18th Abduction (Women's Murder Club) (13 page)

I told Jacobi what I had and my feeling that it all added up to a lead.

Nancy Koebel was almost sure she’d seen Carly Myers giving a roll of money to a guy named Denny, a man known as Carly Myers’s sometime pimp. She had further linked that meeting and cash payment to an SUV with the logo of a takeout taco joint on Valencia Street called Taqueria del Lobo.

Jacobi exhaled and said to me, “Go get him.”

Once Koebel was on her way home, I searched the DMV database for a vehicle registered to the taco shop on Valencia Street. I got a hit on a blue Chevy Tahoe belonging to the taqueria’s owner, Jose Martinez.

The records told me that Martinez was thirty-four, had been honorably discharged from the army, and lived on Shotwell Street, a few blocks away from his shop. He had no police record, and his DMV photo didn’t match the ATM shot of Denny. That was too bad, but I was still interested in the taco truck’s connection to Carly Myers.

I called my girl Yuki and spelled out the short version of the story. She said, “Stay right there.”

Yuki came up to Homicide, and after Conklin and I filled her in on the Koebel interview and what it meant to our case, she jogged back down to the DA’s office and got busy. Yuki is fast and thorough; by 6:00 p.m. I had a search warrant for the Chevy Tahoe in my pocket.

The six o’clock news came on as Conklin and I got ready to leave the Hall. I buttoned my jacket, left a message for Jacobi, shut down my computer, and boosted the volume on the tube.

The top-of-the-hour broadcast began with the heartbreaking pleas of Harold and Marjory Jones and William and Cora Saran, the parents of the missing teachers. They wept, begged the kidnapper to bring back their daughters, and offered rewards with no questions asked for information leading to their return.

After the grieving parents spoke, the mayor made a no-news announcement that every member of the SFPD was on the job, and that the FBI was also on the case.

So far there was nothing to report.

I felt sick to my stomach. My gut told me that those girls were dead and their bodies had been dumped. But for the sake of my mental health, I looked at the positive side. Until we found their bodies, there was hope.

We hadn’t shared Denny’s low-resolution ATM photo with the FBI. He was a local character, and this was still our case.

Conklin jangled a set of car keys until I turned to face him.

“Ready, Sergeant?”

I followed him down the fire stairs and out the front doors to Bryant, where we picked up our regulation gray Chevy squad car. Conklin took the wheel, and we made good time as we sped from the Hall to the Mission, a diverse and vibrant neighborhood with a bustling nightlife. It also had sketchy areas known for crime: crack houses and drug dealers, streetwalkers and gangs, criminals of all types and customers looking for some type of good time.

The Mission is gentrifying now, but five years ago, when we were working this case, it was dangerous after sunset. Even armed, I was on edge as the light faded out and the fog that usually evaded the Mission rolled in.

Rich slowed the car and we crawled down Shotwell, both of us searching the darkening streets for a taco delivery vehicle and a man called Denny, last name unknown, no verified ID, who was maybe a pimp and was definitely a person of interest.

We passed the intersections of Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth.

Men with hoods obscuring their faces clustered on the unlit street corners, drug deals going down in plain sight. We passed Nineteenth and came upon Shotwell’s, on the corner of a seemingly quiet street known as the prostitution hub of the area.

Something about this area—or maybe it was just the darkness of this case, the specter of a man who got off on torturing women—was stirring up memories for me. I’d worked the Mission as a beat cop, and I’d spent a lot of time on these streets. San Francisco had been a different city then. After years of gentrification, the city barely had anything that qualified as a “bad neighborhood.” Although the building had some polish now, I remembered Shotwell’s being a lot grittier.

It was a personal landmark for me. When I was still a rookie, this tavern was an off-site HQ used by female cops. It was a meeting place to discuss how to deal with being ignored, belittled, and sexually harassed by the men of the SFPD.

And with the fonder memories of those nights drinking with some of the toughest women I’d ever known, Shotwell’s brought back vivid images of a crime I’d worked when I was still green. Still unaccustomed to the shock of human savagery.

I recalled every detail of that night that had begun with a crackling radio call. “Calling all cars. Homeless down at Shotwell and Twentieth.”

My partner, Lisa Frazer, and I had answered the call.

Lisa had ten years on the job and was a wife, mom of two, and top marksman. As she proved often in the squad car, she could also carry a tune. Lisa was singing and driving as we patrolled the Mission that night, and when dispatch called at midnight, we responded.

