Close Case Page 4

  “Tell me about it. Until I got called up to Crenshaw’s, I was stuck at intake dealing with the custodies.”

  “So you understand what a cluster fuck it is. When I restricted the search to just a few blocks around Crenshaw’s up on Hillside, I only got a few hits.” He pulled a different, thinner printout toward him. “Nothing obvious, but I circled a few worth looking into. Best one’s probably a traffic stop on a guy with a couple UUV pops.”

  “Johnson mentioned that one.” Given the carjacking-gone-bad scenario, the proximity of a defendant twice convicted of Unlawful Use of a Vehicle was at least interesting.

  “I don’t have high hopes, though,” Chuck said. “The guy was stopped heading east, which would put him on his way to Crenshaw’s place. Possible a guy would try to pull something off right after being stopped by a cop, but—”

  “Not likely,” I agreed.

  “Right. So then I expanded the search to include a mile around the vic’s place. That’s when I got this massive thing,” he said, holding up the thicker report again. “We wind up hitting downtown and all the crap from last night. It’s taking me awhile to get through it all.”

  “You going out on the warrants?”

  “You bet. Ray and Jack will take the car and the condo, but Mike and I are doing the office.”

  “Call me if you find anything?”

  “But of course, madame.”

  “And make sure the other boys keep me in the loop too?”

  “No one’s out to get you, Sam.”

  “Just make sure they don’t shut me out.”

  “Consider it a birthday present.”

  Chuck was right. Even for cops like Calabrese, the ribbing I was getting was just collateral damage from bombs directed at the man who walked into my office a couple of hours later.

  Russ Frist is best pictured as a young Kirk Douglas in a Brooks Brothers suit, if Kirk had been built like a side-by-side Sub-Zero. I told him the other day that any more time on the weights and his seams were going to burst open à la Dr. David Banner, but without all the incredible green hulkiness.

  Frist rapped his knuckles against my open door before plopping his dense body down in my guest chair. “You keep any aspirin in this dump?” He grabbed a mail-order running-gear catalog from the corner of my desk and started flipping through it, propping one wingtip on the unoccupied chair next to him.

  “You comfy there?” I asked. “Can I get you a pillow? Maybe some chamomile tea?”

  “Tea’s for wusses.” He looked up from the magazine to give me a self-mocking tough-guy look while he shifted his weight to rest both feet on the ground. “Got an aspirin?”

  “Sorry, can’t help you.”

  “I feel sore all over. Advil, Tylenol, Aleve, anything?” I was shaking my head as he rattled off pharmaceutical products. “Come on, Kincaid, even you must get the occasional ovary-induced cramp.”

  “And just when I was feeling sorry for you. Besides, you probably did this to yourself. Did you lift yesterday?”

  “Yeah, that’s probably it.”

  “Then suck it up, Mister Marine. Don’t you jarheads always say that weakness is wanting pain to leave your body?”

  He laughed. “I think you mean ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body.’ But point taken: All whining will cease. So did you make it up to Vista Heights this morning?”

  “Yes, I made it up there, thank you very much. The trip was a total waste of time. I’ll be requesting reimbursement for mileage, you know.”

  “What are you complaining about? It saved you from intake, didn’t it?”

  “Speaking of which, it was mighty convenient that I drew our unit’s short stick on that one. Where were you this morning?”

  He interrupted the browsing again and laughed, shaking his head. “Convenient, you say? You don’t know me at all by now, do you, Kincaid? What time do I usually get in?”

  Russ was the only attorney in MCU who often beat me into the office in the morning. “You are such a little shit.”

  “It was a near miss, though. I actually saw you walking to the courthouse just as I was sneaking out to Marsee’s. Nestled into a cozy little table in the back, I almost felt guilty, knowing what was waiting for you on your voice mail, but the cheese Danish got me past it.”

  “Did you come in here just to torment me, or is there actually a purpose to this little pop-in?”

  “I wanted to see how things went on the Crenshaw case this morning.”

