Three O'Clock Séance: An Inspector Rebecca Mayfield Mystery (The Rebecca Mayfield Mysteries Book 3) (13 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

After finding Geller’s body, Rebecca called the crime scene unit and the medical examiner, while Sutter requested patrolmen to secure the crime scene.

She was torn about handling the investigation. She and Sutter were the on-call team this week, and as someone who knew the deceased she already had some insight—especially since he had been her prime suspect in two other murders.

On the other hand, it was already known she’d spent personal time with him and even had gone to one of his séances. Maybe that hadn’t been one of her finer moments, yet, she told herself, it was good investigative work to follow a lead or a hunch.

She phoned Lt. Eastwood and told him of her concerns. Eastwood realized this case would get a lot of press. Geller might not have been hugely popular, but he did have a following. And him being a psychic would lend to all kinds of quips and nasty headlines:
Psychic Fails to Foresee his own Murder
or
Psychic Finally Gets Answers about the Great Beyond.

Eastwood decided Rebecca needed to remain on the case, but that Bill Sutter should be its public face.

“I’m the what?” Sutter asked, shocked, when Rebecca gave him the news. She was glad it would be him, not her, facing news cameras.

They spent the rest of the day canvassing Geller’s apartment building, asking if anyone had seen or heard anything suspicious. When they learned nothing, they expanded their questions to neighbors, and then asked for footage from the surrounding city streets.

Rebecca showed the doorman a photo of Lucian Tully. The doorman recognized him, but hadn’t seen him for several days. Although she had initially thought Sandy must have been somehow involved in the ladies’ deaths, she now wondered if he wasn’t completely innocent. After all, Lucian’s name was the one shown as the beneficiary on Neda and Candace’s life insurance forms. Was Lucian the one behind everything? Had he fooled her and everyone else so completely?

But then, many people never failed to surprise her—some being a lot worse than she expected, and others, like a certain Richard Joseph Francis Amalfi, surprisingly better. Or so she hoped.

She asked to speak to the building manager, Jim Perkins. He immediately announced he knew nothing because he never spoke with Sandy Geller.

“Never?” That was a surprise to Rebecca.

“No. If he wanted anything, I’d get a call from his secretary,” Perkins frowned. “It was made clear to me that all my interaction with him should be in writing. Period.”

“I see. Do you recognize this man?” She showed him a photo of Lucian Tully.

“No. I’ve never seen anyone connected to Geller. I suspect most of his visitors, if any, came in with him through the garage and then took the elevator from there directly up to his floor.”

“So anyone entering via the garage would by-pass all security?” she asked.

“Sure. Our tenants deserve some privacy from doormen and cameras. Anyway, a person needs a code to get into the garage, so it’s not as if anyone could sneak inside.”

“Of course,” she said drily, as if no one had ever managed to sneak into a garage with a security code as its doors slowly opened or closed. “Do you have any cameras or security tapes?”

“Certainly. We have four cameras—and tapes. Our system works.”

She didn’t bother to voice the opinion that a building this size would need a few more than four cameras. “I’d like to see those tapes.”

He grimaced with annoyance. “They won’t tell you anything we haven’t.”

“How do you know that?” She gave him a cold stare.

He backed down. “I’ll send them to you right away.”

o0o

From Geller’s building, Rebecca and Sutter went to Lucian’s apartment to take him in for questioning. He wasn’t there. They talked to his neighbors, but none had any idea about his comings or goings. All said he was quiet, shy, and pleasant, but said little beyond “hello” to any of them.

It wasn’t only Lucian, however, who was a suspect. She had nothing to rule out Geller’s other employees, clients, and even friends. All were in play until she was able to find something to help narrow the field. And, as yet, that wasn’t happening.

Back in Homicide, Rebecca was pleased to find the surveillance tapes from Geller’s apartment building had already been delivered.

Sutter gave a brief update to the press, and as soon as it was over, he escaped for home. Rebecca decided to stay, review the tapes, and see what else she could find out.

She was going through exceedingly boring tapes when Brandon Seymour phoned, and asked if she had heard anything more about Claire Baxter’s disappearance.

“Nope,” was her quick reply.

“See what you can get out of Amalfi. He probably knows a lot more than he’s said so far.”

“Ask him yourself and leave me out of it.” How many more ways could she say that to Seymour before he understood she meant it?

“I have no interest in wasting my time trying to get him to cooperate,” Seymour said. “You’re my best source at the moment. This situation could become dangerous, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I can take care of myself,” she said tiredly, and hung up.

She went back to the tapes. Now that her prime suspect in Fourman and Carter’s deaths was gone, who else would have motive to kill them and Geller? The three deaths had to be connected.

As expected, the surveillance tapes showed nothing, which meant that whoever went to Geller’s condo might have been aware of camera placements—or he let his killer in with him.

Just then her phone rang. It was Seymour again.

“I thought you’d want to know,” he began. “We’ve found Claire Baxter and Amalfi. We’re moving in on them.”

That jarred her. “Moving in? What do you mean? Where are you?”

o0o

Rebecca rushed down to the docks in the Hunters Point area. It was one of the few areas in the city that hadn’t yet gone through the gentrification that was transforming most of San Francisco. Crime was high; the homes and apartments were mostly small, run down, and covered with bars, boards, and graffiti; and good people did their best to stay off the streets after dark. Near the bay were old piers and warehouses that handled West Coast shipping.

From the appointed meeting place, Seymour led Rebecca to a side street that looked down on a one story building and the empty parking area surrounding it. It was dusk, and a light fog had rolled in. The area was bare of traffic and people, surrounded by gray mist. 

