Red Line (20 page)

Sinclair staggered into Maloney’s office. He hadn’t moved from his computer in two hours, and every muscle in his body ached. His knees burned and his feet throbbed. A tall, slim man dressed in the tan uniform of the California Highway Patrol sat in Maloney’s guest chair.

“This is Officer Clark with the MAIT team,” said Maloney, referring to the CHP’s Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team. “He was observing an autopsy on what they assumed was a fatal accident when the coroner noticed something.”

Clark told them about responding to a multicar collision around three in the morning. A woman had fallen or had been pushed from a red Mini Cooper, which caused a six-car pile-up. Ambulances transported five people to ACH for a variety of injuries, the woman code blue and pronounced upon arrival.

“When I got to the coroner’s office,” said Clark, “they showed me two flex-cuffs that were transported with the body. The paramedics said her ankles and wrists were bound with them. They cut them to render treatment. The coroner
pointed out a peace sign medallion around her neck and told me that is a signature of your killer.”

Sinclair felt lightheaded. The killer was to some extent replicating what had happened to Samantha and Jane. Samantha was hit by a car just like this victim. Samantha was drugged, as was Zachary. Jane committed suicide, and Susan’s death by cutting her wrists was a classic suicide method. He grabbed the back of the chair alongside the one Clark was sitting at. “You got an ID on her?”

“No ID. She was wearing blue scrubs, so we’re guessing she works in the medical field.”

“Description?” asked Sinclair, feeling better and letting go of the chair.

“Female white, late twenties, five-six, one-fifty, brown, and brown.”

“That doesn’t fit any of the people we’re protecting, but I’ll check with O’Connor to make sure,” said Sinclair. “Did you recover the Mini Cooper?”

“It fled the scene. Male white driver, no further description. We’ve got a comm order out for it.”

“Wearing scrubs,” said Sinclair, thinking aloud. “The van dumped near San Francisco General. Maybe he needed transportation and snatched a nurse or someone driving by.”

“Then why the flex cuffs and medallion?” asked Braddock.

“You’re right.” Sinclair shook his head. His brain was operating at half speed. “We need to get her photo to SF General, see if anyone can ID her.”

“The body’s pretty mangled,” said Clark, “but the face is identifiable.”

Sinclair moved toward the door. “Let’s go.”

“Matt, you need to stay here,” said Maloney.

“This is a homicide. It’s my case. I need to identify the victim, visit the crime scene—”

“The scene’s gone, Sergeant,” said Clark. “We opened the freeway hours ago.”

Braddock said, “I’ll take a photo of the victim at the coroner’s office, send it to the team working the area of the van, have them show it around the hospital.”

“I need to interview the witnesses,” said Sinclair. “Someone saw enough to ID the driver as a white male. They must know more.”

“Our officers asked the right questions,” said Clark. “If there was more, we’d have gotten it.”

“It’s my case, damn it. I’m the one who needs to do the asking.”

“Matt,” Maloney said.

Sinclair looked at the lieutenant. Maloney met his gaze but said nothing more. Sinclair felt the eyes of everyone on him.

Maloney turned to Clark. “We’ll assume jurisdiction of the investigation. How soon can you get us copies of your reports, photos, and scene work?”

A phone in Clark’s pocket chirped. He listened for a minute. “That was dispatch. A unit spotted a red Mini Cooper on the Nimitz Freeway in Hayward and lit him up. The car took off, but we caught him on the city streets after a minor accident. Driver’s a nineteen-year-old African American male.”

“The driver’s black?” said Sinclair.

“Yeah, the driver told our arresting officer he found the car with the key fob in it on East Eighteen Street in Oakland. There was a purse in the car with hospital ID and a driver’s license in the name of Melissa Mathis, age twenty-seven, address in San Francisco.”

“Mathis?” asked Sinclair.

“Yeah, why?”

“Shit.”

“What?” asked Maloney.

“The lawyer from Children’s that I talked to yesterday—Phyllis Mathis. I’ll bet she’s got a daughter named Melissa.”

Sinclair propped his leg on the toilet seat in the Marriott Hotel suite and applied a fresh bandage over the deepest cut. It had started bleeding a few hours ago when he stretched at his desk. Now it throbbed. His knees were scabbed over. He replaced the bandages on his feet. Although they were still tender, they didn’t hurt as much as earlier. He popped two Tylenol and walked to the dressing area. The plush carpet felt good on his bare feet.

Sinclair removed two white shirts from their packaging and hung them in the closet so that the wrinkles would fall out enough by morning and he wouldn’t need to iron them. Ironing was a skill he never acquired. He looked at the light gray pants and jacket—“suit separates,” the personal shopper at Macy’s called them. He had bought a regular suit as well, but the alterations wouldn’t be complete until Monday.

