A Killing in China Basin - Kirk Russell [103]
‘Alex wanted to show me a rundown building she was thinking of buying into. She wanted me to buy in also and made up a story about how we would own it together. She said she had a way to make it happen, so I said I’d come down and stay with her a few days and we’d go see the building. She was sleeping with the realtor and had a key, so we could go anytime.
‘She had a key and false papers to show me that I was half owner in this building. She had a whole new identity for me as the building owner: Alex and me, the credit thief and unemployed middle-aged woman buying a commercial building in San Francisco. She wanted me to sign these false papers and feel like I had two hundred thousand in equity. She claimed there was no mortgage. She got the realtor on the phone and he told me Alex had paid cash for the building.’
‘You must have been very angry.’
‘I wanted revenge. I needed to make things fair. I’ve lived very quietly and paid cash for everything, or done things for trade. I’ve lived poor. I never had one credit card. I cancelled everything when Cody went to jail because I knew what he’d do when he got out.’
‘Where are the papers Alex showed you?’
‘With me.’
‘I’d like to see them.’
‘You’ll see everything.’ She paused and then spoke too quietly for him to hear, but something passed along the edge of his consciousness, something he should realize, something missed. He was twenty seconds behind her as they went through the Waldo Tunnel. He watched her car going out the other side. As she started down toward the Golden Gate Bridge, her voice was much slower.
‘You’re right, I got the Ketamine from a vet I know. When did you figure it out?’
‘Last night.’
‘I just wanted to question Alex. I didn’t mean for anything else to happen.’
Having seen the marks on Jurika’s neck he didn’t believe her.
‘Where is the rope you used to strangle her?’
‘I threw it in a garbage can at a rest stop on the drive back home.’
As bridge traffic slowed to a crawl and her brake lights came on she described the room and the mattress, and moving a chair over and Alex convulsing on the mattress.
‘We were going to go out and celebrate after she showed me through the building. That’s why she was dressed up.’
Raveneau decided to close in and radio for backup. He carried a second phone, an emergency phone, and used that to text la Rosa, ‘Quinn confessing to Jurika murder. Call for backup.’ La Rosa could see him but probably not Quinn, but she’d figure it out.
‘Are you still there?’ he asked, and Quinn wasn’t. He tried calling her back and didn’t get an answer. He tried again as he reached the first tower of the Golden Gate. At this hour there were four lanes running into the city. Later, they’d move the cones and the other side would have more lanes for the reverse commute. Up ahead, the right-hand lane stopped moving and Raveneau changed to the cone lane, the center lane.
It was Quinn holding up traffic in the right lane, her car barely moving forward, cars bleeding out of that lane and honking. When she came to a stop Raveneau forced his way over, hitting his horn hard. He came close to an accident and then just stopped his car and got out. He ran toward her and he almost got there.
He got within ten feet. ‘Erin, no, Erin wait!’
She turned. She looked at him and then went over the rail before he could grab her. Raveneau saw her tumble, clothing fluttering, flapping, and the ocean foaming as she hit. Then he could barely keep his hand from shaking as he called for help. A Coast Guard rescue team from Fort Baker was there within minutes and they found her, but she was dead when they pulled her out.
Raveneau and la Rosa drove down to Fort Baker and identified her after the guard brought her into the dock, and in the car they found a written confession.
‘I should have known,’ Raveneau told la Rosa later. ‘I saw the open motel door and had a feeling when I came out of the Waldo Tunnel that I needed to catch her. I just didn’t put it together fast enough.’
‘We did everything we could.’
He didn’t answer that. He knew