Thrill Kill (16 page)

The morning’s first light was appearing in the sky by the time Sinclair and Braddock got back to the office. While the techs had processed Dawn’s condo for trace evidence and dusted the printable surfaces, they went through every piece of paper they could find, hoping to find something with Preston Yates’s name on it. But much as with Dawn’s working apartment by the lake, this one had also been stripped of all incriminating documents. There was no computer and no paper files.

Sinclair made a fresh pot of coffee and began researching NorCal on the Internet, hoping to find someone he could talk to that day who could tell him why Dawn was living rent-free in a condo they owned or at least maintained. NorCal was a major commercial real estate developer in the East Bay. They owned a number of Oakland office buildings, including a twenty-four story building in the city center. Sinclair found an article about NorCal winning the city council bid to develop the huge tract of land that was once the Oakland Army Base. Another article from eight years ago contained a photo of Sergio Kozlov, the president and CEO of NorCal, posing with a past mayor. The article touted the huge contribution NorCal had made to Oakland’s redevelopment efforts and how the city gave NorCal a full city block, land valued at more than twenty million dollars, along with tax breaks, to build a commercial office building.

The only corporate officer mentioned on NorCal’s website was Sergio Kozlov. There were photos of Kozlov with various members of Oakland’s city council, including one where he had his arm around Preston Yates’s shoulder while he cut the ribbon that opened the road from the Port of Oakland’s shipping terminal to the redevelopment area, which would turn the old army base into a warehouse and logistics center for the port. There were older photos with him next to Jerry Brown when he was the mayor of Oakland and a more recent one with him next to an older Jerry Brown as the state’s governor.

Meanwhile, Braddock was on her computer going through the city council agenda reports, which were public information. It seemed Preston Yates had made the motion for the council resolution to select NorCal as the developer of the Oakland Army Base property, and he was a supporter of every development by Kozlov.

Sinclair said, “Yates throws his support for this billion-dollar project to NorCal Development, and in exchange they give him a free love nest for his mistress.”

“If we could prove it, that would be bigger than our murders,” Braddock said. “Can you imagine? Political corruption at that level. Multimillion-dollar contracts given in exchange for personal favors. Maybe we should tell Phil so he can have his Fed friends look into it.”

“Fuck Phil,” Sinclair said. “I don’t even know whose side he’s on anymore. He’ll have to give me something from the escort service computer before I give him shit.”

Braddock bit her lip and went back to her computer, while Sinclair began researching Preston Yates. Yates had graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in political science and went on to earn a JD from Boalt Hall, Berkeley School of Law. He was the counsel for an assortment of nonprofits and married the owner of one of the largest ad agencies in San Francisco, a woman ten years his senior. He ran for his first public office, a seat on the Oakland School Board, at twenty-eight, winning
easily, largely because he outspent his opponents tenfold. At thirty-five, six years ago, he ran for the District 1 council seat and took 60 percent of the votes. The North Oakland council district was one of the wealthiest districts, comprising a 57 percent white population. No one had run against him since.

Sinclair’s cell phone buzzed. “Have you got something for me?” he asked Bianca.

“I have information on the twenty-four names and a series of photos you’d be very interested in seeing.”

“Can you e-mail it to me?”

“Sorry, but Helena insists on eyes only.”

“She’s in no position to insist on anything.”

“She disagrees. She says if this isn’t good enough for now, you can go to the DA and get a warrant for her arrest. She won’t budge.”

Sinclair thought for a minute. “Okay, where?”

“I’m working at my apartment all day on a settlement agreement that’s due tomorrow. Can you come here?” When Sinclair agreed, she said, “Come alone.”

*

Braddock didn’t like it at all. She told Sinclair so during the entire drive to San Francisco’s Nob Hill. Bianca couldn’t be trusted. If Bianca didn’t intend to give him copies of whatever information and photos she had, it would be his word against hers. If they acted on the information without the documentation as proof, they’d be left hanging and looking like fools at best. At worst, they could jeopardize the integrity of the investigation. She suggested that if he still insisted on meeting Bianca alone, he should at least put their digital recorder in his pocket and covertly record their conversation. Sinclair agreed and left her sitting in the car drumming her fingers on the dash as he entered the high-rise luxury building.

