WMC - First to Die

Chapter 35

THE NEXT MORNING, I arrived at the office straight from an eight o'clock transfusion, feeling lightheaded, slightly woozy. First thing I did was scan the morning Chronicle. To my relief, there was nothing on the front page about anything relating to the disappearance in Napa. Cindy had kept her word. I noticed Raleigh coming out of Roth's office. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing his thick forearms. He gave me a guarded smile- one that told me of his discomfort at my cutting a deal yesterday with Cindy. With a flick of his blue eyes, he motioned me outside to the corridor. "We have to talk," he said, as we huddled near the staircase. "Listen, Raleigh," I said. "I'm really sorry about yesterday. I thought it would buy us some time." His dark eyes smoldered. "Maybe you should tell me why she was worth compromising control of this case." 1st to Die I shrugged. "You see anything about Napa in the papers this morning?" "You contramanded a direct order from the chief of police. If that doesn't leave you in a hole, it sure digs one for me." "So you'd rather be digging out of a story in the Chronicle about a serial killer?" He backed against the wall. "That's Mercer's call." A policeman I knew skipped up the stairs past us, grunting hello. I barely nodded back. "Okay," I said, "so how do you want to play it? You want me to go in and spill my guts to Sam Roth? I will." He hesitated. I could see he was torn, clicking through the consequences. After what seemed like a minute, he shook his head. "What's the point? Now." I felt a wave of relief. I touched his arm and smiled at him for a couple of long beats. "Thanks." "Lindsay" he added, "I checked with the state highway patrol. No record of any limos reported stolen in the past week." That news, the dead end that it represented, discouraged me. A voice shouted out from the squad room. "Boxer out there?" "I'm here," I hollered back. It was Paul Chin, one of the bright, efficient junior grades assigned to our team. "There's a Lieutenant Frank Hartwig on the line. Says you know him." I ran back in, grabbed the phone on our civilian clerk's desk. "This is Lindsay Boxer." "We found them, Inspector," Hartwig said.

Chapter36

"CARETAKER DISCOVERED THEM," Hartwig muttered with a grim shake of his head. We were walking up a dirt path leading to a small Napa winery. "I hope you're ready for this. It's the worst thing I've ever seen. They were killed making love." Raleigh and I had rushed up to St. Helena, turning east off 29, "the wine road," onto Hawk Crest Road until it wound high into the mountains, no longer paved. We had finally come upon an obscure wooden sign: Sparrow Ridge. "Caretaker comes up here twice a week. Found them at seven this morning. The place's no longer in regular use," Hartwig continued. I could tell he was nervous, shook up. The winery was barely more than a large corrugated shed filled with shiny, state-of-the-art equipment: crushers, fermenting tanks, staggered rows of stacked, aging barrels. "You're probably used to this sort of homicide," Hartwig said as we walked in. The sharp, rancid smell hit our nostrils. My stomach rolled. You never get used to homicide scenes. They were killed making love. Several members of the local SCU team were huddled over the open bay of a large, stainless grape presser. They were inspecting two splattered mounds. The mounds were the bodies of Michael and Becky De George "Awhh, shit, Lindsay" Raleigh muttered. The husband, in a blazer and khakis, stared up at us. A dime-sized penetration cut the center of his forehead. His wife, whose black dress was pushed up to her neck, was on top of him. White-eyed fear was frozen on her face. Her bra was pulled down to her waist, and I could see blood-spattered breasts. Her panties were down to her knees. It was an ugly, nauseating sight. "You have an approximate time?" I asked Hartwig. He looked close to being sick. "From the degeneration of the wounds, the M.E. thinks they've been dead twenty-four to thirty-six hours. They were killed the same night they disappeared. Jesus, they were just kids." I stared at the sad, bloodied body of the wife, and my eyes fell to her hands. Nothing there. No wedding band. "You said they were killed in the act?" I asked. "You're sure about that?" Hartwig nodded to the assistant medical examiner. He gently rolled Becky De George body off her husband's. Sticking out of Michael De George unfastened khakis was the perfectly preserved remainder of his final erection. A smoldering rage ripped through me. The De Georges were just kids. Both were in their twenties, like the Brandts. Who would do such a terrible thing? "You can see over here how they were dragged," Hartwig said, pointing to smears of dried blood visible on the pitched concrete floor. The smears led to car tracks that were clearly delineated in the sparsely traveled soil. A couple of sheriff's men were marking off the tracks in yellow tape. Raleigh bent down and studied them. "Wide wheel base, but fourteen-inch tires. The tread is good, kept up. An SUV would have sixteen-inch wheels. I would guess some kind of large luxury sedan." "I thought you were just a desk cop," I said to him. He gri

