Close Case Read online

  “Yeah, a search on the Crenshaw case. We worked it out, though.” He wanted the play-by-play, but I explained I had detectives in the field waiting for instructions.

  Chuck was uncharacteristically glum when he answered the phone.

  “What’s wrong with you? Worried I’d blow the restraining order?”

  “No, I knew you’d handle it.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t even know how to put it,” he said lowering his voice. “It’s just so unbelievable. Johnson called. Matt York’s wife has been cheating on him.”

  “Alison was cheating?” I asked in disbelief. Chuck and Matt had met the day they both sat for the bureau’s civil service exam. They stuck together through the police academy and had been friends ever since. Chuck had been a groomsman at Matt’s wedding to Alison, and just last week, Matt had been one of the few buddies willing to work for pizza and beer when Chuck loaded the U-Haul and moved to my place.

  “Did Johnson tell you that Percy had a woman over a couple of nights ago? She parked in someone else’s spot?”

  “Yeah. A pissed-off neighbor wrote down the license plate.”

  “Right. Well, the plate came back to Matt, and the neighbor’s description of the driver matched Alison. Ray called her. She’d been seeing Percy for a few weeks.”

  “Oh, my God.” I suppose I should know from my own experience with marriage that you can never tell who might be cheating, but it seemed hard to imagine with the Yorks. As I understood it, Matt had fallen so hard when he met Alison Madison working in the precinct records room that his sergeant made him choose between a transfer or a shift change to avoid the romantic distraction. Matt chose the transfer so he and Alison would still have the same schedule. I’d had dinner with them a couple of times since Chuck and I had become an item, and I could have sworn that same intensity was still there. Last I heard, they were trying to get pregnant. In retrospect, maybe it had been a last ditch effort at happiness.

  “So now,” Chuck said, “just to make sure we’re squared away, we’ve got to nail down where Matt and Alison were on Sunday night. Alison was at a baby shower with ten other women, but no one has talked to Matt yet. I told Ray I’d do it.”

  “I’m sorry, Chuck. I know that’ll be hard.”

  “It’ll suck, basically. But, hey, what are you gonna do, right? Where are we on the warrant?”

  I knew Chuck well enough to know he desperately wanted a change of subject and mood. “Have you been fretting over there?”

  “When are you going to get it, babe? Worrying gets you nowhere. It’s all about the zen. We good to go?”

  “Nope. Say bye-bye to that warrant.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, I’m serious. Judge Wilson granted the order; the warrant’s void until further notice.”

  He waited for the expected “just kidding.” When he didn’t get it, the cussing commenced. “What the—”

  I had to smile. “What about the zen, babe?”

  “I apparently lost it with the contents of my bladder.”

  I walked him through the compromise Judge Wilson had hammered out.

  “So when are we supposed to do this thing?” he asked.

  “Soon, I think. The attorney will call me once he knows who’s going to help us on the newspaper’s end.”

  “And you can only have one person with you?”

  I needed to pick between Mike and Chuck. I cringed at the thought of publicly opting for my beau, but I trusted Chuck’s discretion more than Mike’s. The son of a former Oregon governor, Detective Charles Landon Forbes, Jr., might choose to eschew political niceties, but he understood them enough to tolerate them when necessary. With Mike, what you saw was what you got.

  “Why don’t you find something else for Mike to do? You and I will take care of the files.”

  “Sounds hot.”

  “You say that about everything.”

  “With you? You know it.”

  I was still smiling while I disconnected and dialed Johnson’s cell number.

  “Hey, it’s Sam. You get my message from Mike about the neighbor?”

  “We’re on it.”

  It had been six months, but the MCT detectives were still getting used to my style. I kept a closer watch on investigations than a lot of the other DAs. “Did you talk to her?”

  “Just walked out, in fact. Nice lady, but not real helpful. She didn’t bother turning around to look at whoever was talking to Crenshaw, so there’s no way we’re getting an ID from her. She can’t even remember anything about the voice, other than that he had an Or-uh-gahn accent.” He emphasized the last syllable of our state’s name, the way people from the rest of the country pronounced it. The wrong way.

