Switchback (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Read online

  Switchback

  A Lt. Hastings Mystery

  Collin Wilcox

  This Book Is Dedicated

  to Chris’s Monica…

  and to Monica’s Chris.

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  Preview: Calculated Risk

  1

  THIS, THEN, WAS THE lost talisman, this single cylinder of blued steel centered on her torso. Everything else, even creation, was excluded: the beginning and the ending, everything and nothing.

  But she couldn’t confess it. Neither could she beg and therefore save herself. Even here, even now, she couldn’t capitulate. Instead she must mock him:

  “You won’t do it, you bastard. You can’t do it. And then you’re mine. You’ll never—”

  Flame was erupting; the car rocked with the explosion. The orange flash centered on the revolver’s maw was consuming everything. The beginning and the end, gone.

  2

  THE SPEED WAS CRITICAL, not too fast, not too slow. The speedometer, then, focused everything: numbers on the dashboard, not a dial with a needle. The digital age had caught up with him: 27, the speedometer registered, two miles over the limit.

  The limit—and beyond. He’d crossed the line, entered that far country waiting in perpetual darkness. Lift the revolver, press the trigger, see the blood blossom, vivid red on light beige wool, one of her favorite sweaters. Leave forever all that he’d ever known: the parents who never smiled, the children who turned away, snickering.

  28, the numbers showed. Ease off on the accelerator. In the country beyond, his country now, danger was everywhere, waiting. One cop-stop for a traffic infraction meant death.

  30, now.

  The car was going faster, not slower. Was it the first sign, the first warning? He’d meant to ease off on the accelerator, but instead he was traveling faster. Downhill, could that be it? Suddenly it was essential that he know. Because mind must control the car, it was his only hope. If he’d willed his foot to lighten its pressure on the accelerator, but instead the pressure had increased, how then could he manage the rest of it? How could he escape them?

  The plan. In the plan, where was he? Had he lost his place? How many times, these last days, had he gone over the plan?

  First, pick up the car, stolen especially for the night, an essential component, no questions asked. Two fifties, and the Buick was his. A stolen car. Then, second, a stolen pistol. He’d intuitively known how the revolver worked, apparently the American male’s birthright, something elemental, instinctive. And an effort of the will, an actor immersing himself in a new role, he’d decided to take the persona of the street hoodlum, scoring for the next fix: wait for her to park the car, wait for her to walk along the sidewalk, unsuspecting. Then, God, pull the trigger. Then run. Take the gun, take her purse, and—

  —her purse.

  Had he said it aloud? Was it his voice he heard, himself talking to himself?

  He realized that the car had stopped. On Lake Street, in the middle, brakes locked, car bouncing, he’d come to a stop. He was bending low, searching. The revolver, yes, was on the floor in front, just as he’d planned.

  Only the revolver, not the purse.

  He’d followed her when she’d decided not to park on Page Street, decided instead to drive to the beach, which she often did. The parking lot had been deserted when she arrived. He’d let her park, let her get out of the Nissan, let her walk out on the beach. When she’d gotten to the surf line, he’d driven slowly, without lights, into the parking lot. As if their meeting had been arranged, he’d parked the stolen Buick close beside the Nissan, still the only two cars in the parking area. He’d—

  Headlights flashed in the mirror; a horn blared. Close behind him, then beside him, then ahead: still angrily bleating. Reacting, he was reflexively stabbing at the accelerator. The Buick shot forward, struck the curb, bounced. Now his foot found the brake; the Buick was stopped, engine still running, gear selector still in Drive. He touched the lever, moved it to Neutral.

  Take the purse, take the money, he’d rehearsed. It was, he knew, what a petty thief would do: take the purse, pocket the money. Then toss the purse.

  And then, as a murderer would do, throw the gun through a sewer grate, gone forever.

  And then, mind over matter, the actor, he would walk home, the solid citizen, returning. Because the trash container and the sewer were on the same corner, two blocks from home.

  But now he was miles from home. And she was miles from Page Street. She was lying among the low bushes bordering the beach.

  And in her car, abandoned at the beach, someone would discover her blood-spattered purse.

  Blood…

  He’d been so careful about the blood.

  He’d gotten out of the Nissan on the passenger’s side and gone around. He’d opened her driver’s door and let her tumble out onto the gravel of the parking lot. And then he’d—

  On the sidewalk, two figures were materializing out of the darkness, coming toward him. They would see him: one man in a Buick, just before midnight. They would see him, and they would remember.

  But, desperate revelation, he was suddenly immobilized, somehow held prisoner, unable to move until the other images had registered, a succession of freeze-frames: Lisa, sprawled on the gravel as inert and shapeless as a bundle of old clothing…

  Lisa’s ankles in his hands as, careful of the blood, he dragged her body faceup, arms spread wide, away from the car and into the nearby underbrush…

  Lisa’s eyes, open so incredibly wide in the moonlight, as if, surely, she could see deep into his secret self and would surely remember.

