The Emerald Cat Killer (14 page)

The couple facing her couldn't have been more than forty but the stress lines in their faces and the alternate white knuckles and trembling hands made them seem far older. “I'm really sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Horton,” Officer Varela said, “I don't think I have anything new to give you today. We're working on the case constantly. The trouble is, we don't even know if Rebi is still in Berkeley. Many of these children are runaways. A lot of them turn up in Los Angeles but others are found in New York, Chicago, Seattle, or … well, anywhere in the world.”

“And the ones who don't turn up at all?” The father's hair was iron-gray. To Celia Varela it looked as if he was accustomed to getting hundred-dollar haircuts. It also looked as if Mr. Horton's haircut was a couple of weeks overdue. His mustache matched his hair, and he must have kept command of that himself, as it was neatly trimmed and his hair was carefully groomed, if a little longer than Varela remembered from past meetings.

“I'm sorry,” Varela said. How many times had she heard herself saying that? It was practically her mantra. “The majority do turn up, and we send them back to their families. I wouldn't give up. We're still looking for Rebi and when we find her—”

“You did find her!” This time it was the mother who interrupted. “You found her and you sent her to that juvenile hall place. What a name for that dungeon! It sounds like something out of a Disney movie. It's nothing but a prison and a crime school for children. It's Guantanamo. It's Abu Ghraib. It—”

Her husband put his hand over her mouth. “Stop!”

She clawed his hand away with both of hers. “Where is she? I want my daughter!”

Celia Varela was halfway out of her chair when she saw that Mr. Horton had gotten his wife under control. Mrs. Horton slumped into her chair, pulled a handkerchief from her purse, a Versace original, and sobbed into it. Her husband sat with his hand on her back, looking at Varela, breathing deeply.

When Mrs. Horton regained control of herself she said, “You know, you did have her.”

Varela looked down at the case folder on her desk. “We did find her. The court sent her to juvenile hall. And she was returned to you.”

“And promptly disappeared again!”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Now Dad spoke up. “We gave her everything. We enrolled her in the finest private schools. She refused to attend. We tried to send her out of state to a boarding school. She refused to go to the airport. We tried to bribe her. Nothing. She just wanted to go to public school and be with her so-called friends. Criminals and degenerates. Criminal degenerates. That says it all. Criminal degenerates.”

“The public schools turn out many fine people.” What a weak comeback. Celia almost had to mock herself for that line.

Dad said, “Have you any clues?”

Mom said, “She was only home for a few hours. We picked her up at that awful place and brought her home for a good scrubbing. She was filthy, and we dressed her in a beautiful outfit and we took her out for a special meal to celebrate her homecoming. We didn't criticize, we didn't condemn.”

Dad made a humming sound and tilted his head this way and that way.

“All right, I might have said a couple of words. And if
he
”—Mom emphasized the last word—“if
he
had taken responsibility and not treated his daughter like a royal princess who could do no wrong, his little angel…”

“Please, Carolyn.”

“All right, never mind. I won't try to place blame. I just want my daughter back. I want her home with her family. So we took her to Chez Panisse. Alice Waters personally greeted us. We've been family friends for decades. And it was a wonderful meal. The food was delicious. The service was perfect. And we came home and she said she was happy to be home but she was tired and she wanted to go to bed.”

She paused for breath, then plunged on.

“An hour later, not an hour later, I went to check on her and she was gone again. Gone, after all that. You know, we had special locks on the doors and the windows so she couldn't sneak out at night, and they didn't stop her. Do you think they stopped her? They didn't stop her. Not for a minute. Eat dinner, go upstairs, gone. Gone. And now where is she?”

“That's what we're trying to find out, Mrs. Horton.” Celia Varela steeled herself for what was coming next. As surely as the day follows the night, the spring follows the winter, next would come the complaints about all the taxes Mr. Joseph Horton paid and the service that taxpayers didn't get for their money.

Celia Varela tried to do her job without completely tuning out as Mr. Horton started the standard rant about his taxes and her badge. She held her tongue until it was time for her next appointment, this one with a woman whose husband had absconded and taken their toddler, two beagles, and a parakeet with him.

Once the Hortons left she heaved a sigh and opened another case folder.

