Yuki walked behind her down a long, narrow hallway and entered a living room crowded with what looked to be generations of furniture. An elderly gentleman sat in a lounge chair, his hand on a carriage that he was rocking gently.
Mrs. Kordell introduced Aaron-Rey’s grandfather as Neil Kordell and said her husband was at work.
“My husband is a total wreck,” she said. “He doesn’t sleep. He barely speaks. Aaron-Rey’s death has destroyed him.”
Yuki took a seat on a worn brown sofa, and Mrs. Kordell sat in a matching armchair. On the table between them were pictures of a smiling Aaron-Rey Kordell.
“Why don’t you tell me about your son?” Yuki said.
The boy’s mother picked up one of the photos and held it as she talked. “Aaron-Rey was fifteen. He was so big, he looked older than that—but he had the mind of a child.”
Yuki nodded. Zac had told her that Aaron-Rey was mentally handicapped but had never been in any kind of trouble before his single, fatal incarceration.
“He went to school every day, or so we thought,” said Aaron’s mother. “I only found out later that he hung around bad places.”
“After the shooting at the crack house,” Yuki said.
Mrs. Kordell nodded, and then her father-in-law told the story.
“What happened is that Aaron-Rey saw that these three dealers got shot and he ran out onto the street. The cops came after him and arrested him for killing those men. It was a joke. Aaron-Rey had the mind of a five-year-old. He didn’t even know how to shoot a gun.”
Mr. Kordell seemed to realize that he was rocking the baby too hard, said into the carriage, “Sorry, sweetheart,” and clasped his hands in his lap. He was agitated and clearly grieving for his grandson.
Yuki said to the elderly man, “As I understand it, the police found the gun on Aaron-Rey’s person.”
“Yes, that’s true. He picked up the gun. He didn’t think more than Oooh. A gun. And the police took him in and they questioned him for hours and didn’t call us.”
Mrs. Kordell picked up the story.
“If Aaron-Rey hadn’t been wrongly arrested, if the police hadn’t played him by saying how great he was for killing those drug dealers, my son wouldn’t have waived his rights and he wouldn’t have confessed. And he wouldn’t have been killed in jail while waiting for trial. My son would still be alive.”
Yuki felt the sharp pain of the people who had loved Aaron-Rey, and she could see that now that she was with the Defense League, terrible stories like this one would be her life.
Mrs. Kordell was saying, “The police should pay for what they did, right, Ms. Castellano? They should pay so that they don’t do this to anyone else’s child.”
Yuki said, “I agree. We’ve already filed the case against the City and the SFPD. It’s going to be difficult, Mrs. Kordell. The City is going to defend itself. You may have to testify. Tough questions are going to be asked, and the City’s lawyers are going to put Aaron-Rey in a bad light, if they can.”
“We’re all in,” said Mrs. Kordell.
“So are we,” said Yuki.
Actually, joining the Defense League seemed like a rash and very crazy idea. Was she even remotely cut out for this?
Yuki embraced the Kordells and said good-bye.
She hoped to hell she’d made the right decision.
Because when Parisi and his expensive law firm hired by the City were through chewing her up, she might never want to practice law again.
CHAPTER 25
AFTER LEAVING THE Kordells, Yuki drove four blocks and parked her car directly across the street from the crack house where three months before, Aaron-Rey’s life had taken a very bad turn at Turk and Dodge Place. As Aaron-Rey’s mother had said, the Tenderloin was a bad place to raise children. No kidding. It was the worst.
The impoverished district was an underworld of savagery, mayhem, and despair, populated with aggressive drunks and crackheads, runaways, derelicts, streetwalkers, and violent thieves. The best you could say of people who survived on these streets was that they were pitiable; most of them were doomed.
Yuki knew better than to get out of the car.
She was here to see the scene of Aaron-Rey’s death, to get the picture in her mind so that she could make a moving and watertight narrative for a jury.
