Authors: Lachlan Smith
“I'm your insurance policy, Nikki. I'm not asking you to be disloyal. I've already given you more than you can give me. We're not trading names; we both know that. I'm asking about Campbell, not Damon. Just tell me what everyone in the police department knows. What was he working on before he got sent down to patrol?”
Her face turned toward me in the darkness. There was a new sobriety in her posture, all the arrogance and condescension drained away; for a moment she seemed to look at me with a shared humanity. “I don't know where you got the idea that he was a crooked cop.”
“Isn't that obvious?”
She didn't say anything, then in her regular conceited tone answered, “Of course. They're all crooked, all on the take. It's just the ones that get caught who give the department a bad name.” She edged her chair forward and laid a heavy, damp hand on my thigh. Her breath had a floral, alcoholic scent. I was intimately aware of the bulk of her, all that flesh and blood.
Her voice was low, without hope or expectation. “You'll need to move your car somewhere more discreet if you're going to stay tonight. Don't think that what I'm offering you is insignificant. If you prefer to leave, I understand, but when you walk out that front door, you'll be without my protection. Bedroom on the left, street door on the right, the same way you came in. You decide.”
She rose and went in. From the other side of the house I heard a tub begin to fill. I had gotten as much as I was going to get from her, at least without giving more than I was prepared to give. Still, I didn't leave for a moment, but sat taking in the view. I'd begun to pity her and was trying to understand why. Her warning made me fear what the night might hold.
When the water stopped I roused myself and went quickly through the house and outside.
~ ~ ~
I was picked up as soon as I turned onto Skyline, with a pair of headlights blazing from my mirror. I mashed on the gas, but he kept a foot or so off my back bumper, a big V8 truck or a Hummer, the high beams at eye level, lighting up the dashboard bright as day.
Nikki's parting warning hadn't been an idle one. Even now she must be chin-deep in her bath, both knowing and not knowing what was happening out here on the road. My pursuer didn't try to get ahead. Whenever I slowed, he rammed me, the higher bumper riding over the rear end of the Rabbit with a screech of tearing metal. Each time he hit, he accelerated; it was like falling, that helpless sensation you get in the pit of your bowels. My tires squealed as I struggled to keep from fishtailing, but each time he backed off as we came to a curve. He was experimenting, I realized, getting a feel for how to push me off the road without losing control and following me. Each push lasted a little bit longer, left me swerving a little closer to the edge. There were plenty of long drops.
My only advantage was that even in the dark, I knew every twist and turn. I'd ridden Skyline on my bike dozens of times, and could fly down any number of steep, winding descents back to the flatlands without crashing. The Rabbit's lower center of gravity and narrower wheelbase would give me at least a fighting chance of staying ahead on the way down. Or so I hoped.
I knew the road I was looking for: it was called Thorndale, and it was the steepest, most winding route down from the heights of Skyline that I knew, with at least three hairpin curves. In several places no room existed for two cars to pass, and at every turn there was another driveway. At night, they would be impossible to tell from the road itself.
The trick was making the first turn off Skyline onto a street called Elverton, which wasn't steep and merely wound along the contour of the slope for half a mile or so, past the top levels of the kinds of houses that were common up here, with the garages on top and the living quarters beneath them.
The curves were what saved me. He didn't know when they were coming, and I knew just how much I had to slow down to get around each one without skidding. The road began to drop and I gained ground. In the next few curves he managed only a few nudges, but I was near the edge of control already. We had to go back uphill before Elverton met Thorndale, and as we reached the top he caught me again, slamming me so hard that my head whiplashed. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!” I shouted.
Now the road took a ninety-degree turn, then a precipitous hairpin. If I could open up some distance between the first and second set of turns, I ought to be able to lose him in the warren of twisting roads above Mountain Boulevard.
I took the first ninety-degree turn hard, straightening in the downhill curve. With no choice but to slow for the hairpin, I scraped the guardrail but kept on the road. For the first time during the last several minutes, the demonic headlights fell away. Risking a glance in the rearview mirror, I saw him backing up; he'd had to do a three-point turn. I came out of the S-curve, killed the lights so he wouldn't have my taillights to guide him, and floored it. If he caught me on this straightaway, I was dead.
