A Killing in China Basin

FORTY-ONE


Raveneau got a call from communications command and drove straight to the hospital. He badged the officer guarding the door and walked in carrying his laptop.

‘Elizabeth?’ He took her hand and she opened her eyes.

‘You,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Man, my head and neck hurt.’ She touched her forehead then the pillow. ‘I hit the sidewalk.’ Her voice was slowed, groggy. She could hear herself. ‘I’m fine. I’m lucky, right?’

‘Very lucky.’

‘I know, I screwed up.’

‘You didn’t screw up.’

‘I’ve got some stitches.’

‘I heard.’

‘It grazed me, my skull.’

She closed her eyes again. She’d been unable to get to her feet afterwards. She felt blood streaming from her head, heard a man talking to her and faraway sirens as she lay on the sidewalk. She knew the man with her was trying to help, but she couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. She remembered the ride here and the doctor telling her how lucky she was as he stitched her up. She opened her eyes again, stared at Raveneau.

‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

The coverage had gone national. Raveneau listened to local radio on the way here. KCBS reported, ‘Police are looking for a male assailant who shot and wounded a San Francisco homicide inspector tonight. The suspect is believed to have fled in a blue Volvo station wagon with license plates beginning with the letters T and F. He is armed and dangerous and anyone spotting the vehicle should keep their distance and call this number . . .’

‘Elizabeth?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I want to ask you a couple of questions.’

‘OK, sure, let’s go.’

Her face was very pale. She needed to just rest here in the dark. He knew that.

‘Are you sure the shooter was male?’

‘Ninety percent.’ She mustered. She opened her eyes and said, ‘Wearing a dark-colored mask, like one of those they have now for extreme cold. It covered his head down to his collar bone. Bulky coat.’

‘How do you know he was male?’

‘I think he started to say something as he shot me. His arm, size of his head.’

‘Stoltz?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Heilbron.’

She didn’t answer. She faded on him, then said, ‘Maybe Heilbron. Something about his build.’

‘Or neither?’

‘I don’t know.’

She closed her eyes again. Raveneau waited several minutes.

‘Ben?’

‘I’m here.’

Her eyes still closed, she said, ‘He roared up and hit the brakes hard.’

Which was probably why he missed.

‘What about the gun?’

‘You’re telling me we haven’t caught him.’

‘That’s right. It’s gone statewide.’ It went statewide and became a bad night locally for Volvo drivers. ‘Remember anything more about the car? Cracked windshield, faded paint, a rack on top, anything.’

She kept her eyes closed but spoke more clearly.

‘Definitely Volvo, wagon type I rode in as a kid, kind of square looking, a black bumper, chrome wheels.’

Raveneau booted up his laptop to find images of older model Volvo wagons. As the screen came up, la Rosa opened her eyes.

‘Put the laptop on my stomach when you find something.’

He rested it on her and held it steady as she scrolled between two photos and then said, ‘That’s it, that’s the car, a Volvo 240 with the bumper wrapping around in back.’

‘One idea floating is that it’s Stoltz and he went after you because you’re the spokesperson for the task force. But that seems unlikely to me because the task force just happened and you’ve only had one press conference. How often do you run that same route?’

Slower answering again and closing her eyes, saying, ‘Vary the runs, but generally the same direction.’

‘At about the same time of night?’

‘Erratic since I started at homicide, but, yeah, I like that route.’ She smiled with her eyes closed, adding, ‘Or used to.’

She was religious about her exercise. Raveneau’s guess was she ran the route often enough for someone to get a sense of her pattern. He didn’t go there now. He didn’t push her on it, except to ask, ‘Have you run it since joining this cobbled together task force?’

‘Excuse me,’ a woman said from behind Raveneau. He turned. He’d missed Deputy-chief Grainer walking in.

‘What did you just say?’

‘We’re talking about the shooter,’ he said, but Grainer ignored him now. She took la Rosa’s hand and said, ‘I’m so relieved you’re OK.’

Then she turned to Raveneau and asked, ‘Is that your laptop, Inspector?’

‘It is.’

‘Please take it off Elizabeth.’

She touched la Rosa’s face, withdrew her hand, and stood looking down at her as Raveneau turned the computer off.

‘Have you got your phone, Elizabeth?’ Raveneau asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll call you.’

In the hallway he ran into Captain Ramirez.

‘How is she?’

‘She’s OK. I talked to the doctor who stitched her up and he said the bullet grazed her. It tapped the back of her skull as it passed by. He told me it made the faintest groove on the bone right here.’

Raveneau touched his skull where the stitches were.

‘Did you learn any more from her?’

‘Not really. She believes he was male and of fairly sturdy build.’

‘Which fits Stoltz.’

‘It could. Or someone else we’ve been questioning. Carl Heilbron.’

‘I’m guessing it wasn’t coincidence.’

Raveneau didn’t respond to that. It was an inane statement. He left Ramirez and rode the elevator down. Several reporters hustled toward him as he walked out.

‘Can you confirm the shooter was Cody Stoltz?’

Someone in TV who ought to know once told him that national news was purely an entertainment business driven by constant market research polling, and to complain about endless nights of repetitive coverage of whatever current story they were selling was just naïve. He’d bragged that most of the time his national network decided what was news. Celebrities with brand names were easy to market, so significant lasting stories got built around them. Raveneau knew there was a higher plane of cynicism he had only glimpsed at, but he was pretty sure how the media would play this one.

It would be a more immediately saleable story if the wounded homicide inspector had died here in the hospital with her last words being, find my killer. But that’s the breaks of the story-making business. You’ve got to work with what you have. Still, the story-makers were hard at work shaping the expectation – SFPD homicide detail and family versus unknown but driven and capable assailant.

So now it was a chase and a hunt, a reality-based action show where more might get killed and the stakes and the ratings were driven higher. Who doesn’t love a good task-force sized hunt? Talk about turning the tables on a stalker, the media would compete to join the hunt, and you know what, Raveneau was OK with that. They needed the media’s help.

He saw some familiar faces among the reporters, but ignored their calls on the way to his car. But as he drove away he did take a call from a reporter he knew and answered the questions as honestly as he could.

‘Is there any true evidence that points toward Cody Stoltz?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Then why hasn’t he come in with a lawyer and challenged this?’

‘You’ll have to ask him.’

‘OK, all right, but you’re looking for him.’

‘Yeah, we are.’

‘And he’s trying not to get found?’

Raveneau didn’t see any need to answer that one. His mind drifted back to la Rosa, how close a call it was.

‘Was Inspector la Rosa able to give a clear description?’

‘No.’

‘Will she recover more memory, more of a description?’

‘Maybe, but I doubt it. The assailant had a mask on and it happened fast.’

‘Does that mean that, other than it was a Volvo he was driving, you have little to go on?’

‘Right now, that’s accurate.’

‘OK, one last question, if you were Stoltz and you hadn’t killed anybody and didn’t plan to, what would you do now?’

‘I’d call a lawyer and have him arrange a surrender.’

‘Does that mean you’d arrest and charge him?’

‘I can’t answer that.’

‘Perfect. Thanks, Ben, talk to you later.’