  “How’s the search of the vic’s apartment going?”

  “Nothing obvious yet. Did Chuck tell you about Alison York?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you believe that shit? I guess you never know, huh?”

  No, you never did. I thought back to the shock of finding my ex-husband Roger atop his extramarital conquest on our dining room table.

  “Lucky for all of us, we can avoid what could have been an even worse scene,” he went on. “I just called Central. Matt put in OT on the swing shift Sunday, working the protest crowd. Chuck’s going to talk to Matt about the details, but it looks like he’s clear.”

  “So we finally find Percy’s dirty little secret, and we’ve still got nothing.”

  When victims’ messy entanglements are responsible for getting them killed, we usually get a whiff of it right away. Last year, we had a family mowed down in a home invasion in Sellwood. According to the family’s neighbors, coworkers, and fellow parishioners, they were plain old regular folks. A quick sweep of the house revealed otherwise. Plain folk don’t hide forty grand and nearly a kilo of heroin in the sofa cushions. Needless to say, the discovery helped MCT narrow the investigation considerably. In the odd case where the victim isn’t hinky, developing a theory to guide the investigation is a lot tougher.

  “We’re still digging,” Johnson said. Of course they were. The truth was, until you knew who did it, everything about the victim’s life remained in question. After all, which was more likely: that the case truly was the statistically improbable random killing, or that the police just hadn’t stumbled across the right dirt yet?

  “Anything helpful?”

  “Well, we’ve got the super I told you about this morning.”

  “The one with the generic description of two white guys in the lot.”

  “You got it. Peter Anderson. The guy’s seriously stressed. The condo owners are paging him incessantly, wanting every light in the parking lot replaced in case it burns out. Meanwhile, we’ve got him downtown looking through the books.”

  “Needle in a haystack,” I said, recognizing that it wasn’t anything Johnson didn’t already know.

  “I’m trying to get someone in ATTF to work up a montage of some likely candidates, but I’m not holding my breath.” It was a good idea. Members of the specialized Auto Theft Task Force could help. With the bureau’s fancy state-of-the-art X-imaging software, officers could now search a database of mug shots electronically, pulling up photos of perps with similar crimes with a few keystrokes. The problem was that Ray had no idea which known car thieves were most likely to get violent with a victim.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “I just don’t know anyone over there anymore. You know how it goes.”

  If interdepartmental cooperation at the bureau was anything like it was in the DA’s office, I wasn’t surprised that ATTF hadn’t dropped everything for a faceless member of the MCT. I offered to call Heidi Moawad, ATTF’s assigned prosecutor. I was pretty sure she’d help me; she had a reputation as a good egg, and I’d shared my friendlier side with her at a couple of tipsy happy hours. Most importantly, I had saved her two weeks ago from walking out of the courthouse elevator with a bra hanging out of her gym b
ag. We’re talking serious female bonding.

  “If all else fails, what about bringing in a sketch artist?”

  “Too early. We don’t usually get into something like that until everything else has dried up and all we’ve got left is an eyewitness and no suspect. We’re sort of in the reverse situation right now. Lots to look at still, and a witness who may not have seen anything helpful.”

  “All right, keep me up-to-date. I need to go brief Frist.”

  “Damn. Tell him to give you some breathing room already. It’s been six months.”

  “Yeah. How about you tell him for me?”

  Russ was still waiting for assurances that David Bever’s pop-in with Judge Wilson wasn’t going to derail the investigation. Jessica Walters was splayed generously in one of his office guest chairs, her Rockport loafers kicked off to expose obviously swollen feet, her suit jacket draped open around an enormous mass that was once a flat abdomen. I realized I was staring at the buttons that threatened to pop from the crisp white cotton stretched across her impressive girth.

  My gawking didn’t go unnoticed by Jessica. “Christ, Kincaid. Get a good enough look there?”

  “Sorry,” I said. I forced myself to lift my gaze from her belly to her eyes. “I guess I didn’t realize you were that far along.”