A few doors away, just a few doors away, Marvia Plum and Olaf Strombeck and Hobart Lindsey had gone over what was known of the previous day's activities involving Eric Coffman. Officer Jo Rossi was invited into the conference. She had gone up to Coffman's office on Vine Street and recorded brief statements from Coffman's young associate, his legal intern, and the office manager.

Rossi had even stopped in at Saul's Delicatessen, tracked down the waitress, one Alexandra Skrivanos, born in Greece, raised in California. Everything checked out against Lindsey's version, not that there was any reason to expect otherwise.

“Just between us.” Marvia stood up, closed the door, and sat down again. “Just between us, what do you think?”

Strombeck and Lindsey made eye contact across Strombeck's desk, and in perfect two-part harmony asked, “About what, Lieutenant?”

“About the Coffman case and the Simmons homicide. Come on, the tape is turned off, nobody's going to come back at you for stating an opinion.”

“Put me down for Yamura's Law, Lieutenant.” Strombeck had not hesitated.

“Bart?”

“I want to know more.”

“So has everybody since the Garden of Eden. God saw Cain slay Abel, that one was open and shut if ever a case there was. But what about this one—or these two?”

Lindsey still hesitated.

“Didn't you have a golden rule of your own, Bart? What was it, ‘
When you eliminate the impossible, that which remains…'
Wasn't that it?”

“No, it wasn't.” She was digging at him and he knew it. “It was, ‘
Understand the victim and you'll understand the criminal. Understand the criminal and you'll solve the crime.'”

“And in the present case?”

He waited.

“That applies—how?”

“It doesn't!” He stood up angrily. All right, she'd got to him. “In the present case, we just have to keep on digging. Digging and digging. Until we hit pay dirt.”

“Do think there's a key to this whole mess?”

Strombeck said, “You bet there is. It's that goddamned computer.”

“I've been looking for it since I started work on this. I think I'm getting close.”

Marvia Plum said, “You're going in the wrong direction, Bart. Wrong for us. Right for you, I suppose. You want the computer itself, right?”

“That's right. So I can see if Simmons's novel is on it. The one that Chocron gave a thin coat of shellac and sold to Gordian House as his own.”

“Olaf, you and I need to go in the opposite direction. Track it back to that dark and stormy night when it was stolen from Gordon Simmons's Chevy. That's how we'll unravel this thing.”

She stopped, hot and bothered.

“And I'll bet a week's pay that when we do that, we'll also crack the Coffman attack.”

TEN

“Should I clear out?” Lindsey asked.

“Why?”

“Well, you're planning police tactics and I'm a civilian.”

“Stay. Sit. You're part of this thing. You know procedure, Bart. And we need your input on this.”

Strombeck said, “I should head down to Fruitvale and get started on this, Lieutenant. Should probably go in civvies.”

Marvia gave forth with the grin that Lindsey had loved for so long. “No, I don't think so.”

“Reason, Lieutenant?”

“Olaf—Sergeant Strombeck—do you happen to have a mirror handy? Nothing like a six-foot-something blond Viking named Olaf to blend right in, in Fruitvale where the average male is about five seven and barely able to pass the brown-bag test. No, Olaf, this one is mine.”

She stood up. “I'll contact Oakland gang unit and let them know I'm coming. If I'm lucky and I need some help, they'll give it. In any case, they're less likely to shoot me.”

She reached for a couple of case folders on Strombeck's desk, pulled a pad from her own pocket, and jotted notes. Even in a Buck Rogers world the pencil and paper survived.

“Okay, Bart, let's review. Your man is one Rigoberto Chocron, a.k.a. Steve Damon. No permanent address or phone number. Best chance of contact is through a restaurant called Los Arcos de Oro on Foothill Boulevard in Fruitvale.”

“That's it. But … wait a minute.” Lindsey fumbled for his cell phone. “I'm not very good at this, but I think I might—” He opened the clamshell and retrieved the picture he'd snapped of Rigoberto Chocron as Chocron arrived at Los Arcos de Oro.

Marvia Plum had the phone out of his hand before he could lose the image. “Hobart, this is great. Olaf, get this over to IT and have 'em load it into the system. And get some printouts. Lindsey, spell! Spell! This guy's name, his Anglo handle, that restaurant, name and address, and the phone number there.”

