The sun was just peeking through the window blinds when Steve heard the car horn. He turned his head and groaned when he saw 7 am on the alarm clock. He closed his eyes. The car horn was replace by insistent knocking and ultimately, the sound of his front door opening. Why had he ever given Mike his key?

He kept his eyes closed but heard a caterwaul in the kitchen and assumed Mike was making coffee. Did he even have any coffee? His body was giving him stern warnings about the wisdom of quick movements. He felt almost as sore as the morning after a particularly bad ski wipe out a few years ago. At least then he was having fun and the lovely Gina was making coffee, not an impatient Mike Stone.

After several false starts he made it to the shower, dressed and descended the stairs. There was a steaming cup of coffee, a Danish and a bottle of aspirin waiting on the table. Mike was reading the paper. Steve chased several aspirin with a large swig of coffee. He decided not to sit down, the fewer transitions he put his body through, the less painful the day would be. He leaned against the counter and finished his coffee.

"You know, it's a bad idea to break into a cop's house, you might get shot." He refilled his cup. "By the way, thanks for the coffee."

Mike finally lowered the paper, "It's not B and E if you have the key and you're welcome. Looks like you're moving a little slow this morning."

"You could say that. 7 am, come on Mike."

"Got a call from Charlie this morning. They found something."

"What?"

"He'll tell us the whole story as soon as you get your tail in gear. We have a report to finish and I have to be at city hall by 11."

"Is that the royal we, as in I type it and you sign it we?"

Mike smiled broadly in response. "Rank has its privilege. I'll tell you what, this time I'll type the report and you go talk to the mayor."

"No way, man. He's all yours. That's why you have your own office."

Steve held his hand out for the keys. Mike got up, dropped the paper on the table and walked by his partner without ceding them. "I got it, buddy boy."

00000

Charlie had a wide smile on his face when Mike and Steve entered the lab. Although he looked as worn as Steve felt, he was having a hard time corralling his enthusiasm.

"First off, we found blood on the stairs and on the floor. Looks like he tried to clean it up. We actually had to pull up the treads on a couple of steps, but we found it in several places. Female and consistent with the Woodward girl's blood type. But that's not the clincher. When we dusted the banister, we found her prints and…"

"That just proves she was there, why are you so excited Charlie?" Steve wasn't in the mood for the fully embellished narrative.

"I was just getting to that. Walters must have let her hand drag through the blood when he moved her. I don't know, maybe she was heavier than he thought. When he put her back down, she left a perfect set of prints on the floor in her own blood. I guess he didn't see them. Murder, accident, who knows? But there is no doubt in my mind, she died there.

"Is that it? We were already pretty sure she died there. Did you find anything from the other victims?" Mike was underwhelmed by the news.

"Well, no. We are still going through the prints, there are a lot of them to compare to our victims." Charlie's excitement was slightly tempered by Mike's reaction. "But we did find these." He held up a ring with several keys and a business card. "We found the card in his wallet this morning when the morgue sent over his personal effects."

"And they are?"

"Walters' keys and the address of his studio."

"He had a separate studio?"

"He had a separate studio. I was just getting ready to take a team over. Care to join us gentlemen?"

00000

Steve and Mike beat the lab team to the address on the outer edge of North Beach. The building looked like an old machine shop and was within easy walking distance of both Walters' home and the Art Institute. Mike tried several keys from the ring before he gained access to the dingy brick storefront.

Illumination from a series of skylights flooded the large open bay. Long shelves lined either side of the room with a spacious work table and several easels in the center. An olfactory mélange of mineral spirits, pot, stale tobacco and incense clung to the interior. There was another smell which competed for their attention. Both Mike and Steve easily identified it as chlorine bleach.

"Smells like somebody felt the need to clean up something recently." Mike said hopefully. "I'll look around in here, why don't you take a look around back." He pointed Steve in the direction of the rear exit. Steve left through the back door and Mike began a more in depth investigation of the contents of the room.

Moving from shelf to shelf on the left side of the room, Mike made a cursory search, opening boxes and poking through the contents. While he found a fairly substantial stash of pot and amphetamines, there was no evidence relating to the murders. He crossed over to the other side of the room.

