To Catch a Cook: An Angie Amalfi Mystery (11 page)

Tide currents showed that the body should have washed up within a couple of weeks just north of the Golden Gate. It did not.

When the connection between the missing victim and San Francisco’s two murders was discovered, the case was basically turned over to the S.F.P.D., who added little to it.

He shut Cecily’s folder, his mind filled with more questions than the reports answered.

The envelope with photos of Mika’s autopsy still sat, unopened, on his desk.

Homicide remained empty. He hadn’t even noticed that three hours had passed. A couple of guys would be dropping in soon. Some of the skanks they dealt with could only be found after the sun went down. Much later, eleven or midnight, the on-call inspectors would probably show up because that was when most of the city’s murders happened.

As if he were moving in slow motion, he lifted the envelope, bent the metal clasps forward, opened the flap, and slid out the photos.

A black-and-white eight-by-ten showed a man lying on his back, on a carpeted floor, his plaid-shirt-and-jeans-clad body riddled with bullet holes.

He’d seen plenty of photos like this one before, but never had bile risen in his throat. He kept his eyes riveted to the photo. Despite the carnage, the thing that struck him the hardest was that the victim looked so very young. He was a thin man. His long hair, almost black in the photo, had spilled
thickly around his head onto the carpet. His eyes were shut. No bullet marred the narrow, highcheekboned face with a broad brow and high, straight nose. His eyebrows were dark, not particularly thick, and arched. He wore a mustache and a short, trimmed beard. Except for the last, it was Paavo’s own face.

The photo blurred. His hand shook as he lowered it. Mika, in death, was younger than Paavo was now. He didn’t feel like he was looking at a father—more like he should be a brother, or even a son.

The shock, the grief, gradually faded, leaving emptiness inside him. Although the office was well heated, he was filled with an incredible cold. Then he remembered the feel of Angie’s arms circling his neck last night as he sat out on the chilly deck, remembered her warmth and sunniness, her compassion. He drew in a deep breath, and continued.

He quickly leafed through other crime scene shots, all taken from different angles. Lamps, the headboard, the walls, the bed, the closet, and the dead man.

He stopped when he reached the first autopsy photo. He didn’t want to look at those. He didn’t think he ever could. As he gathered the photos together to put them back into the envelope, he saw a five-by-eight white envelope.

He knew what was in it—a photo of the victim in life. Homicide inspectors often used them to talk to people when they tried to find out more about a victim. It was too unsettling for people to be asked what they knew about a person and to be handed a photo from the morgue, or even worse, the scene of the crime. Only police should ever have to see victims in such poses.

So here was the photo the homicide inspectors thirty years ago had used to ask people if they
remembered Mika Turunen. Paavo opened the envelope and removed the photo.

If homicide inspectors had asked him their question, he would have answered, “Yes. I remember him.”

They weren’t precise memories, not sharp or definitive, but more of a blur. Yet, he
knew
.

Suddenly he had an odd sense of vertigo, of being lifted high in the air by sure but gentle hands, and looking down into the big, blue eyes of the man in the photo. Echoes of laughter, adult and child, wafted in his ears. Another fuzzy memory came of a zoo, the strong musky scent of animals in his nostrils, and climbing onto a railing to look down into a pit where Siberian tigers were kept, and the feel of someone’s large hand on his shoulder, holding him, ready to grab him if he started to tumble over. He couldn’t quite remember the face that went with those hands…maybe not even the hands, exactly. Yet it wasn’t an unfamiliar touch. It was one he’d known. One he’d felt safe with.

Then it was gone, and he never felt safe that way again.

How could he have forgotten? And why hadn’t Jessica and Aulis talked about him?

The vague sense of knowing his father had been a part of him for years, but they had assured him that he was wrong. As he grew older, the perception faded, and he came to believe them.

Why had they wanted him to forget the father who had played with him, and loved him? He grew up thinking the man didn’t care that he existed, that his father walked away and never looked back. Why had they done that not only to him, but to the loving man who had been his father?

Nausea roiled in his stomach, and once more his vision blurred.

“Hey, Paav! Can’t believe you’re still around when you’ve got a woman waiting for you.” Homicide Inspector Bo Benson came in carrying a tall cup of coffee. Paavo glanced up at him.

“What’s wrong?” Benson asked. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“Maybe so,” Paavo said. He slid the photo back into the envelope, carefully locked everything away inside a desk drawer, then picked up his jacket and left.

