Hungry Ghosts (23 page)

She stepped back and lifted her hands as if to shove me, but they were shaking, this time for real. She stared at them as if they were the first telltale mark of relapse.

“What did you find in Jeffrey's shop?”

“Nothing. Nothing, because he saw through my plan.”

Nothing, because he'd moved it to the first place he could rent.

I raced out, down the block to Lombard Street by one of the motels, and flagged one of the airport-hopeful cabbies. He drove silently, but the sharp turns and abrupt stops signaled that he had the same opinion of short fares as Webb Morratt. He pulled up by a hydrant near Jeffrey's new address. I paid and barely got both feet on the pavement before he screeched away.

Light bars on three police cars flashed. The double-parked cars blocked the lane. The sidewalk was jammed. For an instant every single person there stopped and stared. I straightened my shoulders and strode toward them like Helen Mirren in
Prime Suspect
.

The crowd was arrayed in three concentric semicircles like waves lapping from the entry hall. The outermost, and thinnest in density and commitment to drama, was made up of passersby. Some were tourists, glad for an acceptable reason to stop and catch their breath in a city that had turned out to be much hillier than they had assumed. Be-jeaned locals milled among them with even less commitment. Police raids on Tenderloin apartments were not news; for them the payoff would have to be quick. Those in the middle circle were pressed closer, murmuring in groups, huddling in inadequate shirts against the afternoon wind. They had the look of tenants rousted when the police charged in. The center was, of course, the cops, milling like extras in a crowd scene. It was John who'd coined that comparison, but he wasn't complaining about the plethora of squad cars responding to a run-of-the-mill call in a reasonably safe neighborhood. “You never know when safe'll turn into Baghdad,” he'd pronounced, following it with “There's no such thing as too much backup.” His gripe had been the guys who hung around after “in case.”

“Hey, lady, no one's allowed inside,” a young blond uniform announced.

“I'm going—”

“You're Lott's sister, aren't you?” a short guy with a shaved head asked.

I couldn't read him well enough to figure out whether that was a plus or minus. I nodded and kept moving up.

“He's not in there,” the cop yelled.

“Not yet? Tell him I'll be upstairs.”

“Hey, I don't think—”

I turned, caught the kid's eye, said “It's okay,” and moved faster, buoyed by the knowledge I wouldn't be facing John inside.

The building was usual for this area. Shabby now, it must once have been a stylish address, with its oval staircase winding up the three floors to what
were now two flats on either side of the building. They'd be tiny studios with kitchen alcoves. The front ones sported bay windows; the rear ones would have views of the alley. Bare wooden risers squeaked under my running shoes. The carpet—a mottled brown chosen in prescient anticipation of stains—was so thin the landings squeaked beneath it. Here tenants would take the squeaks as not a nuisance but a warning. It was a temporary dwelling for those on their way up or slipping fast, where children entertained themselves with leaning over the railing to spit and run. I couldn't imagine Jeffrey Hagstrom here. He'd be like the white-collar fraud prisoner in
Shawshank Redemption
, the guy who hanged himself after his first night. People in his Marina neighborhood where Georgia lived would never even walk down this block.

The doors on the first floor were shut and I made it to the second-floor landing before it struck me that the cops might be here about something—someone—unconnected to Jeffrey. I could hear them on the floor above. I also realized I had no idea where Jeffrey's flat was. What I needed was a dark alcove—better yet, a closet—to slip into and reconnoiter with my brain. Why were so many cops here to question him? He'd be a suspect in Tia's murder, of course. But this army of blue? And the building emptied? Did they think he'd flipped out?

No. If he'd flipped, I'd be hearing “Police! Open up!” and the door snapping open, maybe gunshots. So, either they were here for answers or for something else, and his living here was coincidence.

Or there was a third possibility. But it didn't occur to me until I'd opted for the decision I always made in situations I had no chance of reasoning out: in for a lamb, in for a sheep.

“Jeffrey! Jeffrey, you up there?” I took a breath and headed up the stairs.

C
HAPTER
23

I
ROUNDED
onto the third-floor landing. Cops were everywhere. Without pause I swung onto the steps and made it to the fourth floor before a stout officer with a brown ponytail hanging from her regulation blue cap barred the way. “This is a police scene. No one's allowed up here.”

I peered around her into the living room. It looked empty. No people, no carpet, no furniture in sight. “Where's Jeffrey?”

“I
said
, ‘No one's allowed up here.'”

I'm less intimidated by police than the average person. Strident rookies only raised memories of John at his worst, bullying Mike, who cared enough about him to pay attention. The sound of what Mike had called that “TV toughie-cop voice” transformed me into the four-year-old who'd flounced past John and laughed. “Who's in charge here?”

“I'm giving you one more chance to turn around and walk back down the stairs.”

I wasn't about to get into a physical battle with the police. I'm not that much of a four-year-old. I also wasn't about to leave. She took a step toward me. I shifted to the right and snagged a clear view into the flat all the way to the bay window. Korematsu! There is a time to avoid the cops and a time to give in. This was the latter. “Detective Korematsu!” I didn't call out to him, merely said his name loud enough to catch the attention of a man who had to have been aware of the problem out here.

He turned and walked, rather than strode, to the doorway. He was wearing a tan suit, one too light a color for police work. It set off his too-long-for-a-homicide-detective hair, his dark eyes, and that odd flicker that might have indicated amusement or irritation. “Darcy, what are you doing here?”

“I'm looking for Jeffrey Hagstrom. What are
you
doing?”

“Discovering he's not here, apparently.” He motioned me inside. “I've been looking for you.”

