A Killing in China Basin

SIXTY-ONE


A nondescript building, gray stucco walls, flat roof, unpainted sheet metal caps at the parapets, two steel man doors, no windows, and two heavy gauge metal roll-up doors in an industrial section of South San Jose. The sidewalk was wet from showers and the wind was cold as Raveneau walked over to the locksmith’s truck and tapped on the guy’s window, while la Rosa dealt with the alarm company.

Within fifteen minutes they were inside where it was warm and quiet and clean. Cars, trucks, and SUVs sat on a floor of waxed concrete. La Rosa pointed at a boxy blue Volvo wagon and then took a step back.

‘That it?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘We’ll probably want to impound it tomorrow, not tonight.’

She walked over and moved slowly around it, looking in through the windows, her shoes squeaking on the wax floor. They went from vehicle to vehicle, and then through an apartment and an office. Close to fifteen thousand square feet and many automotive mechanical tools. He didn’t know anyone that worked on their own car any more, but it looked like Stoltz assembled engines. When they found a locked storage room door he wished they’d kept the locksmith here longer.

They used a battering ram instead, punched out the lock and found rows of guns and boxes of ammo. They found maps with notes written on them, lines in different colored ink, and Raveneau took a guess.

‘We’re looking at us, the homicide detail, our patterns of habits. He mapped our lives.’ Raveneau spread some of the maps and looked at the notations. ‘Looks to me like he studied all of us at one point, I mean, look at this, that’s Jacobi’s house and McKinley right there, Stewart, Garcia, I’ll be damned.’

They found a big stainless-faced Sub-Zero refrigerator with beer and some fresh vegetables, and a photo board in the office off the apartment that had seven or eight photos of a well maintained ranch house, and varying shots of the driveway sloping up to it and a carport.

‘That’s Becker’s brother’s house in Walnut Creek,’ he said.

‘But he didn’t shoot Becker’s brother. They got a DNA hit and charged the kid.’

‘They want to revisit their case.’

Before leaving they returned to the blue Volvo wagon and la Rosa stood in front of it with her arms crossed. ‘I didn’t think we’d find this. I didn’t expect to see it again, and I’m surprised it affects me so much. I thought it was Heilbron.’

Raveneau nodded.

‘And I didn’t know seeing the car would be this emotional.’

‘It was that close.’

When they left it was three in the morning and raining. It rained harder as they drove back and they were too tired to talk any more. He fell into bed and asleep to the sound of rain against the windows. At dawn he woke to a phone call from an exuberant Bates.

‘Where you at, Ben? I’m coming into the city ready to buy you breakfast. I want to thank you in person.’

He met Bates at a place on Potrero Hill that Bates and Whitacre used to frequent. The sidewalk in front of the café and the sliding door to the patio was plastered with dry plane leaves that were sodden with last night’s rain. It was the morning after the first true storm off the Pacific and you could feel the change. He found Bates inside at a corner table, a plate of home fries, eggs, bacon, and sourdough toast in front of him.

‘I take twenty milligrams of Lipitor every day so the eggs don’t hurt me. Man, these are good. I miss this place. You know, Ted and I used to come here all the time.’

‘I remember.’

‘I wanted to thank you in person because they were right on the edge of charging me. They’d already gotten a warrant and gone through my house. I came home to that two days ago. How’d you get him? I heard he showed up.’

‘He did but I don’t know how he knew to be there.’

‘So it’s not over?’

‘Not quite, but pretty close. We’ve got everything we need to charge him for three murders. We got a lot off a laptop.’

Raveneau watched to see how he reacted to that and Bates stopped eating. One of the three was Jacie and he laid the toast he’d bitten into back down on the plate.

‘Jacie, too?’

‘Yeah, it was Stoltz.’

‘How sure are you?’

‘Everything about the truck is there. We got enough off the laptop and from photos and diagrams out of a warehouse in San Jose to charge him. He did a lot of planning, but do you really want to hear this?’

‘Pictures of Jacie?’

Should he tell Bates that? Was it really necessary?

‘Hey, hand me that menu.’

Bates reached across the table and gripped Raveneau’s wrist. ‘I want to know.’

‘There were photos. He studied his targets, recorded what happened, and analyzed his mistakes. He killed her, Charles.’

A waitress showed and Raveneau ordered coffee and toast. The waitress wasn’t the one clearing tables but Bates handed her his plate, and then seemed to forget where he was and stared at the wall behind Raveneau.

‘How long did he follow her?’

‘I don’t know, a couple of months, a year, longer, and there’s no way to say whether he was really after you or Jacie, or evaluating both of you. Given Becker’s brother I’d say he was after Jacie.’

‘So Ted was right and I was wrong.’

‘Ted was right.’

‘F*cking Ted was always right.’

‘Not always.’

Raveneau watched him pick up the coffee cup and then set it back down. His face seemed to have aged in the ten minutes Raveneau had been here. The short distance Bates had gotten from his initial grief was lost.

‘I’ve got something I want to ask you,’ Raveneau said, and Bates tried to find a balance again, waved weakly at the table, said, ‘You should eat. I want to buy you breakfast.’

