THE NUMBERS MAN

CHAPTER THREE

March 30, 2005
San Francisco, CA

When he called in, Hawke was on the Embarcadero on his way to China Basin. San Francisco Homicide rotated on-call inspectors on a Monday to Monday basis, and Hawke and his new partner, Elizabeth la Rosa, were on this week. The initial radio call had been about an 802, a dead body in Golden Gate Park, but by the time he phoned in the medical examiner had arrived and said, "Call Homicide." Hawke made a U-turn, his view swinging across the water past the gray towers of the Bay Bridge. He called la Rosa.

"I'm not placing Marx Meadow," she said.

"As you come through the park there's Lloyd's Lake with the little Greek temple. Marx is right after that."

"Drive toward the bison paddock?"

"Yeah, go left at the AIDS Memorial and keep working your way down."

Yesterday, it rained hard and showers had carried into this morning, but now the storm was blowing out. Late afternoon sunlight reflected brilliantly off the bay and buildings looked brighter in the clean air. In the last few weeks there'd been several heavy storms, so what was a jogger doing on a rain-soaked meadow this afternoon? The jogger who'd found her had called 911 from his cell phone at 3:38. He'd flagged two mounted officers, and the horse guys had waited until the first SFPD radio unit arrived and took over. It was now 5:10. He and la Rosa would have about an hour of daylight.

The jogger's name was Jason West. As he drove through the city Hawke ran him through Q-ALL, the database of San Francisco victims, witnesses, and suspects. He ran West's driver's license number through DMV, and before reaching the Stanyon Street entrance to Golden Gate Park fed his name into the national system, West's reward for being a responsible citizen.

Golden Gate was a long rectangular park, a thousand acres of reclaimed sand dunes. Clouds half the size of the city swept overhead as he drove through the park toward the ocean. He passed streets barricaded for bike and pedestrian usage, then Lloyd's Lake with its mock temple. As he reached Marx Meadow he pulled in ahead of the patrol units and a fire truck. Crime and photo lab teams were en route. La Rosa was ten minutes behind him.

Most of the homicides Hawke had seen in the last several years were in the Bayview, Tenderloin, Western Addition, and the Mission. Most were gang related. He hadn't been in this part of the park in a while, and looking out across the meadow what came to mind now was playing baseball here as a kid. The low spot that was always wet in the spring, the picnic tables you had to watch out for, the trees and slopes on three sides that had been like bleachers in those days. Four green picnic tables were spaced every twenty yards or so along the left. A rusted iron barbecue grill serviced each and thin paths worn into the muddy grass looped them together. On a warm weekend day each of these tables would get claimed early, but with the recent heavy rains the meadow was empty.

He spotted the jogger standing with a uniform officer near the end of the field and started toward him, picking a route between the picnic tables and glistening ponded water. The grass was vivid with spring, littered with dandelion blooms. At the end of the meadow on the left side was the narrow redwood grove and he watched the tops of the redwoods move in the wind and remembered a service road up there behind the trees. The service road ended and became a paved walkway that fed out onto the Fulton Street border of the park, so maybe she'd been brought in that way.

Hawke shook the jogger's hand and gave him a card, but didn't pull his star off his belt. He thanked him for waiting.

"I shouldn't be waiting. I've got someone meeting me at my office in a few minutes. I already gave a statement, I really don't get why I'm still here, because I really don't have anything else to say."

"Tell me how you found her."

"If I do, it'll be the fourth time in the last hour."

"It'll be the first for me."

The jogger, middle-aged, white, male, cold, shivered from the wind or nervousness or both. He wore thin nylon shorts, a black tank top, a fanny pack belted around his waist with a cell phone clipped onto it. An iPod was attached to a Velcro band on his arm. He had the stringy legs, emaciated chest, and well-worn shoes of the inveterate runner.

"Okay, I always run at lunch, and was doing my usual run." He pointed at the redwoods. "I found her in the trees," and added, "I can't believe this is happening to me. I've to get home, shower, and be ready for this appointment."

It didn't happen to you, Hawke thought, but nodded in understanding. When he'd called in they'd told him the jogger didn't want to stick. He already given a statement and it was a city problem, not his. Hawke saw la Rosa at the far end of the meadow, lifted a hand to signal her, and asked, "Did you run yesterday?"

"Yes."

"In the rain?"

"Rain is no big deal." West pointed across the meadow at a dirt track. "I always come down that path."

"Then where?"

He'd run through a large puddle in the middle of the meadow, and turned the calf of his right leg toward Hawke now, showing dried muddy splashes and revealing his pride in the bunched muscles. Maybe if he ran hard enough long enough he could outrun cancer and old age. He had a pedometer attached to his shoe and Hawke asked to see that as la Rosa reached them. The pedometer read 2.3 miles, a number Hawke copied down along with West's address and email. He took in West once more, a slight build, thinning blond hair, wearing paper thin running clothes, his penis shrunken with cold and outlined by the wind, La Rosa standing over him, her opening smile gone and looking down hard at West, though Hawke knew this about her already, like him, she wasn't a fan of intimidation.

