A Killing in China Basin

FORTY-FOUR


Stoltz’s lawyer adjusted her glasses and made a prediction. ‘They’ll release him within two days and my client will sue and win.’

It took Raveneau an hour to string together how the SID team knew Stoltz was on his way to his mother’s house. Turned out the FBI tracked him real-time through his cell phone, and Raveneau didn’t say it to anyone except la Rosa, but he regretted the takedown. He believed Stoltz would have come in, whereas now he was refusing to talk. He sat and talked strategy with la Rosa and then called Jurika’s cousin, Julie Candiff. Candiff’s fingers clicked over a keyboard as she talked with him. She was flaky but cooperating, flying in from Phoenix tomorrow morning just before noon.

‘We’ll pick you up at the airport.’

‘I rented a car.’

‘OK, it’ll take you about thirty-five minutes to get here. Do you want directions?’

‘No, I have my phone.’

‘We’ll see you tomorrow.’

She didn’t answer and a moment later hung up.

‘Is she going to show?’ la Rosa asked, and Raveneau shook his head, no.

He called the LA car dealership that sold the BMW to Stoltz and talked with the salesman who closed the deal. Somewhere between the LA dealership and where they took him down, Stoltz switched from a BMW into a Toyota Prius and Raveneau was looking for the salesman’s help. He wanted the mileage on the car as it left the lot. He got that, 39,334.

After thanking the salesman and hanging up he used Google Maps to get the distance from the dealership to Stoltz’s mother’s house. Stoltz was a mile short of there when he was taken down. Now he called the Department of Motor Vehicles and got a list of other vehicles, cars and boats in the name of Steven Pullman. He sat back, thought about it, and then made another call and got the answer he expected.

‘If he’s paying his bills as Steven Pullman no judge is going to hold him on an illegal social security number and an alias on a credit card. In this state, if we started locking up people with illegal social security numbers we’d have to build a jail every fifteen minutes.’

As he hung up, he thought more about Heilbron and the case they were building against him, and then what was already starting to click suddenly made even more sense. It fit. It was too much to be coincidence. If Lafaye was telling the truth about buying Erin Quinn’s identity from Alex Jurika, and they had that clear link to Stoltz’s past, what if the Steven Pullman identity was also bought through Jurika?

By late afternoon he had a full record of everywhere the Pullman Visa had ever been used. He wrote up a request for a search warrant for Stoltz’s residence and vehicles. As he finished la Rosa walked back in.

‘You’re not going there without me,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t want to. Let’s see those stitches.’ He wrapped an arm around her after looking at them, then said, ‘OK, partner, let’s go see the judge.’

Los Altos police assisted and taped the road off as Raveneau drank coffee and ate a tuna sandwich. Then he and la Rosa walked down the gravel drive toward the guest house. A string of low landscape lights marked the way. He looked at the dark hills beyond and the pool and tennis courts and the lawyer waiting for them in the light of the open front door. Raveneau introduced himself and la Rosa to the lawyer. She had a direct look and seemed to have a genuine interest in protecting her client. She read the warrant carefully as Raveneau shook open a pair of latex gloves and put them on slowly.