Tell No Lies (29 page)

He looked down at the screaming front page. The newspaper print left a smudge on the meat of his thumb. He felt the air go out of him.

“I’m not sure.” He swallowed dryly and moved toward the stairs. “But I’ll find out.”

Chapter 44

A conference room in Homicide had been cleared out, a makeshift war room dedicated to the Tearmaker. When Daniel arrived, Dooley got one look at him and told the others to take a coffee break. As he surveyed the inner sanctum with awe, she paced like a great cat before a dry-erase board sporting a spiderweb of connections between map locations, photos of the victims, and rap sheets of Daniel’s group members. Stacked on a rear table were sheaves of motorcycle registrations and profiles for the employees of Metro South—even some for workers in the neighboring buildings. Clearly, SFPD had pulled out all stops; assembling this much data must have required a staggering number of man-hours. An array of mounted TVs, tuned to local stations and CNN, popped up visuals about the Tearmaker, the nickname also looping through the news crawls. One reporter had resorted to scared-man-on-the-street interviews about the newly branded killer. Dooley’s expression—fury iced with disgust—made clear how she felt about the nickname’s leaking. Daniel found himself watching the screens with horrified interest until she muted them so he would focus.

He trudged over and sat in a chair near the latest case files, taking a moment to shape the cyclone of thoughts that had consumed him on the drive over. Trying for patience, Dooley waited. In the background the slick logo of the Tearmaker—a hockey mask with tear tracks—finally vanished from ABC7, replaced by footage of the Gilroy Garlic Fry at AT&T Park.

Daniel spread his hand on the nearest stack of papers. “Marisol Vargas was a professor.” His throat was raw, his voice soft and scratchy. “But her field—it was something medical, wasn’t it?”

Dooley finally stopped pacing. She lowered herself into a chair carefully, as if she’d grown suddenly fragile. “Public health.”

“Did she ever work at UCSF?”

“No. Not full-time at least.”

“Look into it,” Daniel said. “There’ll be a connection. And Kyle Lane. An M.B.A., right? Where’d he work before he moved to the health-food company?”

Dooley grabbed a file, scrabbled through the pages. Then stilled.

Daniel said, “UCSF, right?”

She gave a little nod. “Grants and funding.”

“For the oncology department.”

“Doesn’t say.” Dooley tapped the file, her forehead lined with thought. “So there’s a medical connection between Clarke, Lane, and Vargas. How does Jack Holley fit in? He was a security guard.”

“Did he ever guard—”

“Nope. Not UCSF, not any hospital. From the beginning I oversaw his case
myself,
remember? I know his entire employment history.”

“Call and check.”

“Daniel—”

“Trust me.”

Keeping her gaze on Daniel, Theresa picked up a phone, poked at the numbers with the end of a pen. As she routed through various menus and departments, Daniel zoned out. His blinks grew longer and longer, and then Dooley was repeating his name.

His head snapped up, the sore muscles of his neck making him grimace. “Huh?”

Her eyes were intense, alive. “I had the security firm search every single one of Holley’s time sheets. Seems they swung him off his usual job for a one-week period. He usually worked jewelry stores—that’s why we missed it—but they got a request to beef up security at UCSF Medical during some big animal-rights protest. The dates were…” She flipped through her notepad.

Daniel said, “Fall 2009.”

Dooley’s mouth fell open a little. “October fifth through eleventh.” She wet her lips. “Daniel? You want to tell me what the fuck is going on here?”

He took a deep breath. Readied for the plunge. “The paper this morning. Cristina recognized Molly Clarke. She was treated by her.”

“Treated?” Dooley said.

“There were closed trials at UCSF,” he said. “Experimental therapy—the radiation seeds?—for heart-cancer patients.”

“Cristina had
heart cancer
?”

“Yes. It’s rare, but she got it.”

“And?” Dooley was clearly fighting for patience.

“The study is the connection. Between the victims.”

“But
why
?”

His frustration flared. “I don’t know.”

“If the victims are connected,” Dooley said, “then Cris is connected, too. You’d better—”

“We have a guard at the house,” Daniel said. “Before I left, I asked him to stay at her side at all times.”

