A Plague of Secrets

16

A gust of wind pulled the door of Darrel Bracco’s car out of his hand and slammed it for him just as a fresh volley of rain peppered the blacktop all around him. Lowering his head, he pulled up the hood of his yellow parka and jogged at a good clip toward the obvious destination-the coroner’s van parked in front with a squad car, lights on at the porch and in the front windows. It was ten forty-three when Bracco flashed his badge at the two patrolmen standing by the door.

Debra Schiff was already there inside, clogging up the hall by the kitchen with some coroner and crime-scene people, including Lennard Faro, and the original team of inspectors who’d pulled the call-Benny Yung and Al Tallant. They were all trying to keep out of the way as the photographer finished her work.

Schiff, at a glance, was wet and, by the looks of her, none too happy either. Darrel looked around as he came in out of the rain-the murder had occurred in a ground-floor front unit on the right-hand side of a Victorian building on Potrero Hill. There weren’t any obvious signs of struggle in the living room to Bracco’s right. A distraught-looking young man was sitting on the couch with his hands clasped between his knees, while another patrolman sat across from him, unspeaking.

There was similarly not much sign of struggle as Bracco came and looked over Schiff’s shoulder, except for the one overturned kitchen chair and the body sprawled out on the floor, the puddle of blood underneath Levon’s head.

“Not that I’m not thrilled to be here,” Bracco announced to all and sundry, “but does somebody want to remind me again why we need Deb and me?”

Tallant was a mid-thirties distance runner with big teeth, a long, jowly face, and a perennial shadow that he couldn’t ever seem to shave off completely. “Not our call,” he said. “We ran it by Glitsky and he said to bring you in.”

Debra turned back to her partner. “Listen to this, Darrel,” she said. “Why don’t you hit it, Ben?”

Yung, heavyset and normally cheerful, at the moment seemed stretched thin and exhausted. He reached over and pushed a button on the telephone unit on the kitchen counter. “Levon,” a voice said, “I am a private investigator named Wyatt Hunt and I’m working for a lawyer here in town who’s representing a woman named Maya Townshend, maybe known to you as Maya Fisk, who I believe went to school with you at USF. If I could have a couple minutes of your time to ask you a few questions, I’d appreciate a callback. My cell number, anytime, is-”

Yung hit the stop button and turned back to his colleagues. “We called Hunt and asked him what he was working on and eventually got around to Dylan Vogler. I recognized the name and we talked about it and decided to call Abe.”

“It was a good call, Benny,” Schiff said. “Don’t mind Darrel. He gets crabby when his beauty sleep gets interrupted.”

“Hey,” Bracco said, “I’m not crabby. I said I was thrilled to be here. And if this is part of Vogler, even more so.” He pointed back toward the living room. “Who’s the kid out front?”

“Boyfriend,” Yung said. “Brandon Lawrence, says he’s an actor. He called it in and waited for us to arrive. Had a dinner date and a key, but this was over before he got here and I think I believe him.”

“Well, let’s keep him on a while anyway.”

“That’s why he’s still here,” Tallant commented with some asperity. “He’s not going anywhere till we let him.”

“Hey, no offense, Al. I see a fresh body, I get a little pumped up.” Bracco looked across and down to the body, spoke to the crime-scene boss. “So, Len, what do we got?”

Faro, the squad’s token metrosexual with his well-trimmed goatee, spiky hair, and multiple gold chains around his neck, was in his early forties but looked and dressed a decade younger. He’d been leaning against the kitchen wall and now came off it. “He got hit hard and hit at least once again, best guess is by the back of the cleaver we found rinsed off in the sink. Maybe dead before the second blow, although that’ll have to wait for the autopsy, not that it matters much. He’s dead enough now.”

Faro moved away to the far side of the kitchen table. “Whoever did this, our victim almost undoubtedly knew him. Or her. No sign of forced entry.” He pointed down at the table. “Note the condensation ring, still here, across from where Levon was sitting. Maybe they were sitting here together having a glass of something. We bagged up some clean and dried glasses that were in the tray by the sink. Maybe find a print on one of ’em, but unlikely. So whatever else you might say, your killer’s a pretty cool customer, washing up after. Michelle,” he asked the photographer, “you get all this?”

She nodded, then pointed and shot at the ring on the table one last time and stepped back to survey the room and make sure she’d captured it.

“So what’s his connection to Vogler?” Bracco asked. “Besides Maya?”

Al Tallant knew that one. “None that we know of. Not yet.”

“Is that why we got invited to this party?” Bracco asked.

Tallant nodded. “Pretty good guess.”

“Anything else?” Schiff asked.

“Nope,” Yung said. “Levon was clean, with a job and everything.”

“Where?” Bracco asked.

Yung nodded. “ACT.” This was the American Conservatory Theater. “He had business cards in his wallet. Associate director of development. He was moving up.”

