The Fallen

25

McKenzie and I stood in the shade of the Dream Wheels building late the next morning, while sketch artist Kathy Iles finished with Cass. Our St. Patrick’s Day temperature was supposed to hit eighty degrees by the afternoon.

Kathy is an exceptionally good sketch artist because she makes the subject look like a real person instead of a generality or type. I’m sure you’ve seen sketches, or Identikit drawings, that don’t quite look like real people. Kathy won’t settle for that. I think her secret is how calming she is, how “okay” she can make things seem, even though many of the people she interviews are victims of terrible crimes. She takes her time and gets details that other artists miss because the witnesses are so upset. Kathy’s a big, easygoing woman and she’s very sensitive to people’s mood changes. She became a police artist because her mother was killed in a botched convenience-store robbery by a man who was never identified and never caught.

“Sorry,” she said as we stood in Cass’s office and looked at the fresh sketch. “The hat, the sunglasses, the mustache. He looks more like a disguise than a man. This isn’t one of my best.”

“It’s what he looked like, though,” said Cass. “You got him, really, you did.”

“Well, thanks,” said Kathy.

Her rendition of Hummer Man showed a heavy-faced, blue-collar guy who, just as Cass had suggested, might be found on the back of his pickup truck at a Chargers tailgate party at Qualcomm Stadium. The sunglasses and thick mustache hid much of what might have been revealing. Kathy was right: This was not her best. Her Hummer Man was vague and generic.

Physically, the man in the sketch looked a little like Mincher, but Mincher was still too young. And Mincher had an affable, southern attitude about him that didn’t fit Cass’s “screw you” description of Hummer Man. Unless, of course, Mincher was a talented actor.

I learned that Hummer Man was right-handed, which was something I’d forgotten to ask Cass myself.

Kathy had also gotten Cass to remember that Hummer Man’s fingernails were neatly trimmed and clean, in possible contrast to his overall appearance as a workingman. His hands looked smooth. I thought of Hummer Man’s new Chargers cap, the clean fingernails and smooth hands, and his superior attitude.

Then I thought of the surveillance tape that I’d seen, and the flash of shoe leather. What kind of shiny shoes would a working fellow be wearing on a drizzly, soon-to-be-rainy day?

It seemed wrong. I wondered if we were looking for a real workingman or for a guy who had tried to seem like one.

“Maybe that’s exactly what we’re looking at — a disguise,” I said.

“I did think there was something phony about him,” said Cass. “Just... off. He looked like a regular person trying to look like a famous person trying not to be recognized. Or something like that.”

Back at my desk I found a message that Assistant Chief Dale Payne of the New Orleans PD had called. I called him back.

“I’ve got everybody who came through the annex to claim those guns,” he said. “That includes us, Sheriffs, feds, everybody. I got badge and phone numbers. Took some doin’. So here goes. Maybe this’ll help you find out who walked out of here with my Model 39.”

I typed out the name, rank, and organization of each person who was present at the annex weapons release. Just as I had thought, the NOPD had not let Lieutenant Darron Wight handle the weapons transfer alone — he’d been assisted by Officers Clay Strunk and Gloria Escobedo. I was partly expecting to hear Ron Mincher’s name but was glad I didn’t. None of the six names were familiar to me.

I left messages for three of them, but the other three I managed to get live. I explained in brief, concise terms that I was looking for someone who had lifted a murder weapon that day in New Orleans.

The first two told me with condescending patience that of course everybody had signed in — it was procedure. Bob Cramer of DEA hesitated, then was pointedly uncooperative. He said he wasn’t in the habit of giving out the names or whereabouts of DEA agents to “local law enforcement.”

I scratched the names off the list with increasingly bold sweeps of my pen, but I circled Bob Cramer.

I sighed and looked out the window at sun-drenched San Diego, still winter in America’s Finest City.

After lunch McKenzie and I left headquarters with a half-inch stack of wanted posters and a half-inch sliver of hope. Before making copies of the posters, we had scanned the picture to an SDPD flyer form with our department seal and WANTED FOR QUESTIONING at the top, and a description of the unidentified subject at the bottom.

First we stopped at the Ethics Authority Enforcement Unit building. The Little Italy sidewalks were busy with pedestrians enjoying the sunshine and I could smell the bread and garlic from the restaurants. Arliss Buntz looked at us when we walked in, then began straightening her desktop. Her ancient, near-green sweater hung on a coatrack by the stairwell and there was a very small vase of California poppies beside her telephone.

“Come on up,” said Van Flyke. He stood over us, looking down from the second story.

“Well, go on up,” said Arliss.

I closed the door and played the tape of Garrett Asplundh’s last conversation with Stella. Van Flyke listened with a frown, his head slightly cocked.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“Our friends in law enforcement,” I said.

