Thrill Kill (19 page)

“Do we have an address?”

“She went to his father’s address back in October and struck out.”

“Maybe we’ll have better luck,” Sinclair said.

A half hour later, Sinclair and Braddock met two uniforms in front of Garvin father’s house on Rawson Street in Oakland’s Maxwell Park neighborhood. A cold, steady rain fell, and Sinclair pulled his raincoat closed but left it unbuttoned so he could quickly access his gun. A four-foot fence surrounded the nicely maintained single-story stucco house, painted an olive-brown color. A green Ford Fusion sat in a newly stamped concrete driveway. Sinclair’s computer research had shown the house was built in 1922, was 1,400 square feet, and was valued at just over five hundred thousand. Even though the house was old and small, Sinclair still couldn’t afford to buy it.

Sinclair briefed the officers on the warrant and Garvin’s description: male, white, twenty-five, five-foot-ten, 160 pounds, brown hair, hazel eyes. Garvin had some minor arrests and a number of traffic tickets, the most recent on a seven-year-old Hyundai. Sinclair reminded the officers that three people were involved in the hanging and burning of his victim. Since they had worn masks, Garvin could be one of them.

Barton, the older officer of the two, made his way around the back, while the other accompanied Sinclair to the front door. Braddock stood at the front of the driveway, where she could cover the right side of the house as well the front in case Garvin squeezed out a front window as Sinclair entered. A man
in his late fifties with thinning brown hair and dressed in jeans and a denim shirt answered the door. “We’re looking for Sean Garvin,” Sinclair said.

“I’m his father. Like I told the other officers, he doesn’t live here.”

“Do you know where I could find him?”

“The boy doesn’t much tell me anything these days.”

“When did you last see him?” Sinclair asked.

“Sometime last summer.”

Had Mr. Garvin been more forthcoming, Sinclair might have believed his son wasn’t there, but he sensed the man would have no problem lying to the police. “We have a warrant for his arrest, and this is his listed address, so we need to come in and check.”

Mr. Garvin stepped aside. “You got the guns. I ain’t fool enough to try to stop you.”

Sinclair and the uniformed officer walked inside and through a small living room, formal dining room, and kitchen. Neat and clean. They followed a narrow hallway to a master bedroom so small the queen-size bed barely fit and into a second bedroom with two twin beds. The closet was filled with women’s clothes. When the kids had moved out, Mr. Garvin’s wife probably started using it as an overflow for the miniscule closet in the master. Both bathrooms were empty.

At the front door, Sinclair handed Mr. Garvin his card. “If you were to call me with his whereabouts, we wouldn’t need to keep on tromping through your house.”

Garvin grunted and slammed the door.

The four of them regrouped in the street. Sinclair saw a window curtain in a house across the street move and a face in the window quickly disappear. “Why don’t your guys knock on two or three doors each way on this side of the street,” Sinclair said to the uniformed officers. “See if anyone knows anything about Sean. We’ll take the houses on the other side.”

The officers didn’t look too thrilled about knocking on doors in the rain, but they kept it to themselves and trudged down the street. Sinclair and Braddock crossed the street to a yellow stucco house about the same size as Garvin’s. A short black woman with white hair opened the door before they knocked. She leaned on a cane with her left hand.

“Come in, officers,” she said. She shuffled into the living room and lowered herself into a rocking chair next to the front window. “Mr. Garvin’s an ornery old man, isn’t he?”

Sinclair removed his hat. “He didn’t seem to like the police too much.”

“In the thirty years he’s lived in the neighborhood, I don’t think he found anyone he liked.”

“Do you know his son?” Sinclair asked.

“You must mean Sean. The other boy—his name escapes me—he went away to college years ago and never came back.”

“Yes, Sean. Have you seen him lately?”

“Last week maybe. He comes by the house every week or two. Mostly when his mom’s home and Mr. Garvin’s at work. I don’t think the father likes Sean much.”

“Does he come alone?”

“Oh, yeah. His friends aren’t welcome there. Haven’t seen any of them in years.”

“Do you know any of them by name?”

“No, it’s been too long, and I’m not good with names anymore.”

“Does he have a car?”

“A little one. Gray. I’m not very good with car makes anymore either. They all seem to look alike these days. Did the boy do something wrong?”

