Claire stepped heavily down from the ladder, adjusted the light a few degrees, revealing four faint smudges fanned out on the girl’s left cheek.
Fingerprints.
I could hardly believe it. Thank God, we finally had something.
“Those are a child’s prints,” Claire said, crushing my half second of elation. “Left by the six-year-old boy who found her.”
“Nuts,” I said. “Hey. What’s that?”
I moved in closer to better see the glint of something in the girl’s mouth. Was it a clue? Maybe a message?
“Too sad for words, that’s what it is,” Claire told me. “Show Girl here is wearing braces.”
The air went out of me.
She was so young. Too young to die, especially like this.
Why were you working, little girl?
I watched Claire scrape under the victim’s nails, clip them into an envelope. Seal it, sign it. Walk around the table and do the same to her other hand.
“I got the tox screen back, Lindsay,” she said. “Same sorry story, girlfriend. Her blood alcohol was point one one zero, and there was a ton of Rohypnol in her system. Same as the others.”
“So they liquored her up and drugged her, of course. Why take any chances she’d fight back? Cause of death?”
“Like before, they probably burked, smothered, and strangled her sometime around midnight. Definitely a homicide.”
“Those pricks are consistent, aren’t they? I’m guessing they gave her a bath to get rid of trace evidence. Like the other two.”
“So you think she was killed in a hotel room?”
“Yeah, and she’s probably a working girl. Three girls down, and I’m still looking for one decent lead.”
Claire said, “I think I’ve got something for you, honey.” She turned to her assistant. “Bunny, help me roll Jane Doe. Can you do that?”
Claire placed Show Girl’s right arm across her body and pulled her over to her side as Bunny balanced her.
“Look here,” said Claire, pointing to the smudge behind the girl’s left knee.
I stooped down, saw the crisp ridges of a fingerprint that had been raised by fuming the girl’s skin with superglue.
The blue lace gown the victim had been wearing was floor-length. Her legs had been covered to her ankles.
That fingerprint hadn’t been made by a bystander.
I turned my head and beamed at my best friend, Claire.
“The perp who washed her,” she said, beaming back at me. “He missed a spot.”
Chapter 82
JACOBI OPENED THE DOUBLE DOOR to the morgue and announced, “I know how they got the vic into the convention center.”
“You’ve got our full attention,” I said.
He walked straight through the vault to Claire’s office, returned a minute later with a bottle of water.
“I’ve been eating hot dogs all day,” he explained.
“Help yourself,” said Claire. “Hell, Warren, take two.”
Jacobi eased his butt onto a stool. His face was sagging from exhaustion, but sparks were going off behind his heavily lidded eyes.
“Get this, Boxer. A truck was coming from the marshaling yard to the convention center with a load of carpeting. The driver apparently stopped to take a leak against a building on Folsom. Trucks aren’t supposed to stop there, but they always do.”
“So it was a hijack?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t a heist. More like a hitchhike. The bad guy comes up behind the driver, sticks a gunlike object into his back.”
Jacobi started to laugh.
“Oh. Tell me the joke.”
“Sorry. Imagining the guy holding his joint when he feels the gun sticking in his back. It’s a guy thing, Boxer.
“Anyway. The holdup guy uses the driver to get the other guy out of the truck. Knocks them both out with a stun gun. Then he and his buddy load them into the back of the truck, tape and gag them.”
“So now they’ve got a truck with approved plates and the driver’s ID,” I said. “You’re thinking they transferred our victim into that truck? Maybe she was inside some kind of container?”
“No flies on you, Lieutenant.”
“I try to keep up with you, Jacobi. I’m listening. Keep talking.”
Jacobi nodded. “So they drive to the convention center loading docks, unload this young lady’s container onto a hand truck, wait for the right moment. Then they decant her inside and pose her in the Ferrari.”
“Maybe the container was a suitcase,” I said. “A big one. Leather. With wheels.”
“Could very well have been something like that.”
