February 20, 2008
“What kind of sick puppy eats gravy fries and a milkshake for breakfast?” Santos asked, nose wrinkled in genuine disgust.
Churchill didn’t even glance up from the follow-up forensic sheet, the fluorescent lights of the bullpen casting a sickly pallor over the pages. “An eighteen-year-old.”
“Jesus.”
“You telling me you never scarfed down worse when you were a kid? Greasy spoon specials at two in the morning after some house party?”
“Only MREs when I was in the Marines, and I didn’t get a vote.” He tapped the page with a blunt finger. “Digestion stage puts time of death around nine a.m. Fries half-mushed, not full chyme yet. Greasy meal like that? Could swing an hour either way, depending on how much grease slowed things down.”
He flipped back to the preliminary ME report, the paper crackling in the quiet morning hum of the station. “Still doesn’t add up. She’s whacked on New Year’s Day, nine in the morning, give or take. Remains found ten days later with only one day of decomp—no bloating, minimal discoloration, tissues intact, no insect activity worth noting. Like she’d been… paused.” His eyes narrowed, the light bulb visibly clicking on. “He put her on ice. Kills her, does his freaky shit, sticks her in a freezer, then dumps her nine days later for us to find. Explains the timeline perfectly.”
She nodded slowly, the theory locking into place like a tumbler in a lock. It was elegant in its cruelty. She grabbed the desk phone, the cord tangling around her wrist, and dialed the ME’s office directly. “Yeah, this is Detective Churchill, Homicide. I need urgent histological slides on all three vics—liver, muscle, skin—looking specifically for freeze-thaw artifacts. Crystal gaps, ice damage, the works. Log it as an addendum, priority one.” She hung up and exhaled, already bracing for the inevitable pushback. The remains were still in San Francisco’s overburdened lab; further toxicology was already weeks behind. More bureaucracy stacked on bureaucracy, the kind that let killers breathe free while cops waited on paperwork.
While they waited on the labs, they had hundreds of hours of video to comb through. Sami’s receipt from the Aristocrat gave them a tight window—eight-fifteen to nine-thirty, give or take. No downtown CCTV worth a damn, but the business district, bridges, and freeway corridors were lousy with cameras. They’d already run the partial plate through CLETS and pulled every Caltrans feed they could access without jumping through extra hoops.
She leaned back in her creaky chair and glanced at their shared task board, the cork surface still mostly bare. In the past week, they’d knocked out subpoenas for every private business camera along the route, faxes flying to the courthouse like carrier pigeons, affidavits drafted for the DMV to cover their asses on privacy grounds. Real police work. Not the glamorous chase you saw on TV, but the grind that kept cases from collapsing in court. She’d hated the desk jockeying when she first made detective—felt like it sucked the life out of the hunt. Over the years, she’d learned the hard truth: catch the killer, sure. But dot every i and cross every t, or some slick defense attorney would jiu-jitsu your oversights and the bastard walks. She’d seen it happen too many times. Not on her watch.
***
Churchill dropped a grainy black-and-white photo on her lieutenant’s desk with a soft thud. “That’s the john’s car.”
He squinted, bifocals perched on the end of his nose. “Lambo?”
“Lamborghini Diablo SV Roadster. Rarest model they ever made—only two in the world, one of them supposedly in a private collection in Dubai. Made tracking it stupid easy.” She slid over the digitally enhanced still, the image crisp enough to see every detail. Sami sat clearly in the passenger seat, head thrown back in laughter, platinum blonde hair catching the morning light like she was having the time of her life on what would be her last ride. “No clean shot of the driver, but we got the plate. DMV coughed up the registration in under an hour. Custom plate, ghost owner until you start digging.”
She let the pause hang just long enough, watching his face. “Want to guess who owns it?”
The LT rattled off a couple of A-list movie-star names, each more ridiculous than the last. When she finally dropped the real name, his eyebrows shot up, and he let out a low whistle.
“Fuck me with a Dodgers baseball bat…”
“Pretty much my reaction, Skipper.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“How do you know it was him driving?”
“I don’t. But what are the odds he lets anyone else touch wheels like that? Thing’s worth more than most people’s houses.”
“Rich pricks don’t think like us mortals.” He rubbed his jaw, the stubble rasping under his palm. “Still, last person seen with the vic doesn’t equal killer. You know that.”
“He’s got priors—state and FBI jacket. False imprisonment, sexual assault, battery. The girl he allegedly beat needed full reconstructive surgery on her face.”
“Allegedly,” the LT reminded her, voice flat but not unsympathetic. “Case was classic he-said-she-said. Victim had a pimp boyfriend who might’ve been the real problem. Evidence was thin as tissue paper. You know how these things shake out in court.”
“Yeah, I do. And I know exactly who the jury believes when one side’s the spoiled only son of an American oligarch and the other’s a working girl with a record.”