ed. "I spent a summer in college working in the pit crew on the NAS CAR circuit. I can change a tire faster than a beer man at 3Com can change a twenty. My guess would be a Caddy. Or a Lincoln." Lima, his eyes were saying. My own mind was racing through something Claire had once said. Link the crimes. It was uncommon for a pattern killer to switch methods. Sexual killers liked closeness to their victims: strangulation, bludgeoning, knives. They wanted to feel their victims struggle, expire. They liked to invade a victim's home. Shooting was detached, clinical. It provided no thrill. For a moment, I wondered if there were two murderers. Copycat killers. It couldn't be. No one else knew about the rings. I went over to Becky De George as the doctor was zipping her into a body bag. I gazed down into her eyes. They were making love. Did he force them? Did he surprise them? A sexual psycho who changes his methods. A killer who leaves clues. What did he leave here? What were we missing?

Chapter37

FRESH AIR FILLED MY LUNGS as soon as we stepped outside. Chris Raleigh, Hartwig, and I walked down the dirt road. The grid of the valley floor stretched out below us. Rows of fallow grapes hugged each side. We were silent. Shellshocked. A scary idea shot through me. We were a thousand feet up, totally isolated. Something didn't sit right. "Why here, Hartwig?" "How about, it's remote and no one ever comes up here." "What I meant," I said, "is why here? This particular spot. Who knows about this place?" "There's isolated property all up and down these slopes. The consortiums have eaten up the valley floor. These properties take more work than capital. Labors of love. Check the listings. Dozens of them dry up every season. Anyone around here knows places like this." "The first killings were in the city. Yet he knew exactly where to come. Who owns this plot?" Hartwig shook his head. "Du

o." "I'd find out. And I would also make another pass through their room. Someone had them targeted. Knew all their plans. Travel brochures, business cards, see if there's anything from any limousine services." From below, I heard the sound of a large vehicle climbing up the dirt road. I caught sight of a white San Francisco Medical Examiner's Bronco pulling to a stop. Claire Washburn was behind the wheel. I had asked her to come- in the hope of matching evidence from both crime scenes. I opened her door and said gratefully, "Thanks for coming, sweetie." Ckire solemnly shook her head. "I only wish they had turned up differently. It's a call I never like to receive." She pulled her heavy frame out of the car with surprising ease. "I have a meeting later back in town, but I thought I'd look over the crime scene, introduce myself to the presiding onsite." I introduced Claire to Frank Hartwig. "Your MEs Bill Toll, isn't he?" she asked with authority. He blinked warily, clearly nervous. First, he had Raleigh and me here as consults. But he had asked us in. Now the San Francisco M.E. pulls up. "Relax, I already patched through to his cell phone," Claire said. "He's expecting me." She spotted the medical team standing over the yellow bags. "Why don't I go take a look." Trying to hold on to some sense of order, Hartwig followed close behind. Raleigh came and stood next to me. He looked tired. "You okay?" I asked. He shook his head. He kept his eyes fixed on the shed where the bodies had been dumped. I remembered how he had steadied me at the morgue. "Been a while since you took in a really bad one?" "That's not it," he said, with the same unsettled look. "I want you to know… that wherever this leads, it's not about interfacing with City Hall. Or containment, Lindsay. I want this guy." I was already there in my head. This wasn't about the big collar. Or my shot at lieutenant. Or even fighting Negli's. We stood there side by side for a while. "Not that either of us," he finally said, breaking the silence, "is in much of a position to be the last line of defense for the institution of marriage."