Face of a Killer

4

Nicholas Prescott, personal aide to Senator Donovan Gnoble, glanced at his watch, saw it was a little after ten, then looked out the Town Car’s backseat window as they sped southbound on the 101. “You know the senator can’t abide being late. Can’t you step it up?”

The driver, Eddie, a burly, dark-haired man with a nose as crooked as Lombard Street, eyed Prescott in his rearview mirror. “Next time order a helicopter.”

Prescott ignored his sarcasm. Good drivers who were discreet and would take orders from an aide without question, no matter what the request, were hard to come by. With no choice, Prescott sat back in his seat, waiting, knowing Senator Gnoble wouldn’t be pleased. So be it. Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up to the curb at SFO, where Donovan Gnoble, tall, round-faced, with thick snowy hair and his trademark goatee, stood by his suitcase, clearly trying to keep the impatience from his face as he waited for his car. The man hated airports, and San Francisco’s was at the top of his list. Oakland was only slightly better, and Prescott had tried to book that flight instead, to no avail. The driver parked, got out, and walked around to the curb, opening the rear door for the senator.

“Sir.”

Gnoble managed a smile before sliding in. The moment the car door closed on him, shielding him behind the dark glass, he looked at Prescott sitting at the opposite window. “What the hell took you so long?”

“Traffic and a few loose ends, now dealt with.” He handed Gnoble a printed sheet. “These are your stops this morning. Boys and Girls Club of Oakland, then the Association of-”

“I can read, thank you.”

“Bad flight, or something else?” he asked, watching as

Gnoble read through the list, then handed back the sheet. “The flight was fine. It was the call I received the moment

I stepped off the plane that disturbed me.”

“What call was that?”

“About Wheeler’s case. That damned article in the Chronicle. Makes me look like the worst sort of politician. Kevin

Fitzpatrick was my friend, for God’s sake. I might as well be standing over his tombstone, waving a ‘Vote for Me’ sign.” “Not a bad idea.”

“ Not funny. I can’t imagine what his daughter must think.

Especially after her mother asked me to intervene on this whole damned prison visit issue. I hope for her sake she isn’t really going to go through with this.”

“I thought this was par for the course.”

“Maybe I can talk to her tonight at the rally, assuming she can even look me in the face,” he said, staring out the window, his gaze distant. Several seconds of silence passed, then, “You heard who’s picking up Wheeler’s case?” “I heard last night.”

“And you didn’t think it important enough to call?” “There was little anyone could do at that late hour, and

I figured you had bigger problems.” Like the background and security clearance on McKnight. The very thought gave

Prescott a headache.

“We should never have suggested McKnight’s name for that appointment,” Gnoble said, his gaze fixed on something unseen out the window.

“I didn’t think you had a choice.”

“No. I didn’t.” The car lurched forward, then came to a sudden stop, and Gnoble eyed the gridlock in front of them.

“How far behind are we?”

“Maybe ten-fifteen minutes. Don’t worry. I’ve already called and alerted our next stop,” Prescott replied, sorting through the papers on his lap. He pulled out several, handed them to Gnoble, then gave him a pen. “Signature on the bottom of each… I heard McKnight left a note before he killed himself?”

“He did. And it’s exactly the sort of note I expected you to have anticipated and handled before it came to light.” “Had I been informed about everything before you submitted his name, I might have.”

“Well, now you know.” Gnoble eyed the top document, signed it. “I can only hope no one makes sense out of what he was rambling on about before he did the world a favor. If anyone does figure it out, getting reelected will be the least of my concerns.”

“Not to worry, sir.” He handed over the next set of documents. “That’s what spin doctors are all about.”

And the best didn’t always use conventional methods.

Two things came to mind when Sydney opened her front door that afternoon to a sky threatening rain, and saw Scotty walking up the driveway toward her stairs. First, that she should’ve skipped her run and left for San Quentin much, much earlier. Her second thought was that she wished she had a back door, because he hadn’t yet seen her. If she could just step back in, not bring any attention to herself-unfortunately he glanced up just then, and she was stuck.

He waved at her as he walked up the driveway, then stopped at the row of three mailboxes. Hers looked like it was bursting at the seams, and he called out, “I’ll bring this up to you?”

Before she could utter a word, he grabbed the mail, started up the steps, looking every inch the G-man. Blond hair in a slightly-longer-than-military cut, the requisite dark suit, white shirt, and navy tie; he had it down pat. The shoulder holster tended to accentuate this look, but even without it, he’d be pegged as a cop, at least in her opinion. It was in his walk, and in his sharp blue gaze that seemed to miss nothing. He had presence, and frankly, after her months of abstinence, an acute sense of what she’d left behind hit her.

