The 17th Suspect (Women's Murder Club #17)(36)

I was thinking that if this were our case, we would take Lou’s picture to homeless shelters, ask around, do the job of detective work.

I bit down on a sigh, then said, “Millie, I took pictures of the crowd of onlookers on Geary last night. They’re pretty grainy, and the light was terrible. But will you take a look at the printouts and see if anyone seems familiar?”

I put the envelope on the table. Millie dug into her bag and pulled out her reading glasses. Then she moved the photos to her and began a close examination of the crowd. While she was absorbed, I scrutinized my informant.

I had searched her name on the internet and our own databases and had found nothing on her, not a driver’s license or an address or a warrant for her arrest. I supposed that without a computer or a car or a house or a criminal history, there was little record of a life. She’d told Richie that she had grown kids, but not where they lived. Cushing wasn’t a common name, but it wasn’t one of a kind, either.

It was possible that Millie Cushing wasn’t even her name.

“I don’t recognize anyone in this photo,” she said, shuffling it to the bottom of the stack. I watched her look over the second photo, and it seemed to me that her eyes snagged on one of the faces in the crowd.

“You know someone in that picture?” I asked.

“No. I thought I did for a second, but no.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep. Sure as can be.”

Millie looked through the remainder of the enlargements and returned them to me, saying, “I don’t see many street people in that crowd. Everyone’s wearing nice clothes, umbrellas, hats. They look like solid citizens. Every one of them.”

We thanked Millie, and while Rich was walking her out, I pulled out the second photo from the group, the one that had caused Millie to give it a second look. This section of onlookers was standing behind the tape, three rows deep. I counted fourteen men, six women in the shot. All were wearing hats or hoods, or holding up umbrellas.

I peered at each face, looking for what? A guilty expression? A crazed grin? Or maybe one of those faces would jog my memory. I’d seen all of those people in real life. Had one of them said or done anything that I could have noticed at the time and forgotten?

And then something kicked in.

One of the men did stand out in the crowd. He was in the back row, at the end of the line, wearing a black knit cap. He looked angry.

He could have been justifiably pissed off that there had been a shooting. Or maybe he hadn’t liked my phone flashing in his face. Or, hell, could be that the umbrella beside him was dripping water down his neck. Or something else. Like maybe that there were cops at his murder scene.

I memorized his face and the nineteen others in that photo, while waiting for forensics to run the whole batch of maybe sixty people through facial recognition.

Drilling in on faces. That was something I could do.





CHAPTER 52


BACK AT MY desk, I got Charlie Clapper on the line.

Clapper is head of our forensics lab, a former LAPD homicide cop, and a real law enforcement treasure.

No pleasantries were exchanged or required.

“I got back the DNA on the coat Conklin found in the trash near Pier 45.”

“Good. And?”

“There was DNA on it, all right. It’s been fondled, worn, or slept in by innumerable people, making the tests useless. Like a bedspread from a thirty-dollar-a-night motel.”

“Yahoo,” I said.

“On to the next,” said Clapper. “Facial recognition didn’t give us a hit on any of the faces in your crowd shots, Boxer. But it was a good try.”

“Thanks for pricking my balloon,” I said. “What about the ballistics?”

“That’s more interesting,” Clapper said. “The rounds in Laura Russell matched those in Jimmy Dolan, the deceased from the Sydney G. Walton area four weeks ago.”

“So. Same shooter,” I said.

“Same gun was used,” he said. “But it’s a cold hit.”

A cold hit. Bullets matched each other but didn’t match any gun on record. I thanked Clapper, told him that there was a new body at the ME’s office, a Jane Doe, and likely another couple of rounds would be coming to the lab today.

I just had to make it happen.

Conklin was on the phone with the Columbus Avenue shelter. I signaled to him that I was going down to the ME’s office, then I split. I took the fire stairs to the lobby, ditched out the back door, trotted down the breezeway to the office, and pulled open the glass doors.

The receptionist was Gregory, the latest in a long list of people who averaged about three months behind Claire’s reception desk before the grimness and tedium of the job drove them to greener pastures.

After the face-off Greg and I had on his first day, we’d reached an understanding. Claire was never too busy to see me, and Greg no longer went bureaucratic when I showed up.

I said, “Greg, I have to see Claire.”

About eleven people sitting in the reception area—cops, ADAs, family of the deceased—gave me the evil eye.

Honestly, I couldn’t blame them.

Greg said, “Dr. Washburn is on the phone.”

“I’ll just be a minute,” I said. “Or less.”

Greg pressed the buzzer to the inner sanctum.