A Killing in China Basin (26 page)

‘I do,’ la Rosa said from the front seat.

‘We got married six months later. By the time the affair started with Cody I was very angry with John, and the marriage was less than a year old and failing. John had started snorting a lot of cocaine and his temper was totally out of control. He was also drinking too much, and there was the gun thing. I don’t remember what started it. I think it was because of a carjacking in San Francisco. This was right when all that sort of stuff started to happen and Cody and John had sports cars they worried about getting stolen.

‘Cody already knew how to shoot. John didn’t. They went shopping and bought guns one Saturday so no one could take their precious cars. I didn’t want the guns in the apartment, so they kept them in their cars. The day John got killed they’d been out to a shooting range in the afternoon.’

That was in the murder file. Raveneau had read it. Whitacre and Bates confirmed that Stoltz and Reinert had been at in indoor range in Fremont.

‘I really fell in love with Cody. John’s new cocaine habit and his jealousy and insecurity were oppressive. I hated coming home. But Cody was all energy and fun. I didn’t know then how angry he could get. He had a beautiful body and he was so bright. He was already well known in certain circles for the work he was doing. John looked up to him and I thought he was a god.’

‘What were you doing for work at the time?’

‘I quit my job when we got married. I wasn’t doing anything and that was part of the problem. I was living off my husband and sort of despised myself for staying with him just because I had no job or place to go.’

‘And what about Alex? What was she doing for work?’

‘She did temp work but always had plenty of money. She told me once that she’d inherited money. Another time it was because she’d come up with an idea for online bookkeeping that got patented, but I’m sure that wasn’t true, and I’m sure you know by now she was into credit fraud.’

‘When did you know?’

‘Not until after John was dead, but she never really ever talked to me about the credit cards. I just sort of figured it out when she offered to get me a new identity. After Cody went to prison Alex made me into someone else.’

She paused and looked down at her hands. Raveneau looked at la Rosa’s eyes.

‘With Cody and me it built up to a boiling point, and then one afternoon we just tore each other’s clothes off, and then there was no going back. After that everything either of us said to John was a lie. We were lying as routinely as breathing and I made excuses so John and I didn’t sleep together any more. I kept myself chaste by avoiding sleeping with my husband. How’s that for classy?’

‘It happens,’ la Rosa said. ‘You’re not alone there and we understand.’

‘I only wanted to be with Cody but I didn’t have the courage to leave John.’

Her right hand came up now, touched her forehead in an odd gesture and then returned to her lap. She shook her head.

‘I didn’t see Alex much after I got married. It seemed like it was Cody, John, and I hanging out together all the time. Everybody liked Alex but it was as though some part of right and wrong was never taught to her. I remember once she used the phone in our apartment to call a friend in London. They talked for two hours and she never told me. I tracked it down through the phone company and the guy in London said he’d been on the phone to Alex. She was like that. She’d apologize and offer to pay but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t do it again tomorrow. Have you ever known anyone like that?’

‘Those are the only people we know,’ Raveneau said. ‘That’s who we hang out with every day.’

That got the faintest smile.

‘Alex had this charisma, this kind of crazy impulsive streak and she’d get you to do things you wouldn’t otherwise. I was jealous of her because guys gravitated toward her. I’m trying to think of an example . . . OK, here’s one. We go to a hotel up on Nob Hill, one of the stuffy ones, you know, boring, and as we’re leaving some woman is dropping her Mercedes with the valet. I remember she had this perfect blonde hair and the Mercedes was this gold-colored two-seater. The doorman was helping somebody else and when this woman got out of her car she wanted the valet to carry a package in. Her car was sitting there with the driver’s door open and the engine still running and Alex turned to me and said, “We don’t need a cab after all. We’ll just borrow this. Get in.”

‘We drove it to within a couple of blocks of another bar on Union Street and then left it with the keys in it and walked away.’

Her chest heaved as she sighed and said, ‘Now comes the part that’s not in your police files on John’s murder. You know we went to dinner and then went back to the apartment. We’d all done lines of coke. We drank more and John fell asleep. The inspectors asked if we’d done any drugs and I said only John had. If they’d tested me or Cody we would have come back positive. But those inspectors wanted to believe me.’

