Nemesis (24 page)

“George,” I said. “George Haxner?”

“Yeah.”

“Friendly with him, too?”

“Pretty friendly. But if she put the moves on him, he never said anything to me about it.”

“Closed-mouth type?”

“Well, he never used to be. Bragged to me once about a woman he'd had on one of his other security jobs.”

“He say anything at all to you about Verity Daniels?”

“That she was a real fox, right after she moved in.”

“But nothing after you turned her down.”

“Not until we heard she'd been murdered. Everybody was talking about her then.”

“Did you tell him about Verity Daniels coming on to you?”

“No way. Nobody's business but mine and hers.” Krikowski let out a heavy sighing breath. “That's what I figured until now, anyhow.”

“What about the police? You tell them?”

“And have them start looking my way, like you're doing? No, sir. They had enough evidence to arrest Jake Runyon so I figured he must be guilty. If you think I had anything to do it with it, you're crazy.”

No, I didn't think he did. Not anymore. But I asked, “Can you account for your whereabouts Saturday from four-thirty on?”

“You bet I can. My mother came in to take care of the kids and Fran and me went to her brother's in San Mateo for dinner. Stayed until about eleven, came home, talked awhile, went to bed. That satisfy you?”

“Yes.”

“So now you go bugging George, I suppose. Grabbing at straws, man, if you ask me.”

That could be. But I was thinking: Daniels and her sensation-fueled games. In her skewed world, everything had been about manipulation, control, excitement. If she couldn't score with one security guard, another would do just as well. A big mistake that had cost her her life.

 

25

The information Tamara pulled up on George Haxner was just what I wanted to hear. Born and raised in South San Francisco. Patrol cop in S.F. for four years, dismissed for use of excessive force on a teenage robbery suspect. Security work ever since, and his record none too spotless there, either: fired from one job with a large manufacturing company in the South Bay for making improper advances to a woman employee. Arrested once five years ago for a domestic disturbance involving his ex-wife, assault charges dropped when the victim changed her mind and withdrew the complaint. Divorced shortly thereafter. Lived alone since, in the same rented house he'd shared with the ex.

And the clincher: the house was located on Shields Street on San Francisco's west side, not much more than a couple of miles from Lake Merced Boulevard—walking distance from the parking area where Verity Daniels's BMW had been abandoned.

Haxner, all right.

Now I had to find a way to prove it.

*   *   *

The neighborhood where George Haxner lived was old San Francisco working class, not unlike the one I'd grown up in in the Outer Mission a few miles away. It had changed some over the years, become desirable to less affluent urbanites because the home prices were reasonable in comparison to those in other parts of the city and because of its proximity to Lake Merced and the ocean, the S.F. State campus, the Stonestown shopping mall.

Haxner's rented house was the kind that real-estate agents describe as a “fixer-upper”—a small clapboard structure, not much larger than a cottage, with walls and trim that would have needed three coats of paint to make presentable and a front yard full of gravel and dead grass. Its cracked asphalt driveway was empty when I pulled up in front a little before three. Yellowed Venetian blinds covered the front windows. On the narrow little porch, dessicated plant corpses occupied a pair of cracked terra cotta urns flanking the door. Home sweet home.

I rang the bell three times without getting an answer. Haxner must have left for work early, or had some kind of errand to run on the way. Bayfront Towers was on the other side of the city, but unless he ran into heavy traffic, it wouldn't take him more than forty minutes to get there from here.

I felt edgy, disgruntled, as I returned to the car. Thinking that I should have remembered the “on my guard” business sooner, made the connection sooner. Thinking I'd been too focused on the men in Verity Daniels's former life. Maybe. But the extortion flimflam and phony rape complaint and nuisance lawsuits had muddied the waters, and there'd been nothing else to point to a security guard, no good reason to even consider running routine background checks on any of them. Kicking myself for not being an omniscient master sleuth was pointless. Hell, it was a wonder Daniels's out-of-character taunt had lodged in my subconscious at all.