She missed him.

The thought came out of left field, and she berated herself for even thinking it. He’d never been home when they’d lived together, and she’d missed him then, too. So what was the difference?

“How are you doing?” he said, before kissing her cheek.

“Fine.” She held out her hand for the mail. When he hesitated to hand it to her, she took it from him. “What’s so important you couldn’t tell me over the phone?”

He didn’t answer right away, just stood, looked around her small living room, then into the kitchen, his gaze falling on the canvas with its black wash. “I thought you were painting something blue?”

“Changed my mind,” she said, flipping through the mail. “Why are you here?”

“Like I said, I just wanted to see how you’re doing. And to talk.”

“I’m fine.” She dumped the bills on the kitchen counter, threw the political fliers in the trash, and was left with one card from her aunt, and a large manila envelope with no return address, just a postmark from Houston, Texas. Her aunt always sent a card this time of year, saying she was thinking of Sydney and her father. Sydney put it aside, eyed the manila envelope, and tried to think who she knew in Texas.

“That doesn’t have a return address,” Scotty said.

“I see that.” She slid a finger beneath the flap.

“You’re just going to open it?”

Curious, she stopped, looked at him. “You’ve been working political corruption a little too long. It’s not a letter bomb. Relax.” She ripped open the envelope, slid out a few sheets secured with a paper clip. The top sheet was folded binder paper, a bit yellowed from age, and she removed the paper clip, unfolded the sheet. Inside was a deposit slip, the blank sort you filled out when you didn’t have a preprinted one of your own. She didn’t recognize the bank, Houston Commerce Title and Trust. The note scrawled on the front read simply:

For Cisco’s Kid. Send the money to this address.

She stared in incomprehension at the address listed, even as her brain told her she knew who had written that note, where the address belonged. “What the…”

“Sydney-”

“This has to be from my father. Cisco’s Kid is the name of a boat he and his friends owned, and the address written on here belonged to the pizza parlor he owned.”

“Can I see it?”

She ignored him, sat on the couch, wondering why someone would send this to her. An envelope had been clipped behind it, and she looked at it, figured it was probably the one the letter had originally been sent in. It was postmarked Santa Arleta, twenty years ago, and addressed to William McKnight in Houston, Texas. He was one of her father’s old army friends, which somewhat explained the last item: an old photo of her father standing near several other men.

At first she thought it was from her father’s army days, because she recognized a very young-looking Donovan Gnoble, regulation haircut, sharp-pressed uniform, an obscene number of medals on his chest, a senator in the making, waiting only for the brilliant idea to grow a goatee and bring his Southern charm to California politics. Her father stood on one side of Gnoble, McKnight on the other. Two men in the photo she didn’t know, the blond man standing next to McKnight, and the black man crouching down in front of her father, flashing what looked like some sort of gang sign.

Judging from the longer hair her father and McKnight wore, it had to have been taken after her father’s discharge from the service. As far as she knew, her father and McKnight had both done their four years, then got out. Not that her father had actually left the service completely. He went on to work for the army as a civilian, taking photographs for promotional material, recruitment posters, and the like.

It hit her then. The explanation. Someone sent this as sort of a remembrance of her father, just like her aunt always sent a card on the anniversary. Maybe these men were part of her father’s photography crew… Or they all went to college together, since they appeared to be wearing college rings, with red stones, each one of them. That had to be it. With the exception of Gnoble, none of the men wore any sort of legitimate uniform other than black fatigues that merely hinted of military wear-not a bit of U.S. Army insignia on anything. Her father and McKnight were holding what appeared to be black plastic helmets, and she had the absurd thought they were about to hit the paintball courts, only she wasn’t sure it was even a sport back then.

“I don’t understand,” she said, flipping the picture over to see if it was marked in any way, a date, something. There was nothing. “Why would someone send this to me and not put a name on it?”

Scotty gave it a quick glance. “I’d just ignore it. Who knows?”

Something about his voice, the way he said to ignore it, made her look up. He couldn’t even maintain eye contact, and she recalled how he’d grabbed the mail on his way up, not even hesitating when there were two other mailboxes besides hers. The names were actually on the tops of the boxes, which, when filled with mail, you couldn’t even read. Almost as if he knew right where to look, when he’d never been to her apartment before. “Do you know something about this?”

“Not exactly.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It, uh, might be related to a background that Jeff Hatcher was doing on McKnight. I mean, you’re going to hear what happened anyway.”