“Make sure you leave me out of your freaking videos, kid.” Cousin Richie punctuated the air with his steak knife. Angie swiveled her camcorder away from his glistening head and toward unsuspecting diners in the Bella Rosa restaurant. “Why don’t you want to be on TV?”

“I got my reasons. Hell, I’m surprised none of these customers punches you out.” He took a big bite of his New York steak. Richard Amalfi, the son of her father Sal’s older brother, wasn’t one for delicate veals and sauces as his main course. At age forty-four, he was speeding toward the age when men fight middle age with a vengeance. He was overweight and the expanding sand trap in the back of his head was beginning to give him a complex. What was left of his hair was shiny blue-black and curly. His hands were thick, with hairy knuckles on short fingers. He wore a Rolex the size of a pancake on his wrist, plus enough gold against his deeply tanned, black-haired chest to fill all the teeth in a small city.

They had already finished a
minèstra
of swiss chard and cannelli beans, rigatoni with mussel and
basil sauce, and were into the main course. “So, when you going to tell me why you asked me here?” he asked, taking a long swig of Krug’s cabernet sauvignon.

“How suspicious! I wanted to thank you for the house, that’s all,” Angie said between bites of veal roll stuffed with tomato, anchovy, and parmesan. “We’re loving it.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t say a word to Sal or Serefina, just like you asked.” He gave her a wink. “If they ever find out, I’ll deny everything.”

“Absolutely. Oh, I almost forgot, but since you brought it up, I do have one teensy little favor I wanted to ask of you.”

“Uh-huh.” He smirked.

“Don’t give me that look! This is important. Paavo’s been trying to find a guy, an ex-FBI agent named Eldridge Sawyer.”

“Eldridge? What the hell kind of name is Eldridge?”

“I have no idea. Anyway, the guy seems to have gone into hiding.” She handed him a piece of paper. “Here’s his last address. He owned the place and sold it. Paavo tried state records, but there was nothing.”

“What do you think I am, some freaking private eye?”

Now it was her turn to smirk. “I think a pack of bloodhounds would have nothing on you, cousin. You’re someone who has sources in real estate, who has friends who can see where this guy was when the title documents and other papers were sent long after he left his house, and who can, somehow, track him from place to place after that.”

Round, innocent brown eyes gawked at her. “What makes you think realtors keep records like that?”

He was innocent as a retriever in a duck pond. “A lot don’t, I’m sure,” she said, adding more wine to his glass. “Your friends are special. That’s all I know. I don’t know anything else. Nothing at all.”

He chortled. “That’s my girl.”

“You’ll give it a try, then?”

“It’ll cost.”

“No problem.”

He leaned way back, raising his hip in order to stuff Sawyer’s address into his pants pocket. “An ex-special agent trying to hide? It’ll be like taking candy from a baby.”

A squatty two-story building designed to look like a Spanish hacienda with chipped stucco walls and a row of red tile edging a tar and gravel roof bore the sign
CYPRESS MOTEL
in neon letters. Below it, the single word
VACANCY
. The rooms all faced the center parking lot, and the motel office guarded the entrance.

Paavo studied the motel from his car a moment, then walked into the parking lot. It was half-filled. From inside the lot, the motel looked even seedier than from the street. He focused on the door to Room 8, then abruptly turned back toward the office. A small alcove, built between the office and the first rental, caught his eye.

As if against his will, he moved in its direction and stepped inside.

The alcove had an ice machine and several vending machines for soda, candy, cookies, and crackers. The vending machines were new…but this alcove…right next to the office…

“Looking for someone?”

Paavo spun around to see a middle-aged man warily frowning at him. He took out his badge. “I’m checking up on an old case. About thirty years ago a
man was shot in this motel. Do you know anything about it?”

“Thirty years ago?” The man scoffed. “You kidding me? I don’t give a damn about that. I only bought this flea trap ten years ago. Worst thing I ever did. They was supposed to put a shopping mall ’cross the street. Upgrade the area. Then it fell through. This area’s getting worse than ever.

“I had a guy OD last year. A suicide three years ago. But no murder. Not yet, anyhow. Wouldn’t surprise me, though. After being in this business, seeing the customers, nothing surprises me no more.”

Paavo glanced again at the alcove with the ice machines—
the children were playing with ice
—then at the door to Room 8.

“You being a cop,” the motel owner said, hands on hips, “I guess you know what I mean about the public being for shit. That nothing they do surprises you anymore, right?”

“You’re right,” Paavo replied after a while. “Nothing surprises me much at all anymore.”

