Nightlife: A Novel Page 6

  The girl half-turned to go inside, and Detective Hobbes froze the tape. The blond woman was held in place, her image quivering slightly, a band of static moving upward from the bottom of the screen, disappearing, then reappearing at the bottom. Her face was attractive but not distinctive—just small, regular features. She seemed to be one of those women whose eyelashes and brows were light, so that her eyes disappeared into her face until she put on her makeup each morning.

  Detective Hobbes turned to look down at Hugo Poole, her expression controlled. “Well, Mr. Poole? Have you seen her before?”

  “Never.” He kept staring at the girl’s image, scowling.

  Joe Pitt asked, “How did you get this tape?”

  “Dennis Poole had been on vacation until two weeks before he died,” said Hobbes. “His credit card slips gave us the hotel in Aspen where he had been staying. We asked the hotel for their security tapes, and I went down to watch them. The ones from early in his stay were all erased, but a few of the later ones survived. This is the clearest, I’m afraid.”

  “Do you know who she is yet?” asked Pitt.

  “Her name is Tanya Starling. She was registered at the hotel for two days before he arrived. After he had been there for about three days she canceled her room and moved in with him.”

  “Did the hotel have a home address for her?”

  “Yes,” she said. “An apartment in Chicago. The phone number was out of service, so we asked the Chicago police to find out whether the number had been changed, but the whole account was closed. They checked with the company that manages the place and found she had moved out before she left for Colorado. She left no forwarding address.”

  “Is the apartment still vacant?”

  “No such luck. It’s a fancy high-rise with a view of the lake, and there was a waiting list. They cleaned and repainted it right away and new people moved in a couple of days later. There’s no chance of lifting prints now.”

  Hugo Poole broke his silence. “It’s not right.”

  Catherine Hobbes frowned. “What’s not right, Mr. Poole?”

  “I know you don’t like me, but I’m trying to tell you something about my cousin.”

  “And I assume you don’t like me, but I’m listening.”

  “The girl shouldn’t be like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “She’s wrong for Denny. He was a forty-two-year-old computer geek. He had a stupid laugh, he was tall in the wrong way—kind of big-footed and narrow-shouldered. He didn’t talk about anything women could stand to listen to.”

  Joe Pitt said, “That sounds like a million guys, most of them married. If she moved in, she was interested.”

  “Too good-looking,” said Hugo Poole. “When I saw him with women, they were always on the same step of the food chain that he was on. She should be a nice fat girl with bad teeth.”

  Catherine Hobbes studied Hugo Poole. “What do you think was going on? Do you think she’s a hooker?”

  “I doubt it. She was with him for, like, three weeks,” said Hugo. “He’d have died broke and still owed her money.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Hobbes. “Besides, the Chicago police would probably have picked up that kind of information. She could have been some single woman willing to give a guy like Dennis a little slack. His spending a lot of money on her would be flattering. She was on vacation, so the rules and standards sometimes slip a little. Somebody she wouldn’t go out with at home might do for an evening in a strange place.”

  “Okay,” said Hugo. “Lightning strikes and guys like Dennis get lucky. But there’s no way a woman like that would stay for more than one night unless something besides Dennis was the attraction.”

  “All right, you two have convinced me,” said Pitt. “There was a hidden reason why she was with him. So what was it? If she moved out of her fancy apartment in Chicago and took off for Colorado, maybe she was hiding. Maybe Dennis got killed by somebody who was after her.”

  “You mean an old boyfriend or a jealous husband?” said Hugo. “Dennis Poole killed by a jealous husband?”

  “It might explain what she was doing moving in with him,” said Catherine Hobbes. “Living with somebody who’s paying for everything makes a woman hard to spot. She could also have been the one who killed him.”

  Pitt said, “Do you know whether any of his money is gone?”

  “Nothing so far,” said Hobbes. “He had some charges from jewelry stores, and some women’s clothing stores. We’ve found about twenty thousand dollars’ worth.”