He was pulling on the new, overpriced Levis and polo shirt when a knock sounded at the door. Sinclair peered through the peephole and opened the door. Officer Tokepka stood alongside a hotel employee with a room service cart. Tokepka wore a sport coat and tie, his dress shirt stretched
tight over a ballistic vest. Sinclair was pleased when he learned Tokepka volunteered for the duty and was assigned the first shift. He couldn’t think of a better person in the department to guard his door.

“I thought you were going to shower and go to bed, Sarge. You haven’t had more than a few hours of shut-eye in days.”

“I’m bushed, but I knew if I didn’t eat first, I’d regret it halfway through the night,” said Sinclair. “Why don’t you come in—I can have them bring something up for you.”

“We’re fine. Besides, our place is outside.”

“This feels weird. All my life I’ve been the one doing the protecting.”

“We’re proud to be doing this.” Tokepka stood to the side and the employee pushed the cart inside.

The attendant placed a tray on the coffee table in the living room and arranged an assortment of plates, glasses, and utensils. “New York strip, medium rare, baked potato, and steamed broccoli. The food service manager wanted you to have this—on the house—as his thanks for all you’ve done.” He pulled a bottle of Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon from the cart and a corkscrew from his pocket.

“No thanks.”

He set the bottle and a wine glass on the table. “I’ll just leave it in case you change your mind.” He placed the corkscrew on the table beside the wine.

Sinclair didn’t argue as the man pushed his cart out of the room.

He devoured the salad and roll and then cut into his steak as he reviewed the day’s activities. After Phyllis
Mathis made a positive ID of her daughter, he had spoken to her on the phone. She held it together, but just barely. Meanwhile, the investigators in San Francisco interviewed the hospital parking lot attendant who noticed Melissa leaving the garage alone in her car. Techs recovered clear latents from the Mini Cooper’s interior, and the crime lab compared them with elimination prints from Melissa and the doper that CHP had arrested driving her car. Three unidentified prints remained, which the lab ran through ALPS, the California Automated Latent Print System. They got no matches, which meant whoever left the prints had never been arrested for anything serious.

CHP had brought the driver of the Mini Cooper to homicide so Sinclair and Braddock could interview him. The man said he had found the car unattended outside a housing project at six in the morning with the doors unlocked. It started when he pressed the ignition button. When the highway patrol tried to stop him, he panicked and fled. After two hours in room 201, Sinclair was convinced the man was telling the truth and didn’t know anything else. CHP took custody of him and booked him for auto theft and an assortment of traffic violations. When Sinclair returned from his Macy’s shopping jaunt with Braddock and Kim, he sat at his desk and read a hundred pages of reports that had been written by five different police agencies about the shooting and arson at his apartment, the arson of the van, Mathis’s murder, and the recovery of her car. Sinclair had still not received a call from NYPD by the time Braddock, looking as exhausted as he felt, dropped him off at his hotel room.

Sinclair chewed another bite of the steak and looked at the bottle of wine. With everything he’d been through in the last twenty-four hours, and the many family members he’d broken death news to over the last few days, he was feeling the strain. Mrs. Mathis never expected she’d be a target, but he should’ve figured it out. He was tired—mentally and emotionally exhausted. Thoughts swirled around his head: finding the killer before he took another life, his relationship with Liz, Chief Brown’s scrutiny, his failure to solve Samantha’s case when he should have—the cause of all that had happened.

Along with everything else he’d done, the killer stole one of the few moments of joy homicide investigators get to experience—the celebration of solving a case. Sinclair didn’t get to feel elation from solving Samantha’s case. He didn’t get to high-five his partners. He didn’t get to pull the paper with Samantha’s number from the case packet, draw a thick red line through it, and pin it on the board for all to see. He didn’t get to go to the Warehouse and drink beers others bought for him. Instead, he was in the midst of the next killing. One of Sinclair’s favorite moments was calling a victim’s mother and telling her he arrested her son or daughter’s killer. Over the phone, he would hear tears of relief and gratitude along with words of thanks and praise.

With Samantha, there was no mother to tell. Even if Jane were alive, Sinclair doubted he could feel much joy from telling her he solved a case he should have put a red line through many months ago.

He did feel good about surviving the killer’s attack. That in itself deserved a celebration. He deserved a reward after all he’d been through. He uncorked the bottle and
held it under his nose, breathing in the oaky aroma. One glass wouldn’t hurt. It would help him sleep. And he desperately needed a good night’s sleep. He poured a half glass of wine, stared at it for several minutes, and poured the glass and then the bottle out in the sink.

At six sharp, Sinclair heard a knock at the door.

Officer Randy Norris stood in the doorway. Norris had joined the department five years before Sinclair, and they served together as officers on the SWAT team. He now worked in the training division as a firearms instructor and range master, but last night he took an overtime shift guarding Sinclair’s door.

“Looks like you have a visitor and breakfast,” said Norris.

