Face of a Killer

39

Without the San Francisco hills, the momentarily perfect weather, and the light breeze tinged with salt from the bay, the clinic where Jazmine Wheeler worked could be lifted up and dropped into any large and depressed area of any metropolitan city. The buildings were old and in disrepair, wrought-iron bars covered nearly every window or door on the ground floor, and graffiti caught the eye wherever one glanced.

Bayview-Hunters Point was not the San Francisco pictured in the tourist books. This was the San Francisco of the downtrodden, the drug-addicted, the homeless, and the dealers who preyed on them. As Carillo turned the unmarked vehicle onto the street, slowed to check the address on the building, Sydney saw a group of men, some black, some white, watching them, their collective gazes filled with suspicion, no doubt making the pair for cops. This was one of those areas that most law enforcement types didn’t drive into unless they had their hands on their guns and the holsters unsnapped. A glance in the side mirror told her their tail was still on them, and she figured having an extra car with two armed agents behind them came in mighty handy. They found the clinic, as well as a parking spot in a loading zone that was remarkably empty and in sight of the windows of the building they were about to enter, a plus when hoping to keep the car intact while conducting business in such a neighborhood. The two got out of the car just as Jared Dunning pulled up, opened his door. “What the hell are we doing here?”

“Just need to stop by and have a chat with someone about renewing a prescription,” Sydney said.

“Birth control pills,” Carillo added.

Jared looked up at the sign. “It’s a methadone clinic.”

“Damn, Carillo. We are so not sleeping together tonight.”

“Way to go,” Carillo told Dunning as they walked past him, toward the door. “I was this close.”

She waved at the two agents, then entered the building, as Jared Dunning pulled out his cell phone.

The clinic was busy, and while Sydney walked up to the front desk, Carillo stood watch at the door, crossing his arms, taking a don’t-fuck-with-me-or-mine stance, something totally wasted on the receptionist, who sat reading a tabloid magazine while sipping a soda, her half-eaten hamburger sitting on the wrapper next to the phone.

“Yeah,” she said, barely sparing them a glance.

Sydney held out her credentials. “I’m here to see Jazmine Wheeler.”

By rote, the woman reached for a stack of clipboards with patient information forms clipped on them, handed Sydney one, never removing her gaze from the magazine’s pages. “Fill this out, take a seat.”

Sydney slipped her credentials on top of the magazine so there was no doubt the woman would see them and the badge. “You mind checking to see if she’s in?”

“You’re not here for methadone?”

“We tend to avoid that sort of thing in the FBI.”

R. Ashton, according to her name tag, gave a clueless shrug, picked up the phone, and made a call. “FBI here to see you…” She hung up, then, “Jazz’ll be out in a minute.”

“Thank you.”

Sydney stood back, eyeing the gaunt-faced patients who were now eyeing her with even more distrust as they stood in line, waiting for their doses. She kept her back to the wall, her expression neutral, and waited. Five minutes later, a short, trim woman stepped into the waiting room. She was dressed in dark brown slacks, a tan cable knit sweater, a white lab coat, and a beaded necklace of amber. Her flawless skin was the color of dark chocolate, and despite the gray peppered in her close-cropped hair, she looked much younger than the fifty-some-odd years Sydney had figured as her age.

“You’re from the FBI?” she said, fingering the beads of her long necklace, her glance looking past Sydney to Carillo.

“Yes, ma’am.” Sydney showed the nurse her ID. “I’m here about your nephew, Johnnie Wheeler.”

“What for?” she asked, with a tinge of wariness.

“I have questions about his homicide conviction.”

She said nothing for several seconds, merely looked Sydney in the eye as though trying to read her. Then, “And what is it you want from me?”

“I was hoping you might be able to put me in touch with any friends of his, relatives, anyone who might, unknowingly even, have a lead as to what really happened.”

“What really happened?” Jazmine said, her voice strained. “Johnnie was stupid enough to cooperate with the detectives who came out and said they were only there to find out what really happened. A good show. Said they were going to help him, and they did, right into the back of their car. He was railroaded.”

