SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—1978
It started to rain for the second time that day as Colleen Hayes parked the Torino in front of the derelict paint plant in Hunter’s Point. She secured the steering wheel with a Club, got out, locked the car as well. In the distance the silhouette of Candlestick Park cut the wet night sky, its outline broken by a cyclone fence topped with razor wire that surrounded three sides of H&M Paint. Industrial waterfront protected the remaining border. On her patrols Colleen scanned the dirty water lapping the rubble and trash along the shore and looked for evidence of trespassing. Guarding this old plant was the only work she could come by, and she was glad to have it. Moreover, she could sleep on a cot upstairs in a windowless storage room behind the abandoned supervisor’s office, heat up a can of soup on a hot plate, and save on an apartment, which she could not afford. They wanted two hundred dollars a month for a shoebox in this city, where everybody and his brother seemed to be headed, crowding the discos and bathhouses.
She selected another key, this one from the plant ring, and let herself in through a gate, where she crossed the weed-infested asphalt yard in front of the plant, full of pallets of undelivered paint in corroding cans, a dead forklift rusting out in the open, heaps of junk that could not be salvaged. Anything of value had been torn out long ago and sold to fend off creditors.
She took the external stairwell up to the office, her boots clipping the metal stairs.
Inside, on the top floor, a breathy view of the rain-soaked Bay Bridge and Oakland twinkled as Colleen pulled off her leather jacket and threw it over the back of the old roller chair behind a green metal desk. This was technically her office now, as no one else had used it since the plant closed. The single desk lamp pointed down at a dusty desk blotter with a four-year-old calendar. Moonlight filtered in through tall industrial windows, casting a pall of shadows across posters of paint products no longer for sale. Forgotten ledgers were stacked high on a sideboard.
After a decade in prison, pressed in with so many others, living in this empty dark factory was practically what the doctor ordered. Rats? So what? Cold? That’s why they invented blankets. Dangerous? Try Denver Women’s Correctional Facility on a bad night, with a full coven in heat. H&M Paint was close to heaven by comparison.
In the back room she brushed a strand of damp chestnut hair out of her face and was just about to make tea when the office buzzer rang like an electric saw, loud enough to be heard anywhere in the voluminous plant. Someone at the front gate.
Probably more punks, playing games.
Back out in the office, Colleen hit the intercom button on the wall.
“Security,” she said.
There was a pause. Out on the bay, the silhouette of a container ship crept under the bridge.
“Ms. Hayes?” a thin voice said in apparent confusion. The voice of a young man. But he sounded official.
“Who is this?” She didn’t need trouble. She had three years’ worth of parole left.
“Christian Newell—representing Mr. Edward Copeland. I was hoping to have a word with you. I am sorry about the late hour, but I’ve been trying to locate you and only just managed to accomplish that.”
She didn’t think people actually talked the way Christian Newell did.
“Are you a lawyer?”
“I am.”
“Are you here to serve me papers?”
“No.”
“Because if you say you’re not, and then you are, it won’t fly in court.”
“Nothing like that at all, Ms. Hayes. I want to discuss a business opportunity—contracting your firm.”
Her firm. Of one. It sounded like work. And that’s what she needed more of.
“Come on up,” she said, pressing the buzzer to release the front gate. “The outdoor stairwell, to your right. Watch your step—it’s slippery in the rain. I’ll turn the outside light on.” She picked up the length of pipe she kept by the desk just in case.
Moments later, quick footsteps trotted up the metal stairs. A small fuzzy figure appeared in the reinforced glass window of the office door, the shadow of an umbrella over his head. She could see the outline of a bow tie. He wasn’t a threat. She was bigger than he was. She set her length of pipe down against the doorframe and let him in.
Christian Newell shook out his umbrella, wiped his feet, even though the office was well past deserving that kind of attention. He entered the large room carrying a flat leather satchel with buckles on it.
“You’re the night watchman?” he asked.
She took his coat and umbrella. “Person, I guess you’d say—now that it’s no longer 1955. Hayes Confidential provides plant security.”
He gave Colleen a polite but scrutinizing look she’d seen often enough. He saw a woman of medium height, not unattractive, but harder than most, her muscles built up by prison and time in the weight room. No fat. A face that didn’t smile often. “I guess I didn’t expect to find you … working as a guard yourself.”
“I’m a little short-handed right now,” she said, hanging up his coat and umbrella. “Filling in.” She was the only person on a payroll—a payroll still waiting on its first payment.
“I see,” he said.
They sat down either side of her desk.
Christian Newell had short dark hair combed over in a restrained business cut that made him look fifteen although he was probably in his late twenties. His skin was soft and pale. His eyes were deep and cautious, with long lashes. If he’d ever been anywhere near a woman other than his mother, Colleen would have been surprised. He removed a business card from a little gold case and placed it squarely down in front of her in the dust on the desk blotter.