Lindsey spelled.

Strombeck disappeared.

Marvia shook her head. “Bart, you are either the world's greatest detective or a complete nincompoop. Getting Chocron's photo was brilliant. Either way I … never mind.”

Lindsey blinked. “Call me Maxwell Smart. Or maybe Jacques Clouseau.”

“I'll just stick to Hobart Lindsey, thanks.”

While Strombeck was at IT, Marvia asked Lindsey what he was going to do next.

“I'm going to talk to the people at Universal Data Services. Hobart Lindsey, computer detective, hot on the case of the little lost laptop.” He paused. “Marvia, what about Eric Coffman?”

“I spoke with Dr. Pollyam Mukerji this morning. She confirms Mr. Coffman will make a good recovery. He's going to be in intensive care for a couple of days and then they're going to keep him in Alta Bates for a week at least, sitting up there on the fifth floor watching the red-tailed hawks playing in the tall pines.”

“Visitors allowed?”

“They try to keep it down to family but I think you could get in. Call his wife first. Or, no, I imagine she's at his bedside now.”

“Did you get anything out of him?”

She smiled again, but not that wonderful glowing smile. More like a cat-who-ate-the-canary smile.

“You got it. I was over there again this morning. You know they get people up early in the hospital to make sure they got plenty of sleep. Mr. Coffman was sitting up and grousing to beat the band because he doesn't have any appetite this morning.”

“Is that bad news?”

“Mr. Coffman thinks it is. Dr. Mukerji says he's lucky to be alive. You wouldn't think it from the wound—she showed me pictures—but if that knife had gone a couple of inches in practically any direction, he'd be in much worse trouble than he is. Either that, or on a slab.”

Lindsey ran his hand across his eyes. He wasn't responsible for the attack on Eric Coffman, at least as far as he could figure out. Still, he couldn't help thinking that if it hadn't been for their lunch appointment at Saul's and the afternoon meeting at Eric's office, the whole street encounter might never have taken place.

“Did he remember anything? Anything useful, I mean? Did the attacker say anything? Sergeant Strombeck gave me a tutorial on that two-man mugging gang. Was it one of those gone wrong?”

“Something like. Coffman says he was approached by a very young woman. Hardly more than a little girl. He took her for a panhandler and he pulled out his wallet to give her some money. That's when her confederate hit him from behind.”

“But why stab him? If it was a mugging and Eric already had his wallet out … hitting him on the head, that sounds like the sucker-punch tactic. But why the knife attack?”

“Here's why. The way Coffman describes the girl, she's almost certainly a junkie of some sort. Most likely a meth freak. She was supposed to do a poor-hungry-waif act, maybe—my guess, insufficient data to make it more than that—make it a sexual come-on. Either plain garden variety prostitution or more likely entrapment and extortion.”

“A badger game.”

“Right.” She shook her head. “Middle-aged, obviously prosperous businessman type. In all likelihood a family man. She doesn't even have to lure him to a hotel room and have her would-be husband burst in and catch them in flagrante. All she has to do is scream, or even threaten to scream, right there on the street. Private homes and low-rise apartments all around, the coffee crowd coming and going back at the corner—not a bad scheme.”

Strombeck got back from IT and slipped into the room.

Lindsey asked, “What went wrong?”

“The girl is a freak, Hobart. Who knows how high she was flying? Or maybe she was crashing. All the more desperate. She goes into her act, the john doesn't respond the way she expected or maybe she just forgets her lines and freaks out. The john starts to back away and the girl's boyfriend figures, we don't want to let this one get away, he's too juicy.”

Strombeck laid some papers on his desk, reached a long, uniform-clad arm toward Lindsey, and returned his cell phone.

“So, the wallop on the back of the head,” Marvia resumed. “Doc Mukerji says Coffman was lucky on that score, too. She doesn't think the perp used a sap. More likely a hard, heavy object, probably a potato-sized rock that the perp picked up right at the scene. A little harder and Coffman could have gone down with a crushed skull and brain trauma. Instead, he's got a concussion and he'll have headaches for a while, but he should be all right.”