“We’d just like to talk to him,” Sinclair said. “What brings him around the house if he and his father don’t get along?”

“Walks in with a heavy garbage bag. Walks out with shirts and pants on hangers and a box of neatly folded underwear. You’d think a boy his age could do his own laundry.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us about Sean?”

“He was a nice boy when he was little. Used to ride his bike on the street with the other boys his age. When he got older—maybe about high school—he got real quiet. Seemed lost. Lots of boys that age try to figure out the world and where they fit in. Didn’t seem like he ever did. Couple years after he graduated, he moved out. Mrs. Garvin said he wanted to be on his own. I think she misses him, being alone with her husband. Now that I think about it, doing Sean’s laundry’s probably a good thing for her. Lets her see her son on a regular basis.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where he moved to, would you?”

“Sorry, officer.”

“When will Mrs. Garvin be home?”

“Right at five thirty-five. Sharp. Monday through Friday. Mr. Garvin leaves for work at three forty-five. Their marriage probably works best when they don’t see each other much.”

Sinclair made a mental note to come back later to see if Mrs. Garvin was more cooperative than her husband was. “Is there anyone else in the neighborhood who might know where we could find him?”

“He’s always at the Mills Café. You know—over on MacArthur, across from the college. My girlfriends from church and I go to lunch a couple times a week. Sometimes there. Seems like Sean’s always sitting there with his computer, drinking coffee.”

Sinclair jotted down her name and contact information and left his card, asking her to call if she saw him.

Both officers were sitting in their cars when Sinclair and Braddock crossed the street.

Barton lowered his window halfway, obviously trying to keep the rain from soaking the interior. “We went three houses down both ways. Only one resident home. She knew nothing.”

Sinclair told him about Garvin frequenting the Mills Café.

“I’ve been there,” Barton said. “Years ago it was a real dive, but since the hipsters started moving into the area, it’s gotten better.”

After Barton described the layout of the café, Sinclair briefed a quick plan where Barton and the other officer would cover the two doors while he and Braddock entered casually to see if Garvin was there. Sinclair followed the two marked cars to Mills Café, less than a mile away. It was located in a decrepit building on the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and Seminary Avenue next to a liquor store and nail salon. A new blue awning stretched along the front of the café, and four metal tables with chairs were arranged outside, waiting for a sunny day. Across the street was Mills College, a private women’s liberal arts school that was highly ranked among colleges in the western United States. But Sinclair always wondered why parents would spend over forty thousand dollars a year on tuition to send their daughters to college in the middle of one of the most dangerous cities in the nation.

Sinclair and Barton approached the front door, and Braddock and the other officer went around the side to the back. Sinclair left Barton and stepped inside. He scanned the room. There were about twenty round tables surrounded by chairs crowded into the dining area. A counter where customers placed orders and picked up their food covered the back wall. Behind it were a swinging door and an open window that led to the kitchen. Every table was occupied. A dozen people stood in line at the counter. The customers, a mix of black, white, Hispanic, and Asian men and women, most under the age of thirty, reflected the diversity of the student population and that of the surrounding neighborhood.

Sinclair saw Braddock enter the back door and begin looking over the crowd. The plan was for them each to walk through the café looking for Garvin and go out the opposite door if they didn’t see him. Sinclair slowly walked toward the back door, looking closely at the face of every white male, hoping to
recognize Garvin from a driver’s license photo from four years ago. Sinclair weaved between two tables and spotted a man wearing a baseball cap, his face buried in a laptop computer. The man glanced up. Sinclair stopped.

A look of surprise and panic shot across Garvin’s face as he made Sinclair for a cop. Garvin’s hands dropped to his lap. He slowly and deliberately rose from his chair, a black handgun in his right hand.

Sinclair swept back his raincoat and suitcoat and grabbed his Sig Sauer P220 while simultaneously yelling, “Police! Freeze!”

Garvin had the drop on him. All he had to do was raise the pistol and pull the trigger while Sinclair was still clearing his holster.

Sinclair didn’t think. Thinking took too long. He reacted as he’d been drilled in similar scenarios hundreds of times. Draw the gun from its holster. As it’s coming up, punch the gun forward to meet the left hand, which locks onto the right hand. Continue to bring the gun forward to eye level and pull the trigger the microsecond the front sight aligns on the target’s torso.

