Be Mine (20 page)

“No. He’s wasting too much time pursuing you when you didn’t do it.
We should call him right now and tell him, tell him everything. You said he
knows most of it. This way, Sydowski can eliminate you and focus on finding the
real killer.”

“All right. I swear to God, I thought Cliff had taken his own life
after the blowup with me, but when you found him on his bed with his gun on his
back, his ID and star displayed, then obviously someone had organized the
scene.”

Molly’s breath froze in her throat. Her eyes widened. She stared at
Beamon.

“How did you know those details, Ray? That’s Sydowski’s hold-back.”

“I’m not sure. I think you must’ve told me.”

“No, I didn’t. I haven’t told anyone, Ray.”

Beamon said nothing.

“The only people who know are Sydowski and Turgeon. Ray, how did you
know I found Hooper on the bed with his gun and ID displayed?” Molly went to
Beamon, pressing him. “Sydowski wouldn’t tell you. No one knows, Ray, so how
did you know?”

He stood, passed his hand through his hair, stared at the floor.
Maybe he’d seen it in a file. He was unsure. Over the last few days, he’d been
overwhelmed, unsure of anything. He started shaking his head. He didn’t know
how to answer her.

“Molly, I must’ve picked it up somewhere.”

“Ray? Answer me, goddammit. Where did you get that?”

Ray stared coldly into her eyes, then left.

Molly screamed after him, racing down the stairs to the street,
trotting after him, pounding on the window of his car as he drove off.

“Ray! Ray!”

Molly stood helplessly on the street watching his taillights
disappear into the San Francisco night. She made her way back into her
apartment, closed the door, leaned back against it, and slid to the floor,
sobbing.

Come on, girl, be strong.

The tear tracks had stiffened on her cheeks by the time Molly drove
down Mission Street to Bernal Heights.

It was late. She’d spent the last few hours calling Beamon. It was
futile. She adjusted her grip. She’d find him if it took all night. She needed
to convince him that he had to go to Sydowski and tell him everything about
that night.

Everything.

Waiting at a red light, Molly felt faint. Had to be stress. She had
no time to worry about that, she told herself, as she continued south.

Turning east off Mission, she grabbed her cell phone and tried
Beamon’s home number again. It rang and rang. Come on. She squeezed her phone,
cursing when his machine answered. Again, she tried his cell phone. Again, no
answer. Damn. She tossed her phone into her passenger seat and accelerated up
the hill to Beamon’s street before skidding to a stop in front of his bungalow.

The living room curtains were drawn. The bungalow waited for her in
darkness. She went up the walk, pressed the doorbell, and heard it echo through
the small house.

Nothing.

Aside from the distant din of traffic drifting up from the 101, it
was quiet. She went to the garage, looked through the security bars of a side
window. She saw the glint of the Barracuda’s chrome.

No Beamon.

She went around the house to the rear. A galaxy of city lights
stretched below to the skyline glittering in the distance. No sign of Beamon.
Molly’s head felt light again. She steadied herself against the house.
Blinking, she took a few deep breaths.

Okay.

She returned to the front. He’s got to come home sometime. She’d
sleep on his doorstep if that’s what she had to do to make him face the
inevitable.

At the door, she jabbed the bell again.

Nothing. It was silent. Damn it. In frustration she tightened her
hand into a fist and pounded on his door. She hit it once and gasped.

It swung open. “Ray?”

What’s going on? She tried to think. Go in? Or call somebody? Her
head was throbbing. She couldn’t think.

“Ray?”

No answer. This was so stupid. He’d probably forgotten to lock it
coming in or going out, she reasoned, then prayed as she stepped inside. Her
fingers found the lights and she turned on as many as she could find.

“Ray?”

Molly detected something in the air, a trace of a burning smell.
Maybe from cooking, or from working on the car. It was familiar, she thought,
walking through the house, switching on lights as she progressed. Nothing
seemed out of place. Beamon’s cell phone was on the kitchen counter. It was on,
working. In the living room, the red light of the answering machine was
flashing.

Molly swallowed. “Ray?”

It was so quiet, so still. Her stomach was beginning to knot as she
moved down the hall, coming to his spare room, which had his barbells, bench,
and stationary bike.

She moved on to the bathroom. Hit the lights. Nothing. She turned to
leave, then stopped.

A yellow towel dampened with brownish stains was left on the vanity.
The sink was filled with water. It was pink. Molly’s hand went to her mouth.
Her stomach tightened.

“Ray!”

She backed from the bathroom and inched toward Beamon’s bedroom, an
avalanche of dread thundering behind her.

The door was open.

Molly found the light switch.

In that first microsecond of realization, the first thought that
registered in her brain was: Ray, get up, we have to talk. Then she saw the
firework splatter pattern on the wall behind Beamon’s head. He was half seated
staring wide-eyed at her like a macabre puppet with a black hole centered above
his eyebrows. He was covered in goose down from the pillow used to muffle the
blast. Feathers had adhered to his blood. His Beretta and police identification
rested on his stomach.

