more good in this rotten office without the Derringer case than I'd do
at some private law firm fighting over money for energy and tobacco
companies.
"The Derringer case is my only MCT file," I said.
If someone had asked me the night before, I would've said I'd do just
about anything to rid myself of the case: I was going down in flames
and about to grovel for a plea. Now I wanted nothing more than to keep
my hand in the mix, at least in some small way.
"Duncan, I think it would be a good idea if O'Donnell and I met with
defense counsel together to cut a plea. If the defense thinks I'm
totally out of the picture, they'll think they've won. They won't want
to deal."
"Can't do it, Sam. You're out. And I'm going to make it damn clear to
O'Donnell not even to attempt to pressure a plea until IA tells us
where we are with this guy's letter. We got lucky that the Oregonian
withheld the specifics. That letter includes extremely detailed
descriptions of those murders. If IA verifies it, we've got a major
wing nut on our hands. "The Long Hauler." Jesus Christ, what a
fucking nightmare."
It's frustrating when people don't listen to you, but it's downright
infuriating when you know you're right.
"Why's IA involved?" I asked. "I thought Walker and Johnson were
leads on this."
Griffith shook his head. "No. Too much at stake now. The first
letter, anyone who read up on the Zimmerman case could've written it.
Looked like it wouldn't lead to anything, so the bureau thought it was
good enough to keep Forbes off it. If it turns out Landry and Taylor
are actually innocent, your boyfriend's in deep doo doo. Starts to
look like Landry was finally telling the truth when she said Forbes was
feeding her the details."
"But go back to what O'Donnell told the jury. Why would Chuck do that?
The governor's son can get through the ranks without framing people."
"See what I meant about bias, Kincaid? You're smart enough to see that
the whole governor's son angle cuts both ways. You could also say it
puts pressure on him to be a star, to stand out as his own man, make it
big in a way that no one could say it was because of the old man. And
hey, he probably thought she really did do it. He wouldn't be the
first cop to bend some rules to make a case stronger to get the bad
guys."
It did look different from that angle. Given what I'd seen good cops
do to help convict the guilty, why couldn't I believe that Chuck might
occasionally do the same? Even in high school, Chuck had resented the
inherent unspoken separation from his peers that came with being the
governor's son. If that pressure had been bad as a teenager surrounded
by the offspring of lawyers and doctors, what had it been like with
rookie patrol officers? If Chuck felt in his gut that Lan-dry had been
guilty and wanted to bring down a freak like Taylor, might he help her
along with a few details to shore up her story?
As I walked out of Duncan's office, I could barely stomach what I was
thinking. He was right. I couldn't be objective.
Since my regular caseload hadn't included MCT cases before the
Derringer file came along, you'd think life with my run-of-the-mill
drug and prostitution cases would have felt like a return to normalcy.
Instead, it just felt anxiety-ridden. I didn't think anything would
feel normal to me again until the bureau finished its investigation and
I could finally find out what others decided about the future of Frank
Derringer and Chuck, not to mention me.
Chuck had been suspended from all MCT investigations and put on
temporary assignment to patrol. Since detectives don't work patrol,
the police union was filing a grievance, claiming that Chuck had
essentially been demoted without a hearing. The union's interest was
to make the bureau's staffing as inflexible as possible, so the bureau
has to hire new bodies whenever it has a shortage in any single area.
reassignment, since Chuck's salary hadn't been docked. Chuck, of
course, wasn't given a say in any of it and was back on patrol, angry
but cognizant of the fact that he could have been suspended.
Personally, I'd rather be suspended. Maybe if I'd boinked the entire
Major Crimes Team, I'd be one of those lucky public employees who got
suspended for a couple of years with pay until a lengthy investigation
resulted in my return to full employment with no discipline other than
an extended paid vacation. But sex with just one detective left me
where I was, back with my drug and vice cases.
Lopez had agreed to an adjournment. True believer that she was, she
wouldn't have acquiesced unless she thought the delay would help
Derringer. Based on that, I tried telling O'Donnell that the time was
ripe to approach the defense with a decent plea agreement. But he
refused, reminding me that the boss had ordered him not to pressure a
plea until the police determined whether the Long Hauler was for
real.
O'Donnell had continued to surprise me with relatively decent behavior.
He agreed that I'd handle communications with Kendra and Andrea about
the case. Even though I suspected he did it to save himself the work
of victim handhold-ing, I was grateful that Kendra wasn't going to have
to hear about the turn of events from someone other than me.