She stared ahead at the peeling, sagging wood-frame building with a Chinese restaurant on the ground floor. The abandoned second floor, according to Yuki’s information, was a flophouse for junkies. The third floor was the trading floor, where wads of folding money and small packets of powder changed hands.
She saw the scarred metal door that opened from the interior of the house and emptied out to the street. It was clear from the numbers of men and boys who looked both ways before going through that door that the crack house was doing a brisk business.
Yuki imagined Aaron-Rey Kordell hanging out at this place because it was cool, then being shocked and confused when the shooting went down. She saw him picking up the gun—a shiny, valuable object—and running.
If this version of the story was true, and Zac Jordan believed it was, Aaron-Rey had suffered wrongful death and his family deserved justice that could only be delivered in the form of a multimillion-dollar settlement from the SFPD and the City.
Yuki was thinking about the work yet to do when there was a rap on the window. Startled, she turned to see a uniformed officer, making a circle with his index finger, indicating that she should roll down her window.
“Officer?”
“You having car trouble, miss?”
“No, not at all.”
“You know it’s not safe here, right? A woman got shot over on Hyde a couple of hours ago. Wait—”
The patrolman leaned down to get a better look at her face.
“Aren’t you the lady who’s married to Lieutenant Brady?”
“Yes. I’m Yuki Castellano.”
“I’m Clark. John. That’s my office,” he said, hooking a thumb toward his cruiser, smiling at her. “You’re working, Ms. Castellano? Because I gotta say, I wouldn’t like my wife to be in a car by herself on this block.”
“I’m OK, Officer. I’m looking into a multiple homicide that took place a couple of months ago,” she said, pointing to the crack house.
“Oh, right. Those drug dealers who were whacked over there. I arrested that poor mutt who did it.”
“Aaron-Rey Kordell?”
Clark said, “That’s him. He was a runner. Ran out for coffee, smokes, that kind of thing. I don’t know why he shot those pushers. But he did the City a service.”
“What did he say when you arrested him?” Yuki asked.
“Said he didn’t do it,” said Clark. “I asked what it was he didn’t do and he said, ‘I didn’t shoot those guys upstairs.’ So we went into the house and found the DBs.”
Yuki thanked the officer, then pulled her car out into the congested three-lane street. This would be a twisted story to sell to a jury. And maybe an impossible case to win.
CHAPTER 26
BACK IN HER new office at the Defense League, Yuki slugged down half a bottle of water, kicked off her shoes, and locked her handbag in a desk drawer. She booted up her computer and pulled up the Aaron-Rey Kordell dossier Zac Jordan had compiled.
The cops who interrogated Aaron-Rey after his arrest were Inspectors Stan Whitney and William Brand in Narcotics/Vice Division, SFPD.
Yuki easily located the documents showing that Aaron-Rey had been booked and incarcerated upstairs on the sixth floor of the Hall, County Jail #3, pending trial. There was also a death certificate dated a day later showing the teen’s cause of death as “sharp force trauma” to the liver, and a brief report from the correctional officer on duty that a fracas had broken out in the showers.
Eight suspects had been listed in the investigation of Aaron-Rey’s death, but there had been no evidence, no proof, no confession—and no informant had come forward. Aaron-Rey’s death had been subsequently written up as a killing by
an undetermined individual and no further action had been taken.
The transcript of Whitney and Brand’s interrogation of Aaron-Rey Kordell wasn’t listed in the document file, but Zac Jordan had already obtained the video.
Yuki slipped discs into her computer. From the very beginning, the hairs on her arms stood up as she watched the masterful interrogation of a mentally challenged black kid by a team of experienced investigators.
She watched for about an hour. Then she called her new assistant, Gina, and told her that she needed to have a deposition notice served on SFPD inspectors Stan Whitney and William Brand.
CHAPTER 27
CONKLIN AND I had met up with Robbery Division’s Edward “Ted” Swanson and Oswaldo Vasquez on the corner of Mission and Twenty-Third Street, down the block from the now shuttered Mercado de Maya.
