Pacific Beat

Chapter 7

Jim Weir, hunched down in his jacket against the fog, walked south along the bayfront toward Ann’s house. It was just before nine o’clock. His joints felt old again and his fingers were clenched tight on the handle of Brian Dennison’s briefcase. He had not been in Ann’s house since that night, and he felt some duty to enter it, to show her it held more for him than horror, that in his memory Ann was more than her end. Besides, he wanted to be alone. He entered with an extra key that Ray had given him, and quietly closed the door.

Walking slowly through the house, Jim noted that Innelman and Deak had been here. There were traces of black dusting powder on the inside doorknob, on both white bathroom drinking cups. The impound list on the counter said that three wineglasses sitting here were now in Evidence at the County Crime Lab. Three glasses, he thought: three drinkers? He saw that Ann’s address book, which always hung by a ribbon beside the kitchen phone, had been carted off to Evidence, too. Likewise, the message tape from the answering machine. There was a sprinkle of safecracker gray on the floor in front of the refrigerator, where they’d dusted the black plastic handle and door. He followed their thinking: Ann had come home, changed, been confronted here and forced to drive. Not likely, he thought. It didn’t feel right.

Two drawers in Ann’s bedroom chest were partially open, as was the closet door. He stood there in her room for a moment, a room redolent with the smell of her perfumes and lotions, feeling confronted by her presence, half-expecting her to speak. Such a trampling of you, he thought. I’m sorry. He shivered inside the jacket.

More fingerprint powder beside the table lamp in Raymond’s study, cabinets ajar, a Polaroid film envelope lying on top in the wastebasket. Straws, he thought: Ann never came back here. She got in her car and drove to wherever it was she was planning to go. Dennison is desperate for a break. How many times had Raymond stood amidst such a scene, he wondered. Did he dream that someday such props of tragedy would be his own?

He went back to the kitchen, took Malachi Ruff’s interview from the briefcase, and smoothed it out before him on the wobbly kitchen dinette. The questioning had been done by Innelman at eight the morning of Tuesday, May 16. It was written in the usual police English, and contained nothing of importance that Dennison hadn’t already told him. Basically, a drunk named Mackie Ruff had heard a scream, seen someone run along the bay, seen a cop car speed away, then fallen back asleep. Dense fog, dark, much booze inside him. Innelman noted on the report that “Ruff has an outspoken dislike of law enforcement” and that “Witness Ruff was intoxicated at time of alleged incident. Because of dense fog and considerable alcohol, Ruff could not determine age, race, dress, or attitude of possible suspect. Suspect disappeared northbound. Approximately thirty seconds later, Ruff heard a car door open and shut, then an engine start. He reportedly walked back up to Galaxy Drive to observe a white four-door car in motion southbound. Ruff states ‘it was a cop car.’ Upon further inquiry, Ruff elaborated that the ‘emblem’ on the car’s side indicated it was a police patrol unit. Ruff was not close enough to determine any details concerning this alleged ‘emblem.’ ”

Innelman noted, too, that Ruff had no permanent address but could sometimes be found at Frankie’s Place, the Porthole, or the Eight Peso Cantina, all located near the ferry landing on the Balboa Peninsula.

Weir remembered finding Mackie Ruff knee-deep in the chilly water of the Back Bay one winter, dragging a shopping cart behind him. The cart contained an old car tire and a massive tangle of fishing line. Mackie said he was after lobster. Jim had aimed him back toward dry land after Ray gave him five bucks for some food. How trustworthy was Ruff as a witness? Jim noted, too, that Ruff had been placed in custody but not charged. Of course, he thought: If the DA needed him, why bust him, and why admit he was drunk?

Weir smiled humorlessly, set aside the interview, and brought out the chiefs personnel information, the Dispatch tape and transcript, and a small cassette player that Dennison had been thoughtful enough to include.

First task, he thought, is to consider the interim police chief, and Sergeant Cruz.

Dennison was fifty pounds heavier than the 175 pounds estimated by both Robbins and Innelman. He had an O positive blood type; Ann’s killer was B. Dennison had short reddish-brown curly hair; the hair found on Ann’s blouse was straight, medium brown, almost two inches long — male Caucasian between thirty-five and forty-five. Dennison was fifty-one. Brian had told him this morning that he was asleep beside his wife between midnight and 1:00 A.M., and Marlene Dennison had vouched for him. Above it he wrote, HOUR IN QUESTION, and underlined it twice.

