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  She smiled at him. “Of course they have choices. Background may limit or influence, but the choices are still there.”

  He considered that. “Consulting I Ching isn’t a contradiction of that?”

  “Certainly not. If anything, the Sage supports the idea that people have control over their futures. He merely advises of the possibilities.” She looked up in concern. “What’s the matter? Are the dreadful broody what-ifs chewing at you?”

  He smiled at her understanding. “Sort of.”

  Maybe what really chewed on him was Mossman, who had lost all choice. He worked at keeping emotional distance from murder victims without becoming indifferent to the crime. Otherwise, he knew, he could screw up his head and burn out. Mossman and his peculiar bruise, though, haunted him...maybe because of the bruise, whose twin case eluded him? It lurked in the back of his mind the rest of the evening, even through the excitement of watching the Giants win a 1-0 squeaker. He stared at the TV screen with Harry, trying to pull the case out of his memory and asking himself who would stick two needles into someone’s jugular and drain out all his blood. It sounded like something from a horror movie.

  Garreth had no particular desire to go home to his empty apartment, so after leaving Harry and Lien, he drove back to the Hall of Justice. He sat in the near-empty office doodling on a blank sheet of paper and letting his mind wander. Bruise...punctures...blood loss. He recalled a photograph of a man in a bathtub, arm trailing down over the side to the floor. A voice said, “Welcome to Homicide, Mikaelian.”

  He sat bolt upright. Earl Fay’s voice! It had been Faye and Centrello’s case. Faye had told Garreth — new to the detail then — all about it in elaborate, gory detail.

  Garreth scrambled for the file drawers. Everything came back to him now. The date was late October two years ago, just about Halloween, one of the factors which fascinated Faye, he remembered.

  “Maybe it was a cult of some kind. They needed the blood for their rituals.”

  Methodically, Garreth searched. The file should still be here. The case remained open, unsolved. And there it was...in a bottom drawer.

  Seated cross-legged on the floor, Garreth opened the murder book. Cleveland Morris Adair, an Atlanta businessman, had been found dead, wrists slashed, in the bathtub of his suite at the Mark Hopkins on October 29, 1981. The death seemed like suicide until the autopsy revealed two puncture wounds in the middle of a bruise on the neck, and although Adair bled to death, his wrists had been slashed postmortem by someone applying a great deal of pressure. That someone had also broken Adair’s neck. Stomach contents showed a high concentration of alcohol. The red coloring of the bathwater proved to be nothing more than grenadine from the bar in his suite.

  Statements from cabdrivers and hotel personnel established that Adair had left the hotel alone on the evening of October 28 and gone to North Beach. He had returned at 2:15 A.M., again alone. A maid coming in to clean Sunday morning found his body.

  Hotel staff in the lobby remembered most of the people entering the hotel around the time Adair had. By the time registered and known persons were sorted out, only three possible suspects remained, and two of them were eventually traced and ruled out. That left the third, who came through the lobby just five minutes after Adair. A bellboy described her in detail: about twenty, five- ten, good figure, dark red hair, green eyes, wearing a green dress plunging to the waistline in front and slit to the hip on the side, carrying a large shoulder bag. A high end call girl, the bellboy thought, since the few times he saw her before, she had been coming in with different men.

  What interested Faye and Centrello about her was that no one saw her leave. Their efforts to locate her among the city’s call girls failed. Nor did they find any wild-eyed crazies who might have made Adair their sacrifice in some kinky ritual. The Crime Lab turned up no useful physical evidence, and robbery was apparently no motive; Adair’s valuables had not been touched.

  Garreth reread the autopsy report several times. Wounds inflicted by someone applying a great deal of pressure. Someone stronger than usual? The deaths had striking similarities and differences, but a crawling down his spine told him that his gut reaction believed more in the similarities than in the differences. Two out-of-towners staying at nice hotels whose blood had been drained through needles in their jugulars, then the bodies doctored to make it seem they bled out other ways. It had a ritual sound about it. No wonder Faye and Centrello hunted cultists.