  There was no right answer to that question yet. Early in a case, it’s impossible to tell if an investigation is getting any traction. You go through the usual motions of checking out the victim, scouring the neighborhood for witnesses, and shaking down any shady people whose names crop up along the way. You’re working the case, but for all you know you’re climbing the down escalator. But once you hit the right piece of evidence, all the early effort pushes the case into hyperspeed, potentially hurling the investigation forward too quickly from its own momentum.

  It was too soon to tell if we’d get to that point on this case, but we certainly weren’t there yet. I told Frist as much, bringing him up to speed on where the investigation stood.

  “Here’s a question for you, though. When Walker called you about the case, why’d you send him my way?” A high-profile murder like this one would usually be hoarded by the head of the Major Crimes Unit.

  “Give yourself some credit, Kincaid. You’re a good lawyer. You’re thorough with the cops, you’re one of the very best around here in trial, and you’re great with victims.”

  “Would you mind repeating all of that while I transcribe it for my next evaluation?” I said, pretending to grab for my legal pad. “Seriously, I wasn’t questioning whether I’m qualified to handle the case. I know I am.”

  “Modesty never was your forte.”

  “What I mean is—unless you’re saying I’m better than you at all those things—why didn’t you keep the case for yourself? You’re not exactly someone who backs down from publicity.”

  A frustrated defense attorney once told the Oregonian that the most dangerous place to stand in Portland was between Russell Frist and a TV camera. Apparently, his fascination with the media began early. According to the rumor mill, when Russ was still on misdemeanor row, he grew impatient waiting for the spotlight that often singles out career prosecutors. Halfway into a trial against a medical school professor accused of picking up a prostitute on Sandy Boulevard, he recognized a crime-beat reporter at Veritable Quandary, a favorite downtown drinking institution. Russ forwent his regular VQ booth, planted himself at a table behind the reporter, and gabbed away to a coworker about every last detail of his pending trial, down to the good doctor’s impounded Porsche 911 with the DR LOVE personalized plate. The morning after Russ got his guilty verdict, that same reporter ran the story on the front page of the Metro section, “exposing” the blur between Portland’s elite and the city’s seedy side.

  Ever since, Russ’s trials have had a way of grabbing headlines. If he was ducking a case as big as Percy Crenshaw’s murder, there had to be a reason.

  “Is there a problem I should know about?” My question was blunt, but I can be blunter—and I was. “If you’ve set me up to eat a plateful of shit you’re trying to avoid, the least you can do is tell me it’s coming.”

  The straight tack—coupled with the requisite prosecutorial profanity—always did the trick with Frist. “It’s not quite that bad, but there is something. That’s why I came in, actually.” He leaned back in his chair and shut the door behind him. “I talked to the boss about the assignment this morning. We’re taking heat on this Tompkins shooting, big time. Duncan’s just being cautious, but he figured it would look better if we had separate DAs working on the two cases.”

  I was still suspicious. “You’ve had two big cases going at once before. What gives?”

  “This is not two garden-variety big cases.”

  I gave him a blank look.

  “You know,�
�� he said.

  “I really don’t, Russ.”

  “The African-American thing,” he said, whispering the hyphenated adjective the way you might say cancer under your breath during proper dinner conversation. At least he hadn’t used air quotes.

  Still, I laughed at him. He deserved it.

  “I’m trying, OK?” he said.

  “Fine, but the logic’s still just plain stupid. So what? We’ve got two black victims. Since when is that enough to warrant calling in the big boss himself to separate the two investigations?” As District Attorney, Duncan Griffith was the public and political face of this office and supervised all hundred-and-some-odd deputy prosecutors. He rarely involved himself in individual cases, let alone the micromanagement of doling them out.

  “It’s not just their race. Jesus, Sam, haven’t you picked up a paper in the last week? Hamilton stuck three bullets into that woman’s head through a fucking windshield. People are seriously pissed. Those same people love Percy Crenshaw. Duncan’s being cautious, is all. Having two bodies on the cases might keep them from getting clumped together out there in the public mind.” He tilted his head toward the window, as if the glass were all that separated us from the ignorant and manipulable masses.

