“This is important police business,” I said. “Where can I find her?”
“She went to the gym. She usually gets back at around ten o’clock.”
It was quarter to. I took a seat in a wingback chair with a view of the street through two-story-tall plate-glass windows and saw the black limo stop at the curb. A liveried driver got out, went around to the sidewalk side of the car, and opened the rear door.
A very attractive woman in her late twenties or early thirties got out and headed toward the lobby doors while she went for the keys in her bag.
Ms. Steele was slim and fine boned, with short, dark, curly hair. She wore a smart shearling coat over her red tracksuit. I shot a look at the doorman and he nodded. When she came through the door, I introduced myself and showed her my badge.
“Police? What’s this about?”
“Jorge Sierra,” I said.
She drew back. Fear flickered in her eyes, and her face tightened.
She said, “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Please, Ms. Steele. Don’t make me take you to the station for questioning. I just need you to ID a photograph.”
The doorman was fiddling with papers at the front desk, trying to look as though he wasn’t paying attention. He looked like Matt Damon but didn’t have Damon’s talent.
“Come upstairs with me,” Ms. Steele said to me.
I followed her into the elevator, which opened directly into her sumptuous apartment. It was almost blindingly luxurious, with its Persian carpets, expensive furnishings, and what looked to me like good art against a backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay.
I’d looked her up before getting into the car. Ms. Steele didn’t have a job now and had no listing under Sierra or Steele on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Who’s Who in Business. Odds were, she was living on the spoils of her marriage to one of the richest men west of the Rockies.
Steele didn’t ask me to sit down.
“I want to be absolutely clear,” she said. “If you quote me or depose me or in any way try to put me on the record, I will deny everything. I’m still married. I can’t testify.”
I took the mug shot out of my pocket and held it up for her to see. “Is this Jorge Sierra?” I asked. “Known as Kingfisher?”
She began nodding like a bobblehead on crack. I can’t say I didn’t understand her terror. I’d felt something like it myself.
I said, “Thank you.”
I asked follow-up questions as she walked with me back toward the elevator door. Had her husband been in touch with her? When was the last time she’d spoken with him? Any idea why he would have killed two women in a nightclub?
She stopped moving and answered only the last question.
“Because he is crazy. Because he is mental when it comes to women. I tried to leave him and make a run for the US border, but when he caught me, he did this.”
She lifted her top so that her torso was exposed. There was a large scar on her body, about fifteen inches wide by ten inches long, shirring her skin from under her breasts to her navel. It looked like a burn made by a white-hot iron in the shape of a particular bird with a prominent beak. A kingfisher.
“He wanted any man I ever met to know that I belonged to him. Don’t forget your promise. And don’t let him go. If he gets out, call me. Okay?”
“Deal,” I said. “That’s a deal.”
Chapter 13
Early Friday morning Conklin and I met with ADA Barry Schein in his office on the second floor of the Hall. He paced and flexed his hands. He was gunning his engines, which was to be expected. This was a hugely important grand jury hearing, and the weight of it was all on Barry.
“I’m going to try something a little risky,” he said.
Barry spent a few minutes reviewing what we already knew about the grand jury—that it was a tool for the DA, a way to try out the case with a large jury in an informal setting to see if there was enough probable cause to indict. If the jury indicted Mr. Sierra, Schein could skip arraignment and take Sierra directly to trial.
“That’s what we want,” said Barry. “Speed.”