Thrill Kill (12 page)

Sinclair had finished typing page two of what he knew would end up being a five- or six-page crime report detailing the arrests of Danielle Rhodes and Helena Decker when Braddock interrupted him. “Helena’s finished talking with her lawyer, and I put her back in two-oh-one. The lawyer would like to talk with us alone.”

Sinclair followed Braddock into the soft interview room. A fortyish white woman with jet-black, shoulder-length hair wearing an expensive dark-gray suit with a knee-length skirt thrust out her hand when they entered. “Sergeant Sinclair, my name is Bianca Fadell.”

He detected a hint of a British accent in her voice. Her hand was slight, almost bony, but rendered a firm handshake. She offered a business card on thick paper with elegant, raised letters. Sinclair began, “Ms. Fadell—”

She cut him off. “Please call me Bianca.” She smiled, showing teeth that only professional bleaching could get so white. She resumed her seat at the table. Braddock and Sinclair pulled out chairs and sat across from her.

Sinclair asked, “Is Ms. Decker willing to cooperate?”

“She is. I understand you want a list of Dawn Gustafson’s clients. I can get that for you if the District Attorney will provide a signed letter declining to prosecute my client.”

“That’s not the way it works here,” Sinclair said. “The DA’s office only files charges on cases the police bring to them. If I don’t bring them the case, they don’t even know about it.”

“I can guarantee the DA knows about this case already.” Bianca brushed her hair behind her ear, revealing a diamond stud of well over a carat and a heavy gold hoop dangling below it. “I’m sure that you have enormous sway with the DA’s office on most investigations; however, I suspect the determination as to how this matter will be adjudicated will be made at their highest level and may have little to do with what’s best for your homicide investigation.”

“Then why are you even talking with me?” Sinclair asked.

She leaned forward and made eye contact with Sinclair. “You control whether my client goes to jail or goes home today. In addition, certain parties actually desire justice for Dawn’s murder, even if those responsible should turn out to be a client of the agency.”

Sinclair leaned back in his chair. “Before the DA would sign this immunity letter you’re requesting, he’d want to see the full investigation and view all the evidence. That would take weeks, maybe months. The DA doesn’t do that lightly. Do you expect me to let your client walk out of here with only her promise of cooperation and wait until the DA grants her immunity? I might as well just wait for the analysis of her computer files.”

“I already know the FBI and IRS have the computers,” Bianca said. “You may not fully realize what you have gotten yourself involved in. I doubt the U.S. Attorney will allow you full access to the data on those computers.”

“You seem like a very capable attorney,” Sinclair said. “But I don’t play lawyer games. You’ll need to do that with your counterparts at the DA and U.S. Attorney’s Office. If I don’t get something from your client now, I’ll book her, type up my report, and see the charging DA tomorrow.”

Bianca’s dark eyes bounced between Braddock and Sinclair and finally focused on Sinclair. “You have a reputation as an
honorable man—someone whose word is his bond. What I’m about to tell you does not necessarily come from my client. She may or may not have any association with the escort services; however, if you release her, I will be able to gain access to the computer data you’re looking for.”

“How’s that going to happen? We both know the Feds have the computers.”

“Don’t you think that a company would have off-site back-up of their computer files?”

Sinclair had to admit he hadn’t thought of that, but of course, it made sense. “And Helena would give me access to the files?”

“I won’t reveal privileged client information, but as I said, I will be in a position to get you some information about the clients of the escort service. In the meantime, would you be interested in knowing that Dawn had stopped working for the agency a year ago?”

“Really?” Sinclair said. “If that’s true, what good will old client information do me?”

“Maybe none,” Bianca said. “But would you be interested in knowing that Dawn first worked as an escort eight years ago and took a sabbatical when one of her clients fell in love with her about five years ago? Would it interest you that a few years later, she approached the agency and asked to return to work because, according to her, she needed the money to provide a future for a baby she had given birth to? Would you be interested in knowing that she saw more than a hundred different clients during her association with the agency, but toward the end, she only saw a dozen or so regulars, and quite possibly remained in contact with them even after she left the business?”