Dooley was still putting it together. “If your wife was involved in the study, that means the killer
meant
for you to get those first death threats. Those envelopes weren’t
accidentally
put in your box—he just wanted it to look that way. And if the suspect’s in your group like we think…”

“Then he—or she—
chose
me. Just like you guessed before.”

“Why would they have wanted to involve you like
this
? I mean, you’re not just another victim. You’re the goddamned focal point.”

“You said you can tell when people are lying, Theresa, so look at me closely.” He leaned forward.
“I have no idea.”

“Maybe Cris does.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“I’ll do the same.” She rose, tugged open the door, and shouted into the hall, “I want every warm body in here! We just got our first no-shit lead.”

*   *   *

Dooley’s questioning of Cris gave them nothing more, and after she was finished, Daniel got on the phone with her. She was rattled and bewildered, and he promised to keep her abreast of any developments. Cris wanted to run down the hill for a few things—the last week had left the refrigerator and cupboards sparsely stocked—and he made her promise to keep Leo with her at all times.

At Dooley’s request he stayed on in the war room. DAs were called, judges pinned down, and leads flew across monitors and phone lines. The inspectors braced for a dogfight from the pit bulls on the hospital’s legal team, but they proved cooperative, supplying information readily as the subpoenas came in. Predictably, human-resource files were turned over first, patient records to follow. Over the course of the morning and afternoon, the picture slowly resolved.

On her sabbatical in 2009, Marisol Vargas had consulted with the oncology department, acting as a project manager for a smattering of studies. During his tenure at UCSF, Kyle Lane had secured and overseen the funding for numerous trials, and Molly Clarke had served as a dedicated nurse during that period for oncology, hematology, and infectious diseases. The only project all three had overlapped on was the experimental brachy study in which Cris had participated.

And yet the inspectors’ initial pass through the records of the trial, aided by hospital administrators, had yielded no red flags.

“So,” O’Malley said, “who’s gonna get the next death threat?”

Daniel grimaced at the thought of another gray interdepartmental envelope arriving in his mailbox.

“Let’s consider anyone who played any role in that trial to be at serious risk,” Dooley said to the room. “Study coordinators, doctors, the principal investigator, secretaries, chief of staff, the hospital CEO. Put them on alert and get them out of the area. I don’t care if they bitch and moan—after Molly Clarke we are taking no chances.”

“Where are we supposed to tell them to go?” Rawlins asked.

“If they’re doctors, to their summer homes in Tahoe. If they’re broke, to the Motel 6 in Daly City under an assumed name. I don’t give a shit, as long as they’re not findable until we can get our arms around this thing.”

“If the Tearmaker has an issue with some study that took place, why hasn’t he attacked the hospital itself?” O’Malley asked.

Dooley said, “Lotta witnesses, lotta security, what with all the animal-rights crap and stem-cell research and abortions.”

“No,” Daniel said. “That’s not why.” All eyes moved to him. “It’s because this is personal. It’s about
individuals.
‘Admit what you’ve done,’ remember?”

“So we’re back to the patients who croaked,” O’Malley called out, and Dooley cringed a bit.

Most of the study participants had been fortunate like Cris—a testament to the treatment—but two had died. Rawlins was running down information on the deceased in case a relative was nursing a vendetta.

Dooley crossed to a bulletin board and pointed to a row of mug shots—Big Mac, A-Dre, Fang, Martin, Lil, X. Every one of them captured in an unflattering light, pasty and dangerous, up to no good. In two dimensions, thumbtacked to cork, they looked so different—like suspects. Lines fanned from each picture like sun rays, connecting to lists of names broken into subcategories:
relatives, known associates, cell mates.

Dooley said, “I want
every last connection
checked until we find one that leads back to that trial. Understand?”

Several mumbled assents and the room wound back into motion. After finishing his third cup of surprisingly decent office coffee, Daniel excused himself to go to the bathroom. He washed his face, stared at a reflection he barely recognized. He’d not fully considered the toll the past week had taken on him, and the physical evidence was appalling. Stress etched in each line of his face. His crow’s-feet pronounced. Bloodshot eyes. Two-day growth.

