Sinclair jockeyed his car into a space between two marked units and spotted a broad-shouldered man with a gold badge on his uniform striding toward him. As the midnight-shift watch commander, Lieutenant Beck was responsible for all uniformed police working the city at night. He was in his midforties but sported a buzz haircut like most of the twentysomething officers working under his command.
“You got here quick,” said Beck.
“I was close.”
“You had the one from last night?”
“Yeah, that was mine.”
“It doesn’t take a homicide detective to figure out this is the same guy,” said Beck.
Beck had spent his entire career in uniform, but like many command officers, that never stopped him from thinking he was an expert at investigations, even though he never even investigated a residential burglary as a detective.
The yellow tape cordoned off an area twice the size as the previous night, and twice the number of patrol officers roamed the area. Several greeted him as he walked by. Sinclair slid under the tape. Talbert was snapping photos.
The body, dressed in running clothes, was laid out on the sidewalk in front of the bus bench.
“Paramedics got here before us,” said Beck. “They found her on the bench in a sitting position. Put her on the ground to check vitals and start CPR, but rigor already present. Pronounced her.”
“Any ID?”
“Paramedics felt something in the back pocket of her shorts, but we’re waiting for the coroner before we disturb the body. I already called them.”
“It used to be patrol waited for homicide to arrive and make that decision,” said Sinclair.
“Seemed like a no-brainer to me, Sinclair. Two bodies the same place in two days might generate media attention. Figured we’d clean this up and get out of here quick.”
Sinclair glared at him. “We stay as long as it takes.”
“Whatever,” Beck replied. “I also called the chief’s office and PIO. Figured we’d get ahead of this.”
Involving the department’s public information officer and the police chief before Sinclair even made it to the scene meant he’d have a slew of people getting in his way. “What else did you say? Since it’s my case, it would be nice if I knew at least as much as the chief.”
“I told him it looks like we have another well-to-do victim, just like last night.”
“We don’t know who she is yet, right?”
“No, but look at her. Manicure and fancy haircut. She didn’t get highlights like that at Supercuts, and the diamond on her left hand is at least two carats. My wife’s pressuring me for a bigger one, so I notice these things.”
Sinclair crouched and looked at her ring. Maybe Beck wasn’t totally useless.
“The chief said he was coming here himself and told me to call your lieutenant,” said Beck.
“That’s fucking great.”
“I’m just doing my job, Sinclair. I didn’t ask him to come.”
“You’re just doing it too well, Lieutenant. What else?”
“Last bus of the night came by eleven thirtyish, driver sees a woman sitting there not moving. All the drivers are spooked after yesterday, so he calls it in. I got a unit at the bus yard getting his statement. Checked missing persons reports, but no similars. Doing the normal canvass of the area. Nothing so far.”
Talbert slung her camera around her neck and stepped forward once Beck finished.
“Talk to me, Joyce,” Sinclair said.
“Haven’t found anything of value. I’ll print the shelter again. Got some close-ups of the vic, and I’ll get more when the coroner gets here and rolls her.”
“Did you finish your report from the last one?”
“I was gonna finish it up tonight, but they sent me on this as soon as I hit in-service on the radio.”
“Should I get another tech here?”
“I can handle it. I won’t go home until I have both reports finished and on your desk.”
The coroner’s van arrived and Charlie Dawson stepped out. After he and Sinclair exchanged information, both coroner investigators gloved up and ducked under the tape.
Dawson extended the corpse’s arms, showing Sinclair long, deep cuts in both forearms. “Classic suicide cuts,” Dawson said. He twisted the arms around, showing a band of superficial cuts and abrasions around both wrists.
“Flex-cuffs—just like the last one,” said Sinclair.
“Same thing on the ankles.”
Dawson rolled the body and pulled two cards from a Velcro-closed pocket of her shorts. He held up a driver’s license and Kaiser medical card. “Strange things for a jogger to carry around with her.”