  “The magic of a black jacket,” she explained, momentarily holding her blazer closed in front of her. She was right; the move took off a good trimester. “Yep, I’ve only got one more month, and I’m not going to lie. I’ve gained fifty-two pounds.”

  Frist nearly spit up the water he was guzzling from a sports bottle. “Well, you better hope you’re giving birth to a four-year-old, because I’ve never heard of a fifty-pound newborn.”

  “Tell me about it. Julia’s been accusing me of using the pregnancy as an excuse to eat all the shit she normally keeps away from me. I keep telling her I’ll take it off breast-feeding, but she’s threatening to withhold sex if all this fat sticks around.” She grabbed her stomach for emphasis.

  “Uhh, I know you like fucking with my head, Walters,” Frist said, with his patented introductory gravel, “but that’s a little too much information.”

  I wasn’t sure if Frist was referring to the mammary activities or to Walters’s intimate mention of her longtime partner. Either way, his discomfort was ironic, because I had heard Frist and his buddies fantasize about both. Apparently, a big pregnancy bosom was sexy only if it wasn’t going to be used as intended, and the idea of Walters with her beautiful girlfriend was hot only when discussed among her male coworkers.

  “Deal with it,” Jessica retorted. “If your half of the species had to go through this shit, doctors would have invented an artificial womb fifty years ago. Anyway, Sam, this is what awaits if you too decide to enjoy the miracle that is human childbirth.”

  I silently added the physical discomforts of pregnancy to my long list of reasons for being squeamish about motherhood. Nine months of sobriety. The mall-hopping required for a whole new wardrobe of maternity clothes. No way could I swing a club past a belly like Jessica’s, so bye-bye to golf. Apparently indescribable physical pain. Stretch marks. Diapers and upchuck. Not to mention the idea of a little independent person who can’t talk, understand, or reason; who at the slightest sensation of discontent, could afford to pour every last drop of oceanic baby energy into a penetrating scream that convinces you—rationally or not—that you are an incompetent parent who fails to anticipate and satisfy your child’s most basic needs. No, thank you.

  “Not to change the subject, ladies, but what was the deal on that Dunn Simon thing?” Russ asked.

  I told him about David Bever’s motion to halt the search of Crenshaw’s office and Judge Wilson’s order.

  “You should’ve made Bever go through the City Attorney’s Office,” Russ suggested. “They’re the ones who represent the police, and the motion was aimed at the bureau, not us.”

  True enough, but I couldn’t see any advantage in involving Dennis Coakley’s office. “We’re lucky the judge called anyone at all, since Bever waltzed in to the ex parte docket. Besides,” I added, “most of the city attorneys don’t know anything about search and seizure anyway.”

  Jessica and Russ exchanged a knowing glance. Jessica was the one to speak the shared thought. “Not to mention the warm fuzzies between you and Dennis Coakley.”

  “And there’s that,” I said, with a sigh. I wondered how long it would take to heal the damage inflicted by one rash decision. OK, make that two. Three, maximum.

  “Well, don’t sweat it, Kincaid,” Russ said. “I’m not exactly Dennis Coakley’s favorite person right now either. Duncan and I had a meeting with him this morning about the Tompkins shooting.”

  “Is he worried about the police union?” On the rare occasions that the city tried to discipline a bad apple in the police barrel, the PPA went into overdrive. Two years earlier, the city tried to fire a vice unit lieutenant for having sex on duty in the back of his bureau-issued Crown Vic with a self-described escort. He chalked it up to a “lapse of judgment,” even though the activity had occurred thrice weekly for an eight-month period. The Portland Police Association beefed the termination, and the state Employment Relations Board eventually ordered the bureau to reinstate the backseat lothario, albeit with a demotion and a transfer out of vice. Ever since, I’ve wondered what a cop needs to do to lose the protection of the powerful PPA. That, and I always checked the upholstery before accepting a ride in a bureau car.

  “If my MCT guys are any indication, the union will balk if the city tries to go after Hamilton on the employment front.”

