The 20th Victim Read online

The first photo was a glamour shot of the jazz center, the corner view of the building’s expanse of glass windows sparkling in morning sunlight. The street was quiet. There was some traffic at the intersection, but this shot had clearly been taken before three people, a semi-well-known guitarist and his two bodyguards, were picked off one shot at a time.

  Fogel had said she’d taken a picture of the car.

  In the lower right corner of the photo, on the opposite side of the street from the jazz center, was a black Ford Taurus.

  I said, “The witness said that the gunman fired from inside a car. Maybe this one. I can read, uh, four numbers on the tag.”

  “Not a bad line of sight from the car to the entrance of the building.”

  There were a couple of other cars parked in front of the Taurus, all of which would have to be checked out.

  I jotted down the tag numbers as Conklin said, “I’m ready for the next one.”

  I clicked on the next picture. It had been shot only a few seconds after the first. It showed a man in the driver’s seat of the Taurus, his gloved hand on the window frame, pulling the door closed.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “So much for his prints.”

  My partner adjusted the monitor so it faced him square on. “Am I hallucinating? Or is that Barkley without the beard?”

  I enlarged the man’s face so that it took up most of the screen, but the more enlarged I made it, the more his features went out of focus. I had seen photos of Barkley with and without the beard. But I couldn’t be sure that this was him.

  I said, “I’ll find Stempien. You run the plates.”

  I called Stempien, but he didn’t pick up. It was twenty after twelve. Lunch hour. When I ate out close to the Hall, my cheap eatery of choice was MacBain’s. Was it Stempien’s go-to joint, too?

  Conklin looked up from his computer and said, “The Taurus was reported stolen thirty-six hours ago.”

  “Could be Barkley stole it before the shooting and still has it,” I said, trying out a theory. “Or, Richie. He could’ve left the car after the shooting and walked off the scene. The car could be right where it was yesterday. The street was closed all day for CSI and until late last night.”

  “I’ll go take a look,” he said. “You find Stempien.”

  I transferred the two pictures to a flash drive and went across the street to MacBain’s.

  The place was crowded. It always was at lunchtime. True detective that I am, I spotted Stempien at a table by himself, a plate of steak fries, a burger, and an iPad Pro in front of him. I navigated a path through the congested bar and grill, and when our FBI computer guru looked up, I smiled and said, “May I join you?”

  He said, “Absolutely,” but his look told me that he was checking out my face.

  “Fistfight,” I said.

  “Whoa. You okay?”

  “Never better,” I said.

  Syd came to the table and I ordered what Stempien was having. Once she’d departed, I held up the thumb drive and said, “Mike. You feeling heroic today?”

  “Love to be a hero. How can I help?”

  “I brought you a snapshot. Can you look and tell me if it’s Barkley? If you’re not sure, you have to run it through your DeepFace recognition program. ASAP.”

  “What you call ASAP is what I call normal. As if I’ve heard anyone in the past five years say, ‘Mike. Take your time.’ And I’ve been waiting.”

  I laughed. Stempien pushed his plate aside and plugged my thumb drive into his tablet. He stared at his device. He finger-swiped and pressed buttons, but he didn’t speak.

  I don’t think I breathed as I watched him work.

  Chapter 104

  The judge asked Yuki to call her first witness.

  She called Officer William Scarborough, and once he’d been sworn in, Yuki told the jury that the witness would run the video and explain what had happened at each moment in time.

  Yuki asked the court officer to dim the lights, and then Officer Scarborough pointed the remote at the laptop downloading the digital recording from the cloud.

  He said, “First we see the Chevy speeding through the light, and we take off after him.”

  He stopped the video as the Chevy slowed.

  “What’s happening here is that the driver is going ninety, and that green minivan in front of him is full of kids and going about forty. For all the horn blowing, the van doesn’t speed up.”

  Scarborough started the film again.

  “Now the Chevy is forced to slow down. The van is crawling in front of him and traffic is flowing on his right and left sides. Here’s where it all goes down. I pull into the traffic on the left, speed ahead, and see daylight between the back of the van and front of the Chevy.”

