Slaughtered Page 3

  "I don’t know how a guy like me scored a woman like her. She’s amazing."

  Setting the photo aside, he noted Boyd’s lackluster response, despite his declaration. Jack said, "Tell me exactly what happened from the moment you got home. When did you first notice your wife was missing?"

  "Night before last."

  "What makes you think she’s missing? Could she have just left? Did you two have a routine? If so, what broke it?"

  He tried gauging Boyd’s behavior. Everyone had tells. Boyd’s would let Jack know if the man was serious or just jerking his chain at Ray’s encouragement.

  "We’ve only been married a couple years, but I guess that’s long enough to settle into a routine. She’s always there when I get home from work. She only works part time in a shop on Pier 39, so she’s always home before me to start dinner." He grabbed the cup from the desk, lifted it to his mouth again and took a healthy gulp.

  "When you first arrived, you said Bonnie’s things were still in the closet, and her car was in the driveway?" As with any police investigation he’d ever conducted, he made sure to take thorough notes. Even if something didn’t seem important now, it could be relevant later, which was why he backed up every interview with a recording.

  Boyd nodded. "Yeah. Dinner was still in the oven. She always made our house very homey. You know, with the smell of food when I come through the door, everything in its place, the floors vacuumed . . ."

  "Kids?"

  Boyd shook his head. "We’ve been trying, but—"

  Jack forced himself away from the familiarity of Boyd’s story and let the man ramble. Sometimes, some of the best clues came from ramblings.

  "Bonnie always has her hands in something; she can’t just sit without doing something."

  "Does she have any hobbies?"

  "Like what?"

  By the look on Boyd’s face, the idea of his wife having her own interests hadn’t been a consideration. Jack was sure Leah had hobbies. He didn’t expect her to stay home alone all day while he worked. Even after Zoë was born, he’d encouraged her to have a life outside the home. For Boyd, the question seemed to confuse him.

  "What do women like doing? Knitting . . . painting . . . reading group . . . gardening . . . or something more active like walking or jogging?"

  Boyd thought for a moment. "Does spending my money count? She loved shopping."

  Jack chuckled lightly. "Yeah, I suppose that’s a hobby of sorts." He noted Boyd’s serious gaze. He couldn’t blame the man. This was an upsetting time. Jack knew that better than anyone. "What about friends? Does she have a close friend she goes with?"

  "I don’t know, Mr. Slaughter. When I’m at work, I’m at work and she does her thing. When I’m home, she’s home. The only name I can think of is Lucy or Lucy-Anne . . . something like that. She only ever talked about one friend. I assume that’s her."

  Jack made a note of the names. "Do you have a last name for Lucy-Anne?"

  Boyd just shook his head.

  "Did you file a missing person’s report?"

  Boyd shook his head again. "Not right away. I knew they’d blow me off because she’d only been gone a few hours, regardless of her normal routine, but when she hadn’t returned by midnight, I called anyway."

  "It’s a common misconception that you have to wait twenty-four hours to file a missing person’s report—adults or kids. But they do prefer folks wait to be absolutely sure an adult is really missing, rather than just getting home late."

  "That’s pretty much what they told me. They took her description but said they’d wait to file a formal missing person’s report in case she eventually decided to come home."

  "And as far as you knew, by midnight, she’d only been gone, what . . .?" Jack trailed off, letting Boyd fill in the blank.

  "A few hours. Like I said, I got home just before six and she wasn’t there."

  Jack continued making notes as he asked, "What about family? Does Bonnie have any family she could have gone to see, or relied on if she felt she needed help?"

  He could tell by the narrowing of Boyd’s eyes that the last question took the man aback. "N-no. She didn’t have any family. Like me, she was an only child, and her parents died a long time ago. I think that’s part of what drew us together—we were all alone." Boyd sat forward on the chair, set the now empty cup on the desk, and looked Jack in the eye. "I had a rough night. You of all people gotta understand that, right?"