This case was where it started for la Rosa and him. This would be their first together and he knew already that the jogger would wash out as a possible suspect, maybe as early as today.

"So was this your usual route today?"

"Yes."

"Down the dirt track, across the meadow, and then what do you do?"

West pointed toward the far end of the meadow, toward John F. Kennedy Drive where they'd all parked.

"I go out to the path that runs along the road." He glanced at la Rosa. "But I needed to pee, so I went up into the trees first."

"Is that in the statement you made earlier?"

"No, I was afraid the park police would cite me. They don't like it."

"Show us where."

West led them up into the redwoods. Numerous trails ran up to the service road and access path above. They were all shortcuts down to the meadow. West pointed at a dark stain at the base of a tree.

"Like a dog," la Rosa observed, and Hawke said nothing as he saw the victim for the first time, her body through a gap in the trees, saw what West had seen when he stood here, the white-gray skin of her upper thigh and buttocks, a dark skirt hiked up over her hips, a red sweater bright on the redwood needles. Her hips lay over a log, torso on the downslope, her head supported with rocks the killer must have stacked. Her face was turned as though trying to see who was behind her. Hawke studied the medical examiner working near her, and then looked back at West.

"And what did you do after you saw her?"

"I went down to the meadow and then I came back up. I wasn't sure what it was at first," and Hawke nodded and looked through the gap in the trees again at what was unmistakably a woman.

"Take us the route you took," he said. "We'll walk behind you."

When they got to within ten yards of the body Hawke reached and stopped West. Her legs were spread, her knees in a shallow depression. The log she'd been laid across thrust her hips up exposing her pubic and anal regions. High along the inside of her thighs he saw trickles of dried blood. Her torso rested on the downslope duff on the other side of the log. Both arms had been positioned close to her body. Hair fanning out around her head was stringy from rain, and looking at the way she was posed he registered the similarity to another killing, but didn't say anything yet.

There was little odor but Hawke guessed she'd been dead a couple of days and the cold storm had slowed decomp and kept the blow flies away. The elastic band of her black skirt stretched tight around her belly. She'd been here long enough for that swelling, and her skirt and red cotton sweater were heavy with water. He guessed she'd come through yesterday's storm. He squatted, studied the blood in the duff around her neck, saw neck wounds largely hidden by how she'd been positioned, and listened to la Rosa's quiet questioning of West. Hawke became conscious of West's agitation, his desire to get away from the body.

"How close did you get to her?" Hawke asked him after standing.

"Ten feet, or so."

"Did you touch her?"

White underwear lay near her right calf and looked as though they'd been stepped on.

"Are you kidding?

"That's not your shoeprint on the underwear?"

"It's definitely not mine."

West lifted his shoe to show them the sole as if that proved it.

"I tried to call 911 from in here but couldn't get through, so I walked back down to the meadow."

He pulled his phone off its clip and showed Hawke the call log, then frowned as Hawke wrote down all the numbers the log showed.

"What number do we use to get in touch with you?" Hawke asked, and then wrote those down and let him go. They watched him climb up the muddy dirt track the way he'd said he'd run in. At the top of the hill he turned and stayed long enough to watch the CSI team in their baggy navy blue uniforms arrive behind the photographer, all of them lugging gear across the slippery grass.

"What did you think of West?" la Rosa asked, after they'd looked over the body with the CSI team.

"He's an asshole, but I think he mostly told the truth."

They checked out the muddiest sections along the path around the picnic tables and found a couple of deep heel strikes. Though they may well have been made by someone lugging a heavy ice chest out to one of the picnic tables last weekend, Hawke marked several for castings. If carried, she was probably drugged or unconscious.

They climbed back up through the redwoods, leaving the photographer and CSI team to do their work. Hawke talked to the ME before combing the service road above. La Rosa moved through the trees below. He called the fire department to request a truck with a long ladder they could raise a light on, knowing they'd be another couple of hours here. After walking the road he dropped into the trees, moving toward la Rosa, finding soggy cardboard that had been somebody's bed in warmer months.

"It's been too cold to be in a skirt without stockings," la Rosa said. "Her underwear is there but no stockings."

Hawke didn't answer and thought about a killing fourteen months ago, not far from here at Lincoln Park Golf Course.

"Are you always super quiet, Hawke?"

"Give me a couple of murders and I'll get warmed up."

Then he didn't know whether he'd offended her or something else had caught her eye. She went quiet, moved away from him, and he worked lower into trees, examined a blue shirt caked with mud that from all appearances had been here for years.

