A Killing in China Basin (15 page)

When he got in the car he was shaking and unsure why he’d lost it in there. Three hours later and after two more stops, one for gas and one for a nap that he’d hoped would clear his head but left him feeling like he was jet-lagged, he deviated from his plan and took the cut-off for a state park, following a road rising toward dry hills and a reservoir. In this rural country a little state park wasn’t going to be crowded, and he needed to be somewhere he could sit and think because he was screwing up.

He pulled in and parked next to a brown and white trailhead sign. Fifty yards to his left was a cinder block toilet structure for hiking types. Two other cars were in the lot, an old Subaru with a bike rack and a Chevy pickup. It felt safe enough and he locked his car and walked up a trail to a stand of pines, hoping the cool air and sunlight would help him calm down inside. He found a place to sit where he could still see his car, and then tried deep breathing. He lay on his back for a while thinking about everything that had happened in the last week and a half.

Then, as he was close to leaving, another car drove into the lot, a late model, white four-door Buick with a trim gray-haired man getting out, a guy in his early sixties, who immediately looked through the windows of Stoltz’s rented Nissan. He got something out of his car, laid down on the pavement and reached under the Nissan. Stoltz moved around the back of a pine tree and watched the man dust himself off as he stood up, nothing in his hands any more. He got back in his car and pulled out. Like in a movie, like something you wouldn’t believe had happened unless you saw it.

Stoltz drove back to the freeway and then north thirty miles before taking an exit that led to a shopping mall. He needed a place to park and look under the car. He drove through the mall and had a crazy idea as he saw two California Highway Patrol cars parked side by side, with an open space between one cruiser and a mammoth Ford Expedition blocking the officers’ view, where they sat at a table in a Fresh Mex.

He pulled into the parking space, walked around, opened his passenger door, leaned over, then sank down and slid under the Nissan. He scanned the dark underbody until he found it, like a blister of metal attached to the chassis. He wrenched it free. Nothing but magnets had held the GPS tracking device in place, so he figured he could do the same with the CHP car. He slid out and then underneath the CHP chassis. The magnets snapped against metal as the device grabbed, and Stoltz was on his feet, locking the Nissan before going into the Mex Fresh to buy food to-go. He was still waiting for his food as the CHP officers left. He watched them drive away.

Then he did a lot of driving and doubling back. He didn’t turn in the rental until after dark and took a cab to the warehouse. At the warehouse he rethought everything and changed his plan yet again.

THIRTY-FOUR

R
aveneau waited for a call from an old friend, Bob Moore, who’d built a consulting business doing credit card fraud work. A decade ago Raveneau tried to help him learn the truth after his daughter died illegally bungee jumping off a railroad bridge in northern California. Moore couldn’t accept the conclusions of the local sheriff’s department and his anguish over it was so intense that Raveneau had done his own investigation. He concluded what the sheriff had, that her death was accidental but needless, and that recklessness by the more experienced bungee jumpers she was with had contributed but wasn’t malicious. He did that investigative work at his own expense and would never have considered asking for money.

But yesterday he’d called Moore asking for a favor. Moore was an industry expert. He booked months in advance and Raveneau asked him to jump Alex Jurika to the front of the line. When the phone rang it was Moore calling back about the cards they’d found in Jurika’s apartment.

‘One of those cards had fifteen thousand four hundred forty-two dollars charged to it from January sixth to July one this year. So that’s more or less twenty-five hundred dollars a month. Alex Jurika or whoever used the card also made regular payments and not all of those were the minimum payment. She paid down a thousand dollars in April and made another sizeable payment later, could have been in June. I’ve got the date here, hold on a second.’

Papers rustled.

‘Sorry about that, it was in June—’

‘This past June?’

‘Yes, and eleven hundred and twelve dollars, enough so it doesn’t look like your typical fraudulent usage. The card belongs to an elderly woman in San Rafael. She didn’t even know she was missing her card. Her daughter figured it out. She told me her mom has twenty cards and hardly ever uses any of them.’

‘What’s the cardholder’s name?’

