Fatal Error (28 page)

“Close to it,” Ali said. “I’m on my way to Salton City. You’ll never guess what happened. Do you remember Velma Trimble?”

“One of the two old ladies who came to the wedding? Was she the one with the dogs?”

“No,” Ali said. “Velma’s the other one. She’s had a recurrence of cancer, and she’s in hospice care at home. Mom, she gave me a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar donation for the Askins Scholarship Fund.”

“I’m sorry to hear she’s so bad off, but bless her heart,” Edie said. “What a wonderfully generous thing to do. But why are you going to Salton City? I was there once, years ago with your father. Back then it seemed like the end of the earth.”

I’m pretty sure it still is
, Ali thought.

“Do you remember last summer when my friend Brenda Riley showed up down in Phoenix?” she asked.

“The one with the boyfriend troubles and the drinking problem?”

“The very one,” Ali replied. “Now her former boyfriend, Richard Lowensdale, has been murdered. Brenda is high on the list of suspects, but I may have come up with another possible suspect who lives in Salton City. I’m just going over to have a look.”

“Do you have your Taser along?” Edie asked. “And have you done a spark check recently? You know what they say, ‘No spark, no zap.’”

“Yes,” Ali said, smiling. “I’ve got plenty of spark.”

“Oops,” Edie said. “Customers at the door. Gotta go. You take care.”

A
fter coming back from the reservoir at five a.m., Gil managed to grab three hours of sleep. Once he was up, he found he was out of cereal and milk, so he made do with a bologna sandwich and a cup of coffee.

Sitting at the breakfast counter, he listened to a message that had come in to his cell phone overnight. He hadn’t heard it because the phone had been in the other room on the charger. The caller, someone named Ali Reynolds, claimed to be a friend of Brenda Riley’s.

Just what I need right now
, Gil thought.
Somebody else telling me that poor, sweet Brenda would never do such a terrible thing.

Yes, Gil would call Ali Reynolds back—eventually. When he was good and ready. Right now, though, it took all his flagging energy to drag himself to the Nevada County Crime Lab.

“So what’s the deal with the amputated finger from Scotts Flat Reservoir?” he asked Mona Hendricks, the chief criminalist in charge of the lab.

“It’s a thumb, not a finger,” Mona corrected, studying Gil over the top of a chipped coffee cup.

“Well, excuse me all to hell,” Gil said. “It looked like a finger to me.”

Mona ignored his sarcasm and added some of her own. “Anybody ever mention that you look like crap this morning?”

Gibes from Mona went with the territory.

“Thank you so much for the update. Let’s just say I’m overworked, underpaid, and missing a lot of sleep at the moment.”

Mona grinned back at him. “I don’t think the underpaid part is going to wash. If you’ve got as much overtime in as I think you do, Randy Jackman is going to have a cow.”

Randolph Jackman was the Grass Valley chief of police and Gilbert Morris’s boss. Jackman was nothing if not a political animal. He had moved up in the world of law enforcement not on the patrol side as a cop on the streets but on the administrative side. His view of the world was firmly aligned with the bean counters of the world; he was more a city manager type than a Sergeant Joe Friday. Gil already knew that the overtime he had logged that weekend was going to be a headache, but when you stacked the OT up against three solved homicides, he figured he was all to the good.

“Let me worry about Jackman,” Gil said. “Tell me about the thumb. Does it belong to Richard Lowensdale?”

“I believe so,” Mona told him. “I had my people dust the wall next to the toilet in Lowensdale’s bathroom. That’s always a good place to pick up usable prints. On the wall we found prints that match the two fingers that were found at the crime scene, and there are prints that match the thumb print too. So, yes, that would mean this thumb also belongs to Lowensdale unless there were two people using the facilities at that address who are both going around getting fingers whacked off.”

“Let’s hope not,” Gil said sincerely.

Mona rolled her eyes. “That was a joke, Gilly! Get yourself
some coffee and get on the beam. Of course it’s Lowensdale’s thumb. There aren’t any other damned prints in the whole house. Lowensdale was the only person living there, and whoever killed him was wearing gloves.”

“I’ve got two women who claim their missing fiancées lived at that same address—Richard Lydecker and Richard Loomis.”

