“Yes, Your Honor.”
He said, “If we were on a TV show, I would say, ‘This is highly irregular.’”
Irregular or not, the judge called court into recess, and Yuki, Zac, and I followed the judge into his private chambers. He didn’t ask us to sit, so we stood around his desk.
Judge Rabinowitz said, “What can you tell me about this individual, Sergeant?”
I said, “The man we believe was the passenger in the stolen white Chevy, the one who shot officer Morton, is a drug dealer by the name of Antoine Castro.”
“You have him in custody?”
“He was shot dead yesterday, Your Honor.”
“You say the man suspected of shooting Officer Morton is dead?” Rabinowitz said. “And what do you infer from that, Mr. Jordan?”
Zac Jordan said, “As I’ve told the court, Clay Warren was terrified that the shooter would have him killed or harm his family. Absent the immediate threat, my client may cooperate with the DA. If he tells what he knows about the drugs in the car, if had a working relationship with Castro, we may be able to roll up some major criminal activity.”
“Lot of ifs and maybes,” Rabinowitz said.
Zac added, “We need a little time, Your Honor. The defense requests a continuance.”
“This is highly irregular,” said the judge. “But you’ve got until one week from today.”
Chapter 109
Leonard Barkley knocked on the back door of a small brown stucco house on Thornton Avenue, two doors down from the nearly identical house where he’d lived with Randi for four years.
His neighbor, friend, and coconspirator, Marty Floyd, opened the door and gave Barkley a wide smile.
“I was worried about you, man,” said Floyd. “I never saw so many cop cars as was on TV yesterday. Hey. I’ve got pork chops and potatoes still hot. Sound good?”
“Fantastic. Got milk?”
“Sure do. And I set up the game. Maybe we can go a few rounds.”
“I’ve walked miles,” said Barkley. “I need to wash up, change out of these clothes. And no kidding, I need to sleep.”
“Eat first. Shower later. Sleep when you’re dead. Sounds like a T-shirt slogan, doesn’t it?”
Barkley laughed. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning. He couldn’t remember when he’d last laughed.
“You win, Marty. Eat first.”
Marty Floyd—transit cop, political junkie, and full-ranking member of Moving Targets—carefully placed a heaping plate of food in front of his friend Barkley and sat down across from him at the kitchen table.
“Barko,” he said. “You’re a folk hero. There’s going to be ballads written about you someday. How’d it go down?”
Barkley put his phone down next to his plate. A clamshell burner. He sawed off a hunk of pork chop with a steak knife.
“Eat first,” he said. “Then talk.”
Floyd laughed, got up, and poured Barkley a glass of milk.
Five blocks away Randi White Barkley was riding inside a squad car with her minder, Officer Carol Ma Fullerton.
The dog had been left behind, because as Randi had told Fullerton, she just needed to pick up her electric toothbrush, her own pillows, a box of dog treats, a phone charger, and her personal massager, none of which she’d taken when the police kidnapped her.
Fullerton found Randi quite amusing. She pulled up to the Barkley house on Thornton near the junction with Apollo and parked in the short driveway.
She said, “We should hurry.”
“I told you, Officer. Carol. This’ll take two minutes. Just wait for me.”
“You’re in custody, dear,” said Fullerton. “Besides, I’m coming too.”
“Suit yourself,” said Randi, as if she had a choice.
She walked up the three wooden steps to her door, cautioning herself not to look at Marty’s house two doors down, where a kerchief had been tied to his car antenna, signaling her that Barkley was there.
The house key was in her hand when she heard Marty Floyd call out to her across two patchy front yards.
“Randi, how’s it going?”
“Good, Marty. I have company.”
“Yeah, I see. You look rested.”
“Later, buddy. Be good,” she called out.
Feeling nervous because Leonard was so close and knowing that she wouldn’t get to see him, Randi opened the front door.
“Home sweet home,” she said without enthusiasm.
Then she went inside with her jailer.