‘Miriam Shapiro. Do you want her address and the daughter’s phone numbers? I can email them to you. Here, I’ll do that now. Let me know when you get them.’

‘I got ’em.’

‘Where was I?’

‘Miriam Shapiro’s daughter.’

‘That’s right. OK, so I know what the daughter believes, but I don’t really know what the San Rafael Police concluded. It probably makes more sense for you to talk directly with them.’

‘I’ll call them.’

‘Good, and here’s the story. Last summer, old Miriam broke her hip and needed home care. After the home care started, a Visa disappeared from a bundle of a dozen credit cards Miriam had sitting in a desk drawer with a rubber band around them. The credit card company was then contacted with a change of billing address. Whoever made contact had all the requisite info on Miriam Shapiro, so they gathered up more than just a Visa at the house. Bills started mailing to a UPS Store outlet mailbox in San Francisco.’

Raveneau copied down the address.

‘Identity thieves will rent a mailbox or an apartment and pay the rent out of cash advances on cards. They’ll make significant buys, pay the bill in full and then get new credit card offers and a higher line of credit. When it gets high enough they borrow the whole amount and disappear. It takes a certain amount of risk management and patience.’

It was a common enough credit fraud scheme, but Raveneau didn’t comment. He didn’t want to derail Moore’s momentum.

‘The daughter for reasons of her own – she told me she was just curious because her mother never lets her open mail or pay bills – went online and checked her mom’s credit score. When she printed off a credit report she saw all the cards paid except for this Visa with the fifteen grand run up and a new address. She called the credit card company and the police.

‘But here’s where it gets more interesting. An arrest was made of a Latino woman at the UPS Store in San Francisco as she picked up mail, which in this case included eleven other credit card bills, Miriam Shapiro’s and ten others that were also fraudulently obtained. Your department made the arrests but it was a San Rafael Police operation. I have the case file number. I’m emailing it to you, right now.

‘It turned out the Latino woman didn’t speak English and could prove she’d only been in the country for three months. She was actually here legally and there were lots of tears and weeping because she claimed she’d never broken a law in her life and couldn’t understand why anyone would do this to her. All she did was answer an ad in a Hispanic newspaper and get a part-time job to collect mail from a few spots, and that may have been the truth.’ He paused a beat. ‘I believe it was.

‘She met with the woman who hired her one time only. The interview was in Spanish and she got laid out on her mail collection duties and told how she’d be paid – in cash and dropped once a month where she’s living. Because she was only getting three hundred bucks a month, getting paid in cash didn’t seem like a big deal to her.’

‘I’d like to get a printout of what was bought with the cards.’

‘The most significant purchases were for computers, printers, phones, a shredder – equipment as though someone was setting up an office.’

‘Shipped or bought in stores?’

‘Shipped, bought online, and I’ll give you the address they went to. That’s about it. That’s all I’ve got.’

‘That’s a lot and thank you.’

‘You call me anytime you need any help. I’ll talk to you later.’

Raveneau called the San Rafael Police and a Lieutenant Cordova got on the line and suggested he drive over.

‘I’ll copy everything before you get here,’ Cordova said.

San Rafael’s police station was beneath the city offices on Fifth Street, down a handful of brick-lined steps off the sidewalk. Lieutenant Cordova handled credit fraud and business was booming.

‘In the Shapiro case the credit card didn’t walk out of the house on its own,’ Cordova said, ‘so I started with the people taking care of Mrs Shapiro. That led to a firm that provides skilled home care help, which led to a woman named Brittany Rodriquez who worked at the Shapiro residence. I think it’s likely this Rodriquez took the card and handed it off to someone else. The name of the home care firm is GoodHands. It ought to be StickyHands. They have offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, and there have been other similar complaints in each of those cities about them.

‘The business is owned by a woman named Faith Silliman and she may be legit. She provided employment records on Brittany Rodriquez, gave me a way to find her, and was very cooperative.’

‘What about this Brittany Rodriquez, where would I find her? If you think she might have stolen the card we’ve got and handed it off, I need to find her.’