All right, what now? I did not want to have to brace Haxner at Bayfront Towers. Too public. I would have to walk a finer line with him than I had with Krikowski—phrase my questions carefully, try to get him to admit something incriminating without making any direct accusations. And even with that approach, there was no guarantee I could get enough out of him to convince Figone and Samuels that I was on the right track.

A neighborhood canvass was a better idea. The logical place for Haxner and Verity Daniels to have done their trysting was in this rundown rental house of his. It had the required privacy, plus it explained where Daniels had disappeared to for several hours two and three mornings a week and on weekends. If that was the case, then it was possible one of the neighbors had seen her arriving or leaving, or that distinctive BMW of hers parked in the vicinity.

No such luck. I rang nine doorbells and talked to five people, three of the five willing to answer my questions. All of them knew George Haxner by sight, but nothing much about him because he kept to himself and because, as one of them told me, folks on this street minded their own business. A woman in the house directly opposite said the only car she'd ever seen parked in Haxner's driveway was the green four-door sedan that belonged to him.

Almost five by the time I was done with the canvass, and the edgy frustration was sharper now. And breached by a worm of doubt. I'd been wrong about Krikowski being Daniels's lover; suppose I was wrong about Haxner, too? I didn't want to believe it. It
had
to be Haxner. Maybe they hadn't carried on their affair here after all. Or else they'd taken considerable pains to keep it a secret even from Haxner's neighbors, in which case the idea had to have been Daniels's. It was just the sort of melodramatic intrigue she'd gone in for.

Two options now. Go see Haxner at Bayfront Towers after all, or call it a day and come back here tomorrow morning. The problem with both was that I would be bracing him on his turf: the place he worked and the place he lived. He didn't have to talk to me at all if he didn't want to, especially not here at his house—

His house.

And inside it … what? Something that might link him to Daniels, maybe to her murder?

Sure, maybe. But in order to find out I would probably have to break-and-enter, and I was not willing to do that. Even if I were, it was still daylight and it took time to pick door and window locks, if they could be picked at all, and smashing a window was noisy as well as destructive.

Suppose he'd left one of the doors or windows unlocked?

Fat chance. Ex-cops were seldom that careless. And it would still be illegal trespass, not that I was above that kind of gamble; I'd done it before.

There was one other unlikely possibility. Check it out?

No. Forget it. Waste of time.

But even as I thought that, impulse drove me out of the car. None of the immediate neighbors was in sight and the street was empty. Better make this quick just the same. On the porch I tried the door first, with the expected result. The terra cotta urns were easy enough to tilt so that I could take quick looks underneath. Nothing but dirt. I rummaged among the dead plants inside one urn, didn't find anything, and moved over to the other. Nothing there, either—

Wait. Yes, there was.

Key. Pushed round end down into the dry soil among the stalks.

I pulled it out, stood there with it in my hand. New, still shiny under the flecks of dirt. Not a spare key, I thought—one he'd had made for Verity Daniels. I almost wished I hadn't found it. Almost. But now that I'd gotten lucky …

A car went by on the street, but the driver paid no attention to me as it rolled on out of sight. Still nobody on the sidewalks or in the nearby yards. And Haxner was at work on the other side of the city.

I slid the key into the lock, turned it, heard the bolt click over. And before I could change my mind I opened the door, walked in as if I belonged there, and then shut it behind me.

For a few seconds I stayed put to let my eyes adjust to the gloom. Living room. Air a little musty, as if the place hadn't had a good airing in some time. I got out the pencil flashlight I carry, shined it around. Old, nondescript furniture, older model TV set, a shabby carpet worn through in places. None of the usual bachelor's clutter; whatever else Haxner was, he cleaned up after himself. I opened drawers in the end tables flanking the sofa. A farrago of stuff, none of it of any interest. A cabinet stood against one wall, but all it contained was sets of dishes, glassware, and linens that looked as if they hadn't been used in years.

