The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19)(36)

“Uh, honestly? You look like you’ve been sleeping in the trunk of your car.”

I laughed, sounding slightly hysterical to my own ears.

“I wish,” I told him. “Sleep is a distant memory. What have we got here, Officer?”

Thompsett ran the scene for Jacobi, Conklin, and me.

“The vic is a white man in his sixties, duct-taped to a chair. Three shots to the chest. He’s still there.”

“Who called this in?” Conklin asked him.

“Anonymous tipster called 911, said that he heard gunshots and saw the shooter flee on foot. Said he recognized him as Mr. Loman.

“I knew the name from the APB,” Thompsett said. “My partner and I responded and found the front door closed but unlocked. We called for backup and went in. Hogan and I took a quick look around, checked to make sure the victim was dead. CSI got here an hour ago.”

Thompsett handed the sign-in log to Jacobi, said, “Nice to see you, Chief. How’re you doing?”

“Fired up. Ready to go.”

I worked out the timeline while Jacobi signed us in. Dispatch had forwarded the 911 call to Homicide. Jacobi had picked up the call while Conklin and I were interviewing Rafferty and Briggs.

How had the caller recognized Loman?

Who was Loman to the victim?

Thompsett said, “Let me get Lieutenant Hallows for you.”

He phoned CSI’s night-shift supervisor, Lieutenant Gene Hallows, who came out to the front step to meet us. He cautioned us to follow directly behind him. “It’s a bloody mess in there. Watch your feet. Don’t sneeze,” he said, handing out the shoe-cover booties and latex gloves.

I got it. Don’t corrupt his crime scene.





CHAPTER 50





WE THREE COPS stood in the foyer as CSI’s Lieutenant Hallows filled us in on the fresh new crime scene.

He said, “My first impression is that this is the work of professionals. The dead man is Arnold Sloane, store manager at Milano’s Fine Jewelry. Sloane has finished his dinner for one and refilled his wineglass, and that’s when someone rings the doorbell.

“He either looks through the peephole or is expecting company. In any case, he knows this person or, more likely, persons. They come in or they push in, hold a gun on him, duct-tape him to the chair, gag him with a T-shirt. Then they go through the rooms.”

I said, “It was a robbery?”

Hallows nodded. “Looks like it. They threaten Mr. Sloane and he gives up the safe combination. The safe in his den was opened without tools or explosives. And there’s a little gratuitous vandalism. Either staging a robbery scene for our benefit or working out a grudge. So they break up his stuff, take a knife to the pictures, and slice up his clothes. Some sadism here, I think. He knows what’s going on. Maybe praying that after they rob him, they’ll leave. Or what? He knows what’s going to happen. He can’t even bargain with them. So he sits in the chair and then they go ahead and shoot him.”

Hallows is a tough old dog, but he was disturbed by what he had seen.

“Damn psychos.” He shook his head.

I looked past Hallows and saw the body of an older man duct-taped to an upholstered armchair, a gag made out of a T-shirt tied around his head. Three gunshot wounds bloomed red on his pajamas.

Hallows said, “Shell casings were removed by the shooters. They were careful. Maybe we’ll have something for you to go on in a couple of days.”

Jacobi said, “Thanks, Lieutenant. Can you give us the tour?”

I realized with a shock that we were the damned primaries on this homicide. This was our case. Mine and Conklin’s.

We walked past the techs processing the living room: making sketches of the layout, putting down markers next to blood spatter, shooting photos, and taking prints.

Hallows brought us to the bedroom and showed us the empty safe in the closet and the slashed clothing. We went back to the living room, walking carefully behind Hallows, seeing the horror of a cold, professional murder done at close range.

When the ME’s techs came in to remove the body, we got out of the way.

Once Conklin, Jacobi, and I were standing outside in the dark again, I asked Jacobi, “Say the tipster wasn’t blowing smoke—what’s Sloane’s connection to Loman?”

Jacobi said, “Maybe somehow Loman knew that Sloane might have millions in his safe.”

Really? Was this Loman’s big heist?

A man had been murdered and robbed, not in a museum or a bank or an art gallery, but in an eleven-hundredsquare-foot condo in the Castro District.

If the killers had left anything of forensic value behind, CSI would find it. The whodunit detective work was going to be first up for SFPD. But Conklin and I were still on the Loman task force. We needed help to secure the crime scene right now.

I conferred with my partner and then took Officer Thompsett aside. As first officer, he and his partner could stand in as primaries until we had forensics.

“Until detectives are assigned, this is your case, Officer,” I said. “Draft some uniforms and canvass the neighborhood. Keep records of everything. Call me or Conklin if you get a lead.”

“Will do, Sergeant.”

I got into the squad car, called Brady, and reported in. I thought of calling Joe, but it was too late. I leaned against the passenger-side window and dropped into a dream about Chris Dietz. I was facing him down that long sixth-floor hallway, and he had TEC-9s pointed at me, one in each hand.