Act of Deceit

Chapter 51

A t five in the morning, Donnally parked the Mexican cop’s Taurus in front of William Sherwyn’s house. He left the rear extending two feet into the driveway. The back half of the car was illuminated by a streetlight. The front was shadowed. He then climbed out and snatched Sherwyn’s San Francisco Chronicle and brought it back to the car. He paged through it until he found the article about the shooting:

Sherwyn emerged from his front door an hour later. He surveyed the landing, the front steps, and the grass for his newspaper, then looked up and spotted the Taurus. He glared at it as if annoyed by a negligent neighbor. The gesture satisfied Donnally that Sherwyn had never seen the car before.

Sherwyn reentered his house.

Donnally walked up the stairs thirty seconds later and tossed the newspaper against the front door. He then concealed himself in the shadow outside the range of the porch light.

Sherwyn stepped outside, picked up the Chronicle, then skimmed through the pages until he found the story. His brow furrowed in puzzlement as he read. Donnally guessed that Sherwyn already knew that the killing hadn’t turned out as planned, perhaps because Cruz hadn’t called to confirm that he’d done it or come to collect his fee, but Sherwyn wouldn’t have been able to figure out why Cruz hadn’t been identified by the police.

Donnally stepped forward. Sherwyn lurched away from the shadow falling across his newspaper, then spun around. His eyes widened and his hand clenched the paper. Donnally pulled back his jacket to show his semiautomatic, then reached into the house and turned off the light.

They both glanced toward the street as a Berkeley Police patrol car cruised by.

“Don’t even think it,” Donnally said.

The officer turned left at the corner and drove down the hill toward the flatlands.

Donnally tilted his head toward the Taurus.

“What are you going to do?” Sherwyn asked. “Kidnap me and leave my dead body in the woods?”

“Seems only fair. You tried to do me in just the same way.”

Donnally drew his gun and pointed it at Sherwyn.

Sherwyn hesitated, but then walked down the steps and across the grass. He looked up and down the sidewalk as he approached the car, as though hoping to spot a neighbor.

Donnally chambered a round.

“I’m just as happy to drop you right here,” Donnally said. “I can have your body in the trunk before it even crosses anyone’s mind that it was a gunshot and not a backfire.”

Donnally stepped around Sherwyn and opened the passenger door. Sherwyn slid in, then Donnally climbed into the driver’s seat and pointed the gun at Sherwyn.

“Put your hands where I can see them.”

Sherwyn raised them.

“No,” Donnally said, “against the dashboard.”

Sherwyn complied.

“The problem is that we’re sort of at a stalemate,” Donnally said. “Even if the police identify the guy you sent to murder me, there’ll be no way to connect him to you. You’ve spent enough years studying homicide files to figure out how to get away with one.”

Sherwyn didn’t respond.

“Don’t worry,” Donnally said. “I’m not taping this. I don’t want to leave any evidence behind of what’s going to happen next.” He held up a gloved hand. “Not even any fingerprints.”

Donnally started the engine.

“The guy looked to me like an LA gang type,” Donnally lied. “I can’t figure out how someone like you could get hooked up with somebody like that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, just like you didn’t know who Melvin was.”

Donnally drove to the stop sign at the end of the block, then accelerated around the corner. Sherwyn pulled his hands away from the dashboard and braced himself against the console and the door.

“Put your hands back where they were,” Donnally said, raising the gun.

Sherwyn again placed his hands on the dashboard.

Donnally took the next right, then pulled over. He didn’t speak right away.

“Now that I think about it,” Donnally finally said, “maybe you’re worth more to me alive than dead.”

“Blackmail?”

Donnally laughed. “That sounds like a confession. You should’ve said extortion. That would make you look like a victim.”

“How much do you want?”

“Let me think… let me think… how about five hundred thousand for Melvin for what you did to him and five hundred thousand for trying to kill me.”

“Where do you think I’m going to get a million dollars?”

Donnally looked over at Sherwyn, grinning. “So now we’re negotiating?”

“Call it whatever you want.” Sherwyn smirked. “I knew you had an angle. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. If I had known it was only money we could’ve worked this out already and saved ourselves a lot of trouble.”

“You mean like hiring a hit man?”

“Construe it any way you like.”

“What’s your counteroffer?” Donnally asked.

“Half a million divided between the two of you and a signed statement from Melvin that nothing ever happened.”

“How about two hundred for Melvin and four hundred for me?”

Sherwyn nodded.

“But this all assumes you have the money,” Donnally said. “Do you?”

“That’s not your problem. I can get it.”

Donnally put his gun back into his holster, then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen.

“Write out an IOU. Make it out for services rendered. Due in two days.”

Sherwyn wrote the sentence, signed below it, and handed it back to Donnally, who then shifted into drive and pulled back into the street. He took two more right turns and stopped in front of Sherwyn’s house.

Sherwyn opened the car door and stepped out.

Donnally lowered the passenger window as the door closed, and said to Sherwyn, “Nice doing business with you.”

Sherwyn looked up and down the street to make sure no neighbors were outside and leaned down.

“What makes you so sure I won’t walk inside and call the police?”

“Because you know how tomorrow’s headline will read. ‘Priest Accuses Prominent Psychiatrist of Child Molesting, Sordid Tale of Abuse Poised to Destroy Careers.’ ”

D onnally drove down the hill and stopped at a phone booth to call Janie.

“How’s my alibi?”

“You’re drinking coffee in bed and watching the news. I’ll have the recording for you to study when you get back. And twenty minutes ago you called your father from your cell phone. How’d it go with the doctor?”

“We’ll see. He’ll be trying to get some money together. Probably not as much as he agreed to, but who’s counting?”

D onnally traveled back using the same route he’d come. Over the north bay, down through Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and to the house where he had found the Taurus. He sealed up the car, stuck his gloves into his jacket pocket, then walked back to Janie’s.

She handed him his cell phone when he stepped into the kitchen. He punched in a telephone number.

“Ramon, this is Harlan. I found a rental car ignition key under the front steps. I thought you might be interested.”

N avarro called twenty-four hours later as Donnally was replacing his neighbor’s shot-out window.

“You were right, man,” Navarro said. “We located the car a few blocks away from you. It had been rented with a forged credit card. We lifted fingerprints matching the shooter in the car. And guess what? We found William Sherwyn’s all over the passenger side.”

“Did you knock on his door yet?”

“Yeah. It was weird. I told him I was investigating the shooting at your place and were wondering about some fingerprints we found. His face just went white. In twenty years investigating homicides, I’ve never seen anything like it. Then he started babbling and saying that you kidnapped him and forced him to touch the inside of the car. When I asked him why you would do something like that he clammed up and said he wanted to speak to a lawyer.”

“Did you arrest him?”

“No. He’s not going anywhere and I want to get a warrant to search his house and office. And I need to check out a few things.”

“Like what?”

“Like whether you’ve got an alibi.”

“Alibi? Me? Man, talk about blaming the victim.”