I stooped to Denny’s body and, using a pen, moved his collar aside. There were bruises around his neck. He’d been strangled but not hanged.
Similar MO but not identical.
And why had he been killed at all?
Conklin and I theorized over Denny’s body.
Had he told the wrong barfly at Bud’s that he’d been questioned about the big man buying drinks for the murdered women at the Bridge? Had the big man heard that Denny was talking and put him down?
Or was this an unrelated murder? Denny could have gotten into something in the parking lot. Then got rolled. Strangled.
Nah. Too much of a coincidence.
Normally, I didn’t talk to the dead, but I heard myself say, “What happened to you, Denny?”
While Conklin notified dispatch that we were on the scene, I called Jacobi at home.
I apologized for waking him up, but hell, this couldn’t wait.
“Our favorite pimp got taken out,” I told Jacobi. “Denny Lopez. He gave us nothing. This was a senseless, stupid death.”
“Not your fault, Boxer.”
“That’s not how it feels,” I said.
As I signed off with Jacobi, Conklin said, “Look,” and pointed to Taqueria del Lobo’s delivery truck at the far end of the parking lot. He said, “That’ll be back at the lab within the hour.”
Conklin and I edged through the crowd, heading toward the manager’s office to see Jake Tuohy and get the day rolling. I had a terrible sense of déjà vu. I pictured all the interviews that would follow, the guests who had been minding their own business, or asleep, hadn’t heard a thing.
But one bright thought peeked through the clouds.
Denny’s killing, compared with the others, lacked finesse. I would say it had been rushed. Maybe we were crowding our killer. Maybe we were getting under his skin.
CHAPTER 88
Joe was annotating the Petrović file when Diano called.
“You were right,” the agent said. “The GPS had autotrack. I have the location of the car.”
“Watch but don’t touch it,” Joe said. “Give me the coordinates.”
Joe drove to the address Diano had given him in Laurel Heights, an upscale area of two- and three-story Edwardian homes, tree-lined streets, and expensive shops, everything beautifully maintained.
He easily found the Tesla with the dinged-up front fender parked in front of the Laurel Inn on Presidio. You really couldn’t miss it. The back end of the car was caved in from a bad collision.
Joe touched the door handle and the falcon wing creaked open and lifted.
A purple scarf was curled up in the passenger-side footwell. Joe recognized it as Anna’s, and there was a candy bar wrapper near the scarf that confirmed it.
Snickers. Anna’s favorite.
Joe’s backup teams joined him at the car, and they spread out. They had no picture of Anna, but her description—a woman of forty, five foot six, 130 pounds, with a scar the size and shape of a hand on the left side of her face from eye to mouth—should serve.
The five experienced federal agents went from door to door, from shop to hotel to apartment building, in a grid five blocks in all directions from the car. The wreck of the Tesla had been noticed, but no one had seen a woman matching Anna’s description. The photo of Petrović also drew a negative response.
Joe phoned Steinmetz and reported what he knew: the damage to the vehicle, no indication of violence inside the car, and no sign of Anna. He suggested that Steinmetz get the SFPD involved. The Tesla had to be transported to the city’s forensics lab, and they needed to file a missing person report.
Joe watched the flatbed truck take the Tesla down Presidio Avenue toward the forensics lab at Hunters Point. Once it was out of sight, he phoned Dale Winston at the dealership to ask if Anna had made contact and to tell him that the car had been seized by the FBI.
Joe returned to the office and sat down with Steinmetz, who once again stated the uncomfortable truth.
There was still nothing linking Petrović to Anna.
“But here’s an idea, Molinari,” Steinmetz said. “Ask Petrović for permission to search his home, car, and business. Say you just want to eliminate him as a person of interest. See what he says.”
Joe thought it over and saw no serious downside. And maybe Petrović would toss them a bone, have a suggestion—or a telling misdirection.
Joe found Petrović at Tony’s Place. The former military executioner said that he was “eager to help out law enforcement. No problem.”
Joe, Diano, and Ennis went through the restaurant. Then Petrović led the caravan of federal agents to his house and threw open the doors.
He mocked the agents as they searched the spacious three floors.
“Maybe she’s in the washing machine, Joe. Have you searched the trunk of my car? Don’t forget to dust everything for fingerprints. I’ll send the bill for cleanup to the FBI.”
Joe was polite. But after three hours of eating shit, he was seething.
Did Petrović have Anna?
Or had she had an accident with the car and, rather than face the music, taken off to parts unknown?
Anna was strong-willed and angry at him.
If she had gone off on her own, Joe really had no clue where to look for her.
CHAPTER 89
Finally home after my eighteen-hour day in the Tenderloin, I greeted Joe and Martha from the doorway. I unbuckled my gun belt, pulled off my jacket, and stepped out of my shoes, leaving it all in a heap, and made my way across the room to my husband.
I was exhausted, frustrated, and starving, but still dying to tell Joe about Lopez and kick the case around with him. He was sitting on the sofa with his laptop open on the coffee table. I dropped onto the couch next to him, put my arms around him, and hugged him to pieces.
“I’m guessing you had a bad day,” he said, hugging me back.
I got right into it, telling him about Denny Lopez in snatches, knowing that Joe was an expert at making sense of random clues. Then he did the same with me.
“Anna is missing,” he said. “She borrowed a car from the dealership, had an accident, and vanished.”
When he’d given it all up, I saw that his case was like mine, clues everywhere, leading to nothing.
“Keep your phone charged,” I said. “She could call saying she ran away from home and that she’s all right.”
He nodded, but from the look on his face, I knew he was deeply worried. He didn’t buy my happy ending for Anna at all.
“I did find something interesting,” he said, “about our pal Slobodan Petrović.”
He turned the laptop so that I could see the photo on his computer screen, a slightly out-of-focus image of a group of about eight men wearing fatigues, loosely gathered in a wooded area. They looked like they were having an outing. But there was more to it than that—much more.
A female wearing only a skirt pulled up around her thighs was lying in the middle ground, encircled by several of the men. And in the background, shaded by trees, were bodies of men and women in civilian clothing hanging from branches. There had to be a dozen of them. The vignette looked unreal, like an art installation, the product of a particularly gruesome imagination. But it wasn’t art. And it wasn’t imaginary.