The night after I'd been kicked off the case, I had taken Kendra out to
dinner and did my best to explain why the case was being set over. I
wanted desperately to answer all her questions about what was going to
happen, whether Derringer was still going to go to jail, why some
"stupid" letter had to affect her case, and everything else she asked
me as she played with her food. All I could do was tell her not to
give up hope. We'd have to wait and see.
We both kept up a good front, but the signs of demoralization were
clear in her untouched plate.
Now that the case was over, there wasn't much of an official role for
me to play in Kendra's life. I talked to her about enrolling in the
LAP teen program. Learning Alternatives to Prostitution was intended
for court-mandated treatment of criminal defendants, but anyone could
enroll. I'd already contacted them, and a counselor had told me she
could get Kendra a volunteer tutor to help her with school and Kendra
could participate in weekly group therapy sessions. Sometimes the
"therapy" took the form of activities like painting and gardening, but
those might be just the things Kendra needed to reenter life as a
somewhat regular thirteen-year-old.
Now, Monday morning. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be
acting like a lawyer. I spent the afternoon returning phone calls and
covering grand jury hearings. One guy I indicted definitely earned the
dope-of-the-day award, if not the year. The defendant marched into the
lobby of Southeast Precinct to report a fraud and pulled fifteen ounces
of heroin and a scale from his gym bag. Turns out the seller c
harged
him for a pound. Outraged by the one-ounce shortage, the defendant
thought the police would help him get what he called "reparations."
Ordinarily, this would have carried me through the day. But even the
reprieve from crank calls, break-ins, head cracks, and brown Toyota
Tercels wasn't enough to make me appreciate my return to the mundane. I
couldn't keep my mind off the so-called Long Hauler and his claim of
responsibility for the attack on Kendra. Something just didn't feel
right about it. I needed to get more evidence against Derringer, so I
could trash him no matter what the Long Hauler's story turned out to
be.
I decided to take a little detour on the way home from work. I
wouldn't even say that I decided to do it; it was more like my body
willed me. Right after my usual merge onto the 1-5 from the Morrison
Bridge, I noticed the exit sign for the Lloyd Center mall. I reminded
myself of how good I'd been about following Duncan's orders. I thought
of the trouble I'd be in for snooping around, the way O'Donnell's
nostrils would flare in anger if he found out, and the possibility that
it was all a waste of time anyway. The next thing I knew, I was
parking my Jetta outside of Meier & Frank in the Lloyd Center parking
lot and walking into the handbags department.
Now, if this had been a premeditated case of meddling into affairs that
were no longer mine, I would have checked Kendra's purse out of the
evidence locker and taken it with me to the counter. But since this
was impromptu meddling, I was left describing the purse to the nitwit
at the counter.
Nitwit was about seventeen years old. Her blond hair tumbled out of
the knot at the back of her head like a fountain designed by someone on
a heavy acid trip. From the bottom up, everything she wore was
irritating: platform sandals that made my feet wince, jeans slung low
enough to reveal a navel ring and bony hips, and a tight belly shirt
that evidently operated like a tube of toothpaste, pushing all her
bodily fluids into her head and retarding the firing of her synapses.
My badge, ID, and lengthy explanation of what I was looking for and why
were apparently lost on her, because she seemed to think I was browsing
around for a new handbag.
And, of course, everything she said ended with a question mark. "We
don't really have any bags by Esprit right now? But we have, like, a
ton of black leather purses, OK? We have some really cute Nine West
purses over here? And there's some on sale over there? But I really
like these Kate Spade ones?" I was beginning to think she was an evil
robot, programmed to prattle on about purses until her frosty-pink lip
gloss dried up.
I explained it to her a few more times. I wasn't interested in buying
a new purse. I was from the District Attorney's Office working on a
criminal investigation and needed to know whether they carried a
certain black leather purse by Esprit last autumn.
After the fourth try, Nitwit clued in and the frosty lips started
moving again. "OK, like, I totally didn't understand that before? You
want to ask about something we had, like, way back in November? I so
didn't work here yet?"
I finally uttered the magic words that should have been my first. "Is
there, like, a manager or something?"
Sweet lord, a woman in her thirties was never such a relief! Her name
tag identified her as Jan, senior sales associate. All that mattered
to me was that she'd worked there for two years and spoke that
increasingly endangered language known as grown-up.