  After a jaw-cracking yawn, Garreth glanced down at his watch and was shocked to find it almost three o’clock. At least he would not notice the emptiness of the apartment now. He would be lucky to reach the bedroom before he collapsed.

  9

  Every eye in the squad room turned on Garreth as he tried to sneak in. From the middle of the meeting, Serruto said, “Nice of you to join us this morning, Inspector.”

  Garreth sighed. He had already gotten the same dry comment from John Leyva as he breezed by the counter in the outer office. “Sorry. A potential witness wouldn’t stop talking. Have I missed much?”

  “The overnight action. Takananda can fill you in on that later. You’ve identified the Mission Street shooter. Anything more on him yet?”

  “On my way in this morning I rattled some cages close to him,” Garreth said. “We’ll see what that produces.”

  “So we’re just waiting to collar him, right? How about the floater?”

  Garreth let Harry answer while he tried not to yawn. Despite the hour he fell into bed, sunrise woke him as usual.

  “I’ve been awake since five-thirty,” he told Harry after the meeting broke up. “So I went to work, rattling cages, like I said.” He poured himself a cup of coffee. Do your stuff, caffeine. “Are those the lab and autopsy reports?”

  Harry tossed them at Garreth. In return, Garreth handed over the Adair file from his desk. “Read that. I finally remembered where I saw a bruise like Mossman’s before.”

  The lab and autopsy reports told Garreth nothing new. No bloodstains on the clothes, confirming that Mossman did not have his throat cut on the street. However, soiling which analyzed as a mixture of dirt, residue of asphalt, vulcanized rubber, and motor oil suggested Mossman had gone to the bay in the trunk of a car. No surprise there. The autopsy report merely made official what Garreth saw yesterday. Analysis of the stomach contents found a high percentage of alcohol, as he expected.

  He glanced at Harry, who sat frowning at the Adair file. “What do you think?”

  Harry looked up. “I think we’d better get with Faye and Centrello.”

  They made it a five-man meeting in Serruto’s office.

  With both files in front of him, Serruto said, “I see the similarities.” He looked over at Harry and Garreth. “Do you want to pool resources with Faye and Centrello?”

  Harry said, “I thought I’d give them a chance to take over the case if they want it, since the Adair thing was theirs.”

  Centrello grimaced. “I don’t want it. You two play with the cult crazies for a while. I’ll be glad to give you anything I know that isn’t in the reports, and if you solve it, the glory is all yours.”

  Faye looked less certain, but did not contradict his partner. Serruto frowned at the Adair file. “Are you thinking cults on the Mossman thing, too, Harry?”

  “It’s worth checking out.”

  “Don’t get too tied into it; it didn’t solve the Adair killing.”

  “Words of wisdom,” Harry said as they left Serruto’s office.

  “You know, both men had alcohol in their stomachs, so they were drinking not long before they died.” Garreth pursed his lips. “I wonder if they drank in the same place?”

  Harry put on his coat. “Adair went to North Beach. When you call the cab companies, check for North Beach destinations on those trip logs.”

  Garreth nodded. “Which is going to turn out to be dozens. All the visitors want to experience our night life.”

  Harry grinned and slapped Garreth’s shou
lder. “You’ll sort them out. That’s detective work, Mik-san. Think about me, trying to find someone who knows where Mossman went. I can’t believe he didn’t mention something to someone.”

  A thought struck Garreth. He frowned at Harry. “You talked to quite a few people?”

  “It seemed like hundreds.”

  “And no one knew a thing. Maybe he didn’t want people to know. He’s a married man and if he had something extracurricular going...”

  Harry pursed his lips. “Mossman’s only calls from his room were to Denver, nothing local. If he had a lady, she would have to be either a member of the convention or someone he met Monday. Susan Pegans fainted when we told her Mossman was dead, and that wasn’t even telling her how. Skip the cab companies for now. Let’s go chat with our saleswoman.”

