The Fallen

10

I spent the early part of that Friday afternoon at my desk with the coroner’s report on the death of Garrett Asplundh. McKenzie sat across the aisle with her own copy. The day was cool but clear, and the city was beautiful as I looked downtown to the new ballpark and the glassy condos and the silver-gray water of the bay.

The city has changed a lot in my twenty-nine years. When I was a boy there was no Gaslamp Quarter, just a rough borough of bars and porn shops and tattoo parlors and cheap hotels overrun with sailors on leave and a lot of down-and-out people. I remember an inordinate number of wig shops. The hairpieces looked so strange in the dirty windows, displayed on the sleek, faceless mannequins. The joke was, you didn’t stroll through this part of downtown, you ran. When I got older, I thought it was interesting to find that this area had always been rough and tumble. Back at the turn of the century it was nicknamed “The Stingaree,” and it was filled with saloons, opium dens, and gambling houses. Wyatt Earp ran a place called the Oyster Bar, while upstairs in the same building was a brothel called the Golden Poppy. Ida Bailey was one of the locally famous madams, from whom Jordan Sheehan had borrowed and updated a marketing strategy — parading her girls around town in the latest mode of transportation. The cops were slow to shut Ida down because some of them were her best customers. Funny how history was repeating now. Same truths, different people. They named a restaurant after Ida. There was plenty of trouble in the Stingaree but until a few years ago, no gas lamps. They were put there by the city for character.

There was no “East Village” either. Just big warehouses and weekly hotels and odd businesses that seemed to be dead or dying. Trash in the street blowing in the bay breeze. Plenty of homeless people and services to get them back on their feet, or at least out from under other people’s feet. Our current police headquarters was built right in the middle of it, like a church in the middle of a pagan village. With the ballpark now in and millions of dollars committed for redevelopment, San Diegans say that East Village will someday be the crown jewel of downtown.

As I looked down at the city it struck me that a lot of the Gaslamp and East Village was built with municipal bonds sold on San Diego’s high credit rating from Jance Purdew Investment Services.

Garrett Asplundh had been questioning the truth behind those ratings. Garrett Asplundh had helped a call girl get satisfaction from a city councilman’s aide who had hurt her. Garrett Asplundh had helped a girl get on her feet without having to make a living on her back.

And someone had murdered him. Now it was official.

The cause of death: “Gunshot to the head. Cardiac failure due to massive brain trauma.”

The murder weapon was likely the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson semiautomatic recovered from the front floorboard of the Explorer. But since the fatal bullet had passed through Garrett’s head and the driver’s-side window of the vehicle and lodged or landed in a still-unknown location, there were no tool marks to check against the weapon.

I knew that our chances of finding that bullet were very small.

Time of death was between 8:00 P.M. Tuesday, March 8, and 2:00 A.M. Wednesday, March 9.

Photographs of the blood spatters and free histamine levels in Asplundh’s blood suggested he lived for nearly ten seconds after he was shot.

And in that brief time, there had been a struggle.

Or at least contact. Garrett had lashed out with his right hand and come up with three brown wool fibers from either a jacket or sweater. One fiber strand was stuck to his palm, and two were caught in a fingernail that had been clenched tight enough to break and snag the material. I looked at the close-up photo of the finger and broken nail, at the fibers caught in the line of the break.

For a moment I considered one of the photographs of Asplundh slumped in a blizzard of his own blood. And I wondered at our human instincts for holding on to life. They were the same instincts that led me to claw the air on my fall. It’s pure biological impulse and has nothing to do with the odds.

“Ten seconds,” said McKenzie. “I wondered about that, with all the blood.”

“Wouldn’t you love to match up those fibers and get this guy?”

“They probably won’t get us far, with so many brown sweaters and jackets in the world,” she said.

I had a thought. “But wouldn’t it be cool if a little of the nail was left in the garment? Look how jagged that break is. Maybe Garrett left something of himself behind. It could snag right into the weave and you’d never know it was there.”

McKenzie gave me a tolerant look. “Maybe.”

I noted that, contrary to Stella Asplundh’s worries, Garrett’s blood-alcohol content was zero.

His blood type was B positive.