  3

  JESSICA FARR CHECKED HER watch: time, seven twenty-five, exactly nineteen minutes and ten seconds on the lap counter. Fifty seconds, then, remained yet to jog, rounding out the mandatory twenty minutes, three times a week. An hour and a half, actually a few minutes more, would then remain in which to get in her car, drive home, shower, dress, feed Max his early morning snack, briefly skim the New York Times and the Sentinel before, at nine o’clock, booting up the computer and modem, ready to deal with her people in Los Angeles.

  Forty seconds. Conscious of plenty in reserve, celebrating this bright and shimmering day, she picked up the pace for a strong finish. Beside her, tongue lolling, Max was barely keeping up. Once the dog had actually walked the last several yards, completely pooped. At age six, the standard poodle was—

  Suddenly Max was veering off, making for the low-growing scrub that separated the jogging path from the beach and the parking lot just ahead. Seven seconds remained. Sprinting, kicking at full stride, she swept into the parking lot. God, she could feel the rush, those last triumphant yards, all out. At the car now she pulled up, be
gan slowly jogging in place, coming down.

  “Max—here, Max.”

  She waited for the dog to show himself, then repeated the command. Nothing.

  “Max! Come!”

  And then she saw the tip of his tail, just visible above the scrub. He’d found something concealed in the tangled vegetation. A hundred dollars spent on obedience training, and still the damn dog obeyed commands only when it suited him. Angry, she strode the fifty feet to the edge of the graveled parking lot, then continued walking in the beach sand to the dog. Consequence: it would be necessary to empty sand from her jogging shoes, an aberration that would erode a time frame that, thanks to the poodle, was already skewed.

  “Max! Dammit!”

  But, with his head and shoulders buried in the vegetation, the dog was oblivious. Behind him now, she grasped his collar and yanked.

  Revealing, in the brambles, a human hand and wrist and part of a forearm.

  Muttering an obscenity, she released the dog. She stepped back, considered for a moment, then decided to sit in the sand, obliquely facing the exposed hand. Unpredictably, instead of returning to sniff the body, Max was sitting beside her, as if to reassure her that, somehow, it would be all right.

  4

  HASTINGS SMILED, NODDED TO the uniformed patrolman stationed at the entrance to the Hall’s underground parking garage. As the barrier came up the patrolman casually half saluted, returning Hastings’s smile. Hastings parked his Honda in his reserved stall, locked the car, began walking to the elevator. Ten minutes into the nine o’clock morning shift, this level of the garage was almost full.

  As he walked between the rows of cars, he realized that, God, he was looking for a particular white Toyota: Janet Collier’s car. He might have been a schoolboy again: a lovesick adolescent hoping to catch a glimpse of that one special girl.

  Five weeks ago, a small, sad man named Anton Rivak had invited Hastings into his apartment—and bolted the door behind them. Rivak had been a marginal suspect in the meticulously planned murders of five men. They’d talked for perhaps fifteen minutes before Hastings asked Rivak to account for his whereabouts during the preceding two hours, during the time the last of the murders had been committed. They’d been talking about Rivak’s beetle collection; with great pride, Rivak had shown Hastings one of the framed, cotton-covered display boards on which the beetles were impaled. When Hastings asked Rivak where he’d been earlier in the evening, the little man hadn’t answered. Instead, he’d taken a long-barreled .22 caliber Colt Woodsman from its hiding place behind the display board. For another fifteen minutes, with the pistol trained on Hastings, speaking very softly, Rivak had confessed to the murders. In the hallway outside Rivak’s door, two detectives were on backup: Janet Collier, on loan from Bunco, and Jim Pomeroy, Safes and Lofts. At the first hint of trouble, the detectives would come crashing through the door, guns drawn.

  But the first sign of trouble had been a shot: a single shot from the Woodsman that penetrated Rivak’s right temple. The little man had sighed once, slumped back in his chair, and silently died. In death, his eyes had remained fixed on his beetles.

  First Hastings had shouted that he was all right. Then he’d kicked the gun away from Rivak’s still-twitching hand. Then he’d gone to the door, unbolted it, let Janet Collier and Jim Pomeroy inside the apartment.

  The phone had been in the bedroom. Sitting on the bed, Hastings had made the calls to the coroner and the police lab. As he spoke into the phone, Janet had come to stand in the bedroom doorway. Turning toward her, Hastings could see it in her face: in the line of duty, this was her first dead body, with all the blood, and the empty eyes staring at nothing, and, worst of all, the odor of urine and excrement.

  There were no chairs in the tiny bedroom, only a double bed. Talking to Communications, Hastings patted the bed beside him; she should sit down before she fell down. Nodding, tremulously smiling, she accepted the offer. Finished with Communications, Hastings had remained seated, letting his gaze wander over the walls of Rivak’s bedroom. Three of the four walls were covered with framed displays of beetles, each board the same size and design as the one that had concealed the Woodsman. For a few awkward, stilted moments they’d talked about the beetles. Then, inevitably, they’d talked about Rivak, the meek little waiter who’d murdered five men because they’d had him fired from his job at Rabelais, the exclusive men’s club. Born in Hungary, his body misshapen at birth, Rivak had always been a victim. Except for his job and his beetle collection, he’d had nothing, meant nothing.

  Janet had never seen a body, Hastings had never witnessed a suicide: both of them had been shaken and were trying to conceal it.

