A Killing in China Basin

THIRTEEN


The next morning Raveneau and la Rosa put on the booties, spacesuits, caps, masks – the whole get-up – before going in to watch their Jane Doe autopsied. The medical examiner quietly catalogued female, five foot four, one hundred twenty-three pounds, of mixed race, likely Asian/Caucasian, black hair, brown eyes, significant large black-colored moles high on the right side of her back, a tattoo of a diamond on the heel of her left foot, two inch scar on her left knee, another small tatt low on her back and one on her scalp inside the hairline. Approximate age: thirty. A tiny stud piercing in her left nostril was removed. Wounds: ligature marks at neck, hemorrhaging at eyes and tongue, scalp wound at right temple, bruising at the back of the neck, another bruise, two inches by one inch, on the right thigh just above the knee. An abrasion on the right elbow that likely occurred shortly before death, possibly from a fall. There was more bruising where ankle and wrist restraints had been removed.

Raveneau listened to the medical examiner’s quiet progress, heard him say ‘no evidence of sexual assault.’ He looked at the gray skin of her face and tried again to guess the reason she was in the China Basin building. There weren’t any needle marks, nothing indicated drug use. Prostitution or a sexual liaison was possible, and his guess was still that she came in through the gate with her assailant. One of them had a key. He and la Rosa would need to interview Heilbron again, as well as the realtor.

As they cut her open he and la Rosa left the room. They’d get the rest from the report. They didn’t need to watch her liver weighed.

‘What do you make of the tattoo on her heel?’ he asked after they’d stripped off the suits and were outside in the cool breeze of the corridor leading back to the Hall.

‘I don’t make anything of it.’

‘Maybe we can track down her name through the tattoos.’

‘That seems like another goose chase.’

‘Another one?’

‘Well, like one.’

Their Jane Doe’s sketch had run in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, but how many people read the newspaper any more? Still, at Homicide they had new calls, new tips. In the late morning an email tip on a different case arrived via the ‘Contact Us’ link on the SFPD website. The tip named two kids who’d allegedly witnessed a stabbing outside a club in the Mission several weeks ago. Raveneau called the high school and confirmed that both young men were seniors and at school today. At noon they drove over, met with a dean first, and then one of the two young men, who immediately denied having been at the club that night.

La Rosa took the lead with the second young man and impressed Raveneau. She was soft spoken and easy with the boy, a sixteen-year-old named Robert Fuentes. She was more relaxed and confident than with Heilbron. She’d also changed her look, cut her hair short this weekend, turning her proud face more handsome and mannish, something she told Raveneau on the drive here that she regretted. She told him something else this morning, that her roots were upper middle class. Her father was a knee surgeon, her mother in marketing, and both tried and failed to talk her out of police work, arguing that she could do better for herself.

Raveneau spoke decent Spanish but la Rosa was fluent and hip to the language the kid used. Forty minutes into the interview Fuentes gave up a name, H Man, Hector Jimenez, a gangbanger, and told them where to look for him.

They picked Jimenez up off the street in the mid afternoon and brought him in. He was a big man, coffee-colored, half-Puerto Rican, half-Mexican and muscled, wearing a canary-yellow shirt that came down to mid thigh. Jimenez knew to say nothing and lawyer up but inexplicably did the opposite: confessed to the shooting, saying he was high and the victim had come on to the girl he was with so he had no choice. They were hours with him in the small interview room and after he signed a confession they booked him.

Then they went to see Heilbron who was hostile and unwilling to talk to them at all. The thrill of confessing had passed and he made no attempt to answer Raveneau’s questions. Instead, he said, ‘I made up the whole thing, I didn’t kill her. I got everything from one of the cops outside. He’ll remember me. Ask him.’

Raveneau and la Rosa knew they’d have to kick him loose, but that didn’t mean they weren’t conflicted about it. Then, as they were leaving, Heilbron called to la Rosa. She glanced at Raveneau and then went back, demanding as she got close, ‘What is it?’

‘I know you’re not married. I want to ask you out. I’d like to spend time with you.’

‘Would you?’

‘Last night I kept waking up thinking about you. We should get together.’

‘Let’s do that. Let’s do it in an interview room tomorrow morning and we’ll talk about San Jose. How does that sound?’

She didn’t wait for his answer. Outside, Raveneau turned and said, ‘Let’s get a drink and celebrate our first week on-call together and you getting the Jimenez confession today.’

In the old days Raveneau drank Scotch and when somebody wanted to buy the homicide inspector a drink he usually accepted. He’d get warmed up and entertain a small crowd with stories as Angie waited at home. That was back when he thought it meant something to appear on TV answering questions about a homicide investigation at a press conference. It was also when he thought an eighteen-year-old Scotch meant the whiskey had been in a barrel for eighteen years, as opposed to the truth, which was that just a fraction of the barrel had. He hadn’t known anything more about Scotch than he’d known about homicide investigations. Now he ordered a glass of wine, la Rosa a margarita.

‘The homicide dick who drinks white wine,’ la Rosa said after the waitress left.

‘When I was the Great Inspector I drank Scotch. In those days I couldn’t find a hat big enough to fit my head.’

‘How do they fit nowadays? They must be tight still.’

‘Not as tight.’ He studied her a moment and said, ‘I should have asked you this weeks ago. Everyone calls you Liz, but what do you prefer?’

‘Oh, I don’t care.’

‘No, I’m asking, I mean it.’

‘I like Elizabeth but no one uses my full name.’ She smiled a warm smile. ‘I’m OK if you just call me Inspector. I’m still getting used to it and I love the sound of it.’

‘I’m going to call you Elizabeth.’

Raveneau finished his wine and as la Rosa downed her margarita they ordered another round. It felt like they got somewhere today and maybe also crossed a generational gap. Getting the Jimenez confession made it a lucky day, but that was before they knew what had happened across the bay in Oakland.