Chapter 110
The Chronicle’s city room was loud and busy, everyone bending their heads over their computers, working toward a six o’clock closing.
Jeb McGowan knocked on the glass wall of Henry Tyler’s office, and Tyler motioned him in.
“Sir, I need a minute.”
“Anytime. Take a seat.”
McGowan chose to stand.
“Mr. Tyler, something happened and I have to tell you about it.”
“Go ahead, Jeb. And for Christ’s sake, sit down.”
Jeb sat on the edge of the leather sofa facing Tyler’s desk. He said, “I don’t know how to say this.”
“Speak, Jeb. Out with it.”
“Yes, sir. This is it. Cindy ambushed me in the garage. She kissed me, and clearly she wants more. It’s classic sexual harassment, Mr. Tyler. She sees my potential. She wants to sideline the competition.”
Tyler picked up his desk phone and called Cindy. “I’ve got a fire in my office. Can you come down?”
Cindy told him she’d be right there.
She saved her file and, skirting the center of the city room, took the perimeter route, the long way around to Henry’s office. His door was open, and after knocking, she went right in.
“Where’s the fire?” she asked Tyler.
She saw McGowan sitting on the edge of the sofa but didn’t acknowledge him. She sat in the side chair next to her publisher and editor’s desk.
“Jeb?” said Tyler. “Tell Cindy what you told me.”
McGowan, now red faced, gutted it out.
“You know where the fire is, Cindy. I told Mr. Tyler about those unwanted advances you made in the garage, and since you’re technically my superior, that’s sexual harassment.”
Tyler asked, “Cindy? What happened?”
“He sneaked up on me, Henry. He grabbed the back of my neck, so that I couldn’t pull away, and stuck his tongue in my mouth. He asked me if I liked it. I told him if he ever did that again, I’d get him fired.”
Henry Tyler picked up the phone and punched in some numbers, and when the call was answered, he said, “Marie, Mr. McGowan is leaving our employ. Please do the paperwork. Say his job was downgraded and filled from within. Send security to the city room to take his ID, watch him pack up, and escort him out of the building. Thank you.”
Tyler put the receiver down hard and turned back to McGowan.
“Jeb. You’re fired. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. If it gets back to me that you’re bad-mouthing Cindy or me or the Chronicle, I’ll return the favor. Bookkeeping will direct-deposit your check through the end of the pay period. But I want you out of here. Now.”
Chapter 111
Dave was dozing when the side door of the van slid open.
Nurse Carolee Atkins stepped up and sat heavily in the passenger seat. She shook his arm roughly to wake him up.
Dave pressed the button that raised his chair back into an upright position.
“Hi. Nurse Atkins…thanks…for coming.”
“What is it that you want, exactly?”
He pointed and said, “Glove…compartment.”
Atkins opened the glove box and took out three manila envelopes, one marked with her name, one with Perkins’s name. The third one read, “Last Will and Testament.”
“Where’s the painting you were talking about?” she asked.
“Cargo…compartment. I…crated it up for you. Wrote your name…”
He yawned widely and le
ft the sentence unfinished.
“Dave. Is the cargo compartment open?”
“You mind?” he said, gasping. “Talking to me? My last, uh, day.”
Atkins sighed. “Okay, but I have guests coming for dinner, so let’s keep it short. What do you want to talk about?”
“Tell me about…Ray. Something you liked. Closing…my eyes. Tell…me.”
Atkins said, “I liked your father, a damned sight more than I like you. One time I couldn’t leave for lunch because we were shorthanded. He went out and got me a sandwich. And pickles.”
Dave Channing was sleeping deeply. Whatever he’d taken—a cocktail of heart medication, blood pressure medication, diazepam, digoxin, which alone could have killed him, and what looked like half a bottle of wine—was shutting him down.
“Dave?”
He groaned.
Atkins opened the envelopes. Yes, there was a check for the doctor, ten thousand dollars. She read the apology from Dave to Dr. Perkins, and it sounded sincere. He said that he’d lost his mind in grief. He hoped the money would cover the cost of repainting the car. He was very sorry for being such a pain in the ass and asked the doctor to please forgive him.
