21st Birthday (Women's Murder Club #21)(41)
This was Lucas’s recollection. Police records might well show otherwise.
Katie knocked on the office door, opened it, and said, “Mr. Parisi, you have a meeting with the mayor in five minutes. After you see him, you have a meeting with the victims’ families.”
“Thanks, Katie. Yuki, you want to add anything?”
“I do,” said Yuki. “If Mr. Burke didn’t kill his wife and child, he and Mr. Gardner can tell the judge at arraignment.”
“Okay, then,” said Parisi. “Mr. Burke, we’ll investigate your claim, as far-fetched as it is. I suggest you and Mr. Gardner prepare for court. Sergeant Boxer, if you will be so kind, take Mr. Burke back to his cell.”
CHAPTER 54
THE TASK FORCE GATHERED once again in Swanson’s empty office at the end of our floor.
I ran the story for those who hadn’t heard it.
Brady stood with his back to the whiteboard and said, “Show of hands, who believes Lucas Burke is innocent?”
No hands went up. And then, as if it had its own mind, my right hand lifted from the table.
“Boxer?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time with Burke. I don’t like him. But I find his emotional distress, over the baby, over Misty, real. When I’m with him, I believe him. Otherwise?” I threw up my hands. “I’ve struggled with this, you know that, lieu. So, it’s either that he’s a dirty old man who has positioned himself to date underage girls, end of statement. Or all of that plus he’s a gifted liar and a stealthy killer. Or all of the above and his psycho killer father is setting him up for a fall. Count me on the fence.”
Brady held me in his ice-blue stare a beat too long, and then said, “I’m going to meet with the mayor. Boxer, you’re in charge. But this is how I see it. What Gardner said is true. We have only circumstantial evidence. So, if Lucas Burke is telling the truth, we need to find Evan Burke, bring him in and question the hell out of him. We do impeccable police work. Determine whether Burke Senior has a California residence. Check out his movements over the last week, down to the minute. What we don’t want to do is send the DA into court to arraign the wrong man.”
Brady left the room and I took the floor.
I divvied up the manpower, six teams and me, and assigned them to NCIC, ViCAP, and other databases we had at hand. Until we found Evan Burke, we would scrutinize every unsolved murder of every female going back fifteen years.
The state of California had produced a lot of data.
We hit the keys.
A simple search for “Evan Burke” turned up sixty men with that name in California alone. We halved the list to men in their sixties, but that wasn’t enough.
I reached out to Captain Geoffrey Brevoort, Marin County PD. Although Breevort quickly confirmed Corinne and Jodie Burke’s disappearance, Lucas’s memory of his father’s arrest didn’t match the records. Breevort had nothing on Evan Burke; no mug shots, no prints or DNA. He’d been questioned, yes. But his alibis had held up and the man not only cooperated, he was an emotional wreck.
While I was on the phone with Brevoort, Conklin found a dozen Evan Burkes in the DMV so now we had addresses, birth dates, and best of all, photos of several dozen Evan Burkes in California. None of them resembled Lucas.
And then, Alvarez found a California boating license for an E. R. Burke in Sausalito, six nautical miles off the coast of San Francisco. There was no photo attached to the file, no prints, but it was a place to start.
I called Brevoort again and plugged into the detectives working on the Wendy Franks case, told them what we knew. I reached the harbor master in Sausalito, the one who had seen Wendy Franks taking her Sea Ray out with an unknown male passenger.
I sent him a clip of the man in black who was captured on video in the Sunset Park Prep parking lot. Not good enough for facial recognition or any recognition, but hell, maybe the dim and grainy photo would come up as a “maybe.”
It didn’t.
I texted him the info Alvarez had turned up; name and numbers of the certification and vessel ID. The harbor master had no such vessel at his marina. He offered to check around and I thanked him.
We broke for pizza, and then put our eyes back on our screens. The day moved so slowly that when Brady arrived back in the task force HQ, I was surprised that it was still light outside.
Five fifteen to be exact.
I gave Brady the rundown. “We’ve made some progress. No man called Evan Burke has a record. One did live in Sausalito and his wife and child did disappear and it is a cold case. Ten years ago, that same Evan had a Century Boats 30 Express and a license to operate it. He sold it. The current owner lives in the Caribbean. We do not have a current address for that Evan Burke, but it’s still more than we had.”
“Good work, Boxer. Time to quit for the day.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And everyone try to go to bed early tonight.”
CHAPTER 55
OUR TASK FORCE of eight put place marks between pages, saved files, made notes for the next day, and we did it quick. Then we filed down the hallway to our bullpen.
I phoned Joe from my desk and he said Julie had just had her dinner.
“Want to meet us at the park?” he said.
This was a question that made Martha act like a pup, and I was having a similar reaction. Park. Grass. Lake. Daughter, husband, and dog all together.