Molly did not remember if she started screaming before or after
seeing the message in blood pleading from the wall behind her.

Why, Molly?

Startled by screams,
Ray Beamon’s
neighbors peered from their windows.

Molly had emerged from Beamon’s bungalow to the front doorstep,
trembling and sobbing. Vivian Masters and Gertrude Lorimer abandoned their card
game and hurried across the street to comfort her.

“Ray’s dead. Ray’s dead,” Molly whispered over and over. Masters and
Lorimer were stunned. Their attention went beyond Beamon’s open door but
neither entered his house. Lorimer stayed with Molly while Masters ran home and
called 911.

Two of the district’s closest SFPD units and an ambulance responded
with lights and sirens. The first officers secured the primary scene, escorting
paramedics to Beamon’s body. They found no signs of life, thus setting in
motion an investigation into the death of another homicide inspector.

The first responding uniformed officer had two years on the job. A
stickler for procedure, he and his partner protected the scene, took quick
careful notes, collected initial statements and information, then told dispatch
to alert the homicide detail.

At the Hall of Justice, Inspector Jay Tipton and his partner, Jeff
Vidor, were on duty. Tipton took the call.

“What? Repeat that address? Repeat the name? Who made the find?
Right. Okay.”

Vidor’s jaw dropped and he cast a glance at Beamon’s desk when
Tipton told him. Then Vidor jabbed the cell phone number for their boss.
Lieutenant Leo Gonzales. He was at home watching John Wayne in The Searchers.
Gonzales was sorting out their strategy to charge Beamon with Hooper’s murder
when his phone chimed softly in his chest pocket.

“Leo, this is Vidor. Ray Beamon’s dead. At home.” Vidor heard nothing
but a static hiss at the other end. “Leo?”

“Christ Almighty. Are you sure?”

“Just came in from the unit on-scene.”

“Goddammit. Did he off himself?”

“I don’t know. We’ll take it. We’re on our way.”

“No, I want Sydowski and Turgeon. You go, but you assist them.”

“But we caught it--”

“I want Sydowski on it.” Gonzales hung up. With fumbling between his
glasses and his cell phone, he accidentally activated Turgeon’s number on his
speed-dial menu. Hers was next to Sydowski’s.

She was at home struggling to take her worried mind from Hooper’s
case. It had been keeping her up nights. She was trying to reread Crime and
Punishment when Gonzales broke the news.

“Oh God. No. I can’t believe this,” she said.

“You call Walt. I’ll meet you there. I’ve got to alert the brass.”

Sydowski and Turgeon arrived together, parking amid the district
black-and-whites. Their radios crackled and emergency lights strobed, making
the entire neighborhood pulsate in red. Residents gathered at the yellow tape
the uniforms had stretched around Beamon’s yard, concern drawn on their faces.
Beamon’s house stood alone against the twinkling lights of the city he’d
served.

Sydowski and Turgeon talked with the responding officers, started
their own notes, tugged on latex gloves and shoe covers, then ducked under the
tape at the entrance to the house and went to work. They barely spoke,
proceeding methodically, clinically, for at times it was as if they were
underwater struggling in slow motion against a current of horror. For a
deafening moment, all Sydowski could do was pray that Beamon had committed
suicide. But it was evident by the scene that such prayers were in vain.
Someone was killing San Francisco’s homicide detectives. Killing his friends.
Rage and pain swirled in Sydowski’s heart, pushing him to the edge.

It was as if he’d stepped into the deepest darkness. Hours ago he’d
braced himself to charge Ray with Hooper’s murder. And now Ray was dead. The
same way as Hooper. They were partners in death. It nearly brought Sydowski to
his knees. He reached deep into his gut, scrambling for anything he could cling
to, clawing for the strength he needed to see this through.

He took several deep breaths.

Righteous investigation was his only weapon.

He would break this case down into the tiniest parts and analyze
each one until he found the truth. God, he had to.

He had to.

In Beamon’s bedroom, Turgeon turned to Sydowski as she inspected the
scrawled message to Molly on the wall.

“She’s the obvious link.”

“Or the obvious suspect.”

Turgeon waited for Sydowski to elaborate. “We’ve got a whole new
case now,” he said.

After they were done in the murder room, Sydowski talked to the
medical examiner’s people and the criminalists at the scene about recovering a
range of evidence, cell phone, answering machine, phone records, e-mails, the
fatal round to compare with the rounds in Hooper’s case. He wanted them to test
Beamon’s gun, scour the house and neighborhood for any other evidence. Go
through his cars, his garage. None of them took offense that Sydowski was telling
them to do what they were trained to do. None of them were insulted. They knew
he was raging against the violation. They understood. They were hurting too.

Sydowski had requested a residue test whereby an investigator would
rub a cotton swab with a nitric acid solution on a person’s hands. Analysis
could detect gunshot residue that stuck to hands that fired a weapon, or were
close to one that was fired. Sydowski approached one of the crime scene
technicians.