Thrill Kill (7 page)

He pulled two boxes off the closet shelf and opened the first. Inside were an assortment of leather restraints and plastic handcuffs. The second box held a dozen satin blindfolds and a vast array of vibrators and dildos.

Sinclair looked at Braddock. “How many boxes of this stuff do you have in your bedroom?”

“My only sex toy is my husband,” she said. “What about you, Sinclair?”

“I’m saving myself for marriage, remember?” Sinclair replied with a wry smile.

Sinclair went into the bathroom and slid back the shower door. Not even a bar of soap or shampoo. The drawers below the sink were equally sparse, containing a toothbrush and toothpaste, a few brushes and combs, and some dental floss.

“She didn’t live here,” Braddock observed.

“And I doubt she entertained any clients here either,” said Sinclair. “Wouldn’t a call girl need to shower and clean up between clients?”

“I’d think so, and a woman would have all kind of toiletries if she even stayed here overnight.”

In the main room, the techs were on their hands and knees, crawling along the carpet and stopping occasionally to examine different locations. “We saw some spots,” said the male evidence tech, “but it wasn’t blood.”

Sinclair went through the kitchen cupboards and drawers. A basic set of glasses, dishes, eating utensils, and cookware. A Mr. Coffee coffeemaker, a can of coffee, and a bunch of bananas beginning to turn black were on the counter. In the refrigerator were four containers of yogurt, a carton of cream, a package of deli turkey, and a bottle of salad dressing.

Sinclair stripped off his gloves. “What do you think?”

“She’s not living here,” said Braddock. “She uses it as an office for her bookkeeping, but that’s it. She probably eats lunch
snacks here, but the kitchen doesn’t look like anyone’s cooked in it.”

“Stealing her computer and files could mean the motive relates to her bookkeeping stuff rather than her prostitution.”

“Unless she’s an accountant for the mob, bookkeepers aren’t killed for what they do,” Braddock replied. “Maybe the killer thought she had trick information on her computer and in the file cabinets and grabbed everything.”

“Then we’re back to assuming she was killed over her prostitution activity.” Sinclair scratched his head. “But we’ve decided she’s no longer using this apartment as a hooker pad.”

“Maybe she never was,” said Braddock.

“You think?”

“She moved from the Hayward apartment a year ago. What if she just moved her bedroom stuff and living-room stuff here because she had to do something with it? If she had been using the sex toys, wouldn’t she unpack the boxes and put the stuff in drawers where she could get at it easier? Wouldn’t some of her lingerie be dirty and in a laundry basket?”

“Most escorts only do outcalls,” said Sinclair. “When I worked vice, we hardly ever ran across girls who took customers to their own place, and let’s not rule out something to do with the streets. She never fully broke away according to Jimmy and Tanya. What are the rest of the tenants like in this building?”

“Quite a few middle-aged and elderly Asians, the rest a mix of young professionals of every race, but mostly single women.”

“Not the kind of place you’d bring tricks, especially when you’ve already been kicked out of one apartment complex for it.”

“No,” Braddock said. “So she set the place up to look like she’s living here, with a bedroom and all, but she’s only using it as an office.”

“She wants to give the outside appearance that she works out of her home, but she’s living somewhere else and either hooking there or just doing outcalls.”

“Or maybe she’s gotten out of the business.”

“Anything’s possible, but I’m not convinced.” Sinclair turned to the techs. “Did you find anything to indicate she was killed here?”

“Nothing,” the man said. “Although someone searched the place, they didn’t really tear it apart. No signs of a struggle, so maybe she wasn’t abducted from this location.”

“We think this was an office for her,” Sinclair said. “And she was already dead when someone came back here to take information that could be incriminating.”

“What are you thinking?” Sinclair asked Braddock as he started the engine. The rain had stopped and the sun was fighting to break through the clouds.

“The truth?” She laughed. “I’m trying to figure out what to buy Ryan for Christmas.”

“How can your brain jump from figuring out a murder to shopping for your husband?”

“Multitasking. We women have superior brains. Did you want to discuss the murder some more?”

“Hell, we’ve talked it to death.” Sinclair eased the car into the street and drove toward Lake Shore Drive.

“Good. There are only nineteen shopping days left. What would a man want for Christmas?”