  Scarborough paused the video to make sure the jurors got a fix on the next move.

  Scarborough said, “I make a hard right in front of the Chevy. It’s a tight squeeze, but I’m just trying to stop the guy. He T-bones our cruiser, hitting in the rear compartment, and we all come to a stop.”

  Scarborough explained the action in the last part of the video.

  “That’s Officer Morton walking over to the driver’s side of the Chevy, ordering the driver to step out of the car. But what Morton can’t see is that the passenger door opens and a tall man in black clothes gets out.

  “I can’t see his face,” Scarborough said. “I’ve watched this video so many times, but the crash put our car at an angle to the Chevy, and this guy walks out of the shot. I’ve got less than a second of his profile. He resembles a dangerous criminal I’ve seen on FBI posters, but ‘resemble’ isn’t enough for a positive ID.”

  Scarborough’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat and let the video roll.

  “He walks around the Chevy to where Todd Morton is standing with his back to him, talking to the driver.

  “Here. It’s painful to watch. The gunman opens up on Todd. He goes down, and then the son of a bitch fires at the cruiser. At me.

  “The dash cam catches me as I get out of the cruiser and go toward Todd, and I’m calling for an ambulance and traffic is going nuts, and by then the shooter has evicted the old man from his RAV4 and takes off.”

  Scarborough hit Pause again and said, “At this point Clay Warren gets out of the Chevy with his hands up, and I direct him to put his hands on the roof and not to move. I cuff him. Pat him down. He wasn’t armed. The ambulance arrived fast, but Todd was dead from the time he hit the ground.”

  Yuki asked for the lights to go on. Several people in the gallery were crying, and one person left her seat and pushed open the door.

  Yuki said, “I know everyone here feels for you and Todd Morton’s family. What can you tell us about your late partner?”

  Scarborough sighed and spoke for several emotional moments about Morton, lauding him and stating that neither of them had ever been involved in a shooting before.

  “You said you couldn’t identify the shooter?”

  “His features are regular. He wore sunglasses, and his jacket had a high collar. Mostly, he was on the move, standing away from me or half away from me, and then he was shooting at me. Things were happening fast.”

  Judge Rabinowitz asked defense counsel if he had any questions for the officer, and Zac Jordan said that he did not. Yuki thanked Officer Scarborough and asked him to step down.

  Rabinowitz said, “Ms. Castellano. Please call your next witness.”

  “We have no other witnesses, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Jordan?”

  “I have a character witness, Your Honor.”

  “In that case, let’s take a brief recess…uh, a half hour. And then after your witness, Counselor, we’ll hear your closing arguments.”

  Chapter 105

  I snatched up the receiver of my ringing phone.

  Conklin said, “I’m on Fell Street outside the entrance to the jazz center. You’re right again, Boxer.”

  “We got a break?”

  “Black Taurus with a one-eighty-d
egree view of the entrance to the jazz center and a surprise inside the car.”

  “Don’t make me beg.”

  “Try not to take all the fun out of this.”

  “Fine. Pleeease, Richie. Tell me.”

  “Good enough. I found a shell casing under the gas pedal. I’ll stay here until CSI comes with the flatbed. A uni is taking tag numbers up and down the street.”

  “Good work, Rich.”

  As I waited impatiently for my partner to return, I looked for Brady. He wasn’t in the bullpen. He wasn’t in Jacobi’s old office on five. His assistant told me he was in a meeting out of the office. And then he walked through the squad room door.

  “I was with the ME,” Brady said, speaking of Claire’s stand-in. “Where’s Conklin?”

  “Right here,” he said, coming through the gate.

  Brady said, “Follow me.”

  Once we were seated in his office, Brady said, “Close the door, will ya?”

  Conklin reached behind him and swung it shut.

