up this hill at this speed. Something’s bothering you.”

She stopped and looked at him. “We’re not in some boy-and-girl relationship that requires your helping when something’s bothering me. I’m a police officer working a homicide case. Your role is not to delve into my female sensitivities so you can talk me out of them. You’re here with me only because my captain thought you might be able to contribute to the progress of the investigation. That was not an opinion I shared.”

“It’s Crowley, isn’t it?”

“Do
not
tell me I’m imagining things.”

“I won’t. But—”

“I’m also not interested in being told it’s not his fault because you knew each other twenty years ago, or because he’s too old to get used to women in homicide, or because you two are from California and I’m not.”

“Okay,” he said. “It’s just that it’s a waste of time to get mad at me.”

“I’m not.”

“Or even at him.”

“I’m not mad. I’m a woman cop. I’m used to being ignored, and to much, much worse. I’m looking for the house number.”

“Okay,” said Pitt. He followed her along the street for another half block, until they came to a narrow one-story house.

They walked up to the steps and Hobbes rang the bell, then listened for a moment to the door being unbolted and unlatched. It swung open to reveal a woman around sixty years old with dyed red hair wearing a pair of jeans with knee pads over them.

“Mrs. Halloran?”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the woman said. “I was just finishing up on the trim. Come on in, but don’t touch any woodwork. Everything else is dry.”

They went inside. The furniture in the small living room had been pushed together in the middle of the hardwood floor and covered with one large canvas tarpaulin. She pulled the canvas off on one side to uncover three chairs. “You must be Sergeant Hobbes.”

“That’s right,” said Hobbes. “This is Mr. Pitt. He’s a private investigator cooperating with us on this case.”

It was not lost on Mrs. Halloran that Joe Pitt was handsome, and closer to her age than to Hobbes’s. She kept her eyes on Pitt as she said, “Here, this is the only place we can sit right now.” Mrs. Halloran sat on one of the chairs. “You said ‘case.’ Tanya Starling is involved in a case?”

“We’re looking for her so we can ask her a few questions. A man she knew in Portland was the victim of a crime.”

“What’s his name?”

“His name was Dennis Poole.”

“Oh, my goodness,” said Mrs. Halloran. “No wonder she left in such a hurry. You mean you think she killed him, or that she’s in danger?”

Catherine Hobbes allowed some of her frustration to show. “We just want to talk to her. She knew him, and we would like to know anything she can tell us. She left Portland, so we haven’t been able to talk to her.” Hobbes reached into her folder and pulled out a photograph. “Can you identify the woman in this picture?”

Mrs. Halloran held the picture a distance from her face, then close up, then farther away. “Yes. That seems to be Tanya. But you should try to get a better picture. It’s so fuzzy.”

“It’s copied from a videotape. Did you talk to her much?”

“When I rented the house to her, we talked a bit. She said she was moving here from Chicago. Was that a lie?”

“No,” said Hobbes. “Her last permanent address was in Chicago. We think she was only in Portland for a short visit.”

“That makes sense. She had nothing much with her. Her roommate hadn’t even arrived yet.”

“What was the roommate’s name?”

“Rachel Sturbridge.”

“What was she like?”

“I never met her. She was going to arrive separately in a few days. I let Tanya sign the lease and add Rachel’s name to it, but Tanya paid the rent and security deposit in advance with her money, and initialed the lease to agree to all of the provisions, so for the time being, she was my tenant. I assumed that later on, as a matter of course, I would meet the other one. But as a rule, when you rent to young people, you don’t want to hang around all the time. You risk becoming a second mommy to them. And what you don’t know won’t hurt you.”

“And you didn’t see her when they moved, either?”

“No. They didn’t tell me ahead of time, and if they had—I don’t know—maybe I would have come to be sure they didn’t leave the door unlocked or walk off with any of my furnishings, but they didn’t anyway. They were perfectly nice. Later, when Tanya called and told me they had moved out, she said I could rent it to someone else right away. I asked if I could send her a refund at her new address, but she told me to keep the money for the trouble of renting it twice.”

“Very thoughtful,” said Catherine Hobbes. “Do you remember the date of the call?”

“Let’s see,” she said. “It must have been about a week ago.”

“Did she say where she was calling from?”

“No, I don’t think she did. She was in a hurry, and she said she was just taking the time to let me know about the vacancy, and had to go. I didn’t want to keep her on the line.”

Catherine Hobbes said, “Here’s my card, Mrs. Halloran. We’re very interested in talking with her, so if you hear from her again, or remember anything that might help us, please get in touch. You can call me collect. In fact, I’m going to add my home phone number so you can reach me anytime.” She quickly wrote it on her card.

Mrs. Halloran took the card, glanced at it, and stuck it into the pocket of her jeans. “All right,” she said.

“Thank you.”

As soon as they had walked far enough from the house to avoid being overheard, Joe Pitt said, “Are you getting the same feeling I am?”

“Oh, yes. She knows somebody is looking for her, and she doesn’t want to be found.”

“This Rachel might be helping her lose the guy who killed Dennis Poole—if they use Rachel’s car, and pay for things in Rachel’s name, he’ll have a hard time finding Tanya.”

“But we won’t,” said Catherine Hobbes. “Now that we know about her it gives us two chances for a hit. When we find one, we’ll have the other.”