Swanson and Vasquez got out of their unmarked Chevy and we all shook hands. Swanson was stocky, with a pleasant face, sandy hair, and light-gray eyes. He was exactly my height at five foot ten, probably my age, too.
Vasquez was muscular, shorter and younger than his partner, with an impressive grip. Looked like he’d once been a prizefighter.
The four of us, along with another team from Robbery, worked the streets adjacent to the mercado, canvassing dives and whorehouses and apartments in the area.
I personally went through Maya’s apartment above the mercado, looking for anything that would indicate that her death was anything but a murder of convenience for the Windbreaker cops. I found nothing but a small, neat home and a tiny room Maya had prepared for her unborn child. This was as heartbreaking a vignette as you could possibly imagine.
The walls were a sunny yellow in a room that never got sunshine. The crib had been made by hand, as had the mobile of rainbows hanging over it. It was all too touching, too sweet—and if I never see a rainbow mobile again, it will be too soon.
I interviewed Perez’s neighbors, who told me what a sweetheart Maya was, and a few of them cried. Feeling heartsick and angry, I rejoined the canvass, and between the eight of us, we came up with exactly no idea who had robbed the market and shot Maya Perez to death.
No one admitted to even seeing the robbery go down, and this time, there was no grainy surveillance footage.
When our shifts were over, the eight of us refueled at a local diner and went back to canvassing both sides of the block again, catching up with people who had day jobs and had just returned home.
We still got nothing.
And then I got a call from Clapper, head of Forensics.
“We’ve run the slugs taken from Maya Perez.”
“Good. What did you get?”
“Two thirty-eights. The gun that fired them isn’t in the system. I wish I could give you something. A name. Another shooting. Something.”
There are days when being a cop is challenging and worthwhile and days where the job is duller than watching a dripping faucet. Today was neither. A cold canvass in the Mission was stressful and dangerous, and it had been unproductive. A total bust.
Conklin and I went back to the Hall and briefed Jacobi and Brady on our great huge bag of nothing. That meeting took about five minutes, including the Q&A.
I walked with Richie out to the parking lot.
He tried to cheer me up, saying, “Someone is going to slip up. Bad guys almost always do.”
I’ve said the same thing to Richie. Joe has said the same thing to me. It’s the cops’ version of “Everything is going to be OK.”
Hah.
Whoever these Windbreaker bastards were, they were organized, they were disciplined, they had untraceable weapons, and their timetable was short. How long would it be before another low-tech, high-cash business was shot all to hell by men portraying themselves as San Francisco’s finest?
My partner and I waved good-bye, got into our respective cars, and exited the lot.
As I made the turn up Bryant, I glanced up at the Hall and saw that Jacobi’s office light was still on. I felt bad for him. The job was my former partner’s entire life.
We had to get these shooters for a number of reasons, and one of them was surely that we had to do it for Jacobi, before he retired as chief of detectives.
CHAPTER 28
LIFE WAS GOOD chez Molinari. Martha, our loyal doggy, was asleep on the sofa next to my dear husband, and although he was on the phone, the wonderful aromas coming from the kitchen told me dinner was ready.
“Heyyyy, Blondie,” said my husband, cupping the phone. I blew him a kiss and went to the baby’s room.
Julie was sleeping on her back. She had kicked off her blanket, so I pulled it up to just under her arms. She waved a fist in her sleep and I kissed her sweet forehead. She pushed me away. I took this as a sign that my little girl was asserting her personality, even in her sleep. Go, Julie.
But seeing my beautiful child brought me straight back to Maya Perez’s apartment. I visualized the small, windowless room she had turned into a chick-yellow nest for her baby, who would never be.
I watched Julie breathing for more than a few minutes. Then I shucked my clothes and hit the rain box for fifteen delicious minutes. When I returned to the living room in my man-in-the-moon-patterned PJs, Joe was dishing up the chicken cacciatore.
I went over to him and got a big hug, a kiss, and a belated jumpety howdy-do from Martha.
