Act of Deceit

BODIES FOUND IN HUNTERS POINT

Thomas Peele

Chronicle Staff Writer Two unidentified men were found bludgeoned to death in an abandoned Hunters Point warehouse on Sunday night. The bodies were discovered by a homeless man looking for a place to sleep. Police reported that it appears the men were beaten to death after being tortured, and they suspect the homicides were the result of a drug deal gone bad. Sergeant Pete Peterson said the hands of both men had been cut off, most likely in an attempt to prevent their identification by fingerprints.

“What’s this?” Janie said, her soft footsteps coming to a stop on the carpet behind him.

“I’m just tying up some loose ends that Sonny left me with. It doesn’t all seem quite real yet.”

“That’s the problem with history.”

“The tragedy is real,” Donnally said, staring at the monitor, “it’s just not anchored to anything.” He thought for a moment. “If Mauricio was still alive, it would be different.”

“I know,” she said, squeezing his shoulder, “and he would’ve been proud of her. Charles told me that Anna helped out lots of people. Food, medicine, advice. Some would come right to her door once a week, like clockwork. She’d give them boxed lunches or, for the ones she trusted, money to buy things for themselves.”

He looked up at her. “Like clockwork?”

Janie nodded. “My phrase, but his idea.”

“Did he say who?”

She shook her head, then sat down next to the desk.

“He told me she even borrowed money to pay for all the charity.” She smiled. “He said she took out a ‘mortuary.’ It took most of the session to figure out why he picked that word. It turned out that the bank she went to was next to a funeral home and what she got was a mortgage.”

Donnally raised his eyebrows as he looked over at Janie. It sounded less like charity and more like guilt.

“It seemed a little excessive to me, too,” Janie said.

“When are you seeing him again?”

She glanced at her watch. “Ten o’clock.”

B y noon Donnally was sitting before a different monitor, this one at the Alameda County Recorder’s Office, and paging through scans of Anna Keenan’s loan records. He became more and more puzzled as he looked through the documents. Between the day her mother signed the house over to her in 1980 and when she was murdered, she’d refinanced three times.

He wondered whether she’d discovered the violent origin of the money that went into buying the house and had decided to turn evil to good by giving it away.

Then why not just sell the house and give the money back to the armored car company?

The answer again arrived in Sonny’s words. “There’d be too much to explain.”

And with her remaining in the house, Artie and Robert would believe their money was still invested there.

Is that why they killed her? Because they found out she’d given their money away? And because they wanted to get past her to Trudy so she could make good their loss?

Donnally leaned back in his chair and stared up at the tiled ceiling.

But then strangling her? Kneeling over her on her bed and strangling her?

It didn’t make sense. Not with his years investigating homicides. A knife at her throat, yes. A gun at her temple, yes. But strangling? Not very likely. And by hand? Even less likely. Strangling hands were a weapon of passion, not calculation.

Donnally found that his eyes had lost focus. He blinked, then logged off the computer.

It just didn’t make sense.

D onnally’s cell phone rang as he drove across the Bay Bridge. It was Janie.

“Charles said that one of the two regulars she gave money to was named Art or Artie. Does that name mean anything to you?”