Van Flyke shook his head in disgust. “Some of the stuff that I have to put up with in this city. They create the Ethics Authority to watchdog the city, and what’s the city do? It watchdogs the Ethics Authority.”

“The conversation took place at four-thirty on Tuesday the eighth — the day Garrett was killed,” I said.

Van Flyke nodded but said nothing.

“Whoever heard it could know that Garrett was going to be down at the Cabrillo Bridge that night,” said McKenzie.

“He doesn’t say what bridge,” said Van Flyke.

“If you knew Garrett well, you knew what bridge he was talking about. Did he ever tell you about it?”

“He proposed to her there.”

“When did you get your copy of this tape?” I asked.

“Yesterday,” he said. “Always on Wednesdays, unless Kaven forgets and drags his feet. These tapes aren’t of high interest to us in Ethics. We think it’s demeaning to be taped and monitored in the first place. Especially by the mayor and you people.”

McKenzie took one of our new “Wanted for Questioning” flyers from her briefcase and showed it to Van Flyke.

“Looks like you with a mustache,” she said.

“I’m a Dolphins man,” he said.

McKenzie held a flyer up toward him for comparison. She raised her eyebrows and Van Flyke smiled and shook his head.

“He’s better-looking than you,” said McKenzie.

“Most men are,” said Van Flyke. “What they don’t have is my vibrant personality. Tack your poster to the wall behind Arliss’s desk and everybody who comes through here will see it.”

“We’ll leave a few on the downstairs table too,” said McKenzie.

“Great,” said Van Flyke. “And do me a favor — tell your bosses over at the PD to keep their noses out of Ethics Authority business. They want to pass around tape-recorded conversations, they can bug their own people.”

Erik Kaven said that he “irregularly” monitored and recorded Ethics Authority phone calls but he did not listen to the conversation between Garrett and his wife. He was not prone to spying on his own employees. Certain other individuals had access to the monitoring equipment and could have eavesdropped while the conversation took place or perhaps replayed it later from the tape. He said the policy of monitoring Ethics Authority calls was “asinine” and he was firmly against it, but because such practice was included in the Ethics Authority charter, he had to play by the rules.

“It was the mayor and council’s idea,” said Kaven. “It’s their way of keeping us under their political thumb. They want ethics, but they don’t want ethics with teeth.”

I thought of what Stella had said, how Garrett distrusted Kaven because of Kaven’s coziness with Sarvonola and the business interests of San Diego.

“You were against hiring Garrett, weren’t you?”

He eyed me. “I thought he’d be better off as a cop, but the decision was up to Van Flyke. I direct the Authority. I don’t dictate. And don’t bother asking me to let you hear any more Ethics Authority tapes. You want Ethics Authority property, go to court and come back with a warrant. Or talk to all your blameless captains — you can probably get anything you want from them.”

“We’ve already got some paper,” said McKenzie. She brought out another flyer. “Looks like you.”

He took and studied it. “‘Wanted for Questioning’... What kind of a face is that? Looks like a costume. What put you onto this guy? What’s his story?”

“Get some paper and we’ll talk,” said McKenzie.

Kaven smiled. Behind his gunslinger’s mustache his teeth were white and straight. “Fine. I don’t want to know. I know too much already.”

Over the next four hours we drove to three television studios, six radio stations, six newspapers, and three magazines. We could have just faxed the sketch to each of them, but in my experience a personal appearance helps get attention.

We were greeted with gravity and furrowed brows at each stop and we got assurances that our sketch would be aired, published, or — in the case of radio — described, by everyone we talked to. With each sketch we included a press release about the Garrett Asplundh murder.

At five that afternoon we were finishing up with the city-run community centers, all of which feature bulletin boards for local, allegedly nonprofit announcements. Among the flyers for natural-childbirth classes, baldness therapies, free kittens, gem and mineral shows, herbal weight-loss programs, haiku workshops, and nonmedical treatments for sweaty palms and poor eyesight, we tacked our “Wanted for Questioning” flyers of Hummer Man. He looked brusque and lowbrow in the optimistic mix of self-improvement schemes, educational programs, and free pets.

By the time we rolled back into headquarters it was almost dark and still seventy degrees. We had ten flyers left. I put a few of them in my briefcase and gave the rest to McKenzie. She began scanning one into her computer to post it on our PD Web site and send it out as a jpeg to some of the watchdog Web sites that are helpful to law enforcement.

Chet Fellowes eased into the Homicide room, shoulders sloped and arms long. He put both hands on my desk, leaned over, and turned to face me.

“We’re set for Eden Heights at midnight,” he said. “You found it, you can come along for the fun if you want.”