Bianca opened the door to the twenty-eighth floor penthouse apartment dressed in a short silk kimono. Bare feet, loose
hair, and probably nothing under the robe. “I’m having a bloody Mary, but I have coffee made if you’d like some.”

“Sure,” Sinclair said. “Black.”

She glided across the gleaming bamboo floor into the open kitchen. Floor-to-ceiling windows covered two walls with a view of the top of the Transamerica Pyramid building. The bottom of the building and most of the city below was hidden by the fog, which gave him the feeling they were floating on a cloud. She set a glass mug on a massive marble coffee table centered in front of a long, white sofa. “Have a seat,” she said. “I’ll get the file.”

He sipped the coffee, a weak brown brew with hazelnut flavoring.

She sat next to him so closely he could feel the heat radiating off her, and she pulled several handwritten pages from a legal-size envelope. “Feel free to look at these and take notes of what’s important, but I’ll ask you not to transcribe it word for word. Each of the twenty-four names you provided was run through the service’s database. You’ll see each name written here.” She pointed out the names in the left column. “Next to each name are the dates when Dawn provided services for that particular man.”

Bianca leaned over the papers on the table, exposing most of her left breast when the kimono, kept together only by a sash around her waist, parted. Sinclair had no doubt that Bianca was aware of it. He kept his eyes on the papers as she continued. “A few of the men only saw Dawn once. Most saw her less than ten times. Preston Yates was a regular two or three times a week for several months. Then nothing. I’ll tell you more about that later. William Whitt was one of her regulars from the time she began working for the agency about eight years ago. He last used her services about a year ago. You don’t need to count all the dates next to his name. He paid for Dawn’s company a hundred and fourteen times. You’ll note that there are no dates within the last year associated with any of the men.”

Sinclair jotted the men’s last names in his notebook, the number of times they had seen Dawn, and their most recent date. “There are huge gaps when Dawn saw no one.”

“From what I understand, Dawn first came to work for the agency about eight years ago. For a while, she continued to work as a streetwalker. Some of the girls who started on the street can’t seem to give it up. Eventually, Dawn became fully employed with the agency, taking about two or three calls a day and working about five days a week. About five years ago, Preston Yates stopped calling for appointments with Dawn, which coincided with Dawn’s request to take fewer calls.”

“Let me guess,” Sinclair said. “She wasn’t the first girl who decided to freelance with a regular and cut out the agency.”

Bianca turned sideways on the couch and casually pulled one of her legs to her chest. “Agencies are on guard for that. They had her followed and tracked her to a new residential building near the civic center in Oakland, a unit on the fourth floor. She spent several hours there three times a week, occasionally overnight.” Bianca pulled a dozen black-and-white photos from the envelope and spread them across the table.

One photo showed Dawn entering past an apartment door being held open by Preston Yates. Several others, apparently taken through the window with a powerful zoom lens, showed them kissing. A sequence of photos showed Dawn completely naked walking from what Sinclair recognized as the bedroom hallway into the main room of the condo and embracing Yates as he stood looking out the window, followed by her leading him by the hand toward the bedroom.

“These sure look like blackmail photos to me,” Sinclair said from the other side of the coffee table.

“I believe the agency showed the photos to both of them at the time and admonished Dawn for cutting out the agency. Preston paid an undisclosed amount of money to make up what the agency’s commission would have been, and Dawn promptly quit. Helena later found out Dawn had become Preston’s
full-time mistress. The next time the agency heard from her was about two years later, when she called begging for her old job back. She told Helena she had made a terrible mistake falling in love with a john. She said she got pregnant, and when she refused to have an abortion, Yates wanted nothing to do with her. Dawn went home, had the baby, but for whatever reason couldn’t stay.”