One side of the building had a heavy-looking door with the word “Office” painted on it. The other side had one door and three truck bays with roll-up garage doors. Because of the many parking spaces, they couldn’t get any closer to the building without being seen.

“It’s a furniture supply warehouse,” Seymour said. “Overseas shipments are stored there until retailers come to pick them up. From what we’ve learned, the front office is fairly small, and most of the building is one big open space filled with furniture crates. We suspect something is going down soon,” Seymour said. “My men are in position.”

“How do you know Claire Baxter is in there?” Rebecca asked. She didn’t like the looks of this at all.

“When we got word of Claire Baxter’s disappearance”—Rebecca liked the way he worded that, careful not to admit that
she
was the one who gave the word to Seymour—“I had my men look at any cameras near her apartment, as well as her phone records. We suspect she may be in hot water because of the artifacts we confiscated, and now has to pay up. We found she has access to a valuable Assyrian relief that recently was removed from its spot in a local gallery, along with her getting an updated appraisal record about it.

“We also started following Amalfi yesterday, and tracking his phone calls as well. We found that first Claire, and now Amalfi, have been calling the same number. Then, late this afternoon, we spotted Amalfi leaving a security vault storage facility—one of those places the rich leave art work too big for a bank—with a box very much the size of the Assyrian relief.

“Tonight, he didn’t go to his club. Instead, he headed down here. We suspect arrangements have been made to exchange Claire for the art work. Now, he seems to be waiting. And so are we.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“We’ve got infra-red scanners that show heat signatures for five people in the office. Four keep moving around, and one is still, and the form is such we suspect it’s Claire and that she’s sitting on one spot, not moving. The people with her are most likely the smugglers Interpol has been tracking. The problem is, they aren’t ‘mere’ smugglers. They’re killers. Five in Europe. Also, the Iraqi who alerted Interpol about the Nimrud jewelry being sold in San Francisco was found dead this morning.”

“What? Why would they kill him?”

“As a warning to others who might turn to authorities to report wrong-doing.”

Rebecca felt a chill run down her back. She wondered if Richie knew the extent of the danger he might be facing.

“We’re pretty sure Claire Baxter—and Amalfi—aren’t going to make it out of there alive. Now, we’ve got to decide if we use hostage negotiators, or simply storm in and do whatever it takes to rescue her.”

“But you try to storm the place, they’ll all but certainly kill her,” she said.

Seymour folded his arms, staring at the warehouse. “We might not have a choice.”

Just then, Rebecca’s phone vibrated. It was Richie. She walked away from Seymour and answered. “Where are you?” she whispered. “What are you doing?”

“It’s about time your friends got here,” he said. “I’ve been freezing my ass off waiting for them.”

“Richie, the men who have Claire are killers! You’ve got to—”

“Just tell Seymour that Claire Baxter is in the warehouse office. Tell him to wait until the action starts, then arrest those mothers.”

With that, he hung up.

“Wait! Hello? Hello?”

Seymour turned to see what was going on, and she relayed Richie’s message.

“He knew he was followed here?” Seymour said.

“I didn’t tell him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said hotly.

“What action is he talking about?”

Just then, Richie appeared at the edge of the parking lot. Rebecca smacked Seymour’s arm both to get him to be quiet and to watch. They moved a little closer to the warehouse parking lot, taking care to stay huddled next to a building so that it would be difficult for anyone in the warehouse to see them in the fog.

Rebecca watched Richie take a few more steps, then stop and look around. He glanced up towards the area where she and Seymour stood, although she suspected he couldn’t actually see them. The realization struck her that if anything went wrong, she might never see him alive again. The thought hurt, even more than she had imagined it would.

She wanted nothing more than to stop him, to tell him to go back to safety and let the FBI handle this. But she knew if she did anything, bullets might fly, and he could easily be the first one killed.

“What the hell is he doing?” Seymour muttered. He used his mouthpiece to tell his men not to move.

Rebecca’s heart was in her throat, and at the moment, all she could do by way of answer was to shake her head.

“Damn!” Seymour said. “He should know better than to trust those guys. He could get Claire Baxter killed. Him, as well. We better stop him.”

Rebecca found her voice at that. “No. Let it play out. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Does he?”

She sure as hell hoped so.

Seymour studied her a moment, his eyes narrow.

Richie began to walk again. In his hands, holding it out in front of him, was the package he had picked up at Claire’s home. The Assyrian relief. It was, as the FBI suspected, time for a trade.

Someone opened the warehouse office door and Richie went inside.

Rebecca could scarcely breathe as the minutes ticked by.

“I don’t want to wait much longer,” Seymour said. “We could warn them that we’re here, use hostage negotiators.”

“Not yet,” she said. “He wouldn’t be here alone. His people know what’s going on.”

“You seem to know a lot about him and his ‘people.’”

“Which means you should listen to what I’m telling you.” Her voice sounded both harsh and scared, and Seymour again gave her a strange look.

Finally, they saw the office door open. Claire stepped out. Rebecca froze, not even breathing. Where—?

Richie appeared in the doorway and lunged at Claire, knocking her to the ground. At that very moment, a shot rang out, and then all hell broke loose as a barrage of gunfire from the alley opposite the parking lot hit the warehouse walls and broke the leaded window by the office door. People inside the warehouse fired back through the open door and broken window.

“What the f--!”
Seymour yelled and began barking orders at his men through his earpiece.

Richie half-dragged Claire to one side of the warehouse. A Mercedes sped towards them. The back door swung open and Richie pushed Claire into the car and then jumped in after her. As the door was pulled shut, the Mercedes sped away.