“Unbelievable,” Claire said. “That they have the nerve to move a body in full sight, let alone pose her inside a car at the auto show!”
“She would’ve looked like a dummy if anyone had noticed her—and no one did,” Jacobi said. “I scanned all the videos. It was pure chaos last night. Forklifts doing wheelies. Cars being unloaded. Hundreds of look-alike guys in work clothes setting up the booths.”
“Can the drivers ID their attackers?” I asked.
“It was dark. They were completely surprised. The perps wore stocking masks.”
Jacobi came closer to the victim’s body. “Smell that? There it is again. That’s swamp magnolia.”
“Black Pearl.”
A thought broke through to my conscious mind like a bubble rising up from the bottom of a lake. It was so simple and obvious. Why had it taken me so long to make the connection?
“It’s one-stop shopping,” I said out loud.
“What do you mean, Boxer?”
“The designer clothes and the shoes. The killers grabbed what they could off the rack, clothes for a girl they hadn’t met yet. So sometimes they got the wrong size. The real jewelry, the good stuff, was under lock and key, but beads and rhinestones? No problem.”
“The perfume that they sprayed on those girls,” said Jacobi, picking up the thread. “It’s exclusive. Only sold at one place.”
“Our killers had easy access,” I said. “They snatched it all at the same store.”
Chapter 83
I WAS BEHIND THE WHEEL of a new Lincoln sedan at 8:00 that Monday morning. The chief was scrunched in beside me, looking about as comfortable as a pickle in a jar. He was in uniform, his hair slicked down, and he was sweating.
A dozen squad cars caravaned behind us as we took to the roller-coaster streets of San Francisco. What a ride this was going to be.
“We’re pissing off a lot of important people for a dead hooker,” Tracchio said to me.
“We owe her.”
“I know, Boxer. We owe them all.”
Tracchio buzzed down the car windows, letting in the chilly 54 degrees.
I knew he was feeling the heat.
He’d taken over the job of captain without having been a detective. And he’d inherited a police department with the most pathetic record of crime solution in the country. Right now, he was relying on me. I wanted to deliver for him.
The Sunday Chronicle was on the seat between us. The front page headline read CAR SHOW MURDER, and the story continued on page three with a photo of our victim, now dubbed Show Girl, along with a public plea for information on the girl, or anything else.
The victim’s devastated friends had come forward, and now Show Girl had a name.
Lauren McKenna had no current boyfriend, liked pretty, trendy shoes, and while she may have been hooking, she was at Berkeley full-time.
She’d only been nineteen.
Her death was senseless and tragic. And her killers were still enjoying their freedom. And probably planning to kill again.
Tracchio drummed his fingers on the door panel as I turned right into Union Square.
I ran my theory through my mind once more. If I was wrong, the chief was going to bear the brunt of it.
Despite a nauseating flicker of doubt, it still added up for me. The Car Girl killers worked at Nordstrom.
; Chapter 84
THE UPSCALE DEPARTMENT STORE, and one of my own favorites, wasn’t yet open to the public. But Nordstrom’s employees were assembled and waiting in shifting clumps on the store’s main floor.
Nordstrom’s president, Peter Fox, was looking very handsome in Ralph Lauren, houndstooth check, and five-hundred-dollar shoes from Italy.
He had a calm demeanor, but I could see the sweat on his upper lip and worry in his eyes as he walked the chief and me through the store.
“I carefully checked the merchandise on the list you faxed me,” he said to me. “Checked it myself. You were right that those items had been stolen, but I can’t believe any of our people had anything to do with murders.”
The dramatic, curving escalators that connected Nordstrom’s main floor to the floors above and the mall below had been shut down.
The scent of Black Pearl was in the air as I climbed a dozen steps so that I could be seen over the sparkling counters and display racks.
I introduced myself, and when the room quieted down, I explained why we were there.
“Our crime lab found prints on the victim’s shoes,” I said, “and we want to exclude anyone who may have touched those shoes in the course of doing their jobs.