  10

  Susan Pegans stared at the detectives with eyes flashing in outrage. “No! Absolutely not! I didn’t go anywhere with Gary. He’s a very happily married man.”

  Garreth caught a note of regret as she said it. He bet she would have gone with Mossman in a moment, given an invitation.

  “Alex Long and I had dinner in Chinatown with a couple of Iowa contractors and their wives. Ask Alex.”

  They would, but for the moment, Garreth continued to press her. “Have you seen him spending an unusual amount of time with any single person here?”

  “He spent time with everyone. Gary doesn’t — ” She broke off, eyes filling with tears. She wiped at them with the handkerchief Garreth handed her. “Gary didn’t play at conventions, not ever. He worked. Why do you think he was sales manager?”

  “But you knew where he was going Monday night. Verneau said he told all three of you,” Harry said.

  “Yes, so we would know who had been contacted and not duplicate efforts.”

  “Yet you didn’t think it strange when he said nothing to you about Tuesday night?”

  She shrugged, sighing. “I wondered, yes, but...I thought he’d tell us Wednesday. I — ” She broke off again, shaking her head.

  “Pity unrequited love,” Harry murmured as they left her. “Well, do we take her at her word or start questioning some of the other ladies? You’ll have noticed how many really beautiful ones there are here.”

  “Maybe we ought to think about guys, too,” Garreth said. “That would be a better reason for keeping it quiet.”

  “You talk to beautiful young men, then; I’ll stick to the ladies. Just find someone who went out with him.”

  Garreth found no one. He worked his way across the exhibition hall talking to personnel manning the booths and convention members visiting the booths. As far as he could determine, Mossman had said to hell with the convention on Tuesday. Checking with Harry later, he found his partner having no better luck.

  “Maybe you ought to start on the cab companies,” Harry said. “I’ll keep working here.”

  “Let me bounce one more idea off you. You mentioned that he may have met someone Monday evening. So let’s talk to the people he was with Monday.”

  “Good idea. Verneau gave me their names.” Harry scribbled two names on a notebook page and handed it to him. “You take this pair; I’ll see the others.”

  Garreth made it easy on himself. He rounded up both men and talked to them at the same time, hoping one might stimulate memory in the other. “Where did you go?” he asked them.

  Misters Upton and Suarez grinned at each other. “North Beach. That’s some entertainment up there.”

  He gave them a neutral smile. “It has a little of something for everyone. Do you remember the names of the clubs you visited?”

  “Why do you want to know about Monday?” Suarez asked. “Wasn’t Gary Mossman robbed and killed Tuesday night? That’s what’s going around.”

  “We need to know about people he met Monday. Please, try to think. I need the club names.”

  They looked at each other and shrugged. “We just walked around, stopping anywhere that looked interesting,” Upton said. “We’d get a drink, watch a girl or two dance, and go on. I don’t remember any of the names.”

  Neither did Suarez.

  “Did you talk to anyone?”

  They blinked. “What do you mean?”

  Garreth gave them a man-to-man smirk. “You were five guys out on the town alone. Didn’t you meet any girls?”

  The contractors grinned. “Well, sure. We kind of collected four along the way.”

  Or were collected by the girls. “Did Mossman pay special attention to any of them? Did he ask one of them back to the hotel?”

  “No. He didn’t pair up with any of them.”

  “Do you remember the girls’ names? I also need to know if he met anyone outside your group.”

  Upton hesitated before replying, with a show of straining his memory, “I think Mandy was one of them. I don’t remember her last name.”

  Mandy being the one who came back to the hotel with him, no doubt.

  “Lana was another,” Suarez said. “Mossman didn’t talk to anyone except us and them.”

  “Describe the girls please.” Though what were their chances of finding them by first name, probably not even real ones, and description? Probably zip.

  “Except the singer,” Upton said.

  Garreth looked up from his notebook. “Singer?”

