“Hi, this is Inspector Ryan Greening, San Francisco Police Department. I wanted to talk about one of your cases.” He recited the case number. “Zo? Sutton and Holli Buckner.”
“I know the case. Do you have something for me?”
“To be honest, I don’t know what I have. Zo? Sutton claims her case is connected to a homicide we had in the city last night.”
“Really?” Solis didn’t sound that impressed. “Anything to it?”
“That’s what I’m hoping you can confirm. If possible, I wanted to request a copy of the case file.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem, but before I go wasting my time, what do you have?”
From his tone, it seemed that Solis either didn’t have a high opinion of the SFPD or of Zo? Sutton. “Last night we had a murder of an unidentified woman in her twenties. She was discovered at a construction site, naked, suspended by her wrists. She’d been flogged repeatedly before being stabbed in the heart.”
“Flogged?”
Greening heard surprise and interest in Solis’s voice. Now he moved to totally hook him. “Yes. Our victim also had the Roman numerals VI carved into her left hip. We think he’s numbering his victims.”
Silence. That said plenty.
“I have Ms. Sutton’s account, but could you give me your take, Deputy?”
“We responded to a trucker’s 911 call that he’d found a woman unconscious on the shoulder after spinning out in her car. We found Ms. Sutton naked and semiconscious. At first glance, we thought we were dealing with a DUI. A blood test revealed she was under the limit, but the drug panel revealed Flunitrazepam. This tied into her assertion that she and her friend, Ms. Buckner, had been abducted and held captive.”
Greening didn’t like the way Solis gave his account. He sounded like he was giving evidence in court, not talking cop to cop. Something was off here.
“What did you learn about the abduction?”
Greening heard Solis exhale down the line.
“Not much. Ms. Sutton could provide very few details. She couldn’t give us her whereabouts leading up to the abduction or after. Nor could she provide more than a very generic description of the man who kidnapped her. No one could corroborate her account. Essentially, the case ran out of steam.”
Greening understood Solis’s frustration. There was nothing worse than landing a case with no leads. It was like trying to capture a cloud in a jar. What Greening still didn’t understand was the dismissive tone he was hearing.
“Did you ever get anything from Ms. Sutton’s car?”
“We found fibers and hair belonging to Ms. Sutton, Ms. Buckner, and an unknown male.”
Trace evidence was one thing Greening didn’t have. It showed the guy had gotten careful since Zo?, but if he proved to be careless, a comparison match would nail this guy for both crimes. “If we get anything on our end, I’ll share results with you. Did you ever get a line on this workshop location this guy took them to?”
“We canvassed the area looking for buildings matching the descriptions of the building she mentioned, but we never found a match. That’s if she remembered it right in the first place.”
That was the problem with Zo?. Her account was Rohypnol distorted. A workshop could be an office building or a church basement, for all she knew. “What about Holli Buckner? Did you look into her?”
“Yes. It appeared that Ms. Buckner had reserved a room with Ms. Sutton in Vegas, but we couldn’t confirm or deny whether she was with Ms. Sutton. Proving the validity of her claims was difficult. We couldn’t find any eyewitnesses to prove Ms. Buckner had traveled with her, despite appearances that she had.”
Appeared and validity were interesting choices of words. They fell into the same category as alleged. They implied disbelief.
“Holli Buckner hasn’t been seen since this incident.”
“I know.” The words came tight and clipped.
“What do you think happened that night?”
“I don’t know,” Solis said with less tension in his voice. “Ms. Sutton was an unreliable witness. She provided us with a confusing account that made it impossible to pursue a case of any kind.”
Considering Zo? had been roofied, her imprecision wasn’t surprising.
“What’s the case’s status?”
“Open.”
Not a surprising classification under the circumstances, but Greening knew these guys hadn’t done enough on the case. He could rub Solis’s nose in it, but he threw the man a bone instead.
“Just between us, what are your instincts telling you?”
“It could have gone down just as Ms. Sutton says.”
“I hear a but in there.”
Solis gave Greening a grunt of appreciation. “This could be a tale to cover a catfight gone bad or a cover for Holli Buckner to disappear.”
Zo? as perpetrator. It was an interesting theory. Solis was as suspicious as Ogawa. “But her wounds?”
“Easily self-inflicted.”
“And the Flunitrazepam?”
“Possibly self-administered.”
“That’s pretty convoluted.”