Red Line (23 page)

The man’s phone vibrated on the desk in front of him.

He had anticipated her demand for proof. Liz might be ambitious, but she wasn’t stupid, so he expected she would
vet him as an untested source before agreeing to meet. He replied,

Sinclair stepped into the office. Sanchez looked up from his desk. “That girlfriend of yours called. I think she might have tricked me into saying something.”

“Liz? What did she want?”

“She said she had a source who mentioned the peace medallions and the murder weapon being a nine. She wanted me to confirm it.”

Sinclair looked at his cell and noticed a voicemail from Liz. “Did you?”

“Of course not. I told her distinctly I would not confirm it; however, I told her that if she reported it on the news, it could jeopardize your investigation.”

Sinclair shook his head and chuckled. “Yeah, she got you.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. You actually put her on notice not to use it. She won’t risk getting on homicide’s shit list.”

“Who do you think told her?” asked Sanchez.

“We put out those details to every department in the state, so that leaves a few thousand possibilities.”

“Liz Schueller does have a way of getting men to talk to her.”

That she does, thought Sinclair, as he walked to the window. Staring at the street below, he punched up her voicemail.

Sinclair brought up the Channel 6 News website on his computer. Blasted across the screen was:
Tonight at 5 and 10. The Bus Bench Killer: A Special Report by Liz Schueller and the Channel 6 News Team.

The man read the incoming e-mail.

The man pasted text from the next archived e-mail into a reply.

The man hit send and walked out of his office.

Sinclair leaned back in his chair, propped his stocking feet on his desk, and studied his notes from the interview with the lawyers Phyllis Mathis and Russell Hammond. He grabbed the phone and dialed Hammond. “How’d you end up getting the referral from Horowitz?” he asked.

“A previous client referred it.”

“Who was that?”

“A man named Darryl Tyson. I represented him on a medical malpractice claim a few years ago. He’d developed a medical condition from parasites while working on a clean water project in Sierra Leone that the Arquette family foundation financed. When he returned to Oakland, he went to Summit Medical Center. They misdiagnosed him and he nearly died.”

“Jane knew Tyson?”

“They met in the Peace Corps in their twenties and stayed friends,” said Hammond.

“Would he know Jane’s father or Samantha’s father?”

“He was quite close to the family from the way he talked.”

“Describe him?”

“Medium height, slightly built African American man in his forties. Very bright. Degrees in engineering and chemistry, speaks English, French, and several other languages fluently.”

As Hammond talked, Sinclair entered Tyson into RMS. No hits. He brought up the DMV screen and entered his information.

“Do you have an address and phone number for him?” Sinclair asked as he clicked on a DMV record showing a man matching the information Hammond provided.

“I’d have to go to my office to get his file, but I’ve been to his apartment several times. He lives in the high rise on Lake Merritt—Twelve Hundred Lakeshore.”

Sinclair hung up. The DMV record on his computer showed the same address. He ran Tyson in CORPUS, CII, and FBI. He was clean at the local, state, and federal level. DMV showed a year-old Volvo sedan registered to him and a ticket for running a stop sign three years earlier.

He grabbed his phone and started to call Braddock just as she walked in the door. He closed his phone.

“I know who can lead us to Olsen.”

“I thought the chief said—”

“Fuck the chief,” said Sinclair. “The killer’s close—I can feel it.” Sinclair nearly bumped into Jankowski as he headed out the door. Jankowski was coming in with a thick Sunday
San Francisco Chronicle
under his arm.

Jankowski said, “Thought this would help us pass the time while we waited—”

Braddock cut him off. “Tell Matt we can handle the field work for him.”

“What field work?” asked Jankowski.

“I’m going,” said Sinclair. “You coming?”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she said.

“Damn straight.” Sinclair pushed through the door and headed down the stairs. “This is the Oakland connection to Olsen.”

Braddock followed. “Let me and Jankowski bring the guy in and you can talk to him.”

“There’s no time.” Sinclair crossed the sidewalk to his car.

“I’m coming too,” said Jankowski, as he hurried to catch up. “Where’re we going?”

“You’re supposed to support me, damn it,” she said to Jankowski.

“Ah, come on, it’s his case,” said Jankowski.

She shook her head in frustration and climbed into the passenger seat of Sinclair’s car.

“Twelve Hundred Lakeshore,” Sinclair shouted to Jankowski, who lumbered down the street to his car.

Sinclair pulled out of the parking space, accelerated through the light at Broadway, and caught the last second of the yellow lights at the next two streets.

Braddock sighed loudly. “Okay, Matt, so what’s this hot lead all about that justified your escape from office jail?”

Sinclair shot through the Chinatown streets, blowing through red lights after slowing and looking both ways while recapping his conversation with Russell Hammond for Braddock. Exiting the Eleventh Street Tunnel, he turned right and followed the edge of Lake Merritt. He jerked the car to a stop in front of the apartment building and strode to the front door with Braddock and Jankowski hurrying to catch up.

“Que pasa?” a short Hispanic doorman said when he saw Sinclair display his badge.

Sinclair glared at him. “Does my badge say Federales?”

“Sorry, sir.”

“How long has Darryl Tyson lived in the building?” Sinclair asked.

“I’ve been here two years. At least that long.”

“When did you last see him?”