Schiff looked down on the body. “Not anymore.”

“How about dope?” Bracco asked. “You see any sign of marijuana?”

“Funny you should ask,” Faro said. “He had a half-full Baggie in the drawer next to his bed. Anybody else, hardly worth talking about. But if he’s connected to Vogler…”

Bracco nodded. “I hear you.”

“Well,” Tallant said, “if you guys won’t be needing us anymore, it’s been a slice.”

Bracco and Schiff stayed on the scene until the coroner’s team removed the body well on toward two o’clock in the morning. Faro and his crime-scene unit stayed on as well, poring over the house from stem to stern but adding little to their store of information.

Out in the living room the inspectors tag-teamed Brandon Lawrence, who in fact had his own key to the apartment and had called nine one one when he’d discovered the body. He told them both, verifying the obvious, that Levon lived alone and that they were in a “wonderful, committed relationship.” He told them that he hadn’t touched anything after coming upon the body and, not being able to stand the proximity to his lover, had waited outside the whole time for the arrival of the first squad car. He would do anything he could-anything!-to help them find who’d done this. But he’d seen nothing suspicious, either in the neighborhood or once he’d let himself in. Until he’d seen the body. Bracco and Schiff made sure they had his ID, DNA, and fingerprints. They told him these were for elimination purposes and let him go home.

Bracco walked Lawrence to the door and then returned to sit at the end of the couch, catercorner to where his partner sat back in an armchair in the well-lit living room. Schiff’s face wore a pained expression, and she sighed. Finally, she looked over at Bracco. “I’d hate to think that getting Jerry Glass involved and shaking things up at the Townshends’ had anything to do with this.”

“Maybe it didn’t, Debra. Maybe Maya doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Do you believe that?”

“No. You?”

“Based on the rule of never a coincidence, me neither.”

“I’d love to call her right now, find out if she’s got an alibi.”

“Not yet. Not in the middle of the night, without more than this.”

“I know. But still…”

“We could pull an all-nighter and hit her at seven sharp. If she’s got no alibi, we sit her down for a serious chat.”

“She’d just call Hardy and he wouldn’t let her talk.”

“Fine. Wake him up early too. And by the way, I’ve been meaning to ask, how do you get to be friendly with a defense attorney?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as friendly. He and Abe are pals. I worked with him a time or two. He used to be a cop, you know.”

“Who did? Hardy?”

“Yeah. Then a DA.”

“Get out of here!”

“True.”

“What made him go over to the dark side?”

Bracco gave her a sideways glance. “You’re more mad at yourself than at me or Hardy or anybody else, aren’t you?”

She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have gone to Glass. Levon might still be alive.”

“I’m not going to say you might have wanted to discuss it with your partner first.”

“Good. Don’t.”

Bracco took a beat. “What do you think of the cleaver?”

“As a murder weapon? It seems to have worked.”

“You think it’s a woman’s weapon?”

“Spur of the moment? It’d do.”

“But it couldn’t have been spur of the moment. Whoever it was knew him and if they came over here to kill him, they would have brought something to do it.”

Schiff nodded. “Either that or she knew he had the cleaver. All she had to do was get him into the kitchen and get behind him. In fact,” warming to her theory a little, she went on, “I think I like that she used the wrong side, the dull side. A guy maybe doesn’t do that.”

Bracco sat back on the couch. “Maybe not. I don’t know. But we could talk about this all night and never go anywhere. As opposed to what we do know.”

“Which is what?”

“Well, keeping it simple, let’s assume that Levon hung out with Maya in college. We’ve been thinking that Vogler was blackmailing Maya, so let’s call that a fact too. What does that say to you?”

“She’s the connection, back when they were all in school.”

“That’s what I see.”

“She didn’t own the coffee shop then.”

“Yeah, okay. So the blackmail didn’t start then. It wasn’t until she had money.”

“Maybe she was paying Levon, too, somehow.”

“And then he finds out Vogler’s been killed and suddenly he’s a little uncomfortable.”

“No, he’s a lot uncomfortable.” Bracco sat with his thoughts for a moment, then suddenly came forward, stood, and went over to a lamp table across the room where he’d left some small Ziploc evidence bags and other stuff from Levon’s pockets, including his cell phone. As a matter of course he and Schiff were going to go through the recent history of calls received and made, which were automatically logged, but they’d both thought they’d wait until the next morning when people would be awake. Now, though, he picked up the phone, turned it on, and brought it back over to where he’d been sitting. “I love these things,” he said. “Remember what a hassle it used to be to get phone records on people? Days, weeks, subpoenas. Now, push a button, bingo. Ah, here we go.”

The very first number in Levon’s recently made calls menu was a 415 area code that struck Bracco as familiar. He took out his own cell phone and ran down his own recently called menu until he came to the same number.

“It looks like Levon got uncomfortable enough to call somebody we know,” he said.