His heart appeared normal for a thirty-nine-year-old man. His veins and arteries were unobstructed. His kidneys and pancreas were normal. His liver was slightly enlarged, likely the result of prolonged heavy alcohol use.

The medical examiner’s report told of the same hernia operation that was mentioned in the hidden threat assessment run for us by Hollis Harris.

“Funny he wasn’t drinking that night,” I said.

“Why?”

“They say here he had some liver damage from heavy drinking. Every drinker I’ve known drinks every day. When they’re sick they drink. When they’re in the hospital they’re pestering you to sneak them a bottle. They drink when they’re nervous or happy or down or celebrating or thinking or washing away sorrows or just washing the car. You know, drinkers drink. But that night he didn’t.”

“Stella said he’d quit,” said McKenzie. “Maybe he was telling the truth.”

“For his last night alive, he was.”

“What else do we know about him that night?” asked McKenzie. “We know he met Harris at five P.M. Then Carrie Martier at six-thirty, from whom he got a nasty DVD. Then April Holly at seven-thirty. He was supposed to meet his ex at nine, but he never showed. He was wearing a gold tie when he got to April’s and a blue one when he was shot.”

I thought for a moment. “According to Harris, he was scattered and unfocused.”

McKenzie considered. “And later April said Garrett was looking forward to something or someone. We’ve got a big window here. M.E. says time of death between eight and two the next morning. That’s a lot of time to do a lot of things. To do a lot more than just change your tie.”

“Why did he change the tie?”

“For Stella, don’t you think?” said McKenzie. “If you’re going to take eight thousand artsy pictures of your hottie and put them on your wall, you’re going to make sure you look sharp when you see her. If you’re going to reconcile, you want to look your best.”

For Stella, I thought. For your ex. The woman who bore your daughter and later almost sued you for divorce. The woman who was the object of your desire, object of your artist’s eye, object of your obsession.

Still your hottie. Reconciliation.

“Stella said he was going to the bridge to say a prayer,” I said.

“For what?”

“For what would happen between them later that night.”

“You’d figure he’d go alone,” said McKenzie.

“Sure, alone.”

“Okay, Robbie, but Garrett was an ex-cop. He was a good investigator. He was bright and alert and suspicious and ready. And sober. But he sat there behind the wheel and somebody drives up and leaves that extra set of tire tracks we saw. And Garrett takes it point-blank.”

“He got fooled.”

“Big time. He trusted the shooter.”

The M.E.’s report noted that Garrett’s left arm had once been broken just above the wrist, something that had eluded Hollis Harris’s lightning-fast hidden threat assessment.

His weight at death was 204 pounds, adjusted for the loss of two of his estimated five and a half liters of blood.

McKenzie and I sat at our own desks, lost in different chapters of Garrett’s murder book. She waited until the other detectives were gone and Captain Villas’s door was shut, then came over and leaned down close.

“Villas will have to tell the chief about Fellowes. The chief will have to tell Professional Standards. They’ll have to interview us. They’ll want the discs and we should have our stories straight about making copies or not making copies.”

“I’ll burn them.”

“Just for us?”

“Just for us, McKenzie.”

“Gotcha.”

A minute later Sally from HR called and told me that Councilman Anthony Rood and his aide, Steven Stiles, had hosted an “exploratory fund-raiser” aboard the aircraft carrier Midway the night Garrett was murdered. Her sources had told her that both men arrived onboard about six o’clock and left around midnight. Rood had nailed down pledges for eleven thousand dollars and found “substantial support” for a run at a California assembly seat.

A few minutes after that, Ethics Authority Director Erik Kaven called. His voice sounded like his face looked — craggy and lined and suspicious. I pictured his Wyatt Earp mustache and his bright, distrustful eyes. I recalled that he had killed the two bank robbers with a total of two shots.

He wanted to know how the investigation was going, and I told him it was going well.

“Are you getting full cooperation from Van Flyke?” he asked.

“Yes. He’s been helpful.”

“Garrett was a smart man. Smarter than his boss. But Garrett had an Achilles’ heel that occasionally hurt him as an investigator.”

“What was that?”

“He had a higher opinion of human nature than was realistic.”

“I can see how that could get in his way.”

“I would hope so.”

Kaven hung up.