This fit with what they already knew about Dawn and answered some of the questions that had nagged Sinclair. The existence of the apartment on Athol Avenue and the fact that Dawn wasn’t living there made more sense.

“Can you get me the names of these regulars and the father of her baby?” Sinclair asked.

“I believe that’s possible, but my client will need to be free to orchestrate it.”

Sinclair and Braddock stepped out of the room and conferred. He hated releasing someone from custody on just a promise to provide information—you ended up getting burned more often than not. But Braddock pointed out that they had little to lose by releasing Helena. Neither of them cared about a pimping case. Besides, the Feds could slam Helena much harder than the state courts. It was ironic that they had a better chance of getting the information they needed from a suspect and her defense attorney than from fellow law enforcement officers.

Sinclair and Braddock returned to the interview room. He said, “I’ll release her, but she has to understand the release is only pending further investigation. If she doesn’t come through, I walk the case to the DA, get a warrant, and have a team of blue suits drag her off to jail.”

Bianca held out her hand. “Deal.”

Sinclair put out his hand. Bianca took it in both of hers and gazed into his eyes. “I appreciate your trust. I can tell that what both Dawn and Danielle said about you is true. You’ll be hearing from me soon.”

After Bianca and Helena left the homicide office, Sinclair and Braddock returned to their desks. “Whew!” Braddock said. “With all the sexual energy Bianca was putting off, I felt like a voyeur just being in the same room.”

Sinclair laughed. “She was just flirting. I’m sure she’s accustomed to using her wily womanly ways to get what she wants from men.”

“I’m glad you’re too strong to be influenced by it,” Braddock said. “But that was no act. That lady is seriously hot and she wants you in a big way.”

The lieutenant looked up from the papers scattered across his desk when Sinclair entered his office. Sinclair advised him of their decision to release Helena in exchange for her cooperation and asked, “What happened with the chief?”

“Everything’s okay,” Maloney said. “Sergeant Roberts had been keeping him abreast of everything. It seemed I was the only one not in the loop.”

“Sorry, boss. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

“It wasn’t crime-wise, but politically is a different story. The chief wants to be informed of the names of any clients you discover.”

Sinclair agreed, but was worried that if the escort service clients were politically connected, the chief would be tempted to run interference to protect them. It was beginning to sound like politics might trump his murder investigation.

“The chief also said you’re to see Mr. Normart at the DA’s office for charging or any legal advice on this case,” Maloney said.

Normart was the chief assistant district attorney, the number two person in the DA’s office. Seeing him to get a mere pimping case charged was completely out of the ordinary. The only time Sinclair even went to the main courthouse, the old, grand building on the east side of downtown, was when one of his murder cases was in trial. OPD investigators did most of their business at the Oakland branch office, which was right across the street from the PAB.

“He’s referring to the escort service case, right?” Sinclair asked.

“The homicide, too, since it’s connected.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as pretty fuckin’ weird, lieutenant?”

Maloney leaned into his desk. “It makes sense if they want to control what could be a politically charged trial and coordinate jurisdiction with the Feds.”

“Well, there’s nothing for me to see Normart about because I don’t want to charge Helena Decker with anything.”

“You might want to give him a call and tell him that.”

“When the hell did we start conferring with the DA before we’re ready to charge the case? I thought the police investigate and lawyers prosecute. There’s no one to prosecute until I solve the case.”

“I don’t need a lesson about roles and responsibilities in the criminal justice system from a sergeant,” Maloney said. “I’m just trying to keep everybody happy.”

“I’m just trying to solve a murder and could care less about everybody’s happiness.” Once he said it, Sinclair regretted the way it came out. Lieutenant Maloney was one of the few people he did care about keeping happy, not only because it made his life easier, but also because Maloney was a good guy who had put his career on the line more than once to protect his investigators and the integrity of their cases.

“Fine,” Sinclair said, backtracking. “I’ll call him.” Maloney picked up his phone, signaling the conversation was over.

