A Killing in China Basin - Kirk Russell [28]
They came down the cart path under the tall pines and cedars that bordered the fairway. To their right California Street dead-ended into steps as wide as the street that climbed up to Lincoln Park. Raveneau pointed down California at a building.
‘Those windows up on the upper floor there, the second ones in, that’s where she lived. With her dog she’d routinely come up these steps and into the park at night. Her roommate told me that Ruiz had said that if her dog did its business in the trees along the golf course fairways, then there was no need for a doggy bag. So she’d bring the dog up here regularly right around sunset.
‘My prime suspect is a groundskeeper who hates dogs. He told me that if he catches a dog on the golf course he’ll take its collar off and drive it to a pound in another city. That way it’s just another stray with the clock ticking down as soon as it gets to the pound. The dog’s owner puts up posters on the telephone poles with the dog’s picture, but Bryce has turned the missing dog in at a pound fifty miles away.’
‘Don’t they have chips they put in pets now?’
‘Sure, but not all dogs.’ Raveneau pointed. ‘She was in those trees. Bryce told us he found her by chasing her dog. Later he changed that to stopping his mower there because he needed to go up into the trees and urinate.’
He showed her the spot under the tree where Ruiz had been. There were weeds but still the bare spot.
‘That spot had pebbles arranged as numbers. Her dog had pawed part of it, so we could only read a few of the numbers. Maybe if we could have read the rest we’d know more, but that’s where the “Numbers Man” case name comes from.’
They left Lincoln Park then drove the Embarcadero, following the waterfront as Raveneau talked about Hunter’s Point and the expanse of navy property the city didn’t patrol, which gangs out of the projects used routinely. Ironically, the crime lab was located there in a rehabbed area near the water. New development was slated for Hunter’s Point. But beyond the enclave with the crime lab were big abandoned structures, rotting wharfs, and dry docks. As they drove through, Raveneau pointed out the crane that had once loaded the Hiroshima bomb.
‘When there’s a killing in the projects we try to get there fast and get to the children who were witnesses. The kids have no problem saying it was a man in a bright green coat on a little bicycle who stopped and shot the other man, then rode off. Then we’re looking for a guy with a lime-green parka and a little bike in an area with the worst poverty in the city, with empty rooms, no phone or electric service, rock bottom nothing. We can usually find him, but bringing a case against him, that’s a different deal. That’s why we take anonymous tips.’
‘Bringing the case is what we’ve got to do more of.’
She said that with such fervor he glanced over at her.
‘It is. But out here they’re not going to testify if they’re going to get killed for it later. Who would?’ He turned to her. ‘Ready to head back?’
Later that afternoon they watched the copy of the Heilbron tape again. Images were date and time marked. In one thirty-five minute period Heilbron covered several square miles of the city, filming lone women, most of them walking along city sidewalks. His set-up had a zoom feature so after the camera was on them he often zoomed in. Some of the women must have become aware of the van from the way they reacted. Others seemed oblivious. He filmed eight different women before driving into China Basin and to the building where their victim was killed. Resolution was poor. The lighting was poor. But it was definitely the building, and the next shots were of Boyle’s Auto Body.
What followed was a sort of manic period of moving around with the camera running. He sat outside two clubs south of Market. He backtracked several times between Seventeenth and Twenty-first on Valencia Street. At one point a woman approached the passenger side of the van, but disappeared from camera range.
Then he returned to China Basin and Raveneau saw it as he watched this time. Heilbron