Sinclair felt as if he were moving in slow motion. Front sight on the target. He took up half the slack in the double action trigger and stopped.

Garvin’s gun was still at his side. Sinclair was locked into a strong Weaver shooting stance, both hands on his pistol, the sights aligned on the suspect’s sternum.

Four girls sat at a table between him and Garvin. Even though Sinclair didn’t take his eyes off his target, he knew the faces of each girl showed sheer terror. He prayed they wouldn’t leap up into his line of fire. Beyond Garvin were more tables of people and more still at the counter. Some customers rose from their tables. Sinclair heard screams as people rushed toward the back door.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Braddock fighting her way toward Garvin through the throng of people pushing to get out
the back door. Although it had been drummed into him and every Oakland cop to always consider their backstop—where their bullet would end up if it missed their target—Sinclair was only slightly concerned about the people behind Garvin. The best way to avoid hitting them was by putting any rounds he fired in the center of Garvin’s chest.

Garvin’s gun hadn’t moved. Still, Sinclair knew Garvin could raise it and shoot faster than Sinclair’s brain could tell him to pull the trigger and send the requisite command to his index finger.

“Garvin, drop the gun!” Sinclair bellowed. “Now!”

Garvin didn’t move. His face was frozen. His mouth gaped open.

Braddock slipped through the crowd of people to a position behind Garvin.

Sinclair saw Braddock holster her Glock and wondered what the hell she was doing. Her right hand reached across her body, under her coat, and came out with her ASP. With a backward flick of her wrist, the eight-inch expandable baton snapped out to its full twenty-one-inch length. She swung it down across Garvin’s forearm with a loud crack.

Garvin’s gun flew across the floor. Braddock threw her arm across Garvin’s shoulder, trying to drag him to the floor. Sinclair pushed through the four girls in front of him and holstered his pistol. Grabbing Garvin’s coat, he pulled him to the ground, landing Braddock on top of him. Barton scooped up Garvin’s pistol while the other officer jumped on top of the suspect and handcuffed him.

The two uniformed officers pulled Garvin to his feet and shoved him through the crowd to the front door. After a thorough pat down, they crammed him into the backseat of a patrol car.

Barton slammed the door and turned to face Sinclair. His nostrils flared as he obviously fought to control his breathing and the adrenalin still coursing through his veins. “Why the
hell didn’t you shoot?” Barton yelled. “You had the shot. He had a gun.” Barton took a breath and half-turned as if he was walking away. Then he turned back, faced Sinclair again, and yelled, “Why the fuck didn’t you shoot?”

Sinclair said nothing. He was wondering the same thing.

When Sinclair and Braddock entered room 201, Garvin was sitting in the corner with a cast covering his right arm from the knuckles of his hand to just below the elbow. Sinclair had Garvin sit between him and Braddock at the small metal table.

“What did the hospital say?” Sinclair asked.

“The bitch cop broke my wrist.” Garvin glared at Braddock. “They said I need to come back next week for surgery.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” Sinclair said.

“It wasn’t even a real gun,” Garvin replied.

After Garvin had been safely confined in the patrol car, Sinclair examined the gun. It was a Crossman pellet gun, designed to look like a Colt .45 Model 1911. From a distance, no one could tell the difference.

“You’re very lucky an experienced police officer like my partner was there,” Braddock said. “It sure looked real, and most police officers would’ve shot. What are you carrying a BB gun for anyway?”

Garvin shrugged his shoulders.

“To shoot out windows and engage in other acts of vandalism with your anarchist friends?” Braddock said.

He shrugged his shoulders again.

“Right now, you’re under arrest on a warrant,” Sinclair said. “But that’s not why we picked you up.”

“I figured that.”

Sinclair and Braddock had discussed the interview strategy before coming into the room. There was a great deal that Sinclair didn’t know about the murder, and Garvin could be one of the suspects from the park. It was even possible that the three men in the park weren’t the ones who choked and shot Dawn but were instead the cleanup crew.

Sinclair slid the Miranda form from his folio and read it verbatim.

Garvin looked up at the camera in the corner of the room. “Lawyer,” he said.