“Not entirely,” said Sinclair. “Older guys do it all the time. Jogger has a heart attack or accident, they know who she is and where to take her.”
Braddock slid under the tape and joined the group surrounding the corpse. “You beat me here again,” she said to Sinclair.
“I was closer.”
Braddock smiled knowingly.
“Here’s something else interesting,” said Dawson, running his hand over purplish coloring on the back of the legs. “Appears to be postmortem lividity, but not fully developed.”
“Which means?” asked Braddock.
“The body was in a sitting position with the legs extended, sort of like someone sitting on a bed, for at least several hours after death,” said Dawson. “If the body was in a chair or on that bench, for example, with the feet lower, the blood would pool into the lower legs. But that’s only a guess. The doc’ll have to say for sure.”
“You mind if we hold onto the ID cards?” asked Sinclair. “I want to get them printed.”
“No prob. Just get me all the info.”
Talbert held out a plastic envelope and Dawson dropped the cards inside.
Sinclair copied the pertinent information into his notebook. “The woman’s got a Lafayette address.”
“Another rich place,” said Dawson. “Just like the Danville boy.”
“I live there,” said Sinclair “And I’m sure as hell not rich.”
“Yeah, right,” said Dawson. “I know how much overtime you homicide dicks get.”
Dawson rolled the body back over and placed paper bags over the hands. “Broken nail on the right hand. Maybe she scratched him and got some DNA.”
Dawson removed a medallion that was hanging around her neck and dropped it into a bag his partner was holding.
“Wait a minute,” said Sinclair. “Let me see that.”
The pendant was a peace sign about the size of a half-dollar and made out of sterling silver or silver-plated. It hung from a cheap-looking chain.
“Didn’t the boy have one of these?” asked Sinclair.
Dawson shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m sure of it,” said Talbert as she punched buttons on her camera. “Look.”
Sinclair, Braddock, and Dawson peered at the LCD display—the same medallion against the background of a black T-shirt.
Sinclair knew the moment he got the call that two bodies at the exact same place in two days was no coincidence. The medallion verified it. The cheap jewelry didn’t match the rest of her appearance. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise.
Sinclair and Braddock stepped back as the coroner investigators brought out a gurney and packaged the corpse.
“Can you run it down for me—when you arrived, who told you what?” asked Braddock.
“I know you’re up and would normally be primary, but this is definitely linked to the Caldwell case,” he told Braddock. “That makes this mine too.”
Sinclair read the disappointment in Braddock’s face. She didn’t see it as dodging a bullet. “But, hey, we’re a team,” he said. “So we win or lose together.”
Beck broke in. “One of my officers has something that may interest you.”
They moved to the other side of the yellow tape, where a young black officer with a cherub face stood.
Officer Rose said, “This might be nothing, but a half hour before we were dispatched on this, I got a call on a nine-four-nine vehicle two blocks away. The caller was a neighbor who said she lives next door to a drug house, and a black van circled the block for ten minutes and then stopped in front of the house. I figure that if I were a killer and wanted to transport bodies, a van would be a perfect vehicle for it.”
“Makes sense,” said Sinclair. “Did she get a license number?”
“It came back to a Tyrone Hayes with an address over on Adeline.”
“I know Hayes,” said Braddock. “Big man. Gentle smile, soft spoken, but mean as hell. He did time for a series of rapes back in the nineties. He was a tennis-shoe pimp who liked to pick up young girls, drug and rape them, then turn them out.”
“Not a very impressive pimp if he had to make his rounds on foot instead of in a fancy Cadillac,” said Sinclair.
“A year or two ago, the sexual assault unit conducted home visits on all two-ninety registrants on this beat after a rash of home invasion rapes,” said Braddock. “Hayes
mean-mugged and threatened every male officer on our team but turned on his charm with me. Tried to impress me by saying that he branched out when in prison and found that young male asses were as good as girls.”