When Sinclair got back to his desk, Braddock was online. “Ms. Fadell, or Bianca to you, is an interesting lady,” she said. “Born in London to Syrian and Persian parents, she got her undergrad in poli sci from Princeton and graduated from Yale Law School eighteen years ago, which would make her at least forty-three. The girl looks damn good for that age. There’s an article from the society page of the
Chronicle
a few years back saying that after she ended an eight-year marriage, she became romantically involved with Brett Green.”

“The financier who made a run for mayor in San Francisco?” Sinclair asked.

“That’s the guy. She was listed in the twenty most eligible bachelorettes in San Francisco last year and the hundred most influential women in the Bay Area. Here’s a photo of her with some state senator at a fundraiser for the United Way, which she’s on the Bay Area board of.”

Sinclair looked at the photo on Braddock’s monitor of a fiftyish man in a tux next to Bianca, dressed in a black gown with a plunging neckline that extended to her navel.

“Anything about her legal work?”

“She’s been with Carter, Peterson, and Shapiro for ten years, and a partner for the last eight. It’s one of the top firms in the
city. They do everything. She’s listed as specializing in international business and global human rights.”

“Global human rights,” said Sinclair. “That sounds ominous.”

“Actually, it’s huge. Wealthy people pump big money into international nonprofits that work to improve women’s lives in third world countries. Bianca’s page on the law firm’s website lists some she’s associated with.”

“So her law firm makes big bucks supporting these liberal causes.”

“That’s not the politically correct way of looking at it, but she must do more than merely earn her keep doing it or else she wouldn’t have made partner. She’s listed as legal counsel for EHT, that’s Ending Human Trafficking, an international nonprofit headquartered in San Francisco, and some other organizations.”

“So she works for outfits that are against sex trafficking of women and defends a woman who, many would say, exploits them.”

“Lawyers say everyone is entitled to a good defense,” Braddock replied.

Sinclair went back to typing his report. At four o’clock, the other homicide investigators left for the day. But Sinclair had a mile-long task list on Dawn’s case. At the top of the list—the task most likely to produce results with the least expenditure of time—was to look into her former clients. But to do that meant waiting for Bianca to come through, which probably wouldn’t occur until tomorrow afternoon. Waiting wasn’t something he did well, but the alternative often meant spinning his wheels on tangents that weren’t likely to pan out. He returned to the report he was writing. At least he’d get that out of the way in case a new lead materialized tomorrow while he waited for the call from Bianca.

The following morning, Sinclair carried his empty coffee mug to the intelligence unit, set it on Robert’s desk, and sat on his sofa. Roberts took his cup into the outer office, returned, and handed Sinclair a full cup of coffee and then settled in behind his desk. They glared at each other for a few moments in silence.

Finally, Sinclair spoke. “We used to be partners. I feel like one of our street whores, the way you’ve used me.”

Roberts took a drink from his cup. “This is bigger than your murder.”

“If you told me that two days ago, I doubt I would’ve gotten involved in this.”

“You were looking for an inroad into the escort service,” Roberts said. “This was it.”

“We used to be honest with each other. I sense there’s a whole lot you’re still not telling me.”

“My job’s different now,” Roberts said. “There’s a whole lot I can’t tell many people.”

“Will I ever get a list of the escorts and their clients?”

Roberts looked at him for several beats. “I don’t know.”

Sinclair couldn’t tell if Roberts really didn’t know or that was his way of saying no. “What unit do those FBI agents work in? They aren’t out of the Oakland office.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I reached out to my friends over there,” Sinclair said. “They knew nothing of the op.”

“Are you referring to Archard?”

“Her and the two who were in the hotel bar and later lurking around the design center.”

“She’s assigned to organized crime out of the San Francisco office.”

“The other two?”

Roberts said nothing.

Sinclair drank some coffee. “You can tell by looking at them they’re not field agents. They were too clean, too bookish to put handcuffs on an actual bad guy.”

Roberts said nothing.

