A Killing in China Basin - By Kirk Russell Page 0,4

and rolled her prints, putting on latex gloves and inking her fingers with the ME looking over them.

Shortly after nine that morning they ran her prints through the local AFIS system. When they didn’t get a hit, they ran them through both the state and the western states systems. Nothing there either and Raveneau suggested they return to China Basin and start knocking on doors.

But no one had a female employee who hadn’t showed up this morning, nor had anyone seen anything unusual, though one owner asked, ‘What’s unusual any more?’

At noon, the bars and clubs began to open their service doors and they questioned the bartenders and owners they could find. No one remembered the shimmering rich purple shirt that they carried in an evidence bag.

Perhaps, Raveneau suggested to an assistant manager at the next club, one of your bartenders remembers two women, one with a purple silk shirt and high Asiatic cheekbones, black hair cut back from her face, a tiny stud in her left nostril, and her friend at the bar with her. Maybe they met a man or a couple of men and paired off.

They worked a wider radius and a bartender on Folsom Street, a young guy with spiked hair and a pallid face, saw something familiar in the shirt, but then couldn’t quite find the memory.

When they returned to Homicide they put together a press release without a photo but with a description of the victim and her clothing. La Rosa walked it over to the PIO, the Public Information Officer, so they wouldn’t miss the news cycle.

Late in the afternoon Raveneau returned to the building. He might find something. He might not. He didn’t expect to. But it had become his habit to return alone when the scene was quiet. Over the years he had even come to the irrational belief that the spirits of the dead linger a short while.

He felt sorrow as he walked through the building trying to see why she was here. If she was local and there was family or others who had cared for her, then there was a good chance they’d hear from someone soon. Bringing her killer to justice was the responsibility he and la Rosa carried. For anyone who had loved her, they could do little more. And a murder conviction seldom brought closure. Closure was a well-meaning idea capitalized on by radio self-help hosts and talk-show psychologists promoting books. The only true way to free your heart from a terrible act was forgiveness, and forgiveness was one of the most difficult things for a human being. It got bandied about as if common, but it wasn’t. Forgiveness was a kind of transcendence, beyond justice and maybe beyond most all of us.

FOUR

Toward dusk, as Raveneau returned to the homicide office, Cody Stoltz joked with the staff at a Starbucks in Palo Alto as he waited for his macchiato. Then on his way to a table he stopped briefly to check in with a middle-aged woman who’d been laid off and was looking for a job. He met her last time he was here. Same as today, she’d had her laptop open and was working on her resume. She seemed grateful that he took the time to say hello.

When he sat down it was at a corner table. He pulled out his laptop and used Google Earth to find Whitacre’s house. He wasn’t necessarily ever going to go anywhere with it, but it gave him pleasure to see Whitacre’s dumpy little stucco box with its faux Spanish look. Whitacre’s neighborhood wasn’t far from the freeway, so maybe the exhaust had caused Whitacre’s cancer. He hoped so. The lawn was dry, shrubs ratty, the pine tree sickly and out of place. Whitacre’s old American relic of a car sat in the driveway.

Past the car was a fence. On a long bike ride he once checked out the fence and gate. The fence was redwood, silver-gray with age. A couple of flagstones led from the white concrete of the driveway to the gate. Through the gate was a door to the kitchen. It was a nowhere house on a nowhere block in the bleak life Whitacre lived. But none of that changed what Whitacre had done.

FIVE

When the homicide detail moved from Room 450 on the fourth floor to Room 561 on the fifth floor, the difference was more than just moving up a floor in the gray monolith of the Hall of Justice. In the old office,