The Fallen

13

I was called in by Professional Standards as we drove back downtown from Logan Heights.

“Those guys give me the crawls,” said McKenzie. “Kind of like Ed back there.”

“I’ll tell them that.”

“Keep it between us,” she said. “Like the nasty DVD you burned. Fellowes with his damned socks on. Christ.”

“You’ll be next for Professional Standards,” I said.

“Yeah. They’ll separate us like criminals so we can’t match our stories. I hate being treated like that by the people I work with.”

Professional Standards is part of the Internal Affairs Division. These would be Garrett’s people, the ones who get paid to watch the watchers. A lot of the Professional Standards officers don’t work out of Broadway headquarters, so we everyday cops don’t even know what they look like. One of their captains is Roger Sutherland, who is rarely seen around headquarters but who now sat at a conference room table with my boss, Captain Villas, and Assistant Chief Bryan Bogle.

Bogle shut the door behind me as we sat. The table was rectangular and not large. I was seated along one side. Sutherland sat directly across from me, Bogle to my left, and Villas to my right. Two small tape recorders sat in front of Sutherland.

“Thanks for coming,” said Sutherland. Which was faintly comic because any SDPD officer who refuses to answer the questions of Professional Standards can be fired. There is no such thing as Fifth Amendment rights. A convicted criminal has more rights than an officer before Professional Standards. It is widely known in the department that Sutherland attended law school at night but could never pass the California bar. Maybe in compensation, he often seems vigorously bound to the letter of the law. He switched on both recorders.

I nodded and waited.

“Fill us in on the Asplundh investigation, will you?” he asked.

I did. Sutherland flipped open a notepad and pulled a pen from his coat pocket. He’s a big man, and the pen looked small in his hand. I wished that Villas had warned me about this interview, but I was obviously not supposed to be warned. Assistant Chief Bryan Bogle leaned back with his hands behind his head, staring past me out the window.

There was a lot to tell. McKenzie and I had come up with hundreds of pages of information gathered by the victim, six hours of incriminating video, and an interesting though incomplete timeline of Garrett Asplundh’s last hours. He had enemies to spare. The CSIs and crime lab had worked their usual magic. We had decent latents, a woman’s earring, a broken marble, and a gun possibly stolen by someone in law enforcement and brought here all the way from New Orleans to murder Garrett Asplundh. We had a Spook Valley genius, a clever madam, Chupacabra Junior, and a Wall Street investment analyst.

I told them we liked the Squeaky Clean earring. And that the lab couldn’t match the Explorer latents with Jordan Sheehan’s file prints, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. Whether she pulled the trigger or not, what was her jewelry doing in Garrett’s car?

We’d see her later today.

“Detective Brownlaw,” said Sutherland, “I understand you recognized some of the men in Mr. Asplundh’s sex video.”

I looked at each of them in turn. “Yes, sir. One john was Captain Fellowes. Another was a Motor Patrol officer named Mincher. Also, Councilman Rood and his aide, Stiles. I recognized a fireman but don’t know his name. And a couple of paving contractors who get a lot of city jobs. I recognized them from a fraud case I worked years ago.”

Sutherland looked down at the table and shook his head.

Bogle still stared through the window.

Villas exhaled loudly.

“Detective Brownlaw,” asked Sutherland, “who knows the content of these sex videos, besides you and McKenzie Cortez and Captain Villas?”

“John Van Flyke — Garrett’s boss at Ethics Enforcement. And Carrie Ann Martier, the woman who compiled them. And two of her work friends. It’s possible that Stiles has seen a portion or was told about it by Garrett. Martier got an apology and some money not long after she told Garrett about getting beaten by Stiles. I think Garrett was behind that. He must have used something... convincing.”

“Have you or your partner spoken to Stiles?”

“Not yet.”

“To anyone on the sex video?”

“Just Carrie.”

Sutherland and Bogle traded some quick eye work. I looked out the window and thought about my wife again.

“Say nothing about these videos,” said Sutherland.

“No, sir.”

“Not one word.”

“It would be bad.”

“Bad? It would be unfair to this department and terrible for this city,” said Bogle. “We need to find internal solutions.”