Sinclair continued, “I wrote a crime report covering the prostitution solicitation by Danielle Rhodes and the pimping exchange by Helena Decker. I listed Cummings, Archard, and you as witnesses. Under normal circumstances, you each would have to provide a supplemental report.”

“You know we in Intel don’t like to be listed as witnesses.”

“You know we in homicide don’t like to be punked out.”

“You wouldn’t have Decker if it wasn’t for the FBI and IRS,” Roberts said.

“You didn’t level with me from the beginning. In our world, nothing’s more important than a homicide, but you guys are withholding evidence that I need to solve it.”

“Have you turned in the report?”

“I’m still holding it,” Sinclair said. “I don’t need to turn it in until I see the DA to get Decker charged.”

“Is that your plan?”

“Why should I tell you my plan when you won’t share yours with me?”

“Because if I know your plan, I might be able to help.”

“Ya know, Phil, all the dealings I had with Intel in years past were just like this. We peon cops pass on everything we know to Intel. They listen, sometimes say, ‘Oh, yeah, we knew that,’
and then write it down and stick it in a file. The only time they ever passed on anything to us is when they throw us little tidbits because they need something. I thought it would be different when you came up here.”

“Sorry, Matt. It’s the nature of the job.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll get my info from Decker and her lawyer. At least they deal with me honestly and openly.”

“You should be cautious dealing with them. They might not be what they appear. And I’d appreciate you passing on anything Decker tells you.”

“I’m sure you would,” Sinclair said as he got up and walked out the door.

Sinclair stopped at the crime lab to see if they had any results from the crime scene or Dawn’s apartment. The firearms examiner had determined the bullet recovered from the victim’s head was a nominal .38 caliber projectile, which included .38, 9mm, .380, and .357. Based on the weight of the jacketed hollow point slug, 87.6 grains, they surmised it was most likely a .380. The bullet displayed rifling characteristics of five lands and grooves with a right twist. A list of firearms with those characteristics included Llama, Kel-Tec, Walther, and Smith and Wesson. The lab entered it into IBIS, the Integrated Ballistics Identification System, but got no hits. That only meant the gun that fired the round had not been recovered in a crime by any police agency that enters their crime guns into IBIS, or no identifiable bullets from the gun had been recovered at a scene. In other words, the bullet dug out of Dawn’s brain was a dead end.

The fingerprint unit examined nearly a hundred latents that had been lifted from Dawn’s apartment. Eighteen were identifiable; the others were either partials or too smudged to identify. Twelve of the identifiable prints were eliminated as belonging to Dawn. That left six, which could have come from different people or could have been from different fingers of the same person. They entered them into their computer, which searched prints at the county level, then the state level, and if neither hit,
then on to IAFIS, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System maintained by the FBI. There were no matches, which meant the prints didn’t belong to anyone with an arrest record. A friend of Dawn’s or even a technician who fixed a broken refrigerator last month could have left them. Another dead end, unless Sinclair identified a suspect to match them to.

No one from the DNA unit had yet looked at the clippings of Dawn’s nails for DNA, but Sinclair never held his breath waiting for DNA results, knowing the backlog of DNA cases in Oakland.

Everyone in the homicide office was busy when Sinclair made his way back to his desk. Investigators were talking on the phone or working on their computers. Both interview room doors were closed, indicating witnesses or suspects were in there awaiting their opportunity to reveal details about a murder other than Sinclair’s. Everyone seemed to have leads to work on their cases except him. Braddock had a case packet from another one of her open murders on her desk. Even she was working on something other than Dawn’s murder.

Sinclair spent the rest of the day typing up search warrants and affidavits for Dawn’s phone and e-mail accounts. The longer he sat at his desk, the more irritated he became, not only because he hated clerical work, but also because it meant there were no active leads that could justify putting these mundane tasks on the back burner.

At five o’clock, he shut down his computer and headed out the door, figuring he should join the commute traffic to Lafayette and hit one of his old AA meetings. That was always a good place to dump a load of irritability.