"What do you mean?" Steve asked.
Mike was still staring at him; there was a look in his eyes that the younger man hadn't seen in awhile.
"That's why he ran," the lieutenant said slowly and quietly, as if he was working through the various possibilities as he spoke. "He didn't have to take the car…" He pushed himself away from the headboard, as if his entire body was suddenly focused and on alert.
The blue eyes flicked quickly to the two sergeants. "Think about it," he said, raising his left hand, his gaze turning inward, "Russell was obviously in the house when Steve and I went down the driveway to the garage. Did he see us?" He shrugged. "He must have… so then why did it take him more than an hour to decide to run? And why take the car? He could've just slipped out the back door and gone down the alley… Why be so obvious as to take the car?" He shrugged to himself. "Because there was something in the car that he didn't what anybody to see?"
The sergeants glanced at each other, frowning. Healey looked back at his boss. "But the lab boys and the guys in the garage have gone over what's left of the Imperial with fine-toothed combs. They didn't find anything."
Mike pursed his lips and shook his head. "Then they missed something," he said quietly, almost to himself.
Brow furrowed in consternation, Steve looked from his colleagues to his partner. "What?"
Mike looked at him, shrugging and shaking his head with a slight smile. "I don't know," he admitted, "but something… I'll stake my life on it."
With raised eyebrows, Steve looked back at Healey and Haseejian. He smiled with a short dry snort. "You heard the man."
"Yeah," Healey said slowly, continuing to frown. He looked at Haseejian. "Well, partner, I guess we've got to pay a trip to the impound yard first thing tomorrow morning."
"I guess we do," Haseejian agreed with a slow nod, looking at Mike with barely concealed wonder.
Glancing at his watch, Healey got to his feet. "Listen, ah, we better get outa here. I want to get home for dinner tonight for a change and get a good night's sleep. I have a feeling it's gonna be a busy day tomorrow."
Chuckling, Haseejian got up as well. "When isn't it lately?" he growled good-naturedly as he stepped towards the door, joining his partner. "Gentlemen," he nodded to Steve, who had also stood, and Mike, still sitting on the bed, "have a good night and we'll, ah, we'll see you soon."
Healey opened the door. "Get better soon, both of you," he said, looking from one to the other, "we really need you back in the office."
"We're gonna try," Steve laughed sharply as he held the door for the sergeants to exit. "See you."
"Thanks, fellas," Mike called from the bed as Healey and Haseejian disappeared.
Steve closed the door and turned to the room, meeting and holding Mike's stare. After a few seconds of silence, he asked quietly, "You really think there's something in that car that'll point the finger at Russell for the rape?"
Mike nodded slowly. "Yeah, I do…" Suddenly he pushed himself to the side of the bed and stood up, heading towards the door.
"Where are you going?"
Moving past Steve, he opened the door then turned back. "Well, I don't know about you, but I don't intend to spend one more night here. Not when my life and my career are hanging in the balance." He had taken a step out the door when he felt Steve's hand on his arm. He stopped and looked back.
"I'm with you on that, a hundred percent but, look, it's almost dinnertime and we really can't get anything done tonight. Let's stay here again tonight and we can leave first thing in the morning. How does that sound?" He raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Besides, if both our homes are still unoccupied tonight, maybe those parasitic reporters will realize we're not around and take off."
Mike listened to him with an impatient frown, which had gradually softened. He smiled and nodded. "You got a good point, buddy boy." He sighed heavily. "All right, we'll, ah, we'll stay here tonight but as soon as the sun comes up – pffft!" He jerked his left thumb over his shoulder.
Steve chuckled. "I'm with ya." He glanced back at the desk and the remains of their game. "So, ah, it's still early… Wanna kick my butt again before we go to dinner?"
Laughing and shaking his head, Mike stepped back through the door, picked up one of the chairs and brought it over to the desk.
# # # # #
The Yellow Cab slid around the corner from 18th onto De Haro and slowed almost to a complete stop. Mike in the front seat and Steve in the back both leaned forward to stare through the windshield up the street.
"I don't see anybody, do you?" Mike asked softly, including the driver in his observational request.
"No," Steve said softly, almost squinting up the street and shaking his head slightly.
The cab driver glanced at Mike then over his shoulder towards the back seat, frowning. "Um, what are you looking for?"
"People… reporters… camped out on the sidewalk about midway up the next block on the right," the older man growled without taking his eyes from the street.
"Oh… okay." The driver shrugged almost imperceptibly, turning back to look out the window with a bewildered smirk. "Well, I don't see nobody."
Mike turned to him with a whimsical half-smile. "You don't, don' you?"
The confused cabbie shook his head.
"Okay, well then, let's go," Mike chuckled, pointing up De Haro.
# # # # #
Mike closed the door, checked the curtains were fully drawn, then picked up his suitcase. "You can use Jeannie's room," he said as he started up the stairs.
With a nod and a chuckle, Steve picked up his own suitcase and followed. He thought back to the exchange they'd had earlier that morning when Mike had informed him they would be staying at his house in Potrero. Steve longed for the comfort of his own bed but Mike had quickly nixed that idea.
"We don't want anybody knowing we're in town, do we?" he'd asked rhetorically. "So if we both go back to our own homes, somebody's gonna catch on. And as soon as Rudy finds out we're not at the motel anymore, he's gonna go to your place and he's gonna come here."
Steve had frowned. "Well, yeah, so why –?"