“And Helena, being a kind-hearted madam, took her back in.”

“Helena’s a savvy businesswoman. Dawn was a major moneymaker. Helena kept her on a shorter leash this time around and met her for coffee or lunch every month. Although many of the girls who work for the escort service say they plan to save up their money and get out of the business, Dawn was actually doing it. Helena was all for it. She always wanted what was best for her girls. Dawn was going to school and finally got a part-time job as an accountant. About a year ago, she thanked Helena and told her she didn’t need the agency any longer. Helena wished her well.”

“She didn’t have her followed?”

“Ah, Matt, you think like a madam. Helena learned that Dawn was meeting with many of her old clients, but one or both of them showed up at meetings with briefcases, and often only stayed together for a few minutes. She concluded that Dawn was only doing accounting work for those old clients, and since most of them continued to call the agency for escorts, Helena was convinced Dawn was actually out of the business.”

“Who does Helena think killed her?”

“She has no idea. She thinks that if Preston did it, he would’ve done it when she refused to terminate the pregnancy.”

“Did she ever use those photos again?”

“Not according to her; however, between you and me, I think she’d use them to avoid prosecution. She believes Yates can influence your department.”

“Are there others she could also use to influence her prosecution?”

“I haven’t seen the client list, but she assures me there are others she could go to for help if she has to.”

“I’d like copies of those papers and the photos,” Sinclair said.

“Sorry, but that’s not the deal. If your investigation identifies one of these men as Dawn’s killer, I’ll make sure you get everything you need on that man. If it’s Preston, I’ll give you the photos. But if I were to give you any documents or photos now, you’d have to submit them as evidence. After that, too many people in your department and the DA’s office would have access to them.”

“Then I guess we’re done here.” Sinclair took a final sip of his coffee and set the cup on the table.

“We don’t have to be.” Bianca leaned back against a large pillow. “I find you very attractive, Detective Sergeant Sinclair.”

Sinclair tried not to act surprised by her directness. “I’m flattered. There’s no doubt it would be an experience I’d never forget, but there’re a million reasons why it would be totally wrong.”

*

“She really propositioned you?” Braddock asked after he finished briefing her on what Bianca told him on their way back to Oakland.

“It’s on tape,” he said, handing the recorder back to her.

“You have to admire her directness. I’ll hang onto this. I doubt she’ll want that little indiscretion to get out.”

Sinclair laughed. “I have the feeling she could care less.”

“What now?”

The thick fog turned into a drizzle, and Sinclair turned on the windshield wipers as they passed Treasure Island. “I want to talk to Preston Yates.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Why not?” he said. “We’ve got a witness who puts two men taking out the body. I guess it’s possible that he killed her
and called for a cleanup, but I don’t see him as the killing type. If he did it, he’ll lawyer up in a heartbeat. He learned at least that much in law school. Forget who he is for a minute. This is the natural progression of our investigation. We know he acquired the apartment where Dawn was killed. She was still living there because of their relationship, so for all practical purposes, it’s his apartment. Isn’t that the next person you’d normally interview?”

“Of course, but we can’t ignore who he is.”

“He shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind his position. What he’s concealing might open up this whole can of worms and get us on the right track.”

Fifteen minutes later, Sinclair parked their car in front of a storefront office on Telegraph Avenue. He had called the number on Yates’s card and told the woman who answered he wanted to brief the councilman on a homicide he’d previously inquired about. She told him that since it was Sunday, Yates was at the district community office and could see him between meetings.

Sinclair and Braddock entered through a glass door into an outer office cluttered with secondhand tables and desks. This had originally been Yates’s campaign office, and Sinclair remembered how it bustled with activity that flooded into the street when Yates was first running for office six years ago. Now it was purported as a place for volunteers to give back to their community. In actuality, politicians such as Yates used the volunteers and the office to keep the citizens in his council district happy and ensure his next election victory.

