Everyone Pays (17 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

MICHAEL

At Dan Steele’s modern house on South Van Ness, I pounded the door. Only just after five o’clock, and I knew he’d be home.

“Yeah?” he said in the hallway, already opening the door. His confidence kept him from worry. To his mind, he controlled this space and his life. I knocked it right out of him with a fast jab to the nose.

He stepped inside fast, backing away with hands to his nose, and I followed him inside, shut the door.

Leaning into his left side, he dropped down to some kind of fighting stance with his knees bent. All over the city, they practiced a form of fighting now as fitness. They thought they did, anyway. Kicking a pad, punching a bag. I stepped inside and slashed across his forearms with my blade, ripping through cloth and skin. At the sight of his own blood, he went white, clueless, defeated. He held his hands up.

“No. Please.”

I hit him again in the nose. He cried out and covered it with his hands.

“Is that what the girl said before you cut her? Tried to remove her tongue?”

He fell to his knees, maybe finding religion, which would be a first. I kicked him in the stomach, and he fell back, working to catch his breath.

“Anything,” he said. “Whatever you want.”

Then I stood over him, looking down.

“How did you know that? About the girl?”

“The pimp and God. And now the pimp is dead.”

“Did you—?”

“This is about you. Get on your feet.”

Then I heard a woman’s voice from farther inside the house. “Dan?” she said.

I froze. This wasn’t what I’d planned. I put my finger to my lips for him to keep quiet.

“Dan?” she said again. I heard her moving upstairs.

His hallway floors were bright hardwood and led into a kitchen where white cabinets surrounded a wide white-topped island. All new appliances. Bright hardwood stairs led up along an exposed brick wall to the second level.

“Tell her not to come down.”

He called to her to stay upstairs.

“Who is she?”

“My wife, Julia. Please don’t hurt her. I’ll give you anything.”

I shook my head. The second sinner married. A day of surprises.

He posed as a person who fit in, was right with the world. He needed to be exposed.

“Call her down.”

“What?” He slowly realized what I meant, how this might play out.

“Call her.”

“No. Do what you want to. Hurt
me
.”

“Julia!”

More movement upstairs. “Who is that?”

“Come down, dear,” I told her, and she appeared at the top of the stairs wearing a white shirt, high-waist pants. Long brown hair to her shoulders.

“Who are you?” Then a scream. “Oh my God, Dan! What happened? I’m calling the police.” She disappeared. I heard a door slam.

I kicked him in the side. “Get up.” He scrambled, and I kicked him toward the stairs. Crawling on hands and feet, he hurried up the flight with me behind him. Calling the police in San Francisco was not a speedy proposition.

I took my time.

We reached the top of the stairs, and Steele fell forward onto the carpet. I said, “Wait here.”

I curled around the banister, back toward the front of the house, and kicked open the door to her bedroom. She sat on the bed, iPhone to her ear, held up a fireplace poker with her right hand.

“No. No.” I closed on her and pulled it away. “Put down the phone.” She didn’t. “This isn’t about you. Put down the phone and come with me. I won’t hurt you.”

“Hello, police?” she said.

“Give me the phone,” I said louder, holding out my hand.

“Police? Hello?”

I grabbed her arm, pulled the phone away from her.

Steele said from the door, “Just give it to him, honey. We don’t want him to hurt us. I’ll give him money. Whatever he wants.” He dabbed his nose with a white towel now, collecting blood.

I listened on the phone, as a hold message repeated, then hung up.

“This man,” I said, pointing at Steele with the poker, “has hurt women. Girls. Do you know what he does?”

His wife sat down hard on the bed.

“A girl,” I said. “I know her. Emily is her name. He and his friends hurt her. They beat her. Cut her tongue.”

She turned to him, confused, but I could see the questions in her eyes. She knew there were things she didn’t know.

A phone in the bedroom started to ring.

“Dan?”

“It was before our talk,” he said.

I said, “It was last week.”

The phone rang again.

The look of pain on her. Her eyes closed. “Dan. Oh God, Dan. What is this about?”

The phone rang.

“I am here for God,” I said. “This is all about Him.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

DONNER

Five minutes later, we were in the car, patching into DMV records to find out what we could about Eric Meaders and Dan Steele. The sky was dark already, and I couldn’t believe how fast the day had passed.

We could put a watch on Weber’s apartment, at least until he decided to get out of town. I wondered what had saved him, them. Maybe seeing the wedding pictures on the mantle was enough to ease the priest away. Maybe pictures of the kids. If the names had come from Dub, then Emily couldn’t have told him who did what to her, specifically. Maybe James Weber and his kids just got lucky. It wasn’t a good feeling to process.

“What do you think, partner? What’s our play?”