“They’re mistaken,” Mona said decisively. “I’m telling you Richard Lowensdale was the only resident. We didn’t find anyone else’s prints anywhere in that house.”

It annoyed Gil to think he was so tired that he’d totally misread Mona’s black humor remark.

“But here’s what I don’t understand,” Mona said. “Why would someone do that?”

“Do what?”

“Leave a bloody thumb to rot inside a perfectly good purse?”

“I don’t know the answer to that either,” Gil admitted. “But I’m going to find out. Having the thumb match my homicide victim gives me enough probable cause to ask for a search warrant. So that’s my next step—getting a warrant to search Brenda Riley’s residence.”

“Today,” Mona said, smiling.

“Of course today. First thing.”

“Good luck with that,” Mona said. “You do know it’s a holiday, right? If it hadn’t been for your damned thumb, I wouldn’t be here either. I don’t think you’re going to find many judges at your beck and call at the moment. Do yourself a big favor, Gilly. Take the rest of the day off. Get your search warrant tomorrow; execute it tomorrow.”

“No,” Gil said. “I’ll get it today.” He started to leave, then turned back to her. “What about the computer? Did you find anything on that?”

Mona shook her head. “Nope. Not a thing. Someone reformatted
the hard drive about four o’clock on Friday afternoon. There’s nothing left on it at all. Since he was a Mac user, your victim might have used iDisk or some other kind of web-based backup system, but to gain access to that, you’ll need his passwords.”

Good luck with that
, Gil told himself.

“That reformatting timetable is within an hour or two of what Millhouse estimates the time of death. That also means there probably was something on the computer,” Gil said. “Something incriminating that the killer didn’t want us to see. What about the vacuum cleaner?”

“No prints. We opened up the bag. Didn’t find much in it. Looks like it hadn’t been used in a very long time.”

Remembering the mess inside Richard’s house, that seemed more than likely.

“But the motor’s burned up,” Mona added. “Like somebody turned it on and left it standing in one place in the living room until it overheated. It’s a wonder it didn’t burn the place down.”

“If they weren’t cleaning, what were they doing?”

“Have you ever used a vacuum cleaner, Gilly?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Kirbys are supposed to be excellent for cleaning but they’re very high on the noise scale. I think maybe the killer was using the vacuum for noise cover.”

Remembering what Ted Frost, the real UPS driver, had told him, Gil nodded. “I’ll bet you’re right,” he said.

Gil left the lab and went straight back to the department to draw up his request for a search warrant. Yes, he knew it was a holiday, and no, he didn’t care. That had always been one of Linda’s major complaints about him. She claimed he was too stubborn, too bullheaded. That once he got an idea in his head, he wouldn’t let it go. This was probably more of the same. Gil
was determined to find a judge who would sign off on his request for a warrant, and he would, holiday or not.

At ten a.m. Gil had his warrant request in hand and was on his way to track down District Court Judge William Osborne when Sergeant Kathleen Andersson, the Sunday day shift desk sergeant, stopped him on his way out the door.

“Chief Jackman wants to see you,” Kathleen said.

“But I’m on my way to pick up a search warrant,” Gil argued.

“Take my advice,” Kathleen told him. “This didn’t sound like an invitation—more like an order. ASAP.”

More like a summons to the principal’s office,
Gil thought. Reluctantly, he reversed course and headed for the chief’s office.

“I hear you’ve been a very busy boy this weekend,” Chief Jackman said when Gil entered his office. “From what I see on the time clock, you worked damned near around the clock for three days.”

“Three homicides in three days means working round the clock, and since I’m the only guy on the Investigations Unit who’s in right now—”

“Good work on the first two,” Jackman interrupted, “but I’ve got to tell you, we can’t handle this kind of expense. It’s unfortunate that Investigations is so shorthanded at the moment, but while your team members are legitimately off work for one reason or another, they’re still on my payroll. In the meantime, you’re running up enough overtime that it’s turning into a budget disaster.”

It seemed to Gil that the chief would have been better off mentioning that to the killers who made the messes rather than to the cop charged with cleaning them up. That’s what he thought, but he didn’t mention it aloud, because Jackman didn’t leave room in his rant for any kind of reply.