Later that day Glenn Wasserman met us at the impound yard to show us what he’d found in the Explorer. The vehicle sat in a clean bay under strong incandescent lights. The window blood was black and thick enough to throw shadows onto the dash. Industrial air conditioners hummed along and gave the air a cold, clean feel, and anybody who worked here always wore at least a sweatshirt under the lab coat.

Glenn is a pleasant-faced twenty-five-year-old with two sons already and twin girls on the way. He grew up in Normal Heights like I did, though the four-year age gap kept us from knowing each other well. His handshake was strong and cool.

“After the GSR came up negative and I knew we had a homicide, I worked with two scenarios,” said Glenn. “One was an unknown assailant. The other was a known assailant. I’m leaning toward number two. Here’s why.”

He led us to the passenger side. I saw the silver fingerprint dust on and around the door handle.

“You already know about the gun that was found in here,” he said. “Wiped clean. Not so much as a friction ridge.”

“No surprise,” said McKenzie. “This guy is every kind of cool.”

“What about the cartridges in the magazine?” I asked.

“Clean.”

“The spent one?”

“Clean again. You bring a Tri-Flow wipe for prints, you don’t forget to wipe the cartridges you load.”

Glenn nodded at the Explorer. “While I was working on this vehicle, I realized it has automatic door locks. With the ignition on and the vehicle put into gear, all five doors lock. So if Asplundh came down the swale and parked near the bridge, then shut off his engine to wait, all four doors and the rear lift gate would have been locked. Could he have opened them while he waited? Sure — for someone he knew. Could he have gotten a good look at them through the passenger’s window? Maybe he could, if he had the engine running and his heater and defroster on.”

“The engine was off when patrol got there,” I said. “Everything was off.”

“Exactly,” said Glenn.

I pictured Garrett sitting alone in a locked and cooling car. I thought of the second set of tire tracks leading down the hillock from above.

“Maybe Garrett’s killer was already in the vehicle with him,” I said.

“And the second set of tracks was the pickup car,” said McKenzie.

“That’s consistent with some other things we found,” said Glenn. “Now here, the door handle of this vehicle is painted black. And the paint continues up the backside, where you’d put your fingers to pull it open. A handle like that is one of our potential honey pots. It’s a perfect print trap. But guess what? No prints again. No partials and no overlaps. I think it was wiped by our shooter on his or her way out.”

Glenn used a hankie to pull out the handle and swing open the door. He pointed at the numbered pink tags taped to the radio, ashtray, vanity mirror, console, seat-belt buckles, automatic door and window controls, even on the door-lock button in the far rear cargo section.

“We lifted partials from all over this vehicle,” he said. “Most of them are Garrett’s, but some aren’t. Nothing big enough to run through the print registries. We got a decent thumb from the radio on/off button — not Garrett’s. We got two partial fingers from the cover of the vanity mirror on the passenger-side sun visor — not Garrett’s. Probably not the shooter’s either, if he or she was careful enough to wipe the inside of the door handle. Prints can keep a long time, especially in cool, damp weather, so these could be weeks old.”

Glenn folded his handkerchief and pushed it back into a pocket on his lab coat.

“Hair and fiber,” he said. “We’re lucky the interior is upholstery instead of leather or vinyl. It won’t clean up very well, and it grabs and holds more than leather. Upholstery is a hair and fiber trap, and we got plenty. Ditto the floor mats.”

The passenger seat was marked with numbered yellow tags held in place with pins. Eight in all — three on the back and five on the bottom. I saw more yellow tags down on the floor mats.

“Yellow tags two, three, and six all locate apparently female hairs,” said Glenn. “Naturally blond — three, seven, and eight inches long, respectively. Straight.”

He pointed to a tag on the seat back. One on the floor mat. Another on the driveshaft hump in front of the center console.

“Kind of spread out,” said McKenzie.

“We know Asplundh got a hand on his killer,” said Glenn. “Grabbed the shooter hard enough to break a fingernail and trap some fibers. Maybe he struck or tried to grab the head first. Maybe when he clutched the coat or sweater that left those brown fibers, it shook the shooter violently. Either way, that could explain the spread of hairs if the killer was a woman.”

“Or they could have been floating around in there since Garrett’s last date with a straight-haired natural blonde,” said McKenzie.