Special Agent Hatcher was Scotty’s hero and mentor, primarily because Hatcher worked closely with all the political bigwigs, handling the sensitive backgrounds for security clearance on political appointments, which was where Scotty wanted to be, thinking it would take him straight to the top. The closest he got was working political corruption, something that didn’t endear him to any politicians.

“A background for what, exactly?” she asked.

“My understanding is that McKnight’s name was submitted as a nominee for political appointment. They wanted us to start the background before the announcement was even made, to avoid months of delays in the appointment. Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy.”

She wasn’t one to keep up on political appointments or positions, but that one she remembered, because of a fairly recent investigation and arrest of one of the past administrators for lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into a Republican lobbyist who was also arrested due to nefarious dealings with the federal government. And because of that past, anyone appointed by the president to be the czar of spending for the entire federal government’s budget was bound to be placed under the microscope. “I take it he failed the background?”

“You know damned well some of this stuff is classified.”

“Then tell me what you can talk about.”

He seemed to wrestle with the decision to mention anything, then finally, “Nothing gets out of this room, Sydney. Nothing.”

“I’m listening.”

And still he hesitated.

She stood, pointed to the door. “If you’re not going to talk, Scotty, then I’ll damned well ask around until I find someone who will.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, and she knew he was torn. Duty came first, the world be damned.

“Scotty…”

“Okay, okay,” he said, glancing at the photo. “Everything was going fine until Hatcher contacted this guy’s soon-tobe-ex-wife, Becky Lynn McKnight.”

Another name she hadn’t heard in years, except the vague recollection of her mother being upset about the woman moving back to the Bay Area after separating from McKnight. Becky Lynn had worked for Sydney’s father, up until his death. “Becky Lynn? What does she have to do with this?”

“I take it you remember her?”

What she remembered about her was her mother’s comment at her father’s funeral on seeing Becky Lynn. Something about seeing who she dug her greedy claws into next. “Barely. I was just a kid…”

“Her name was flagged by OC.”

“Organized crime?”

“She’s a woman living well above her means, beyond even the checks McKnight had been sending her since their separation. I can’t go into specifics, but as soon as Hatcher saw that, he knew this wasn’t going to be a simple background.” Sydney glanced at the photo, trying to figure out where it all was leading. “What does any of this have to do with why someone would send this to me?”

“Hatcher was told that was being mailed to you. By McKnight.”

“Which explains what? Why you are here in town? To intercept it from my mailbox before I got to it?”

“I only wanted to save you the pain, in case… Look. There are some holes in Becky Lynn’s story about the time she worked for your father and when she hooked up with McKnight. When Hatcher first started digging into it, he went back to McKnight, who at first said Becky Lynn was lying, that he didn’t know anything about her past or the money in her accounts when he met her. He said your father introduced them. And then Hatcher finds out McKnight was actually a partner in your father’s pizza parlor-” “I think several of his old army buddies went in on it. They were sort of doing my father a favor, after that explosion blew a couple of his fingers off and he couldn’t do his photography anymore.”

“Well, that wasn’t really the problem. Not at first. It had more to do with Becky Lynn’s ties to organized crime and her story about where her money in these offshore accounts came from, not matching up to her ex-husband’s, who happened to have records of it all, which he gave to Hatcher by mistake. That, of course, sort of puts the kibosh on his being approved for any political appointment. Becky Lynn tells Hatcher she can clear it right up, calls McKnight on the phone, telling him it was time to come clean. What happened next was-” He stared at the photo before meeting her gaze. “Hatcher talked to McKnight on the phone, Syd. Hatcher said his voice was slurred. He was upset. He kept apologizing.”

“Apologizing?”

“For what he did to your father.”

“What are you talking about? McKnight was in Texas when my father was killed, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t think McKnight was talking about the robbery, Syd.”

“Then what?”

“Becky Lynn said that someone was blackmailing McKnight about something that happened when he and your father were in the army together. Something to do with a big banking scandal way back when.”

“What do you mean someone was blackmailing him? Did Hatcher ask him about it?”

“He couldn’t. McKnight killed himself first. Hatcher thought he was drunk when he was talking to him on the phone, mumbling about sending you some letter that explained it all. Next thing he hears a gunshot. Hatcher called a field agent to drive out to McKnight’s to check on him, but he was already gone. Police were already there. Apparently a neighbor heard the shot, too, and called.”