Colleen read the card upside down without picking it up. She sat back in her creaky chair. A blast of rain scattered against one of the tall windows. She did the button of her denim shirt up against the chill. “I’m still new to San Francisco so forgive me if I don’t know much about Edward Copeland.”
“How much do you know about him, Ms. Hayes?”
“I’ve got a sneaking suspicion he’s not destitute.”
“Mr. Copeland is a former industrialist,” he said, looking around the office. “Quite successful in his day. Perhaps he could have saved this place. But he’s retired now.”
“So why does he need me? I handle plant security.”
“A private matter,” Christian Newell said. “A family matter.”
Colleen squinted. “So again—why me?”
Christian steepled his fingers. “Before we proceed, I’ll need you to sign a non-disclosure. Regardless of whether you take the assignment or not.” Christian picked up his satchel, opened it, extracted two sheets of paper, both heavyweight bond, and laid them out. They were duplicates, obviously one for her, one for him. Christian Newell’s name was already signed and dated in fountain pen on both copies.
Colleen picked up a copy, read it over. She wasn’t supposed to talk about anything they discussed. She set it back down.
“If I take this assignment, I’m going to have to talk to somebody about it at some point.”
“The agreement is really just a formality.”
“How many formalities have turned into legal nightmares?”
Christian divulged what might have been a smile. “It must be a hindrance to have a prison record and be trying to start a security consulting business.”
He knew about her record, too.
“It does help keep me in a lower tax bracket,” she said.
“Mr. Copeland still has numerous business connections. He can be quite helpful when he chooses to be. He could make a call and possibly hasten your license application.”
She eyed Christian. “How much do you know about me?”
Christian Newell cleared his throat. “July 1967, you killed your husband, whom you suspected of molesting your daughter. Your daughter, Pamela, was eight years old at the time.”
Something she thought about several times a day. “It was a little more than a suspicion.”
“The court was not lenient, regardless. You served nine out of fourteen years for manslaughter. You were released from Denver Women’s Correctional Facility last year, came to California looking for Pamela, who had turned eighteen, and had taken up with a motorcycle gang. Things did not go well.”
“Well, you seem to know plenty about me,” she said. “And yet, my past isn’t stopping you from wanting to hire me. So imagine my next question.”
“Mr. Copeland thinks your past could actually be an asset in this case.”
If her past was an asset, the work wasn’t benign. But she needed money. She had enough to live on for the rest of her life if she died Friday. Early Friday.
“It wouldn’t be worth suing me anyway.” Colleen selected a ballpoint pen from a San Francisco Giants cup. She attempted a loop on the blotter, found the pen dry, picked another. She signed both copies of the non-disclosure and pushed one toward him. Christian Newell picked up the document, examined it, slipped it into his satchel, set the briefcase down by his side.
Colleen raised her eyebrows.
Christian Newell said, “Mr. Copeland has two daughters. One of them is still alive.”
“I gather this visit is about the one who isn’t.”
Christian Newell pulled something from his breast pocket. It was a black-and-white high school yearbook photograph of a pretty young woman with pale white skin and long dark hair. Dramatic bangs cut across her forehead to reveal mischievous arched brows and lively dark eyes. She wore a low-cut gown and a diamond pendant necklace. An impish smile was ready to break out any minute.
“Margaret Copeland was brutally murdered eleven years ago,” Christian Newell said, “in San Francisco.”
“During the Summer of Love.” Colleen took the photo, held it by the edges. This young woman was gone. She thought of her own daughter, ensconced in some commune in Northern California now, unwilling to talk to her own mother. Certainly not dead, but Colleen often worried what might become of her.
“She looks so young,” she said wistfully.
“Just turned eighteen when she was found in Golden Gate Park. Beaten. Raped. Drugged. A dry-cleaning bag over her head. The only other thing she was wearing were a pair of white go-go boots. The coyotes had already started on her by the time a man walking his dog found her.”
“It’s quite an image.” Colleen set the photograph down. “I’m sorry.”
“Margaret was the problem child of the family. In 1967, she took off from home and got mixed up with the wrong crowd.”
“She wasn’t the only one.” Again, Colleen thought of her daughter, Pamela. And she thought of Pamela’s friend, Eva—she never learned the girl’s real name—who Colleen found murdered by the bikers Pamela hung out with.
So many casualties. Some still breathing.
“Indeed,” Christian Newell said. “The newspapers loved it. ‘Wild child daughter of wealthy industrialist meets a drug-addled death in the Haight.’ At the time, the Zodiac Killer was on the loose. Eventually, the San Francisco Police Department assumed Margaret was another of his victims.”
“Assumed.”
“No connection to the Zodiac was ever made. Margaret’s case was never solved.”