“I know.”

I knew it, but it still didn’t mean much to me. The truth is I’ve never been interested in the political side of law enforcement, or in other men’s ambitions or in palace intrigues. Even less so since the fall from the Las Palmas. All I really wanted since I was six years old was to be a cop. That’s because a cop found me after I’d been chased and bitten by a dog on the way home from first grade and become lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood of Normal Heights. I was stuck down in a thorny juniper hedge where I thought I could get away from the dog. I was terrified and blubbering and bleeding and the dog was growling at me but the cop scared it away and helped me out and gave me a ride home. He called Animal Control right there from his patrol car, and they captured the dog, tested it for rabies and saved me from a series of painful abdominal injections. It may be a corny story but it’s true. Later, when I was thirteen, I read The New Centurions by Joe Wambaugh, and it only made me want to be a cop more. When Roy Fehler got shot in the gut the second time, I cried for his bad luck. I met Mr. Wambaugh at a party once and he’s a good guy. I’m just a cop and that’s all I’ll ever be, because it’s all I want to be.

I could tell that these men were playing on a different field than I was. They were thinking ahead, thinking around, thinking big, thinking of themselves. Spin. Proaction. Damage control. Acceptable losses. Bureaucratic triage.

“I’m just trying to find a killer,” I said.

“Don’t say anything about these videos to anyone,” said Sutherland. “We’re going to have to figure out the best way to handle it.”

“Yes, sir. I just hope we don’t have to cover for whoring cops very long. Fellowes has no right to those girls just because he looks the other way when he’s finished.”

“That’s true,” said Villas.

There was a pointed silence then, as Sutherland, then Bogle, looked hard at Villas.

“Let me ask you something, Brownlaw,” said Sutherland. “You’ve spent the better part of a week looking at the life of Garrett Asplundh. You’ve talked to his ex and his boss and some of the people he was working with. Do you like what you’ve learned about him?”

“He seemed to have had integrity,” I said.

“He did. He was one of us. I mean us, Professional Standards. He knew what standards were, believe me. He knew them in his heart. In the end he wasn’t able to stay with us, because of other things in his life. But Garrett knew things. He understood things. He knew how the city works and how this department works and how people behave. He knew everything about everybody. And never once did Garrett go outside these walls with what he found. He always came back here with it. Internal solutions for internal problems. Van Flyke understands that. As does Director Kaven.”

Three looks in my direction. Brass is allergic to the idea of scandal. If the brass is a bun boy — that’s an officer who has worked his way up through desk jobs instead of working the streets — he’ll get hysterical at the mere possibility of scandal. Sutherland was just such a man.

For a moment I tried to distract myself, which wasn’t hard. I realized again, for the millionth time since Saturday morning, that Gina had left me, probably forever, and I tried to blame myself for sleeping too drunkenly to wake up and stop her. But really, I doubt that it would have mattered. And the anger I felt at her and at myself that morning was still there inside me. I wondered if she went in to work today. I wondered what she would do if I showed up at the Salon again.

I must have distracted myself quite well, because the conversation took a sudden turn.

“How are you feeling these days, Detective?” asked Bogle.

“Oh, fine. Thank you.”

“No problems with equilibrium?”

“None at all.”

“What about vision or hearing?”

“All fine, sir. The doctor checked me out in January. Full physical. I’m healthy.”

“That’s really good, Robbie,” said Bogle. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“Tell us about the book,” said Sutherland. “Fall to Your Life!”

That was a surprise. I explained that Malic had written it to explain what he did and to help other people realize they can overcome problems and start new lives.

“And that’s you on the cover?” asked Sutherland.

I nodded.

“We’re told he shares the profits with you,” said Sutherland.

“I get twenty-five percent. It comes to two-fifty per book.”

Sutherland checked back through his notes. “You know, Detective, you signed a confidentiality agreement when you went to work here. You’re not allowed to publish information about the San Diego Police Department unless it’s submitted to us beforehand.”

“I didn’t write anything, sir.”

“You granted an interview to Mr. Malic, though, didn’t you?”

“Not formally. We got to know each other during the trial. I told him some personal things. Not much, really. And nothing about the department except that everyone here was pulling for me after the fall.”

