“You weren’t too late on Friday. Denny called you and needed help. He was still alive.”
“I know, and I offered to come get him and protect him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He thought I was part of it, that they were tracking him through the phone I’d given him.”
Frost stared at him. “Were they?”
“Of course not. I’m not a spy, Frost. I want to catch this guy even more than you do, believe me.”
“Did Denny tell you why they wanted him dead? Did he tell you about the cruise?”
“No, he hung up without giving me any details.”
“Denny knew about Lombard. That was his last word.”
“That’s because I told him about Lombard,” Gorham said. “He must have guessed that there was a connection when people started going missing. Or maybe he heard someone talking about it on the boat. I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”
“So you don’t know what happened on Tuesday night?”
“The only thing I know for sure is that Lombard is active,” Gorham retorted. “We’re closer to him than we ever have been before. Denny’s murder can lead us straight to Lombard. You and I need to work together to find him and stop him.”
Frost’s phone rang before he could reply. It was as if he were still being watched, as if Lombard somehow knew everything he was doing and everyone he talked to. He checked the caller ID.
“Who is it?” Gorham asked with suspicion in his voice.
“Cyril Timko,” Frost told him.
“Did you tell him we were meeting?”
“No. Nobody knows.” Frost answered the phone and put it on speaker so they could both hear the call. “Cyril, it’s Frost Easton. What’s up?”
The raspy voice of the captain’s aide crackled through the phone. “I need you in Dolores Heights right away. We’ve got a dead drug dealer up here. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who killed Denny Clark.”
25
Nobody had moved the body yet. It still lay sprawled across the train tracks where the MUNI J line came down the hill into Mission Dolores Park. Dr. Finder from the medical examiner’s office, who had studied the body of Denny Clark in Frost’s foyer, was crouched over this body, too. The remains were gruesome. The man on the ground had no face, just an unrecognizable jam of blood, bone, and cartilage. One arm had been scissored from his body and lay with its shirt sleeve still intact on the redbrick sidewalk leading into the park.
“Heart attack?” Frost asked.
Dr. Finder chuckled behind his mask. A plastic cap struggled to contain the halo of hair sprouting like wheatgrass from his head. “Well, I guess his heart might have stopped in the second or so before he got run over. But let’s assume not. Tonight MUNI stands for man underneath it. He was hit as the trolley came down the hill and then dragged here before the undercarriage spit him loose. Or most of him, anyway.”
“Was this an accident? Was he playing chicken with the train?”
The pathologist shook his head. “Not according to the MUNI driver. He says there were two men struggling near the tracks, and one pushed the other. There was no way to stop. I believe Officer Timko has the man who did the pushing in a squad car over there. Apparently, the man claims it was self-defense. He’s the one who called the cops after it happened.”
“What about the pushee?” Frost asked. “Who is he?”
“According to his driver’s license, our deceased’s name was Diego Casal. Twenty-three years old. He’s well known to our friends in vice.”
“Why does Cyril think Diego was involved in Denny Clark’s murder?” Frost asked.
“Probably because of what I found in Mr. Casal’s pocket. Namely a long-barreled pellet pistol that would have worked very nicely to fire the kind of gel round that poisoned Mr. Clark. And if that weren’t enough, there was a dissolving pellet left in the chamber. I won’t know until I test it in the lab, of course, but I won’t be at all surprised if we find a matching poison.”
“Hmm,” Frost said dubiously.
“You don’t sound pleased, Inspector.”
“When I was a kid and Santa got me exactly what I wanted for Christmas, I always wondered how he knew.”
“What a suspicious boy you were,” the pathologist chided him. “Me, I’m pleased to have a corpse with no mystery for once. And if it wraps up the saga of Mr. Clark, that’s an added bonus.”
“Yes, all neatly tied up with a bow,” Frost said. “Ho, ho, ho.”
He left Dr. Finder to continue his work with the body, and he headed across the green grass of Mission Dolores Park to find Cyril Timko. The park overlooked the glowing city skyline. Around him, the J line was shut down, and half a dozen squad cars surrounded the intersection at Twentieth Street. Gawkers ringed the area with cameras that flashed like lightning. He suspected that pictures of Casal’s mangled body had already made their way onto social media.
Captain Hayden’s aide stood alone in the middle of the park, sucking on his e-cigarette. The streetlights made his badge glow like a gold star on the breast of his uniform. He had perfect posture, as always. His face was bony and white, except for the dark stubble at his beard line. The widow’s peak in the middle of his forehead looked sharp enough to cut glass.
“Looks like you’ve been busy doing my job, Cyril,” Frost said.
The man’s eyebrow cocked as he tried to decide if Frost was annoyed. “I called you as soon as we realized there was a connection to Denny Clark. When the report first came in, we had no idea.”
“So what do we know?”
“I assume Dr. Finder already told you about the pellet gun and the gel cartridge?”
“He did.”
Cyril blew out a cloud of vapor. “Well, there’s a lot more. I checked Casal’s phone. Denny Clark is among his contacts. There’s a record of calls between them going back for months. According to vice, Casal is a known dealer, so if you found cocaine on Denny’s boat, it’s a good bet it came from him. He has a reputation for violence, too. He’s a suspect in at least two drug-related homicides in the past year.”
“Did either of those killings involve poison?” Frost asked. “Poison’s an odd weapon of choice for a dealer. If it was Casal, why not just shoot Denny and be done with it?”
“I don’t know, but the poison was slow and nasty, right? Bitch of a way to die. Maybe Casal wanted to send a message. The word is that the guy ran on a short fuse. It could have been a fight over pricing. It could be that Casal thought Denny was freelancing and moving in on his turf.”
“In other words, Captain Hayden was right all along about the drug angle,” Frost said.
“That’s what it looks like.”
Frost frowned. “What about my three other missing persons? Why would this Diego Casal want them dead?”
“I think we can explain that, too.” Cyril nodded his head toward one of the squad cars parked on Church Street. “We’ve got the guy who pushed Casal in front of the train. He calls himself Romeo Laredo. Hell of a name, huh? He’s a hotshot IT guy with an apartment in the Presidio.”
“What’s Romeo’s connection to Diego Casal?” Frost asked.
“He says he doesn’t have one. Romeo was at a party in the Castro a few blocks away, and when he left, he noticed this guy following him. He figured he was being stalked for a mugging. Romeo’s a big guy, so he stopped and confronted him. Casal tried to pull out the pellet gun, and it turned into a struggle. That’s how Casal wound up eating the train.”
Frost shook his head. “What does that have to do with my missing persons?”
“Romeo says he doesn’t know Diego Casal,” Cyril continued, “but he recognized him.”