  Boyd wasn’t wrong.

  "I tried waiting twenty-four hours…just in case Bonnie really was just cooling off, from what I don’t know, but just in case, ya know? They said give her time. I did. I really did. When she didn’t come home by yesterday morning, I rang the police to see if there had been any news. They said they’d send someone out for a report. It had only been about twelve hours, but to be fair, they arrived pretty fast. And left just as fast, in my opinion."

  "It can happen, especially if the scene is pristine…such as a lack of an obvious struggle." Jack tried assuring Boyd.

  "I get it. I just don’t know what to do with myself. She means everything to me. With her gone . . ." Boyd took a deep breath. "I got the same runaround from the officers as I had on the phone—She’s an adult . . . blah blah blah . . . what could they do?"

  Jack nodded. "It’s an unfortunate fact, Mr. Boyd."

  Boyd rubbed his palms down the length of his thighs and rocked slightly in his chair.

  Ignoring the man’s agitation, Jack continued taking notes. "Go on. When did Detective Navarro contact you?" he pressed.

  "Late yesterday. I waited until normal business hours before coming here this morning. I didn’t know you," Boyd quickly glanced over his shoulder, "lived in your office."

  "Needs must, as they say." Jack hadn’t intended on living here either, but why pay rent on two places when he spent all his time in the office anyway? "Go on."

  Boyd nodded. "I kept calling the department to see if there had been any updates or leads. When I saw a report on the news yesterday about a woman’s body being found out at Spreckels Lake, I had to know if it was her. I had to."

  Boyd’s gaze penetrated Jack. He knew all too well the anxiety the man must have felt when he saw the news report. It had been much the same when he’d received the text yesterday morning. His gaze flicked to his cell phone sitting on the corner of the desk beside him, and he suppressed a cold shiver threatening his spine.

  Jack met the man’s gaze again. "I understand, Mr. Boyd. Go on."

  Boyd sat back slightly in the chair, sitting on his hands, Jack assumed, to keep from fidgeting. "In the afternoon, Detective Navarro said my information had been passed onto him. I got a new set of questions . . . Did you have a fight? No, we never argued. Did you or she have any enemies? No, everyone loved Bonnie. Could either of you have had a falling out with a drug dealer? Absolutely not; we don’t do drugs. Could Bonnie have been hiding something from you? We tell each other everything . . . or at least I think so. Pretty sure."

  "They’re all valid questions. What did he say next?"

  "He asked me for Bonnie’s description. I’d given it to the officers at the house, but I guess he just needed to verify what I’d said. I don’t care. I just want to get her home where she belongs." Boyd’s voice trembled.

  "I know you do. I’m sure the police will do everything they can."

  "That’s just it. Detective Navarro said he works Homicide. He’d only taken my call because I’d asked about that woman at the lake. He also said there weren’t any Jane Does, I think he called them, with her description. And without a ransom note and the house not being disturbed, he said I was better off hiring a private investigator. He said he’d keep Bonnie’s details, but unless a body turned up matching her description, or unless I received a ransom note or a call, she’d be treated like a disgruntled wife…that maybe she’d gone somewhere to cool off, like the other officers told me. I know he was only being honest with me, but I gotta know where she is. Will you help me?"
r />   "You don’t even know what my fee is yet."

  "I don’t care what it is. I just want Bonnie home."

  Jack stared at Boyd for a long moment before swiveling his chair around to the filing cabinet behind his desk. He yanked open the top drawer and pulled some papers from a file before closing the drawer again. At the desk, he filled in the required details, then spun the documents around to face Boyd. "This is my contract. The fee is listed here." He tapped the amount with the tip of his pen. "Take a moment to read it over before signing." He tossed the pen down onto the contract and sat back.

  Boyd immediately scrawled his signature at the bottom of the document. He pulled out his checkbook, tore out a slip and filled it in. He slid it under the pen’s clip and pushed it and the contract back at Jack. "I don’t need to read it. Detective Navarro said you were the best. After what you’ve been through, I know you won’t let me down."