I moved on through a small dining room, then into the kitchen. Nothing in either one. A door opened into a utility room just large enough for a washer and dryer, and another door in there led into the attached garage. I didn't find anything in the utility room, but in the garage—

A folded length of plastic sheeting and a coil of nylon rope, stuffed under a workbench along one wall. I dragged them out for a close look. The top edge of the plastic showed ragged where a piece had been snipped off, probably with the pair of shears that lay atop the bench. One end of the rope also showed a fresh diagonal cut.

Solid evidence, if both cuts matched those on the section of sheet and piece of rope that had been used to bind up Verity Daniels's corpse. But would it be enough to offset that damn coat button? Given the way defense attorneys worked and judges interpreted the fine points of the law these days, probably not.

I put the sheeting and rope back where I'd found them. There was nothing else for me in the garage; I went back into the house, down the hallway on the far side that led to a pair of bedrooms with a bathroom sandwiched between.

The nearest was no longer a bedroom; Haxner had turned it into a combination storage and exercise room. Mostly storage: a stack of cardboard boxes, a folded futon, a chair with a jagged tear in its upholstered backrest, an old wardrobe with nothing inside it but a couple of spiderwebs. A collection of barbells and weights had a dusty, disused look—the kind of equipment you see for sale cheap at yard and garage sales.

Five minutes poking around in there was enough. The adjacent bathroom was still a little moist from Haxner's prework shower, the air thick with the mingled smells of soap and lime-scented aftershave lotion. Usual stuff in the medicine cabinet, none of it feminine. The old patterned robe hanging from a hook behind the door was a man's. To be thorough, I lifted the lid on the toilet tank for a look inside. Common hiding place, but not one used by Haxner.

The bedroom at the rear had a big double bed with a mahogany headboard done in a bas-relief pattern of squares. The bed was unmade, but the blankets had been drawn halfway up. No bachelor's clutter here, either; enough light filtered in through a shaded rear window to let me see that. The top of a heavy oak bureau was empty except for a hairbrush and a small leather case. A digital alarm clock was the only item on the single nightstand. The few articles of clothing inside the closet were all on hangers and all male.

But there was something wrong with the way the room looked. I couldn't tell what it was until I risked switching on the overhead light. Then I had it. The carpet in there was wall-to-wall, a faded green with a nondescript pattern, and bare except for a oval, braided throw rug a couple of feet from the bed. The rug was what was wrong—it didn't belong there, so far away from the bed.

Another thing, too: there was no lamp on the nightstand.

I lifted one end of the rug, dragged it aside. A couple of Rorschach-like blots stained the carpet underneath. Haxner had tried to remove them with some kind of solvent, but it had done nothing more than blur and smear them. Professional carpet cleaners would have had a difficult time getting spilled blood out of an old carpet like this.

Verity Daniels's blood. This was where she'd been struck with the blunt instrument—a bedside lamp, for instance—and then strangled.

Conclusive proof, if a sample from the carpet matched her DNA.

I replaced the rug as I'd found it, then got down on hands and knees and looked under the bed. Dust bunnies. But when I used the backs of my hands to move the nightstand, light winked off a fragment of opaque glass wedged up against the baseboard. I leaned close to peer at it. Piece of broken light bulb. Something he'd missed when he cleaned up afterward.

I left the fragment where it was, maneuvered the nightstand back in place. Anything else in here?

The case on the bureau first. I opened it, using my handkerchief to avoid leaving fingerprints for the police to find. A couple of outmoded tie clips, a pair of cufflinks, a man's wedding ring, a handful of loose change. The bureau drawers held underwear, socks, T-shirts, two dress shirts in unopened cleaner bags. I pulled each one all the way out so I could look underneath. Nothing. A pad of paper, two pencils, a roll of breath mints, and a six-pack of Trojan condoms with two left unused occupied the nightstand drawer. Its underside hadn't been used as a hiding place, either.

I lifted the blankets and sheets on the bed and ran my hand between the mattress and the box springs. Nothing. I went around on the other side and did the same thing there. Nothing. Then I noticed that the headboard on that side was pushed up tight against the wall, while on the other side it stood out a couple of inches. Simple shifting from Haxner's weight, probably, though the headboard and frame looked heavy.