‘Inspectors Whitacre and Bates.’

‘Yes. We’d been talking about a weekend trip that we’d planned to take together to Mendocino; or rather Cody and I were talking. We were holding each other in the kitchen because we thought John was asleep and then he walked in and caught us. When he did, Cody pretended it was nothing, but John wigged out. The marriage ended when he walked in. Everything ended. Then Cody said he was leaving and John asked if he wanted to kiss me goodbye first. He should have left right then, but he didn’t. He kissed me long and hard and then walked out the door. That’s Cody, and of course John went crazy and followed him down. Cody wanted the confrontation. He knew John would follow and he knew the guns were in the cars. I was supposed to back up his story about the mugger, but I couldn’t do it.’

Raveneau saw it now. He knew what she’d say next. ‘So you came up with your own.’

‘That’s right; I came up with my own version. How did you know that?’

‘Tell us what happened.’

‘I don’t know what was said in the parking lot, but Cody was ready. Earlier in the night he told me he was going to be ready if something happened later. Somehow he made it happen and I know he must have shot John. I heard the shots, and when I went downstairs Cody was kneeling next to John who was lying between two cars in this little back parking lot. He was alive. He might not have died. He was having a very hard time breathing, but he was breathing. He was still alive and we didn’t do anything. Cody leaned over him and he told me what to say about a mugger. If John was conscious he heard it. It was that horrible and you should arrest me, but at least I don’t have to hold it inside any more.’

‘Did Cody ask if you’d seen the shooting?’

‘No, he just told me what to say, and there’s something else I have to tell you. I had nothing to do with John getting murdered, but I did lie afterwards and that’s why Cody has looked for me all these years. He knows I lied.’

‘Let’s go back to the conversation with Cody after John was on the ground shot. What did Cody tell you to do?’

‘He said to tell the police there was a mugger who’d tried to rob them and had shot John and run, and that no matter what to stick with that story.’

‘Did he tell you he’d shot John?’

‘Yes, and he wanted me to get the story right. He was holding the gun he’d shot John with and I was supposed to call 911 and tell the police that he had gone looking for the killer. He said he’d turn up after crashing his car.’

Her voice broke. A gasp came out of her as she said, ‘And then John died. He was telling all this to me in a whisper as John was trying to breath. If I’d run and called 911, maybe he would have lived.’ Tears ran down her face. ‘He made this noise, this sort of sound from his lungs and then he died, and Cody looked at me and said, “He’s over with. He doesn’t exist any more. You don’t ever have to think about him again.” Those were his exact words.’

Her shoulders shook as she wept.

‘I am so sorry. I so wish it had never happened. I wish it had been me. I wish everything that came after never happened. It should have been me instead of John. It should have been me.’

Raveneau waited, then asked quietly, ‘And you didn’t see the shooting?’

‘No.’

‘Is there something more to tell us about that?’

She wept uncontrollably before saying, ‘Yes.’

FIFTY-EIGHT

T
hey brought her back to the homicide office and she made her statement in an interview room.

‘I wasn’t at the window. I never saw Cody shoot him. I was outside on the landing. But everything else was true. Cody shot John and there wasn’t any mugger.’

‘Are you telling us you lied to Inspectors Whitacre and Bates about what you witnessed?’ Raveneau asked.

She nodded and after a pause said, ‘Yes, I lied. I couldn’t do what Cody wanted.’

‘Did Cody know you didn’t see the shooting?’

‘Yes, he knew. When I came down I asked him over and over, what happened, what happened, and he told me John had gotten his gun out and shot at him. The shot missed and he was able to get his own gun out of the glove compartment. He said he didn’t shoot until John raised the gun and started to aim at him. Right after that he asked me, what did you see, and I remember saying, I didn’t see anything, I only heard the shots. I came down because I knew they were gunshots and John had been talking about getting his gun out of the car. I knew something very bad had happened.’

‘How did Cody respond when you told him you hadn’t seen anything?’