Norris ushered Walt and the hotel worker into the room and stood by as the room service attendant arranged food and coffee on the table in the living room and then escorted him back out.

Norris said, “When my relief comes on at eight, I’m heading to the range to run qualifying shoots for day shift.”

“On a Sunday?” asked Sinclair.

“No shortage of overtime these days. I’ll do your gun inspection if you stop by. That’ll satisfy the officer-involved shooting protocol, and you won’t have to leave it and carry a loaner gun.”

Sinclair told Norris he’d try, and Norris returned to his post in the hallway.

Sinclair poured coffee for Walt and him. “I’m sorry I bothered you last night.”

“You almost picked up a drink,” said Walt. “You can call me anytime for that.”

Sinclair picked at a bowl of melon and strawberries. “I don’t know why I poured that glass of wine.”

“You’re an alcoholic. That’s what alcoholics do.”

“That simple, huh?”

“Yeah, but you didn’t drink. That’s the biggest step toward the solution.”

Sinclair finished the fruit and started on the scrambled eggs. He wondered if a different job was the solution—one without the emotional upheavals of homicide.

“How long will you stay here?” asked Walt.

“At least until we get this guy. It’ll take months to repair my apartment, but I can’t go back there. My neighbors used to feel safe having a cop next door. Not now.”

“I spoke to Fred. He’d like you to stay with us,” said Walt. “The guest house in the back has been empty since his daughter died. I think you’d find it more comfortable than a hotel room.”

“As long as the killer’s out there, anyone near me’s in danger.”

“The estate is very secure. You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.”

“Right now, I’m just focusing on getting through today.”

Walt grinned. “One day at a time.”

“I just need to catch this asshole and . . .” Sinclair stared at a landscape print on the wall.

“What are you thinking?”

Failure. That was the crux of the thoughts swarming around his head. How his failures caused people around
him to die. After his brother’s death, he thought he had escaped it. He had become a police officer. He thought he had made good. Then he got called back into the Army. He was part of a small team of soldiers sent to capture an Iraqi insurgent who had planted an IED that took out part of an army convoy. He knew the mission required a platoon of forty, but he didn’t challenge the order to do it with a squad of ten. He ignored the other signs: the deserted outdoor market, the absence of kids in the street, the doors of houses closing when they rolled into position. The people in the neighborhood knew the insurgents were there and that there would be a fight. He should’ve pulled them back, but he didn’t. Five men died because of his failures that day and more died in the months to come because the bomber they failed to capture buried even more IEDs.

Sinclair shook his head. “This was the same way I felt when I was going after a different killer. That’s when my alcoholism started.”

“Events don’t cause alcoholism. Sometimes we stop caring and then stop controlling our drinking because of tragedies in our life, but many people get through them without drinking.”

“Before that point in my life—before I shot that killer—I controlled it . . . well most of the time. I know I started drinking a lot more after Iraq, but I was keeping it together. Just barely at times, but I was doing okay. At least I thought so at the time.”

“Not that shooting someone under any circumstances isn’t traumatic, but what was different about this?”

“I sort of went off like the lone ranger. Alonzo Moore had killed at least three people. All young black men. One was a competitor—dealing crack on Moore’s turf. Another
was one of Moore’s underlings who smoked up the crack he was supposed to sell. The third also worked for Moore and let a tossup steal the money he made from selling Moore’s dope.”

“What’s a tossup?”

“A slut, in street slang. Or in this case, a woman who exchanges sexual favors for a few hits off a crack pipe.”

“I wonder what I might have been willing to do for a drink or drug if I hadn’t stopped,” said Walt.

“I flipped someone in Moore’s organization who witnessed all three murders. The case was going to trial when my witness was killed. Everyone on the streets knew Moore did it. He wanted everyone to know—you deal on my turf, you lose my drugs or money, you testify against me, you die. There went the case.”

“That must have been hard to swallow.”

“Everyone else in the unit told me to let it go—that I’d done all I could do—but even though the victims weren’t exactly pillars of society, no one had the right to take their lives. My first partner in homicide said it was our responsibility to speak for the dead. That the lives of every victim mattered, no matter who or what he was. He was right about that, and I couldn’t allow Moore to kill without consequence.”

Walt’s face tightened. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t go out and whack him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Sinclair, seeing the concern in Walt’s face. “I started following him, waiting for him to screw up. I did it on my own time because the lieutenant wouldn’t allow it. Since I was technically off-duty, I couldn’t use a department undercover car, and my unmarked car would have been made a mile away in that part of town. So, when
I got off shift, I took off my suit coat and tie, pulled on a windbreaker, and cruised West Oakland in a rental to see what Moore was up to and who he was associating with. I figured that, eventually, one of his associates would get arrested for something and I could turn him, or Moore would make a mistake himself and I’d be there when it happened.”

“Sounds like you were determined.”

“Obsessed is more like it.”