14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 8

IT WAS A terrible sight.

The dead woman was lying on her side. She was white, had shoulder-length brown hair, and looked to be in her late forties or early fifties.

She had cared about her appearance, and wore expensive clothing: an unbuttoned tan raincoat over blood-soaked beige knit separates. The source of the blood looked to be a long slice through her clothes from her lower abdomen up to her rib cage that had likely required strength, determination, and a long, sharp blade.

The victim had bled out fast. She might never have known what had happened to her.

I trained my camera on the conspicuous wound. Then I shot close-ups of the victim’s hands—no wedding band—and of her face, and of her stockinged feet, which lay like beached fish where she’d fallen out of her shoes.

An authentic and pricey large Louis Vuitton handbag lay beside her. I opened the bag and photographed the contents: a pair of good running shoes, a makeup kit, a Jimmy Choo sunglass case, a paperback novel, and a brown leather wallet, new and of good quality.

When I opened her wallet, I learned that the victim’s name was Tina Strichler. Her driver’s license listed her age as fifty-two, and her home address was about six blocks from the scene of her death. Strichler had a full deck of credit cards, and business cards identifying her as a psychiatrist. She also had receipts for recent purchases and two hundred twenty-two dollars in cash.

I typed Strichler’s name into my phone, using an app that linked up to SFPD databases—and got nothing back. Which didn’t surprise me. So far, I had nothing to explain why this woman of means had not been robbed. She’d been gutted in broad daylight on a busy street where cell phone cameras were pointing in every direction.

I circled the body and took photos of the crowd on the sidewalks on the chance that whoever had killed this woman was watching the activity at the crime scene.

Conklin came toward me and summarized the witness statements, using his hands to point out the direction the victim had been coming from.

“The Gosselins were crossing Balmy Alley toward the victim,” he said. “Mrs. Gosselin didn’t notice the killer until he struck or punched out at the victim’s midsection. All she saw was a medium-size white guy in a black jacket or coat or shirt with the tails out. She thinks he had brown hair.”

Conklin looked exasperated, and I felt the same way. So many pairs of eyes, and one of the only two witnesses had seen practically nothing.

My partner went on.

“After the attack, the doer kept going and disappeared into the crowd. Mr. Gosselin saw none of this. He went to his wife when she started screaming. The rest was chaos. A stampede.”

An unmarked car pulled up and two guys from our squad got out: Fred Michaels and Alex Wang, both new hires by Brady.

Conklin and I greeted them and brought them up to date on the details of the crime as we knew it. I told them I’d send them a typed version of my notes and the photos as soon as I got back to the Hall. And then, as sorry as I was to do it, I turned the case over to the new guys.

Conklin and I had our own horrible murder waiting for us at our desks. We got back into our separate cars and were headed back to the Hall when, as I turned onto Bryant Street, something came to me. It was a realization that just about reached out and hit me like a slap across the face.

Claire had been right.

There had been murders on each of her birthdays for the previous two years. And I was almost positive that those cases hadn’t been solved.