Hendricks was writing down Steele’s particulars into his pad. He could’ve emailed them to his cell phone, but that wasn’t his style.

“You mean with Weber?”

I nodded. “How you want to keep him safe in case the priest comes back?”

“We put men on the house. Use Bowen’s blessing to call in extra troops. Tighten the web. Then we worry about the other two.”

I said, “We catch this son of a bitch. Do it now. Fast.”

Hendricks nodded like that was a novel solution, something I had just thought of. I suppose I deserved that or worse. He got on the phone with dispatch to start the work of getting a unit sent to watch the Webers’ apartment. Next we could work on the others: Steele and Meaders. I pulled the laptop around to see the screen, saw all Daniel Steele’s information, and called the first number on the list.

The phone rang and rang, then voicemail came on and said that Dan and Julia weren’t home. Dan and Julia Steele, the perfect couple, I imagined. Except sometimes Dan went out to play poker and beat on a hooker or two. Nothing so much wrong with that.

Right?

The beep came, and I gave my name, told them to call me, that it was urgent.

No. There was plenty wrong with that. And what would his wife do if she found out?

Next I tried Steele’s cell. Still no luck. His voicemail picked up right away this time and said he’d get right back to me after the beep. I left my info. Told him it was of the utmost importance.

Hendricks was off the phone with dispatch. He started punching Eric Meaders’s name into the computer.

“Steeles aren’t home,” I told Hendricks. “I’ll call a unit to go check their house.”

“Try Meaders. I’ll call for the unit to the Steeles’.” He pushed the screen back toward me, showing all Eric Meaders’s information. This time, I tried the cell first. Meaders’s address was in Bernal Heights, along a quaint row of townhouses on a series of twisty roads.

He picked up on the first ring. “Meaders.”

“This is Investigator Clara Donner with SFPD homicide. I need to meet with you.”

“Oh,
homicide
,” he said through the phone. I could hear a touch of excitement in his voice. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“My partner and I would like to talk with you about a case we’re pursuing. It’s important that we meet with you as soon as possible. We can come to you.”

I heard him muffle the phone receiver with his hand, then he said something on his end. There was music in the background, something with a lot of bass. “I’m downtown. Can you come to the Thirsty Bear?”

“Ten minutes good?”

“You bet. See you there. Oh, and, Investigator?”

“Yes?”

“I’m looking forward to meeting one of San Francisco’s few women in homicide. This will be a real honor.”

“Yes, I—” But I didn’t say anything else. I just hung up.

Hendricks said, “Unit’s on their way to Dan Steele’s place.”

“Good. Meaders wants to meet us at the Thirsty Bear. He’s also a little weird.”

He laughed. “Happy hour, Donner. You probably caught him at the Gold Club.”

It was one of the most popular strip clubs downtown, also right across from the Thirsty Bear. “Too bad we aren’t meeting him there.”

“Yeah. I hear they have a good buffet.” Hendricks winked as he started the car.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

As soon as we came into the Thirsty Bear, we saw Meaders standing at the bar, away from the crowd. If I hadn’t just seen his driver’s license photo on our laptop, I’d still have known him; he was the one who looked like he was waiting to meet with the police. He smiled like a real fanboy, one of those types who think police work is so damn cool. If only I could find a hot guy with this attitude about dating a cop.

My thoughts flashed to Alan, that I still hadn’t called him back. Over twenty-four hours had gone by now. Maybe I’d gone beyond playing hard to get. Didn’t matter. There wasn’t time to think about it now.

Eric Meaders stepped toward us—no drink in hand, jacket still on. He was a white guy who looked like a polished tech type: bald head, cotton polo shirt, khakis.

He’d made us as cops the moment we came in. What else could we be? No one could mistake us for a date, even friends. But here we were, and Meaders was big into it.

“I’m glad to see you two, Investigators.” He looked at each of us. “Is it Sergeant, or Inspector?”

It was enough to raise an eyebrow, at least. Hendricks gave me a wary look. The force had changed its designations for homicide cops to investigators with the rank of sergeant in 2009. Prior to that, homicide investigators ranked as inspectors, the only designation of its kind in the US. Now we were back “in the main”: sergeants by rank, investigators by profession.

I was a sergeant, being that I’d come in after the switch. Hendricks was an inspector. Meaders seemed to know more than he should as a civilian, so I ignored the question.

“You like investigations?” I asked. “Sleuthing?”

He nodded. “Big reader. Love those Women’s Murder Club books.” A wink. “Bet you’re something like Inspector Lindsay Boxer. Yeah?”

Patterson’s books were known around the station as good paperweights and doorstops, if not much else. He had famously gotten the code for murder wrong in his first book of the series, and I had never forgiven him. Truth was, women made up a far bigger part of homicide in San Francisco than either TV or books made it out. A woman had actually led up homicide, served as lieutenant, for twenty years.