“Cortez, too?”

“Cortez, too. And wear your vests. People like Chupa Junior go well with body armor.”

“You talk to Villas?” I asked.

“Of course I talked to Villas.”

“Then we’re in.”

“You can ride in one of the tactical trucks with my people,” said Fellowes. “We’ll have two. I looked over the location yesterday. We’ll have some men waiting out back by that pool house. That’s going to be the emergency exit when Chupa spots us driving up.”

“All right. Thank you, sir.”

He leaned closer and whispered. “The video that Garrett had, with our guys and the girls on it. It hasn’t gotten out, you know? You’ve kept it in-house, haven’t you?”

“I turned it over to Professional Standards,” I said.

“But you made a copy, right?”

“No, sir. Why would I?”

At times like this I’m glad that people can’t see the lies tumbling out of my mouth like I can see theirs. But I always wonder if, maybe in some other way, they can.

“There’s going to be a shitstorm when the VIPs get popped at Eden Heights tonight,” said Fellowes. “Cops, pols, fire, businessmen — everybody gets pulled into the net. Bad for us. Bad for the city. Can you handle that?”

“I can handle that.”

“Because you’re not like some people. I mean, you don’t want our city to look bad, do you?”

“I like it the way it is.”

“Meet us down by the sally port at midnight.”

He slapped a heavy hand on my shoulder and went to McKenzie’s desk.

McKenzie left the station a few minutes earlier than usual. She had a dinner date with Hollis Harris and needed to have it wrapped in time to get her back here by twelve for our raid on Eden Heights. I smiled and was pleased that it would take McKenzie and Hollis four or five hours to have dinner. McKenzie read my thoughts and looked away.

I thought of all the endless dinners that Gina and I had made together from magazine recipes in our home, spacing the courses between lovemaking and letting the cooking and eating become part of the love, or the love become part of the cooking and eating — a dizzying series of desires we built and rebuilt together with the windows open to the breeze and the TV turned down low and the answering machine taking all calls and me praying my pager or cell wouldn’t go off and take me away to deal with criminals.

McKenzie had looked somewhat tired but happy ever since she first went out with Harris. Her complexion and attitude seemed less severe. She had told me that he had the fastest mind she’d ever known and was coming along nicely as a recreational handgunner. He had shown an interest in sporting clays, which McKenzie had never shot. She said they were planning to try clays together and wondered if Gina and I would like to do it, too. I’d told her that would be great — I’d get with Gina and see when she was free. I found it disappointing that after five years of marriage I was lying about my wife, while after one week of dating, McKenzie was able to make plans with and speak honestly about her boyfriend.

I stayed late at headquarters, then stopped by Higher Grounds on my way home. The first two employees I talked to were pretty sure they had worked that night, but neither remembered seeing the man on my poster. The second two were pretty sure they had not worked that night, and neither of them remembered seeing him either.

Then an extremely pale girl with lucid green eyes took one look at the flyer and lifted her brilliant gaze to me.

“I waited on him,” she said. Her badge said “Miranda.” Her hair was white. “That’s not a great sketch, but I recognize the guy. He came in about eight-thirty. I remember thinking his sunglasses were overkill cool, because it was dark and rainy.”

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

“He ordered a medium decaf with cream,” said Miranda. “I remember thinking that was a good thing for him to order. He looked nervous.”

“How could you tell that?”

“His hands were shaking.”

“Had you seen him before?” I asked.

“Two or three times. But... he was different that night.”

“Different how?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t say exactly how.”

“Did he say anything to you, besides ordering the coffee?”

“Not one thing,” said Miranda. “He looked off to the side when he paid, like he didn’t want to see or be seen. He paid with two dollars. That’s when I saw his hands shaking. He left me the forty cents for a tip.”

“What kind of voice did he have?”

“I don’t remember. I’m visual, not aural.”

“Did he ever take off the sunglasses?”

“No.”

“Would you recognize him if he came in again?”

She smiled and shook her head as if dealing with a child. “I’m an art student. I’ve got twenty-ten vision. There’s only one thing I can really do well, and that’s see. I’d recognize him.”

I wrote my cell number on the back of five business cards and gave one to her.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” she said. “Two, actually.”

Then I handed the others to the employees one at a time.

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

“I saw you on TV,” Miranda said, studying me with her perfect green eyes. “I’m glad you lived.”

“Thank you. That’s nice of you to say.”

“It made me thank God for my life.”

“Me, too. Can you think of anything else about this man you saw?”

“No. I’m sorry I can’t tell you how he was different. It’s not that I didn’t see him clearly, it’s just... I’m sorry. He was just not the same as when I’d seen him before.”