“If anyone feels uncomfortable giving up fingerprints and a painless cheek swab, please give your name to Inspector Jacobi. He’s the good-looking gentleman in the brown jacket standing at the information booth. Then you’re free to go.”
Three long lines formed along the marble aisles. Clapper’s crew took samples and directed people to a table, where their IDs were checked and their prints were taken.
Molly Pierson, the human resources director, stood beside me. She had spiky white hair and lime-green glasses framing her dark eyes. She ran a pen down the list of employees, crossing off names of those present.
“I saw him a minute ago, so I know he’s here,” she muttered, nervously sweeping the room with her eyes. Her anxiety lit a match to mine.
“Who do you mean?” I asked.
“Louis Bergin. Our stockroom manager. I don’t see Louie.”
Chapter 85
“LOUIE WAS IN FRONT OF ME on line,” volunteered a thin man with a goatee standing a few feet away. “He said he had to go to the can.”
The man pointed his finger toward the men’s room, ten feet away from an elevator. I saw the arrow above the elevator door arc downward, the car stopping at the ground floor, three levels below us.
“What does Louie look like?” I asked urgently.
“Big guy. Over six feet. Blond.”
I turned to the chief.
“I’ll cover you here,” he said. Then I shouted to McNeil and Samuels to check the bathroom. Told Lemke and Chi to block the exits to all the streets.
“Nobody goes out.”
Conklin and Jacobi were behind me, running down the escalator, the three of us spilling out into the immense interior of the mall.
I pulled up short in the thickening foot traffic drifting in and out of the trendy shops—Godiva, Club Monaco, Bailey Banks & Biddle, Bandolino, and Kenneth Cole.
I didn’t know where to look first, which way to turn. I didn’t see anyone matching Louis Bergin’s description.
My Nextel rang, and I grabbed it from its clip.
It was McNeil, saying, “He’s not in the bathroom, boss. Nobody’s in here.”
“You and Samuels, take Fifth Street,” I said.
“There he is,” said Jacobi.
I saw him, too.
Across the mall, a coatless man in a white shirt was walking away from us, blending in with the crowd. He was about six two, 230, dirty-blond hair, smoking a cigarette.
A bruiser.
I drew my weapon, called out his name over the echoing rumble of the milling crowd.
“Louis Bergin. This is the police. Stay right where you are. Put your hands in the air.”
Chapter 86
LOUIE BERGIN SWUNG his big head toward me. We locked eyes over the crowd for a fraction of a second, and I yelled again. “Bergin. Stop right there. Don’t make me shoot you!”
He snapped his head back around—and began to run.
Adrenaline poured into my bloodstream as Conklin, Jacobi, and I dodged shoppers, followed Bergin at a run, out through the southeast exit of the mall into the morning rush on Market Street.
Bergin had to be fleeing for a reason.
Was there a warrant out for his arrest?
Or was he running from us because he’d murdered three girls?
I had another blinding moment as I tried to see through the cars whizzing by on the street, screen the pedestrians through my mind, pick a man in white shirtsleeves out of the bustling crowd.
My heart hammered as I finally saw him thirty yards ahead, loping across Market against the light, taking a right onto Powell.
“There!” I yelled out to Jacobi and Conklin. I fixed my eyes on Bergin, who was cutting a path through the shrieking crowd ahead of us.
The sidewalks flanking Powell were an obstacle course of pedestrians, street vendors, passengers lined up for the trolley.
I was already feeling the takedown as a reality, anticipating the rush of throwing Bergin to the ground—but Bergin knocked aside a man selling pottery on the sidewalk, mugs and bowls smashing as Bergin took to the street.
That’s where he picked up speed, his long strides eating up the asphalt, expanding the distance between us.
The gangly man whose pottery stall had been overturned joined the chase, as did a group of brainless, cheering kids who’d been loitering around the newsstand.
