A Killing in China Basin

SIXTY-TWO


Lafaye led them into a high-ceilinged room with paintings hanging from picture moldings and tall double-hung windows that looked out across Fulton Street into the trees of Golden Gate Park. A curved sofa arrangement faced the windows and she urged them to sit down and have tea with her. A silver teapot she said she brought home from Thailand sat on the thick glass of the coffee table. Lafaye lit a cigarette and when la Rosa frowned, blew a stream of smoke her direction.

‘This is my house and as far as I know they haven’t banned smoking at home yet.’

‘You visited Cody Stoltz in the hospital,’ Raveneau said. ‘Let’s talk about that.’

‘Well, if you’re here to confront me about it, it’s true. They discharged me early this morning and I drove straight to the hospital where he is. Then I lied my way in. I told them downstairs that I was his half-sister from Indiana and I’d flown all night to get here. Then they were kind enough to tell me what floor and room he was in.’

‘The nurse said that when she walked in you were messing with the equipment they’ve got him hooked up to.’

‘You’re really loaded for bear this morning, Ben. You’d think you’d take the day off and get down on your knees in a chapel and thank God you got him.’

She took a long pull on the cigarette but this time exhaled away from la Rosa. She turned back to Raveneau.

‘I was leaning over him hoping he was awake and conscious enough to recognize me.’

‘She heard you talking to him.’

‘I was talking to him. Did he hear me? I have no idea. I hope he did. I told him what they probably haven’t told him yet, that if he lives, and I made sure he understood that’s a big medical “if” right now, but if he does live the only thing he’ll ever be able to move will be his eyes. Now here’s the good part, he opened his eyes as I was saying that. I said it twice and slowly, and then added, but no one really expects you to live. Pretty awful of me, isn’t it?’ She stared hard at la Rosa. ‘He tried to run me over with a boat. On TV they’re saying he’s the one that shot at you. How do you feel about him?’

‘I think making a trip to the hospital to do that is disgusting,’ la Rosa answered.

‘That’s what you’re trained to feel, but what do you really feel?’ She tried to stare la Rosa down but that wasn’t working, so she added, ‘Are you going to tell me I didn’t have the right to tell him what I think?’

‘Let me tell you why we’re here,’ Raveneau said.

He let several seconds go by before continuing and Lafaye interrupted his timing, saying, ‘Oh, I’m such a terrible host. All I’ve made is tea. Would you like some coffee? Isn’t that what homicide inspectors drink? And what else do you serve at the homicide detail, soda pop, water? What can I get you?’

‘You can ease up a little,’ Raveneau said, ‘we weren’t expecting lunch. We’re here to talk with you about some things we’ve learned after going through files. We got a lot of information, including emails relating to his search for Erin Quinn.’

‘How exciting, but will any of it matter if he dies?’

‘We think so. Under one of his email identities he corresponded with you. Both of you were using aliases but he’d figured out who you were.’

‘Well, obviously, Inspector, if he lured me to his boat.’

‘How do you you think he discovered who you really were?’

‘I’ll never be able to give you that answer.’

‘Did he learn about your Erin Quinn identity and work backwards?’

She gave the smallest shrug and sipped tea.

‘Now we’re behind the third firewall and reading more emails.’

He paused again. Whether or not she knew it was Stoltz she was talking to in the chat rooms, she had certainly learned it on the boat. She wouldn’t say what had lured her to the boat, but he must have had something she wanted. And Raveneau suspected a shared search for Quinn, and that to get her to the marina and on the boat he either offered something or threatened her in some way. If it was a bodily threat then they would have heard about it by now, and if the threat was as Lafaye had suggested earlier – to reveal to the media that she had a false identity that she used in foreign countries and that was going to somehow create a scandal – Raveneau wasn’t buying. He doubted anyone would fault her, given what she was doing.

Lafaye leaned forward now, as if to speak in confidence.

‘All he wanted was a way to find the real Erin Quinn and I couldn’t give him that.’

‘You did give him that. You led him to her.’

‘Excuse me.’

‘You told him about the meeting at Lake Merced and he met her instead of you.’

‘Oh, please, this is like a B movie. I didn’t collude with that monster.’

‘How else could Cody Stoltz know to be at Lake Merced at three in the afternoon? Maybe you were on the boat, maybe you were scared and he forced it from you, but he learned it from you.’

‘Now I’m losing patience.’

‘Or maybe you made a deal with him and he dropped you near the shore and you swam in.’