Dave tried to speak.
“What is it, Dave?”
“Pain.”
“Sorry. If you’d asked me to help you out, you wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
“Help me…now.”
Atkins ignored him. She lifted the envelope with the words “Last Will and Testament” written on the front. She opened the envelope, took out a piece of typed paper, and started to read. It was a long narrative in which Dave thanked all of his online friends and left his paltry possessions to the staff and the money from the sale of the winery to a children’s charity that specialized in helping kids with disabilities. The document had been signed and witnessed by a Jeff Cruz. Nice.
She’d saved the envelope addressed to her for last.
Dear Nurse Atkins,
I apologize for being very disrespectful and making your job harder. I know you did your best for my father, and I’m indebted to you. I’ve left you a painting my mother named The Sun Also Rises, after an Ernest Hemingway novel. It was her favorite painting and all I have to give you. Peace and light.
Good-bye,
Dave Channing
The letter was also signed and witnessed by the same Jeff Cruz.
Atkins knew what Nancy Channing paintings were worth because Dr. Perkins had one. Now she’d have one, too.
Dave sputtered, then asked haltingly, “Was Dad…in pain?”
Atkins sighed. “Yes, yes, he was in pain. I only help the ones who are in pain.”
“How?” Dave asked. “How do you…help?”
She said, “Dave, don’t bother yourself with details. He wasn’t in pain. Like you are. Okay?”
“I’m going…now. For God’s sake. Help.”
He bent over and, grimacing, wrapped his arms tightly across his abdomen.
“Your father had been sedated, Dave. They’re all sedated. I put a little something in the drip line. They’re already asleep and they’re asleep when they die. Ray felt nothing. He didn’t have to suffer like you.”
Dave looked up at the tall woman with the cinnamon-colored hair. He could see her hard eyes staring down at him.
“You do that. For them?”
She sighed in disgust, couldn’t wait to get away from him.
“I’m a helper. Someone has to do it, and I know how.” She clucked her tongue, as if saying, What a shame you took this into your own hands.
Then she put her hand on his knee.
“It will be all over soon, Dave. Nothing will bother you again.”
Chapter 112
Nurse Atkins lifted the half bottle of wine from between Dave’s atrophied legs and took a couple of swallows.
It was pretty good. She drank some more and put the rest of the bottle back where she’d found it. Dave Channing was still breathing, but barely. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with buttoned cuffs and a turtleneck underneath.
She managed to get a couple of fingers against his wrist. His pulse was slow. His breathing was shallow. She knew what dying looked like. Dave Channing was on his way out.
She said, “I’m getting the painting now, Dave. And thanks for that. I forgive your jackassery. Have a good trip.”
Atkins got out of the passenger seat and walked around to the rear doors of the panel truck, hoping to find them unlocked. They were.
She felt a little dizzy as she twisted the handle, pulling the doors open. That was from the wine. She focused on a pile of quilted mover’s blankets on the floor of the cargo compartment. She didn’t see a crate or a mailing tube or any kind of box at all.
Had Dave’s last act been to prank her?
She got into the rear compartment on her hands and knees and felt along the back wall. Nothing. That son of a bitch. She backed out of the van, cursing. Had he forgotten to put the crate in the van? Or had he been so stoned he couldn’t lift it?
Getting out of the van was proving to be harder than getting in. There was no light back there, and now she was feeling nauseous. She’d left the papers in the front seat. She had to get them. She carefully backed out of the rear compartment, made for the front door, passenger side—and gasped. Something hard had poked her in the back and was pressing against her spine.
It could only be a gun.
A man’s voice said, “Put your hands behind you, Ms. Atkins. I’m taking you into custody.”
She recognized the voice but still turned her head to check. It was Dave’s friend. Joe something. He was strong. A former football player. She couldn’t outrun him, but maybe she could talk him down.