I held up my badge, turned my fury on them all.
“Get out of the street. You could get shot!”
Jacobi was wheezing and hacking behind me. The uphill run was too much for him, and he dropped back, limping from the gunshot wounds he’d taken last May.
I shouted, “Warren, send mobile units to Union Square.”
Up ahead, Conklin backpedaled in a circle. That’s when I knew we’d lost Bergin.
I swept the doorways of dozens of shops with my eyes. If Bergin had ducked into one of the small hotels or restaurants, or, God forbid, shot underground into the BART station, he was gone.
A blur grabbed my attention—Bergin running alongside the trolley up ahead, using it as a barrier between us.
“Conklin!”
“I see him, Lou.”
Rich Conklin’s stride was a good match for Bergin’s, and he was really fit. As Conklin crossed Powell behind the trolley, I heard him yelling to pedestrians, “Outta my way. Get back.”
He couldn’t close the gap.
I was close enough to see Conklin hook the trolley’s grab rail with his left hand, step onto the rear step, and ride for twenty feet before executing a first-class flying tackle onto Bergin’s back, pulling the big man down.
Bergin fell to the sidewalk, grunting as the air went out of his lungs.
I was heaving, my legs wobbling with fatigue. I didn’t think my heart could beat any faster, but I was right there. I had my Glock in both hands, pointed at Bergin’s head.
“Stay down, you son of a bitch,” I gasped. “Stay down and keep your hands in front of you. Don’t move a finger.”
Chapter 87
PANTING, I CALLED IN our location as Conklin cuffed Louie Bergin’s hands behind his back.
Bergin’s palms and the right side of his face were scraped and bloody from the fall.
But he didn’t say a word.
And he didn’t fight.
I was thinking ahead, and I was troubled. All we had on Bergin was “interfering with a police officer,” a charge that called for minimal bail, nothing more than that.
If he could cough up a thousand bucks, he’d be back on the street in half an hour. He’d be in Vancouver by dinnertime, and we’d never see him again.
Conklin read my mind.
“Lou, you saw him. He was resisting arrest.”
My eyebrows shot up. Resisti
ng? The man was lying on the street like a dead tuna.
“He swung at me,” Conklin insisted, rubbing his jaw. “Got in a good one before I wrestled him down. Have to admit, Lou, this gorilla struck a police officer.”
“I wish I hadda struck you, dickhead,” Bergin muttered from the sidewalk. “I woulda broken your jaw.”
“Shut up, please,” Conklin said to Bergin good-naturedly. “I’ll tell you when to speak.”
I understood what Conklin was doing: upping the charge so that the bail bond would rocket.
It wasn’t playing fair, but we were desperate. We needed time to find out if Bergin had killed our Car Girls.
Conklin read Bergin his rights, stuffed him into the backseat of a cruiser just as Jacobi pulled up and offered me a ride to the Hall.
During the drive, I told Jacobi that I couldn’t wait to interrogate Louis Bergin, to get answers, to get a confession, to put a name to his accomplice, to put the Car Girl killers away.
“You okay, Boxer? You sound rattled.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I’m thinking, what if Louis Bergin isn’t our guy? What’s next? Because I don’t have another idea in the world.”
Chapter 88
JACOBI AND I WAITED impatiently in my office as Bergin was processed, his mug shots and fingerprints going into the system for the first time.
“You and Conklin should interrogate him,” Jacobi said.
“It’s your case,” I said. “It’s your interview.”
“Let’s see how Conklin handles it, Boxer. I’ll be right behind the glass.”
The hulking Louie Bergin was sitting at the table inside Interview Two. Conklin and I took the seats across from him, and I reviewed the scant information we’d coaxed from the computer.
“Says here you’re a solid citizen,” I said to Bergin. “A good employment history and a nice clean sheet. This shouldn’t take too long.”
“Good. Because as soon as I’m out of here, I’m gonna sue your ass for false arrest. And I’m suing you, for tackling me.”