“What do you mean railroaded?”

“By the cops. A scapegoat. Black man in a white town. He didn’t do it. There is no justice,” she said, stepping back into the hallway. “That’s more than I should’ve told you, and all I’m saying. Anything else, talk to Johnnie’s attorney.”

Sydney started to follow her down the hall. “Can you at least look at a photo?” she called out as a couple of the resident addicts moved in.

One of them, a tall black man, came within a foot of Sydney, saying, “You heard the lady. Go.”

Jazmine Wheeler stopped midflight, spun on her heel, and stalked toward the man, pinning her gaze on him. “Get your ass back in line, Trey, or you’ll be drying it out in detox, faster’n you can say where’s my methadone? Hear me?”

He put up his hands, edged back. “I’m cool. Just want to make sure you was okay, Miss Jazz, you hear me?”

“I hear you. Now get.” She waited until he was back in line before she faced Sydney. “Give me one good reason why I should look at this damned photo of yours.”

“Because I’m the daughter of the man your nephew says he didn’t kill. And if he didn’t do it, I want to know who did, before they stick that needle in his arm two days from now.”

Several seconds passed as Jazmine searched Sydney’s eyes, perhaps trying to judge her sincerity, and then she said, “My office is the third door on the left. We can talk in there.”

She led Sydney down the hall into a small room, cluttered and filled with hanging plants. A yellow school bus photo frame was filled with twelve pictures of a young boy, showing his progression from kindergarten until graduation from high school. Sydney thought she saw a bit of Johnnie Wheeler in the boy, and wondered if it might be his son, the baby he’d talked about having when he was arrested. They were the only photos in the room. A large padlocked file cabinet filled one corner of the office, its side covered with magnets from various destinations around the U.S. The remainder of the space was taken up by a metal desk, buried beneath stacks of medical folders.

Jazmine moved behind the desk, but didn’t sit. “I have a lot of patients I have to get through. And when they don’t get their methadone, things can get ugly very fast, so make this quick.”

Sydney opened her folder and set the photo on her desk. “Do you know any of these men?”

Jazmine gave a dismissive glance toward the picture, then did a double take. “What does Frank have to do with this?”

“You know him?”

“Frank White. Johnnie’s father.”

“You’ve seen this photo before?”

“No. But that’s definitely him. And he died well before Johnnie was ever arrested.”

“Do you know what he did for a living?”

Jazmine hesitated. “There’s what he said he did, and then there’s what I really think he did. He said he was a contract civilian employee doing electrical work for the army. Seemed his services were in demand. All over the world.”

“And you didn’t believe him? That he was a contract electrician?”

She gave a cynical laugh. “I know the government tosses money around like there’s no tomorrow, except when it comes to helping out places like this clinic, but how many times do they need to send out emergency electricians to change lightbulbs in places like Pakistan, Chile, or Honduras?” She started stacking folders, rote action to occupy her hands. “You name a political hotspot in the world twentytwo years ago, or some country that bordered one, and my sister’s ex-boyfriend was sent there. Usually taking off on a flight that left in the middle of the night. I told her something else was going on, but she didn’t believe me, nor did she care. In fact, what I remembered her saying was that since she never married the guy, he could take all the trips he wanted to wherever he wanted, as long as the child support checks came in.”

Sydney thought about her father, and his sudden trips to far-off locales to take his alleged photographs for recruitment posters and pamphlets. “Exactly when did he die?”

“Two years before my nephew was arrested for murder.” Right around the same time as her own father’s accident, she thought, just as Jazmine added, “Faulty wiring, was what I was told. Sparked some explosion.”

Explosion…? So many pieces fell into place with that simple statement. The time her father had come home from one of his photography trips with an injury that caused him to lose two fingers. Someone “accidentally” setting off “real” charges instead of the fake ones they were supposed to use for photography. Her father forced into retirement, and their subsequent move from Red Springs, North Carolina, to California. It made her wonder how she’d ever believed her father’s story about his accident and his retiring. What had he told her at the time…? Because he couldn’t hold a camera steady anymore.