‘He said I did see and it was a mugger. He said listen closely because I’m going to tell you what you saw. He was completely calm and John wasn’t even dead yet. He said, this is what we’re going to tell people. There was a mugger.’

She recounted a long back and forth dialogue about the mugger who’d stepped out of the bushes when John and Cody were arguing, and then said, ‘I talked to Alex a lot afterwards but I never told her I’d lied to make sure Cody got locked up. I said I was afraid of him and wanted a new identity, and Alex got me one. She sold my real name and info that goes with it. It seemed like a great idea since I knew Cody wouldn’t hurt whoever bought it. He might question them, but they wouldn’t know me.’

‘Who did she sell your identity to?’

‘A woman named Deborah Lafaye. She started and runs this international charity and I don’t really know what she’s done with my name. But I wanted to know who was buying it. I’ve never met her but you can google her name and come up with a lot. I thought it was perfect because I figured she was traveling a lot and would leave a trail that went everywhere. When I gave Alex the go-ahead I wanted it to go to someone who needed it for a good purpose. I was thinking of a woman hiding from an abusive ex-husband, but she found Lafaye in a chat room and after she’d gone back and forth with her, Lafaye made it clear she would only use it in foreign countries and that I should never make contact with her, so I haven’t.’

She seemed unaware that Jurika had worked for Lafaye and they left it that way. Maybe Jurika thought that would blow the deal so hadn’t told her. Or maybe she had other motives.

‘How much were you paid for it?’ Raveneau asked.

‘Five thousand dollars.’

‘And then you became someone else?’

‘Yes. Alex got me a new identity.’

Raveneau wrote down $5000, drew a dash and left a zero standing by itself. Lafaye had told them she’d paid fifty thousand dollars to Alex Jurika for the name. Jurika may have pocketed the balance.

‘Do you know if Alex had any continuing contact with Deborah Lafaye?’

‘No, but I didn’t talk to Alex much after that. I had made up my mind to disappear. I think it was probably more than a year before I talked to her again.’

Raveneau accepted that Erin felt she had to come forward now. He understood that. But it felt like something was still missing in her confession. That she had lied to Whitacre and Bates said plenty about her. He was weighing that as well.

Unprompted now, she said, ‘I know how wrong what I did was, but it doesn’t change anything. Cody still killed John.’

Raveneau nodded. ‘We know he did.’ He paused and added, ‘Inspector la Rosa and I are going to step outside for a few minutes.’

‘I don’t want to be left alone in here.’

‘Have you been in an interview room before, Erin?’

‘Yes, I was arrested twice when I was nineteen.’

And once when you were twenty-two, but all three were out of state and we haven’t been able to get the prints, which was what he wanted to talk to la Rosa about. He told her again they’d be back in a few minutes.

Outside, he told la Rosa, ‘I think we ask her for her fingerprints so we can confirm she is Erin Quinn. Then we’ll run her prints and see what happens. But we don’t want to stop her from talking, and it seems to me she’s getting more skittish. But I also think she’s holding something still. What do you think?’

‘I agree.’

‘If we press her about the name she’s living under now she may want to walk out. She’s not going to give us her current alias. Let’s leave that alone for the moment.’

On the screen they saw her start to move around. She looked agitated and Raveneau said, ‘Keep her here. I’m going to run to the bathroom and I’ll be right back.’

Raveneau was standing at the urinal when his cell rang.

‘She walked. She’s at the elevator. Do I let her go down?’

His voice echoed in the bathroom.

‘Stay with her. She needs a ride back to her car so give it to her and I’ll follow.’

La Rosa dropped her on a corner in China Basin and reported that Quinn wouldn’t let her take her to her car.

‘I’ve got her, I see her,’ Raveneau said. ‘She’s walked back up to Third Street and looks like she’s going to cross.’

But it was another forty-five minutes before Quinn unlocked a white Enterprise rental car. He watched her pull away and then trailed her. Ten minutes later he read off the license plate to la Rosa. It took la Rosa another fifteen to find out the car was rented yesterday afternoon in Sacramento by a Corinne Maher.