  And then, still sitting beside him on the bed, she’d touched his hand. And she’d—

  “Frank,” a voice called out. “Hold the elevator, okay?”

  Turning, Hastings saw Jerry Kennealy, just locking the door of his vintage ’66 Mustang, lovingly restored.

  Conscious that he felt something like relief, Hastings waved in return. Yes, he’d hold the elevator.

  5

  AT THE INSPECTORS BUREAU reception desk, Hastings scanned his phone messages and slipped them into a thick file folder filled with interrogation reports, FBI workups, and documents from the crime lab and the coroner’s office.

  “Anything else?”

  Seated behind the desk, Millie Ralston said, “Lieutenant Friedman is having a root canal, I think. Anyhow, he’s at the oral surgeon. And Inspector Canelli was looking for you.”

  Hastings thanked her, went down the glass-walled hallway of the Bureau to his office. Seated at his desk, Canelli waved for attention. Hastings nodded, pointed down the hallway to his office. He unlocked the door, left it open for Canelli, dropped the file folder on his desk.

  In the doorway, Canelli said, “Lieutenant Friedman’s having a root canal. He says he’s planning to come in later this afternoon, unless he’s hurting too bad. He’s got to see the DA at three o’clock. Then he’ll come by here. He said to tell you.” Canelli was a big, swarthy, earnest man. Because he didn’t look like a cop or think like a cop or act like a cop, Canelli was Homicide’s premier stakeout specialist. In a pontificating mood, Friedman had once labeled Canelli an innocent abroad, the only Homicide detective in recent memory who periodically got his feelings hurt. Like Friedman, Canelli weighed about two hundred forty, not all of it muscle.

  “Okay—” Hastings nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Yessir. That’s what I really wanted to tell you. There’s a dead one out at Baker Beach, in the Presidio. I got it about ten minutes to nine, but I thought I’d wait for you.”

  Hastings glanced out into the inspectors’ squadroom. Of the thirteen men who worked Homicide, only three were at their desks. Three, plus Canelli.

  “Is the scene covered?”

  “No problem. There’s about four units there. Rafferty, from the Park Station, is in charge. They’ve got the tapes up, and everything, and there aren’t many rubberneckers around, especially at this time of day—a few dog walkers and some joggers, that’s about it. So everything’s cool. Some jogger, she found the body—or her dog, I guess. Rafferty’s holding them at the scene. The jogger’s pretty pissed about it. She’s very upscale, Rafferty says. Drives a BMW, and everything. She’s got a poodle, too. In fact, according to Rafferty, the poodle sniffed out the body.”

  “Why don’t you go out, get things started? I’ll call the lab and the ME. I’ve got maybe five other calls I’ve got to make. Then I’ll be out.”

  6

  HASTINGS PULLED THE UNMARKED car to the curb, opened the glove compartment. Except for a plastic-coated registration certificate, the compartment was empty. Someone had taken the city map, probably the same slob who’d left the floor littered with takeout food wrappers.

  Baker Beach…

  Drive to the foot of Thirty-fifth Avenue, he’d thought, enter the Presidio, turn left, and the beach was right there.

  Thirty-fifth Avenue?


  Or Twenty-fifth?

  Yes, dammit, Twenty-fifth. If it wasn’t Thirty-fifth, it must be Twenty-fifth. He signaled for the turn, found himself on Clement Street, driving east toward the green hills of the Presidio, a verdant contrast to the surrounding urban sprawl. Built in the nineteenth century, the Presidio originally had served to guard the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Now the Presidio was the garden-spot headquarters of the Sixth Army, plush duty for officers and enlisted men with retirement on their minds. One of San Francisco’s pleasant little surprises, Baker Beach offered a picture-postcard view of the Golden Gate Bridge, curving over the narrows and into the Marin County headlands to the north. Because Baker Beach was open to the public, it was policed by both the Sixth Army and the San Francisco police.

  Twenty-sixth was next, then Twenty-fifth. He signaled, made the turn. Yes, the waters of the bay were just down the hill, sparkling blue beneath a cloudless sky. Just out to sea, a container ship was maneuvering to pass beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

  At the bottom of the hill he turned into the Presidio, then turned down to the beach and the shoreline. In a graveled parking lot he saw the familiar array of official vehicles: the coroner’s van, the forensics van, two black-and-white sector cars, two MP cars, and Canelli’s unmarked cruiser. Yellow crime scene tape outlined a white Japanese sports coupe and bracketed the low shrubbery on the east border of the parking lot. On the beach, a few random figures strolled along the shoreline, a few dogs frisked at the water’s edge. Facing the taped-off section of low brush, Canelli stood with a lab technician. As Canelli pointed, the technician was nodding. Yes, he understood Canelli’s instructions. Out of long habit, Hastings took his plastic ID plaque from his jacket pocket, clipped it to his lapel. Sensing a superior officer’s presence at the scene, Canelli turned as Hastings approached. The two homicide detectives stepped carefully over the yellow tape, solemnly walked side by side to the white sports coupe, a Nissan 240 SX. According to protocol, the technicians drew back out of earshot, busying themselves at their work.