By the time Colleen got back to H&M, it was close to midnight. Her heart rate was elevated from the high-speed drive and her thoughts were tense. She’d lost the tail but she suspected they knew where she lived.
In the office, the smell of dead smoke still hung in the damp air. She took off her suit jacket, threw it against the chair. She lit up a cigarette, fluffing her damp hair out as she called her message service.
No new messages. Damn.
She stepped out of her pumps, picked them up, took them and her jacket into her room and changed into her jeans and cowboy boots and put on her poncho.
And did the rounds, more than discouraged.
The fence was as she’d left it, the pallets still leaning up against it. She felt more like a sitting duck now. When she got time, she’d take a crack at fixing it herself.
She went through the effort of moving the Torino inside the gates. She didn’t need any more bad news. Someone—ten-to-one SFPD—had their unfriendly eye on her.
When she was done locking up, she checked the wooden mailbox on the front gate. Just because she always did at the end of her patrol.
And, to her surprise, found an 10x13 manila envelope. Nothing written on it. She picked it up. Held it.
She could tell there was a file folder inside. The file folder was thick with sheets of paper.
And she forgot all about the police, or whoever they were, tailing her. Her heart thumped for another reason. She wanted to tear the thing open then and there but caught herself, looking up and down Yosemite. No one around.
She headed back up to her office, where she got the space heater out of her “bedroom,” plugged it in by the desk. She sat down in the manager’s chair and opened the envelope clasp. She pulled the file folder from the envelope.
Laid it on her desk. Opened it.
San Francisco Police Department, Department of Homicide.
Investigative Report.
November 23, 1967.
Written by Detective James Davis. The original report. Not a copy. The only person she suspected owned this was Jim Davis. And since Jim Davis was no longer alive, that meant his son, Steve, had probably managed to get hold of it, and, after last night’s failed rendezvous, and her phone call, must have relented and dropped it off.
No note, no contact information.
It was too late to call the Davis household. That place was a minefield anyway. All she knew was that, now, she had what she needed. A wild thought came to her, that she might wrap this up while Mr. Copeland was still breathing. And that would make things that much easier for Alex.
Colleen laid the report back in the folder for a moment, got up, put water on for coffee. It promised to be a late night.