Tell No Lies (7 page)

Bright spots, glued to Daniel’s eyes, blotted the ensuing darkness. Yelling, he swiped at the air, blinking his way back to visibility. When it came, he saw that he was alone, stabbing at the darkness.

Chapter 10

“How are you doing?” Theresa Dooley asked.

Hunched forward in his chair, Daniel studied his hands. “Better than Marisol Vargas.”

Seconds after the killer’s retreat, the cops had blown into Marisol’s apartment to find Daniel standing with the butcher knife at his feet, arms raised, his back still to the wall. He’d been brusquely cuffed and shoved into a chair, where he’d waited, ineffectively explaining himself and enduring glares from an endless torrent of uniformed officers until Dooley finally arrived to clarify matters. She let him call Cristina who was, by now, frantic.

As Daniel was led out, he glimpsed the body through the huddle of crime-scene investigators. Thin black notch in the throat—the death cut—matched by dueling slits beneath each eye that drained tears of blood down Marisol’s cheeks, a gut-twisting depiction of coerced crying. He halted, transfixed by the stiff, painted doll face until Dooley gently prodded him along.

She brought him down to the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant Street, a city-block slab that housed SFPD headquarters, Southern Station, and the courts and jail. The edifice, thrust up from a scattering of bail-bond shops, overpriced parking lots, and pretzel stands, was less than a mile from Daniel’s workplace.

A noise kept reverberating off the walls of his skull.
Slit.
It was the sound of a person being killed a few feet from where he’d stood. And the heart-stopping pop of that flash. It had done more than merely blind him in the moment. It meant that Daniel’s face was now preserved in the killer’s camera. For what future use?

His adrenaline had ebbed, finally, leaving him spent. The muscle of his left forearm twitched irregularly, a stress reaction he’d not encountered before. He’d been gripping his elbow to make it stop. It finally dawned on him that his nails were digging through his skin, and he looked down at his clawed hand, told it to relax.

In the cramped space of the Homicide Division on the fourth floor, Dooley’s office was small and virtually unadorned. Schoolroom-size desk, two chairs, bookshelves housing brittle binders, and a single poster on the wall featuring the SFPD badge, backlit like a superhero logo. No personal photos in evidence, no stained coffee mug, not even a fake fern. Dooley sat on the edge of her desk facing him, her shoulders tugged forward as if bearing weight. Through the bleary, rain-spotted window, early morning leaked over the horizon.

“That’s the problem with living in a nice ’hood,” Dooley was saying. “No police station nearby. We just couldn’t get there in time.”

Daniel gave a little nod.

“Marisol’s bedroom phone was left off the hook—probably by the killer. That’s why none of our calls to warn her got through. He covered his bases. We were late by a sliver.”

“So was I.” Daniel realized that his hand had again fastened onto his forearm. “I shouldn’t have hesitated in the dining room. I should’ve just charged straight into the kitchen—”

“This is an organized, highly aggressive killer,” Dooley said. “If you’d barged in, we’d be dealing with
two
murders tonight.”

A tightness clutched Daniel’s neck, threatened to force a shudder. “Same request on all those letters. ‘Admit what you’ve done.’ So why Marisol Vargas? Why Jack Holley?”

“We haven’t linked them yet. Quite a range on demographics between those two. Our girl Vargas is a professor at San Francisco State who lives in … well,
your
neighborhood. Jack Holley was a former rent-a-cop who lived in the Tenderloin. As you know, ain’t nuthin’ tender ’bout that ’hood. They both got the same knifework, though. The bleeding tears. Our boy, he likes making them cry.”

“I have a question.”

Dooley rubbed her eyes. “Just one?”

“It looked like there was a struggle in the foyer. But the door wasn’t kicked in. Marisol had deadbolts, everything. How’d he get her to open the door?”

For the first time, Theresa’s face showed her exhaustion. “Same question we had at Jack Holley’s. No signs of forced entry at his place either. Doors, windows, nothing. A street-smart ex–security guard who lived at Turk and Taylor, and he just opens his door to a large male stranger?”

“Maybe he isn’t a stranger,” Daniel said, and one of Dooley’s thin eyebrows lifted slightly to indicate that the consideration wasn’t a fresh one.