It was never about holding a camera; she knew that now.

It was about holding a gun.

“Is there something I should know about this?” Jazmine asked, watching Sydney carefully.

Sydney slid the photo closer to her. “Are you sure you don’t know the rest of these men? Have you ever seen any of them before?”

Jazmine picked up the photo this time, looked at it for quite a while, but then shook her head. “The one here, with the curly blond hair,” she said, indicating Robert Orozco. “Maybe once when Frank came out to visit Johnnie for Christmas. Well, stopped by on his way out of the country, was more like it. But I couldn’t say for sure, because the other guy waited in the car.”

“Do you ever remember the detectives questioning you about Johnnie’s statement, that my father had befriended him?”

“Of course. Johnnie came to me that night because of his burned hands. He’d gone there to get some money to get to this job that your father had arranged for him. Johnnie told me that someone killed him, then set the fire, all while he was hiding in the back.”

“Did he say how it was he got burned?”

“Yes.” And yet she hesitated, as though trying to decide what to tell Sydney. Finally, “He said he went to help your father. When Johnnie realized he was dead, he fled out the window.” She took a frustrated breath, glanced off to the side, before continuing. “ I’m the one who convinced him to call, tell them just what he told me.. .”

“And Johnnie never questioned how it was that Kevin found him?”

“What was there to question? He’d just had a new baby, was trying to kick the drugs, and when your father told Johnnie that someone at some church had submitted his name, who was he to discount his good fortune that at last things were going his way? The cops said he made it up, an excuse for being in the restaurant that night to steal the money. But why? What could it possibly matter now how your father found him?”

Sydney pointed to her father. “That man standing behind Frank White. That was my father. Kevin Fitzpatrick.”

This time it was Jazmine’s turn to stare, and Sydney could tell the moment she started to understand just what was going on, the dawning of realization. “Your father?”

“Yes.”

“The man my nephew said befriended him, but that everyone said was impossible that they even knew each other?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God…” She sank into her chair. “Johnnie was telling the truth. He didn’t do it. This proves it.”

“No, but it goes a long way in validating his story. It does not mean he didn’t kill him.” Jazmine started to protest, and Sydney said, “I’m not saying he did. Just what we can or can’t prove. And just because my father knew Johnnie Wheeler’s father, that does not mean that Johnnie didn’t kill him. But that’s not what I’m worried about,” Sydney continued. “My father lost two fingers in an explosion around the same time Johnnie’s father was killed. My father was also allegedly a contract employee for the army, but his story was that he took photographs for recruitment posters and pamphlets.”

“Then why wouldn’t your father have told Johnnie that they knew each other?”

“Maybe because of what they really did for the army. A friend of mine saw this photo and suggested that the men in it were obviously Delta Force, an elite group of highly trained special operators. It’s been suggested to me that they were working some sort of black ops assignments.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that whatever they were assigned to, especially if it was dealing with anything associated with national security, the government denies their involvement or association, and they could not discuss it with anyone outside of their unit. Period. And that would include the sons and daughters of former members.”

“Then what good does any of this do for Johnnie if you can’t prove it? They’re going to execute him on Tuesday.” She brought her hand up to her mouth as the reality of it all hit her. “My God. That’s in two days…”

“It gives us a starting point. Just yesterday I had no idea that my father knew Johnnie Wheeler’s father, or that they might have worked together. Now that I do, I have a whole new direction to look in.” And not much time to find the answers, she reminded herself.

Sydney returned her photo to the folder, then wrote her cell phone number on one of her business cards, telling Jazmine to call day or night if she thought of anything. As she started out the door, she remembered the suicide note, the nicknames used within it, and she asked, “Do you have any idea if Johnnie’s father went by any nicknames? Heard any of his friends call him anything different by chance?”

“Well, Frank was sort of a shortened version of his name. Does that count?”

“Short for what?”

“Francisco. He hated that name.”