Killer Karma

14

Cole slammed a fist down on the desk, but the frustration of the silence and marshmallow feel only made him angrier. Shit, shit, shit. He scowled at the back of Irah’s neck. If he was too late to save Sara, he reflected savagely, at least he could make Irah pay. What would happen if he put his hand through her spinal cord? He affected electrical current. Would that short-circuit nerves…stop Irah’s heart?

The thought jerked him up short. He recoiled from it, appalled at himself. Killing Irah was no answer. Besides being murder, making him as cold-blooded as she was, it denied Sara justice. If he could do nothing else, he owed her that…cleared of being his killer, her own killer arrested-

Cole caught at himself again. “Hey…whoa, man!” He was letting an emotional rush to judgement trample what brains he had left. “You need to step back and take a breath.”

Despite his gut feeling and the circumstantial evidence, Sara might not be dead. Alone or accompanied, whatever her general condition, she had to leave the office under her own power. With a good fifteen pounds on Irah, she could not have been carried out. Certainly not carried without attracting attention. She must have been walked out. For the terror in the garage to be hers, she had to reach there alive. And she went home.

Not necessarily, came a thought. Irah could have been there to make it appear that Sara fled.

He circled through the desk and around behind her computer. Leaning his forearms on the monitor, he frowned down at her. “Was it you?”

The voice mail message for Gao made more sense if Irah left it. He did not see absence excuses even occurring to someone running for her life. But…he needed to find out for certain about Sara.

He was certain Irah shot him. He also knew nothing right now that would make Hamada consider her a suspect. He had zip for motive. That disappeared with the magic words “fruit of the poisoned tree.” Nothing would have come of Sara’s distress call, either, if Irah turned his call into a dismissal…telling him she was all right but fired and anxious to forget ever meeting him. He would have happily forgotten ever meeting Sara Benay.

One possibility remained to check out. Anyone might kill in overwhelming anger or fear, but stone killers did not come out of the blue. There had to be indications elsewhere in her life of a capacity to kill. More than in target shooting or even her enthusiasm for video carnage.

Maybe something would turn up running her through the computer.

“See you in Hell, punk,” Irah said to the computer, and in a voice that sound like some British actor, went on, “Too right, Captain Carrasco. Prepare to clear sector D-9.”

Her glee made Cole want to spoil her fun. What could he do to a regular computer screen? He spread a hand across it and looked away long enough to sink through the surface. A pleasant buzz ran up from his hand. To his satisfaction, the area within the outline of his hand swirled in chaotic color.

Irah started. “What the…”

“Enjoy your game.” Leaning down toward her, he intoned, “I’ll…be…back.”

Then he pulled his hand back and concentrated on a mental image of Homicide. Could he repeat his ziptrip there?

Apparently not. After three tries, he still remained in Irah’s office. Well, he could always go to Burglary first.

That worked. Shaking his head, Cole stumped out into the corridor. Was he ever going to figure this out!

Wait…including the view out Razor’s window finally made that ziptrip work. Maybe it would work for Homicide, too?

They had a view of the Bay Bridge. Though just down the hall, he pictured that along with Homicide and gave the ziptrip a try. The corridor morphed into Homicide. Cole knocked on Hamada’s desk for luck. Maybe there was hope for him yet.

The computer gods smiled anyway. Homicide’s computer sat idle. He hoped it stayed unneeded long enough for him to work.

Standing up at the keyboard, he struggled through menus to the search program. Though it cost him time and the aggravation of extra effort, he ran Irah first as Irah Flaxx. That came up negative. A disappointment but not really surprising. If she had been using Carrasco since returning to San Francisco, all the records in the Flaxx name were from her juvie days.

He typed in Carrasco. Only to be disappointed again. She came up clean…local, state, and NCIC. He expected no felony or misdemeanor convictions prior to her Citizens’ Academy course. They would not have accepted her otherwise. Something later pointing to a homicidal personality would have been nice to find, though. There was nothing…not even a speeding ticket. She had passed the firearms safety course required for gun ownership, which he expected, but of course the permit did not specify what firearms she owned.

