A Killing in China Basin (30 page)

‘You can ease up a little,’ Raveneau said, ‘we weren’t expecting lunch. We’re here to talk with you about some things we’ve learned after going through files. We got a lot of information, including emails relating to his search for Erin Quinn.’

‘How exciting, but will any of it matter if he dies?’

‘We think so. Under one of his email identities he corresponded with you. Both of you were using aliases but he’d figured out who you were.’

‘Well, obviously, Inspector, if he lured me to his boat.’

‘How do you you think he discovered who you really were?’

‘I’ll never be able to give you that answer.’

‘Did he learn about your Erin Quinn identity and work backwards?’

She gave the smallest shrug and sipped tea.

‘Now we’re behind the third firewall and reading more emails.’

He paused again. Whether or not she knew it was Stoltz she was talking to in the chat rooms, she had certainly learned it on the boat. She wouldn’t say what had lured her to the boat, but he must have had something she wanted. And Raveneau suspected a shared search for Quinn, and that to get her to the marina and on the boat he either offered something or threatened her in some way. If it was a bodily threat then they would have heard about it by now, and if the threat was as Lafaye had suggested earlier – to reveal to the media that she had a false identity that she used in foreign countries and that was going to somehow create a scandal – Raveneau wasn’t buying. He doubted anyone would fault her, given what she was doing.

Lafaye leaned forward now, as if to speak in confidence.

‘All he wanted was a way to find the real Erin Quinn and I couldn’t give him that.’

‘You did give him that. You led him to her.’

‘Excuse me.’

‘You told him about the meeting at Lake Merced and he met her instead of you.’

‘Oh, please, this is like a B movie. I didn’t collude with that monster.’

‘How else could Cody Stoltz know to be at Lake Merced at three in the afternoon? Maybe you were on the boat, maybe you were scared and he forced it from you, but he learned it from you.’

‘Now I’m losing patience.’

‘Or maybe you made a deal with him and he dropped you near the shore and you swam in.’

‘I made the swim I told you about and he tried to run me over with the boat. You can believe that or not believe it, I really don’t care. Why don’t you ask the doctors if I really had hypothermia?’

‘You need to come clean with us on this.’

‘Then I’ll feel much better, right? Nothing will change but I’ll feel better to get the burden off my soul and more to the point, your case will be tidied up. What did the lovely Ms Quinn tell you about a meeting? Obviously, not much, or you wouldn’t be here. What else did you find behind the mythical third firewall?’

Lafaye tapped out another cigarette from the pack on the table. She glanced at la Rosa and said, ‘You were good on TV last night. If you get tired of working murder cases come see me, because you can bullshit with the best of them. Anyone watching last night would have thought the case was solved. I guess it’s not.’ She lit the cigarette and nodded toward Raveneau. ‘You’re so lucky to be learning at his knee. Is there anything else before we end this?’

‘There is,’ Raveneau said, ‘we don’t want you to make any travel plans.’

‘Really, Ben, that’s a little vindictive, isn’t it? I think you’re trying to tie things up a little too neatly. You’ve already got enough to satisfy everyone.’

Raveneau leaned toward her. ‘Here’s my big problem. We happened to follow Quinn to Lake Merced. We could just as easily not have. If we hadn’t, Stoltz would have taken her and probably not been apprehended. So let’s say you made a deal with Stoltz and gave him the meeting time, and like I said earlier, maybe you had to. But, if so, you could easily have told us when we came to see you in the hospital. But you didn’t do that. That bothers me. That means the case is still ongoing.’

‘Well then, that means my lawyer needs to take over. This will be the last interview we have without him.’

She stood up but Raveneau remained sitting.

‘One more thing, we also believe you’re hiding information that could make you a suspect in the murder of Alex Jurika.’

Raveneau waved the stack of papers he’d brought in.

‘It’s all here.’

‘That’s preposterous.’

‘Is it?’