"Hawke, over here!"

She'd pulled her flashlight and held the beam on an oak tree where a small rectangle of bark had been stripped off. Four numbers were carved into the raw wood of the trunk, numbers roughly an inch and a half tall reading 1-9-9-1, the whole thing no more than three and a half inches wide and right at head height. Stains on the wood looked like blood.

"Didn't you have something with numbers a year or so ago?"

"Yeah, and it's an open case, and not that far from here. It came to mind when I first saw her." It was a case he'd failed to solve and thought about constantly. "It's a case I worked with my former partner, Kidd. Did you ever meet Kidd?"

"Does he have kind of a red face and blond hair?"

"That's him."

"I got introduced, that's all."

"In the Lincoln Park murder the victim's name was Angela Ruiz. She was killed in January last year, and the numbers there were formed with pebbles pushed into mud near her face. But only two numbers were legible, a one and a nine." Hawke held his thumb and forefinger apart. "They were about this tall. There are photos in the Ruiz binders. Whoever made them scraped the mud smooth and must have used a straight edge to line up the rocks. It was very carefully done, like this carving."

He turned more so he could see la Rosa better.

"Ruiz had a golden retriever. We think she was out walking the dog on a golf course cart path at night when she was assaulted. The dog may have run during the assault, then returned at night and pawed around her face, scraping away what might have been more numbers."

"As in another nine and a one?"

"No way to tell, but that's sure what I'm wondering now. We never went public with the numbers and the body was positioned in a similar way, but there's a catch. There were employees of the golf course who saw it all before we closed off the scene. One of those employees became our prime suspect, but at least ten others saw the crime scene, so they knew about the numbers."

"I remember this now. I remember some talk about that guy. What's his name? He filed a complaint against you later, right?"

"Raymond Bryce. And, yeah, he did file several complaints. Some of my suspects don't like me much."

"That's when I first got my star. I started at homicide January one last year."

Hawke nodded. He remembered her coming on and getting introduced around Homicide. She was the only woman among seventeen inspectors and the rap at the time was that she wanted to be brass, that Homicide was only a stepping stone for her.

"We'll have to go through the Ruiz binders together," he said, and touched the oak. The tree was no more than eight inches in diameter.

"We'll need a crew to cut this down, and technically, we need park approval. It's a young tree but they still aren't going to be thrilled about it. Do you want to call them while I talk to CSI?"

"Sure, I'll call them, but is anything else similar here, Hawke?"

He looked at her thinking they'd have to take everything they could from here. They'd have to bag the redwood duff. They'd look like a landscaping crew leaving.

"Okay," she said, "don't answer. I'll go get on the phone and do the dirty work with the park people and you stay here and practice being a sphinx."

She smiled, showed she was joking, but Hawke said, "I'll make that call if you want."

"No, I'm fine with it. I'm just talking, but I want to know if there are more things you see. I need you to tell me if there are."

"Do you want to handle the press?"

"Why are you worried about the media right now?"

"Because if it's the same guy who killed Ruiz, it's going to get out and they're going to be all over it. You'll be ten times better with them than I am."

"And so what are you then, Obi-Wan Kenobi in the background?"

"Yeah, I'm in the background."

Their eyes met. They were coming from completely different places, a May/December pairing of inspectors, Hawke on the backside, la Rosa rising. Hawke was just a couple of years short of the thirty years service and four short of the age fifty-five minimum required to retire at ninety percent salary, but with no desire to retire. He knew la Rosa was looking for the press conferences, the occasions when the captain wanted the inspectors to do the briefing, knew that already from talking to her, and he wanted to focus only on the killer. Focus on the similarities and find this guy without getting into a conversation with reporters about cold cases and similarities to the TV shows they were watching at night.

"Sure, I'll handle them," she said, and then headed down to the meadow.

Hawke went back up to check the road again, figuring it was the last chance to walk it before the fire department vehicle tore it up. He knew he'd disappointed la Rosa. They'd talked about their different styles when Lieutenant Lewis had asked if they wanted to partner, and what la Rosa had emphasized was communication, talking, sharing information and working a case together. This was a first test of that. She hadn't said anything about being the only woman, but several times spoke about her desire to be treated as an equal. What he heard in that was she'd been treated as less than equal in some previous roles, maybe in the years she rode in a radio car.

As he walked the service road again, he took a phone call from a Sergeant Perez at the Richmond Precinct Station. He recognized Perez's voice and remembered Perez's ambition to make it onto the Homicide Detail.

"The reason I'm calling is a woman came in this morning to report her friend missing and the description sounds like your body in the park."

"Do you have that description there with you?"

"Right in front of me."

"Read it."

He listened and then jotted the missing woman's name, Sharon Riley. The description did sound like their victim. He copied down the phone number of the woman who'd come in to make the report, thanked Perez, and hung up.