We were two blocks from the location and arrived in under a minute. Frazer braked the car, turned off the engine. The headlights went out. Without the headlights, the only illumination was one small light coming from a high window in a nearby apartment.

It threw just enough wattage to shadow the victim, lying spread-eagled in the street.

I jumped out of the car and got to the victim first. I took one look and called our street sergeant, Pat Correa, saying that we were on the scene and needed clear air, an ambulance, and CSI.

She said, “I’m on it. I should be there in three, four minutes.”

Thank God it was Correa. She was an old hand and a role model.

Meanwhile, Frazer and I had work to do. By our flashlight beams, what I could see through the dark and fog looked to be the work of a serial psycho known around the Hall as the Bloodsucker. No one had ever seen him up close, so the man was also a myth, but he did cut throats, drink his victims’ blood, and leave his signature behind.

My hand was shaking as I shined my light on the victim and said, “I’m Lindsay. I’m a cop,” and I asked her to hang in. An ambulance was en route. She groaned softly but didn’t open her eyes and didn’t move.

The victim appeared to be a street person, middle-aged, with knotted hair and rags for clothes. The plastic bag she used to carry her possessions was still looped over her left wrist.

I sorted through it for ID and found an apple, a wad of tissues, a ball of tinfoil, and miscellaneous odds and ends, but no wallet, no ID.

The four-inch-long gash to the side of victim’s neck looked like a knife wound, and an artery had been cut. No mistake about it, she was bleeding out. So much blood was puddling around her, it was separating, and the iron smell of it blended with the urine stink coming up from the street.

Frazer was quick to render aid, pressing her gloved hand to the victim’s pulsing wound.

She said, “I’ve got her, Boxer. Preserve the scene.”

The victim was still alive. Just.

Was the Bloodsucker hanging back, watching us?

I looked at the faces of the gathering crowd of bystanders. Gangbangers who ran the neighborhood, I thought. We didn’t have cell phones then, so I took pictures with my mind, memorizing what little I could see of the rubberneckers even as I ordered them away from the immediate area.

One of the onlookers was a husky guy with big hands, and he just wouldn’t step back. I warned him off. I got in his face and blocked his access, but he mocked me, crouched into a
boxer’s stance, and danced on the balls of his feet, daring me to take him on.

And then he rushed me.

My father was a bad father, a worse husband, and also a dirty cop. Maybe I was trying to make up for all that by becoming a cop myself. One thing Marty Boxer did teach me: “With the name Boxer, you better know how to box.”

I thought the husky guy could hurt me, but I was more afraid that he’d corrupt the scene. So I drew back my fist and punched him in the face with all my strength.

He howled, staggered backward holding his hands over his nose. The crowd I had shooed away reassembled and began hooting, catcalling me and Frazer, “Here, piggy, piggy.”

I was worried that this mob was going out of control. Two of us. More than a dozen of them. I fired a shot into the air to get their attention. I remembered, too late, that warning shots were illegal, but I figured I’d explain later. We were outnumbered and I was afraid for my life.

It was almost pure bravado when I yelled, “Who wants to go to jail for interfering with law enforcement?”

There was laughter. This was bad. A menacing scrum of kids was having a good time with the lady cop. They might have weapons. I would be surprised if they didn’t. The crime scene was still exposed, and it was just me holding off gangbangers, and Frazer standing between the victim and death.

I pushed through the hecklers, and when I got to the car, I called dispatch, demanding backup forthwith.

Correa’s voice came over the radio. “I’m on Mission and Twentieth. Watch for my lights.”

The gangbangers heard Correa’s voice over the radio saying that she was three blocks away, and it backed them off. I’d bought a minute to tape off the street and I got to it.

Frazer said, “I’m sorry I can’t help with this.”

I said, “Do you see
that
?”

I flashed my light on the brick wall, and there, finger-painted in blood, was the Bloodsucker’s signature, the sketch of a grinning face, blood running down his chin.

Frazer was asking the victim for her name, telling her to stay with us, repeating her promise that she would be all right.

The guy I’d punched out was sitting with his back against a car, holding his nose and howling. I prayed that we’d gotten to the victim in time. That someone had seen the victim’s attacker.

I took out my notepad and shouted to the ominous and growing crowd. Not just young men anymore, thank God. “Did anyone see the attack on this woman?”