“I’m not defending the asshole,” he said, leaning forward. “I’m telling you what you’re walking into if you make him the focus. Media scrutiny, high-powered lawyers, political pressure from upstairs. Proceed with caution, Churchill. Feel me?”
She met his eyes without blinking. “Loud and clear, Skipper.”
Back at their desks, the murder board remained mostly bare—just a faded dot-matrix NCIC rap sheet and a single faxed Caltrans log pinned crookedly in the corner. On the side, off the books for now, they kept digging quietly. Santos had personally tracked down the assault victim from the old case. Her story hadn’t changed in six years; if anything, the anger had hardened into something colder. Her pimp ex was doing serious time for assaulting a cop—nowhere near her life anymore. The taped interview was clean, no leading questions, IA’s wet dream of a defense exhibit. Solid gold.
She focused instead on the pieces that didn’t scream monster on the surface. The guy had actually been brilliant—top of his class at Columbia Medical School, the kind of prodigy who made headlines in alum magazines. It was the first university that her own daughter, Ada, had applied to last year. She had lobbied hard—borderline begged—for Stanford instead. Too far from home, too full of entitled rich kids who treated rules like suggestions and people like disposable props. The thought of Ada tangled up with that crowd still made her stomach twist into knots. Would her baby fit in? Would she come home changed, hardened, or worse—hurt? Ada was only eighteen, bright-eyed and determined to work for the United Nations someday, changing the world one policy at a time. She pictured her in those ivy-covered halls surrounded by the same kind of privilege that had produced their suspect, and the worry settled heavily in her chest.
“Disarticulated with surgical precision,” she muttered under her breath.
“What?” Santos looked over, eyebrows raised.
“Nothing. Thinking out loud.”
The guy had been on track to become a world-class surgeon. Then, one year shy of graduation, he dropped out without explanation. That’s when the trouble started—arrest, dropped charges that somehow never stuck, everything else. Classmates had clammed up tighter than Skull and Bones initiates. Ivy League code of silence. Made her grateful Ada was staying local, even if it meant reminding her daughter every other day not to let anyone dim her fire.
“Oh shit,” Santos muttered, staring at his screen.
She rolled her chair over, the wheels squeaking on the linoleum. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Subpoena to the carrier just came back. Cell-site data puts him across town at Les Deux the whole relevant window—not near the Aristocrat. Sectors are half-mile blobs at best, but it’s a decent alibi on paper.”
“Figures. Slick bastard always has an angle.”
He switched tabs and spun the monitor toward her. “With his MO, he’d need serious space. Downtown condo or suburban McMansion with a two-car garage? No way. Has to be something big, private, and isolated.” He opened a Google image search result. “Like this.”
The photo loaded: a sprawling manor, surrounded by acres of manicured grounds that bled into dense forest on three sides. No neighbors for miles. The kind of place that screamed money and secrecy.
He pulled up the map overlay. “Three and a half hours from the Aristocrat if he obeys the speed limit on the PCH. If he drives that coastal highway like it’s the Autobahn—easy in a Diablo—he could make it in half that. Plenty of time to do his nasty work and still be back before anyone missed him.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “We need to draft an affidavit for a GPS tracker on that Lambo.”
“DA will laugh us out of the office. Not enough yet for a judge to sign off.”
“Fine. Covert visual surveillance in the meantime to build probable cause.”
“And risk tipping him off?” He shook his head. “No. Right now he thinks he’s untouchable. That hubris is our best weapon.”
Santos exhaled, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Okay, boss. What’s the play?”
She laid it out step by step—subpoenas, deeper background, the New York angle. He listened, nodding along.
“While you’re handling that,” he said when she finished, “I’m not sitting on my ass. I want the Lon Chaney look-alike from the Aristocrat. First, bring the cook back in for a proper sketch—something better than his vague movie memorabilia description. You cool with that?”
“More than cool. If this were a full task force, we’d be running down every lead anyway. Go get it done.”
She caught her lieutenant striding past the cubicles, coffee in hand. “Hey, Skipper.”
He stopped mid-step, turning with a sigh. “What now?”
“I need to fly to New York. Follow up on a lead on the Columbia dropout angle. I’m taking Ada with me—mother and daughter bonding, kill two birds.”
He stared, then shook his head. “New York? Fine—two days max. Solo on the department dime. Kid stays home. This ain’t spring break, and IA will crucify us over mileage and hotel claims. Saks Fifth Avenue on your personal card? Don’t even think about it. Per diem covers coffee, crullers, and cabs—nothing more. Pack light—TSA’s making us strip like it’s amateur hour at the comedy club.”
She gave him a crisp salute, the familiar Navy banter easing the knot in her gut. “Aye, aye, Skipper.”
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