She tried to think about her father’s friends. She had a vague remembrance of a few of them coming over to their house in North Carolina, sitting around, drinking beer… and talking about fishing. Her father’s big dream was to retire and spend every winter at some fishing villa in Baja California. In fact, that seemed to be a common dream among them, talking about beer and fishing and boats, but for the life of her, she couldn’t picture names or faces. And what preteen kid would? She was too busy worrying about more important things like pimples and boys, even after her father was injured, left his job, and they picked up and moved back to California. Her father’s military career was something he rarely spoke about. Even when Sydney asked him about his time there, what he did for the army, he always put her off with some response about taking photographs for posters, making the army look good.

But that didn’t explain any of this. “I don’t understand what this has to do with my father?”

“Hatcher thinks your father was the blackmailer.”

Syd stared mutely, then shook herself, tried to think past the hurt, the betrayal she felt at Scotty for imparting such lies about her father. “He’s wrong, Scotty.”

“I don’t think so, Syd.”

“My father was a good man.”

“Look at what your father sent to McKnight,” he said, pointing to the yellowed letter she held.

“This could mean anything. He was not blackmailing anyone.”

“There are indications that your father might have been involved in more than just that. That he might have been doing the same to-”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Sydney dumped everything back in the manila envelope, then tossed it onto the coffee table. When he tried to reply, she interrupted with “I have no idea why you felt it necessary to fly across the country to ruin my father’s name.”

“Sydney.”

It was that voice he used when he needed to impart bad news, though in her experience, it had been news such as why he couldn’t come home that night.

She hated that voice, but waited for him to finish.

“The stuff McKnight sent you,” he said, nodding at the manila envelope. “I need to take that.”

“Why?”

“Evidence of a crime.”

She picked it up, started to hand it over, but then thought better of it. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Sydney, listen to me.”

“No, Scotty. Unless you tell me exactly what that crime is, it stays with me.”

“I told you. It involves McKnight’s suicide. The blackmail.”

“And he mailed it to me before he killed himself. And the statute of limitations ran out on anything my deceased father did a long, long time ago.”

“Syd-”

“Get a warrant.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you should know. In case anything leaks out.”

She said nothing. And he stared at her a moment longer, his expression filled with apology, embarrassment, and something else she couldn’t define. Finally he leaned over, kissed her on her cheek, and she jerked back, wanting nothing to do with him.

“I’ll be in town for a few days if you need to get in touch with me.”

When she didn’t answer, he let himself out. Sydney glanced at the envelope, then ran to the door, opening it, as she called out for Scotty to wait.

Midway down the steps, he stopped, looked back at her.

“What do you mean, ‘in case anything leaks out’?”

“McKnight left a suicide note before he died. I don’t have all the details; I don’t even know if it mentions your father. The cops got the note before Hatcher did, and they booked it. But he was being investigated for a political appointment, and you know how those things make it to the press. Especially during election years.” He waited on the steps a moment, perhaps looking for some reaction from her.

She closed the door, leaned against it, not willing to believe any of what he told her. She glanced at the envelope, but couldn’t even force herself to touch it again. Scotty was wrong, and that was all there was to it. Her father was good, just. He’d been cut down in the prime of his life. If McKnight was the one who mailed this to her, he did it simply as a memory. Nothing else.

And with all that she told herself she should put off going to the prison. The thought of facing her father’s killer after Scotty’s news was not something she could deal with.

But she knew she’d go, and it made her wonder if her day could get any worse.

Apparently it could.

Calling her mother to inform her that she was on her way to visit the man who killed her father wasn’t the best of ideas.

She knew this. Clearly she was delusional when she’d punched in her mother’s phone number at precisely 2:32 that afternoon, but she wanted some reassurance she was doing the right thing. Or maybe she just wanted to speak to someone who knew her father was a good and just man, no matter what Scotty had said. The contents of that envelope could have any number of explanations. It proved nothing.

“Hi, Mom,” she’d said when her mother answered the phone.

“Sydney. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t tell me nothing. I can hear it in your voice.”

“Dad was a good man, right?”

“What’s going on?”

“Mom, I’m really sorry, but I’ve done a lot of thinking about going to San Quentin. I heard he has new attorneys working the case. That means he could get out.”

“Not again. I can’t imagine how you ever came up with such an idiotic idea to go there.”

“Mom-”

“Trying and doing are two different things. I don’t want you near that man.”

At least Sydney was smart enough to have waited until she was pulling up to the prison gates before she’d called. “I need to know why he killed him.”

“Jake!” Her mother shrieked her stepfather’s name. “Jake! Will you come here and try to talk some sense into Sydney!”

“Mom. I have to go,” she said, not wanting to talk to Jake at all. He always took the day off on the anniversary so that her mother wouldn’t be alone, which only served to intensify her guilt for driving out to San Quentin on this day of days.

