A Killing in China Basin

THIRTY-FOUR


Raveneau waited for a call from an old friend, Bob Moore, who’d built a consulting business doing credit card fraud work. A decade ago Raveneau tried to help him learn the truth after his daughter died illegally bungee jumping off a railroad bridge in northern California. Moore couldn’t accept the conclusions of the local sheriff’s department and his anguish over it was so intense that Raveneau had done his own investigation. He concluded what the sheriff had, that her death was accidental but needless, and that recklessness by the more experienced bungee jumpers she was with had contributed but wasn’t malicious. He did that investigative work at his own expense and would never have considered asking for money.

But yesterday he’d called Moore asking for a favor. Moore was an industry expert. He booked months in advance and Raveneau asked him to jump Alex Jurika to the front of the line. When the phone rang it was Moore calling back about the cards they’d found in Jurika’s apartment.

‘One of those cards had fifteen thousand four hundred forty-two dollars charged to it from January sixth to July one this year. So that’s more or less twenty-five hundred dollars a month. Alex Jurika or whoever used the card also made regular payments and not all of those were the minimum payment. She paid down a thousand dollars in April and made another sizeable payment later, could have been in June. I’ve got the date here, hold on a second.’

Papers rustled.

‘Sorry about that, it was in June—’

‘This past June?’

‘Yes, and eleven hundred and twelve dollars, enough so it doesn’t look like your typical fraudulent usage. The card belongs to an elderly woman in San Rafael. She didn’t even know she was missing her card. Her daughter figured it out. She told me her mom has twenty cards and hardly ever uses any of them.’

‘What’s the cardholder’s name?’

‘Miriam Shapiro. Do you want her address and the daughter’s phone numbers? I can email them to you. Here, I’ll do that now. Let me know when you get them.’

‘I got ’em.’

‘Where was I?’

‘Miriam Shapiro’s daughter.’

‘That’s right. OK, so I know what the daughter believes, but I don’t really know what the San Rafael Police concluded. It probably makes more sense for you to talk directly with them.’

‘I’ll call them.’

‘Good, and here’s the story. Last summer, old Miriam broke her hip and needed home care. After the home care started, a Visa disappeared from a bundle of a dozen credit cards Miriam had sitting in a desk drawer with a rubber band around them. The credit card company was then contacted with a change of billing address. Whoever made contact had all the requisite info on Miriam Shapiro, so they gathered up more than just a Visa at the house. Bills started mailing to a UPS Store outlet mailbox in San Francisco.’

Raveneau copied down the address.

‘Identity thieves will rent a mailbox or an apartment and pay the rent out of cash advances on cards. They’ll make significant buys, pay the bill in full and then get new credit card offers and a higher line of credit. When it gets high enough they borrow the whole amount and disappear. It takes a certain amount of risk management and patience.’

It was a common enough credit fraud scheme, but Raveneau didn’t comment. He didn’t want to derail Moore’s momentum.

‘The daughter for reasons of her own – she told me she was just curious because her mother never lets her open mail or pay bills – went online and checked her mom’s credit score. When she printed off a credit report she saw all the cards paid except for this Visa with the fifteen grand run up and a new address. She called the credit card company and the police.

‘But here’s where it gets more interesting. An arrest was made of a Latino woman at the UPS Store in San Francisco as she picked up mail, which in this case included eleven other credit card bills, Miriam Shapiro’s and ten others that were also fraudulently obtained. Your department made the arrests but it was a San Rafael Police operation. I have the case file number. I’m emailing it to you, right now.

‘It turned out the Latino woman didn’t speak English and could prove she’d only been in the country for three months. She was actually here legally and there were lots of tears and weeping because she claimed she’d never broken a law in her life and couldn’t understand why anyone would do this to her. All she did was answer an ad in a Hispanic newspaper and get a part-time job to collect mail from a few spots, and that may have been the truth.’ He paused a beat. ‘I believe it was.

‘She met with the woman who hired her one time only. The interview was in Spanish and she got laid out on her mail collection duties and told how she’d be paid – in cash and dropped once a month where she’s living. Because she was only getting three hundred bucks a month, getting paid in cash didn’t seem like a big deal to her.’

‘I’d like to get a printout of what was bought with the cards.’

‘The most significant purchases were for computers, printers, phones, a shredder – equipment as though someone was setting up an office.’

‘Shipped or bought in stores?’

‘Shipped, bought online, and I’ll give you the address they went to. That’s about it. That’s all I’ve got.’

‘That’s a lot and thank you.’

‘You call me anytime you need any help. I’ll talk to you later.’

Raveneau called the San Rafael Police and a Lieutenant Cordova got on the line and suggested he drive over.

‘I’ll copy everything before you get here,’ Cordova said.

San Rafael’s police station was beneath the city offices on Fifth Street, down a handful of brick-lined steps off the sidewalk. Lieutenant Cordova handled credit fraud and business was booming.

‘In the Shapiro case the credit card didn’t walk out of the house on its own,’ Cordova said, ‘so I started with the people taking care of Mrs Shapiro. That led to a firm that provides skilled home care help, which led to a woman named Brittany Rodriquez who worked at the Shapiro residence. I think it’s likely this Rodriquez took the card and handed it off to someone else. The name of the home care firm is GoodHands. It ought to be StickyHands. They have offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, and there have been other similar complaints in each of those cities about them.

‘The business is owned by a woman named Faith Silliman and she may be legit. She provided employment records on Brittany Rodriquez, gave me a way to find her, and was very cooperative.’

‘What about this Brittany Rodriquez, where would I find her? If you think she might have stolen the card we’ve got and handed it off, I need to find her.’

‘She disappeared and I haven’t been able to find her. GoodHands, the company, got its ass generally fired around Marin County as word got out. With Rodriquez we never had anything to hold her with.’

‘OK, what about the owner, Faith Silliman?’

‘We could probably get her on the phone. Do you want me to call her? She told me her business depends on her credibility and integrity and that for me she’d be available twenty-four seven.’ He looked up and grinned. ‘Let’s find out.’

Cordova called, got her, and then explained he was with a homicide inspector from SFPD. He handed the phone to Raveneau.

‘Does the name Alex Jurika mean anything to you?’ Raveneau asked.

‘It sure does. Alex was with me on and off for two years before I fired her. I flew in from Seattle to do it myself.’

‘Why did you fire her?’

‘She was stealing credit card numbers. There was no proof, but no question either. I paid out nine thousand dollars to take care of it.’

‘Was she a friend of Brittany Rodriquez?’

‘I think she was and they colluded. She said no.’

‘Alex Jurika is our victim. We found a credit card and a driver’s license in Miriam Shapiro’s name in Jurika’s apartment.’

‘Alex was murdered?’

‘Yes.’

When she spoke again her tone had changed. She sounded far less judgmental. Raveneau looked at Cordova as he answered Silliman’s questions about the murder. The case was going somewhere now and he felt the difference.

‘Can I ask you to email me records of when she worked for you?’ Raveneau asked.

‘I’ll do it right now.’

Raveneau opened the email on his phone and read through the records before driving away. Some hard things had been written in Jurika’s termination record. He thought of her sister Gloria’s comments about Alex’s character and how different she’d been as a child. He spoke to Alex now as he drove.

‘I don’t know where you went wrong,’ he said, ‘but your sister is right. You did go wrong. And Deborah Lafaye is probably right, you had a lot going your way that you didn’t make good use of. But we’re going to find who did this to you. We’re getting closer and we will figure it out. We will get there.’