He shrugged. “Weeks, maybe a month. He travels a lot.”

“Does he live alone?”

“Why you asking all this? Tenants expect privacy.”

Sinclair stepped closer and glared down at the twenty-five-year-old man. “I’m working a homicide and if you impede me, I’ll arrest your ass.”

“He lives alone, but a friend’s been staying with him,” the doorman said. “Been visiting for a month or more.”

“Does the friend have a name?” Sinclair asked.

“The manager would know. He’ll be here tomorrow at eight.”

Sinclair’s phone vibrated. He saw it was Liz and pressed the button to send her to voicemail. “What’s the friend look like?”

“Anglo. Bigger than you,” he said to Sinclair. “But not as large as you,” the doorman said with a sly smile to Jankowski.

Sinclair caught Braddock’s and Jankowski’s expressions, as they noted the description fit that of Olsen.

“Is he home?”

“Tenants usually take the elevator straight from the garage, so I don’t see them in the lobby.”

“You got cameras, right?”

“I don’t watch them all the time. But the nightshift saw him.”

“When?”

“He said Mr. Tyson’s guest came in through the lobby around four yesterday morning and took the elevator up.”

“Was that unusual?”

“Four in the morning and he wasn’t out clubbing.”

“How’s that?”

“Had on cargo pants, a vest, and small backpack. Strange time to be hiking.”

“What’s his apartment number?”

“I’ll show you.”

A few minutes later, they got off the elevator on the seventeenth floor and followed the doorman down the hall.

“Knock and tell him you got a delivery or something,” said Sinclair.

The three detectives stood to the side of the door as the doorman pressed the buzzer. After a moment, he buzzed again and yelled, “Mr. Tyson, this is Manny the doorman.”

“You have a key?” Sinclair asked.

“I have a passkey, but I must call—”

“We don’t have time for that. Gimme the key or we kick the door.”

“Don’t you think we should get a warrant and have patrol make entry?” asked Braddock.

“I’m thinking that Tyson hasn’t been seen in a while and he might be held hostage inside, which would justify entry under exigent circumstances,” said Sinclair.

“You’re really stretching it,” she said.

“Or maybe under the hot pursuit doctrine,” said Sinclair.

“Too much time has elapsed,” she said.

It would take two or three hours to type up an affidavit and warrant and another hour to track down the duty judge for a signature. If Olsen wasn’t inside, something there might lead them to him. The safest course of action was to get the warrant to avoid having a judge later throw out any evidence they found inside. But Sinclair seldom
took the safe route. He needed to stop the next murder. “Series of crimes that is still ongoing. We’ve been working them nonstop. He’s likely preparing for another murder right now, which we won’t prevent if we’re delayed getting a warrant.”

“Sounds like exigent circumstances to me,” said Jankowski.

“What the hell,” said Braddock.

Using the doorman’s master key, Sinclair unlocked the door and pushed it open.

“Police—anybody home?” he yelled inside.

After announcing twice more and getting no response, Sinclair drew his pistol and crossed the threshold into the apartment. Braddock and Jankowski followed. Sinclair swept through the living room and dining room with Braddock at his side. He peeked over a counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area. No one hiding there. He and Braddock squeezed past Jankowski, who had been covering the hallway while they cleared the main room. Sinclair poked his head into a bathroom on the left and pulled back the shower curtain.

“Clear,” he shouted.

He entered the first bedroom on the right. A queen-size bed, dresser, and two bed tables filled the room. Sinclair pointed his gun at the closet as Braddock slid the glass doors one way and then the other. Nothing other than clothes. Although the bed seemed too low to the ground for someone to fit underneath, he still dropped to the floor and peered under it to make sure. He led the way down the hall into the master suite, where he and Braddock searched two closets in the dressing area, then the bathroom, and finally the bedroom. All clear.

When searching a house under exigent circumstances, they couldn’t justify opening drawers or looking in any place where a person could not conceivably be hiding; however, any evidence they saw in plain sight was fair game, so Sinclair stopped for a moment to take in the master bedroom and glance in the closet again on his way out of the room. He saw nothing noteworthy.

When they returned to the main room, Jankowski was standing over a dining table covered with DVDs, papers, stacks of files, and a laptop computer.

“Look at this,” said Jankowski, motioning toward the stack of file folders with the names of the four murder victims printed on the tabs. Alongside that pile were two more folders, one with Braddock’s name and another with Liz’s.

Braddock gasped and pulled out her phone. “I need to call Ryan. Get the kids, get them safe.”

Sinclair clasped his hands over Braddock’s phone and held her hand until she calmed. “He’s not after Ryan and the kids, Cathy. He’s after you.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because of me.”

It was apparent to Sinclair the moment he saw Braddock’s and Liz’s names. Olsen killed family members of the people he blamed for what happened to Samantha and Jane. Braddock and Liz were the closest thing Sinclair had to a family.

“You’re safe with us,” said Sinclair. “But we need to locate Liz. She’s his next target.”

“Matt,” interrupted Jankowski, who was standing by a bookshelf in the living room. “Is this Samantha, your first victim?”

Sinclair and Braddock crossed the room to where Jankowski was looking at a framed photograph of Samantha, a man, and a woman.

“Oh, shit,” said Sinclair.

“You recognize him?” asked Jankowski.

“That’s Liz’s cameraman.”