“You promised to be at Uncle Don’s campaign rally tonight,” her mother said. “What am I supposed to tell him?”

“You don’t need to tell him anything. I’ll be there.”

“Sydney-”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have told you.”

“Jake!”

“Sydney?” Her stepfather’s voice was calm, quiet. “What’s going on?”

If anyone could talk her out of this, Jake could. Her father’s best friend after he moved them out to California, Jake had stepped in to help her mother after her father was killed, and almost a year later, they’d married. He’d always been the calm one, taking charge when her mother’s emotions got the best of her, which, thanks to him, was less and less as the years went on. But he’d also been a strict disciplinarian, and even now that Sydney was grown, no longer living under his well-ordered roof, she hesitated, not wanting to incur his anger.

“Sydney?”

“I’m sorry. I have to go.” She heard her mother crying just before she disconnected, then left the phone on the car seat beside her, wracked with guilt, but knowing she couldn’t go through with this and not tell her. She’d never lied to her mother. Never. But the truth was that the emotions of all this were overwhelming her, and when it came right down to it, she wanted to know that her mother, even Jake, cared as deeply as she did about her father, that they understood why she could not stand by and allow the man who had killed him to forget what day it was, or to escape justice by conning his misguided attorneys into believing he was innocent. But it was more than that, she realized. So much more. This was the chance her mother had denied her, the chance to face the man who had killed her father.

He had exhausted all his appeals and was supposed to be put to death for the murder, but the wheels of justice turn slowly, too slowly in his case. And though no one else might care, Sydney knew just why she’d made the trip. She wanted, needed to know what, if anything, this man had thought about during these past two decades.

She wanted to know if he was sorry.

That thought fled the moment she took her first real look at the entrance of San Quentin. She had never been there before. Had no wish to go. But she was there now, and what came to her mind was the absurd and surreal thought that the prison appeared to be a gothic fortress set on the shores of a windswept coastline. The picturesque effect was ruined, however, by the guard towers and fourteen-foot-high razorwire fences-and the fact she had to stop just inside the first gate and place her gun in a gun locker before driving through the second gate.

Sydney parked in a lot adjacent to the bay, where the cold wind whipped the water into a froth of whitecaps and the waves pounded the retaining wall, sending white spray over the top and misting the air with salt. She pulled her blazer tightly about her and glanced up at the dark sky, hoping the rain would hold off until after she finished with her interview and was back in her car.

Inside the building, after passing all security checkpoints, she ran her fingers through her windblown hair, in hopes of looking a bit more professional for the prison official who had agreed to help her when she’d called that morning. He was waiting in a conference room that smelled of coffee that had been percolating too long. He stood when she entered, his uniform neatly pressed, his shoes shined to perfection. “Thomas Sullivan?” she asked. “I’m Special Agent Sydney Fitzpatrick. I appreciate you seeing me through this.” “Not a problem.” He nodded at an empty pink bakery box on the table. “You just missed the last of the donuts. Or do Feds eat donuts?”

“This Fed does. But after my late night, what I really need is coffee,” she said, anxious to get the interview started, yet willing to stall at all costs.

“That we got plenty of,” he replied, and walked over to the counter. He poured coffee into two Styrofoam cups, then brought them to the table, indicating she should sit. “You ever been here before?”

“Other prisons, not this one.” Not until today.

“California’s oldest prison. I’m thinking if they had a crystal ball when they built the place back in 1852, they might’ve held out for condos. Think of the money they would’ve made. Four hundred thirty-two acres of priceless bay-side real estate, right here beneath our feet, not that the prisoners give a rat’s ass.”

She smiled, then sipped at the sharp coffee, nervous. He must have sensed it, because he asked, “How do you want to do this?”

“I’d like to interview him face-to-face with no partition.” “Anything else?”

“What’re the chances of not giving him my name? I’m… not here officially.”

“Don’t see a problem, long as we know who you are and log it. Not like you’re interrogating him or anything.”

Not in the real sense, she thought, and before she knew it, she was being led into another interview room in a secured part of the prison. Their footsteps echoed down the long hallway, and she thought that if she were smart, she’d turn back, ignore the temptation to ask this man why he’d done what he’d done. What did it matter? It was not going to bring her father back. It was stupid on her part. He wasn’t worth the effort, and after what Scotty had dropped in her lap, she didn’t need the emotional turmoil. But then they led him in, shackled at his hands and his feet, and her heart started pounding.

Johnnie Wheeler.

This was the man who had changed her life forever.