Halfway down the wall was a black curtained opening. He pulled back the drape and reached along the wall looking for a light switch. When he found it, the walk-in closet sized space was bathed in the red glow of a dark room. In the confined space, the smell of bleach was more pervasive. Mike looked down at the floor. Large swaths of the concrete bore the brilliant appearance of having been bleached, even in the crimson gleam of the safe light.

00000

Of course there's a dumpster. Steve thought as his attention was drawn to a large trash receptacle to the right of the door. When he flipped open the lid, he saw several empty bleach bottles. Below the bottles were a number of spattered white drop cloths. Steve groaned as he reached into the dumpster and grabbed the nearest cloth. His goal was to retrieve the contents without making a foray into the filthy container, but things were not going his way this morning and the cloth caught on an unseen obstacle. "Rank has its privilege my ass," he swore to no one as he boosted himself over the side and dropped onto the detritus covering the floor of the dumpster. Mike exited the alley door in time to grab the pile of tarps Steve was hoisting over the side.

"Having fun?"

"Don't even go there." Steve extricated himself from the bin. He crouched down to inspect the cloth Mike had unfurled across the alley. To their surprise, everything they were looking for was contained within the yards of stained fabric.

"You have got to be kidding me? Have you ever seen anything like this?" Steve stood up and brushed off his pants and shoes.

"Seems a little too good to be true, doesn't it."

Bundled within the fabric were two men's wallets and a ladies handbag. Mike pulled out his handkerchief and flipped open one of the wallets. "Gary Kohler."

Steve had mirrored Mike's action with the second wallet, "Ted Brooks and I'm gonna guess that was Anna Kearns' handbag."

Mike had already moved on to the .22. He checked to make sure the safety was on and picked it up by slipping a pen through the trigger guard. "And the star of our show, the murder weapon. Would it be too much to ask that it have our suspect's fingerprints on it?"

Steve laughed and shook his head in disbelief. "We might as well tie it all up with a ribbon and take the rest of the day off. This guy must have really thought we are morons."

"Or…" Mike's thought was cut short by the squeal of the alley door.

Charlie exited the building. "What do you have for me?"

00000

Steve was busy typing when Mike walked into the bullpen. After the morning discoveries, they had returned to Bryant Street. Mike headed to lock-up. Vince Molinaro needed interviewing before he was arraigned on assault charges. Steve returned to his desk to type up a case summary for Mike to take to the Mayor.

Mike sat in the chair across from Steve's desk while the younger man continued to pound on the typewriter. Steve looked over at his partner. "Ok, I've seen the "face" before, what's cooking in that head of yours?"

"What face?"

"You have the Mike Stone, I'm not so sure about this, face. Come on, it's over. You saw the killing floor in the dark room. We found everything else we needed in the alley. I'm sure when Charlie gets done, we will have more than enough evidence to put this to bed. Hell, if Walters were still alive we'd have enough to take him to the grand jury today."

"I just don't know, it was all so convenient."

"Yeah, convenient for you, you weren't the one who had to climb into the dumpster. I think you owe me a new pair of shoes. If you're not 100% sure, what are you going to tell the mayor?"

"That's the 64 dollar question isn't it?"

Steve finished the last line and pulled the paper from the typewriter with a flourish. He handed it to Mike and looked up at the clock. "Well, you better make up your mind pretty soon, it's 10:30."

Mike sat quietly while Steve refilled his coffee and sat back down. "So tell me, if Walters didn't kill the first three, then what, the evidence was planted? What about the bleached floor? And if not Walters, than who? You talked to Molinaro. He's just not smart enough to have pulled this off. Sure we have to double check his alibis but it leaves us fresh out of suspects. I think you're overthinking this one. Go tell the mayor it's over and smile at the press conferences when he tells everyone how brilliant Lt. Mike Stone and what's his name are. Maybe Joe Randolph will finally have something nice to say about the SFPD in his column tomorrow."

"That's another thing that's been bugging me. How did Randolph find out about the first three killings so quickly? He nearly beat us to the scenes."

Steve sighed heavily. "You're not going to let this go, are you?"