One old man raised his hand. He was wearing a Giants cap and a plastic bag over his clothes. I felt mist on my face. It was starting to rain.

“I saw him,” he said.

I said, “Come with me.”

I still remembered how it had seemed to me, then, as though everything were working against Lisa and me, and most of all, against the victim, who hadn’t yet been able to tell us her name.

But there
was
a witness.

I steered the elderly man to a place where we could speak outside the tape. I stood with my back to the wall.

I asked him for his name and address.

He pointed to his chest and said, “I’m Sam Winkler.” Then he pointed to a large cardboard box halfway down the block, leaning against the wall of a building, and said, “My centrally located, eco-friendly, multipurpose abode.”

He was deadpan, but I had to smile.

While keeping my eyes on the street, I asked Sam to tell me what he had seen.

He said, “This strange guy passed right by me—four feet away. He was talking to himself, very loud and very crazy. I didn’t understand him. I don’t think it was English. Maybe
Swedish. I never saw him before. I was just glad he kept going. I didn’t mess with him.”

“Tall? Short? Black? White? Young? Old?”

Sam Winkler shrugged, then said, “Medium-sized and skinny.”

I made a note. “And you saw the attack?”

“Some of it. I stood up to make sure he was gone, and Rona was sitting right there against the building when this dude came up to her. He hunched down. She cried out, and I couldn’t see what he did from where I was. But I saw when he wrote on the wall with his finger.”

“You did?”

Sam said, “That was him, right? The Bloodsucking bastard?”

“The victim’s name is Rona?”

“Yeah. That’s what she calls herself.”

“Last name?”

He shrugged for the second time.

I said, “Do you see that man here now?”

“No, he took off thataway.” He pointed southbound toward Twenty-First Street. “I didn’t get a good look at him.”

“Would you recognize him from a picture?”

“I wanna help,” Sam told me. “But my eyes aren’t good. And it’s blacker than black here, right?”

He was right. Almost total darkness with a chilly froth of fog.

The bystanders were getting rowdy again and a half dozen of them began to rock our car. It was a dangerous situation. I pictured ordering them to line up with their faces to the wall, frisking them, cuffing them.

I’d never pull that off. It was not a one-cop job and Frazer was occupied.

Where was our sergeant? Where was backup?

I turned to see Frazer still keeping pressure on the fire hose that was Rona’s severed carotid artery. She was saying, “Hang on, please, dear. Help is on the way. I promise.”

I thanked Sam for his time and went on to a witness found after I’d left the scene. This one was high on drugs and had not seen the crazed, bloodsucking psycho. Of the six men and women I questioned, only Sam had seen the actual assault, and his eyewitness report was almost useless.

To my great relief, Sergeant Correa arrived with lights and sirens on full blast and a cruiser drafting behind her. The ambulance pulled up, and after a moment the victim was lifted in and the bus took off.

Once the victim was gone, the crowd dispersed, and Frazer, Correa, and I waited for CSI with our hands on our guns. Correa went back to her car and took the call from dispatch, who informed her that Rona had died in the bus en route to the hospital.

Correa told Frazer, “I hope yours was the last face Rona saw before she died, not her killer’s.”

I felt sad and mad. He’d been right here, and for all any of us knew, he was still here, one of the shadowy figures just out of reach.

He was never caught. The killings of this type stopped, and that meant that the Bloodsucker had gotten scared, or married, or moved on. But unless he was dead, the odds were good that his blood lust was only dormant.

Another killer the SFPD chased, a sadist, committed a dozen
murders. Then he put himself on the shelf for thirty full years, holding a regular job, belonging to the neighborhood watch and family-type organizations. Until he missed the attention and began to kill again.

Had the Bloodsucker retired? Or was he still living in the Mission, hiding out, working as a barber or a librarian, watching cartoons with his kids on the weekends, biding his time?

Was he watching us now?

My reverie dissolved when Rich said, “Chevy Tahoe at three o’clock.”

The Tahoe was dark blue, a full-size SUV with logos spelling out the taqueria’s name and phone number on the side doors. Across the street from the vehicle was the Taqueria del Lobo, a small walk-in takeout taco shop.

“That’s it,” I said.

I called in our location, and my partner double-parked beside the Tahoe, blocking it in its spot.

Conklin and I got out of our car into a neighborhood of bad old memories and ghosts that were still quite alive in my mind.

We waded through the fog.