The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(14)
The gang was all here.
CHAPTER 18
I WAS STILL on adrenaline overload from last night’s shootout at the Anthony Hotel, and now Brady’s full-house staff meeting had tweaked me to a turn.
The clock on this mysterious big heist was running out and we needed answers—fast. Conklin parked our squad car in front of the Anthony Hotel behind three cruisers and the CSI van. I was glad to see that van. If anyone could read tea leaves in the dregs of this cesspool, it was Charlie Clapper and his team.
I zipped my Windbreaker over my vest and yanked up the chain holding my badge so that it hung outside my jacket. I got out of the car and took in the sights. Morning on Sixth Street looked like a flashback to the Great Depression. Clouds blocked the sun. Trash blew up the pavement and collected in the gutters. Pedestrians drifted purposelessly, and the thin traffic slowed when drivers saw the CSI van.
Uniformed officers leaned against their cruisers, protecting the perimeter. Others had door duty, barring the press and checking IDs of hotel residents. An old man vomited in the alley next to the liquor store.
My partner said, “Ready?”
“You bet. Can’t wait.”
We crossed the buckled sidewalk to the hotel entrance, entered the stinking lobby, and identified ourselves to the desk clerk, who was twenty years older than the clerk working the night shift. He had been informed, no doubt. He said, “Don’t mess up the place, okay?”
Conklin said, “Got it,” and we took the stairs, an obstacle course of discarded crack vials, condoms, Thunderbird empties. We exited through the fire door onto the sixth floor.
All but two of the doorways were taped off; tenants had been relocated and their rooms cleared. I noticed now that a couple of those doors had wreaths circling the peepholes. Another was hung with a stocking, the name Mia stitched on the cuff. Meager hopes for a merry Christmas, dashed.
At the front of the long hallway, room 6F looked as I had seen it last night, the bullet-perforated door left hanging by one hinge after Dietz had sprung his surprise attack on a team of trained SWAT commandos armed with military-grade automatic weapons. The bloody outline of Dietz’s body was like an unwelcome mat in front of the door. Why would he pick a fight he so obviously would not win?
At the far end of the hallway, the door to 6R was wide open. I called out to Charlie Clapper and he stepped out to meet us. Clapper was director of Crime Scene Investigation, a former LVPD homicide cop with deep knowledge and no attitude. He always looked as though he’d dressed for a business meeting, and despite the booties over his shoes and the blue latex gloves he was wearing, today was no exception. His blazer and tie were snappy, and his graying hair was immaculately cut and combed.
“Welcome to the morning after,” he said.
“Always a pleasure to see you, Charles,” I said.
Clapper told us to view the scene from the doorway. “For anything you want to see close up,” he said, “I’ll be your eyes.”
The room was lit by a couple of halogen lights and was small enough that we could see everything in it from the threshold. Three CSIs, gloved up, wearing booties, and armed with cameras and evidence bags, stepped gingerly around the periphery of the room.
Done correctly, processing a crime scene is a slow, methodical procedure of documentation and analysis because of the underlying need to keep the scene intact. If there were clues to Loman’s plans, they could be here.
I looked around and saw an open can of beer on top of the old-fashioned TV set, a plate of half-eaten spareribs on the kitchen table. The closet door was open, revealing two men’s coats and assorted pieces of casual clothing. A coffee table in front of a sagging sofa was laden with what looked to be expensive cameras and technical equipment I couldn’t identify.
“So what do we have?” I asked Clapper.
“Looks like he was living here alone,” said Clapper. “And he was working on something not exactly kosher. Those are the tools of his trade: cameras, sophisticated listening devices. No expense was spared. Oddly, there’s no laptop in either of his rooms, but we got his phone.
“Unrelated, there was a stash of porn over there,” he said, pointing in the general direction of the sofa. “And in the bathroom. And under the bed.”
“Regular porn or something special?”
“Straight-up busty women. Two semiautos plus ammo were in the closet. I sent the guns and the phone to the lab. Before I did that, I mailed this from his phone to mine. You may find it interesting.”
Conklin and I stood beside Clapper as he swiped through the crime scene photos. He stopped on one and angled the screen so we could see it: a map of Golden Gate Park. He enlarged it. The de Young Museum, located inside the park, had been circled in red.
Hot damn.
Finally. We had a clue.
CHAPTER 19
CONKLIN AND I were heading down the fire stairs to the Anthony’s lobby when a curvy young woman stepped out of the shadows on the fourth-floor landing.
She said, “Hey. Inspectors. I got something to tell you about Savage. I mean Chris.”
She looked to be around twenty years old and was wearing frayed black tights and a tight red top with sequins at the neckline. Her haircut was choppy and there were studs in her face, hoops in her ears. The tattoo on one arm read BITE ME. One of her hands was inked with a baby’s face under a banner reading ANGEL.