  Ignoring the comment, Jack ran a copy of the contract on the printer-scanner on top of the filing cabinet before stuffing the original into a stained folder. And after snapping a picture of Bonnie’s photo with his Samsung camera, he added the hard copy to the folder as well.

  He looked at the documents in the folder to be sure he had everything he needed. "You mentioned Bonnie has a cell. I need the number. And if she has any credit cards she uses exclusively, I’ll need that information as well."

  "What for? She doesn’t have it with her. Like I said, she left everything behind. Even her purse. Everything’s in it. Including her phone."

  Jack looked up. "It’s routine. I want to check her call history. If she’d made any calls you weren’t aware of, or if anyone called her, it would show up and could lead us to her. And she could have made purchases on her cards in the past that may give us some clues as to where she could have gone . . . a new apartment, a trip somewhere, a car . . . anything you might not have seen on a shared card."

  "I don’t have her card numbers with me. I can call you when I get home. Here’s her cell number." Jack watched Boyd scrawl the cell number on a clean page in the notebook.

  Jack stood and handed Boyd his copy of the contract. "I’d like to follow you back to your place, so I can do a walk-through. I can get the card info there."

  "The officers who came to take my statement already did that."

  Jack looked Boyd in the eye. "I know, but I’m no longer in the department. And I prefer doing my own investigation."

  Boyd nodded, writing down his address in the notebook beside the phone number. "Whatever you need."

  Jack threw on his black leather jacket, stuffed his notepad and a pen into the inside pocket, and zipped up. A few minutes later, helmet firmly in place, Jack straddled his black Harley Fatboy and followed Boyd out of the alley beside Tommy Wong’s.

  Maybe Carl Boyd wasn’t such a dick after all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Carmelita Street was in the southernmost part of the Western Addition—an area at the heart of the peninsula that had once been a largely sandy region with some small-scale farming. It had eventually become a streetcar suburb with the arrival of the cable car. And with the area being more accessible, the city expanded westward to create more homes. Even with the continued growth and development, streets, like Carmelita, remained lined with Queen Anne Victorians—Victorian architecture in a Queen Anne revival style. Some of the more elaborately painted homes around the city were more affectionately known as Painted Ladies.

  Because of the Western Addition’s flatter aspect on the peninsula these houses had survived the Great Earthquake of 1906 and had become some of the most expensive homes in the city for their size.

  Perhaps a hat-tip to farming times, these streets were lined with fruit trees, as was Dubose Park which butted up against Carmelita, with its sprawling, pet-friendly green, secured play areas for kids, and the arts center. The local elementary school was a block away. The location was the perfect place to raise a family.

  Had Jack’s salary been higher—much higher—he would have bought Leah a house in an area like this. As it was, the Sunset District—an area developed with smaller, affordable homes after the 1906 earthquake as a place for displaced San Franciscans to start over—was much more affordable at more than half the price. And he and Lead did—had—loved walking across the road most nights to the beach to watch the sunset . . . hence the name of that part of the city.

  Jack forced himself to focus on Boyd, who had turned into the driveway of a pale-yellow house midway up Carmelita, parking beside a gray Nissan Altima that was so old, it could have been a Datsun. He pulled his bike in behind Boyd’s newer Prius, partially blocking the sidewalk, and flipped down the kickstand. He swung his leg over the seat to stand, pulling off his helmet and stuffing his gloves inside it before hanging it from one of the handlebars.

  On his way to meet Boyd at the front steps, Jack pulled out his phone, switched on video mode and slipped it into the top front pocket of his jacket with the lens pointing forward. He wanted to record his inspection of the house, so he could view the walk-through again later, in case he missed anything now. And since Boyd had already given him permission to record their interview, Jack took creative license with that permission to include video—technically, he hadn’t concluded the interview. They’d only changed venues. He just wouldn’t tell Boyd he was being video recorded.

