14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 98

THE NEXT MORNING at ten, Conklin and I took the drive to Parkmerced with two uniformed officers following behind.

Nancy Swanson opened the door. She was wearing the same big shirt and jeans she’d been wearing yesterday, and from the look of her eyes, she’d been crying since then, too.

I introduced Conklin, but she didn’t look at him. I handed her the search warrant and she stepped aside, snapping, “What do you have against Ted? Do you even know how he’s doing?”

“Have you heard from Vasquez?” I asked her.

“If I had, you’d be the last person I’d tell.”

Conklin and I went through the house, which looked cheerful now with daylight coming through the many windows facing the greenery of Villa Merced Park. We gloved up, and with Nancy watching, Conklin and I searched the den. We found a trick panel in a bookcase. There were innumerable banded stacks of twenty-dollar bills inside.

One of the uniformed officers uncovered more cash under the frozen food in the basement freezer, and Conklin uncovered a cache of guns in the bedroom closet, under the carpet, below a trapdoor. I turned up more stacks of money in the dishwasher.

Nancy had stashed it there in a hurry.

Swanson’s car was included in the warrant, and I turned up five passports and some cash in a trap inside the dash. We bagged and tagged everything. While we packed up, I called Jacobi. He sighed loudly and said, “I love you, Lindsay.”

I had to laugh. And so did he.

Once we were back at the Hall, we went straight to Jacobi’s office with our cartons of Swanson’s stuff. Jacobi picked up the phone, punched in a number, and said, “We’re ready for you, Sergeant.”

A few minutes later, we were comfortably seated on Jacobi’s leather furniture, telling Phil Pikelny what we had found at Ted Swanson’s house.

Pikelny was lean, maybe thirty-five, an East Coast cop from New York or Boston. He had no discernible accent, and he had a good haircut, handsome clothes, and nice shoes. Swanson, Vasquez, Calhoun, and Robertson had reported to him.

“This is unbelievable,” he said. “How much money was there?”

“Looks to be like a million or so,” I told him. “Between that, the guns, and the passports, I’m guessing that Swanson was leaving soon.”

Phil said, “I completely trusted Ted.”

Jacobi asked Phil what he knew about Vasquez and he said, “I liked him. A lot. And I would say that my opinion of Vasquez now means absolutely nothing. I have no idea where he might be, and he certainly hasn’t called me.”

Conklin and I stopped off at the property room and signed in a million two in US currency and a half dozen assorted guns.

After that, we briefed Brady on the Swanson house haul.

Brady had just gotten off the phone with the hospital. He said, “From what I could determine, Swanson is hanging on by a frayed thread.”

He also told us that Brand and Whitney were in the wind. Not answering phone calls. Not going home.

“Vasquez is still missing,” Brady said. “The car that got away from Naglee was found in a ditch off Highway Ninety-Two with about a hundred bullet holes in the chassis. There was blood in the backseat. The lab is working it up.”

Had Vasquez been murdered or abducted, or had he just gotten a ride out of town?

“Why don’t you two take the rest of the day off,” said Brady. It was five in the afternoon. I don’t remember the last time I’d gone home at five, but this was good.

I had plans for the evening.