Blood of Others (9 page)

Pulling his Taurus
out of the
Star’s
parking
lot downtown, Reed decided Geary, then Divisadero would be the best route to
his secret meeting with his anonymous source who promised to tell him who
killed Iris Wood.

The caller had offered no
details. Wanted to meet Reed within an hour at a specific bench at the
northeast corner of Golden Gate Park, near the hospital.

Reed had nothing on at the
moment, so he figured he would give it a shot. He dropped the Ford’s front
windows, switched on his favorite rock station in time to catch the beginning
of “Layla.” He pumped up the volume.

This guy sounded like a nut who’s
seen too many bad conspiracy movies. He is either going to want money, a favor,
or demand the
Star
publish his ten-thousand-word manifesto on the
parallel universe. Reed shook his head. He had met all kinds.

Upon arriving, Reed’s chief
concern was not meeting a stranger, but parking. It was damned near impossible
to find a spot anywhere in the city and he was afraid he’d get nailed after he
slipped his Ford into a vacant slot in a restricted area.

Ah, to hell with it. Reed hurried
to the park carrying a rolled-up newspaper, as his caller had requested.

He found the bench and
immediately set a twenty-minute deadline for Mr. X to show up. He really should
be chasing Sydowski right now. The only thing this would achieve would be a
parking ticket.

Reed took stock of his immediate
area. A couple of neo-Haight types playing guitars, a mom with a baby in a
stroller. Nothing. Bored, he unfurled the papers, the
Chronicle
and the
Star,
to once again study the reports on Iris Wood.

A shadow fell over him.

“You Tom Reed from the paper?”

Reed recognized the voice of the
caller, now standing before him. A slight man in his late twenties. About five
feet nine inches. One hundred forty pounds. White, head shaved. Goatee. Black
jeans. Black T-shirt. A candidate for state time. Spider web tattoo on his
right forearm. Stud in his left lobe. Grey eyes. Runny nose. Cokehead.

“Yeah, I’m Tom Reed.”

“Got ID?”

Reed produced his press photo ID
and a business card.

“No tape recorders, I want to
check you.”

Reed stood. “What’s your name.”

“Slim. Call me Slim.”

“Listen Slim, you are not
touching me. I’m not recording this. You called me. Now say what you’ve got to
say because I’ve got to be somewhere.”

“Okay.” Slim rubbed his chin,
sniffing. Looking around, licking his lips. “You got good police contacts for
the district down near Stern Grove?”

Reed nodded. That was where they
had found Iris Wood’s car.

“Listen, I had nothing to do with
what happened to that woman.”

“Take it easy.”

“I am so jammed up, man. I don’t
know where to turn. I don’t know. They’re gonna put this crap on me.”

“Slow down. Who is going to put
what on you? Slim sit down beside me.”

Slim fished matches and a pack of
Camels from his pocket, lit one and drew on it deeply, before sitting next to
Reed.

“I’m on parole, okay? The program
ain’t workin’ for me. See, I got a bad habit and I’m down near the south side
of the Grove. I had been scoping out some houses down there and I got a line
that some people are going to be on vacation, okay?”

Reed nodded.

“So I am going to move on this
place, but I got a curfew, so I got to do it early.”

Reed felt pieces of his story
coming together.

“It’s a great night for me, fog
is thick, area secluded. I’ve got the jewelry maybe, three, four grand in quick
cash. I’m cutting out clean, heading for the street when I just about have a
heart attack.” Slim dragged on his cigarette. “I’m leaving when I see an
unmarked police car throw the red right on the street in front of me. Hell, I
thought I was busted. But he’s making a stop. Stopping a car.”

Reed’s newspapers rustled as Slim
tapped them with his cigarette hand. “
Her car.
The cop is stopping her
Ford Focus.”

“What did you do?”

“I step back slowly near a tree.
I mean like, I am
there.
It’s dark and they are like shadows, but I just
hear their voices. The cop stops her and begins to write her up. Then he hits
her or something, and drives off with her.”

“Why didn’t you call it in?”

