A Killing in China Basin - By Kirk Russell Page 0,81

very bright, as the guy that thinks up the ideas that change things. He thought he was going to be famous but I don’t think money ever really mattered to him.’

‘Because he already had it,’ la Rosa threw out, and Quinn didn’t respond. She held herself as though she was cold and stared at the floor until Raveneau said, ‘We’d like to go back to our office with you.’

‘I don’t want to go to a police station. Can we talk in your car?’

‘Sure.’

Raveneau sat in the backseat with her. In the front la Rosa took notes, her pen scratching on the pad she carried. Quinn spoke in a flat voice tinged by sadness.

‘In those days Alex was pretty wild and I was the more conservative one, but we both partied a lot. John and Cody were best friends and they were in a hotel bar together the night we met them. We were out cruising. Everything that happened after was my fault and I’m going to tell you why. I’ve made up my mind to tell you.

‘We met in a bar on Spear Street that isn’t there any more. That night Alex sort of paired off with Cody and I went with John. Alex and Cody ended up going home together. Cody was very aggressive with women. He was very good looking. They went home together and did whatever they did, and John and I talked until late, and then we took this long walk along the Embarcadero and past Fisherman’s Wharf and all the way out to Fort Mason and the Golden Gate Bridge.’

‘Pretty good walk,’ Raveneau said.

‘Yeah, and we saw the sunrise from under the bridge and then had this great breakfast, but what we had was more intellectual than anything else and we were too young to realize it wasn’t enough. We would have made great friends but we weren’t meant to be married. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I do,’ la Rosa said from the front seat.

‘We got married six months later. By the time the affair started with Cody I was very angry with John, and the marriage was less than a year old and failing. John had started snorting a lot of cocaine and his temper was totally out of control. He was also drinking too much, and there was the gun thing. I don’t remember what started it. I think it was because of a carjacking in San Francisco. This was right when all that sort of stuff started to happen and Cody and John had sports cars they worried about getting stolen.

‘Cody already knew how to shoot. John didn’t. They went shopping and bought guns one Saturday so no one could take their precious cars. I didn’t want the guns in the apartment, so they kept them in their cars. The day John got killed they’d been out to a shooting range in the afternoon.’

That was in the murder file. Raveneau had read it. Whitacre and Bates confirmed that Stoltz and Reinert had been at in indoor range in Fremont.

‘I really fell in love with Cody. John’s new cocaine habit and his jealousy and insecurity were oppressive. I hated coming home. But Cody was all energy and fun. I didn’t know then how angry he could get. He had a beautiful body and he was so bright. He was already well known in certain circles for the work he was doing. John looked up to him and I thought he was a god.’

‘What were you doing for work at the time?’

‘I quit my job when we got married. I wasn’t doing anything and that was part of the problem. I was living off my husband and sort of despised myself for staying with him just because I had no job or place to go.’

‘And what about Alex? What was she doing for work?’

‘She did temp work but always had plenty of money. She told me once that she’d inherited money. Another time it was because she’d come up with an idea for online bookkeeping that got patented, but I’m sure that wasn’t true, and I’m sure you know by now she was into credit fraud.’

‘When did you know?’

‘Not until after John was dead, but she never really ever talked to me about the credit cards. I just sort of figured it out when she offered to get me a new identity. After Cody went to prison Alex made me into someone else.’

She paused and looked down at her hands. Raveneau looked at