San Francisco is a recurring setting in two sharply different accounts: Richard Doss invokes it to explain his whereabouts when Eldon Mate was killed, while Guillerma Salcido Mate recalls moving there to find work after Mate rejected their son, Donny. The city links a present investigation to an earlier rupture in Mate’s family life without making those stories equivalent.

A Claimed Alibi

When speaking with Alex Delaware, Richard says he was out of town when Mate was killed, specifying San Francisco as his destination. He describes looking over a hotel for Tokyo bankers who had bought it five years earlier for thirty million dollars and now wanted to sell for considerably less. His account is presented as an alibi, not independently established proof of where he was. Richard later says police have tried to speak with him and that, if they are proceeding through a list of suspects in order, he expects to be near its bottom. He also points to the killer’s murders of two women after Joanne Doss as a reason the investigation is not simply about him.

Guillerma’s Move for Work

San Francisco also belongs to Guillerma’s recollection of life with Eldon Mate. After Mate refused to engage with Donny—becoming angry when the frightened baby screamed—Guillerma called him a couple more times, but he still would not visit. She says Donny’s birth turned Mate away from them, and she moved across the bridge to San Francisco and got a job. Her account presents the move as a practical response to rejection, rather than as a formal end to the marriage: she later returned to Oakland when rent was cheaper, while Mate was gone and his checks came from Arizona.

The City’s Contrasting Roles

The two references place San Francisco within different kinds of explanation. Richard offers it as a specific destination in a business account meant to establish his absence; Guillerma locates it in a sequence of calls, refusal, relocation, and paid work. In her story, the city marks an effort to support herself after Mate’s withdrawal, while the unresolved marriage continued through his pension checks. The city thus connects the investigation surrounding Mate’s death with the earlier consequences of his estrangement from his family, while leaving the truth of Richard’s alibi to the police inquiry.