I didn’t want to turn Meaders against us, but he was testing my nerves, setting off alarm bells like crazy. This was the guy who’d put a beating on Emily and started this whole chain of events. I was sure of it.

I said, “Do you want to interview us, or should we interview you?”

Meaders pursed his lips, pulled back a little.

Hendricks touched my forearm. “Easy, partner.” He motioned to a table that was just clearing: two stools and a tall table of light-brown wood. “Talk here?”

We walked over. Meaders and Hendricks took the two chairs, and I stood. Hendricks started with the break-in at Weber’s and asked Meaders if he knew him. He asked about Dan Steele just the same.

“We’re not here to bust you for anything,” he said, “but we’re concerned there’s a man who wants to do you harm for what you might’ve seen, what you might’ve been around.”

I would have said he shouldn’t have beaten on girls, that a renegade priest vigilante wanted to pay him back for it in kind, and that we might be willing to help. Or not.

That was why Hendricks did our talking.

I watched and listened, fingering the pictures of Emily in my pocket. I wanted to show them to Meaders, put the hard questions to him and see what he knew, but this wasn’t the time or the place. So I listened as Hendricks built it up, asking him about his associations with Steele, Weber, and the others. He asked about the poker nights and what might’ve gone on there, and then, finally, he asked him about the girls.

“Have you ever brought prostitutes into any of these evenings? Maybe done one or two of them some harm?”

Meaders stepped away from us, looked taken aback. “What?”

“Listen.” Hendricks tapped his wrist. “We’re not here to do anything about it. From what I understand, this is basically legal at this point in our city. If not, that’s someone else’s concern. But—” And here he got very serious, waited for Meaders to meet his eyes. “We know someone is out there killing people who’ve done things to a girl named Emily. Silver, she’s sometimes called. We’re looking to track this killer. We have reason to believe he might be targeting you.”

Meaders’s eyebrows came together, and he bit his lower lip. “You’re saying—”

Here’s where I couldn’t take it any longer. I slapped Emily’s picture down on the table. “See this girl? You know her. We’re not here to get you for what you did to her, but believe me I’d like to.” I grabbed Meaders’s wrist. “You’re in danger. There’s a guy coming after you and your friends, and we need to know everything about what you did and with whom.

“You want to get out of town? Fine. You want to run for your freaking life? Fine. Be my guest. But you tell us everything you know right now, got it?”

He stammered. Hendricks had badged the waitress earlier and asked her to bring us three waters, and now she finally delivered them. Meaders reached for his glass. I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he drank.

“Tell me what you know about this girl. Now.”

“She’s a girl. One of. I seen her.”

Now his confidence and inquisitiveness about homicide fell away—fast. He looked to Hendricks then back to me, and asked, “Who is he? This guy?”

Hendricks shook his head. “You don’t want to know. Honestly. The things he’s done to a few guys, Piper, Farrow, Heyes. You know them?” He tapped the table. “Never mind. You do or you don’t. They’re
nothing
you want to see now. Trust me.”

I waited a beat before pouring it on. “Made plenty of good cops lose their lunch. The pictures we could show you. Man.” I let it trail off.

“Something happened to them?” Meaders asked. “Why didn’t I see it in the news?”

“I look like a reporter to you?”

Hendricks leveled his eyes at Meaders. “You beat her last, beat her bad. She lost a part of her tongue.”

“I—No.” He turned away for a moment, and I knew he was going to come back asking for a lawyer.

“You don’t need a lawyer, Eric. You need us. You need protection.”

He swore. Then nodded. “Yeah. Things got out of hand. We did more to her than I expected. Things they just, you know. I get excited sometimes. We’d been drinking, did a few lines.”

Hendricks had been right about the Gold Club, and I knew it then. This guy was way worse than your average john or guy with a porn addiction. He was full-time, all kinds of obsessed, had a darkness inside him. He had no ring on his left hand, and that wouldn’t change. It was going to be like this with him for a long time. Forever, maybe.

I wanted the priest to have him.

I wanted not to want that.

I sucked my teeth, trying to avoid saying what I felt. If we could catch the priest and stop this guy from getting hurt in the process, then fine. If we managed to catch him and there was some collateral damage—say Meaders got hurt? Well, I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.

“Bait,” I said, cutting them both off. I didn’t even know what they’d been saying. Probably something about Emily we already knew, like how he didn’t mean to hurt her, or sever her tongue, or that he just happened to punch her in the jaw when she had it out and . . . something I didn’t need to hear.

“What?”

“We want to use you as bait. Set a trap for our guy. What do you say?”

I didn’t listen to his answer. In truth, I didn’t care what he wanted anymore.