“No one ever came forward to claim the body. It’s not so uncommon; we already had twenty-three unclaimed John Does that year. But I still remember the innocence of his young face. He had blue eyes,” I said. “Light red hair. And now, all these years later, more murders with the same signature.”
“You know what feels really weird, Lindsay? To think that this killer could be someone who lives in this town —”
The phone rang, cutting Bob off midsentence.
“Robert Hinton,” he said.
In the next instant, the color drained from his face. There was silence, punctuated by Bob saying, “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” Then he said, “Thanks for letting me know,” and hung up.
“A friend of mine who works at the Gazette,” he explained. “Ben O’Malley’s body was found by some kids hiking in the woods.”
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 56
JAKE DALTRY’S PARENTS LIVED in a housing development in Palo Alto, a thirty-minute drive southeast of Half Moon Bay. I parked the Explorer on the street in front of their cream-colored raised ranch, one of a dozen like it on Brighton Street.
A portly, unkempt man with gray flyaway hair, wearing a flannel shirt and blue drawstring pants, answered the door.
“Mr. Richard Daltry?”
“We don’t want any,” he said, and slammed the door. I’ve come back from bigger slams than that, buster. I took out my badge and rang the bell again. This time a small woman with hennaed hair and gray roots, wearing a bunny-print housedress, opened the door.
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer, SFPD,” I said, showing her my badge. “I’m investigating a homicide case that’s been in our cold-case files.”
“And what’s that got to do with us?”
“I think there may be similarities between my old case and the deaths of Jake and Alice Daltry.”
“I’m Agnes, Jake’s mother,” she said, opening the door. “Please forgive my husband. We’ve been under a terrible strain. The press is just awful.”
I followed the elderly woman into a house that smelled of Lemon Pledge and a kitchen that didn’t seem to have changed since Hinckley shot Reagan. We sat at a red Formica table, and I could see the backyard through the window. Two little boys played with trucks in a sandbox.
“My poor grandsons,” said Mrs. Daltry. “Why did this happen?”
Agnes Daltry’s heartbreak was written on her deeply lined face, her stooped shoulders. I could see how much she needed someone to talk to who hadn’t heard it all before.
“Tell me what happened,” I urged her. “Tell me everything you know.”
“Jake was a wild child,” she said. “Not bad, you understand, but headstrong. When he met Alice, he grew up overnight. They were so much in love and wanted children so badly. When the boys were born, Jake vowed to be a man they could respect. He loved those boys and, Lieutenant, he lived up to that promise. He was such a good man, and he and Alice had such a good marriage—oh.”
She put her hand over her heart and shook her head miserably. She couldn’t go on and she hadn’t talked about the murders at all.
Agnes looked down at the table as her husband came through the kitchen. He glared at me, took a beer out of the refrigerator, slammed the door shut, and left the room.
“Richard is still angry at me,” she said.
“Why is that, Agnes?”
“I did a bad thing.”
I was almost desperate to know. I put my hand on her bare arm, and at my touch, tears rose in her eyes.
“Tell me,” I said softly. She grabbed tissues out of a box and pressed them to her eyes.
“I was going to pick up the boys at school,” she said. “I stopped off at Jake and Alice’s house first to see if they needed milk or juice. Jake was naked, lying dead in the foyer. Alice was on the stairs.”
I stared at Agnes, urging her on with my eyes.
“I cleaned up the blood,” Agnes said with a sigh. She looked at me as if she expected to be whipped herself. “I dressed them. I didn’t want anyone to see them that way.”
“You destroyed the crime scene,” I said.
“I didn’t want the boys to see all that blood.”
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 57
I WOULDN’T HAVE DONE this a month ago. I would’ve been too busy thinking about the job I had to do. I stood and I opened my arms to Agnes Daltry.
She put her head against my shoulder and cried as though she would never stop. I understood now. Agnes wasn’t getting the comfort she needed from her husband. Her shoulders shook so hard, I could feel her pain as if I knew her, as if I had loved her family as much as she did.
Agnes’s grief moved me so much that I was thrown back into the loneliness of losing people I had loved: my mom, Chris, Jill.
I heard the distant sound of the doorbell. I was still holding Agnes when her husband came back into the kitchen.
“Someone’s here to see you,” he said, his anger coming off his body like a sour smell.
“To see me?”
The man waiting in the living room was a study in dung brown: brown sport jacket and pants, brown-striped tie. He had brown hair, a thick brown mustache, and hard brown eyes.
But his face was red. He looked furious.
“Lieutenant Boxer? I’m Peter Stark, chief of police, Half Moon Bay. You need to come with me.”
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 58
I PARKED THE EXPLORER in the “guest” spot outside the gray-shingled barracks-style police station. Chief Stark got out of his vehicle and crunched across the gravel toward the building without once looking back to see if I was following him.
So much for professional courtesy.
The first thing I noticed inside the chief’s office was the framed motto behind his desk: Do the right thing and do it well. Then I took in the mess: piles of papers over every surface, old fax and copy machines, cockeyed, dusty photos on the wall of Stark posing with dead animals. Half a cheese sandwich on a file cabinet.
The chief took off his jacket, exposing a massive chest and monster-size arms. He hung the jacket on a hook behind the door.
“Sit down, Lieutenant. I keep hearing about you,” said the chief, riffling through a stack of phone messages. He hadn’t given me eye contact since the Daltry house. I took a motorcycle helmet off a side chair, put it on the floor, and sat down.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Sorry?”
“What the hell gives you the right to come into my backyard and start poking around?” he said, drilling me with his eyes. “You’re on restricted duty, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
“With all due respect, Chief, I don’t get your point.”
“Don’t screw with me, Boxer. Your rep as a loose cannon precedes you. Maybe you shot those kids without cause —”
“Hey, look —”
“Maybe you got scared, lost your nerve, whatever. And that would make you a dangerous cop. Get that?”
I got the message, all right. The guy outranked me, and a report from him that I had violated police procedures or disobeyed direct orders could hurt me. Still, I kept my expression neutral.
“I think these recent murders link up with an old homicide of mine,” I said. “The killer’s signature looks the same. We might be able to help each other.”
“Don’t use the we word with me, Boxer. You’re benched. Don’t mess with my crime scenes. Leave my witnesses alone. Take some walks. Read a book. Get a grip. Whatever. Just stay out of my hair.”