“Give me a break.” He pulled on
his cigarette. “Listen, I didn’t know what happened. I thought, okay. Cop makes
a stop, woman gets sick, or faints like or something, and he takes her to the
hospital. Then I see the news. I read the papers. I start to figure it out.”

“Are you sure it was a cop?”

“I’m a con.”

“You get a plate number?”

“No.”

“What kind of car?”

“Full-sized unmarked sedan. Ford
or Chevy.”

“But you’re not certain, Crown
Vic, Impala, Caprice?”

“No.”

“What about grill lights and a
flash pattern, like strobe or wigwag, notice anything like that?”

“I can only say that it was an
unmarked car.”

“So you think they’ll somehow
implicate you?”

Slim tossed his cigarette.
“Listen, if that cop who murdered her finds out I was boosting jewelry at the
very time I saw him, then I am a dead man. Dead. I am a thief. I ain’t no
killer. They’re gonna put it on me. They can do that. The guys inside have told
me stories, man.”

“Take it easy. What do you want
from me? If your information is true, I want to report it. And who’s to say the
police don’t already know this?”

“That’s just it. Find out. You’re
my protection. I have to go.”

“How do I reach you?”

“I’ll call you.”

Slim turned to walk away.

“Wait,” Reed said. “How do I know
you didn’t kill her?”

He was gone.

So were the other people in the
area.

Reed sat there for a moment
trying to comprehend what he had just heard. It was astounding. A cop. Unless
Slim was the killer. Reed stood up and made the one-block walk back to his car,
glad he had alerted the photo desk at the
Star
prior to this thing.

Reed drove six blocks away to a
Burger King, the rendezvous point with Henry Cain, a news photographer. During
Reed’s meeting with his source, Cain had positioned himself some sixty yards
away with a telephoto lens -- the same long lens he used at 49-er games --
taking pictures of Reed with his source. Between bites of his Whopper, Cain
showed them to Reed on his digital Nikon. A series of crisp shots clearly
identifying Slim.

Picture after picture.

The coffee
in Wyatt’s take-out cup rippled at
the surface as he sipped from it, swallowing hard.

It had been a long time since he
had been on the street. Waiting at the rear of Forever & Ever, he was
jittery, feeling the weight of his gun in his shoulder holster and everything
it signified in the rubble of his life.

Wyatt took another hit of coffee.
As nerve-shattering as this was, he needed to do this. There was no escaping
it. At any moment he could again be forced to draw his weapon and make another
life-and-death decision.

I hope not.

He had already paid an enormous
price. He was an outcast. Scorned. Expected to fail. It was killing him. Rage
seethed in his gut but he wrestled it down with the realization that this case
was his only hope, his last chance to make it all right again. To prove he was
a solid cop. If he failed, he failed completely, because he had nothing left to
lose. Fate had him by the balls. He crumpled the cup and tossed it in the
trash.

No sign of Veronica Chan.

Wyatt nodded to the uniform
posted at the rear and went inside to look around while waiting for her. This
assignment Sydowski had spat at him was superficial. Wyatt’s job was to review
the bridal shop’s security videotape which showed nothing, according to
Sydowski and the crime scene people who had already watched it about a dozen
times before putting Wyatt on it. After that, he was told to go find out why
the shop’s security cameras apparently malfunctioned, and to try to obtain the
video security tapes of surrounding businesses, in case one of them picked up
something.

Wyatt and every other detective
on the case knew full well much of that had already been done. He figured they
were just keeping him out of the way, ensuring all he did was annoy people by
asking them questions they’d already answered.

So here he was staring at
mannequins in wedding dresses, his world hanging by a thread, a man alone in
his skin, nothing waiting for him at home but a can of beans in an empty
fridge. And this was a good day.

“Inspector Wyatt, is it?”

He turned to a stunning woman, in
a tailored suit. Model’s figure. In her early thirties. Cleopatra
shoulder-length hair framing a stone-cold face.

“Yes.” He extended his hand.

She offered hers. Small. Same
warmth as her face.

“Veronica Chan,” she said. “We’ve
been through all of this with your colleagues and I really don’t appreciate the
police department’s repetitions.”

