“Storage unit somewhere, maybe.”
“Come back for it later, after things’ve cooled down? That’d be pretty risky. Seems more likely they’d want to get far away from San Francisco and never come back.”
“Depends on what their plans are. They’re too shrewd to run blind—they’d have a hideout set up or in mind.”
“So they could be anywhere now.”
“Just about. One thing they’ll do before they go very far is switch that SUV for another set of wheels, make themselves even harder to trace.”
“We can’t just sit back and let them get away,” Tamara said grimly. “We’ve got to do something.”
I said, “I’ve already told the SPCA about the abandoned dogs. And I’ve got a call in to Jack Logan. When I hear from him, I’ll lay out everything we suspect. He knows I wouldn’t come to him unless I was reasonably sure I had good cause.”
“But will he do anything even if you fess up to unlawful entry?”
“Whatever he can. The abandoned dogs should give the police the right to inspect the kennels. McManus’s and Carson’s prints are bound to be in there, and if we’re right that the two of them are fugitives, that’ll be enough cause for a search warrant for the house.”
“All that’s gonna take a long time,” Tamara said. “Too long.”
“No use worrying about what we can’t control. Even if APBs were put out right away, it might already be too late. They could already be off the highways by now, holed up someplace.”
“Yeah.”
“Look at it this way,” I said. “No matter what happens, they won’t be killing any more people in Dogpatch.”
“I’d feel better about that if I knew they won’t be killing any more people anywhere.” She was silent for several seconds. Then, “I keep wondering what happened to the bodies. No place on the property where they could’ve buried ’em?”
“Not unless there’s a pit hidden under the kennels.”
“… You think maybe?”
“No, I don’t. Chancy disposal method anyway.”
“What about that sick dude in Ohio a couple of years ago, had decomposing and mummified corpses all over his house and yard?”
“Different type of case. Trust me—there aren’t any corpses hidden on the Dogpatch property.”
“So maybe they cut ’em up and fed ’em to the dogs.”
“Pretty grisly work for a couple of middle-aged women.”
“Well? Men don’t have a monopoly on being monsters.”
She was right enough about that. But whatever the answer, I had a feeling it wasn’t chopped-up human dog food.
* * *
Jack Logan hadn’t returned my call by the time I headed home. I’d left two messages for him, one on his cell’s voice mail, the other at the Hall of Justice, both stressing the urgency of the information I had for him, but he’d become a busy man since his promotion to assistant chief. The constant demands on his time came not only from the PD but also from the city’s political hierarchy and individuals a lot more powerful and influential than I would ever be. Jack and I had been friends a long time, but that didn’t count for much on the priority ladder.
In the old days I’d had other friends in the department I could have appealed to, but they were all gone now—retired, working for other police departments or at other jobs. One more example of the effects of time erosion. There were a few inspectors I’d had business dealings with, but I didn’t know any of them well enough to approach them with a handful of nothing much more than speculation based on circumstantial evidence. Logan was the only one who’d give Tamara’s and my suspicions the attention they deserved.
* * *
Mild argument with Kerry when I got home. She wanted to go out to dinner—Emily was spending the night with a friend—and I wanted to stay in, relax after the long day, wait for Logan’s call. She won the argument, as she usually does when she really wants something, by a combination of cajolery, guilt-tripping (we hadn’t been out together alone in weeks), and subtle sexual promise. Not that she used sex the way some women did, as a form of extortion. She’d never said no to me just because she didn’t get her way—too honest and caring for that kind of nonsense. But if she did get her way, her natural tendency was to be more enthusiastic in her lovemaking. I may be crowding geezerhood, but I can still be as swayed by the prospect of enthusiasm as I was in my younger days.
So we went out to dinner, at a Sicilian restaurant that had just opened up in Noe Valley. My one proviso being that I keep my cell phone on because Logan still hadn’t rung back. Normally doing that goes against my grain—people who get calls and then chatter in public places are near the top of my list of my pet peeves—but this was a special circumstance. Kerry had no objection when I explained the situation on the drive down to 24th Street.