A trim woman introduced herself as Yates’s chief of staff and escorted them to the larger of the two offices in the back of the main room. Yates wore khaki chinos and a plaid button-down shirt and sat with his feet on an old desk, reading a thick binder. He rose and shook Sinclair’s hand with the same limp grip as before.

“Councilman Yates, this is my partner, Sergeant Braddock.”

“A pleasure.” He smiled at Braddock. “Sergeant, please call me Preston. Have a seat.”

They sat on two metal folding chairs in front of his desk.

“You wanted to tell me about a homicide.” Yates leaned forward in his chair as if he were interested.

“The murder of Dawn Gustafson,” Sinclair said. “We spoke of it Friday night. We found the apartment where she was killed.”

“It wasn’t in my district, I hope.”

“The new condos at Twelfth and MLK Way, unit four-nineteen. Does that mean anything to you?”

Yates’s smile faded for a few counts and then returned to his face. “Can’t say it does.”

“That’s interesting, because we spoke to a neighbor who was a close friend of Dawn,” Sinclair said. “She was introduced to a man named Press, who was Dawn’s boyfriend.”

“It still doesn’t mean anything to me.” Yates’s smile disappeared.

Sinclair pulled out the photo lineup that he and Braddock had shown to Angela Porter and set the six DMV photos of white males on the desk in front of Yates. “She picked number four as Press. That’s a photo of you, Mr. City Councilmember.”

Yates jumped up. “This meeting is over.”

“Sit down,” Sinclair ordered.

Yates marched to the door. “You may leave now.”

His chief of staff and a fortyish man with shoulder-length hair poked their heads through the doorway.

Sinclair slammed the door shut in their faces, turned to Yates, and said again, this time louder, “Sit down.”

Yates walked meekly back to his desk and sat down. Sinclair grabbed Yates’s chair with him in it and rolled it to the front of the desk facing his and Braddock’s chairs. Without the barrier of the desk between them, the confidence left Yates’s face. He slumped in the chair. Sinclair said nothing, allowing the silence to build.

Finally, Yates said, “Aren’t you going to read me my rights?”

“Did you kill her?”

“No.”

Had Yates said yes, Sinclair would have been screwed. The confession would’ve been inadmissible. But it was a risk worth taking. “Then I don’t need to advise you of your rights. I’m looking for the man who did. Everyone else is just a witness.”

“A witness to what?”

“You tell me,” Sinclair said.

“I don’t know who killed her.”

“Tell me what you do know.”

Yates sat there quietly for several minutes. Sinclair said nothing.

“Okay, I knew her,” Yates finally said.

“Tell us about it. From the beginning.” Sinclair’s phone buzzed. He looked at the screen: Maloney. He pressed a button, sending the lieutenant to voicemail.

“You don’t need to do this,” Yates said. “I can be of great benefit to you.”

“It sounds as if you’re offering me something in exchange for me to not do my job. You know what that is, don’t you?”

“I’m not trying to bribe you. That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Tell me what you are saying.”

Sinclair’s phone buzzed. A text from Maloney:
WTF are you doing?
Sinclair ignored it and put his phone away.

“What crime did I commit? Engaging in prostitution? The DA doesn’t prosecute men for that. Even if your department catches them in a sting, the most they get is a fine and court probation.”

“I’d rather not arrest you and make you go through that.”

“Where’s your case? If it was with that girl, she can’t testify. Where’s your evidence?”

Sinclair’s phone buzzed again. He ignored it. “We’re not in court and I’m not here to argue a case. I’m here to solve a murder. Tell me about your relationship with Dawn Gustafson.”

“You know that if this gets out, it’ll destroy me.”

“Then tell me everything, and I’ll see that it doesn’t get out.”

“How can I trust you?”

“You’ve got no choice. I have the dates when you paid Special Ladies Escorts for Dawn’s company. Two or three times a week for a few months. I’ll eventually track how you paid. I know about the photos and your payoff to the agency. I know you played house with her in the condo where she was killed. I know your friend, Sergio, owns it. I know about the baby.”