When he returned to the beehive of the war room, he was shocked to see that all activity had ceased. The cops were transfixed in their chairs from some newly hatched revelation.

Dread filled his chest. He said,
“What?”

Dooley was staring at her laptop. “Come here.”

He did.

“Look familiar?” She pointed at a PDF file—a scanned form, filled out by hand.

MOTHER:
viviana olvera

FATHER: _____

PATIENT NAME:
francisca olvera

PATIENT AGE:
fore

There it was. The handwriting from the death threats. The words that had set the machinery into motion.

“Viviana Olvera,” Daniel said. “She filled out this form.”

Dooley’s voice cut through the buzz in his head. “We got the
writer
of those death threats. But maybe not the author.”

“Why’s the father not listed?” he asked.

“Maybe she doesn’t know who he is,” Rawlins said. “Or he’s illegal, married to someone else, in prison, whatever.”

“
Mamá
’s hitting up the free clinics, applying for financial assistance, so it was probably better not to document a man and a second income,” Dooley said.

“But this is … this is
good,
right?” Daniel said. “There’s an address here.” He pointed farther down the screen.

“Building was torn down in 2010. We ran her through the system. Which wasn’t helpful, given she’s not
in
the system. According to the doctor’s notes on the kid’s intake session, the mom’s illegal. That’s the problem with this. No marriage records, birth records all fucked up, family tree missing all the leaves and branches. Someone pops out a kid three feet across the border…” She rubbed her face with her palms. “And no father.”

The blank line seemed to stare out at them: FATHER: _____

Dooley shook her head. “So. The million-dollar question is, who’s the babydaddy? Because that masked motherfucker’s
pissed.
” She handed Daniel a sheet of paper, still hot from the printer, that contained a grainy photograph.

A little girl with a spontaneous smile, brown skin, and beautiful almond-shaped eyes. Crooked teeth, some missing, some still growing in. Frizzy dark hair fought into a style of sorts, a rubber band securing a side braid. The thin neck of a fawn. She wore a stained plaid dress with a hole beneath the collar. She was in the throes of an awkward stage, but her energy was so pure, so earnest, that the sight of her was arresting. The kind of kid with music in her laughter.

“Indistinct ethnically,” Dooley said. “Could be half black, half Chinese, half anything.”

“Which means the father could be Fang,” Daniel said. “Or Big Mac.”

“Or Martin or A-Dre,” Dooley said. “I know they’re alibied for certain nights, but I’m not ruling out anyone a hundred percent. A-Dre’s brother could be hooked into this, and you could’ve been rolling around with
him
in the restaurant storage room while A-Dre cooled his heels at his pad. Francisca Olvera could be a cousin, a niece, a friend’s kid.” She tapped a pencil on the table to accent each possibility. “All we know for sure is that the killer has
some
connection to the group. That’s all.”

“You’re focused on the men,” O’Malley said. “But how ’bout Xochitl’s kid she gave up for adoption?”

“They tested Viviana Olvera to establish blood type for transfusions,” Dooley said. “No question she’s the biological mother.”

“The age doesn’t work out for X’s kid anyway,” Daniel added.

O’Malley again. “Where are we with Lil’s convict ex-husband?”

“Joined a biker gang in Montreal,” Rawlins said. “Gubitosi tracked him down. So Lil’s ruled out.”

“Not
ruled out,
” Dooley said, her irritation making clear this line of reasoning had been cause for previous discussion. “Until we get something airtight—and I mean
NASA-shuttle
airtight—we don’t
eliminate
suspects. We”—and here the other inspectors joined in weary chorus—
“reduce the likelihood of their involvement.”
Dooley blinked, half annoyed, half amused. “That’s right. And we divert resources accordingly.”

Daniel asked the question that had been scratching at him since he’d seen Francisca’s face. “How’d the girl do? With the medical treatment?”

Dooley and O’Malley exchanged a look, as if just now remembering that Daniel had come in late. “She wasn’t in the study,” Dooley said.

“What do you mean?” Daniel said. “The form you showed me. That was for the trial.”

“She was enrolled,” Dooley said. “But at the last minute, she got bumped.”

All the heat in Daniel’s body seemed to rush to his face. His hand dimpled the printout.