  “Your call,” I said, sounding unintentionally dismissive. “I’m happy to have the case.”

  The ring of the phone saved me from any further paranoid political overanalysis. According to the digital readout, the call originated from Lockworks, a hair salon owned by my very best friend, Grace Hannigan. Grace and I say we’re like the sisters we never had, even though she in fact has a screwed-up half sister who turns up occasionally for money. The day I pass up a call from Grace for run-of-the-mill work talk will be the day I officially deserve a smack upside my Lockworks-coiffed head. Fortunately, Frist took this as his cue to leave, mouthing I’ll talk to you later as he headed out the door. I picked up.

  “What’s up?”

  She got straight to the matter at hand. “Percy Crenshaw’s dead?”

  “I would’ve told you tonight.” One of the defining ingredients of the friendship I share with Grace is gossip. I hear the city hall and court juice first, while she keeps me up-to-date on the socialite scene. “It’s going to be my case, actually.”

  “Yeah? Well, your case is on the news.”

  “Already?” Senior prosecutors pine for the good old days, when they could rely on a tight lid until at least the five o’clock news cycle. No such thing anymore as a safety period, given today’s nonstop informational stream. Thanks to the cable news practice of designating programming time to local affiliates, even a regional story like mine could pop up any time, 24/7. “What channel?”

  “Headline News,” she said. “Oh, and before you hang up, happy birthday, girlie.”

  One of the advantages of a best friendship is the license to be rude when necessary. As she knew I would, I cut the call from Grace short and rushed down the hall to the conference room, the site of the office’s only television set. A couple of the guys from Drug and Vice were watching a repeat of Pimp My Ride, where humble little Corollas are transformed into full-fledged pumped-up badass-mobiles. Picture a vehicular makeover by Snoop Dogg but without the class. I silently cursed Chuck Forbes and his cable addiction for poisoning my brain.

  Ignoring the protests of my former DVD colleagues, I grabbed the remote and started flipping for the news. I didn’t recognize the correspondent, a perky, twenty-something brunette positioned at the periphery of the parking lot. From the looks of her enormous umbrella and rain-inappropriate clothing, she was probably new. Soon enough, she’d have a hooded Gore-Tex jacket like the rest of them. Behind her, I did recognize the carport where I had stood just that morning. The carport, I reminded myself, where Percy Crenshaw had lost his life last night.

  The news now had one more crime story to add to the pile of coverage about Delores Tompkins and last night’s protests. She covered the basics: location, apparent cause of death, the early morning discovery of the body, the victim’s semicelebrity standing, the lack of any current suspects. It was pretty much what I would’ve expected, given the investigation’s early status. Until, that is, she began interviewing a self-described neighbor.

  The neighbor was definitely new to Portland. Or, as she put it with a nervous smile, “We’re new to these parts, so this whole thing’s got us darn near ready to head back down to Louisiana.”

  One of the DVD peanut gallery couldn’t resist. “Right, because I hear purt’ near nothin’ goes wrong in them thar parts—”

  “Jesus, you sound like Jethro Bodine,” I said, turning up the volume.

  “Wait, you didn’t let me get to the punch line. There’s no crime there unless you count the pumpkin cases. Get it? Pump kin?”

  I shushed him and turned up the volume some more. All of Russ’s cautious talk had gotten to me. Leave it to the local news to transform one anomalous case into a sign that the entire city had become a war zone.

  “I feel just awful today wondering if there was something I could’ve done,” the neighbor continued. “Percy lives upstairs from us, so I’m right across from his carport. I was taking my dog Quincy out for his nighttime tinkle, and I saw Percy coming in. He waved at me, which was his usual way. As I was going through the door, I heard someone say something like ‘Nice car, Snoop.’ You know, that’s what he had on his license plate, the word SNOOP. Well, I didn’t think anything of it, but now I’m wondering whether it could have been whoever…well, whoever did this to him.”