Yates put his face in his hands. He rocked back and forth, breathing heavily. After a few minutes, Sinclair pealed Yates’s hands away from his face.

“I’m not after your career or your reputation, but right now, you’re between me and the truth. Trust me, Mr. Yates, I will bulldoze over you or anyone else who tries to keep me from the truth.”

“If my wife finds out—”

The door swung open and Chief Clarence Brown appeared in the doorway. If looks could kill, Sinclair would have been a dead man. “Sinclair, Braddock, outside!”

They slowly stood and walked toward the door. Yates stood as well. “Councilmember,” Brown said, “you should stay here and talk to no one until I return.”

A dozen people had gathered in the outer office. Brown said to Yates’s chief of staff, “I’d like the room.” Once everyone filed out the door and clustered on the sidewalk, Brown said, “Now, what in the hell do you two think you’re doing?”

“Investigating a murder,” Sinclair said. “That’s what I’m paid to do.”

“Don’t be flip with me, Sinclair. You know better than to interrogate a sitting city councilmember without running it up the chain of command.”

Sinclair wanted to ask him where in the manual of rules that was written, but decided his best chance for keeping his job rested with a logical explanation. Brown listened for ten minutes as Sinclair laid out the facts that led them to Yates. The rage left
Brown’s face, and by the end of the story, he was shaking his head in disbelief. “So Yates was keeping the girl as a mistress and they had a love child together?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And shortly before her murder, she was planning on asking him for greater child support?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“But you don’t think he killed her?”

Sinclair shrugged his shoulders.

“Wait here,” Brown said, and he disappeared into the room with Yates.

Fifteen minutes later, Brown came back out just as Maloney burst into the room out of breath. “It’s about time you got here,” Brown said to the homicide commander.

“Chief, I—”

Brown waved his hand to quiet him. “Last weekend, Yates was in Long Beach with two commissioners from the Port of Oakland for a conference. I know it’s possible that he had someone kill your victim, but it’s doubtful he did it himself. The councilmember will be in my office Tuesday at five o’clock. He will have copies of all of his bank and cell phone records. Come prepared with a list of questions you have for him. He will be there without a lawyer and will answer anything related to your murder investigation.”

Sinclair nodded his approval.

“This stays among us.” Brown made eye contact separately with each of them, and then locked his gaze on Sinclair. “If I find any of you leaked this to the media or said a word to anyone—and I mean
anyone
 . . . I don’t even need to finish that sentence, do I?”

Maloney, Sinclair, and Braddock all shook their heads in unison.

“Personally, behavior of this sort by a government official disgusts me, but I try not to impose my morality on others. The politics of this situation are well above your pay grade. Don’t
involve yourself. That’s not just advice; it’s an order. Leave the politics to me.”

*

Skyline Boulevard ran for twenty miles along the Oakland Hills from the border with Berkeley to the end of Oakland’s city limits in the east. Dozens of pullouts offered panoramic views of the Oakland flatland, the Bay Bridge, and on clear days, as far as San Francisco, Alcatraz Island, and the Golden Gate Bridge. William Whitt’s house sat on the south side of the winding two-lane road, high above toney Montclair Village and the city of Piedmont.

After Brown had finished with Maloney and his two investigators, Maloney had taken Sinclair and Braddock outside to add to the chief’s ass-chewing. Sinclair felt bad for putting his lieutenant in the chief’s line of fire by keeping him in the dark, but had he asked for permission to interview Yates, he would never have gotten it. When Sinclair told him of his plan to next interview William Whitt, Maloney gave him permission under the condition that he and Braddock keep it low-key and nonconfrontational unless clear evidence of Whitt’s involvement in the murder surfaced. If he received another call from the chief, Maloney promised them there’d be hell to pay.

Whitt opened the door dressed in a cardigan sweater, tweed slacks, and leather slippers. “Sergeant Sinclair, I’m surprised to see you again so soon.”

“Do you have time to talk?” Sinclair asked.