‘She disappeared and I haven’t been able to find her. GoodHands, the company, got its ass generally fired around Marin County as word got out. With Rodriquez we never had anything to hold her with.’

‘OK, what about the owner, Faith Silliman?’

‘We could probably get her on the phone. Do you want me to call her? She told me her business depends on her credibility and integrity and that for me she’d be available twenty-four seven.’ He looked up and grinned. ‘Let’s find out.’

Cordova called, got her, and then explained he was with a homicide inspector from SFPD. He handed the phone to Raveneau.

‘Does the name Alex Jurika mean anything to you?’ Raveneau asked.

‘It sure does. Alex was with me on and off for two years before I fired her. I flew in from Seattle to do it myself.’

‘Why did you fire her?’

‘She was stealing credit card numbers. There was no proof, but no question either. I paid out nine thousand dollars to take care of it.’

‘Was she a friend of Brittany Rodriquez?’

‘I think she was and they colluded. She said no.’

‘Alex Jurika is our victim. We found a credit card and a driver’s license in Miriam Shapiro’s name in Jurika’s apartment.’

‘Alex was murdered?’

‘Yes.’

When she spoke again her tone had changed. She sounded far less judgmental. Raveneau looked at Cordova as he answered Silliman’s questions about the murder. The case was going somewhere now and he felt the difference.

‘Can I ask you to email me records of when she worked for you?’ Raveneau asked.

‘I’ll do it right now.’

Raveneau opened the email on his phone and read through the records before driving away. Some hard things had been written in Jurika’s termination record. He thought of her sister Gloria’s comments about Alex’s character and how different she’d been as a child. He spoke to Alex now as he drove.

‘I don’t know where you went wrong,’ he said, ‘but your sister is right. You did go wrong. And Deborah Lafaye is probably right, you had a lot going your way that you didn’t make good use of. But we’re going to find who did this to you. We’re getting closer and we will figure it out. We will get there.’

THIRTY-FIVE

A
second warrant to search Heilbron’s house was denied, the judge stern with Raveneau after inviting him in and offering him coffee.

‘You searched his house once and found nothing tying him to the China Basin murder or a rape in the San Jose area. You never charged him for the murder. You didn’t have any evidence and still don’t. You had a confession of sorts but it didn’t stand up. By your own account it wasn’t credible and you knew that after you and your partner took him to the China Basin building. Am I correct in saying you didn’t believe his initial confession was credible? That there were inconsistencies with the murder scene?’

The judge waited and when Raveneau delayed, he asked, ‘Do you want milk in your coffee?’

‘No thanks, and yes there were inconsistencies. We hoped to hold him on the rape charge. That one—’

‘I agree that one is eerie but the victim was unable to identify him. The San Jose police showed her photos, did they not? She couldn’t identify him and if I’m not mistaken she told them that she never got a very good look at his face, even when he was working on the tire. She didn’t completely trust him. She didn’t stand too close to him. She was on her cell phone.’ He handed Raveneau his coffee. ‘And there’s no DNA evidence.’

‘That’s why he confessed to it, and I’m sure that’s him in the video. I know his look, I know his walk.’

‘That’s not good enough, Inspector. You arrested and held him once already for five or six days, and you’ve already searched his house. I can understand why he worries you and why you’re focused on him, but you haven’t given me enough.’

‘We have reasons to focus on him.’

‘I’m sure you do, but good reasons or not, you don’t have enough for another warrant. This camcorder or videotape arrangement attached to his van is very disturbing, as is the tape he shot, but you’ve got to bring me something closer to probable cause.’

Raveneau picked up the coffee. He didn’t want coffee but he did want to buy time.

‘Let me try again. Maybe I didn’t write it up well. I thought he was off-balanced and possibly thrill-seeking when he first came in and confessed. Now I realize the first confession may be part of some larger plan or fantasy. Whether he was our killer in China Basin or not, I think the killing was a catalyst for him. It happened in an area he considers his own. Possibly it’s a way of killing he had fantasized about. A little over a day later he came in to confess—’