“But interviews are very specifically covered under that CA you signed,” said Sutherland.

“Come on, Roger,” said Villas. “It’s a dumb book but it shows that Robbie is a good officer and that reflects well on all of us. Who cares if he makes some beer money off of it?”

Sutherland lowered a bored stare at Villas.

“IRS might,” said Bogle.

“Well, then let Robbie worry about the IRS. He’s a big boy. Robbie, don’t forget to report your millions in royalties come April,” said Villas.

“What’s the point of this?” I asked.

“Robbie, these guys were just a little worried,” said Villas. “Because of the book. They thought you might be tempted to somehow use or profit from what Garrett had found out. I told them you would never use your experience here for personal gain. But they don’t know you like I do. They just wanted to hear it from you.”

“I would never use what I learn here for personal gain,” I said. “I don’t operate that way.”

Sutherland and Bogle nodded without enthusiasm.

“If Fellowes knew that Garrett had him caught on video,” I said, “that could be a motivation.”

“Fellowes didn’t shoot Asplundh,” said Sutherland. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I have to talk to him, sir. And I can’t pretend that Garrett didn’t have him on tape with the girls. You don’t have to worry about Chet Fellowes telling the world about our internal problems. He is our internal problem. One of them anyway.”

Sutherland looked at me with a hostile calm.

“You might not want to tie Robbie’s hands like that,” said Villas. “If he tells Fellowes that Garrett had sex tapes, maybe that’s enough. Let Fellowes sweat it, not knowing if he was caught or not.”

Sutherland looked to Villas, then back to me. “Talk to Fellowes. Acknowledge the existence of the discs but not who is on them.”

I nodded and stood.

“I want the discs and all copies of them on my desk in ten minutes,” Sutherland said. “Forget you ever saw them. It’s eleven-forty now, and you are dismissed.”

Dale Payne, assistant chief of New Orleans Police, returned my call just after lunch. I was at my desk, thinking about what Sutherland and Bogle had said, wondering why fear was the number one motivator in our bureaucracy.

Payne spoke with the unhurried pace and sly humor of many southerners. In my earlier message I had told him briefly about the murder of Garrett Asplundh, and that I wanted to know what his department had done with the guns recovered from the Property Annex burglary of 2001.

“We put some of ’em back in the annex,” he said. “I mean, we made some changes to that annex first. Installed a real good alarm system. Don’t know why the old one never worked right. And we got new locks on the doors and windows. We’ve got an officer at the desk twenty-four/seven now. I don’t think we’re going to get burglarized again, Detective Brownlaw, but I never get tired of surprises. Some agencies wanted their evidence back, though. Got tired of us givin’ away their goodies, I think.”

I gave him the serial number for Carl Herbert’s Model 39 and asked him where it was supposed to be.

“Let me see what I’ve got here,” he said.

I could hear the tapping of his keyboard, a slow “nope,” then more strokes.

“Well, okay, here it is,” he said. “That Smith nine-millimeter is still here, safe and sound in the newly fortified Property Annex.”

“No, it’s here in San Diego, and it was used to kill a man.”

“My computer says we’ve still got it.”

“You don’t.”

“Let me check before we get our panties in a bunch. I’ll call you right back.”

I sat back and looked out the window. Half of my mind was still upstairs in Sutherland’s conference room and the other half was in New Orleans, where Dale Payne was searching for a weapon he wouldn’t find.

Five minutes later he called back.

“Well, I don’t know why we can’t keep track of that gun,” he said. “But apparently we can’t, because you’re right — it isn’t here. I’ve got the intake forms right here in front of me, the ones we filled out after the guns were recovered and the trial was over. And they say we kept that gun right here. But it isn’t right here. Not unless it changed itself into some other kind of weapon.”

I wondered if we could be off by one numeral or letter on the Smith & Wesson factory serial number.

“Do you have other Model 39s?” I asked.

“Yeah, but the numbers aren’t even close.”

I thought for a moment. “The agencies that wanted their weapons back after the burglary — do you have a record of who took what?”