“Sure.” He held the door open and led them through the foyer to the living room. “I was just downstairs in my office reading a bunch of boring reports.”

Built into the downward slope of the hill, the house seemed as if it had been constructed upside down, with the main floor at street level and bedrooms below. Windows covered the entire back of the house and offered what was literally a million-dollar
view. This part of Skyline was above the blanket of fog that lay over Oakland and San Francisco.

“Beautiful place,” said Sinclair, “but I’d always be afraid it would slide down the hill.”

Whitt chuckled. “I’ve lived here for thirty years and felt the same way for the first ten or so, but when it was intact after the Loma Prieta earthquake, I knew it could weather anything.” Whitt offered them seats in the living room overlooking the fog bank that was rolling in across the bay. “Sitting up here, I’ve become a weather watcher. Although it’s calm right now, you can see the weather coming our way.”

“They say we need all the rain we can get,” Braddock said.

“Yes, but not this kind.” Whitt walked to the window and looked out. “The meteorologists say we’re going to get hit with the bottom edge of a Pineapple Express system. Do you know what that is?”

Sinclair wanted Whitt to talk and relax, so he prompted, “Tell me.”

“It’s an informal term for a strong flow of moist air coming from the waters around the Hawaiian Islands. It usually brings warm torrential rain. This one’s pointed at Portland. We’re just getting a few inches. It’s bad news for the snowpack and skiers, since rain’s expected all the way up to six thousand feet.”

When Whitt turned from the window, Sinclair said, “We came here to talk to you about Dawn Gustafson.”

“I figured as much.” Whitt sat in an upholstered Queen Ann chair that looked uncomfortable. Sinclair and Braddock sat in two swivel chairs across from him. “I was heartbroken to hear of her death. She was an extraordinary young woman.”

“Can you tell us how you knew her?”

“Since you’re here, you already know the answer to that. I saw her profile on the website for Special Ladies Escorts, called the service, and requested her. That was probably seven years ago.”

“How many times did you see her?”

“Detectives, I know the way this makes me look, but the reality is, after my wife died, I was lonely. I’m not particularly good-looking and I don’t have the time nor skill to do the bar scene. Where does a man meet a woman these days? I don’t like to mix business with pleasure. You know the old adage about not dipping your pen in the company inkwell. You’re probably thinking I’m a dirty old man or a sex fiend. She’s just a few years older than my son, after all. But she made me feel good about myself. I would arrange to see her weekly. Sometimes all we did was talk. She was a great listener.”

“Can you give us an estimate, Mr. Whitt?” Braddock asked.

“In the hundreds. About five years ago, she quit the agency. I tried other escorts, but none were Dawn. She called me when she returned to the agency, and we began seeing each other again. She was trying to change her life. We talked about her business plan and I fully supported it, so when she quit the agency, I was the first in line to sign up for her personal finance business. It allowed me to still spend time with her, and her hourly rate was much lower.”

Braddock picked up a framed photo from the coffee table of a young man dressed in a tuxedo. “Is this your son?”

“Travis.” Whitt smiled. “He had it rough after his mother died, but he turned out okay. Finally.”

“Losing a mother must’ve been hard on him,” Braddock said.

“He was ten, maybe eleven, when his mother died. The year before she died was difficult as well. I’m sure you’ll find out. It’s all out there, so I might as well tell you. I had an affair with Travis’s fourth-grade teacher. Susan, my wife, found out and filed for divorce. It was public and messy. I entered counseling, did everything she asked of me. We were reconciling. It’s all in the court records.”

“The teacher’s name?” Sinclair said.

“Lisa Harper. That was a huge mistake for both of us. I haven’t heard from her in years, but I imagine she’s still teaching at the Caldecott Academy. When Susan made my indiscretion
public, the school terminated Lisa. She was teaching at the public elementary school then. I helped her get the job at Caldecott and, out of guilt and a sense of responsibility, I paid the difference in her salary and benefits for a number of years.”