18th Abduction (Women's Murder Club) (14 page)

The Blue Tahoe had the Taqueria del Lobo logo on both sides.

The vehicle was locked, but I shined my light through the windows to look all around the interior. It was clean and tidy. There wasn’t even a taco wrapper in the footwell. Richie checked the tags and called out to me that the number was the same as what we’d gotten from the DMV.

Across the street and down a few doors was the taco shop. The sign overhead was a line drawing of a grinning wolf saying “Bite me” in a voice balloon. The sign hanging in the window read
OPEN
. We crossed the street and Rich pushed the door. A bell tinkled and I followed him in.

The place was small and brightly lit, and smelled delicious. That reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything since coffee and toast with Joe this morning, eleven long hours ago. Something dancy was playing over the sound system, and three men in work clothes were hunched over one of the small tables, eating tacos and refried beans.

The woman behind the counter was in her late twenties, with auburn hair in a ponytail and various tats on what I could see of her arms, mostly of the hearts-and-butterflies variety.

She looked at us, but her big brown eyes swung to my partner.

“What can I get for you?” she asked.

“We’re with the SFPD.” Conklin smiled, introduced us, asked the woman for her name.

“Lucinda. Drucker.”

He said, “We have a few questions for you, Ms. Drucker.”

“Questions for
me
?”

I stepped in and showed her the photo of Denny on my phone. I asked, “Do you know this man?”

She scrutinized the photo, and I swiped the screen, showing more photos from the same set the ATM had shot of the parking lot. Finally she said, “I think that’s Denny.”

“Last name?”

“Lopez.”

I said, “Denny works here?”

“Denny’s my boyfriend. What’s wrong? Why do you need to know?”

I said, “Denny was seen with a vehicle like the one across the street. It was parked near a crime scene. He may have seen something that could help us with our investigation.”

A dark-haired man with a tattoo of a wolf on the side of his neck came out of the kitchen and into the small main room. He wore a stained white apron over his T-shirt and jeans and was drying his hands on a dish towel. This had to be Jose Martinez, the taco shop’s proprietor and owner of the matching SUV.

Conklin and I were both wearing SFPD Windbreakers. Martinez noticed, scowled, and said, “Can I help you?”

Lucinda said, “I got this, Jose. It’s personal. I need to take a smoke break, okay?”

The boss said to me, “This is my shop. Did she do something wrong?”

“We’re doing an investigation, and Lucinda may know a witness who can help us out.”

He was going to go nuts when I told him we were going to impound his vehicle, but I wasn’t ready to disclose that yet. First we needed Lucinda to talk about Denny.

He said to Lucinda, “Your boyfriend get into an accident with my car?”

“No, no, Jose. No, he did not.”

Martinez looked at her, walked to the front window, peered out until he saw the SUV. Then he flapped his dish towel over his shoulder and glared at Lucinda, saying, “Five minutes, Lucy. You gotta help me out here.”

Martinez went to the cash register as the three men stood, balled up their trash, and dunked it into a bin. Lucy ducked under the counter and came around with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

Given Lucinda’s noticeable anxiety, I thought she might refuse to give Denny up. Regardless, I was betting that Carly Myers had left a print or a trace of DNA inside the SUV. Maybe Susan and Adele had also left some trace.

I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be optimistic, but I felt this close to bagging Denny Lopez.

I was high on hope as we followed Lucinda Drucker out to Valencia Street.

I watched and waited as she fumbled with her lighter, lit her cigarette, and took a long drag. She exhaled. Then she said, “I don’t know where Denny is. I called him a couple times today and he didn’t call me back yet.”

Conklin asked for Denny’s number and hers, and she reluctantly complied. He asked, “Under what circumstances did Denny use the company car?”

“He does lunchtime deliveries. Sometimes I let him take it after we’re closed.”

“Martinez is okay with that?”

“Please don’t … look, he’ll fire me.”

Conklin asked, “Do you know where Denny was last Tuesday at about this time?”

“Oh, hell no. I don’t ask him his business.”

She rubbed her shoulder as if she was remembering something that had happened when she’d asked him his business
before. She asked, “What kind of crime was he supposed to have seen?”

“Does Denny do other kinds of work?” I asked, sidestepping her question by inserting one of mine.

“I told you, I don’t ask him his business. Here’s what I want to say: I love Denny. He loves me. I dropped out of high school ten years ago, and he was my first boyfriend and my only. I really know him. Understand? He would never do anything wrong.”

I said, “But you don’t ask him his business.”

