A Killing in China Basin - By Kirk Russell Page 0,7
to be unconscious. She got scared.’
‘When you started choking her?’ la Rosa asked, and Raveneau tried to catch her eye, tried to signal, just let him talk.
‘Yeah, the wire cut into her neck.’ He touched his neck to show where. ‘She moved around too much and started crying, and I didn’t want her to cry. I didn’t go there with her so she could start crying, so I tried to calm her down. I thought if she was unconscious for a little longer than usual she’d calm down.’
‘What do you mean more than usual?’ la Rosa asked, and Heilbron took a drink of Coke. ‘You wanted to relax her?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I pulled the wire tight until she stopped moving.’
‘When she stopped moving did you loosen it?’
‘No, I just kind of watched her.’
‘Weren’t you worried you would kill her?’
‘Not so much.’
‘Did you have sex with her?’
‘No, she was dead by then.’
‘You knew she was dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you feel for a pulse?’
‘No.’
Heilbron turned to Raveneau.
‘I threw everything in the bay.’
‘Show us where,’ Raveneau answered.
But Heilbron had another story to tell them first. He focused on la Rosa again, telling her about a woman he raped in San Jose. Neither Raveneau nor la Rosa revealed that they already knew San Jose detectives had questioned him about a rape two years ago. That came up when they ran his name before walking in to talk to him.
‘She had a flat tire. I helped her fix it. That was on a Sunday. She was back in these hills.’
At some point soon they’d have to read him his rights, Mirandize him, and with that he could request a lawyer. Raveneau liked to get the lawyer question out early so a defense lawyer couldn’t claim later his client hadn’t realized he was entitled to one. He studied Heilbron with a sense that something was off about his story, and Heilbron seemed to pick up on that, taking the conversation back to China Basin, telling them more about the wire around her neck – eye hook on one end of the wire so he could slide the other end through, pull it tight and release it easily.
They Mirandized him and Heilbron waved off having a lawyer. On the drive to China Basin he said he’d bought both the wire and the eye hook he had soldered on to it at Discount Builders on Mission Street. In China Basin he led them upstairs but to the wrong room. Maybe that was because the mattress wasn’t there any more. He got agitated. He wanted to leave the building and showed them where he had thrown her purse, phone, and ‘other things’ into the water.
Raveneau pulled a can of spray paint from the trunk of his car and marked a chunk of broken concrete for divers. Calling the divers in was problematic because now they were very skeptical about Heilbron’s account. His description of the victim was off. He dodged details, and on the ride back to the Hall he went dark on them. He went quiet.
But he did sign a confession and they booked him into jail. Raveneau figured they’d hold him all weekend and maybe as long as Tuesday afternoon, depending on what happened after San Jose detectives questioned him. Before they left him, Heilbron turned to la Rosa. ‘I read that article about you moving to Homicide.’
Raveneau knew there’d been some puff piece when la Rosa moved over from Vice. La Rosa didn’t acknowledge the comment. They left Heilbron with the jailers and upstairs learned that the San Jose police tracked him through one fingerprint left on the rim of a wheel. They were ready eighteen months ago to charge him with the rape of a woman who got a flat returning from a party late at night. He’d stopped and offered to help, assuring the woman that he worked in an auto shop, and then raped her in the back of the vehicle.
All they needed were DNA results from the victim’s swab, but somewhere along the way the swab samples taken the night of the rape got lost, and without DNA the district attorney’s office didn’t want any part of it, so the case went into limbo. A San Jose detective told la Rosa that the victim would no longer take their calls.
When la Rosa got off the phone with San Jose they drove down to meet the divers. Raveneau took his laptop. He filled out the search warrant application for Heilbron’s house as they waited