  Great. Reporters were finding our witnesses before the police. I’d need to call MCT right away to make sure they interviewed this woman.

  As it turned out, MCT got to me first. The voice-mail light was on in my office. My pager, which I had left on the desktop, had vibrated its way onto the floor. I picked it up: four missed pages, all from Chuck’s cell. I assumed he was checking to make sure I knew the news had broken, but I called him right back anyway.

  “Kincaid?”

  The voice was familiar, but it wasn’t Chuck’s.

  “I was calling for Chuck Forbes?”

  “Yeah, it’s Mike. We’ve been trying to call you.”

  “Sorry, I just ran down the hall to watch the story. A friend of mine actually beat you to the punch.”

  “About what?” Mike asked.

  “The news. She saw the story and called me.”

  “The news about what?”

  Talking to Chuck’s partner was making my head hurt. “The Crenshaw case. The news got hold of it already. I thought that’s why you were calling. Someone needs to get out there and interview Crenshaw’s downstairs neighbor, by the way. Or has it been done already?”

  “Shit. I dunno. We’re dealing with something totally different.”

  A beeping on my phone told me I had another call coming in. I let it go to voice mail.

  “What’s up?”

  “We’ve got a problem searching the vic’s office.”

  “I signed off on that this morning,” I said, specifically remembering that the warrant application included not only the victim’s house and car but also his office at the paper. “The judges should all know it’s standard.”

  “That’s not the problem. Judge Schwartz signed it this morning, right after I took it in. We called the Oregonian a couple hours ago to make sure they knew what was going on and that we were coming.” That probably explained how the media had found out about the case before the bureau’s public information officer had released it. “Now that we’re here, they’re telling us not to go in.”

  “They know you’ve got a warrant?”

  “Faxed over a copy this morning to the facilities manager. It didn’t sound like a problem then, but it must have hit a bump somewhere up the road. They say they’ve got their lawyers looking at it.”

  “Shit.” The involvement of lawyers is always bad. Unless, of course, the lawyer is me. “Did they say why?”

  Another beep for another call. When
it rains, it pours. I ignored it again.

  “Not really. Sounds like a load of bull to me. We don’t let anyone else pick and choose whether we execute signed warrants. Chuck thought we should call you before we barged on in, though.”

  He thought right. Even though the warrant entitled the police to use any reasonable means necessary to conduct the search, the bureau was already stressed about the front-page photographs of cops in riot gear dispersing tear gas into last night’s crowds. We didn’t need Chuck and Mike splashed across the paper tomorrow, strong-arming their way past a pack of Jimmy Olsens and Peter Parkers.

  “Did they say who the lawyer was? Maybe David Bever from Dunn Simon?” I was pretty sure Bever’s first-amendment practice included work for the Oregonian.

  “Yeah, that sounds right,” Mike confirmed.

  “OK. Hold tight. I’ll call him and see what’s up. In the meantime, can you call Johnson and Walker? I just saw Crenshaw’s downstairs neighbor on the news. They need to talk to her.”

  When I hung up the phone, I realized that Alice Gerstein was standing patiently at my door. Of course, Alice always appeared patient. As the senior paralegal for the Major Crimes Unit, she had learned to maintain her cool.

  “Judge Wilson’s clerk was trying to get through. An attorney from Dunn Simon’s down there asking for a temporary restraining order on one of your cases.”

  I was already out of my chair, knowing exactly which case she was talking about.

  3

  Late Monday morning downtown at the Oregonian, Heidi Hatmaker was fact-checking an article in the paper’s research dungeon. She was enjoying the silence, but the day’s pace was definitely slower without the ordinary activity of the newsroom. She glanced at the clock, eager for a lunch break, and saw Tom Runyon at the door. Unfortunately, Tom spotted her too. Whenever Heidi’s editor laid eyes on her, it meant more work for Heidi.

  “There you are,” Tom said. “I’ve got a special project for you. It’s a little sensitive. My office?”