The computer did produce one surprise, a hit on her name as the victim of a felony. Seven years ago…a burglary, ironically. The items lost, an antique string of pearls valued at fifteen thousand dollars and a trophy for an amateur stock car race, marked it as one of the Old Spice Burglar’s jobs.

Cole always counted himself lucky that Old Spice ignored the Mission. The bastard had been driving Gayle Harris and Stan Fontaine crazy for almost eight years now. Their only description of him aside from his choice of aftershave — a muscular male of below average height — came from a homeowner who lost a brief wrestling match with him. He typically entered Richmond, Pacific Heights, and Seacliff homes at night. The family woke in the morning to find their security systems defeated, home safes open, and valuables laid out in a display of what could have been stolen if the burglar wished. He took only a few of the most valuable articles that could be easily carried — and easily fenced — and one item at the other end of the spectrum, with little or no value. Presumably as a souvenir.

Rear vision spotted Ellen Bredeson, Homicide’s lone female inspector, heading for the computer. He tracked her progress while working to exit the program, and as it closed, noticed Charlie Dennis across the room beyond her, grinned triumphantly into his phone.

Dennis jiggled the switch hook and punched in a new number, then leaned back in his chair. “Tex, how’s it going?”

Cole stepped out of Bredeson’s way and hurried toward Dennis.

“Shit.” Dennis grimaced. “So maybe it was a lover’s quarrel. You’ll be interested in what I came up with on Benay, then.” He gave Hamada the same information Cole had found on the Narco bust. “But here’s the interesting part. This Tony Novello’s name rang a bell so I ran him, too, and guess what.”

Cole winced at the satisfaction in Dennis’s voice. He obviously thought that an acquaintance who killed her boyfriend made for a case of Sara doing the same.

At the end of his recitation, Dennis listened, then said, “If she does, it isn’t legal. There’s no gun permit for her.”

Cole moved around the desk close to the receiver.

At the other end of the line, Hamada grunted. “Too bad. That would give us probable cause for searching her apartment. With the manager following us around, we couldn’t do more than walk through.”

“‘We’, huh.” Dennis smiled. “How’d you talk your way into her apartment? Welfare check?”

“Well of course,” Hamada said righteously. “Young woman says she’s flying home and doesn’t make it. No one’s heard from her for days. She could’ve had an accident and be lying unconscious in there.” Hamada paused. “The manager was real understanding.”

Dennis and Cole both grinned. If the manager had not been there, Hamada might have checked to see if Sara were lying in a desk drawer. Anything significant he found would be left untouched, of course, until he had a warrant that let him “discover” it legally.

“She took out of here in one hell of a hurry.”

Dennis propped his feet up on the desk. “Would you like to know where to?”

Hope tightened Cole’s chest. Maybe she was who packed?

“That would be helpful, yes,” came Hamada’s dry reply.

“How about Key West…first class ticket on American, one way…”

Cole grinned in relief.

“…Friday morning out of San Jose.”

San Jose! Dismay rocked Cole back. No way could it be coincidence that she flew out of the same airport where his car was found. Shit. Instead of being a victim, she was involved in his death. But then, why the terror? Maybe she was not involved but witnessed his murder and somehow struck a deal with Irah. Irah drove her to San Jose and put her on a plane for the other end of the country.

“With her Mastercard,” Dennis said. He listened, then sighed. “I’ll get on it. Just for the Mastercard, right, until we know what other credit cards she has?”

Another possibility hit Cole. Irah told Flaxx she could pass herself off as Sara. Maybe she was so confident because she had done it once already? If she produced Sara’s driver’s license and credit card at the airline counter, would the ticket agent question her identity or take a close look at the driver’s license? Both were attractive blondes, and attractive women tended to look similar…as the cookie cutter babes in TV shows demonstrated. Most civilians erroneously focused on details like hair color and style in identifying people.

