15th Affair (Women's Murder Club #15)(8)

By the time the day shift started punching out, my eyes were gritty and my temples were pounding. But I was still watching the video when the time stamp read 3:27 p.m. I hit Pause.

There was a girl hanging around the front desk in jeans and a quilted jacket, a mile of bulky scarf around her neck. Was she one of the private investigator kids who’d been shot in room 1418? I was about to say “Look at her,” when she turned toward the elevator and I saw her face. Damn it. She was not the girl in 1418. Not by a mile.

At that precise moment, Conklin was pointing at a different part of the screen.

“I think I saw this guy on the later footage,” he said.

He circled the cursor around a big man who was facing away from the camera, wearing a bulky coat and a knit cap. His body and features were almost entirely obscured—yet he was somehow familiar.

“He reminds me of Dugan,” I said, referring to the security chief.

Conklin said, “That’s not Dugan. Dugan stoops.”

We watched the big man walk away from the cameras, slipping seamlessly between groups of people so that we never had more than a second’s glimpse of him.

We reversed the footage, paused, zoomed in, but there was not even a partial view of his face.

“He knows where the cameras are,” said Conklin.

“Like he’s some kind of pro,” I said. “Let’s look for him on the later tape.”

I booted up the disc we’d already seen a few dozen times, but now we had a new focus. Only a few minutes in, I saw the shadowy male who maneuvered around the surveillance cameras with the dexterity of a rodeo quarter horse. He disappeared into a crowd, reappearing a frame or two later as a charcoal-gray smudge on the move. Then we lost him again, this time for good.

The time stamp read 4:20 when Mr. “Wang” entered the lobby. An hour and twenty-five minutes later, at 5:45, the glamorous blonde made her dramatic entrance.

I knew this part of the footage by heart.

I made screen shots of Wang, the blonde, and the partial angle on the mystery man’s back and printed them out. I was thanking Samuels and Lemke for their help when my desk phone rang. It was Brady.

“Valet parking came up with the murdered man’s car,” said the boss.

“No kidding.”

“Subaru Outback registered to a Michael M. Chan. The DMV photo matches his height, weight, eye color. He didn’t have a record. He was thirty-two, lived in Palo Alto with his wife, Shirley, and two young kids. Both teach at Stanford. He taught Chinese history. She teaches Mandarin. That’s all I’ve got. I’m texting you the coordinates.”

I thanked Brady and told my partner we had a lead. The solid kind.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Richie.





CHAPTER 12


THE SOFT AFTERNOON sun was lighting the beautiful old homes in the Professorville section of Palo Alto. We took a left turn off University Avenue, and a couple of blocks later, we were on Waverley Street, a lush, tree-lined block in this picture-perfect town.

The Chan residence was on the south side of the street, middle of the block: a sage-green two-story Craftsman home, with a wide shed dormer facing the street and a flower garden bracketing the front walk.

Our well-worn surveillance vehicle, disguised as a suburban minivan with stick-family decals and a GO GIANTS bumper sticker, was positioned directly across the street.

We parked the squad car in the Chans’ driveway behind a new Chevy wagon and I called Brady, letting him know we were on the scene. Then Conklin and I took the garden path and the brick steps up to the front door. I rang the bell, and it was opened by an early-thirtyish Asian woman wearing gray sweat pants, a pink Life Is Good T-shirt, a gold cross on a chain around her neck, and designer glasses with purple frames.

I flapped open my jacket to show her my badge and introduced my partner and myself, asking if she was Shirley Chan and if we could come in to speak with her. Fear sparked in her eyes like small black flames. She already knew we weren’t selling raffle tickets for the PBA.

“Is this about Michael?” she asked, her hand going to her collarbones. “Is he all right? Please tell me he’s all right.”

Neither Conklin nor I answered, and in that brief silence, Mrs. Chan switched her focus to Conklin’s eyes, back to mine, and back to Conklin.

My partner has magnetic good looks and the nicest way with women of all kinds: meth heads, serial killers, party girls, old ladies lost in parking garages, and in this case, a woman about to learn that her husband had been killed after private time with an attractive, still unidentified bombshell.

Mrs. Chan stepped back into her house, leaving the door open.

We followed her through the foyer and into the many-windowed living room furnished in washed pine and khaki-upholstered love seats, presided over by a fifty-two-inch TV above a fireplace.

Two young children, who looked to be about seven and five, stared up at us. They instantly saw the distress on their mother’s face. The little girl clambered up from the floor and, asking, “What’s wrong, Mommy?” grabbed her mother around the waist. Mrs. Chan’s hands shook and her voice faltered when she told the kids to go to their rooms. They wailed and argued with her until she screamed, “Haley. Brett. Do what I say.”

They fled.

We three stood in the homey room, Shirley Chan with her hand over her mouth, refusing to sit down. I pulled out the DMV photo of Michael Chan and showed it to her.