“Well, yes, that’d be the release forms. Let me see. Okay, one of our sheriff departments figured they could hold on to their own evidence better than we could. Not that they said that in a direct fashion. Then the DEA and ATF — they wanted theirs back, too. We signed out four guns.”

“But you kept the Smith nine that ended up here?”

“This is really damned unacceptable, Detective Brownlaw. I’m going to make some inquiries, you can bet on that.”

“Can you send me copies of the intake and release forms?”

“I’ll fax them right over. Good luck on your case, Detective. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the kind of help you needed.”

“You may have been more help than you think.”

When the faxes came through a few minutes later, I was wondering what I thought I’d find. I don’t know what I was expecting. There was one intake form for each weapon returned to the annex after the trial — a total of eleven forms.

New Orleans Sheriffs had taken back a Taurus .38. The release form was signed by a Sergeant Willis Simms.

DEA agent Bob Cramer had signed out a Colt Python. ATF agent Barbara Keene had reclaimed an M16 and a sawed-off Remington 1100 and signed the release forms.

All three of the release forms were signed by Lieutenant Darron Wight of New Orleans PD.

Clearly it was New Orleans PD that had lost the weapon — or, worse, a Property Annex insider had stolen it for use or sale.

I sat for a moment as something far back in the detail heap of my mind began to stir. New Orleans. New Orleans. I’d been there once with Gina for a brief vacation. It was pretty and hot and I gained weight on the delicious food. I really wanted to take a swamp tour and we saw alligators, cottonmouths, snapping turtles, and nutria, though Gina with her fair skin was uncomfortably hot.

From my duplicate of Garrett’s laptop hard drive, I called up one of his voluminous files of information on the johns that Carrie Ann Martier and her friends had entertained. I used the “edit” icon to search the files for “New Orleans.”

Nothing in the first or second files. Nothing in the third.

But in the fourth I found what I had so dimly remembered. There was in fact a reference to New Orleans.

Officer Ron Mincher had been employed there before coming to SDPD.

I called one of my friends in Personnel and got her to check Mincher’s file for his hire date here and his years of employment at NOPD. It’s nice when department clerks will do you a favor now and then. I’d signed a copy of Fall to Your Life! for her son.

Mincher had been hired here in December of 2002. He had been an officer in good standing with the New Orleans PD until he quit Louisiana in November of 2002 and made his trip to the Golden State.

I checked the New Orleans PD intake forms that Payne had faxed over. The Model 39 had been booked back into the Property Annex two months before Mincher had quit and headed west for the Golden State. It was there for his taking.

I called Captain Villas and asked him if he could find out if Ron Mincher had worked Tuesday night, March 8. If the inquiry came from Villas, it would have weight and little suspicion around it. If the request came from me, it had little weight but tons of suspicion.

He rang me a minute later and said that Mincher had gotten off at five that afternoon.

I called back Dale Payne in New Orleans and asked him if Lieutenant Darron Wight was still in good standing with the NOPD.

“Why, sure,” he said. “Darren’s moved himself up to captain.”

“Did he have help with the release transactions?” I asked.

“What kind of help, Detective Brownlaw?”

“Well, would Darron Wight have been working alone on the weapons releases? Wouldn’t a lieutenant have some help?”

“I see what you’re getting at. Yes, he’d have had some help.”

“Was it Ron Mincher?”

“I remember Ron. He’s out your way now — Oh, damn, I see where you’re going with this.”

A moment of quiet then, as the possibility sank into Dale Payne’s mind. “I’ll find out,” he said.

I tried to picture the release transactions. I asked Payne if the annex was busy or quiet, large or small, windows or none.

“The annex, it’s about fifty thousand square feet,” said Payne. “And the room there where the intakes and releases take place, it’s a big one. Little slots for windows, vertical slots. Lousy light. There’s a counter and holding lockers behind it. There’s a copier right there because the forms always need to be duplicated. There’s chairs to sit and wait if you have to, and a water jug with a stack of paper cups.”

“What about the officers who came to claim their weapons?” I asked. “Did they bring partners?”

“I couldn’t tell you.”

“But you’d have the names of any partners who were there, right? For instance, if Cramer’s partner was with him, they both would have signed in, right?”