Lafaye snorted and said, ‘You answer a question for me. I swam in and survived, and you caught him and he was the cop killer. Why is it not enough for you that I’ve given most of my adult life to trying to save lives? Why doesn’t that buy me any credibility?’

When he’d had lunch with her she’d told him she did for overpriced medical supplies what Amazon had done for books. She found a way to get cheap bandages and staple generic drugs delivered to third world countries for pennies. She had alliances with firms producing drugs in China and India and her foundation worked out methods to teach doctors and dentists on a massive scale, webcasting dental and medical procedures as they were performed live. Those watching could email their questions. People called her a visionary.

‘We don’t question that you’ve done good deeds on a large scale, but none of that has anything to do with this investigation. What’s the real reason you went to the boat?’

Lafaye got up and walked over to the windows. She looked out at the park as she answered.

‘I went to buy Erin Quinn’s home address for ten thousand dollars.’

‘And do what with it?’ la Rosa asked.

‘Give it to my attorney who would work quietly with law enforcement authorities to build a case against Erin Quinn for extortion. You have to understand that this woman has threatened me. She’s a nightmare to me. And I had no idea that the man I was going to meet at the boat was Cody Stoltz. I thought that he was an individual like me that Quinn had cheated or was extorting. For separate and unspoken reasons we were both looking for her. But of course I didn’t know who I’d been chatting with all those years. You can imagine my shock when he took off his disguise and said he was Cody Stoltz. He tricked me.’

‘How did he know to be at Lake Merced the next day?’ Raveneau asked.

‘Ask him.’

Her foundation was everything to her. It was her life, her ego, her everything, and so he played that last, after she’d ordered them to leave.

‘You’re going to force us to go public with this.’

‘I don’t see why that would be, but I’ll take it as the threat you intend it as, and I have some advice for you, don’t do anything until you talk to my attorney. He’ll call you this morning.’

He did.

‘What can I do to help solve this misunderstanding?’ the attorney asked.

‘We have information that could cause us to view your client as a suspect in an unsolved murder in China Basin. We need her to fill in some gaps in her account to us. That may clear her of any suspicion.’

‘I know that she would like to clear this up.’

‘She needs to tell us how Cody Stoltz knew to be at Lake Merced.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it, right now. We’ll give her the rest of the day and I’ll give you another phone number you can reach me at this afternoon.’

‘After all she’s been through, do you really think you can twist her arm this way?’

‘Use my cell number, that’s going to be more reliable. Are you ready for the number?’ Raveneau waited a beat and then read the number off. After the lawyer repeated the number, Raveneau said, ‘I’ll talk to you this afternoon,’ and hung up.

SIXTY-THREE

I
n the mid afternoon la Rosa called him over to her computer.

‘This Lafaye’s foundation website – look at this. She’s supposed to be in Seattle tonight at a dinner honoring the most significant donors to her foundation. They’re giving her an award at the dinner.’ La Rosa threw him a wicked smile. ‘Think she’d pass up an award?’

The award was to be given at a restaurant Raveneau vaguely remembered reading about as cutting edge with a rising star of a chef, a dinner more likely to draw wealthy donors, the type of people she wouldn’t want to disappoint.

‘What do you think?’ la Rosa asked.

‘I think you’re on to something here.’

At four thirty that afternoon a driver showed up at Lafaye’s house and took her to SFO. They watched her check in and pass through security, and waited until United was ready to board the first class passengers before approaching her. Raveneau pulled his homicide star and made sure the people nearby could read it. Her face reddened with embarrassment and humiliation. One of her aides, a young blonde woman with heavy black glasses, stood dumbfounded nearby. La Rosa turned to her and said, ‘Better board or you might miss your flight. Your boss won’t be coming.’

‘You can’t do this,’ Lafaye said.

‘Step away from the line, Ms Lafaye,’ la Rosa said, and Raveneau just watched her, saw her fumble with her phone and call her lawyer, who demanded to speak to him and then told Raveneau he had two choices, charge her with a crime or let her on the plane.

‘Do you really want us to charge her?’

‘Let me talk to my client.’