  The contractor nodded. “We were in this club — I don’t remember that one’s name either — and Mossman couldn’t do anything except stare at this singer. Not that I blamed him. She was something special, and boy could she sing. She kept giving him the eye, too. I remember he hung back as we left, and when I looked around, he was talking to her. Just for a minute, though.”

  “What did the singer look like?”

  Suarez grinned. “A real babe! Tall, and I mean really tall, man. She had these boots with spike heels that made her legs look like they went up to her shoulders. Nice set of jugs, too.”

  Something like electric shock trailed up Garreth’s spine, raising every hair on his body. He stared at Suarez, hardly breathing. “Do you think she was five-ten?”

  “Who could tell with those boots? She looked taller than me in them, and I’m six feet.”

  “What color was her hair?”

  “Red. Not that Las Vegas red but darker, like mahogany.”

  Red-Haired Woman

  1

  Harry was dubious. “He had a few words with a red-haired singer Monday night. What makes you think he went back for more than that on Tuesday?”

  “A feeling.”

  Certainly he had no other reason. No real evidence connected Mossman to this woman any more than evidence connected Adair to that other redhead. Only the similarity in height and coloring suggested that the two women might even be the same. Still...two mysterious deaths and two memorable redheads...

  Harry quirked a brow at him. “A feeling...like the ones your grandmother has?” He sang the Twilight Zone theme: “Doo-doo doo-doo.”

  If only. Harry might consider his Grandma Doyle full of blarney and superstition but everyone in the family took her Feelings seriously. They rarely missed. Harry himself had witnessed one instance, when she came for a visit after they learned Marti was pregnant. At Harry’s with them, watching his brother play for LA, she went outside suddenly, saying she could not bear to watch Shane get hurt. Sure enough, just before the half, he went under a pile-up. Scratch one knee and one pro football career. Let Harry call it coincidence; Garreth wished he had some of that gift.

  “No, it’s just a hunch. But I want to check out this redhead. Crazies come in all shapes and sizes.”

  Harry considered. “That I can go along with. First we need to see if Mossman went back to North Beach Tuesday.” He checked his watch. “Too bad the evening doorman isn’t on duty yet. He might remember Mossman catching a cab. Let’s get on those cab companies, then.”

  At the Hall they let their fingers do the walking...still a slow process. Each call met the same initial response: did they have any idea how many pickup
s the company made at the Westin in an evening!

  Garreth tried to simplify their task. “This would be for a single passenger...” Easier to find on their trip logs since he estimated most of the fares would be couples or groups. “...picked up between eight and eight-thirty.” Figuring Mossman used an hour or so to return to the hotel, shower, call home, and dress in his red coat.

  By the end of the afternoon he and Harry learned that only six cabs from four companies picked up single fares in that time period. Four went to North Beach, one to the Opera House in the Civic Center, one to the Haight-Ashbury district. Yes, those drivers routinely picked up fares at the Westin.

  Now they needed to determine if any of those fares were Mossman.

  Harry checked his watch again and stood, stretching. “The evening doorman might be on duty now. Let’s go show him Mossman’s picture.”

  And the cabbies, too.

  The doorman did remember Mossman...at least the coat...but not the cab company nor the destination he gave the driver. They missed the driver whose fare had gone to the opera but eventually caught the others. The one remembered his Haight-Asbury fare, and it was not Mossman, nor was one of those going to North Beach. The remaining three drivers could not identify Mossman’s photo.

  “That doesn’t mean I couldn’t have taken him,” one female driver said. “I just don’t remember him. They get in, ride quietly, don’t stiff me on the tip or give me a big memorable one and they’re just another fare, you know?”

  Finally Harry called it quits. While they typed up reports back at the office, he said, “What do you say to taking Lien out for a change? I’ll call her, and you make reservations for three somewhere.”

  Garreth shook his head. “Tonight you have her to yourself. I’m going to grab a quick bite somewhere and fall into bed early.”

  “You sure?” Harry whipped his report out of the typewriter and signed it after a fast proofread.