Had Dennis determined whether “Sara Benay”actually took the flight? Damn it, he wished he could ask! If she boarded, it could be Sara, but if not…if Irah had Sara’s ID and credit cards… His gut knotted. Foreboding beat at him.

He had Irah’s address from the computer. Time to see what her home told him about her. He headed for the outside wall and through it.

A small voice in him started to murmur about due process and civil rights, but he stamped it into silence. What did a dead man care about those. Besides, he reflected, running up to the roof… if Irah killed Sara and him, she had certainly violated their civil rights.

He sighted west on the Sutro Tower. It stood south of Irah’s Richmond address, but as the highest point in the city, he ought to be able to go line-of-sight almost anywhere from there.

Seconds later, standing on the topmost crossbar of the tower, he contemplated landmarks in the vicinity of her address. Spreckels Lake in Golden Gate Park lay even with avenue numbers in the mid-thirties, which put it just blocks from her. He aimed for the lake. After jogging across its surface dodging boats, then out of the park, he had clear line-of-sight…down along the park on Fulton, then up the avenues.

Like the other houses around it, Irah’s…sunny yellow with darker front door and garage door…consisted of two floors stacked over a garage. A more expensive house than when municipal employees first populated the area, but modest compared to Flaxx’s pile of architecture. The entry hall had a keypad for a top home security system — a result of her burglary, no doubt — but her living and dining rooms looked as though she were as indifferent to her surroundings here as she was at the office. The livingroom had just a small furniture suite by the front windows…no pictures on the walls, no plants, and none of the personal clutter that accumulated in his own livingroom. Not a home, Cole mused, a bivouac. Instead of a table, the dining room had a treadmill and a Bowflex. Dishes in a drainer on the kitchen counter indicated she did use the kitchen. Hoping she did not sleep in a bivouac, too, he headed upstairs.

To his relief, it proved to be where she really lived.

Pulling down walls had turned the entire floor into one large master suite. Hassocks, reading lamps, and big, deep chairs furnished the sitting area up by the front windows. Down one wall, bookshelves flanked both sides of a plasma screen TV/media center. Against the opposite wall sat an antique rolltop desk — closed — and curio cabinet crammed with kitsch. Between them a table held a printer, with a shredder beneath it. Cole peered down past the shredder into the catch-basket. Damn. If only he could pick things up.

To forget that frustration he checked out the bookshelves…and blinked in amazement. He would not have taken her for a reader…and even less as someone likely to choose heavy reading. Aside from some mystery novels, college level texts filled one section of shelves…covering literature, history, psychology, and general science. Judging by the multiple bookmarks sticking out of the tops, she had read at least portions of them all. Making up for not finishing high school, it appeared. A framed G.E.D. certificate stood on one shelf.

Other shelves astonished him even more. The books, video tapes, and DVD’s — both commercially produced and home-recorded — looked straight out of a police library…true-crime studies, profiles of American and British police departments, the California Criminal Code, texts on locksmithing and safes, on security systems, autopsies, firearms and ballistics, crime scene investigation, the art of interrogation, arson investigation. He did not own that much law enforcement related material. Her interest in law enforcement had not stopped with the Citizens’ Academy.

At the bedroom end, the wall opposite her bed had been turned into a photo gallery. The photographs hung above a table displaying a large model of a classic Mustang GT…dark green, like the one Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt. He looked over the photos.

And found a shrine. The “model car” was actually a custom funeral urn…flanked by a memorial book and a framed service program with the name Scott Ledonald Carrasco. Dates on the program cover indicated Carrasco had died eight years ago at age twenty-four.

Which probably explained Irah’s return to San Francisco.

All the photographs featured the man in the surfboard photo. At first glance they appeared to be 8 x 10 enlargements of ordinary snapshots…showing Carrasco standing beside or sitting behind the wheel of various cars, and Carrasco drinking with Irah and buddies in bars or around a fire on the beach. Excitement tingled in Cole. Tattoos on the buddies screamed jailhouse…and the vehicles looked like a shopping list for Gone In Sixty Seconds…a BMW Z8, Mercedes SL, Porsche 911, Lamborghini Diablo, series E Jaguar, Dodge Viper, a Mustang GT.

