Night Moves

Chapter 17

I phoned Milo at his desk. He said, “You and your hunches, just talked to Braun’s first wife, Barbara from Stockton. Not the sharpest in the drawer and she’s not a legal wife, she and Braun lived together for three years.”

“How’d you find her?”

“Masterful detection. I looked up Barbara Braun in Stockton.”

“They weren’t married but she uses Braun’s name.”

“It’s her name, too, they’re second cousins, he was an orphan, lived with her family for a while.”

“So that part of his story was true.”

“But the part about Barbara’s illness was a mix of truth and bullshit. She had cancer but survived it. Chemo, radiation, she couldn’t even tell me the diagnosis. Apparently, Hal stuck with her every step of the way, a real prince. In terms of why they split up, all she could say was they ended up different and that she was the one to initiate. She didn’t say initiate, just ‘I did it.’ She came across as basic, Alex. Maybe even a little impaired.”

“Hal was there for her but he claimed she was dead.”

“I didn’t tell her that, why burst her bubble? She had nothing bad to say about him. Broke down big-time when I informed her. Blamed herself, in fact.”

“Why?”

“If she hadn’t broken up with him, he never woulda left Stockton and gotten carried away by big-city sin. I asked her about their years together, the picture I got is a couple of poor kids barely scratching by. Rented trailer, Braun pumped gas part-time, both of them picked crops seasonally.”

“From that to knight in armor,” I said.

“Speaking of which, Braun had hero fantasies way back. Talked to Barbara about joining the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service. Only place he actually applied was the Coast Guard but they turned him down. Something about allergies.”

“Any attempts to be a cop?”

“Nothing she was aware of, though in high school he’d been a police cadet. She does recall him participating in a search party for a missing kid. Nothing obviously creepy about his motives, the whole town turned out and the kid was found safe.”

“Maybe he wasn’t drawn to the city by sin,” I said. “More like expanding his altruistic horizons.”

“Being a big-time hero but he ends up selling shoes and then messing up his leg? Sure, but it doesn’t explain how he ended up on the Corvins’ hardwood. I asked Barbara if Hal had spent any time in San Francisco, trying to connect him to Bitt. It’s not far from Stockton but she said she never knew him to go there.”

“Speaking of Bitt.” I told him Maillot Bernard’s story.

“A long gun. But he didn’t threaten her with it?”

“Just held it and stared at her. She can’t tell the difference between a rifle and a shotgun, but wouldn’t it be interesting if what Bitt showed her was a 12-gauge that he still owns?”

“Easy enough to find out if I could get a warrant to cross his damn threshold.”

I said, “If Chelsea could be documented actually going into Bitt’s house, could you make a case for a welfare check?”

“On what grounds?”

“Mentally impaired minor sneaks into the home of a person of interest in a homicide.”

“Elegantly devious, Alex. But if she just goes in and comes out, iffy... maybe a coupla nights’ surveillance will help. I get lucky, see the two of them actually make inappropriate physical contact, I can go in there with no paper.”

Night one, he parked a block from Evada and watched through binoculars from the far end of the block. Chelsea Corvin never left her house. Bitt’s lights were out.

Night two, just after ten p.m., Bitt’s front door opened and the artist, carrying something, got in his pickup and drove away. Too dark to make out details. By the time Milo made it back to his car, the truck was out of sight.

He enlisted Binchy and Reed for two more nights. Nothing on Binchy’s Sunday watch. Two weeks had passed since the murder. The Corvins didn’t go out for dinner.

On Monday night, when Reed arrived, Bitt’s truck was already gone. No spotting of Chelsea.

Tuesday morning, both of the young D’s were pulled from Milo’s supervision, Reed handling a bar fight in Palms, Binchy catching an armed robbery in Pico-Robertson.

Milo said, “So much for that. Nguyen says it woulda been doubtful without an obvious felony.”

I worked long days on two custody evals but found time to recheck social network sites for anything on Hargis Braun and the three women who’d lived with him.

Barbara Braun’s Facebook page was a skimpy thing. A few relatives, no human friends. The only posted photographs were her and a massive black Newfoundland.

Wally was certified as a therapy dog and demonstrated his interpersonal skills by never leaving the side of a small, pinched-faced woman.

Barb Braun was dependent on a pair of forearm crutches. Add that to EmJay’s arthritis and you didn’t need to be Freud.

Mary Ellen Braun had seemed healthy. I Googled her anyway. Her LinkedIn listing reached out to retailers, said nothing about health problems. But her name showed up in a support group for women with chronic fatigue syndrome.

A man attracted to disability.

The impulse was to tag that as pathological. My training leads me to avoid dime-store diagnosis.

Joining search parties. Planting unsanctioned trees. Butting in during a domestic.

Saving a snake.

For all I knew, Hal Braun’s taste in women spoke to a rare nobility. A man with ideals and goals, however absurdly romanticized.

A poster boy for No Good Deed.

Voicemail on all of Milo’s lines. I left messages but he didn’t call back. Maybe sixteen days of nothing on Braun had put him in a funk. Or his attention had shifted to a more manageable crime.

That night, Robin and I had a late dinner at the Grill on the Alley and were walking to the Seville when my cell chirped.

Ten ten p.m.

He said, “Sitting down, amigo?”

“Upright.”

“Then maybe you should brace yourself. You’re not gonna believe this.”