Crush - Alan Jacobson [111]
Friedberg stopped in front of a slight overhang, at a cement outcropping that contained a rectangular horizontal iron door hinged at the top.
“A fireplace?” Dixon asked.
“Actually,” Friedberg said, “I’m not sure what it was. It was a military installation, who knows what they did here. February 16, 1998, Marin County sheriff’s office got a call a little after midnight. A terrible smell at Battery Spencer. A deputy sheriff was nearby, so he took the call, even though it was outside his jurisdiction. He followed his nose, which led him here.” Friedberg grabbed the irregular bottom of the iron door with both hands and lifted it. The metal hinge squealed.
“Body dump,” Vail said.
“Body dump. Take a look.”
Dixon and Vail stepped forward and peered in. “Goes down quite a bit.”
“Wasn’t any fun getting the body out, I can tell you that much.”
“How’d you catch the case?” Dixon asked. “This isn’t SFPD jurisdiction.”
Friedberg chuckled. “Jurisdiction around here is a freaking nightmare. Need a scorecard and map to keep it straight. A hundred feet in any direction, jurisdiction could change. Basically, it goes by who owned the land before it became a national park. So where we’re standing is U.S. Park Police. They assigned a Criminal Investigative Branch detective, who ran the investigation and coordinated with the Marin County sheriff’s office. That’s where I came in. This was a couple years before I hooked up with SFPD.” He shook his head. “Let’s just say I regretted working the case from day one. But I kept a copy of the file. I always hoped one day I’d solve it.”
Vail stepped back and Friedberg lowered the cover. “ID on the vic?”
“Betsy Ivers. Bank teller, thirty-three, single.”
“Any connection to the wine country?” Dixon asked.
“None I remember. But it’s been a while since I reviewed the file.”
“Did Agent Rooney go over the unusual things our killer does to the body?”
Friedberg clapped his hands to shake off the dirt. “I went to that FBI Profiling seminar in ’06 that your colleague did, Agent Safarik. I know what to look for. He was really good. Great freaking class. How is he?”
“Doing well,” Vail said. “He retired, but he’s got his own company, still doing profiling, expert testimony, the whole shebang.”
“Well, that’s how I knew to fill out the VICAP form. Every cop in the country should take that course.”
Friedberg led the way back toward the bridge, up the stairs and down the incline to the wood post and cable fence that prevented one from taking a header down the cliff, into the Pacific. The sun was setting and the temperature had dropped another few degrees. Head-lighted cars streamed from the city across the bridge into Marin.
Vail took a deep breath. Cold, damp, sea breeze. Smell of salt riding on the air. “Any suspects?”
“Couple people we were looking at. One was a guy who was working for a local pest control company. I liked him, but he blew out of town after we questioned him. Turns out he used a fake ID, name, address. His whole employment app was bullshit. Couldn’t find him—he vanished like water droplets in the freaking San Francisco fog. But just when we were about to start a goddamn manhunt, this other guy came on our radar. Billy Todd Lundy. Some psycho who’d been in and out of mental health institutions as a kid, went off his meds, and had all sorts of run-ins with SFPD.”
Friedberg had Vail’s attention. Mental health issues. That could fit with the severed breasts. “And what happened with Billy Todd Lundy?”
“We questioned him, there were holes in his story. He was seen around Battery Spencer a couple days before the murder, which fit with the estimated TOD. And he also lived down the block from Ivers’s apartment.”
“Violent tendencies?”
“When he was off his meds, yeah.” Friedberg pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and tapped it. Removed one, lit it. “But that’s where things got screwed up. We didn’t have enough to hold him, so we kicked him loose.” He leaned on the fence’s wood post. Took a long drag of his smoke. Nodded