A Killing in China Basin - By Kirk Russell Page 0,16

turned north. He worked through Stoltz’s chronology on the drive home.

Checked in at La Playa at 6:15 p.m.

Dinner at Anton & Michel 7:30 p.m. reso, paid by Visa, first drink at bar 7:21, bill rung out at 8:50.

Checks out of La Playa at 7:00 a.m. next morning.

Gas at Sand City Chevron 7:42 a.m.

Maid cleans room at La Playa, 11:00 a.m. Remakes bed. Replaces shampoo and soap samples.

Two of the times mattered: when the dinner bill was closed out and when he checked out of La Playa the next morning. The window between was a little under twelve hours, more than enough time to leave the restaurant, drive three hours north, murder Whitacre, and return to the hotel to check out at 7:00 a.m. So the alibi was valid, but not solid and digging deeper would have to wait.

He drove home and didn’t walk in the door until two in the morning. He ate a sandwich and drank a flat half bottle of beer sitting in the refrigerator. He left his notes on a counter in the kitchen. He showered. As he lay down he reached for his phone and sent a text to la Rosa, ‘I’m back.’

THIRTEEN

The next morning Raveneau and la Rosa put on the booties, spacesuits, caps, masks – the whole get-up – before going in to watch their Jane Doe autopsied. The medical examiner quietly catalogued female, five foot four, one hundred twenty-three pounds, of mixed race, likely Asian/Caucasian, black hair, brown eyes, significant large black-colored moles high on the right side of her back, a tattoo of a diamond on the heel of her left foot, two inch scar on her left knee, another small tatt low on her back and one on her scalp inside the hairline. Approximate age: thirty. A tiny stud piercing in her left nostril was removed. Wounds: ligature marks at neck, hemorrhaging at eyes and tongue, scalp wound at right temple, bruising at the back of the neck, another bruise, two inches by one inch, on the right thigh just above the knee. An abrasion on the right elbow that likely occurred shortly before death, possibly from a fall. There was more bruising where ankle and wrist restraints had been removed.

Raveneau listened to the medical examiner’s quiet progress, heard him say ‘no evidence of sexual assault.’ He looked at the gray skin of her face and tried again to guess the reason she was in the China Basin building. There weren’t any needle marks, nothing indicated drug use. Prostitution or a sexual liaison was possible, and his guess was still that she came in through the gate with her assailant. One of them had a key. He and la Rosa would need to interview Heilbron again, as well as the realtor.

As they cut her open he and la Rosa left the room. They’d get the rest from the report. They didn’t need to watch her liver weighed.

‘What do you make of the tattoo on her heel?’ he asked after they’d stripped off the suits and were outside in the cool breeze of the corridor leading back to the Hall.

‘I don’t make anything of it.’

‘Maybe we can track down her name through the tattoos.’

‘That seems like another goose chase.’

‘Another one?’

‘Well, like one.’

Their Jane Doe’s sketch had run in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, but how many people read the newspaper any more? Still, at Homicide they had new calls, new tips. In the late morning an email tip on a different case arrived via the ‘Contact Us’ link on the SFPD website. The tip named two kids who’d allegedly witnessed a stabbing outside a club in the Mission several weeks ago. Raveneau called the high school and confirmed that both young men were seniors and at school today. At noon they drove over, met with a dean first, and then one of the two young men, who immediately denied having been at the club that night.

La Rosa took the lead with the second young man and impressed Raveneau. She was soft spoken and easy with the boy, a sixteen-year-old named Robert Fuentes. She was more relaxed and confident than with Heilbron. She’d also changed her look, cut her hair short this weekend, turning her proud face more handsome and mannish, something she told Raveneau on the drive here that she regretted. She told him something else this morning, that her roots were upper middle class. Her father was a knee surgeon, her mother in marketing, and both tried and failed to talk