The Night Detectives (David Mapstone Mystery 7)

She went on. “Maybe he followed her to Zisman’s condo and found out she was cheating on him. Oldest motive in the world.”

To me, he barely had the guts to change a baby’s diaper, much less kill his wife or have the strength to do it in such a physical manner. Sure, people would surprise you, especially if money or sex were concerned. If so, he would have had to do a good job feigning surprise and sorrow when I told him Grace was dead. And been tough enough to slit his own throat and wire his apartment to explode.

I remembered a case in Scottsdale years ago, where a man cut the throats of his family, shot them, set the house on fire, and blew it up. They never caught him.

Detective Sanchez also didn’t know that our names had been written in blood on the apartment wall. Tim Lewis didn’t do that in the seconds before his carotid arteries bled out. Then there was yesterday’s phone call, Mister UNKNOWN saying he had detonated the Claymore and with his aerial theater implying he either had the baby or had murdered it.

“Tim was genuinely torn apart when I told him Grace was dead,” I said. “And remember, the pimp was beating him up when I got there. And if Tim was Grace’s killer, who took the baby?”

She sighed. “I wish I could keep things simple. Occam’s Razor, right? My ass is on the line for this now, and there’s a hundred local, state, and federal investigators living in my shit because of that explosion and kidnapping.”

I appreciated a woman who could quote the classics, but this was one instance where the least complex hypothesis wouldn’t do.

“The pimp is Keavon William Briscoe,” she said, spelling the first name. “He’s middling, not a big player. This is a guy who provides prostitutes for sailors and Marines on leave and runs streetwalkers, not escorts for big-time executives and legislators.”

“He claimed Grace worked for him.”

“Maybe she did. It wouldn’t be the first time a coed made some money on the side. The reason I don’t like Briscoe for this is that he was in jail on the night of April twenty-second, a parole violation. He had a baggie of pot in the car. He’ll probably go back to prison but it gives him an alibi for the one-eighty-seven.” The homicide.

“How did he find where she lived?”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “He was cruising O.B. on April twenty-first and said he saw her, followed her home, and was driving around the block for a parking space when a marked unit stopped him and arrested him. His sister didn’t bail him out for several days.”

“Did you execute a search warrant?”

“Don’t piss me off, Mapstone.” The dark eyes deepened. “I usually don’t fuck up cases. Yes, we gave his place a total colonoscopy and didn’t even find a cheap gun, much less explosives. That brings me back to Zisman. If Zisman found out that Grace was tricking on the side, he would have even more motive to kill her. Maybe it’s his baby. Maybe he has access to military explosives.”

I nodded, but I had seen this so many times: a detective latches onto a theory and does whatever it takes to make it stick and clear the case. Back when I untangled cold cases for the Sheriff’s Office, this was often the original sin in what turned out to be an unsolved case, or worse, one that sent an innocent person to prison.

I also appreciated the heat she was feeling from the brass.

Sanchez didn’t know the full extent of Grace’s entrepreneurship. It sounded as if she was unsure if she had even been a real prostitute or only a wild child.

“What about her friend, Addison?”

“Addison Conway,” Sanchez said. “Jones talked to her. She went back home to Oklahoma at the end of the semester. Grace hadn’t made a call to her since March.”

“So did Zisman and Grace have contact the day of her death?”

She sighed. “It’s not in the LUDs. I went back through two years of records and didn’t find his number. Grace called her mother on the twenty-first. She received a call from the human resources department at Qualcomm that same day. She called your office on the twenty-second. That’s the only call she made on the day she died. The other thing is, the semen inside her doesn’t match Tim’s DNA. In fact, it shows evidence that she had sex with three different men, but none of them her husband.”

The information exchange was definitely working in my favor. I was processing it, thinking out loud. “Grace had gone to a lot of trouble to drop out and get away from guys like Larry Zisman…”

A big smile played across her face. “Until she needed him. Come on, Mapstone, don’t be naïve. Babies are expensive and there’s college coming right up on a parent. You probably have kids, so you understand. She hadn’t even started her job at Qualcomm. Her bank account was drawn way down, only six hundred dollars.”

I wondered if they had checked all her bank accounts, but said nothing.

Sanchez continued: “What if she showed up at Zisman’s condo unannounced and wanted money? Former pro football player—she’s got to figure he’s loaded. Pay up or I’ll tell your wife. Better than that, pay up or I’ll tell your wife I had your baby. Zisman loses it and tosses her off the balcony, goes to his boat, and has his friends cover for him.”

“Wouldn’t Grace have been seen coming into the lobby? Or him going?”

“The night concierge didn’t come on duty until eleven,” she said. “Nobody was at the front desk for eight hours that day. They’ve been having staffing problems. In San Diego, ‘sunshine dollars’ only go so far.”

I thought back to our visit to the condo. “But the building has a card-key entrance. Nobody could get in without using the card.”

“Unless somebody coming in held the door for them. Anyway, after the body hit the concrete, the concierge runs out to the pool area. So if Zisman left, nobody would see him.”

“Cameras?”