  “Are you kidding?” Frist jeered. “The city would love to see this thing go away. Coakley’s pressuring us to call the shooting clean, so the heat will come to Griffith instead of the mayor and the bureau. And don’t forget the money. The city’s already looking at major liability. A criminal indictment will add a couple of zeroes to the civil demand.”

  “So are you going along with it?”

  “We’ll send the case to the grand jury like all police shootings. But we haven’t decided yet which way to steer things.”

  Any prosecutor who tells you that the grand jury acts independent of the prosecutor’s office is relying on legalistic niceties. Sure, as a formal matter, the grand jury has its own powers to call witnesses, gather evidence, and decide whether, when, and which charges should be brought against a defendant. But there’s no judge or defense attorney in the grand jury room, only the prosecutor and the jurors. It doesn’t take a legal eagle to figure out the real dynamic.

  The opposing theoretical and practical realities are what make the grand jury the perfect vehicle for police shootings—or any other sensitive case, for that matter. Behind the sealed confines of the grand jury proceedings, we nudge the decision, subtly or not. Then, in the public statement announcing the grand jury’s decision, we proudly declare that we presented the evidence to a pool of independent citizens and entrusted them with the final call. It’s the ultimate CYA.

  Jessica had strong feelings about the Delores Tompkins shooting, and she wasn’t hiding them. “Fuck Geoff Hamilton. Some time in the pen would do that idiot good.”

  Russ was obviously more torn. “Maybe you should have this case, then. My whole problem with an indictment is the mandatory minimums that would apply if he actually got convicted.”

  “Listen to Mr. Lefty Lou over here.” Jessica hiked her thumb toward Frist. “It’s not like you’ve got a problem with those sentences when we’re doling them out against the rest of the docket.”

  “Oh, come on,” I interjected. “You can’t seriously believe Hamilton’s like the rest of our docket. He’s got piss-poor judgment, but it’s not like he went out looking to shoot someone. He was just doing his job when a situation got out of control.”

  I’m funny that way. Put me in a room with Mike Calabrese, hailing Officer Hamilton as the great American hero, and I’m ready to slam the cell door myself. Faced with Walt
er’s unsympathetic excoriation, I become Hamilton’s defender. When confronted with extreme positions, my tendency is to run to the center. Some might call it waffling. Chuck calls it contrarian. I choose to see it as fair-mindedness.

  Jessica was unpersuaded. “Maybe I’d give the benefit of the doubt to another officer. But Geoff Hamilton’s a thumper. Something wrong with that boy upstairs.”

  “I don’t know anything about him,” I conceded.

  “Well, one thing about working in Gangs, you have witnesses and victims who are usually the defendants on our cases. I take most of it with a grain of salt, but, trust me, Hamilton’s name comes up so often there’s got to be something there. He came into Northeast Precinct a couple years ago, and it was, like, immediately the neighborhood knew his name. One story has him complaining when the precinct’s fleet manager cleaned blood off the hood of his patrol car after a resist arrest. He wanted to send a message to the rest of the neighborhood. If we let him off, we can forget about getting the people up there to work with us anytime in the near future.”

  “And that,” Russ emphasized, “is exactly why Hamilton should probably start looking for a defense lawyer. The line officers will be pissed off for a while, but the alternative is pissing off the entire black community. We’ve sided with hothead cops in I don’t know how many police shootings, not to mention all the other use-of-force cases. But usually the victim was resisting arrest, or at least a wing nut. Tompkins seems pretty clean.”

  “If Tompkins wasn’t doing anything wrong, how did a cop wind up shooting her in the head?” I asked.

  “We’re still trying to figure out what happened,” Russ explained. “Hamilton’s union rep has him clammed up for now, and obviously the woman’s not around to tell us anything.”

  In other words, he had none of the details that might help him decide what was the right, not just the expedient, thing to do.

  “Well, I’m about to join the two of you in the hot seat because a bunch of kids can’t find anything better to do than run around making trouble.” Jessica’s change of subject was so abrupt, I wondered whether the thought of a single mother blown away, leaving a one-year-old and three-year-old orphaned, was too much even for her.