The words lingered until another inspector ducked into the office. Fifties, bloodshot eyes, with white hair and a red fringe of mustache. “Christ, Dooley, have you
slept
since the Holley murder? I can get this. You need some rest.”

“Black don’t crack, O’Malley.”

“So they tell me.” He nodded at Daniel. “Brave thing you did tonight.
Stupid,
but brave.” Back to Theresa. “All right, then, Pam Grier. What do you need?”

“Besides a newer reference? Pam
Grier
? Do I call you Burt Reynolds?”

“I wish you did. Now, come on, lady, what do you need me to jump on?”

Dooley asked, “What have we heard back from Lyle Kane’s house?”

It took Daniel a beat to place the name: Kane was the intended recipient of the third letter.

“Nothing yet,” O’Malley said.

“I dispatched a unit there
hours
ago,” Dooley said. “Why can’t we get a simple confirmation of his safety?”

“I’m on it.”

“Also, pull a warrant and have surveillance get a hidden camera up in the mail room at Metro South in case our boy Daniel here gets any more accidental fan mail.”

O’Malley gave a curt nod before withdrawing. “Anything you need.”

As far as Daniel could tell, the statement was in earnest. It struck him that Dooley was not only the youngest homicide inspector he’d seen tonight but also the sole female and the only non-Caucasian. Photos of the academy classes lined the corridor from the elevator, progressing from the early 1920s; in his stunned, trancelike state walking in, Daniel had focused on all those tiny frozen faces, changing through the years. More color. More women. Except, it seemed, here in Homicide.

“The camera Marisol’s killer had,” Dooley was saying. “Digital, right?”

“Looked it.”

“It used to be the department could put the word out to the Fotomats. Now any sicko with a laptop can print out whatever souvenir he wants in the privacy of his own lair.”

“That’s why you think he took the picture?” Daniel asked. “For a souvenir?”

“Whether the victims’ transgressions are real or imagined, those letters make one thing clear: These are revenge-based killings. So yeah, I think our guy wants to revel in them afterward.”

Daniel’s mouth was dry. “He got my picture, too.”

Dooley nodded solemnly. “I know.”

She didn’t dismiss the grim fact with any false reassurances.

She didn’t linger on it either. Bouncing off the desk’s edge, she circled to her computer. “So that mask,” she said. “It look something like this?”

She swiveled the monitor, and a Google image of a faceless mask stared out at him, eerily disembodied. He pictured that cocked head, the expert twirl of the knife and felt his forearm muscle give another twitch.

It took a bit of effort to swallow. “Yeah,” he said. “Very close to that.”

“And the gloves. You said shiny leather with backing straps, maybe Velcro?” Her fingers purred across the keyboard. “Like so?”

He came forward in his chair, pointing at the screen, as if the image were new to her as well. “How did you…?”

“Sounded like a motorcycle mask,” she said. “So I figured motorcycle gloves, too. This helps, Brasher.”

They stared at each other across the desk.

“Now you can…?”

“Start slogging,” she said. “Check motorcycle-supply stores. Ask around the crime scenes if anyone noticed a bike. It’s not a lock that the guy’s a biker, but it’s a pretty good bet he’s familiar with them. There are more obvious masks to get, you know?”

“And you can check who in Metro South owns a motorcycle.”

“Felons with choppers. That should be a short list.”

“Still.”

“Yes. A start.
If
any of your convicts bothered to register their bikes. That’s the problem with criminals. They’re fucking
criminals.
Disorganized messes. They drive unregistered cars, shoot unregistered guns, change jobs like other people change clothes, skip out on rent to crash on their cousin Hector’s couch. Outdated, incomplete files. Which makes them harder to track down.” She grimaced, cut short her tangent. “What the hell makes you choose a job dealing with these people?”

“These people?”

“Hell yes,
these people.
I grew up with these motherfuckers. Made me want to protect the rest of the world
from
them.” She chewed the side of her cheek, her eye contact unremitting. “So that’s all you got? Liberal guilt. Save the world. Help the underclass?”

“Nah. Nothing so lofty. It’s just what makes me happy. I like a challenge. And I like underdogs. That’s who I want to help. The guy who’s gotten kicked around. The woman who doesn’t think she can have the life she wants.”