He left the motel in a fog, his usual dogged clarity blurred and distorted by the past. His life had been nothing but a house of cards, and he was now in a game of fifty-two pickup. He couldn’t say he remembered having been at the motel as a child, but an eerie familiarity about it haunted him.

As much as he wanted to see Angie, he needed a little time to digest all he had learned and seen. He drove, not paying attention to the streets.

The motel had brought back the nightmare with Jessica, but what he found was reality—the gunfire, the loss of his father, and soon after, of his mother.

Her loss must have overshadowed everything else for him. That was the only way he could imagine believing Aulis and Jessica’s lies about his
father. He rubbed his temple. It was all so very fuzzy to him, memories mixed together with lies.

What must have been going through his child’s mind back then? And through Jessica’s for that matter? She wasn’t much older, but old enough to feel the full impact of everything that happened—old enough to understand, but not to have the maturity to handle it. That was probably why she’d been so close to him for so many years, closer than most brothers and sisters. Despite her youth, she’d learned how quickly those you love could be taken away from you.

Was that why she’d been so eager to live life to the hilt? Why she had burned as a bright young flame that died too soon?

Damn, if only she’d told him. If only he’d known the truth. Maybe he could have helped.

Somehow he ended up on his street, in front of his house. The car that continued past him and stopped at the corner barely registered on his consciousness.

Angie told him she’d sent a cleaning service over to haul away destroyed furniture, and pick up mattress feathers and other debris. He’d like to see his home again.

As Paavo got out of the car, he didn’t look around him and particularly not to the end of the block. The shooter hadn’t expected him to. That was why this parking spot was chosen, along with an M40A1 rifle with a Unertl 9X scope. The car engine remained running as the black-clad sniper dropped behind the fender.

Paavo bounded up the steps to his front door, reaching into his pocket for the key. The scope aligned the back of his head in its crosshairs. He slid the key into the hole, turned, and pushed.

The world exploded.

As Angie drove away from the restaurant, she noticed the headlights of the car behind her. It stayed back some distance, but made all the same turns as she did, and seemed to speed up whenever another car tried to slip between them.

She made four lefts in a row. The car followed.

Going home was no longer an option. Instead, she headed for the Hall of Justice, unable to lose her tail the entire way.

Parking at the Hall was restricted to employees and people with special passes. Because it was an administrative building, not a police station as such, and fairly quiet at night, she didn’t want to park in a nearly empty public lot either.

As she neared, she phoned Paavo to come down and meet her at the entrance. His phone rang, but he wasn’t there to answer it.

Now what?

She could call his cell phone, but he could be miles away at some crime scene.

Hell, she had a Ferrari. Why not use it, just like she had when those jokers were outside her apartment? A freeway on-ramp was up ahead. Turning the wheel sharply, she darted through lanes of traffic and swung onto the freeway, flicked her radarlaser detector to high, and punched the accelerator. The car following her sped up as well, cutting off other drivers to reach the freeway entrance. For a while it succeeded in keeping up with her since she had to keep changing lanes to get around drivers paying attention to the speed limit. Once she passed the airport, however, the congestion loosened and her pedal hit the metal.

The car following didn’t have a chance. And people asked her why she needed a Ferrari in San Francisco!

She glanced at her silent radar detector. She’d received tickets for going 68 in a 65-mile zone. At one point tonight she’d hit 105, and nary a CHP in sight…thank God.

When she finally reached the Filbert Street cottage, she was still pumped from her version of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Paavo wasn’t there. The answering machine she’d recently hooked up had no message from him, and neither did her cell phone.

Where was he? A homicide must have happened. She wished Yosh would hurry back to work. Having Paavo go off on calls alone made her even more nervous than usual. She held Hercules, scratching him behind the ears as she stood at the window.

She assumed Paavo had caught a bite for dinner while he was out, but a warm, comforting dessert waiting for him when he got home would be a nice treat. She enjoyed cooking. Relaxing yet engrossing, it required a degree of expertise and creativity to do well, much as handcrafters found with needlepoint or crochet. Her Amaretto-pecan bread pudding was a particular favorite of his. She happily mixed enough to fill a nine-by-thirteen-inch-baking dish.

Hours later, the bread pudding had grown cold and he still wasn’t home.

At midnight she called Homicide, with no luck, and his cell phone was switched to go straight to messages.

At two-thirty she heard footsteps on the front walk. She sprang from the bed to the window. It was Paavo.

They both reached the front door at the same time.

He grabbed her, his face buried against her neck, and held her tight.