With a long-suffering glare, Mike sighed. "We're gonna leave your car in front of your place and mine here. I have a neighbor who'll lend me their car… And whose front stairs do you think Rudy'll climb to see if we're there…?"
Steve's skeptical stare slowly morphed into a knowing grin and he shook his head. "Good thinking…" he chuckled dryly, conceding the point.
As he followed Mike to the second floor, he asked, "So where do we go next?"
"We're not going anywhere. We're going to stay here for awhile. I want to talk to Dan but I don't want to call him at the office in case someone else answers the phone. So I'm gonna call his wife and get her to get ahold of him and get him to call me here."
"Sneaky…" Steve chuckled. "I like the way your mind works."
# # # # #
Twenty-one-year-old Janet Pinelli had seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. She hadn't visited a hospital, opened a bank account, applied for a driver's license, registered to vote, notified the post office about a change of address or called her parents in almost two months. If she was still alive, she was probably renting a room somewhere, by the week, as did many of the idealistic young people who still poured into The City so many years after the Summer of Love.
Healey was getting frustrated. They were running out of options.
Earlier that morning, he and Haseejian had stopped at the impound yard on their way to the Hall and had another look at the Imperial. Despite what Mike had said last night, there was still nothing about the large Chrysler that stood out for them. A quick visit to Charlie in the lab confirmed that nothing of a forensic nature had turned up in the Imperial, but were then cautioned by the genial technician that not only had he and his team not been looking for anything connected to a rape, but that the car had been soaked with water from a fire hose at the scene.
Discouraged, the two Homicide sergeants had trudged into the office and sunk heavily into their desk chairs.
"What's the matter with you two?" Tanner asked with a chuckle, looking at them from his own desk, a hand over the receiver up to his ear.
"Dead ends," growled Haseejian as he dropped his notebook on the desk and flipped it open.
Tanner nodded towards Healey blotter with his chin. "You got a phone call. From someone named Patterson –" He quickly pulled his hand away from the mouthpiece of the phone under his chin. "Yes, yes, I'm still here…"
Healey sat forward quickly and picked the small pink memo from the corner of the green blotter. Glancing at Haseejian with raised eyebrows, he picked up his phone and began to dial.
# # # # #
The moss green Galaxie pulled to the curb down the block from the rundown three-storey walk-up on Shotwell. Glancing again at the address on the piece of paper in his hand, Healey lead the way to the second floor. A brass '4' hung crookedly against the peeling dark blue paint of the battered and worn wooden door.
With an uncomfortable grimace, Healey knocked. There was no response and no sound from inside the unit. He was just about to knock again when the door opened suddenly as far as the chain would allow. At first they couldn't see anyone then a tiny dark-haired young woman appeared in the opening, staring up at them with wide dark eyes partially hidden behind long uncut bangs.
Both sergeants held out their credentials so she could see them. "I'm Sergeant Healey and this is Sergeant Haseejian with the San Francisco Police. Are you Janet Pinelli?"
The frightened eyes went from the badges back to their faces and after a long second, she nodded hesitantly.
Healey smiled engagingly. "Miss Pinelli, would we be able to talk to you about an incident that happened a couple of months ago?"
# # # # #
Steve wandered in from the kitchen with a fresh cup of coffee to see Mike hanging up the phone. The older man turned quickly towards him and pointed. "Put that down and grab your coat. We're going out."
Steve's head went back slightly. "Where are we going?"
"The Hall."
"What? Mike, we can't show up at the Hall. We're persona non grata there right now, remember? Not to mention Rudy'll have our asses in a sling if he catches us."
"He's not gonna catch us," Mike said, struggling into his black windbreaker with his one useful hand then grabbing a black baseball cap from the closet shelf. "Get your coat on," he ordered.
With a frustrated shrug, Steve disappeared into the kitchen to pour the coffee down the sink then stalked to the front door and picked up his jacket. Mike was standing in the open doorway with the car keys in his hand. He grinned as Steve grabbed them as he passed, heading down the steep concrete steps to the neighbors' brand new canary yellow Ford Pinto.
# # # # #
"You guys got here fast," Haseejian chuckled as Mike and Steve walked through the outer office door.
"Steve knows the shortcuts," Mike smiled as he glanced around the almost empty room, taking off the cap and stuffing it into the windbreaker pocket. "I haven't been in here in years."
"Well, since they shut down this part of the floor, there are a couple of these empty rooms," Healey said, getting up from his perch on the end of the lone table. There were no chairs. "You guys come in the back way?"
"Yeah, and up the stairs… six floors!" Steve smiled at his partner with bemused irritation. "I thought I knew all the nooks and crannies in this place but I've never been up here before."
"Listen, when you walk these halls for the past – don't ask me how many years…." Mike laughed, "you even get to know where all the skeletons are buried." He pointed at the ceiling and winked.
Haseejian's face fell and he leaned towards his partner. "He's joking, right?" he asked sotto voce.
Mike raised his eyebrows quickly a couple of times and smiled enigmatically.
"I'm not sure," Healey whispered back.
Steve cleared his throat pointedly and Mike glanced at him, suddenly all business. "So, ah, where is she?" He took off his windbreaker and tossed it on the table, picking up the yellow legal length pad and six sharpened pencils that were sitting there. Healey pointed to the door at the far end of the room and the lieutenant took a step towards it.
"Mike, we don't have the authority –"
The older man held up his hand. "I know, I know… I just want to sit in on the interrogation. After all, which one of you guys has a daughter around Janet Pinelli's age?" He looked at the two sergeants. "Okay, fellas, let's hear what she has to say."