“Suit yourself.” Sinclair took out a blank arrest form and filled in Garvin’s name and birthdate. “What’s your home address?”

“Lawyer,” Garvin said.

“You’re required to provide this information,” Sinclair said. “If you don’t, you’ll sit in the booking cell until you do.”

Garvin recited his parent’s Rawson Street address.

“Bullshit,” Sinclair said. “We’ve been there and searched the house. You don’t live there.”

Garvin shrugged his shoulders.

“Right now, there’s a relatively low bail on your warrant. Even if you can’t make it, a judge will probably release you on your own recognizance when you go to court tomorrow. But only if you have a valid address that shows you’re a responsible and permanent member of the community.”

“Twenty-seven-oh-one High Street.”

“Apartment number?” Sinclair asked.

“Twenty-three.”

“Who do you live there with?”

“I know what this is about,” Garvin said. “I was working that night.”

“What night are you talking about?” Sinclair asked.

“Saturday night. The night that whore was killed and strung up in the tree.”

“Since you’re bringing it up, work address and occupation is another box I need to complete on this form.”

“I work at Best Buy.”

“The one in Oakland?” Sinclair asked.

“Yeah, by Emeryville.”

“Best Buy closes at nine. The woman was probably killed after that. So if you think you’ve got an alibi through work, you’re wrong.” Sinclair was on rocky ground, because if Garvin said something in response to Sinclair’s comment that incriminated him in the murder, a judge might rule that Sinclair induced him to continue talking even when Garvin clearly asked for a lawyer. But Sinclair didn’t care.

“Three of us did inventory after hours that night. I was there from closing until six the next morning.”

“If I can verify that, we can disregard the Miranda stuff. I just want to know who was at the park that night. I understand you know them.”

“The whole world knows some bitch shot off her mouth on the Internet about who it was, and then one of those stupid fucks chimed in.”

“Then you know the police saw the same thing on your anarchist website. I’m trying to figure out who Gothic Geek and Anarchist Soldier are.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Just send me to jail. I’m not saying anything else without a lawyer.”

“Have it your way. We have your phone and laptop. If you give us permission to search them, I can return them to you by the time you’re released from jail. If you make us get a warrant, the technology in both will be obsolete by the time you get them back.”

“Fuck you.”

Sinclair and Braddock left the interview room, finished Garvin’s paperwork, and took him to the jail. Before he turned Garvin over to the jailers, Sinclair shoved his card into Garvin’s pocket in case he changed his mind after a few hours.

Sinclair and Braddock drove through the rain-soaked city to High Street, about a mile from Garvin’s parents’ house. Two uniformed officers were waiting out front when they arrived.

Sinclair instructed one of the uniforms to stay outside in case someone jumped out a window. Sinclair, Braddock, and the other officer approached the front of the three-story building. An occupant coming out held the door for them. Sinclair rang the bell and knocked on the door of unit twenty-three. Having the manager open the door for them would’ve been the easiest approach, but they didn’t have the legal exigency to do so. At the same time, they didn’t have sufficient probable cause to get a warrant based on anonymous Internet chatter and sources the intelligence unit wouldn’t identify. He sent Braddock to the manager’s office to see if they had information about Garvin, his roommate, and any friends. Meanwhile, he sent the uniform down the hall one way to knock on doors, and he went down the hall the opposite way.

A petite Hispanic woman in her early twenties with a small boy clinging to her leg answered the first door Sinclair knocked on. Sinclair showed his badge. “Do you know the man who lives next door? We think his name’s Sean Garvin.”

“Yes. My husband know him,” she replied in somewhat broken English.

“Is your husband home?”

“He stop work at five. Then come home.”

“Does Sean, the man next door, have a roommate?”

“Ed.”

“Do you know Ed’s last name?”

“Edgar is his proper name. I do not know surname.” She nervously shuffled her feet, looked back into her apartment, and then back at Sinclair. “Come in. You must see.”

Sinclair followed her into a small, basic apartment filled with mismatched, used furniture. She led him down a hallway into a bedroom with a full-size bed and a particleboard dresser. She pointed to a mirrored closet door. Sinclair looked closely and saw
a hole in the middle of the shattered glass. Across the room in the opposite wall—part of the common wall with Garvin’s apartment next door—he spotted a small hole and loose plaster in the drywall.