I said, “Lucky, lucky me.” And I meant it.
“Vino?” Joe asked me.
“You don’t have to twist my arm,” I said. “So what did the home team do today?”
“I’ve been doing a little work,” he told me.
“Really?”
“Free work. I’ve been looking into the CBM case.”
Joe seemed to be in a very perky mood. He pulled out a bar stool for me and another for himself and we sat down at the kitchen island to eat.
“What, I have to ask, is CBM?”
He poured out the glasses of wine and explained, “Claire’s Birthday Murders.”
“Really?” I said, repeating myself. “And you came up with something?”
“I think so,” he said. “The start of something, anyway.”
I liked what I was hearing, but at the same time, I felt a little bad. Here was this big-time law enforcement guy on the bench, now doing unpaid busy work—for me. But he wasn’t complaining.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“I’m gonna do that. Eat your dinner before it gets cold.”
I tucked in. Joe leaned closer and said, “I went back five years and found every crime that happened on the twelfth of May in San Francisco. A lot of shit happened, Linds.”
“I’m guessing fifty-sixty murders a year,” I said.
“Sixty-eight last year,” he said.
We grinned at each other. I loved working with Joe. I was even a little envious that my husband had the time to focus on this case and work it from home.
“Although there was no shortage of violent crime, very little of it resembled the murder of your victim on Balmy Alley. Along with the three fatal stabbings from this year and the previous two, I found a stabbing fatality in each of the two previous years that met my narrowly defined parameters. And I didn’t find any stabbing fatalities just like it on any other days or in the years preceding the one that happened five years back.”
“Tell me about the stabbings in years one and two.”
Joe grinned. “You don’t have to beg.”
He took our empty plates to the sink and brought two slices of pie to the island. It was apple pie, and he’d stopped to put ice cream on top. I looked up at him like, Is this for real?
“Nope. I didn’t make the pie. But then, I was busy on a very twisted and highly interesting case.”
I laughed at him, grabbed a plate, and stuck in a fork.
“Run it for me, will you?”
“Yes, I will, Sergeant,” said Joe.
CHAPTER 29
“SO I DID a little time-traveling,” Joe said. “The victim in y
ear one of the five was an uptown lady, Ms. Alicia Thompson. She had been to Neiman’s and she was on her way to her car.”
“We know this how?” I asked.
“Shopping bags and keys in her hand. And she was killed a half block from Union Square Garage, where her car was parked.”
“Did anyone see anything?”
“Nope, and Ms. Thompson got the full five-star investigation. Chi was the lead investigator.”
“And how did the case play out?”
“Not only were there no witnesses, there were also no forensics, no footage, no nothing. Not even the knife. Make a note, Sergeant Blondie. Taking the knife is a common thread.”
“Duly noted,” I said.
“OK, next victim was very different than Ms. Thompson.”
“Do tell,” I said.
I took the empty dessert plates away and put them in the dishwasher while Martha and Joe headed to the living room. We all settled into the oversize leather sofa. Martha put her head on my lap, letting out a contented sigh.
“Victim number two, Krista Toomey, was homeless,” Joe said. “Twenty-five years old, in bad shape even for a meth addict. She was sleeping in an alley in the Tenderloin. Olive Street. No witnesses, but plenty of people knew her.”
“And were they able to contribute anything?”
“Nothing useful. I found the autopsy report. Like your victim who was stabbed in the back outside her father’s diner, this girl was also stabbed from behind. The first or second blows were fatal, but the killer kept going. Stabbed her all over her back, arms, buttocks—thirty-five separate wounds.
“Based on the shape and depth of the wounds, the weapon was probably a paring knife, but it wasn’t found. Again, no witnesses, no evidence—and because there were no leads, and no friends or relatives stepping forward putting pressure on the police, and there were a whole lot of open cases at that time, this one went cold.”
I understood. I might even have been aware of this crime. All murder cases should be worked and solved. But there’s not enough manpower, not enough time, and some cases just don’t get solved.