She scowled, took a drag on her cigarette, flicked ashes.

We weren’t alone on the street.

Traffic came slowly up Valencia, and streetwalkers leaned into cars at the lights. Shopworkers walked to their cars. Bars opened and stores closed.

It was getting dark, but the big white letters on our backs, spelling
SFPD,
were bright enough to draw attention from passersby. Drucker cast a look up the street, threw her cigarette down on the sidewalk, and stepped on it.

The last three customers came out the door, accompanied by the jingling of the bell. She stepped out of their way.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “Jose is waiting. I have to close up the front—”

“I’ve got a better idea, Lucinda,” I said. “Let’s take a ride to the station and talk where there’s less distraction.”

“I’m
cooperating.
I’ve told you
everything
I
know.
”

I said, “Do you know if Denny runs girls?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

I showed her my phone. I pulled up pictures of Carly and
her friends. “Have you ever seen this woman? Or her? Or her? Is Denny pimping these women?”

“
No way.
Jeez. I don’t know them. I just
said
I don’t ask Denny his business.”

Funny thing. I believed her and I even felt sorry for her. She showed signs of emotional abuse. She was fearful and pretty clearly lying to herself. But we weren’t done here.

I said to my partner, “Let’s serve the warrant on Mr. Martinez and get the vehicle to the lab.”

“Wait,” Lucinda Drucker said. “You have to understand. If you tell Jose that I let Denny drive the car after hours, I’m going to lose my job.”

“Look, Ms. Drucker. We don’t want you to get fired, but see it from our side. We’re investigating a
homicide.
A woman was
killed.
Two more are
missing.
If Denny has seen something, he has to tell us.”

I thought I saw tears in her eyes, but I turned away from her and called Dale Culver in Impound at the lab. I gave him the location, the warrant number, the description of the vehicle, and the tag number. Culver said, “It’s gonna be twenty-five to thirty minutes to get a flatbed out there.”

I was looking up Twentieth Street as I spoke with Culver, when I saw someone who might be Denny Lopez approaching on foot. He was smaller than I’d pictured him, maybe five seven, narrow shoulders. He had his hands in his pant pockets, head down, apparently deep in thought.

Lucinda saw him at the same time.

That was
Denny.
That was
him.

I turned to Conklin, and that’s when Lucinda yelled, “Denny! Cops! Run!”

Lopez looked up, saw us, and split, turning on his heel and running back the way he’d come.

I yelled, “
Stop! Police!
”

He kept going. I was the law, and by running, he’d crossed a legal line right into a gray area called reasonable suspicion.

I yelled again for him to stop. He didn’t even turn his head. Conklin and I ran behind him, and then after streaking along Twentieth, he ditched down Lexington. Although Conklin had a couple of inches on me, my legs were as long as his, and I was fit from running with Joe and Martha.

But I knew we couldn’t risk Drucker or Martinez disappearing with the possible evidence inside that vehicle. I had enough air to yell to Conklin, “Rich. Here. Take the warrant and wait for the lab.”

Conklin faded back and I picked up speed.

I was fast, and on a straightaway I would have had the advantage, but Denny Lopez could pivot like a quarter horse.
One minute he was pounding the asphalt ahead of me, and then he was just
gone.

He seemed to have slipped into another dimension.

Did he live on this block? I thought about Susan and Adele. Where had he stashed them? Were they only yards away?

I checked out the back doors on Lexington Street. Some were gated with iron grilles, some were wood, one was a roll-up garage door. Next to that one was a pair of double doors with metal studs, and beside that was a slim metal grille with peeling green paint and a dead bolt. Behind the grille was a matching green-painted wooden door.

But the dead bolt was unlocked, the grille slightly ajar—as if someone had run through and hadn’t had time to throw the bolt.

I pulled my gun, yanked open the grille, and kicked in the wooden door.

I was expecting anything. A gun pointed at me. A room full of naked men weighing heroin, packing glassine envelopes. But it was nothing like that. I was inside a basement room lit by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. It looked like something between a knickknack shop and a hoarder’s lair.

I called out, “Lopez. This is the police. Come out with your hands up.”

Something stirred from behind a six-foot-tall stack of newspapers. I had a two-handed grip on my Glock, hoping like hell I wouldn’t have to use it.

A woman’s voice called out, “Helloooo, Janice?”

A weedy-looking faerie of a woman wearing a gauzy floral frock, looking between seventy and ninety years old,
appeared from between the newspapers and a rickety china closet.