  I was dying to start the meeting with what we knew. A witness to the massacre at the jazz center had come forward. She had taken pictures of the probable shooter. The photo had been vetted by Stempien, who had stated with 95 percent certainty that the man in the picture was Barkley. Conklin had found a shell casing that had gone with the car back to the lab, and the odds were good that it would match the caliber of the rounds in the three dead men.

  We’d need prints on Barkley’s gun to put these pieces together, but we knew more now than when I woke up this morning.

  My gut told me that Barkley was the jazz center killer.

  We needed to find him, alive and willing to talk, and we had something to trade. The release of Randi White Barkley.

  Brady’s expression told me that he had something big to say, so I listened.

  “Northern Station got IDs on Kreisler’s bodyguards. The one who was walking in front of Kreisler was Bernie Quant, a well-known body man, freelanced for celebrities up and down the coast. The other one is the prize. Name is Antoine Castro, number three on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted.”

  “Antoine Castro? Are you sure?”

  Brady passed me Castro’s jacket. I saw his mug shot and his morgue shot dated today. They were a match to his photo on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted bulletin. Also in his jacket was a long list of prior offenses, convictions he’d dodged because of lack of evidence, and the big one: a bank heist in Seattle. Four people died. The gang fled. A survivor identified Castro, absolutely, positively, and that had vaulted him onto the FBI list.

  In more recent news, Yuki had told me that before Clay Warren went mute, he’d once mentioned Castro as Todd Morton’s killer but had stopped short of positively, then backtracked, and had refused to cooperate ever since.

  Now Castro was dead, and I was shocked. After the shootout on Highway 1, I had theorized that Castro had gotten a fresh horse and ridden out of town.

  It seemed that he’d been in San Francisco all along.

  I said, “Castro is the number one suspect in the killing of Todd Morton. Yuki is trying the kid Castro left twisting in the wind. Brady, don’t you and Yuki talk about your cases at home?”

  “She never mentioned his name,” Brady said.

  I said, “Warren is on trial right now. With Castro dead, maybe he’ll talk about him, his drug operation, where he lived, you know what I’m saying, Brady? Make himself useful in exchange for a deal.”

  “Go,” he said.

  I left the office at a fast clip, leaving Conklin to watch Brady’s face when he told him that we had a phone shot of Leonard Barkley getting into a stolen car outside the jazz center, where three people, including Castro, had been killed.

  For Clay Warren, Castro’s death might be the best thing that could have happened to him.

  I ran to the courtroom.

  I had to find Yuki before the jury came back with a verdict.

  Chapter 106

  Dave had parked his van in the medical center parking lot.

  He had reclined the seat back a few degrees so that he could watch the lot and also see Dr. Perkins’s second-floor office. At 4 p.m. on the nose Perkins left the building, got into his car, and drove away.

  The open bottle of wine rested between Dave’s thighs. He lifted it, took a couple of pills along with some fine Channing Cabernet, and waited for his pulse to slow.

  Then he made a phone call to the doctor’s office.

  He recognized her voice.

  “Nurse…Atkins?”

  “Yes. To whom am I speaking?”

  “Uh. It’s Dave. Channing.”

  “What do you want, jackass?”

  His words were coming slowly. He took long breaths and exhaled deeply. He said, “I came to, uh, bring something for, uh, the doctor.”

  “He just left,” she snapped. “Don’t call here again.”

  Before she hung up, Dave shouted, “Wait! I brought something. An apology. And a check. For the damage…for what I did, uh, to his car.”

  “Leave it in the lab pickup box downstairs. I’m hanging up now.”

  Again Dave yelled, “Wait.”

  “I have things to do, Dave. You should have your lawyer send the check to the doctor, but I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to show remorse so that the judge doesn’t put your sorry ass away for the full three years—”

  “That’s not…it. Listen.”

  “Make it quick.”

  “I took pills. I don’t…have much…time. I wrote…an apology to you, too. And I brought you…a gift. My mother painted a…a small oil. Could be worth…more than…twenty…thousand. My way of saying…I’m sorry.”

  “What kind of pills did you take?”