Cole itched to run Carrasco through the computer. Not that being married to someone with a record and felonious friends made a case for Irah being a killer. He grimaced. Unfortunately nothing he had seen so far indicated anything criminal. Not even her library.

He turned away to check her closet.

Once it had been ordinary sized, he guessed, but taking out the back wall gained access to an adjoining bedroom and gave her a huge walk-in. Clothes racks ran the length of one wall, opposite a bank of drawers and shelves. One shelf had medium and long-hair wigs on mannequin heads. At the far end stood a big armoire and a theater-type makeup table with lights around the mirror.

Looking the two pieces over, he felt that tingle again. Furniture like this usually had rim locks, the kind operated with a skeleton-type key. These had been fitted with cylinder locks. What did she want to protect…or hide?

Closing his eyes, he walked into the armoire. When he opened his eyes again, he stood in the dark and almost up to his knees in the drawer section. Where despite the dark he saw just fine. Not that there was much to see…just a gun safe on the floor at one end and frayed jeans and a battered leather bomber jacket on hangers at the other end, with equally battered work boots sitting under them. What made this worth extra security? True, she had the gun safe, but it had its own lock, operated with a key pad like his at home.

He waded toward the clothing. The jacket hung with a bulkiness that suggested the presence of something under it on the hanger. To check that out, he passed through to the far side.

Opening his eyes again, Cole found himself looking at a faded Kansas City Royals baseball cap hanging on a hook. His scalp prickled. He had seen a cap like that in photographs taken of onlookers at Flaxx fires…and the desk clerk and other guests at the Kijurian’s hotel described him as wearing a Royals cap. A Royals cap, plaid shirt, and…a leather bomber jacket.

Cole spun around to the jacket. A plaid shirt hung draped over the lower bar of the hanger. This had to be the Kijurian costume. Who wore it? Irah had the clothes…but everyone who claimed to have seen Kijurian described him as stocky, which Irah definitely was not. Then he spotted the reason for the jacket’s bulk…body armor hanging under it…not the bullet proof type law enforcement wore but the bulkier protective vest he had seen on bull riders. Like the one Irah wore in her bull-riding photograph. That vest under the jacket could make her appear stocky. What a tidy way for Flaxx to torch his stores…keep it all in the family.

Irah’s face, though, looked nothing like the individual photographed in the fire crowd or that described at the hotel. Even discounting the bristling mustache and eyebrows, the Kijurian face was broad, Slavic, jowly.

Cole backed out of the armoire and eyed the makeup table. What was the movie where bit-part characters came on screen at the end and pulled off false faces to reveal themselves as famous actors? The List of Adrian Messenger. Could Irah create herself a different face like that? Were her supplies what she had carefully locked up?

Too bad he had no true sense of feel that let him reach in the drawers and explore the contents. Then it occurred to him that maybe her could look in the drawers.

He bent over and pushed his face through tabletop. The shallowness of the upper drawers limited his range of sight. To check contents took side-to-side sweeps, making him feel like someone reading a book through a loupe. But passing from cosmetics in the middle drawer to one of the side drawers, he found a salt-and-pepper mustache in a plastic box, and more hair the same color in another box. Yes! Those could be Kijurian’s mustache and eyebrows.

Cole knelt to lean into the large lower drawer. It contained a stack of round boxes…containing hair, he found as he pressed down through them. Wigs? Excitement mounting in him, he shuffled over to the big drawer on the opposite side. Among the boxes, cans, and bottles there, one word leaped out: latex! The material movie makeup artists used to create false faces.

He jumped to his feet and raced out to check the bookshelves and confirm that Irah had books on theater makeup. There was also a videotape labeled Ex-spy/secrets of disguises. Which meant she had the knowledge and materials to make herself into Kijurian. He would love to see a face recognition program compare her to Kijurian.