Raymond’s stats were even more contradictory to evidence: type A blood; wavy black Latino hair. Raymond was left-handed. He weighed ten pounds less than the Crime Lab estimates, and Weir knew from buying him a pair of swim fins one Christmas that Ray wore shoes a full size smaller than their man did. He could remember with perfect clarity telling the Dive Shop owner that he wanted a pair of black rubber Scuba-Pros for a man’s eight and a half. Funny, he thought, how some things stick in your mind. Becky had stood beside him and quipped something about the Fellini film. Eight and a fucking half, he thought, pushing the Dispatch tape into the player. Pretend for a minute that Ray’s physicals matched up. Let’s see if he has an alibi. He ran the tape forward toward midnight, then slowed it down, found his place on the transcript to read along, and listened to the entire hour in question.

Raymond communicated twelve times with Dispatch. He was patrolling the Corona del Mar beat, which left him almost three fog-clogged miles from the peninsula where Ann was likely picked up. One shortcut — the ferry that shuttles between Balboa Island and the old neighborhood — closed down at midnight. Raymond took three interviews between midnight and one; wrote two traffic citations — both for speeding in Corona del Mar — and made no arrests. The Activity Log and Citation Book carbons enclosed by Dennison showed that Ray had written the tickets at 12:10 and 12:50. He had done field interviews at midnight, 12:20 and 12:35. Jim checked the photocopy of Raymond’s time card. He’d clocked back in at the station at 1:00 A.M., exactly on time. Just like Raymond, he thought: on the dot, and by the book. And no more than six consecutive minutes unaccounted for at a time, either by voice or on paper.

Hard to believe, he thought, leafing through the file, that Ray is a fifteen-year veteran already. Raymond’s career flew before him: eight commendations from two different chiefs; six citations from the city for outstanding performance; others from Lions, Kiwanis, the Chamber of Commerce, the Latino Studies Department at Cal State, Fullerton. He had been named Officer of the Year three times. He had gotten a special Certificate of Meritorious Conduct for collaring a burglar in the home of a ninety-two-year-old former city councilwoman, and a special Community Service Award for helping deliver a baby in his patrol car. He had resuscitated a waterlogged boy on the Twelfth Street beach one summer evening, performing CPR until paramedics arrived through the peninsula traffic. The kid pulled through. Weir could still remember the headlines. As he read on in the file, he realized how well Raymond had done, for an unentitled kid from the neighborhood — taking a bachelor’s degree in sociology before choosing law enforcement, finishing high in his classes at the Sheriff Academy, making sergeant at thirty, and lieutenant at thirty-five. He had enrolled in law school just after getting the promotion — the same year Weir quit the Sheriffs to seek his fortune — and now had just two more semesters to go. We all have our treasures, he could hear Becky say.

Now Raymond was adrift, he thought, untethered and on his own. If he meant what he said about executing Ann’s killer, then he was risking more than his career — he was risking his life. Maybe mine, too, thought Jim, if the man we’re after is a cop.

The last page of Raymond’s file offered an interesting fact, of which Jim knew nothing. The ACLU had moved to bring a class-action suit against the Newport Beach PD in the summer of 1988, alleging that minorities were either not hired often enough or not promoted high enough. But Ray had refused to cooperate, and actually had spoken out against it in an interdepartmental letter to the then chief, Lawrence Hiller. A letter back from Hiller, included here in Ray’s file, stated, “We commend Lt. Cruz’s discreet handling of these potentially disruptive matters, and consider it a substantial recommendation toward the lieutenant’s eventual promotion to captain.” The suit was dropped. Ray, thought Weir, was a stand-up guy. He had bigger fish to fry: law school, graduation, the bar exam, practice. Raymond, true to form, wanted to prosecute someday.

And who, really, would be better at it? Raymond Cruz had lived in Newport Beach longer than anyone else on the force, and his great-great-great-grandfather had been a cop before the word cop was invented. Ray’s family, generations ago, had owned Rancho Boca de la Mar, seven thousand acres that included what would become Newport Beach, long before land became real estate. The patriarch, Francisco Cruz, had ruled over the rancho in its glory days of the vaqueros. And Francisco Cruz, as Raymond had told Jim so many times in his childhood, had been a Justice of the Plains, as appointed by the Mexican governor. Justice of the Plains: The phrase had rolled with pride off of Raymond’s youthful tongue.