“When did this occur?” Sinclair asked.

She looked at him confused.

“When did you first see this?”

“When I came home today. About three o’clock.”

“When was it all okay?”

“My husband and I leave today at seven in morning. He go work. I go where I work day care—watch children.”

“Why didn’t you call the police when you saw this?” Sinclair asked.

“I tell husband when he come home. He do.”

Sinclair phoned Braddock and asked her to bring the manager with a key to Garvin’s apartment. Shining his flashlight into the closet, he searched for the path the bullet would have taken after it went through the door. There was no hole in the back wall, so the bullet probably hit the tightly packed clothes in the closet. He’d let the techs search for it later.

Sinclair met Braddock outside Garvin’s apartment and told her about the bullet hole.

“Sounds like plenty of exigent circumstances to me.” She put the manager’s key in the lock and pushed open the door.

Sinclair yelled, “Police, anybody home?” He drew his gun and entered. Braddock and the uniformed officer followed.

Sinclair took two steps inside and stopped.

A body lay on the living-room floor in front of him. Thick blood soaked the dirty, worn carpet under the man’s head. A two-inch piece of skull was missing from the back of his head, and brain matter had oozed and congealed in his hair. Checking for a pulse was a waste of time.

They swept through the rest of the apartment looking for other people—dead or alive—but it was clear. The officer used his radio to request a field supervisor, an evidence technician, and additional units. Sinclair also had him request an ambulance.
Even though there was no doubt the man was dead, as long as the victim’s head was still attached to the body, no one wanted the police making the official determination.

The victim was lying on his side, looking like he collapsed in a heap when the bullet entered his brain. Sinclair gloved up and lowered himself to the ground, careful to avoid getting blood on his pants. The victim’s right eye socket looked like it was filled with grape jelly. Probably the bullet entrance. Once he made sure the officer was out of the room, Sinclair removed the victim’s wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a driver’s license, copying the name Edgar Pratt and a DOB that made him twenty-four into his notebook. Sinclair returned the wallet to his pocket so the coroner wouldn’t be the wiser.

“That’s the roommate according to the rental agreement,” Braddock said. “Both Garvin and Pratt work at Best Buy. There’s not much more on the application than that.”

Sinclair discovered a hole in the living-room wall about five and a half feet high. He walked back to the body and pointed his hand toward the hole. Looking to his right, he got down on his hands and knees and peeked under a worn maroon upholstered chair. He located what he was looking for—a shiny brass shell casing. “It’s a three-eighty,” he announced to Braddock.

“Wasn’t that the caliber of the slug they recovered from Dawn?” Braddock asked.

“Sure was. We’ll need to find the slug in the neighbor’s apartment for a comparison, but I’m sure it’ll be a match.”

“I can’t believe the bullet traveled that far,” Braddock said.

“I can. It looks like it entered Pratt’s head through the eye socket, so it might have entered the brain without hitting bone. It would still have plenty of energy when it came out of the back of the head. It took nothing to punch through two pieces of sheetrock—one at this wall and one at the neighbor’s wall. As long as it didn’t hit a stud, it had enough energy to smash through the glass and the particleboard closet door.”

“Check this out,” Braddock said as she crouched next to a series of shelves that held a large flat-screen TV, cable company receiver, and dozens of cords. Braddock held up a wireless controller in her gloved hand. “These are the DualShock controllers for PlayStation Four.”

“I didn’t take you for a gamer.”

Braddock laughed. “When that husband of mine had his knee surgery last summer, he was confined to the house and spent hours a day on the couch playing different SWAT and military games. He claimed he was honing his professional skills.”

“Where’s the box?”

“See this clean spot,” Braddock said, pointing to rectangular area on the shelf surrounded by thick dust. “This is exactly the size of the PS Four console.”

“The killer took the box?”

“That system is more than just a box,” Braddock said. “It’s a computer. They cost around four hundred without any accessories, so they could’ve taken it for its value. But more likely, they took it because of the data that’s on it—player names and a record of any chat messages between players. You can even e-mail or Facebook message through it. When people play online together, they’re often chatting via text, and the system would probably have a record of that.”

“So that box might’ve told us who the other suspects in Dawn’s murder were and who killed Edgar Pratt,” Sinclair said.