He handed the phone back to Lafaye who sat down now, her face pale, her worried aide hovering nearby as the plane boarded.

‘Please don’t do this. You don’t know how important this dinner is.’

She pleaded and Raveneau asked, ‘Do you want to come downtown and tell us what happened? Your lawyer can meet us there.’

The warning about unattended luggage drowned out what she said next. The United Seattle flight finished loading and a gate near them streamed passengers unloading.

‘If we had more information it might look different, but I’m afraid where things stand right now, we’re very close to charging you,’ he said.

‘Do that and you may ruin your career, Inspector.’

‘I don’t need your help to ruin it.’

He came close to saying, you went to Alex Jurika’s apartment and she lied to you, and the next night you killed her. Almost said it, but held back, and she seemed to read his mind.

‘You know very well I didn’t kill her.’

‘We know that you’ve been lying to us. That much we’ve figured out, and that’s what we’re operating off right now, and you’re gambling you can back us down and that you’ve got the juice to keep us from pressuring you. Maybe you’re right, then again, maybe you’re not. This is our offer. Security here at the airport is under SFPD, so if you want we can go to a room and you can tell us the truth, and maybe we can work this out and you still catch a flight. Otherwise, your lawyer can meet us at Bryant. It’s your call.’

She didn’t make that call for a long minute, and after she did they led her to the airport security office, got her a chair, and shut the door. In that room she finally gave it up.

‘I didn’t go to her apartment for a drink the Wednesday before she was killed. I went because she was a thief and a liar and I needed to talk alone with her. And I don’t care that she’s dead. Good riddance, and as to the bitch who sold me her identity, Erin Quinn, she was a friend of Jurika’s and she’s been extorting me with Jurika’s help for too many years.’

‘You’ve paid Erin Quinn money.’

‘You need to carry your notebook more often. I’ve been telling you that Quinn has extorted me. Those payments were made through Jurika. I’ve paid her more money every year since the foundation became more successful. At first it was another twenty thousand. She said she hadn’t been given enough for her identity and then it was more, and so forth.’

‘And why didn’t you go—’

‘To the police and tell them I’d bought someone’s identity and there are places where I travel under a false passport, and that I’ve paid money to keep the woman whose true name is Erin Quinn quiet. The mistake I made was paying anything in the first place, but at the time I thought the alternate identity would have very negative repercussions. Besides, Quinn let me know through Jurika that she considered her identity stolen and that’s what she was going to go out with. Jurika, of course, would deny having ever sold it to me. How do you think my board of directors would react to that in this age we live in, where no one has the patience any more to wait for the truth?’

She paused, then added, ‘The day I met Jurika at her apartment she asked for another twenty-five thousand. I stalled and hired a private investigator.’

‘Give us a name and a way to reach this investigator,’ la Rosa said, and Lafaye pulled a card from her purse as Raveneau asked, ‘Why did you lie about what happened on the boat?’

‘I told you the God’s truth.’

‘Stoltz knew when to be at Lake Merced.’

‘I set up a meeting through Jurika. I was to meet Quinn there, pay her the twenty-five thousand, and the private investigator was going to follow her when she left, and then with the help of the authorities we were going to go after her. But I was in the hospital. I didn’t make it to the meeting.’

‘Was the investigator there?’

‘Yes.’

Raveneau studied her a moment and then stepped out of the room with la Rosa.

‘Let’s get her to call the investigator and we’ll go talk to him. She can go on to Seattle with the understanding this isn’t over.’

La Rosa’s answer was, ‘If we do that we may never get the answer.’

‘I’ll try her one more time after she calls this investigator and gives him the go to talk to us.’

Lafaye was very willing to do that as soon as they got in the room. Her aide had already found another flight. There was still time for them to make the dinner. Raveneau sat down next to Lafaye and la Rosa steered the aide away. He spoke quietly.

‘Jurika’s murder is still an open question. That’s where this investigation started and where it’ll finish. So nothing I’m going to say to you now clears you on that.’

‘I would never kill any—’