“Even with Mr. Copeland’s money and influence.”
Christian Newell nodded. “Even then.”
“And what makes you think that a night watchperson, only recently settled in San Francisco, with no PI license, can solve an eleven-year-old cold case?”
“Lieutenant Daniel Moran.”
That took her by surprise. Lieutenant Dan Moran, Santa Cruz Homicide. They’d had a rocky relationship last year when Colleen had come to California from Colorado, fresh out of prison. She’d helped Moran solve the murder of Pamela’s friend Eva—inadvertently. She had broken some rules. She was lucky not to be back in prison. “How does Lieutenant Moran know Mr. Copeland?”
“Mr. Copeland makes it a point to know people who are good at what they do. Lieutenant Moran was approached but cannot take the case. He is … ah … retired.”
Probably back on the bottle, Colleen thought.
“But Lieutenant Moran speaks very highly of you, Ms. Hayes. Since you helped solve a missing girl case in Santa Cruz—a case not unlike Margaret’s.”
“Did he mention that the girl in question still doesn’t have a name? Except that the bikers who killed her called her Eva? She’s lucky she didn’t have a county burial and her ashes tossed out to sea.”
“Because you put up the funds for a headstone. Found a church on the outskirts of town to take her remains.”
Colleen gulped back salty bile. She had visited Eva’s grave only yesterday. Placed white carnations in the green metal cemetery vase and spiked it into the damp ground below the headstone. She had separated the flowers out, straightened the arrangement. Then she had stood up, pulling her hair out of her face as a cold Pacific wind gusted through the churchyard, bringing ocean fog across the grave. Sorrow, mixed with regret, flowed through her.
“Don’t pin any medals on me,” she said. “Eva was murdered because I didn’t get to her in time.”
“You found her killer. Not everybody could have done what you did.”
Colleen took a deep breath, let it out. “There isn’t anyone in SFPD to take up the case? Mr. Copeland could make that happen, I suspect. Didn’t you say he has friends everywhere?”
Christian Newell shook his head. “As far as Mr. Copeland is concerned, SFPD Homicide dragged their feet on Margaret. He wants a fresh perspective.”
That gave her pause. But big-city police departments were frequently slow to respond. “Fresh perspective solving an eleven-year-old case. It could be tough.”
Christian Newell leaned forward. “Between you and me, Ms. Hayes, Mr. Copeland simply wants someone to go through the case one final time, make sure there are no dangling items, so he can put it behind him. And he is prepared to pay you handsomely for your effort. There will also be a substantial bonus if the killer is actually found.”
Colleen hadn’t thought the word substantial would ever apply to her bank account again.
“Define ‘substantial.’”
“Five thousand dollars is the amount Mr. Copeland threw out to reinvestigate the case. Another five if the killer is found. But I can tell you he’d be open to a discussion on another number—within reason, of course.”
Five thousand just to start. Half a year’s salary. She had about one percent of that right now, sitting in a Wells Fargo account. It had to last her until her first modest payment from H&M came in. She had never seen five thousand dollars in one place.
“Does Mr. Copeland really want to open old wounds? Because the best that’s going to come out of this is that I solve an eleven-year-old murder. His daughter made a lousy mistake and paid too high a price for it. There were a lot of girls like that.” Eva. Pamela. Margaret Copeland.
“Mr. Copeland is dying,” Christian Newell said. “Lung cancer. He wants this matter put to rest so he can do the same.”
Now it made more sense. “You say there’s another daughter?”
“Tell me about Alex.”
“You can meet her yourself—along with Mr. Copeland. Tomorrow night for dinner. At his house in Half Moon Bay.” Christian raised his eyebrows. “Mr. Copeland has a private chef.”
“I’m sure no one ever leaves one of his little soirées without gushing with praise. But I’m going to have to think about it. I don’t want to fail a man who only has one shot left to find his daughter’s murderer.”
Christian Newell gathered his satchel up one more time and opened it. He extracted a white envelope thick with the dark outline of cash. “Mr. Copeland understands that you may have certain financial restrictions at the moment. He would like to advance you a retainer.” He set the envelope on the dusty blotter, next to his business card.
The thickness of that envelope gave her wild ideas. Groceries, to begin with. Then, who knew? Maybe a second shot at changing Pamela’s mind.
But she just didn’t know, after last year, dealing with bikers, and a murdered girl, if she could handle it.
“I need to sleep on it,” she said, handing Christian Newell the envelope. She wondered if she would ever see that much money again.
“Understood,” Christian Newell said, standing up, pocketing the envelope. “But please call me tomorrow. And if there’s anything I can do to change your mind, don’t hesitate to ask.”
She took a deep breath. She needed the work, but she didn’t need trouble. If the police were involved, that could be a problem. She had to get through parole.
“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” she said.