“How do you relate to that?” Something shifted in her face, recognition dawning. “Right,” she said. “Growing up under the heel of the infamous Evelyn Brasher.”

Daniel gave a one-shoulder shrug, a tell he immediately regretted. “I had it easy by most standards,” he said.

But Theresa was already blazing forward. “So that’s what they do in your rehabilitation class? Talk about their abusive childhoods?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes. Okay. Let’s talk about ‘usually.’
Usually
piece-of-shit criminals are just flat-out
broken.
You can’t get through to them. You can’t fix them. And yet you try.”

“With varying success.”

“So tonight? When you see Marisol Vargas laid out, sliced and diced, you want to … what?
Cure
the guy who did it?”

He wasn’t sure when the conversation had turned, but they were on the far side of the bend, staring at a different view. He felt a pulse beating in his temple, a sure sign to keep his mouth closed.

“What’s the difference between this motherfucker and the
patients
in those little groups you run?” Theresa said. “That tonight you had to actually
see
what they do before you decide to treat them for it?” She pointed at the poster of the police badge, the department motto written in Spanish.
“‘Oro en paz, fierro en guerra,’”
she read in a crisp accent. “Gold in peace, iron in war.” Her nostrils flared. “What happened to Jack Holley? What happened tonight? It calls for
iron.
”

His forearm was no longer twitching. “
I
was the one with the butcher knife in my hand tonight. So stow the dated ‘I’m from the streets’ class bullshit and either focus and do your job or let me go home to my wife.”

Theresa rose sharply and pounded her hands on her desk, elbows locked. Her face as hard as carved stone, but he could see the emotion moving beneath it now. His words had jarred loose whatever logjam she’d been hammering at.

He pulled back and out of the confrontation, saw them as if from across the room—a cop and an eyewitness, both on no sleep, trying to stay afloat in the aftermath of a gruesome, soul-crushing night. The skin at the side of her neck fluttered. The thin line between rage and grief.

And then he understood.

He took a moment to choose his words. “It’s not your fault you didn’t check the rest of the mail earlier,” he said. “I didn’t think of it either.”

Dooley’s mouth wobbled a bit, and then she pinched her lower lip in her teeth and bit down. Her eyes had gone glassy, and she blinked a few times quickly, discouraging any rising tears. She sat down again. Breathed hard for a minute or two.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was being an asshole. It’s the only thing I’ve been any good at this week.”

“I get it. Don’t worry.”

She swiveled over and rested her feet on that windowsill that housed no plants or family photos or anything aside from a film of dust. Chewing her cheek, she stared through the bleary glass.

O’Malley swung back through the door, interrupting the heavy silence. He said, “The reason we’ve got no confirmation from Lyle Kane of 316 Bay Street is there
is
no 316 Bay Street. And? There’s no Lyle Kane either. Not in San Francisco.”

Dooley gave no indication she’d heard him. Silence pervaded the room. Down the hall someone shouted about replacing the fucking paper in the fax machine.

Dooley put her feet down again. Rotated back to her desk. Rubbed her face with both palms.

O’Malley said, “Sorry. The guy doesn’t exist. We got a letter
from
a ghost
to
a ghost.”

Visible over his shoulder at the end of the hall, there was a stir of movement. Cris appeared through the windowed security door, her hands gesticulating as she spoke to the PSA behind the Plexiglas. She was still wearing the ridiculously oversize Giants shirt.

Daniel found his feet. O’Malley stepped aside, clearing the view, and Cris stopped midsentence and looked up. Her shoulders shuddered in relief at the sight of him. Instinct made him start for her, but then he remembered where he was and shot an inquisitive look across at the desk.

“Go back to your life.” Dooley waved a hand at him. “Alarm on, eyes open, we’ll send a patrol car by every few hours.”

“And you?”

“Me?” She mustered a laugh. “Me and O’Malley, we’ll be here chasing ghosts.”

Chapter 11

“Wonderful views of the Transamerica Pyramid.” The Realtor’s pencil skirt constrained her steps into short, deliberate thrusts. She eased up beside Daniel, and they stood side by side, admiring the city panorama like two villainous politicians in an action movie. A sweep of her manicured hand. “As you can see.”

He could see. In fact, the Transamerica building was hard to miss.