“Janice,” she said, looking delighted to see me. “You’re early, aren’t you? Is it time for bed?”

I lowered my gun and said, “I’m Sergeant Boxer, ma’am. Did you see a man come in here a moment ago?”

I was breathing hard, managing to speak to the elderly woman while taking in the whole room. I wasn’t sure that Lopez was here. He could have gone through any door and out the other side. I pictured him fleeing on Eighteenth, circling back for his girlfriend, who might still be standing outside the Taqueria del Lobo.

I tapped the radio on my shoulder mike and called Conklin, gave him my location, and told him to call for backup.

And then a lamp toppled and crashed at the back of the jumbled room. I yelled, “
Hands in the air!
”

A slight man of about thirty, with regular features and wearing a pullover, worn jeans, and run-down sneakers, stood up and showed me his palms.

This was the guy from the ATM photo. I was positive.

I said, “Denny Lopez, put your hands on the top of your head and turn around.”

“You have the wrong guy. You have the totally wrong guy.”

“You’re not Denny Lopez?”

“I’m Denny Lopez, but I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Are you carrying a weapon?”

“No,” he said. “I have a ballpoint pen in my shirt pocket.” I said, “Running from the police is breaking the law. I’m bringing you in on reasonable suspicion of committing or about to commit a crime.”

“
Bullshit!
” he shouted.

“Don’t make this hard on yourself, Denny. Do not move, or I’ll add resisting arrest to the charges.”

I patted him down; found the pen, keys, phone, wallet. I put the wallet on a wobbly end table, pulled Lopez’s hands behind his back, and cuffed him for my safety.

I opened the wallet. Bank card. Credit card. Driver’s license. All in the name of Dennis L. Lopez.

When he spoke again, his tone was conciliatory. He said, “Believe me, Officer. I’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing.”

And I was suddenly filled with doubt.

I could say with some certainty that he was Carly’s pimp, that he’d been seen near the scene of the murder. But had he killed Carly? Had he kidnapped and maybe killed the two other women? Had this puny guy done all of that?

He’d run from me.

Reasonable suspicion was a gray area, and that’s how the courts had ruled. Sometimes yes. Sometimes reasonable suspicion was an excuse for a bad cop to fire on an innocent person.

I weighed it all—quickly.

Was Denny Lopez’s flight from police cause enough to bring him in? Or was I grasping at the only available straw?

Joe was at his desk that evening with all the lights on, going over photos while he waited for Anna to arrive for their meeting.

Twelve hours ago, at seven thirty this morning, Anna had called him at home to confess that she’d been doing her own stakeout of Petrović’s house, against Joe’s express directions to leave surveillance to the FBI.

She said, “I have to tell you what happened.”

Her Bosnian accent weighed down her English, but Joe listened hard and understood that Anna had been watching the Victorian house when Petrović arrived home last night at around midnight. She described the gray-haired man who had visited. “He looked well off, Joe. He had very good posture and a strong step.”

Anna then recounted what he’d done.

She said, “I disguised myself. I had a scarf on, and there was no moon. But still, he saw me and stopped his car.”

“He stopped next to you?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Jesus,” Joe said. “What did he want?”

“He asked if I needed help. Pure evil was … radiating? Radiating off him. I know what you’re thinking. I have a panic fear of evil. But I tell you, it was as if he could see through me and wanted me to know that he had all the power.”

Joe could almost see the dominant smile Anna had described. He muttered “Jesus Christ” again, then said, “You told him that you didn’t need any help.”

“Yes. Just shook my head. I started my car and drove to my house, and then, you would be proud, Joe. I parked several blocks away in case he was following me. I watched carefully. No one was following me.”

Joe sighed. She couldn’t know that for sure. Petrović knew that Anna was watching him. He might well know her as a survivor of his atrocities in Djoba and his personal attacks against her. Her scar, the size of a handprint, was unforgettable. Petrović might have had someone surveilling her house, and he might have a plan to take out this witness to his old life who knew his real name. It was possible, and it made Joe angry and frightened for this woman he hardly knew.

He said to her in this early-morning phone call, “Do you understand me now, Anna? Stay the fuck away from Petrović.”

“Joe. No shouting.”

“Sorry. Please. Anna, you’re looking for trouble.”

“Joe, listen to me. I woke up at dawn with my heart pounding. I knew the man in the Escalade. I’ve seen him before.”

“You’re sure?”

“I think so. I think he was in the Serbian Army. I don’t know his name and I never knew his name. I think he was a regular soldier. But I also think he was one of the men who came to the hotel.”