‘I’m OK, and maybe this goes back to Whitacre worrying so much about Stoltz. I went out to the Reinerts’ old apartment yesterday.’

‘First time you’ve been there?’

‘First time inside.’

‘You got inside their apartment?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What did you do, knock on the door?’

‘No, the building is being renovated. It’s stripped to the studs.’

‘Nice old building, isn’t it?’

Raveneau didn’t care about the building this morning. He watched Bates.

‘The Reinerts’ former apartment has been gutted. At the kitchen sink the cabinets are gone and there’s just the opening where the window was. I stood where she would have been had she seen Stoltz shoot her husband.’

Raveneau didn’t really believe they meant to do anything wrong. He had studied the Reinert murder files and there was no question Stoltz had fled the scene. Not much doubt that Stoltz had shot John Reinert.

‘What do you mean, had she seen?’

‘She lied to you and Whitacre. She told us yesterday that she never saw the shooting. She heard a popping sound she knew was gunfire. She may have seen a flash of light. Then a second shot and she ran down the stairs. She wasn’t afraid to run downstairs because Stoltz had warned her something could happen that night. When I was there I realized it didn’t matter whether she’d been at the window or not. At that distance and angle and at night, no one could have seen the shooting or told who was who.’

‘I stood there and I could tell. So could Ted.’

‘A good defense lawyer would have eaten you up, but it didn’t matter, you had him every other which way.’

‘I don’t like this, Ben.’

‘I’m not really asking for you to like it. The place is being remodeled. Go back and take a look yourself.’

‘I don’t need to. If she lied, then why did she lie?’

‘Because she knew Stoltz had killed her husband. She was supposed to back his mugger story and not only did she not do that, she came up with an eye witness account to help take him down.’

‘And you’re telling me we should have called her on that eye witness account?’

‘What I’m telling you is I stood at that window and I couldn’t see buying her story, and if I had to guess I’d say Stoltz who was in love with her at the time for his own reasons, took the plea bargain and didn’t start his attorney on her. And like you said, he would have gone down anyway. But somewhere later on he probably started dwelling on her lie.’

‘Stoltz had remnants of powder burns on his right hand.’

‘He cleaned his hands. He didn’t have enough on them. It wouldn’t have stood up and you and Ted knew it.’

‘He fired that gun. He should have told us he’d taken shots at the mugger.’

‘Oh, he killed John Reinert. That’s not the question. The question is why you believed she saw it. I know you. You stood at that window.’

‘You can see the parking lot clearly from that window. I can easily remember that.’

‘But you wouldn’t be able to make out who was who, and it was night. Stoltz knew she hadn’t seen it. He—’

‘How do you know that? You don’t know that.’

‘He started to write you letters. He was dwelling on her lie. He wrote about it. It’s in the letters to Whitacre that got filed, but you were more careful. You made sure you lost the letters. I’m betting he brought it up again and again to you.’

‘He killed the man, so what’s your point?’

‘This is what I’m seeing. He shot and killed Reinert, but if he hadn’t had the window testimony to dwell on he’d have only himself and Erin to think about.’

‘You can go f*ck yourself, Raveneau. We did it exactly by the book.’

Raveneau got to his feet.

‘Those Oakland detectives were locked on you, but so you know, I never believed any of it, and I’m very sorry about Jacie.’

Raveneau walked out and his face felt flushed as he got out in the cooler air. He knew Bates would go back and look out that window, and he’d probably see just what he saw that night. Bates would never admit it but both he and Whitacre must have known her account was bullshit.

He was in his car when his phone rang, figured it was probably Bates. But it was the nurse he’d given his card to at the hospital where Stoltz was. A decision had gotten made yesterday that Stoltz didn’t need a police officer guarding his door and on the off chance someone might show and want to get in to see him, Raveneau had written his cell number on the back of his card and asked the nurse to call if there was anything unusual. As he listened to her explanation he guessed it was Erin Quinn who’d showed up.

‘She said she knew him and needed to make sure he really was paralyzed and wouldn’t be coming after her any more.’

The nurse thought that was very strange, but more than that she was outraged they’d found the woman in the room leaning over him.

‘She sneaked in. No one saw her and she didn’t check in with us.’

‘But she said call me?’

‘She did say that, she said call Inspector Raveneau. I don’t know what she was up to but I didn’t get a good feeling.’

‘Describe her again.’

As she did, he realized his guess that it was Quinn was wrong.

‘Thank you. I think I know who it is.’

He called la Rosa.

‘Stoltz had a visitor sneak into his room this morning. A woman who told the head nurse that she just wanted to make sure he was paralyzed.’

‘Geez, you’d think she’d had enough of him.’

‘It was Lafaye. I think we go see her this morning. When are you getting in?’

‘I’m just parking, I’m here.’

He signed in and then left again with la Rosa, drove to Lafaye’s house on Fulton Street. They went up the stairs and Lafaye opened the door like she’d seen them coming for fourteen blocks.

She said, ‘I love the way you follow up. Come in, both of you.’