HOURS AFTER MY dustup with Brady and Jacobi, Conklin and I huddled with Millie Cushing inside Interview 2. She was our only key to the murders of three people. Conklin was meeting her for the first time, and he made the right impression. He found a blueberry donut in the break room, fixed her coffee the way she liked it, and adjusted the thermostat to her preferred temperature.
Millie beamed at him, enjoying the attention, then she answered his questions.
“I have two grown-up kids. My life didn’t turn out exactly as planned, but I have no complaints. I help out at some of the shelters, and they help me out, too. I met Lou at the Columbus Avenue shelter.”
Millie looked good. Her blondish-grayish hair was fluffed, and her turtleneck and sweater and trousers all looked laundered.
I told our CI that this meeting was being taped for the record, and that Conklin and I were fighting to insert ourselves into a case that was out of our jurisdiction.
Conklin said, “It would help if we knew more about Lou, like what her movements were the night she was killed. First thing we’ve got to know is if someone had a beef against her or if she witnessed a crime.”
“You know I want to help. But if I start asking too many questions …”
She didn’t have to finish the sentence.
“Got it,” said Conklin. “We don’t want you to put yourself in danger.”
I was thinking that if this were our case, we would take Lou’s picture to homeless shelters, ask around, do the job of detective work.
I bit down on a sigh, then said, “Millie, I took pictures of the crowd of onlookers on Geary last night. They’re pretty grainy, and the light was terrible. But will you take a look at the printouts and see if anyone seems familiar?”
I put the envelope on the table. Millie dug into her bag and pulled out her reading glasses. Then she moved the photos to her and began a close examination of the crowd. While she was absorbed, I scrutinized my informant.
I had searched her name on the internet and our own databases and had found nothing on her, not a driver’s license or an address or a warrant for her arrest. I supposed that without a computer or a car or a house or a criminal history, there was little record of a life. She’d told Richie that she had grown kids, but not where they lived. Cushing wasn’t a common name, but it wasn’t one of a kind, either.
It was possible that Millie Cushing wasn’t even her name.
“I don’t recognize anyone in this photo,” she said, shuffling it to the bottom of the stack. I watched her look over the second photo, and it seemed to me that her eyes snagged on one of the faces in the crowd.
“You know someone in that picture?” I asked.
“No. I thought I did for a second, but no.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yep. Sure as can be.”
Millie looked through the remainder of the enlargements and returned them to me, saying, “I don’t see many street people in that crowd. Everyone’s wearing nice clothes, umbrellas, hats. They look like solid citizens. Every one of them.”
We thanked Millie, and while Rich was walking her out, I pulled out the second photo from the group, the one that had caused Millie to give it a second look. This section of onlookers was standing behind the tape, three rows deep. I counted fourteen men, six women in the shot. All were wearing hats or hoods, or holding up umbrellas.
I peered at each face, looking for what? A guilty expression? A crazed grin? Or maybe one of those faces would jog my memory. I’d seen all of those people in real life. Had one of them said or done anything that I could have noticed at the time and forgotten?
And then something kicked in.
One of the men did stand out in the crowd. He was in the back row, at the end of the line, wearing a black knit cap. He looked angry.
He could have been justifiably pissed off that there had been a shooting. Or maybe he hadn’t liked my phone flashing in his face. Or, hell, could be that the umbrella beside him was dripping water down his neck. Or something else. Like maybe that there were cops at his murder scene.
I memorized his face and the nineteen others in that photo, while waiting for forensics to run the whole batch of maybe sixty people through facial recognition.
Drilling in on faces. That was something I could do.
CHAPTER 52
BACK AT MY desk, I got Charlie Clapper on the line.
Clapper is head of our forensics lab, a former LAPD homicide cop, and a real law enforcement treasure.
No pleasantries were exchanged or required.
“I got back the DNA on the coat Conklin found in the trash near Pier 45.”
“Good. And?”
“There was DNA on it, all right. It’s been fondled, worn, or slept in by innumerable people, making the tests useless. Like a bedspread from a thirty-dollar-a-night motel.”
“Yahoo,” I said.
“On to the next,” said Clapper. “Facial recognition didn’t give us a hit on any of the faces in your crowd shots, Boxer. But it was a good try.”
“Thanks for pricking my balloon,” I said. “What about the ballistics?”
“That’s more interesting,” Clapper said. “The rounds in Laura Russell matched those in Jimmy Dolan, the deceased from the Sydney G. Walton area four weeks ago.”
“So. Same shooter,” I said.
“Same gun was used,” he said. “But it’s a cold hit.”
A cold hit. Bullets matched each other but didn’t match any gun on record. I thanked Clapper, told him that there was a new body at the ME’s office, a Jane Doe, and likely another couple of rounds would be coming to the lab today.
I just had to make it happen.
Conklin was on the phone with the Columbus Avenue shelter. I signaled to him that I was going down to the ME’s office, then I split. I took the fire stairs to the lobby, ditched out the back door, trotted down the breezeway to the office, and pulled open the glass doors.
The receptionist was Gregory, the latest in a long list of people who averaged about three months behind Claire’s reception desk before the grimness and tedium of the job drove them to greener pastures.
After the face-off Greg and I had on his first day, we’d reached an understanding. Claire was never too busy to see me, and Greg no longer went bureaucratic when I showed up.
I said, “Greg, I have to see Claire.”
About eleven people sitting in the reception area—cops, ADAs, family of the deceased—gave me the evil eye.
Honestly, I couldn’t blame them.
Greg said, “Dr. Washburn is on the phone.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” I said. “Or less.”
Greg pressed the buzzer to the inner sanctum.
I pulled on the handle, walked down the short gray corridor, and found Claire in her office, on the phone. She gestured for me to sit down and I did.
After a minute she hung up and pulled a file out of a desk drawer.
“I’m going to take a wild guess you’re here about the Geary Street victim—even though your name isn’t on the case file.”
“Never mind. Let’s hear it,” I said.
“As you know, there was no ID on the victim’s body, and so far there have been no inquiries about a victim who looks like her. It’s early yet. Someone could miss her in another couple of days, and I have room to keep her for a little longer.”
Claire opened the folder and read to me from her findings.
“Manner of death: homicide. Cause of death: two 9 mm rounds, one to the heart, the other to the left lung, only a few inches away from the first. The shooter came in close. Gunpowder on her rain slicker shows that he or she was no more than two feet away.”
“I’m wondering. Did he know her?” I mused out loud.
“The post showed that she was in poor health. Arterial plaque, fatty liver, diabetes, lungs full of tar. I reckon she was in her late forties, but her organs tell a story of neglect and bad habits. Anyway. She was killed by lead to her heart.”
“What was in her shopping bags?” I asked.
“Soda cans. A soiled blanket. Dirty clothes.”
“Clapper is waiting for the rounds. If someone comes looking for her, call me, okay?”
“Will do. You okay, Linds?”
“Never better,” I said. I leaned across her desk and kissed my best friend good-bye.
CHAPTER 53
I WAS EARLY for my 4:30 meeting with Internal Affairs’ Lieutenant Johnny Hon, upstairs on the fifth floor. I knew of Hon, but we’d never met. IAD was opaque, the most secretive department in the SFPD.