‘I made the swim I told you about and he tried to run me over with the boat. You can believe that or not believe it, I really don’t care. Why don’t you ask the doctors if I really had hypothermia?’

‘You need to come clean with us on this.’

‘Then I’ll feel much better, right? Nothing will change but I’ll feel better to get the burden off my soul and more to the point, your case will be tidied up. What did the lovely Ms Quinn tell you about a meeting? Obviously, not much, or you wouldn’t be here. What else did you find behind the mythical third firewall?’

Lafaye tapped out another cigarette from the pack on the table. She glanced at la Rosa and said, ‘You were good on TV last night. If you get tired of working murder cases come see me, because you can bullshit with the best of them. Anyone watching last night would have thought the case was solved. I guess it’s not.’ She lit the cigarette and nodded toward Raveneau. ‘You’re so lucky to be learning at his knee. Is there anything else before we end this?’

‘There is,’ Raveneau said, ‘we don’t want you to make any travel plans.’

‘Really, Ben, that’s a little vindictive, isn’t it? I think you’re trying to tie things up a little too neatly. You’ve already got enough to satisfy everyone.’

Raveneau leaned toward her. ‘Here’s my big problem. We happened to follow Quinn to Lake Merced. We could just as easily not have. If we hadn’t, Stoltz would have taken her and probably not been apprehended. So let’s say you made a deal with Stoltz and gave him the meeting time, and like I said earlier, maybe you had to. But, if so, you could easily have told us when we came to see you in the hospital. But you didn’t do that. That bothers me. That means the case is still ongoing.’

‘Well then, that means my lawyer needs to take over. This will be the last interview we have without him.’

She stood up but Raveneau remained sitting.

‘One more thing, we also believe you’re hiding information that could make you a suspect in the murder of Alex Jurika.’

Raveneau waved the stack of papers he’d brought in.

‘It’s all here.’

‘That’s preposterous.’

‘Is it?’

Lafaye snorted and said, ‘You answer a question for me. I swam in and survived, and you caught him and he was the cop killer. Why is it not enough for you that I’ve given most of my adult life to trying to save lives? Why doesn’t that buy me any credibility?’

When he’d had lunch with her she’d told him she did for overpriced medical supplies what Amazon had done for books. She found a way to get cheap bandages and staple generic drugs delivered to third world countries for pennies. She had alliances with firms producing drugs in China and India and her foundation worked out methods to teach doctors and dentists on a massive scale, webcasting dental and medical procedures as they were performed live. Those watching could email their questions. People called her a visionary.

‘We don’t question that you’ve done good deeds on a large scale, but none of that has anything to do with this investigation. What’s the real reason you went to the boat?’

Lafaye got up and walked over to the windows. She looked out at the park as she answered.

‘I went to buy Erin Quinn’s home address for ten thousand dollars.’

‘And do what with it?’ la Rosa asked.

‘Give it to my attorney who would work quietly with law enforcement authorities to build a case against Erin Quinn for extortion. You have to understand that this woman has threatened me. She’s a nightmare to me. And I had no idea that the man I was going to meet at the boat was Cody Stoltz. I thought that he was an individual like me that Quinn had cheated or was extorting. For separate and unspoken reasons we were both looking for her. But of course I didn’t know who I’d been chatting with all those years. You can imagine my shock when he took off his disguise and said he was Cody Stoltz. He tricked me.’

‘How did he know to be at Lake Merced the next day?’ Raveneau asked.

‘Ask him.’

Her foundation was everything to her. It was her life, her ego, her everything, and so he played that last, after she’d ordered them to leave.

‘You’re going to force us to go public with this.’

‘I don’t see why that would be, but I’ll take it as the threat you intend it as, and I have some advice for you, don’t do anything until you talk to my attorney. He’ll call you this morning.’

He did.

‘What can I do to help solve this misunderstanding?’ the attorney asked.

‘We have information that could cause us to view your client as a suspect in an unsolved murder in China Basin. We need her to fill in some gaps in her account to us. That may clear her of any suspicion.’

‘I know that she would like to clear this up.’

‘She needs to tell us how Cody Stoltz knew to be at Lake Merced.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it, right now. We’ll give her the rest of the day and I’ll give you another phone number you can reach me at this afternoon.’

‘After all she’s been through, do you really think you can twist her arm this way?’

‘Use my cell number, that’s going to be more reliable. Are you ready for the number?’ Raveneau waited a beat and then read the number off. After the lawyer repeated the number, Raveneau said, ‘I’ll talk to you this afternoon,’ and hung up.