“I know.”

“You
know!”

“Yes. I didn't want to talk to you until I had something worth discussing.”

“That's not the way it works.”

“Except when it does.” I laughed, and I could see he was tempted. “I heard you outside the zendo, but I certainly wasn't about to get in between you and my brother. You can understand that.”

Now he did laugh.

“But I'm trying to find out why it is Jeffrey Hagstrom chose this place to rent.” I did a quick survey of the fourteen-foot-square room. “Are you sure he lives here?”

“He's on the lease.”

“It doesn't look like there's anything of his here. Clothes?”

Korematsu nodded toward the closet. His dark thatch of hair was hanging so low over his forehead the ends seemed to be teasing his eyelashes—teasing
me
—creating a B-movie plot I could barely tear myself away from. But I'd seen enough actors with come-to-bed eyes. Still, I couldn't figure out Korematsu. Was he a straightforward cop in a fine body of which he was sweetly unaware, or was he trying every gambit? Or was the problem me?

I looked into a closet that held two pairs of jeans, two dark jackets, two black T-shirts, two pairs of shoes, and no drug samples or anything else worth hiding. “Interesting.”

“The clothes?”

“The dearth of them, the precision of arrangement. They could be just back from the cleaner. Or they could be new, bought by anyone. Did you find anything else?”

“Nothing.” He glanced toward the doorway, obviously, waiting for me to play my next card.

I believed him. A drug stash here would have been too ordinary a discovery to keep from me. Georgia could have been wrong. She was like the blind man feeling the elephant's tusk. Maybe Jeffrey's connection with Tia had nothing to do with tusks. But then what? And why was Korematsu here with half the police force? Was he going on the assumption Jeffrey killed her for some other reason?

I said, “I'm here because the new tenant in Jeffrey's last apartment gave me his address. She was in the zendo this morning. You remember her, the blonde woman in the suit?”

He nodded, but not in time to cover the small lift of eyebrow that signaled interest. So, he hadn't followed the same route here. How had he found out about this apartment? Had Jeffrey paid with a credit card? Korematsu would have done the standard checks on Tia by now—credit cards, phone, back accounts. Was Jeffrey leading the suspect list? Or had Korematsu run the credit cards of all witnesses? Leo's? Mine? I looked from him into the hallway and back. “This is a big operation here for a peripheral witness. The detective in charge of the investigation. Half of SFPD. You must be thinking Jeffrey killed Tia.” It sounded ninety percent like a statement, about thirty percent more than it was.

“We're not labeling anyone a suspect yet.”

So, Jeffrey
was
big in the running. But why did Korematsu think so? He had to know Tia had dated him. Former lovers always move to the head of the line. But even that wouldn't merit the lead detective and eight backup. There had to be something else.

The ponytailed guard at the door stepped inside. “Sir?”

“Higgins?” He followed her back into the hallway.

I was tempted to ease myself against the wall near the door for a listen, but chances were large I wouldn't be able to get back here fast enough to avert discovery. The only currency I had was Korematsu's sense of camaraderie, tenuous as it was; I didn't dare blow it. I stepped into the kitchen and pulled open a cabinet. Plate, bowl, cup. One pan and one pot sat on the stove. Either Jeffrey was just moving in or he was planning for a short stay. Or he'd never been here at all. In the bathroom, a single towel hung over the shower rod where a curtain should have been. The tub had been washed but the enamel held the ground-in dirt of every tenant since the great earthquake. The only thing that suggested anyone had been here longer than the time it took to hang the hand towel was a garbage pail with a few of the kind of paper napkins you get with takeout orders, as if someone had wiped clean a tube or bottle with the only thing they had on hand, and then tossed the napkins. No tube, no bottle, just napkins. Damn!

I stepped back into the main room and made one final survey. No land line.

“No phone?” I asked as Korematsu stepped back from the hall.

“No.”

In the hall Higgins was lumbering away. A better woman wouldn't have held her tough cop tone against her or inwardly bad-mouthed her butt. I watched as she and her partner moved down the stairs, leaving Korematsu alone with me, and wondered what he had in mind.

The walls were dark beige. One held a faint rectangle—a tenant a few
years back had hung a picture, and his successors had let the bland bare paint fade. Furniture consisted of two Swedish modern armchairs, stained mahogany. I settled in the one with the orange striped pad. “You got a copy of Tia's cell phone records, right? Was Jeffrey the last person she called?”

He pulled a matching chair to face me and sat. “Could be.”

“Just ask; don't tell?”

He leaned back. That almost smile flickered. “That's the PD rule.”

“Rules are made to be broken when you want something.” It was such a corny line, I was embarrassed.

He struggled to keep a straight face and covered the struggle by swiping his thatch off his forehead.

“Enough!” I said. “Seriously, we both want to find Tia's killer. She was my friend. I only met Jeffrey in passing. If he killed her, get him. I'm just saying cop games get my back up. I'll tell you about the call, but I want something in return.”

His hair was back over his eyebrows, but his eyes had hardened. “What?”

“Tell me what's going on here. Why so many officers just to sign off on Jeffrey's not being here?”

“You want to talk to the officer in charge of them?”

“That's not you?”

“Not me.”

“I trust you,” I lied. “Tell me.”

“You first.”

“Okay. Tia's phone call was just after noon. A short call.”

“How do you know that?”

“Nuh-uh. Your turn. Why this big police presence?”

He didn't appear to move. His thumb and first finger rested together and I had the sense that he was just barely rubbing them together as he
considered. “I'd say it was a coincidence, except in investigations coincidences have to be disproved.”

“The coincidence? A whole different case?”