He held back just enough. That section of the narrow road winds slightly between a steep bank on one side and tall eucalyptus on the other, so that at no point can you be sure that another curve isn't just around the bend. I reached the second set of curves ahead of him. These were gentler, but he had no way of knowing that. I was at the advantage now, and in full control; I rode the gas all the way down, lifting my foot slightly at the start of each curve, then pressing hard on the pedal as soon as I found my line around the corner.
At Sobrante I took a sharp right, his lights no longer in my mirror. I was on Thornhill now, and more or less out of danger of plunging off the mountain. My only clear glimpse of the vehicle had been when he'd stopped to make that three-point turn, a big black pickup with dual tires in back, the kind you see pulling eighty-foot yachts or horse trailers.
No doubt he knew where I lived. Meaning I was actually no safer now than I had been a moment ago. Still, I felt the animal aftertaste of fear, the escape from immediate danger that's the only relief a hunted creature knows.
Just above Mountain Boulevard, I stopped to check the car. My door wouldn't open. Neither would the passenger door. I had to lie on the passenger seat and kick the driver's side door with both feet before it gave way, and after that it wouldn't stay closed. I don't know how I made it home without being stopped as a drunk driver. I thought about calling the police, but I feared it'd been Campbell at the wheel of that truck. I needed sleep, then a chance to think.
I wasn't going to get it.
Chapter 20
They came through the front door at 4:31
am.
I'd been asleep for maybe two and a half hours. I'd gotten home just past twelve and found Teddy pacing the darkened apartment. “Where were you?” he cried. Then he did something that surprised me more than anything: he grabbed me and wrapped me in a sour-smelling hug.
He'd come home from dinner with Jeanie and found me gone. I'd left him a note about my plan to go to Nikki's, but when I didn't turn up, he'd assumed the worst.
Nothing could have been more startling to me than the pacing worry that had evidently consumed him since finding my note. He'd not put the doggie bag from the restaurant in the fridge, hadn't turned on any lights other than the one in the hall. When I was fifteen, sixteen, Teddy never seemed to notice the hours I kept. That would have meant revealing that he cared about me, totally out of character for the old Teddy.
The new Teddy, by contrast, was reduced to nail-biting anxiety and worry when I failed to come home within an hour of the time I had promised. The new Teddy expected me to call if I'd promised to call, and if I didn't, he couldn't think of anything else but where I might be, what might have happened. I'd become the fulcrum around which his world revolved.
By the time I made him understand that I was okay, I was too wired to sleep. We made popcorn and started to watch a movie, then stopped it because Teddy couldn't follow a conversation with the TV on. I told him everything that had happened, everything I'd done. I'd never seen him look so helpless as when I told him about the truck following me when I left Nikki's and that wild chase down from the Oakland Hills.
“Nikki didn't give me anything,” I told him. “All I can hope is that Car turns up what I need. He's supposed to be checking with his sources at the Oakland PD.”
“What about this other cop?” Teddy asked. “The one who's married to Campbell? Can't you ask her for help?”
“Every time I talk to her I want to believe her. She's too slippery. I've got to have some way to pin her down.”
“So was it Campbell or Damon?”
I could only shake my head. “Don't forget the one who called me pretending to be Jamil, the one who's in with LaviniaâSgt. Perryâin all this. The worst part is I don't even know who tried to kill meâor when they're going to try again.”
We went to bed without resolving anything, not seeing the way forward any more clearly than we had two hours ago. Then at 4:31
am
the police broke through the door.
I thought it was an earthquake, and it took me a moment to realize that the tremors I felt weren't the building shaking but my heart thudding in my chest. I heard Teddy shouting something and jumped to my feet. My own first instinct was to run. Then men were in my room yelling, “Police!” and “Get down!”
I dropped facedown, and a boot pressed down on the center of my naked back. My arms were wrenched behind me, my cheek pressed into the carpet, my wrists handcuffed so tightly that my thumbs sparked with pins and needles. Teddy was quiet now, though I could hear him letting out small gasps. By turning my head, I could just glimpse him through the crack between the door and the jamb, occupying a similar position in his own room.
“You know your rights, Leo. I don't have to read them to you and I'm not going to bother.” I listened to this unfamiliar soft voice speaking from the doorway like he owned the place.
It was impossible to believe he was in my bedroom where just moments ago I'd been asleep. “What am I being arrested for?”
“What do you think?” said the detective. It was a white man's voice, the kind that could hush a crowd, make everyone strain to hear him.
“Indecent exposure. How about you let me put on a shirt and some pants?”