Weir remembered the tragic story now as he sat in Ann’s small kitchen and felt layers of irony forming. He had first heard it from Raymond himself, in the fourth grade. Francisco Cruz was married to Lisbeth, a beautiful woman of German-Irish blood, who was kidnapped for ransom by the bandit Joaquin La Perla in a daring daylight raid on the rancho. Joaquin was nicknamed La Perla for the pearl-handled revolvers he wore, which, if Weir remembered correctly, were displayed at local fairs for years to come when Joaquin was finally caught and hanged. In Raymond’s fourth-grade version of the story, Francisco had tracked La Perla and shot him down like a dog in the dirt, rescued his wife, and rode home to Rancho Boca de la Mar to celebrate with the largest fiesta in the history of the territory. Weir remembered the toy revolvers that Raymond had brought in as props for his story, complete with the white plastic handles. What actually had happened, however, was that Francisco’s men had abandoned him in the eleventh hour and Cruz had continued after La Perla alone. He finally found the outlaw in what is now Silverado Canyon, where La Perla shot him full of holes and hung his body from an oak tree that is still standing today. Lisbeth was never found. Weir could remember that some heartless fourth-grader had pointed out the discrepancy between Ray’s story and the version in a book of Orange County history, which he brought to class the next day as evidence. Raymond had stated flatly that the book’s author was a liar and probably wasn’t even there when it happened, then had withdrawn into brooding quiet that had lasted for days.

Now this, thought Jim. History might not repeat itself, but its echoes come sounding off the walls. He pondered the fate of the Cruz family. In the last 120 years, they had gone from being major landholders to renters of little houses and apartments, employees, proprietors of small businesses. Francisco’s debt-riddled rancho was eventually sold off by his sons. Now, every inch of it belonged to someone else — even the Eight Peso Cantina was on leased land now held by the PacifiCo Development Group. Irena and Nesto had named it the Eight Peso because that was about how much money Nesto had waiting for him when he came back from Guadalcanal in 1946. His father had invested Nesto’s service checks on a new idea — an automated car wash — which had gone belly-up earlier the same year.

It struck Jim that Raymond had never bemoaned the downward legacy left to him, never developed the sour pride of the fallen aristocrat, never considered himself entitled because of blood or race. Quietly, in his own way, Ray had been trying to turn it around. If he executes this guy, Weir thought, he’d be killing a part of himself, too. If he doesn’t, Ray might join Francisco at the gates of heaven with similar stories to tell.

Next, he divided the time cards for the thirty-two officers on night and graveyard shifts — some of which overlapped one hour for obvious reasons — into partners and solos. The partners he set aside. That left eight solo officers out on each shift. Next, he checked their personnel files for blood type, and came up with five type B’s. Four were right-handed, but two of these clocked out on the early stagger, at 12:02 and 12:18, respectively.

He wrote down the two remaining names on his legal sheet: Philip Kearns and Dale Blodgett.

According to Kearns’s application and performance reviews, he was thirty-four years old, a bachelor. He’d made sergeant at thirty-two. Good, if not outstanding record. Helped deliver a baby in his squad car while partnered with Raymond Cruz, summer of ’87. Yellow-slipped in September of the same year for parking his patrol car in a woman’s driveway and leaving it unattended for twenty minutes — an irate neighbor had complained about the radio noise. An evaluation by Captain Chris Saunders lauded Kearns’s “easy disposition with the public” and “low-key approach to law enforcement.” Kearns had been on the Police Pistol Team, Distinguished Marksman, ever since he was first hired.

Jim wondered whether Ann knew Kearns well enough to get into his car.

The transcript from Dispatch showed that Kearns stopped for coffee at a doughnut shop on Balboa between 11:15 P.M. and 11:35. So, thought Weir, he was patrolling the peninsula, where Ann lived and worked, where Ann was last seen. There was no communication between Kearns and Dispatch from 12:30 and 12:50. His Activity Log and Citation Book showed nothing, either. Twenty minutes, thought Weir, smack dab in the middle of the hour in question. On his legal pad, he wrote, KEARNS UNACCOUNTED FOR 20 MINUTES BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND ONE. He studied the personnel file of Sgt. Philip Kearns: a slender, small-featured face, wispy mustache, lively eyes, handsome in the way that cops are handsome. Medium brown hair, thinning and worn long, combed back from his forehead. Would it match the hair on Ann’s blouse? Jim could feel his hands warming, a ripple of adrenaline easing through his body.

He sat back in the uncomfortable dinette chair and looked around the Cruz kitchen. Neat but not too neat: lived in. A cat clock hung from the wall behind the fridge, with eyes and a tail that moved with each tick and tock. Ann was a cat person. Ann was also a sweats-and-socks person, around the house. Why had she driven to work, then changed into something minimal and flattering? BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T COMING HOME, Weir wrote. Why no coat? BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T PLANNING ON BEING OUTSIDE, WHERE WERE YOU GOING, SWEET SISTER, WHERE DID YOU CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES?

He called the Whale’s Tale and asked for Sherry. Sherry was Ann’s favorite compatriot at work, a woman with an easy sense of humor and the hard legs of a professional waitress. She came on the line a little breathlessly, and when she was done talking, confirmed that Ann left the restaurant in her uniform, not street clothes. Weir thanked her and hung up. Did Annie change in her car? How come the cops hadn’t found it yet?