Wyatt nodded, removing a
notebook. “I know. I’ll try to be specific and quick.”

Her eyes went to the internal
tarp protecting the display window.

“Do we have to do this here? I
can’t stand being so close to where she was,” she said, taking him to the
office. Chan dropped herself in a chair. “My business partner, Julie is under a
doctor’s care. Told me she’ll never set foot in this shop again. Our staff’s
been traumatized. One has resigned. Orders have been canceled. The Carruthers
party is threatening to sue us. I just came from seeing our lawyer. She’s not
certain if our insurance covers us. So who do I sue?”

Wyatt passed her a tissue. “I
don’t know, ma’am.”

Chan touched her eyes, collecting
herself. “On the phone you said you needed more information about the security
system?”

“Just tell me about it.”

“We forbid shoppers to come in
and photograph our gowns. The cameras remind them we’re serious.”

“Protection of your designs?”

“Exactly. Take a picture, then
have a friend do a cheap knock off, almost an infringement.”

“Can you show me the control and
monitor?”

Chan took him to a rear room,
explaining there were four cameras, including one with a fish-eye lens for the
rear entrance.

Wyatt monitored all perspectives
from the device that had a small TV-like monitor and a recorder that resembled
a high-tech VCR player.

“And it’s run on a slow speed
seventy-two-hour loop? That is, all four cameras are recording nonstop?”

Chan nodded.

Wyatt opened his file folder and
the report from Crime Scene. The system was operated by Digicamwatch. The
company attributed the failure to suspected grit on the recording heads, but
was doing further checks. Wyatt looked at the report and punched the number of
Digicamwatch’s contact person into his cell phone.

“DCW, Tony Dekka.”

The guy sounded as if he were
twelve. “Tony, Ben Wyatt with the SFPD. You’re the contact for the system at
the bridal shop down at Union Square?”

“Yes, sir. Glad you called.”

Wyatt wedged his phone between
his ear and shoulder, pulling the system from the wall. “Why’s that, Tony?”

“We did more checks at our end,
sir, and just got some new information.”

Wyatt studied the web of wires
and cables running from the security system’s controls.

“Sir?”

“Go ahead.”

“Seems there was a power burp in
that area and we figure that might have been the cause. A few other clients in
that area were hit too.”

Wyatt visually lined up every
cable and wire to account for it. Camera one, Camera two, Camera three, four,
direct power cord, alarm…

“But, Tony, isn’t there
auxiliary? Every system’s got that because first thing bad guys do is cut
power.”

“Yes. Are you near the system
now, sir?”

“Yes.”

Wyatt tapped his finger to a
small power pack on the rear.

“At the rear is an auxiliary
power source. It’s got tiny cadmium batteries, takes over if the direct source
fails.”

“Which you are telling me
happened, Tony? So why did the system record no activity in the shop when
clearly there was?”

“Sir, unfortunately when the
power burped, there was a two-second delay, before the auxiliary took over.”

“I know.” This was not rocket
science, Wyatt thought as he continued his inventory of all the wiring.

“Well it appears that …”

“What is it, Tony?”

“Legal just told us we’re
supposed to refer this stuff to them.”

“Tony, do you want to face an
obstruction of justice charge?”

A long heavy silence passed; then
Tony dropped his voice to a whisper. “I told them you’re going to find out.
Sir, we think the auxiliary failed to kick on.”

Wyatt flipped to Crime Scene’s
report. They had already checked the auxiliary system and found it functioning.

“That could be a problem,” Wyatt
said just as he found one line that disturbed him and not a word about it in
the report. It ran from the security system to the shop’s telephone box.

“Tell me something, Tony, is this
particular system monitored by your office by computer through the phone line?”

“Oh, sure. All of our systems
are,” he said. “But they’re one hundred per cent secure. No one from the
outside can penetrate them.”

Wyatt’s jaw muscles tightened.
“You got today’s
Chronicle
handy, the front page, Tony?”

He heard him grunting.

“Got it.”

“I want you to look into the face
of Iris Wood and repeat out loud what you just told me. That no one from the
outside can penetrate your system. Got that? You stare into that face and you
keep repeating that.”