“Sure,” said Glenn. “And there is some indication that the hairs could have been in here longer. Two of the three were intertwined with very small debris — lint and dust and dander particles. The kind of material that builds up in carpet or flooring or floor mats.”

He pointed to the other two tags on the seat back. “Here and here — more brown wool fiber, very similar to that found caught in Garrett’s fingernail. This automotive upholstery is wonderful for collecting things.”

“None of those fibers were found on the driver’s side,” I said.

“Right, so check Garrett’s closet,” said Glenn. “I’ll bet you he didn’t have a loosely woven sweater or jacket. Or at least one that he wore very often. He was wearing a well-made suit when he died. The worsted wools and blends like that, the weave is much too tight to shed. Scratch one of your suit coats with a thumbnail sometime and see what you get.”

Glenn used his hankie to shut the door. “Come over here. You’ll like this.”

We followed him to a workbench. Glenn knelt down and keyed open a steel filing cabinet, then stood back up with a paper bag in his hand. The bag was labeled with the date and case number. From inside it he took a small white envelope. He snapped a paper towel from a roll on top of the bench and laid it out, then opened the envelope and tapped it to the towel. He stared down.

“Make of this what you will,” he said. “We found it up front, between the driver’s seat and the console.”

It was a gold earring in the shape of a crescent moon. Sitting inside the curve of the crescent was a blue sapphire. There was a dry black smear on the moon.

Beside the earring was the backing piece, bent out of its likely original round shape.

McKenzie and I traded looks.

“We found the backing in the rear of the Explorer, by the utility compartment,” said Glenn. “It got quite a ride. Maybe that’s how it got bent, too.”

“You found the earring on the driver’s side, not the passenger’s side?” asked McKenzie.

“Yes,” said Glenn. “A struggle could easily account for that.”

He packaged up the earring and backing, put the envelope into the bag, and returned the bag to the file cabinet.

“A hit chick wearing gold and sapphire earrings?” asked McKenzie.

Glenn shrugged. “Women kill.”

“Not like this. We have standards. We have style and finesse.”

He smiled.

I thought of Jordan Sheehan’s straight blond hair and crescent-moon earring. I wondered if she was a person who could blow the brains out of a man sitting next to her in a car. A man she’d met with, smiled at, joked with.

“Come on back to the lab,” said Glenn. “We’ll fire up the microscopes and get a good look at the hair and fiber.”

“I’ll leave that to you two,” said McKenzie. “I got an actual date tonight.”

“Always have cab fare and be in before midnight,” said Glenn.

She deadpanned him, then turned to wink at me and walked away.

I spent an hour in the crime lab looking at the hairs and fibers through Glenn Wasserman’s scanning electron microscope until my eyesight began to blur.

I was pleased to see in the very fine autopsy photographs that a visibly large piece of Garrett Asplundh’s right index fingernail had been torn away and could possibly still be imbedded in a garment worn by his killer.

Back at my desk, it took me five minutes to call up the Squeaky Clean video clip from Garrett’s laptop and confirm that Jordan’s crescent-moon earring was very similar to the one found in Garrett’s Explorer.

I called Glenn to see if he could do a visual comparison of the latent fingerprints in the Explorer with Jordan Sheehan’s ten-set in the PD file.

“Isn’t she too squeaky clean to leave a print?” he asked.

“You tell me, Glenn.”

On my way home, I stopped by John Van Flyke’s Ethics Authority office unannounced and received a flinty look from Arliss Buntz. She admitted that Mr. Van Flyke was upstairs in his office, but unavailable. I asked her to let him know I was there but she didn’t. I sat at the rickety little table and picked up a very outdated sailing magazine.

I heard her forcefully open, then close a drawer. I heard the rattle of papers on her desktop. I turned and looked at her.

“You thought Garrett was headed for trouble,” I said.

“I saw it the moment he walked through those doors.”

“Why? What did you see?”

She fixed me with her old gray eyes. “That he had standards.”

I thought about that. He had a higher opinion of human nature than was realistic. Van Flyke appeared at the top of the stairway and motioned me up. I walked up the stairs, listening to my footsteps on the wood and the sudden loud ringing of Arliss Buntz’s telephone. I noted again how sounds carried in this drafty old Edwardian building. I wondered if the Italian baker and his wife ever got much privacy. I wondered why America’s Finest City couldn’t afford a better office for its own Ethics Authority Enforcement Unit.

