A Killing in China Basin

SEVENTEEN


Heilbron slowed as he reached China Basin then continued south to his former employer, Boyle’s Auto Body. He pulled into an open bay, probably to pick up his last check or ask for his job back. Up the street, Raveneau eased the car over to the curb.

‘Who is this guy?’ la Rosa asked, and he understood what she meant. The San Jose detectives brought their file this morning. La Rosa read through it. So had he.

‘Here’s what I think,’ Raveneau answered. ‘When Heilbron walked into the homicide office and tossed out the San Jose rape after confessing to this killing, he was building his credibility. He knew the DNA was missing, probably wouldn’t magically show up, and if it does Heilbron’s probably been advised by a defense attorney that the amount of time it was lost will get it discredited as evidence. The district attorney won’t go anywhere near a chain-of-custody problem.’

‘OK, but he knew the San Jose detectives would come interview him again.’

Raveneau paused. He looked over at her.

‘He wanted that. It was another chance to taunt them and that’s probably what he’s trying to do with us. I’m not seeing the evidence yet that he’s our guy and I doubt we will. He was standing outside talking to the responding officers when we were upstairs. He got what he knows about the inside of the building from them.’

Taylor, the younger officer, had looked at a photo of Heilbron and IDed him.

‘Then why are we following him?’ she asked.

‘Because the rape was probably him, and we aren’t one hundred percent certain yet on China Basin.’

Heilbron’s van backed out suddenly on to Third Street forcing a bus to veer around it. He accelerated away from the auto shop and Raveneau had to jump on the gas just to stay within two stoplights of him. Heilbron drove to the house he leased in South San Francisco and backed into the one-car garage. Inside, he pulled the shades in the bay window that faced the street.

‘Let’s go back to Boyle’s,’ Raveneau said. ‘Let’s find out what happened.’

In Boyle’s Custom Auto Body an employee restoring a yellow Camaro pointed them toward a rear office with this warning: ‘Boyle isn’t here today, but the office manager Katrina is, but she’s worse than the hurricane was so watch out.’

Katrina had a pinched nose, hair dyed a light red, and earrings that looked like car keys hanging from her ears. She took Raveneau’s card and studied it as if she was with Homeland Security. Raveneau watched and then pulled his homicide star.

‘Carl Heilbron just got fired,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t work here any more. Why is he walking around anyway? Why isn’t he in jail? Seems like every time the police talk about a person of interest they’re back on the street the next day. If he said he killed her, does he have to prove it to you before you keep him in jail?’

‘He recanted his confession and we don’t have anything to hold him on.’

‘So hold him anyway. He’s a creep. He delivered a car to the home of one of our customers last summer and the next night was caught looking in the windows of her house. He didn’t get arrested and now she gets free engine care.’

Katrina stared at them as though he and la Rosa had let that happen.

‘Boyle talked the customer out of calling the police.’

‘That’s your boss?’ Raveneau asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Is he around?’

She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Only if it rains.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Simple. When it rains he can’t play golf, and since he doesn’t like to be around his wife he comes to work. Boyle thinks Heilbron is the best auto body man here, so Boyle and the rest of the misogynist pricks look the other way when Heilbron goes into the bathroom for an hour with one of his magazines. He’s disgusting.’

They listened but didn’t learn much and drove back to the homicide office. Raveneau saw the TV vans from three blocks out. He counted five as they picked up coffees at Café Roma, and then watched a reporter warming up, practicing, pulling her voice down lower, getting more baritone into it as she asked, ‘Is a killer targeting San Francisco’s homicide detail?’

‘Shit,’ he said, ‘here we go.’

Upstairs Becker told them to stay completely away from all media. The brass would handle this one. They sorted new tip calls and emails, and Raveneau left messages for several people and made contact with two; the first was an older woman who thought the sketch of the China Basin victim she saw in the Chronicle was her daughter stolen from her stroller in Iowa in 1949. The second was a young man who said he didn’t know her name but recognized her from meeting her in a bar one night.

‘You recognize her from the sketch?’ Raveneau asked.

‘Definitely. She was at Dorati’s. I’m just having trouble with her name. It was something like Alice or Alicia.’

‘What about a last name?’

‘I know, man, I’m trying.’

‘We’ll come see you. How do we find you?’

He got the young man’s name and a phone number and email. La Rosa struck out with her calls, left nine messages and talked with two men and a woman, people they’d go see but didn’t sound like leads.

At three, the door to the homicide detail got locked and a general meeting held. Captain Ramirez asked Raveneau to summarize events from his Thursday morning meeting with Whitacre. He knew the feeling among the inspectors was that Whitacre ate his gun and this meeting was an unnecessary melodrama. He didn’t have anything that would change that belief, but he did recount in detail what he and la Rosa learned in Oakland and what he knew of Whitacre’s death.

When he finished, Captain Ramirez stood and said, ‘Across the street they think they’re on to a big story and they may end up feeding the ego of the killer if there is a connection, so I want all of you to be more careful.’

No one made any cracks as he said that. No one wanted to get bit by Ramirez. As the meeting ended he motioned for Raveneau to follow him into his office.

‘What were you doing at Lincoln Park this morning?’

‘Checking on a suspect.’

‘Does that mean you have new evidence, a new lead, or what does it mean? I’m asking because Mr Bryce filed with the Office of Citizen Complaints and then called here to let us know. They’ll want to know why you went by there. He’s claiming you’re harassing him.’

‘Someday I’ll arrest him for murder.’

‘Well, you haven’t arrested anybody for that lately. You inspectors think you’re immune, but I’ll tell you right now, you’re not. You’re out chasing this guy around a golf course and I’m taking the blowback. I don’t like that. We need investigative results, not harassment complaints. You can take that message back out with you.’

‘I’ll let you deliver it, sir; you’re better at it.’

Late in the afternoon Lieutenant Becker took Raveneau aside and asked, ‘What did you say to Ramirez?’

‘That I’ve got a stack of General Orders on my desk and three memos about the next shooting qualification day, and that if we got rid of those we’d have more time for golf.’

Becker looked perturbed, then annoyed.

‘You don’t want to alienate Ramirez. It’s not worth it, and you of all people know that. So I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but if you push too hard right now you’re going to wake up one morning in Idaho, living in a little one-room cabin next door to your old partner, Kidd.

‘Every morning the two of you can chop wood together in the bitter cold before the sun comes up, and then warm up in the town café eating eggs, bacon, and a stack of pancakes, eating your way to a heart attack before you spend your afternoon on a little boat on some wind-f*cking-driven mountain lake with your war stories and your fishing poles. I hear it gets to fifty below where Kidd is, so you’ll have ice fishing to look forward to as well. And you’ll have your satellite dish. You’ve got to have that.

‘They’re pushing hard from above. They’re pushing so hard I don’t know if it wasn’t someone in the brass who called the press today, and I can guarantee this: If the solve rate doesn’t go up around here, a sea change is coming and seniority isn’t going to mean—’

They never finished their conversation and that was fine with Raveneau, and for that matter he was glad he got under Bryce’s skin. La Rosa waved him over. She was on the phone to the crime lab and covered the mouthpiece.

‘They’ve got a copy for us of the video off the camcorder in Heilbron’s van. They think there’s footage shot in China Basin. Do we want to pick it up this afternoon?’

Raveneau nodded. ‘Tell them we’ll come get it right now.’