“Jeez, Ryan’s married to a homicide cop who leaves him home to take care of two kids while she hangs out with me looking at blood and gore all day and night. With his forty or more hours a week at work, he obviously doesn’t have time to have any fun, so that eliminates all kinds of cool things like a road bike, golf clubs, or a motorcycle.”

“He’s not getting a motorcycle until the kids have graduated high school and their college is fully funded.”

“You both wear OPD badges for a living and you’re worried he’ll hurt himself riding a motorcycle?”

“What about you and Kayla? Are things serious enough to exchange gifts for Christmas?”

“I ended it a few weeks ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There was nothing to tell. We lasted a month, had fun for a while, and then she got clingy and wanted to make plans for the future.”

“And you got scared and ran.”

Sinclair thought about what Braddock said. The longest he had dated anyone since his divorce almost four years ago was the six months he and Liz were together. That ended more than a year ago when she was nearly raped and murdered by the Bus Bench Killer and subsequently took a position as a news anchor in Chicago. He’d lost track of how many women he’d gone out with since then, but knew none lasted longer than a month.

“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “I knew from the onset that she wasn’t the kind of woman I would settle down with. But she knew how to have fun. She was still into the party scene, though, and I’m just not into that anymore.”

“It’s got to be hard when you don’t drink.”

“I don’t mind going out with people who have a drink or two, but when the sole purpose of going out is to drink . . . Being around drunk people when you’re not also drunk isn’t much fun.”

“You’re not alone.” Braddock pulled out her phone and began texting as she talked. “These days, I start getting sleepy halfway through my second glass of wine.”

“It wasn’t just the partying. Kayla just wasn’t right for me.”

“If the right woman appeared, would
you
be ready for her?”

“If you mean am I ready to buy a house with a white picket fence and have a couple of little rug rats? I think I have a ways to go.” Sinclair glanced at Braddock. When she looked up from her phone, he continued. “But if you mean am I ready to give up the serial dating routine, then yes. I’m getting so tired of that.”

Braddock read something on her phone and put it into her purse. “Can we stop by ACH on the way back to the office? I need to pick up some paperwork on an old case.”

*

A patient yelled for more pain meds from one of the rooms as Sinclair and Braddock walked down the long hallway. Alameda County Hospital—ACH to cops—housed the regional trauma center and one of the busiest ERs in the Bay Area. Every cop wanted to be brought here if they were shot or seriously hurt, but as soon as they were stabilized, they’d want to be moved to a hospital with nicer rooms, a higher class of patients, and nurses less calloused by the workload and the worn-out facility.

A tall, thin white man with a ponytail and a stethoscope around his neck said hi to them as they slipped past the nurse’s station into the break room. A nurse dressed in purple scrubs got up from a seat at a chipped Formica-topped table. She smiled and gave Braddock a quick hug. Alyssa Morelli then stood there for a few seconds staring at Sinclair.

“Matt,” Alyssa said as she finally opened her arms and embraced him.

Sinclair’s chin touched the top of her head as she pressed her body against him. He was certain she could feel his heart pounding in his chest by the time she stepped back and looked up at him. Her hair, pinned up loosely on top of her head, glistened in the sunlight streaming through the window. The sun had finally peeked through the clouds that had blanketed Oakland for the last two days.

“You look good.” Her enormous brown eyes scanned him from head to toe. “I was afraid that you’d turned into some ruddy-faced bozo with a beer belly and blood-vessel-covered nose.”

Sinclair had been a long-haired, unshaven narcotics officer when he last saw Alyssa nine years ago. She was one of the nurses who hung out with a group of patrol officers that Sinclair used to work with. The nurses and cops skied together in the
winter, boated and hiked together in the summer, and met at the Warehouse, the local cop bar, most nights after work. After months of being just friends, Sinclair and Alyssa had gone out on a few dates, but their relationship fizzled after that. She didn’t return his calls and stopped associating with the group. Sinclair heard she started dating a doctor. Shortly thereafter, she became engaged and left ACH for a hospital where the patients were cleaner, the workload lighter, and the pay better.

“You look the same,” he said.

“I’m hoping my wrinkles deepen so patients stop thinking I’m one of the student nurses or high school volunteers.” She laughed—a real laugh.

Alyssa’s Mediterranean ancestry showed in her olive complexion, and her hair was such a dark brown it appeared black under certain light. “We should catch up,” Sinclair said.

