A Killing in China Basin - Kirk Russell [32]
‘What about a boyfriend or relatives?’
‘She had friends but I don’t know any of them. I asked her out once and she turned me down, but I never saw a boyfriend.’
He gave them a look as if to say she was a little odd for not going out with him.
‘What about friends within the apartment complex?’
He shrugged, didn’t know.
‘Let’s go have a look at her apartment,’ Raveneau said.
TWENTY-TWO
As soon as the front door unlocked, Raveneau turned to the apartment manager and said, ‘We’ll take it from here. We’ll bring the key back to you.’
Inside it smelled heavily of used cat litter and a small red cat appeared and meowed as it rubbed against Raveneau’s leg. He leaned over and picked it up. Raveneau found some dry food in a kitchen cabinet and fed the cat, and then got on the phone to CSI as la Rosa went back to the car for latex gloves. Raveneau looked around as he waited. One bedroom, one bath, and a lot nicer interior than the dirty exterior of the building.
On a shelf they found several photo albums. She had a Facebook page and a Twitter account. They’d get on to the Facebook page when they got back to the office and made the call. They read through her Twitter feeds, her emails, and la Rosa called AT&T for phone records. She banked online. Either he or la Rosa would call the bank when they got back to the office.
He walked into the bathroom, looking but touching little as la Rosa was on the phone with AT&T getting Jurika’s voice mail password. He went through her photos on the computer and emailed several of those and her email address book to both his address and la Rosa’s. Then he printed off the emails she’d sent and those received in the last month. As the printer clacked along CSI arrived, and he walked out to lead them in. La Rosa was on the computer when he came back.
‘Did you read these?’ she asked. ‘This must be a friend of hers.’
Raveneau read, ‘u going?’
‘yes. u?’
‘We need all of her friends.’
In an hour they had gone from knowing nothing about Alex Jurika to sorting through information. Raveneau watched la Rosa’s hands move over the keyboard. She was three or four times faster than him. She clicked through emails, pausing on one reading, ‘You’re going to love this.’
CSI pulled prints and latents off counters, the table and door knobs. They had prints from two different people. One was likely Jurika; the other they guessed was also a woman. Nothing Raveneau found suggested Jurika intended to travel; no packed bags, passport, itinerary, plane tickets, or email records of flight confirmations. From the cat pictures and the rest, Raveneau couldn’t see her abandoning her pet, leaving it here to starve. So good chance she was abducted.
AT&T called back and promised to fax a record of her incoming and outgoing phone numbers for the cell and landline. After the CSI pair left and Raveneau couldn’t think of anything more to do here, they locked the door and Raveneau told the manager, ‘We’ll be back later today. We’d like to keep the key, if that’s OK.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you have a way to take care of the cat?’
The manager wrinkled his nose. ‘They’re not even allowed here.’
Now they crossed the Bay Bridge on their way to a print shop in Emeryville, where the woman who had recognized Jurika and called in this morning worked. Her name was Sally Cheung and she turned out to be seasoned, tough, and no nonsense. She nodded as Raveneau showed her a photo.
‘That’s her, and she wasn’t the most honest employee, but she was always fun.’ After a pause she added, ‘She got fired for stealing.’
Fired for stealing credit card numbers, but never arrested and prosecuted according to the former boss they talked to that afternoon. ‘Hiring her was like catching a bad cold on a plane. In the end it didn’t hurt us much, but it was shitty while it lasted.’
They read about her all afternoon and finally got on her Facebook page, then started contacting her Facebook friends, none of whom had contacted