"OK, let's see .. . black leather handbag by Esprit. Around November."
I was nodding as she thought out loud. "Yeah, we had a line of leather
bags by them last year. They normally do more canvas and novelty bags.
What kind of strap did it have? There was one that was more like a
backpack, one that had a shorty little handbag strap, and then a couple
with shoulder straps."
I told her it had a regular shoulder strap and then did my best
sketching it on a piece of scrap paper she gave me.
"Yeah, that looks like one of the shoulder strap ones we had." She
walked around the counter and pulled a bag out that was on display.
"Does it look kind of like this one, but with seams on the side and
without this little buckle here?"
"That's just what it looks like," I said, surprise in my tone. I
couldn't believe anyone could distinguish among purses in such detail,
but I guess others would marvel at my ability to distinguish Grey Goose
from Smirnoff.
"Do most of the people who were here last fall still work with the
company?" I asked.
She looked up in the air like she was thinking and counting. "Yeah,
not everyone, but mostly."
"And what are the chances one of them might remember selling that
particular purse to someone if I get you a picture of the person?" I
asked, my smile revealing that I knew it was a long shot.
"Boy, pretty slim. That was six months ago." She could see my
disappointment register. "Hey, it's worth a shot,
though. Tell you what, you give me the picture and I'll make sure
everyone takes a look at it."
"Great." I thought about the easiest way to get a picture of Andrea to
Jan and slipped into thinking aloud myself. "OK, I can get a booking
photo of her from January, which should be pretty much how she looked
last November."
Solid, reliable Jan looked alarmed at the mention of a booking photo,
and I laughed. "Oh, don't worry. She's not a hardened criminal or
anything." Of course, the truth is that hardened criminals come to the
mall and buy regular, boring things from stable, reliable people like
Jan every day, but I didn't see the need to tell her that. "It's
actually kind of a long story. A security guard at Dress You Up
excluded her from the store. It was really more of a misunderstanding,
but they had her arrested a few months later when she came back."
Jan tilted her head. "God, that rings a bell. I sold a purse to a
woman, and I remember she was red hot about some security guard at
Dress You Up. The guy had accused her of shoplifting, and even though
she told them to look through her stuff and they didn't find anything,
he kicked her out of the store. Didn't apologize or anything. You
know, that would've been around November."
I had to refrain from throwing my arms around solid, reliable Jan. It
had to have been Andrea. She must've bought the purse the same day she
had the run-in with Kerry Richardson at Dress You Up.
"And this woman bought the Esprit purse we've been talking about?" I
asked.
"I have no idea. I just remember the thing about the security
guard."
"What about the woman who bought the purse? Was she about thirty-five?
Brown shoulder-length hair? About my height?" I was doing my best to
describe Andrea, whose appearance was most notable for being
nondescript.
Jan shook her head. "I don't know. Like I said, I just remember that
conversation. Mayb
e if I saw her picture "
I dashed back to my car and drove over to Northeast Precinct. It was
only a couple of miles, but pesky things like lights, cats, and
frolicking children kept getting in the way of my car. The forty
minutes it took me to print Andrea's booking photo from X-imaging and
take it back to Jan felt like an eternity.
Jan looked carefully at Andrea's picture and said, "Yeah, I think
that's the woman. I remember her now." It wasn't the best ID in the
world, but it was a hell of lot more than I had a few days ago.
I was too excited to go home to my usual routine, so I picked up Vinnie
for a visit to Dad's. In the car, I checked my cell for messages.
There were two from Chuck. I'd been avoiding him since the shit hit
the fan in Duncan's office. Hell, I had to face him eventually. I
left a message to meet me at Dad's if he felt like it.
Dad was so happy to see me he didn't even complain about Vinnie tagging
along.
Going to Dad's is a major treat for Vinnie. Dad's yard is large enough
that there were still some bushes that Vinnie hadn't managed to pee on
yet. Vinnie would sniff around back, seeking out unsoiled ones to
violate. Add the Milk Bones that Dad keeps around to control Vinnie's
breath, and Dad's house was the Vinnie equivalent of a Yankees-Mets
game.
By the time Chuck showed up, Dad and I had fed Vinnie, gone to the
market for the "grocks" as Dad called them, and put a dish of baked pen
ne in the oven.
Dad took great pleasure announcing Chuck's arrival before he headed
back to the kitchen. "Sam, your man's here and he's got wine."