A Killing in China Basin - Kirk Russell [19]
‘The homicide dick who drinks white wine,’ la Rosa said after the waitress left.
‘When I was the Great Inspector I drank Scotch. In those days I couldn’t find a hat big enough to fit my head.’
‘How do they fit nowadays? They must be tight still.’
‘Not as tight.’ He studied her a moment and said, ‘I should have asked you this weeks ago. Everyone calls you Liz, but what do you prefer?’
‘Oh, I don’t care.’
‘No, I’m asking, I mean it.’
‘I like Elizabeth but no one uses my full name.’ She smiled a warm smile. ‘I’m OK if you just call me Inspector. I’m still getting used to it and I love the sound of it.’
‘I’m going to call you Elizabeth.’
Raveneau finished his wine and as la Rosa downed her margarita they ordered another round. It felt like they got somewhere today and maybe also crossed a generational gap. Getting the Jimenez confession made it a lucky day, but that was before they knew what had happened across the bay in Oakland.
FOURTEEN
Charles Bates’s wife, Jacie, routinely took an evening walk, mostly when there was still light and often with CD, the D for Charles’s middle name, Douglas. Tonight she was walking alone. Not even their old dog, Chief, was with her. With his back legs Chief was too slow. She left the house a little after five, knowing it would get to dusk as she came through the end of the walk. Even so, she stopped to chat with a neighbor before starting for the dead-end street that turned into the park.
She picked up her pace. Jacie heard that she could lose weight at her hips by walking faster and she wanted to be down five pounds before she and CD went to Hawaii. They had a condo rented on Maui, same one they went to last year on their thirty-second anniversary. She looked forward to going there more than anything else right now.
Up ahead, joggers, hikers, mountain bikers, parked their cars in the rough dirt lot between the trees near where the park trails started. Lately, there were two small construction remodels in the neighborhood and those workers were still figuring out that the road didn’t go through, so when a white pickup passed her going fast toward the dead-end she figured it was another construction worker about to make the same mistake.
The man driving the pickup glanced at her as he passed. Where she was she wouldn’t see him turn around, but she knew it wouldn’t be long. It wasn’t. She heard his truck rattling back down the narrow road, coming faster making up for the lost time, and she moved over to the side, close to the edge but not in the mud. When he got closer she might step off, but because he had come by her slow on the way in she wasn’t much concerned.
Now the truck rattled around the corner, frame floating toward the crown of the road and Jacie frowning disapproval. She heard it accelerate. In the cool gray light of dusk she made out his white face and dark hair, but not his features. She raised a hand, meaning to say slow down, but not waiting, getting out of the way as he swerved, either losing control or coming on purpose. She was once a very good dancer and was on her back foot turning and two steps off the asphalt before the gap closed. She heard the sound when it hit her, but that was all.
She didn’t know that afterward he wrestled the truck back on to the road, straightening the wheel to keep it from rolling, or that his bumper carried dry grass and dirt from where it gashed the hill. She didn’t know that the old pickup’s glove compartment had popped open or that he’d recovered from his near crash and backed up over her body, resting the truck with a foot on the brake as the wheel rose up on her chest.
The impact crumpled the right fender and broke the headlight. A chrome headlight ring was left up on the slope. Pieces of headlight glass were all over the road shoulder. Neighbors heard tires squeal. But the whole thing took less than ninety seconds from start to finish. What the driver