Staring at some books on locks and security systems, it occurred to him…maybe Flaxx kept more than arson in the family. One of the problems in making the burglary case against him was the total silence on the street about him looking for men to pull the jobs. No wonder, if little sister could do it. Who knew the store security systems better? She was slim enough to fit through the small rear windows of stores broken into that way, and limber enough to hide in a small space waiting for closing time, as happened in other stores.

Cole hurried back into the closet and stuck his head into the drawer portion of the armoire. It held rolls of electrical wire and electrical tape, along with a can of polyurethane foam and a black, child-sized backpack. The jumble of items in the small space of the backpack played hell with trying see what was there. Going down through it, eyeball to item, he did make out needle-nose pliers, a small roll of the electrical wire, more tape, another can of polyurethane foam, and a rolled bundle that could be lock picks.

Grinning, he sat back on his heels. The pack’s contents needed to be spread out for a good examination, but it sure as hell looked like a burglar kit to him. What a piece of work Irah was…big brother’s own personal in-house department of dirty tricks. No wonder Flaxx tolerated some attitude. It made for a tight, secure conspiracy…brother, sister, and devoted henchman.

Cole’s satisfaction faded. The only murder the Kijurian outfit and burglar tools pointed to was the firefighter’s. He needed more evidence to show that Irah killed him, and maybe Sara.

The murder weapon would be a start. He leaned into the armoire once more, this time into the gun safe. To his disappointment, all he could see were four zippered gun pouches. Seeing whether one of them held a Glock had to wait for a search. He stood and headed out through the bedroom, fighting uneasiness. In Irah’s place, he would have thrown the Glock in the bay. He could only hope she hung on to it. He needed that gun. Right now, it looked like all the evidence he had against her.

As he crossed the sitting area, the curio cabinet caught Cole’s eye. She had a cylinder lock on it, too.

Connections crackled in his brain. Cross-dressing…burglary…kitsch. Cole ran to the cabinet and peered at the jumble on the shelves. He had barely glanced at the collection before…registered the Mardi Gras beads, a scruffy Princess Leia action figure, and a prancing model horse with a long pink mane and tail…and classified the stuff as childhood treasures and accumulated tchotchkes. Now he took a closer look and bells clanged. He had seen such items Gayle Harris and Phil Braff’s list of Old Spice’s souvenir picks. An armless Barbie doll, flat stones glued together and painted to look like a frog, a snow globe with the Olympic rings and a pagoda, a letter opener in the shape of a miniature samurai sword, a cast metal figure of a jumping horse and rider.

It appeared Irah did not confine burglary to the Flaxx stores.

No wonder Gayle and Braff’s were chasing their tails. Struggling in the dark with an athletic opponent who bested him really screwed up that homeowner’s perception of his opponent. And Irah burglarized herself for, what…cover? Or maybe to study the investigation process, the better to-

Another thought cut across that one, reverberating in him. Irah takes souvenirs.

Feverishly, Cole began studying the shelves even more closely. That was how to tie her to his murder, find a personal article of his here. Or of Sara’s. He hoped there was nothing of Sara’s, but while looking for something of his, he tried not to overlook anything that might be hers. The problem was guessing what that might be. Except for her butterfly passion, he knew so little about her. None of the shelves had a butterfly.

None of the shelves had anything he recognized as his, either.

He frowned irritably at the cabinet and started the search over. She must have something of his here! Not those handcuffs on the bottom shelf. They were hinged and his had a chain. Item by item, shelf by shelf, he examined the contents of the cabinet a second time. And a third. When that found nothing, either, Cole backed off and looked around the room. Where else could she be keeping souvenirs.

Maybe the rolltop desk?

He put his head into it. One drawer contained a pair of handcuffs with a chain, but he had no way to identify them as his. His had no personalizing marks. Nothing else visible to him in the drawers looked significant or incriminating. A laptop in the rolltop section was closed and inaccessible.

Backing away, he took one more look around. Frustration hissed through him. “I guess you won this round, Irah.” For everything here, there was still no proof whether Sara was dead or alive, and no hard evidence against Irah for murder. He gritted his teeth. “But you’ve left evidence somewhere…and I will find it!”