He picked up Dale Blodgett’s file. Blodgett was a sergeant now, like Kearns. He was forty-eight years old, and his personnel mug shot showed a face that looked heavy, humorless, tough. Married, three kids, an average record. His evaluations always stressed the same thing: “Blodgett shows little interest in promotion or future administration. Prefers his beat, works well alone. A capable officer. Recommend step increase commensurate with experience.”

There was one interesting addendum. Blodgett and Raymond Cruz were called onto the chiefs carpet two years ago for a fight in the locker room. The gist was that Blodgett and Ray had exchanged racial insults, then started swinging before three fellow cops broke it up. Warnings were issued. A final note added that a “quantity of canned refried Mexican-style beans” was found by Raymond in his locker one night after shift, packed into his street shoes. He had accused Blodgett, who denied. The matter was not referred to again in Blodgett’s file.

He closed it and ran the Dispatch tape through the hour in question one more time. He listened to Raymond’s nearly constant communications from Unit 8, to Kearns’s less frequent messages from Unit 12, to Dale Blodgett’s clipped dispatches from Unit 6. Weir followed on the transcript. Blodgett signed off at 12:10 and didn’t come back on until almost 1:00 A.M. He told Carol Clark he was stopping for coffee — but failed to give his location. Fifty minutes to drink a cup of coffee? Jim checked Blodgett’s time card, but the blunt sergeant who’d filled Ray’s shoes with frijoles never bothered to clock in. He wrote on the pad, BLODGETT HOSTILE TO RAY — 50 MINUTES OUT OF CONTACT — NO PROOF OF CLOCKING OUT — HOW LATE BACK TO STATION?

Weir crossed his arms and stared at the swinging plastic tail of Ann’s cat clock. Malachi Ruff may have seen a cop car at the Back Bay that night, but Dennison wasn’t in it. Neither was Ray Cruz. But Philip Kearns and Dale Blodgett had, between them, over an hour of time unaccounted for during the hour in question, when Ann was being tormented in the darkness by the wild tobacco plant.

At midnight, Jim was standing on the Balboa Pier, watching the black Pacific heave against the pilings. Lamps cast dismal triangles of light against the darkness. The fog came off the water from the west, like some overweight and earth-bound cloud. The hour in question seemed close around him now, pressing in from all directions, hurling possibilities. Can anybody else hear them? It was this time, he thought, exactly three nights ago, when Ann took her final steps along the shore of the Back Bay.

Weir could see her as she moved down the trail through the ice plant, see the way she leaned back for balance, the way the red espadrilles threatened to buckle, the way she lifted her elbows up and out to steady herself, the strain of her calves, the shine — even down there in the foggy night— of her long golden hair. And the man behind her? Weir saw nothing more than a shadow, a shape in the darkness discernible only as a greater darkness. Together, he and Ann moved east along the shoreline, vanishing one unhurried step at a time into their own very private destiny.

The air around Jim hummed, charged by the dark energies of everything that had happened. Two kids on skateboards rolled by. A Japanese man added one more twisting mackerel to his bucket. The fog held the moon in a white web and wouldn’t let it out. Jim turned back toward town, lowered his head, and wept.

He sat again at the kitchen table, watched the pivoting tail of Ann’s cat clock. A gnawing late-night hunger came over him and he went to the fridge for something. He poured some milk and checked the leftovers — most of them probably going bad, he thought. There were drumsticks in a plastic bag, some stir-fried rice in a bowl, a collection of foil-wrapped surprises on the condiment shelf. One had anchovies he had to throw out. Another had a fat brownie that he ate while he stood there. The last contained three glass test tubes, each half-filled with clear fluid, each with a cork in the end. The first thing Weir thought was something to do with a pregnancy test, but why here?

He held them in his hand and read the handwritten labels: PCH BRIDGE 4/12; B. ISLAND 4/28; and BACK BAY 5/7. The writing was Virginia’s.

What?

He set them on the kitchen counter and looked at them for a short while, noting the slight sediment collected in the bottom curve of each tube. He uncorked one and smelled it, then touched a little on his finger and tasted it. Seawater, no doubt. Checking the impound list for anything that might explain these things, Weir found nothing.

Why?

Samples from the bay. Brine. Hidden in with things that are bound to get thrown out.

He wrapped them in the foil, put the package back, and went into the living room, where he lay down on the couch. The cat clock ticked from the kitchen; electricity buzzed through the power lines outside; the bay lapped lazily at the shore.

He fell asleep there, surrounded by the same walls that had held Ann’s life, and dreamed deep in the night of a man’s fingers holding a purple rose up to her smiling, radiant face.