  “Are you sure he was the one who made all of the charges?” asked Pitt.

  “He was alive on those dates,” Hobbes said. “And he didn’t report a lost credit card.”

  “Then I’ll go with the odds,” said Pitt.

  “What are they?” asked Hugo.

  Pitt said, “That when you have a murder scene and a woman is missing, it’s not because she was the perpetrator. Usually when you find her, she’s the second victim.”

  “Thanks for coming up to Portland and cooperating with us, Mr. Poole,” said Catherine Hobbes as she turned off the tape and took the cassette out of the VCR. “I’m sure that Mr. Pitt will let you know the minute we find anything else.” She walked out of the interrogation room.

  A half hour later, Catherine Hobbes sat alone in the interrogation room in front of the monitor, watching the videotape of herself, Hugo Poole, and Joe Pitt watching the hotel security tape. She studied the reactions of both men to everything that was seen or said. Then she got to the part she had been waiting for: the sight of herself walking out of the room.

  She watched the tape of Hugo Poole as he stood up and looked at Pitt. “What the hell did you do to her?”

  Pitt went to the door ahead of him and reached for the knob to open it. “I went to work for you.”

  “I was expecting her not to warm up to me. This was about you. Whatever you’re doing to her, you ought to either cut it out or do it better.”

  On the monitor, Catherine Hobbes watched the two men walk out the door. If either of them had anything enlightening to say about the murder of Dennis Poole, he had not been foolish enough to say it inside the Portland Police Bureau.

  8

  Rachel Sturbridge emptied the vacuum cleaner bag into the garbage dumpster outside her rented house. She went inside, put on disposable rubber gloves, and walked one last time through her house with a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. She stood at the window that faced north. Between two apartment buildings she could just see the taller office buildings along Market Street. She stepped to the side, sprayed the glass, and wiped it once more. It was important to be sure that she had not missed any surface as smooth as a windowpane.

  She sprayed and wiped all of the handles, knobs, and latches, then took broad swipes over all of the flat surfaces where she might have rested her fingertips in the past few weeks. If David Larson had been lying about calling off his detectives, the least she could do was to deny them the gift of her fingerprints.

  Rachel took a final look at the furniture that Mrs. Halloran, the landlady, had supplied with the house, trying to find any hairs that she might have left on a cushion. She wrote “Eve Halloran” on an envelope, slipped her house key into it, and left it on the mantel. Then she picked up her suitcase, went out the door, and pressed the lock button. Only after she was outside the house and in her car did she take off her thin rubber gloves.

  She was out on Highway 101 by noon, driving south, away from the city. San Francisco had been a terrible disappointment to her, and she wanted to get away, but she had no destination in mind. Today it seemed to Rachel that the world was a cold and treacherous place, and the only act that was appealing was to keep moving.

  For a few hours she drove and thought about her dissatisfaction with David Larson. He was a foolish man, one who had no idea what a wonderful future he had thrown away when he had betrayed Rachel Sturbridge’s trust. He really deserved to die, and it bother
ed her that she had been forced to let him go. It didn’t seem fair.

  When she began to feel hungry, she looked at the clock on the dashboard and noticed that it was five o’clock. She stopped at a restaurant in Pismo Beach and stared out at the highway while she ate, wishing she could see the ocean.

  She refilled the gas tank and drove all the way to the Los Angeles County line before she stopped again. She found a hotel off the Ventura Freeway in the west end of the San Fernando Valley and registered with her Rachel Sturbridge credit card. When she awoke in the morning, she showered, ate, and dressed, then settled her bill in cash. It was time to begin making herself safe from whatever problems David Larson might have caused.

  She needed to be anonymous for a time while she rested and decided what she wanted to do next, and the nondescript neighborhood where she had stopped looked like a good place for that. All of Los Angeles seemed featureless to her, a vast sameness. A young, white middle-class woman could avoid notice for a very long time if she paid attention and didn’t do anything stupid. She rented an apartment in Woodland Hills not far from the Topanga Canyon shopping mall by putting down money for the first month, last month, and security deposit in cash.