Van Flyke swung his office door shut.

“We found Garrett’s laptop,” I said. I told him what we’d found on it.

“It’s ugly stuff,” said Van Flyke.

“You knew?”

“I was his boss.”

“What were you planning to do with it?”

“We wanted Garrett’s Squeaky Cleans to gather all the evidence they could gather. Then we’d see where we stood. Delicate matter. You do things just wrong and the big boys get away. You do things just wrong and the feds or the state gets into the mix and you lose control of your own battlefield. Garrett, Director Kaven, and the attorney general’s office were going to meet next Wednesday, in fact, to figure out where to go with certain investigations. Certain situations. That meeting has been rescheduled.”

“Does Kaven know what Garrett had on disc?”

“Not yet.”

“Will you take the evidence to the grand jury?”

“Kaven will insist, and I’ll concur. That’s how we’ll keep things out of the State of California’s hands.”

“Did any of the johns know what Garrett had on them?”

Van Flyke shook his head. “Not that I know of. We were waiting. Ethics does its best work when people have just enough rope to hang themselves.”

“Did you know about Garrett’s safe house?”

“No.”

I could tell by his expression that he didn’t. And by the fact that no red squares tumbled into the air in front of him. I gave him the basics about the apartment, but not the address. And I told him nothing about April Holly.

He looked at me from under his bushy brows. “I’d like copies of everything on the drive, at your convenience.”

“That will take a little time, Mr. Van Flyke.”

“Take whatever time you need, Brownlaw.”

I looked at the sparse walls of John Van Flyke’s office. No pictures. No paintings. Just a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Ohio State and a commendation from the Drug Enforcement Administration from three years ago. The frames hung close together on a wall of freshly painted plaster, not far from a window with a peek of the blue Pacific.

“Garrett interviewed with you for a job in Florida early last year,” I said.

Van Flyke stared at me with his deep-set eyes. “Yes. We’d met at an FBI digital-evidence seminar at Quantico two years ago. He contacted me later, said he wanted to raise his daughter somewhere other than Southern California. I brought him out for an interview and ended up offering him the job — a small pay increase, but he’d be with a good bunch of people at DEA. He brought Samantha and Stella out with him. They seemed to enjoy Miami. He asked for a week to make his decision, then called and declined.”

“Why?”

“Stella decided she wanted to stay in San Diego after all. Garrett had this theory that Southern California wasn’t the best place to raise a daughter, though I told him Miami has its problems, too. Does it ever. Anyway, Garrett always seemed willing to accommodate his wife.”

“She seems... emptied.”

“She’s still heartbroken over the daughter,” said Van Flyke. “Now this.”

“If they’d have moved to Florida—”

“I’m sure that’s crossed Stella Asplundh’s mind a million times,” said Van Flyke.

I wondered what it would be like to have that dark fact inside you, ready to flash into your thoughts when you least expected it.

“What brought you to San Diego?” I asked.

Van Flyke nodded. “Garrett recommended me to Kaven and he liked what he saw.”

“So Garrett returned the favor you tried to do for him.”

Van Flyke shrugged, tapping on his desktop with his fingers. “A man’s life can change in a moment, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Something divides it into what went before and what comes after.”

I had the odd feeling that Van Flyke was talking to himself as much as to me.

“You, Brownlaw, should understand that. What I’m trying to explain is that when I came to San Diego last year for the first time, it took me all of about an hour to see I wanted to live here. There’s no place like it. This is the best big city in the country. I’ve seen them all. I still can’t figure out why Garrett would want to leave.”

I couldn’t either, but I’ve always loved my city, blemishes and all.

“Just so you know,” I said, “I got a message from Garrett’s brother, Samuel. He came down from Los Angeles yesterday. He’s FBI and next of kin. Interesting combination.”

“I know, I know, and I think so, too. Sam and I have been in contact,” said Van Flyke. “How long until you get me those hard-drive files?”

“Monday afternoon,” I said.

“I’m having lunch with Sam Asplundh at Panchito’s, one o’clock. Drop off the files there, would you?”