“Want the boys to get them from the closet? Or maybe the dresser?”
“My clothes should be right beside the bed. I don't want you opening anything without a warrant.”
“Don't worry,” he assured me. “We'll get one.”
An officer pulled me to my feet. Another patted down my pants, then slung them with my T-shirt over my handcuffs. Teddy wasn't cuffed. They had him up now, too. He was sitting on the bed, a cop standing guard before him. He shot me an anxious look but they hurried me past his open door.
“You're coming with us,” said the voice behind me. “It's just a few questions. Shouldn't take more than fifteen to twenty years.”
I finally got a look at him. He was tall, thick, and heavy and still more or less in shape. It surprised me that a voice so soft should come from a man that large. His face was all bones and sun-tightened creases and eyes that never smiled. The tough-guy effect was undone by the ears, which were too large.
It was a short ride to headquarters down by Jack London Square. From the parking garage they took me up the elevator to homicide and put me in an interview room. I'd been in such a room once before, in San Francisco. I was faced now with the same dilemma I'd faced then, whether to say anything, and if so, how much, knowing that the smart play is always to keep silent. At the same time the only way for an innocent man to prove it is to talk.
After twenty minutes the door opened and Detective Campbell walked in. I wasn't surprised to see him, but I was surprised to see him wearing a suit. “I thought you looked better in uniform,” I said.
“Detective Kristofferson asked me to keep you company while he finishes some paperwork.” He leaned on the corner of the table beside me.
“You're just hanging around, looking for someone to talk to?” I felt cold and jittery. My hands were still cuffed behind me.
“Early bird gets the worm.” He motioned for me to turn so that he could take the handcuffs off. “Hello, worm.”
I flexed my wrists, trying to bring the feeling back in my hands. “Or maybe you didn't get to sleep last night.”
“My head hits the pillow I go right out. Six hours later, I'm wide awake, ready to go. Total refreshment. You can't get that quality of sleep without peace of mind. If you're worrying, you got stress, something eating at you, you'll toss and turn all night. Me, I get a crick in my neck sometimes from lying in the same position, not moving a muscle.”
“So you're not on patrol anymore.”
“That's right. You went too far, Leo. I don't know when you first crossed the line, but when a defense lawyer manufactures evidence in a criminal case, law enforcement has to act. Instead of arresting you right away, the department did what cops do. It saw two black men having a conversation and inferred a conspiracy to commit murder. That's the racism of the system, Leo, what I've been working against all my career. Instead of coming to me, asking for my side, they gave you the chance to frame an innocent man for what your client did.”
“I tried to frame someone? You mean Damon?”
“Damon Watson is a businessman and a respected member of this community.”
“You were there. You saw what happened. If it wasn't for you he would have killed me and my brother.”
“By your brother I take it you mean Teddy Maxwell. Truth: if someone hadn't gunned him down he'd be in prison now for manufacturing evidence. So I hope you had a good night's rest, because it's the last sound sleep you'll get for a while. Tonight you'll be in Santa Rita. If you're smart you'll cop a quick plea, spend the next twenty years with your dad in San Quentin.”
“Someone tried to kill me last night. Damon was going to kill me last week. You were there,” I repeated, my eyes searching for the camera, even as I knew the recording system must not be turned on.
“You'll be nice and safe in the custody of the county until we get it all sorted out.” He stood to go.
I thought of Jamil hung to death in his cell. If they couldn't get me on the outside, couldn't make it look like an accident, well, maybe a young lawyer facing a lengthy prison term might do something rash and desperate. A twisted sheet, my knotted pant legs. Or maybe just a sudden shank in the back.
“What am I here for? No one's told me why I'm here.”
He paused at the door. “Here's a tip. It comes a little late to help you, but maybe you can pass it on. If you don't ask right away, we think you know. I've got nothing against stating the obvious. We might as well have the cards on the table. Since you ask, you've been arrested for the murder of Nikki Matson.”
He went out, locking the door behind him.
~ ~ ~
When Kristofferson finally came he didn't say a word. He just dropped a nine-by-twelve envelope on the desk. “I want my lawyer,” I told him. I'd decided that my chances of getting out today were slim to none. I lacked too many facts, and had nothing to gain and everything to lose by talking.