  Jack found that when people knew they were being recorded, they often played up for the camera or were on their best behavior. He saw the latter with Boyd back in the office but chalked it up to nerves. In his home, he should relax a little.

  "Nice place," Jack said, following Boyd up the steps to the door. "This must have set you back a penny or two. What kind of work do you do?" He liked a little chit-chat. It put clients at ease and often revealed answers to unasked questions pertaining to the case.

  "Property manager. I could never afford a place like this on my salary. My parents left me the house." Boyd fumbled with his keys until he found one for the door.

  "Self-employed?" Jack pressed.

  Boyd shook his head. "I work down on Market." He reached into his wallet and extracted his business card. "If you ever decide to upgrade your office space—" An odd thing to say just then, Jack raised the card as if making a mental note of the company but in reality, recording it on the video before slipping the card into the notebook. "It pays okay, but honestly, these days I can barely afford the property taxes and upkeep. Those fucking yuppies are driving out all of us city natives." Boyd swung open the door then hesitated, gazing inside.

  "You all right?" Jack asked after a moment.

  A noticeable shiver went through Boyd before he offered a weak smile. "Yes, just listening to see if Bonnie had come home. The place seems so quiet without her."

  Jack nodded. "I understand. Shall we go in? The sooner I can look around, the sooner I can get on with my investigation."

  Boyd stepped in and allowed Jack to enter before closing the door behind them.

  From where he stood in the hallway, Jack saw the house was both exactly what he expected, yet not.

  Boyd was right about the yuppies. In recent years, city officials recognized that people working in Silicon Valley were opting to live in the city where it was cheaper and commuting south for work. Traffic congestion meant commute times took hours to go just a few miles, increasing air pollution and road rage. More importantly, it took revenue out of the city.

  So, officials came up with a plan. By offering Silicon Valley tech firms tax incentives to develop in low income and derelict inner-city areas, the city was able to regenerate without actually paying for it themselves. Unfortunately, it meant displacing low income and poor families, which led to the city’s current homeless crisis. But for those who got in before the boom, they now saw property prices explode. And for those who could afford the cost of traditional homes, they were now gutting and upgrading with modern, high-tech gadgetry they’d come to Silicon Valley to create in the first place. A house that had cost a few hu
ndred thousand dollars five years ago was now selling for a cool two or three million. He couldn’t even guess at his own house’s value, but then, who’d want to buy a house where two murders had occurred—he counted Trax’s murder alongside his daughter’s. Hell, even he didn’t want to live there. And he couldn’t sell. Not yet.

  The city vibe was changing too, as yuppies filled the city. No longer was it commonplace to drive through residential areas and see kids playing on the sidewalks or old people sitting in chairs on their porches, shouting across the street to their neighbors as they conversed about the weather. Those streets were quickly filling with trendy cafes where techies sat all day over ten-dollar coffees and thirty-dollar sandwiches while developing the next app or writing code. Jack was saddened to see the city’s traditional culture changing before his eyes. Kids and old people were rare sights these days, except for the few who ventured into the small parks, like Dubose.

  What surprised Jack about Boyd’s place was the lack of modern technology. He’d said he inherited the house from his parents. Jack believed it. The place retained all of its original architecture and Victorian features. And it appeared to have the same carpet and wallpaper too. The place was exceptionally clean, but it was also very dated. For a quick second, he wondered if Boyd had his parents stashed in an upstairs bedroom.

  He would have laughed at the thought if the reality of it wasn’t so possible. The news was full of stories about dead parents left in their beds and the doors shut on them, or love slaves locked in attics or basements, or worse.

  Jack forced himself to walk through the first door and into the living room. Boyd followed close behind.

  He crossed the worn, creaking timber floor that was covered with an equally worn rug at the center of the room to admire the original fireplace. "Great architecture." He envied the hand-carved fireplace mantel, original ceramic tiles and iron surround.

  "I love these old houses too. My wife wants to modernize but I told her doing that will ruin the house."