“And don’t you go tracking Judge Osborne down at home
today either,” Jackman continued. “He just called to tell me you were on your way. He read me the riot act about it. He and his wife are trying to have a relaxing day off. The last thing they need is you turning up on their front porch.”

“I need a search warrant,” Gil explained, “for a person of interest in the Richard Lowensdale homicide.”

“Yes,” Jackman said. “By all means, let’s talk about that.” He clicked a few buttons on his computer. “That would be for the residence of one Brenda Arlene Riley on P Street in Sacramento, correct?”

Gil nodded.

“And your person of interest would be the same person who apparently went for a one-way swim in the Scotts Flat Reservoir over the weekend.”

“We don’t know for sure that it’s a case of suicide,” Gil began. “Yes, Brenda Riley’s personal effects—her purse and her shoes—were found next to the lake, but as far as her committing suicide—”

“Do you personally know of a single woman who would just walk away from her shoes and purse for no reason? Here’s some news from the front, Detective Morris. Your prime suspect offed herself. She left her shoes and purse there as a message, and not a message for you either. It’s just a fluke that the Connor kid brought the purse to you, but if she did commit suicide, that’s the county’s problem and not ours. Your pal, Detective Escobar, can be the guy who pisses off Judge Osborne. We don’t have to. Let him be the one who goes to Sacramento to search her house. That way it’s on the county’s budget, not the city’s.”

In other words, this was a budgetary issue that had nothing to do with the real world of justice, crime, or punishment.

“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Jackman continued. “I want you to stand down, Detective Morris. Take the rest of the day
off. Get some sleep. In other words, no more damned overtime! And before you start writing checks on all this accumulated OT, you might want to think twice. Once your unit members get their butts back on the job, you can take it out in comp time. Fair enough?”

It wasn’t fair, but this was a rhetorical question that came with an obligatory answer. Right or wrong had nothing to do with it. “Yes, sir,” Gil said.

“Very well then,” Jackman said. “Do us all a favor and head home.”

Still steaming, Detective Gilbert Morris did exactly that.

I
n the old days, Ali had sped around on L.A. area freeways with wild abandon. Today, as she made her way north to the ten and then east toward Salton City, she was glad to have the rental’s GPS giving her play-by-play directions. It was early enough on a holiday morning that people weren’t yet creating their own day-off rush hour traffic jams. The only downside was that she did much of the three-hour-plus drive heading straight into the rising sun—a blinding rising sun.

Not sure what kind of food she would find available in Salton City, Ali stopped off in Palm Springs for close to an hour to have breakfast and take on a load of coffee. By the time she turned onto Heron Ridge Drive, it was verging on nine thirty. Heron Ridge Drive was far longer than she expected, winding north along the edge of the Salton Sea. The name had a grand sound to it. The reality was nothing short of grim. Yes, there were clusters of motor homes parked here and there, but most of the few permanent structures looked as though they weren’t long for the world.

At least, that seemed to be the case until Ali caught sight
of the Blaylock place, which looked more like a fortress than a house. The windows and doors of the structure were covered with closed roll-down shutters—metal roll-down shutters. It occurred to Ali that although they weren’t exactly aesthetically pleasing, they were probably downright impervious. A silver sedan of some kind was parked in the driveway. Other than that, the place looked deserted. Abandoned. It didn’t seem likely that anyone would be inside the structure with all the shutters rolled down and buttoned up. Too dark. Too hot. Too claustrophobic.

Ali drove past once. Then she turned around in another driveway about half a mile farther on. As she drove past the Blaylock driveway a second time, she was startled to see a beefy woman standing in the middle of the street with her hands planted on her hips. When Ali started to drive past, the woman flagged her down.

Ali pulled up next to her, stopped, and rolled down her window.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked.

“I was looking for the Blaylocks,” Ali lied. “Mark and Ermina.”

“That’s their place over there,” the woman said, pointing toward the roll-down shutter marvel. “Nobody’s home. I saw her leave first thing this morning. She was all alone in that big old Lincoln of hers. I don’t know where Mark is. His car is here, which usually means that he’s here too, but I can’t imagine he’d be inside the house with all those shutters down all the way. One thing for sure, he wasn’t in the Lincoln with that battle-axe of his when she left. Who are you?”