“Dave said he left something for me in the back. You should call an ambulance. He took all of his father’s pills. I wanted to call 911, but he wouldn’t let me.”
Atkins continued to look at the man who was threatening her with a gun. “I’ve done nothing wrong. You’ll see the papers. Dave decided to commit suicide. He wrote it all down.”
Carolee Atkins planned her next move. She would leave the papers and just start walking toward the office. It was only thirty yards to the door. Her key card was in her bag inside the van, but people leaving the building would let her in. Even now the parking lot was coming to life. The sounds of electronic locks opening. Headlights coming on. She heard the purr of a motor. She was taking a chance, but she didn’t believe that this Joe guy would shoot her in the back.
She’d taken a few steps toward the medical building when Dave came around the side of the van, maneuvering his chair so that whichever way she walked, he blocked her way.
What was going on? He looked wide awake and fully cognizant. And he, too, held a gun on her. He had his phone in his lap, and he lifted it, pressed a button.
She heard her own voice saying, “Your father had been sedated, Dave. They’re all sedated. I put a little something in the drip line. They’re already asleep and they’re asleep when they die. Ray felt nothing. He didn’t have to suffer like you.”
Then Dave’s voice: “You do that. For them?”
“I’m a helper. Someone has to do it, and I know how.”
Chapter 113
The ground was swimming.
Atkins said to Dave, “What? What’s in the wine?”
“Napa Valley’s best Cabernet. Nothing more.”
Joe Something said, “Do what I told you to do, Ms. Atkins. Put your hands behind your back. You’re under arrest.”
It was coming to her now. She’d been tricked. Dave had feigned his suicide, every bit of it. And now she was filled with rage. It wasn’t legal to tape people without telling them.
She said to Joe, “Arresting me? By what authority, mister?”
“My authority as a citizen. It’s quite legal. And if you’re thinking a taped telephone conversation can’t be used in court, the confession you made to Dave, in person, is allowable, and strong evidence.”
&nb
sp; Joe forced her arms back and cuffed her wrists. Then he picked her up and gently laid her in the back of the van on the nest of quilted mover’s blankets.
“Next stop, police station,” Dave called in to her. “We can all give our statements. That goes for Mr. Archer and Mr. Scislowski, who’ll meet us there. They saw and heard you in the rooms of the deceased. They know what you did.”
“Don’t you understand?” she shouted, her voice echoing lazily against the inside walls of the van. “I was doing a good. A good thing. I’m a helper. I was helping people.”
Joe said, “You’re a serial killer, Carolee. But tell your story to the police. And then you can tell it to the FBI.”
He slammed the rear doors shut and locked them. Then he said to Dave, “The SFPD and the Napa sheriff have an arrangement on cases involving the DEA. He’ll be handing her off to SFPD.”
Dave was grinning so hard it hurt.
“My God, Joe. We did it. We did it.”
“We sure did,” Joe said.
The two friends grinned and exchanged a high five, a low five. The kicking from the rear of the van stopped. Joe said, “So what was in the wine?”
“Grapes. But I took a couple of Dad’s pills, beta-blockers, to lower my blood pressure, slow down my heart. I needed to make her believe I was checking out. But then she got greedy for our Private Reserve Cab. She’s just tipsy.”
Joe and Dave laughed for a good long time. And then Dave said, “What a day. I wish I could tell my dad. He went crazy with happiness seeing the two of us together again, Joe. Have I thanked you lately?”
“Yeah. You have. And thank you, Dave.”
“For what?”
“For believing in me.”
Chapter 114
Mike Stempien was in his office at the Hall, remotely hacking into Randi Barkley’s computer.
Randi wasn’t online, but Leonard Barkley had just signed on from a new location near his house. Piggybacking onto Barkley’s screen name, Stempien followed Barkley from his IP address at his new location on Thornton Avenue to an internet café in Gotland to a private home in Budapest to a travel agency in Medellín, working his way layer by layer, ever deeper into the onion layers of the dark web.
The 20th Victim Page 23