“I’d like that,” Alyssa replied.

Just then, another nurse poked her head into the break room. “We’ve got a trauma coming in. Car accident with two victims.”

“I have to go.” Alyssa took both of his hands in hers, rose onto her tiptoes, and kissed his cheek.

Sinclair felt his heart racing again.

“We’ll talk,” she whispered into his ear.

She hugged Braddock, and Sinclair noted a conspiratorial smile between them as they left the break room.

Sinclair waited until they were back in their car before he spoke to Braddock. “You set me up.”

Braddock laughed. “She’s wanted to see you ever since she learned we were partners but wanted it to be a surprise.”

“To watch me make a fool of myself?”

Braddock smiled. “It was funny to see you at a loss for words.”

“I had a wicked crush on her back in the day.”

“Duh! I’ve known about you two for years. Alyssa was working pediatrics at John Muir when I took Ethan there for an ear infection five or six years ago. We recognized each other
from Oakland and became pals. She’s probably my best nonpolice friend. And she had a crush on you, too.”

“I don’t know what happened. She got scared or something, and the next thing I knew, she married some pretty-boy doctor.”

“You had that bad-boy thing going full speed back then. She saw you on self-destruct mode and couldn’t stand to watch it. She wanted normal. The intern she married was that.”

“What happened? There’s no ring on her finger.”

“Once her husband finished his residency and started making the big bucks, he got into the country club scene and wanted her to quit nursing, have babies, and become a Stepford wife. Last year, she finally decided she couldn’t be that kind of woman and filed for divorce. She got bored with the routine of working a floor at John Muir and came back to ACH last month.”

“How’s she doing? She looks great.”

“She loves being back in the ER and is happier than she’s been in years. She ran the San Francisco marathon last summer and teaches Pilates classes at her health club.”

“You have her number, right?”

Braddock turned in her seat to face Sinclair. “Like the rest of the world, she knows about your divorce, you and Liz, and your pattern of one-night stands. Alyssa is all goodness, and that’s rare in people who deal with the same slime as we do on a daily basis. Don’t disrespect her by using your Sinclair charm on her while you’re still dating other women. She’s not just another girl for you to screw and run from when it gets too real.”

Sinclair pulled out of the hospital parking lot. Braddock’s words stung. She knew his game. He wanted to tell her to mind her own business—that Alyssa was a big girl and could take care of herself. But he knew Braddock was right. Alyssa was smart to distance herself from him back then. He wondered if he had actually changed much since.

He turned onto Fourteenth Avenue, deciding to avoid the freeway since it was approaching rush hour. Braddock stared out the window silently as he drove.

“I was pretty hard on you,” she said, breaking the silence.

“I know. Why’d you set this up, anyway, if that’s how you feel?”

“Matt, I love you like a brother. I trust you with my life.”

“But not with your best friend?”

“You’re an awesome guy. You just don’t know how to do relationships. I don’t want to lose either one of you. And I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”

“Maybe this was a bad idea.”

“She hasn’t been with anyone since her divorce and isn’t ready to date. She enjoys outdoors stuff—running, kayaking, hiking. When we get off standby, and if this rain ever lets up, maybe the four of us can go hiking or something.”

Braddock went back to staring out the window.

Sinclair remembered hiking up Mt. Diablo years ago with a group of cops and nurses, watching Alyssa’s tight butt in a pair of hiking shorts. Although Alyssa might be all goodness, as Braddock said, she was still damn sexy.

Sinclair listened in as Braddock placed a call from her desk phone. She was much better at getting people to talk to her on cold calls than he was. When Sinclair did it, people all too often got pissed off and hung up on him.

“Special Ladies Escorts,” said a woman with a husky smoker’s voice.

“This is Sergeant Braddock, calling from the Oakland Police Department,” she said, pausing to let the woman take in what she said and reconcile it with the caller ID that surely appeared on her phone.

The woman’s tone changed from friendly and flirtatious to cold and professional. “How may I help you?”

“One of the women who works for your agency was murdered in Oakland Saturday night, and I’m trying to gather information on her.”

“Do you have a name?”

“She’s known as Blondie on your website. Her actual name is Dawn Gustafson.”

Sinclair heard the clicking of keys on a computer keyboard. A moment later, the woman said, “I can’t confirm or deny that Dawn Gustafson is an employee of the company.”

