Kirk Russell - Counterfeit Road

The video ran two minutes twenty-eight seconds, about the length of your average YouTube. When Raveneau hit play the camera panned from left to right, catching winter sunlight reflecting off windows of the Ferry Building. A glittery sliver of bay showed as the victim, Alan Krueger, and the unknown shooter waited for a car to pass before crossing into the shadows of the lot once used by commuters beneath the former Embarcadero Freeway.

They threaded through parked cars, Krueger ahead, shooter trailing, and once again Raveneau got the feeling they were friends, or at least knew each other. He let it run another five seconds then clicked the mouse and froze the frame. He stared at the screen.

The videotape was made with a hand-held Sony camcorder and shipped four days ago in a used Amazon box from a FedEx drop in Los Angeles. It arrived here addressed to him, Inspector Benjamin Raveneau, Cold Case Unit, Homicide Detail, Room 459, Hall of Justice, San Francisco. That was two days ago, Tuesday, January 11, 2011, exactly twenty-two years to the day after the murder of Alan Krueger.

Raveneau had cut the packing tape, opened the box, and emptied out the Styrofoam peanuts. He left the cassette taped to the bottom of the box and walked it down the hallway to the video unit in the Crime Scene Investigation lab. In the lab they eased off the tape holding the videotape cassette and tested the sticky side for fingerprints and DNA. But whoever sent it was very careful.

Whoever sent it stuck a white label on the black plastic videotape cassette that read 1/11/1989. Raveneau took that date to the cold case closet. He pulled the murder log for ’89, looked up January eleventh and found the Krueger files. In the Crime Scene Investigation lab they produced ten digitized copies of the videotape. They gave him the ten CDs, emailed him another, and he forwarded that to his Cold Case partner, Elizabeth la Rosa. He had watched the videotape at least a dozen times since. He started it again now and the shooter and Krueger cleared the cars, the dark hulk of the Embarcadero’s decks towering above them as they moved toward two concrete pylons.

They moved diagonally away and as they got smaller the steady-handed filming turned jumpy. In the video unit they said whoever made the tape had started walking, probably following Krueger and the shooter. Raveneau zoomed in now. He froze the video when Krueger had only seconds to live.

Alan Krueger worked for the Secret Service for fourteen years before quitting in 1986 and becoming an independent contractor. At the Secret Service he’d been a counterfeit expert. He was carrying sixty-one new US one hundred dollar bills in the left breast pocket of his coat, the bills folded and held by a silver money clip. The second bullet, the fatal shot, passed through a corner of the bills but missed the clip.

Two homicide inspectors who used to be called the go-go twins, Ed Govich and Henry Goya, caught the case. Goya and Govich showed the bills to the Secret Service and were told they weren’t counterfeit. That was well documented. Yet yesterday Raveneau retrieved the bills from storage. He signed them out and handed them off to a Secret Service agent he knew, figuring they were worth another look.

The rest of Krueger’s effects were stored out at Hunters Point in Building 606. Krueger was left-handed and wore a hand-tooled leather shoulder holster on his right side. He was licensed to carry a gun but the holster was empty. The holster was out at Hunter’s Point. So was a wallet found near his body. The wallet was lying against one of the concrete pylons holding up the freeway. It was covered with newspapers. No driver’s license, credit cards, or smaller bills were found. The wallet was empty. Two forged high-quality but fake passports were found in his coat, one Canadian for an Alan McCormick, the other a US passport with the name Allen Jons. In the right front pocket of his pants was a piece of paper with ‘Captain Frank’ written on it and a phone number that PacBell had identified as a pay phone at San Francisco Airport.

Goya and Govich chased the Captain Frank lead and without any good place to start they worked the wharves and local marinas. They talked to boat captains and harbor masters. They canvassed. They knocked on doors. They didn’t get anywhere.

In the video the shooter shortened his step now. He drifted behind Krueger, who turned with a gesture Raveneau read as frustration, as though they had started to argue. When he turned back, his left leg jerked up spasmodically as the first bullet struck. The video barely caught it. If the cameraman intended a clean recording he failed.

Krueger fell and the shooter closed. He read as a dark shape leaning over Krueger. He was fast, efficient, without hesitation, and though in all his previous watching of the video Raveneau had frozen the action at this spot, he didn’t now. He let it roll and thought about the two newly-wed Canadians who had found Krueger’s body. He was trying to locate them and so far had learned they divorced in 2001. Both claimed not to have heard any gunshots, though an anonymous caller had. The caller didn’t leave a name but did leave the time of day he heard the shots, 3:42 p.m.

The Canadians also noted the time they found the body, 3:45, so were probably close enough to have heard the shots. But maybe they were talking or distracted by something else. He remembered how noisy it used to be, the big trucks and busses, the echoes. The old Embarcadero Freeway was gone, demolished after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and the Ferry Building where the video started, renovated and reborn as a food court and now a popular tourist destination. He was there this morning. He bought a coffee, and carried it outside across the promenade and the tracks of the light rail system and worked his way down and tried to find where the video maker had stood.

Raveneau’s cell phone buzzed now as the video went dark. He turned the computer off as he answered, knowing it would be la Rosa.

‘They’re here. I took them into the kitchen.’

‘How many are there?’

‘Three. Two that look like regular Secret Service and a third who looks like he’s in charge.’

‘Then it’s about the money. The bills must be counterfeit and they’re worried about something. I’ll be there in a few minutes.’

The conference room off the Cold Case Unit office had a few beat-up chairs and no table, so the kitchen was where they usually met. The kitchen had two tables pushed together and covered with a striped tablecloth. The Secret Service agents took up the corner of the table that put the refrigerators behind them.

‘Can I get anyone water, a soda, or anything to eat?’ Raveneau asked.

‘We’re not here for lunch.’

The one who answered was Nate Brooks, assistant special agent in charge. The other two agents were Jack Swensen, who Raveneau had turned over sixty of the hundred dollar bills to yesterday, and Michelle Raff, a counterfeiting expert.

The bills were no longer in a San Francisco Police Department money envelope, instead were individually wrapped in clear plastic slips and in bags with the Secret Service stamp. Raff looked like she was guarding them. Swensen looked uncomfortable and Raveneau guessed there was some sort of game plan here that Swensen didn’t like. He nodded toward the money.

‘Thanks for returning the bills.’

‘We’re not,’ Brooks said, and Raff followed with ‘They’re counterfeit. We were wrong in 1989.’

She said that as if she owned the mistake but she was probably eleven years old at the time. Brooks wasn’t there either, also too young. Raveneau took a closer look at him, trying to get a read, trying to understand why anything about this meeting would make him tense. Watchful eyes stared back at him.