  She went to a copying store, just as she had in San Francisco, rented a computer and printer, and took out the CD where she had stored the blank birth certificate. During the long drive from San Francisco she had been thinking of using the name Veronica, but the girl who waited on her was pretty and energetic, and she was wearing a badge that said, “Nancy Gonzales, Sales Associate.” The name Nancy seemed cheerful, so that was the one that she chose. She filled in the blank with the name Nancy Mills.

  Next she bought a hair dye kit and lightened her hair again, then went to a salon to have it cut. She had worn it long and loose as Rachel Sturbridge, so now it had to be shorter. Long hair gave her an advantage with men, but she had decided it would be better if she didn’t attract any more of them for a while. On the way home, she went to an optometrist’s shop in a strip mall and bought some nonprescription contact lenses in different eye colors.

  Two days later, when she went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to apply for a new driver’s license, she wore the brown contacts, so in her license picture she had brown eyes and shoulder-length, light brown hair. She thought of the look as drab and ordinary, which was exactly what she wanted.

  She sold Rachel Sturbridge’s car through the Pennysaver to a woman she told she needed money to pay off a credit card debt. She could walk to restaurants, movie theaters, and even a grocery store from her apartment, so she decided that she could do without a car for the moment. Nancy Mills needed quiet and anonymity and solitude. She was disillusioned by her experience with David Larson, and had no desire to go anyplace where men might see her and talk to her, so she stayed away from health clubs, restaurants that had bars, and other spots where she had found men before.

  After her first week in Los Angeles, Tanya Starling and Rachel Sturbridge had been erased. Nancy Mills was already nearly invisible. She would wait and watch and see if something troublesome had followed her from San Francisco.

  9

  Catherine Hobbes and Joe Pitt walked down the hall of the San Francisco police station, watching the numbers over the doors until they came to 219.

  The door was open, so Catherine stepped inside. There were several desks in the room, where plainclothes officers gazed at computer screens or talked on telephones. She approached a group of three who were leaning over to look at a file opened on a desk, and said to them, “I’m looking for Detective Crowley.”

  “I’m Crowley. Welcome to San Francisco,” said a tall, thin cop with a bald head. He straightened and held out his hand. “Are you Sergeant Hobbes?”

  She flashed a smile and shook his hand. Crowley looked over her shoulder expectantly, and she remembered Joe Pitt. “This is Mr. Pitt, who is conducting an investigation for the victim’s family. Do you mind talking to both of us?”

  Detective Crowley shook his head, then reached past her, his arm almost touching her shoulder, and shook Pitt’s hand enthusiastically. “Not at all. I’ve known Mr. Pitt for about a hundred years. How you been, Joe?”

  Pitt said, “Can’t complain, Doug. I hear you’ve got Tanya Starling’s car.”

  “Well, we’ve found out where it is. We haven’t impounded it. She sold it here about four days after you lost track of her in Portland. There was an ad in the Chronicle. The man who bought it is named”—he picked up a written report and scanned it—“Harold Willis. He bought it for fifteen thousand.”

  Pitt asked, “Was that a good deal?”

  “It was close to the high blue book price, so it wasn’t a steal or anything. She wasn’t just unloading it fast.”

  “And did Harold Willis recognize the photographs of Tanya Starling I sent to you?” asked Catherine Hobbes.

  “Yes. He said it was definitely her. She went on a test drive with him, took his check, made out a bill of sale, signed over the registration, and wished him luck. That took maybe two hours, so he had plenty of time to look.”

  “Where did the sale take place?” asked Hobbes. “Her place?”

  “No. Her ad just had a phone number. She called Willis and brought the car to his house.” He anticipated the next question. “She was alone with him all that time. She wasn’t kidnapped or under duress. If she had been in trouble, she could have told him about it, or driven to any police station.”