“Sounds like a sicko,” said Sinclair.
“The creep’s sick enough to do this,” said Braddock.
Sinclair turned to Rose, “I’m guessing you didn’t spot the van.”
“We cruised the area, but it was gone. The woman didn’t see the driver. I drove by Hayes’s house—the van was parked out front, but the house was dark. I ran him out. He’s still a registered sex offender and on parole. Didn’t see much value in knocking at the door and jamming him up, so we figured we’d keep a lookout for him rolling some other night.”
“Do you want to go by and talk to him?” asked Braddock.
Sinclair shrugged. “Can’t hurt. It’s not like we have anyone else to talk to.”
Sinclair stood at the corner of an old Victorian house on a street that fifty years ago was predominantly Italian. A few late-model German cars were intermingled with older American ones on the street, indicating gentrification was taking a foothold in the neighborhood. Braddock and Officer Rose’s beat partner, a bow-legged officer who wore black gloves with the fingers cut out, stood on the front porch. Rose covered the back. Since Braddock had history with Hayes, it made sense for her to make contact.
Braddock rapped at the door. “Tyrone, this is Sergeant Braddock. I’d like to talk with you.”
A door banged at the rear of the house.
Rose yelled, “He’s coming out the back.”
Rose ran around the corner, out of Sinclair’s view. Sinclair opened the chain-link gate and sprinted down the walkway. When he reached the backyard, he saw Hayes lumbering across the dark yard toward the back fence with Rose a step behind.
Rose caught him at the fence, but Hayes shook him off like an annoying insect.
Rose drew his expandable baton and snapped it open with a flick of his wrist. He swung low and connected with Hayes’s knee with a solid thud.
Hayes howled in pain and rushed Rose, wrapping him up like a three-hundred-pound lineman does to a running back. He grabbed Rose’s baton and yanked it from his hand and flung Rose to the ground. Rose struggled to his feet as Hayes swung a fist the size of a ham hock at his head.
Rose straightened and turned his shoulder into the punch. The blow knocked him off his feet and into a row of unkempt shrubs.
Rose lay still. Sinclair’s first instinct was to rush to the downed officer to check on him, but it had been drummed into him during training exercises and reinforced on battlefields from Baghdad to Oakland that you had to neutralize the threat before you could attend to the wounded.
Sinclair stopped ten feet from Hayes, his hand on his pistol, and yelled, “Police! Freeze!”
Hayes stared at him. Black eyes inside a head the size of a bear’s. Drops of sweat dripped off his broad nose. His nostrils flared as he sucked in huge breaths.
He threw Rose’s baton to the ground. “Go ahead, shoot me, motherfucker.”
The threat of a gun only worked with rational people. It was of no value when the person didn’t care about living or dying or knew the cop wouldn’t use it.
Hayes stepped toward him. Sinclair danced back a step.
When a cop had to wrestle with a suspect, his gun was a liability. If the suspect got his hands on it, the cop was dead, so Sinclair knew he had to protect his pistol while trying to fight a monster that outweighed him by nearly a hundred pounds.
Hayes lunged toward him and swung a roundhouse punch toward his head. Sinclair skipped back onto his left foot and parried the blow with his hand as it passed by inches in front of his face.
Hayes’s momentum, along with Sinclair’s parry, pulled Hayes off balance and left his right side exposed. Sinclair pivoted on his left foot, cocked his right foot into his thigh, and with years of training behind him, unleashed a side kick to Hayes’s rib cage, just under his right armpit.
Hayes grunted and doubled over. Slowly, he straightened up again and took a step toward Sinclair. Sinclair stepped into him with his left foot and threw a straight punch into Hayes’s face. Sinclair heard the satisfying crunch of bone. Hayes dropped to his knees, looked up at Sinclair for a second, and then collapsed to the ground.