“Sure, yeah, that’s right.”

“Can you get me the full roster for those three release procedures? New Orleans PD, Sheriffs, feds, everybody who signed in. It’s a lot to ask, I know. But somebody out there in New Orleans made off with that Smith and it ended up killing an ex-cop here in San Diego.”

A moment of silence. “Detective, that’s one tall order. We don’t have the sign-in sheet on computer. It’s just a pad on a clipboard, you know, so we have a good handwriting sample if we need it. The professional visitors sign in, and at the end of the day we strip off the sheet so there’s a clean one for the next day.”

“But what do you do with the sheet?”

“We keep it for... I’m not sure how long. I’ll see if we have it. It’s going to take a little time.”

I drove down Broadway and past Petco Park and found a spot on Fourth in the Gaslamp Quarter. It was warm, and some of the restaurants were doing good business. I walked north, feeling betrayed by Sutherland and Bogle. Betrayed because they were more worried about the image of the department than the murder of an apparently good man.

John Van Flyke and a man who looked very much like Garrett Asplundh sat at a sidewalk table of Panchito’s in the pleasant March sun. Van Flyke introduced me to Samuel Asplundh, who rose and shook my hand. Samuel looked somewhat like Samantha, too — his niece and namesake. He had a sharp, unhappy glint in his eyes and a half-finished beer before him. He wore jeans and a white dress shirt, a loose corduroy sport coat and cowboy boots. He said he’d be available to help the investigation in any way he could. I told him I would appreciate an invitation to any memorial service or funeral that Garrett might be given, and I knew a young woman who asked to be included also. He gave me the specifics right then and there and said my partner and I, and the young woman, would be welcome.

Stella Asplundh came from the restaurant. She looked the same as the first time I’d met her — exceptionally beautiful and almost completely spent. There was something about her that made me think of my fall. She had fallen too, and I wondered if some important part of her had not survived. She acknowledged me with a small nod.

Van Flyke stood and pulled out a chair for her. I noted the attentiveness with which he pushed it in. Then he sat and regarded me from behind his sunglasses, red hair brushed back from his big face, arms crossed. He seemed annoyed.

I handed him the copies of the hard drive that McKenzie had run from Garrett’s laptop.

“Nice work, Brownlaw. Maybe I could tempt you with a job in Ethics Enforcement someday.”

“I doubt it. But like you said, everything in a person’s life can change in an instant.”

“I said that?”

Sam sipped from his beer.

“Why don’t you join us?” Stella asked.

Van Flyke turned his shaded gaze down the avenue.

“No thank you,” I said. “I’m going to have lunch with my wife.”

I headed up the avenue toward Salon Sultra. Even on Monday it’s open and busy.

I waited at the reception desk while Tammy talked on the phone. Gina was not there and her chair was empty. My stomach felt funny. Rachel saw me midclip, excused herself from her client and waved me outside.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“She left town, Robbie. She’s gone.”

It took me more than a second to believe that. But in my heart I knew it was true. I felt the anger gather inside me again. I was surprised how fast it could form.

“She said she wasn’t happy,” said Rachel. “She thinks there’s more.”

“More what?”

“I’m just telling you what she said.”

“You covering for her? Is there a guy?”

“There’s no other man. She wanted me to tell you that.”

I saw no sign of deception in her words.

“And what else did my wife want you to tell me about her?”

“Don’t get pissed at me, Robbie.”

“What else?”

“That was all, actually.”

I stood there for a moment, watching the cars go past in the sun. A warm wind had blown away the fog and a couple of poppies had opened in a planter along the sidewalk. But my heart was hard with anger and my hands felt heavy and thick.

“I want to talk to her.”

“I do, too. I think she’s making a terrible mistake.”

“Where did she go, Rachel? Don’t give me the bullshit you’re so good at giving. If she’d tell anybody, it would be you.”

“I thought so, too. I feel betrayed. I’m really sorry. But, Robbie? You’re going to be all right.”

The orange triangles of pity bounced into the air in front of her. She pressed her face through them and kissed me on the cheek. She looked into my eyes, kissed me on the other cheek, then turned and pushed through the mirrored salon door.