  Pitt said, “How about the bank account where she deposited his check? Do you have anything on that yet?”

  “It was a business account at Regal Bank.” Crowley handed Pitt a piece of paper. “Here’s the address of the branch where she deposited it, the account number, and her home address.”

  “Great,” said Pitt. “Thanks.”

  Hobbes calmly reached over and took the piece of paper from Joe Pitt.

  “Could be better,” Crowley said. “We called on her and found that she’s moved on again. She had signed a lease for a house with a roommate named Rachel Sturbridge. They paid three months’ rent in advance, according to the owner, a Mrs. Eve Halloran. She says they moved out about a week ago. The date is vague, because they left without telling her.”

  “Did she have a job while she was here?” asked Hobbes.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Crowley said. “The two of them had run a d/b/a announcement in the paper and took out a license for a business called Singular Aspects. It lists a newsletter, which I assume was a catalog. If it was a store, they didn’t stay long enough to open.”

  “That’s what you think it was—a store?”

  “I don’t know. That’s my guess, from the sound of it. I defer to you, though, Sergeant Hobbes. Doesn’t it sound like a women’s clothing store? Anyway, less than a month later, the bank account was closed and they had both moved on.”

  “That’s the part we need to know,” said Hobbes. “Where did they move to?”

  “We’ve got nothing on that yet,” said Crowley. “Neither of them left a forwarding address at the post office or with their landlady. Before they left, they closed their account at Regal Bank, so there’s nothing there, either. They might easily have found a good location somewhere nearby, like San Mateo or Richmond, and moved. By now they could also be in China.”

  “Either way, Tanya Starling doesn’t seem to be in any danger, and she certainly isn’t dead,” said Hobbes. “But she’s still our only potential witness on why Dennis Poole is.”

  Pitt said, “Did Tanya buy another car before she left?”

  “No. Rachel Sturbridge has one, and maybe they drove off in that.” He handed a piece of paper to Pitt. “Here’s the DMV printout on it. A six-year-old Nissan Maxima, black. License plate and VIN are supplied. It’s registered to the address they rented here. So until she gets wherever she’s going and reregisters it with a good address, we won’t know where she is. If she’s in-state, she probably won’t get around to it until next year.”

  “Ke
ep us in mind, will you, Doug?”

  “Sure,” said Crowley. “When we get anything more, you’ll have it.”

  Catherine Hobbes said, “Thank you very much, Detective Crowley. Here’s my card. There are numbers for my direct line, the homicide office, my cell, and my home. It doesn’t matter what time of day it comes in, I would appreciate it if you’ll call.”

  “Of course,” said Crowley.

  She and Pitt walked out of the police station, and Pitt drove the rental car to the house where Tanya Starling and Rachel Sturbridge had lived. As soon as Pitt found a parking space at the foot of the long, inclining street, Catherine Hobbes got out and began to walk. Pitt locked the car and trotted to catch up. By the time he’d succeeded, he was winded.

  “What’s bothering you?” asked Pitt.

  Catherine Hobbes walked along the street, her quick strides keeping her a half pace ahead of him so she wouldn’t have to look at his fake concerned expression. “Nothing.”

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re going to give me a heart attack walking up this hill at this speed. Something’s bothering you.”

  She stopped and looked at him. “We’re not in some boy-and-girl relationship that requires your helping when something’s bothering me. I’m a police officer working a homicide case. Your role is not to delve into my female sensitivities so you can talk me out of them. You’re here with me only because my captain thought you might be able to contribute to the progress of the investigation. That was not an opinion I shared.”

  “It’s Crowley, isn’t it?”

  “Do not tell me I’m imagining things.”

  “I won’t. But—”

  “I’m also not interested in being told it’s not his fault because you knew each other twenty years ago, or because he’s too old to get used to women in homicide, or because you two are from California and I’m not.”