An hour later, Sinclair and Braddock returned to the murder scene. The body was gone, as were half of the officers. Lieutenant Maloney, dressed in a navy blue sport coat and tie, was talking to a tall black man wearing black slacks, a black polo, and a black windbreaker. Even though regulations required those on duty to wear a uniform or a coat and tie, the chief of police figured he could wear whatever he wanted when he visited a crime scene at night. The arrogance of the chief thinking his rank afforded him special privileges irked Sinclair.
“The man you went after isn’t the killer, but you decided to smash his face anyway,” said Chief Clarence Brown.
Sinclair wanted to point out the obvious: that had they known Hayes wasn’t involved, they wouldn’t have wasted their time with him, but he kept his mouth shut. After Sinclair had taken Hayes down, Rose’s partner handcuffed him while Braddock attended to Rose and called for ambulances. Paramedics suspected Hayes had several broken ribs, a broken nose, and a fractured cheekbone. They transported him to the county hospital with a police escort. One of Lieutenant Beck’s district sergeants arrived, took
Sinclair’s statement, and did the use-of-force investigation and paperwork, required any time an officer puts a suspect in the hospital.
Meanwhile, Braddock had searched the Ford van and interviewed Hayes’s mother and uncle, both of whom had been in the kitchen drinking coffee when the police knocked at the door. The mother said Hayes was at the Salvation Army the night Zachary was killed and had been home since midnight. It was Mrs. Hayes’s brother who had driven the van to the crack house an hour ago to pay Hayes’s drug debt so the local dope dealers would leave the family alone. Braddock verified his alibi for both nights with a few phone calls.
“Chief,” said Braddock. “Tyrone Hayes has a ten-page rap sheet. He’s the size of a refrigerator. If I was in Matt’s place, I would’ve had to shoot him.”
“And the story lead would say,
Petite female detective attacked by convicted serial rapist—forced to shoot to save her life
. Instead, we’ll see,
Sergeant Sinclair, with three notches on his gun already, kicks and punches man in the face during homicide investigation
.”
Sinclair focused on Brown’s shaved head glistening under the streetlights, wondering if he waxed it to create that shine.
“How’s the officer?” Brown asked.
“His name is Officer Rose,” said Sinclair. “He’s getting X-rays of his shoulder at the hospital. It didn’t look good, and he twisted his ankle when he fell.”
“What’s the meaning of these necklaces that your lieutenant told me about?”
“We don’t know yet, Chief.” Sinclair wasn’t about to tell him about his theory, only to hear the chief challenge it as guesswork and speculation.
“Who is this woman? Is there a connection between her and the doctor’s son?”
“All we have so far is CDL info on the woman. We don’t know any connection.”
Chief Brown ignored Sinclair and turned to Maloney. “I don’t need to tell you that this shit will hit the fan by morning and people will want answers.”
“I understand, sir.”
Brown stepped toward Sinclair. Sinclair’s eyes were level with Brown’s chin, and he looked up to meet the chief’s glare.
“If you can’t put a red line through these cases quickly, I’ll have them reassigned to someone who can.”
Brown craned his neck and took several whiffs.
Sinclair felt his anger rising. Every captain and lieutenant cowered before this man. Sergeants and officers kept out of his way even though they were usually too insignificant for the chief to bother. But this was personal. First the urinalysis, now this.
“You want me to walk a straight line, Chief? Or maybe stand on one foot and recite the alphabet?”
“Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Sergeant.”
Their eyes locked. Sinclair despised him. He hated the power he had over him. He hated how he made him feel. But he knew he couldn’t win this showdown.
“I just want to do my job. I haven’t had a drink in six months and have no desire to.”
The second part was a lie. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than a few swigs of bourbon. It would calm the rage he felt, dissolve the fear. It would allow him to say exactly what he wanted to that arrogant, condescending prick.
“Then do it. And do it right,” Brown said as he turned. “Lieutenant, with me,” he growled at Maloney.