  Dave’s laugh was a croak.

  “I took ’em all. Sleep. Heart. BP…”

  “Digoxin?”

  “Yeah. If he had it, I took it. I barfed some. But he had spares. I’m drinking…Dad’s best wine.”

  “How much of the digoxin?”

  “I wasn’t, uh, counting.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I’m…passing…out.”

  “Where are you?” Atkins asked.

  “Out…side. The van. Channing Winery…”

  Blinds were cracked open on the second floor. Then Atkins hung up the phone.

  Dave watched the lights in Perkins’s office go out. He took his phone out of his hip pocket and placed it on the dash. He took another swig of the wine he’d helped grow and bottle.

  Then he laid his head back. Waiting. Waiting.

  Chapter 107

  I badged the court officer and he opened the door to courtroom 6A.

  There was standing room behind the last row of chairs in the gallery. I took a spot on the aisle and watched Zac Jordan make his closing argument. I was relieved that the case hadn’t yet gone to the jury. Maybe I could speak to the judge, hand off the bombshell of Antoine Castro’s death, and buy some time for Yuki and Zac to talk to the defendant.

  Zac Jordan was wearing red-framed glasses, camel hair over plaid and khaki, finishing with cordovan cap-toes. It was a look that said, I’m a good guy. I knew he was.

  I listened intently to his closing statement.

  He said, “Clay Warren is guilty of trusting someone he didn’t know in exchange for an adventure, a road trip, and—just guessing here—a small amount of cash. It turned out to be a catastrophic error, the biggest mistake of his young life.

  “It’s also possible that the man who shot Officer Morton put a gun to Clay’s head and forced him to drive. We have seen in the video that this killer also aimed his gun at Jonas Hunt and made off with his car.

  “I have to answer these questions hypothetically because Mr. Warren won’t tell me. He won’t tell you, either.”

  Zac paced a little. His brow was furrowed, and I watched the jurors’ rapt expressions as they followed him with their eyes.

  Zac stopped and faced the jury, saying, “But when he was first arrest
ed, Clay thought he might know who’d convinced him or forced him or paid him to get into the car. He mentioned the name of a notorious criminal, but he said that he couldn’t make a 100 percent ID. And now I know why he wouldn’t cooperate or help himself. He was afraid of retribution—and he got it. He was brutally attacked in jail, stabbed multiple times in the gut, and came this close to dying.

  “You heard Ridley Sierra, Clay’s best friend since grade school, swear under oath that in his opinion Clay is naive and younger than his years. He described Clay as ‘gullible.’

  “I believe that Mr. Sierra is right.”

  My heart twisted thinking about Clay Warren, the poor dope, and I wanted to tell him, “Help is on the way.”

  Zac was wrapping up and time was running out. I saw where Yuki was sitting beyond the railing. I texted her, but she didn’t respond. I was desperate to reach her, so I took a chance and crept up the aisle to the bar, reached over, and tapped her on the shoulder.

  She spun around, annoyed, but then she read the expression on my face. She mouthed, “What’s wrong?”

  I stepped on some feet, bumped knees, but I got close enough to Yuki to whisper in her ear.

  “Antoine Castro is dead.”

  She whispered back, “How do you know?”

  “He’s in a drawer at the ME’s office.”

  Yuki grabbed my hand and squeezed, then stood up.

  She said, “Your Honor, Mr. Jordan, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we have new information from the SFPD. If we may approach the bench?”

  “This had better be good, Ms. Castellano. It had better be brilliant.”

  Chapter 108

  Yuki, Zac, and I stood at the bench, looking up at the judge.

  Yuki said just above a whisper, “Your Honor, the man who we believe killed Officer Todd Morton has been positively identified by his photo. His fingerprints on his gun matched his prints inside the Chevy and Mr. Hunt’s RAV4. I would prefer you hear this information from Sergeant Boxer, who is a homicide investigator with the SFPD.”

  Judge Rabinowitz looked at Zac.

  “Okay with you, Mr. Jordan?”