“I'm not asking you to say anything. Just look at those pictures,” he said in his murmuring voice. “There isn't anybody in this world that doesn't want to get a look at a mess like that. Most of us are just too embarrassed to admit it. Ease your curiosity. I put the photos in front of you; you looked at them. That's all the report's gonna say. Even an innocent man wants to know what he's up against.”
His voice was soothing, hypnotic. It made me want to do what he said. And in truth I wanted to see the pictures. I needed to know what had happened to Nikki after I left her house.
I lifted the brads of the envelope and pulled out a stack of glossy prints showing Nikki carved up in her bath. She was naked and immodestly posed, her landscape of flesh on full display; the killer's last act had been to drain the tub. I saw the red inner wall of her larynx, the yellow globules of fat under her half-severed breast, blue intestines hideously bulging, layers of skin and muscle sectioned and on view. I tried to visualize the blade that had made those cuts but could not, tried to picture the hand that had wielded the blade, the arm that drove it in. But I could not picture the hand or the arm, or the eyes that had watched them at work.
I could see Nikki, though. She'd had a few seconds at most. She hadn't managed to get up, or if she had, she'd fallen right back into the tub. She would have had time to see blood spattering the ceiling, walls, sink, floor, mirror, every surface, a wild spray, as if someone had pressed his palm over the nozzle of a hose. She would have seen her attacker's face and no doubt recognized it.
Looking at the pictures, the blood on the walls and ceiling, I realized the killer would have come out of Nikki's house soaked with gore. His hair, clothes, and shoes would have been sodden with it, warm on his skin at first but cooling in the night air, a sticky mess. Realizing this, I knew they couldn't pin it on me. They'd tow my car and wonder at its condition, but they'd find no traces of Nikki Matson's blood on the seats or carpet. They'd analyze my clothes and shoes, and the results would clear me. They'd be able to keep me in until Monday, when I'd have to be arraigned. Then for lack of evidence they'd have to cut me loose, or so I told myself.
Even given the best scenario, I was going to spend the weekend in jail.
I put the pictures back in the envelope. My hands felt clumsy. I had to assume that at some point this weekend, whoever had come for Jamil would come for me. “I said I want to call my lawyer,” I told Kristofferson. “Now.”
~ ~ ~
I spent several hours in a holding cell at the police station. Around 10:00
am
, manacled and dressed in orange, I was escorted to the parking garage and into a waiting mesh-caged van.
I tried to keep my fear at bay. I'd often wondered what it was like on the other side, I told myself. From now on, I would know. Also, I reasoned, I'd been handed a prime opportunity to investigate Jamil's death. Any witnesses were probably still in Santa Rita. Of course the killer was probably here as well, and possibly on the lookout for me. I had the advantage of being forewarned, but I had no illusions about my ability to defend myself from an unexpected attack.
I was a murder suspect, and after being booked I was placed in a high-security unit in C Pod with more than a hundred other inmates, two to a cell, the same one Jamil had been in. I was relieved not to be in the lower security dormitory units, those feeding grounds for the various street factions, long rows of bunk beds housing dozens of inmates, all locked together through the long, long night.
The pod was a two-level enclosure, with a half ring of cells on the top tier and another half ring on the bottom, the two tiers curving around a large open space with fixed tables, vending machines, and a TV ringed by benches, all watched over from a guard station behind Plexiglas. I was put on the upper tier; inside, my cellmate sat on his bunk, elbows on his knees, reading. Then he looked up and I saw the pinched, small mouth, the hollow, stubbled cheeks. It was my client Marty Scarsdale.
“You've got to be kidding me,” I said, so demoralized I wanted to weep.
He was dressed in a padded beige getup like a giant pita roll. With no sleeves or pant legs, this ill-fitting, inflexible garment was designed to present no possibilities for self-strangulation. Inmates classified as high risk for suicide were forced to wear it, a policy that reminded me of the medieval treatment for mental illness, which was simply to lock the insane in a darkened room.
He stared at me, his gaze uncomprehending; then his eyes blazed. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“A sick joke.” Somehow, after he'd walked out the back of the courtroom between two deputies, I'd imagined I'd never have to see him againâthough of course I'd known that I couldn't avoid appearing at his sentencing hearing.
“What did you do? Kill somebody?”
“You're not supposed to ask people what they're in for. You try to kill yoursel
f
?”
He slid back on his bunk, folding the bulky fabric around his legs. “They're going to send me to prison. You're the one who told me what happens to guys like me there.”