“Is there someone there who can?” Braddock asked.

“Hold please.” A Rihanna song, “The Monster,” beat over the phone for several minutes until the voice came back. “I’m sorry, but there’s no one here with that authority.”

“Do you have a number where I can reach the owner?” Braddock asked.

“I can pass on a message to her.”

“What’s her name?”

“I’m not at liberty to reveal that. Would you like to leave a message?”

Braddock gave her the office phone number and repeated her name. “When can I expect her call?”

“I wouldn’t know. I will pass on your message.” The woman’s voice lost a touch of its edge. “If I may ask, how was she killed?”

“She was murdered and hung naked from a tree in East Oakland.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that. I’ll pass your message on immediately.”

Braddock hung up. “Do you think she’ll call?”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Sinclair said. “These escort services are tough to crack.”

“Didn’t vice used to work them back when you were there?”

“We worked a few, but they were labor intensive. I was one of the UCs on a few operations my first few months there, but then I went over to narcotics.”

“Undercover in an escort operation. Every guy’s fantasy.”

“Yup. Sitting in nice hotels, drinking room-service wine, and waiting for sexy women to come to my room, take off their clothes, and tell me what kind of kinky things they want to do to me.”

“And then you’d arrest them,” Braddock said.

“And offer them a way to stay out of jail if they flip on the higher ups that make all the money.”

“Did vice ever make any cases?”

“A few actually got some prison time,” Sinclair said. “But most cases fell apart somewhere along the way. Usually, the
agency shut down and reopened under a different name. When the department disbanded vice, didn’t SVU pick up that responsibility?”

Braddock huffed. “In theory. But when I was assigned to the special victim’s unit, we couldn’t even keep up with the rape and child abuse cases, so there wasn’t much time to take on major investigations like that.”

It still riled Sinclair when he thought of how the department had been decimated by budget cuts and reorganizations demanded by the Oakland City Council over the years. When he came on, vice-narcotics had three squads, one totally committed to prostitution and gambling enforcement. A half-dozen investigators out of the youth services division handled child abuse cases, and another four sergeants handled sexual assault cases out of the criminal investigation division. Today, the responsibility for all those crimes, as well as domestic violence, fell on the newly created SVU with half the personnel.

“Since you didn’t have time to work them, what did you do when you came across information about escort services or major prostitution rings?” Sinclair asked.

“We passed on the info to Intel in the hopes they could coordinate with the Feds and take down the organizations.”

“Did they ever get the owners of the escort services?”

“I don’t think the department’s targeted anything but street-level prostitution in years.”

“If the department wants to address the problem, they need to do more than a couple of operations a month picking up the girls who are dumb enough to solicit an undercover,” Sinclair said.

“What about the johns?” Braddock asked.

“Bust them, too,” he said. “They’re half of the problem. You remember when we used to do the john sweeps? We’d put a female officer that wanted to play hooker for a night out on the corner and snatch up every dude that solicited them.”

“I loved watching other officers I worked the streets with hang up their uniforms and slip into their hooker getups in
the locker room. They made bets on who could snare the most johns.”

“I never saw you out there.”

“Not my kind of thing, but I respect the gals who did it.”

“I think the record was something like thirty-four johns in one night.”

“That was Jane Oliver,” Braddock said.

“Where’s she working now?”

“Still patrol in East Oakland. You’d never know how hot some of our female officers are when you only see them in uniform.”

Sinclair’s desk phone rang.

“This is number seventy-three in radio,” a dispatcher said. “We just received a nine-one-one call from a woman who said her name was Tanya and she’s helping you on a murder case.”

“Yeah, well, sort of,” Sinclair said.

“She said some really sketchy dude just approached a few of the girls at Thirty-Third and Market, showed off a gun in his waistband, and asked if any of them wanted to take a drive to Burckhalter Park and party. Isn’t that where your murder occurred?”

“Yeah. Did she give a description?”

“Male, Hispanic, twenty-five to thirty, five-ten, slim build, driving a black Camry, partial plate six-four-three.”

“Did you broadcast it?” Sinclair asked.

“I assigned two units to check the area. The caller said she wouldn’t talk to uniformed officers—only you. She’s waiting inside the Cajun restaurant in the thirty-one-hundred block of Market.”

Sinclair hung up the phone and said to Braddock, “Let’s go. Tanya might’ve spotted our killer.”