Marcia Muller - Locked In

“It was set up to look like a murder-suicide, but I don’t think it was. More likely a double homicide.”

He went on to tell me what he and Mick had witnessed at the Spindrift Lodge, ending with, “You know I’ve been investigating possible malfesance at city hall for the mayor’s office. I think these killings are connected to that.”

I remembered the case. One of the mayor’s closest aides and confidants, Jim Yatz, had summoned me to his office in early June and asked me to take on an undercover operation. He didn’t specifically know what the mayor was looking for, but there was some concern about certain confidential documents going missing. Yatz provided me with a list of them; they seemed innocuous enough to me: drafts of general plans for city land use, an updated rent control proposition, budget proposals. Some of the documents had been handwritten in draft, others were computer files that had subsequently been deleted. I offered the services of our computer forensics department to recover them, but Yatz turned that down. Find out who was doing it, that was all the mayor wanted.

Yatz, a burly, dark-haired man in a well-tailored blue suit, had struck me as poorly informed about the missing documents and the mayor’s concerns. And he was a gatekeeper-no way I was going to get in to see the mayor personally, even though I’d met him a number of times at environmental fund-raisers Hy and I had attended. Finally, though, I decided we’d take the case, if for no other reason than to protect the city’s administration, which, for the most part, I supported.

Since I was too well known around the Bay Area, I suggested to Yatz that Craig handle the investigation. But after he and I met with Yatz, we decided Craig had too many contacts in city government to go unrecognized either; he would supervise and send in someone else to do the actual fieldwork. Diane D’Angelo, our newest hire, was his choice because of her polish and business background.

For two weeks Diane worked in the mayor’s office as a temporary replacement for his executive secretary, who was on vacation. She saw nothing out of the ordinary, and no documents disappeared until her last day there. This one was classified as a confidential communication between Amanda Teller and the mayor; no details of its contents were given to us. I ended my direct involvement at that point, though I’d kept myself apprised by reading Craig’s reports, which basically posited that someone was playing political games of no consequence.

Well, games or not, this one had had monumental consequences. Amanda Teller, a forty-year-old woman with an impressive record of service to the community, and Paul Janssen, age fifty-two, a maverick who was challenging the status quo in our mired-down state government, were both dead. And under circumstances that could destroy their legacies.

Craig went on, “Do you recognize the name Harvey Davis?”

Amanda Teller’s campaign manager and a close aide. I blinked.

“Three weeks ago he contacted me. He’d heard I was working for the mayor and said that he had information that would shake up local government. He didn’t want money for it and he didn’t want to be named as the one who blew the whistle. He passed along minor details about Teller-with whom he seemed very disillusioned. Frankly, I thought he was getting off on acting like he had important inside information. Then on Friday he told me Teller and Janssen were scheduled to meet at Big Sur yesterday. Now they’re both dead, Davis, too.”

Craig continued his narrative, telling me about the Davis hit and his subsequent visit to the man’s condo. When he detailed the explicit sexual content of the DVDs he’d found there my senses reeled and I went into a kind of brain lock.

Craig said, “I don’t know where he got those DVDs, but I suspect Teller had copies, too. The conversation between her and Janssen that I recorded reeks of blackmail.”

I just stared at him.

Mick said, “She’s exhausted. Let’s come back in the morning.”

I’m not exhausted, just shocked. Because of that investigation I did for Amanda Teller a year ago, I may have set this thing in motion. And I’ve got no way of communicating what I know.

“… Right,” Craig said. He stood. “Tonight Mick and I will go over the DVDs and my surveillance tapes. We’ll be back tomorrow with a more detailed report. We’ll also play the videos for you.”

I blinked, then closed my eyes. I needed time to process this.

Feet clanging on metal-my feet going up the catwalk at the pier. Echoes resonating off the flat roof.

Elusive, flickering light. Sudden motion.

Collision with a strong body. Falling, reaching out.

Fingertips grazing metal.

Flash!

Chains?

Pain. Darkness.

Now. A life without speech or motion.

The silent scream welled up, and I cursed what I’d become.

Flashing lights disturbed the dusk as she drove along Twentieth Avenue in the city’s normally peaceful Richmond district, going to her appointment with Haven Dietz. She felt a prickling at the base of her spine as she realized the emergency vehicles were congregated at Dietz’s three-story brick apartment house.

People milled around outside the police barriers. Julia pulled her car into a red zone near a fire hydrant and ran down the sidewalk, pushed past gawkers, then stopped when she saw a gurney with a body bag being loaded into an ambulance. A young, heavy-set cop was standing guard behind the yellow crime scene tape. She went up to him, and… oh, shit.

Matthew Griffin. He used to work out of the Mission district precinct, and he’d busted her two times for prostitution.

He recognized her at once. “Julia Rafael. What’re you doing here?”

She took out one of her agency business cards and extended it to him. “Working. A woman who lives in that building is my client.”

Surprisingly, he took a long look at the card. “I heard you went straight. That’s a good agency. McCone has always been somebody who takes a chance on people. How’s she doing since the shooting?”

“About the same. She’s aware, but can’t move or speak.”

“Jesus, what a shame.”

He didn’t know the half of it. Shar had given her the chance of a lifetime, had stood by her when she almost blew it. She owed her-and then some.

Julia let out a deep breath, asked, “Who’s the victim?”

“Woman named Haven Dietz.”

“Oh, no…”

“She your client?”

“Yes.”

He raised the tape. “That man over there in the black coat is Lt. Dave Morrison. Tell him what you know about this.”

She ducked under the tape, moved forward. Griffin said, “Julia?”

“Yes?”

“I’m glad you turned your life around.”

“Thank you. I am, too.”

Lt. Morrison knew nothing of her history and treated her as a professional. He glanced curiously at her scabbed-over nose and blackened eyes, but instead of commenting he listened to her account of the Haven Dietz case and then took her up to the apartment. It had been searched, Dietz’s belongings dumped from drawers and hurled around, and there were bloodstains on the carpet and a spatter pattern on the wall. Shot by an intruder, the lieutenant said.

Looking at the bloody wall made Julia gag, and Morrison gave her a concerned look.

Well, Shar would have gagged, too, maybe, but she wouldn’t’ve thrown up, and Julia wasn’t going to either.

She swallowed hard, asked, “Did she surprise a burglar?”

“On the surface it would appear that way. But experience tells me someone was looking for something specific.”