John nodded. He didn’t like the feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, and that feeling took a sour turn when he arrived home. Melissa pounced before he had a chance to close the front door.
“What are we going to do about Kari? She’s out of control.” His wife stood with her hands on her hips. Her eyes betrayed that she’d been crying.
“I’ll talk to her.”
“Talk to her? This needs more than a talking-to, John. This is serious.”
“Jesus, Mel, what do you want me to do, string her up by her thumbs?”
Melissa’s cheeks bloomed with heat. “She’s gotten suspended from school this time. You can’t act like that’s no big deal. We should think about a private school. She needs more structure and counseling.”
The mention of counseling flashed John to the PSU with patients arranged in their little caged circle.
“Let’s not get too far ahead here. Let me have a minute, and I’ll try to talk to her.”
Melissa huffed in frustration and walked away.
John unclipped his weapon and holster and placed them in a safe mounted in the entry closet.
A glow from the office flickered, and John expected to find Kari venting parental unfairness to the interwebs on Facebook, Snapchat, or whatever social media platform was in with the cool crowd. Instead, his son, Tommy, pecked away at the computer keyboard.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hey, kiddo. What’s up?”
Tommy raised his eyebrows. “I figured it would be best if I stayed out here, away from Mom and Kari. They’re being mean.”
John sat on a corner of the desk and glanced at the screen. “American history paper?”
Tommy nodded.
“Sorry, I can’t help you with that one.”
“There were only thirteen states when you went to school anyway,” Tommy said.
“We called them colonies actually, smart guy. Your sister in her room?”
“Yep. If you’re going in there, been nice knowing you.” Tommy tapped out a few more words.
John started from the room. When he got to the door, he looked back at Tommy, working away. It wasn’t that long ago that the boy survived a difficult kidney transplant. He was still a small boy in size, but the experience forged a painful maturity that an eleven-year-old kid shouldn’t carry. Good and evil in the world didn’t always balance out, and bad things happened to good people. Tommy’s color had improved in recent months, from ashen to pink. The organ-rejection medications left him with a bit of a puffy face, but he didn’t seem to care.
At Kari’s door, John rapped a knuckle on the frame.
“Go away!”
John opened the door, and Kari sat on the floor at the foot of her bed, cross-legged, typing out a text on her phone.
Her eyes glistened, but she tried to hold the tough facade together.
John shut the door and sat on the floor next to his daughter. He took the phone from her hand and set it next to him. “So you wanna tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing if you’re Sugar Ray Leonard.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Why the fight with Lanette?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m so done with her.”
“I thought Lanette was one of your friends. You’ve been in the same class since, what, fifth grade?”
“She’s—it doesn’t matter.”
“It mattered enough for you to deck her.”
Kari’s eyes started to water, and the thick eyeliner smudged when she wiped a teardrop with a knuckle.
“You want to change schools?”
She flicked her eyes in her father’s direction. “No.” Kari chewed on a chipped black-lacquered thumbnail.
“Apparently the school isn’t too keen on you dropping other girls like a bag of rocks. This three-day suspension is supposed to get your attention.”
“She started it.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re both at fault for letting it get this far. What was it about anyway?” John tried to come back to the reason behind the fight again.
“I can’t trust her anymore. She . . .” Kari shut down.
“Can we trust you not to go smackdown on anyone you have a problem with?”
She shrugged.
“Well for the next three days, you need to figure out how you’re gonna survive without this.” John palmed her cell phone and stood.
“Wait. What? That’s not fair.”
“Who said anything about fair? I asked you to tell me why you thought you needed to get into a fight, you decided you didn’t need to talk. So no talking then.”
“God. You’re all the same. You wouldn’t do this to Tommy.”
John went into the hallway, and Kari must have gotten up from the floor, because she signaled that her side of the conversation was over with a door slam.
Melissa waited in the kitchen for John’s report. “Well?”
“She’s hiding something. Kari said she couldn’t trust Lanette anymore. I don’t know what happened between them. But here, Kari won’t be needing this for the next three days.” John handed Melissa the confiscated cell phone.
“What about setting up a counseling session?”
“I don’t think we need to go that far with this. It’s only a fight—”
“Only? John, that’s bad enough. But with her attitude around here, we have to do something about it. I think we need to get her into therapy.”
“If you’ve already made your mind up about it, why did you even bother asking me?”
“I thought you’d want to do the right thing.”
“The right thing? That’s rich coming from you.” John regretted the words while they were still hot on his lips. Melissa had drained their savings to make a deal for Tommy’s black-market kidney—she’d thought that was the right thing to do, but it had only come back to haunt them.
Melissa’s cheeks flushed, and she turned on her heels, leaving John alone in a cloud of distrust.
It always came down to trust.
TWELVE
John arrived at the office early so he could give Paula a heads-up about the bombshell she was going to get from internal affairs today. A little forewarning could make the difference in whether Paula would say something she’d regret. John knew a thing or two about saying something he’d regret—like he’d done last night.
When John got to the detective bureau, a computer tech and Larry Lassiter from IA were at Paula’s desk. The computer geek lifted a computer box from a rolling equipment cart and started connecting all the cords, plugs, and wires.
“Morning, Double L. Paula’s not going to like this.”
Lassiter tipped his head. “That’s why I’m here now. Otherwise, I’d have a vest and riot shield.”
John sat at his desk and reorganized the stapler, phone, and message slips dropped off by the evening shift. “How bad is it?”
“I don’t know. There’s a ton of pressure from up top. Please, tell Paula to get a rep for this one.”
“I’ll try, but you know her. You gonna do the interview?”
“It’s assigned to Kamakawa.”
“Can you push to get it reassigned to you? I’d like to see her get a fair shot.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Can’t promise anything. You know how Kamakawa is, the anointed one. That guy is willing to do anything to get the next promotion. Oh, shit, here she comes.”
“What the hell is this, LL?” Paula said.
Her abrupt arrival caused the tech geek to smack his head under her desk.
Lassiter held his palms out. “It’s standard protocol. You know, those city checks issued to that lowlife, Burger. We’re having IT run your computer to eliminate any link to you and that check request.”
“So you have to go sneak in at the crack of dawn?”
“Well, yeah, actually. Because of this right here, Paula. You kinda scare me,” LL said. A smirk grew on his face.
She shook her head, an
d the bluster started to fade. She walked behind her desk and kicked the side panel. “Get out from under there, you little perv.”
The tech crawled backward on his hands and knees.
“Go do five minutes of deep breathing or that downward-dog crap, and get your shit together. Kamakawa is supposed to pay you a visit this morning about those checks,” John said.
“Sammy? Oh, wonderful. He have you doing his dirty work, LL?”
“Lassiter came by to give us a heads-up that Kamakawa was tapped for this one.”
“Did you plant a listening device on my phone now too?” Paula said.
“No, you want me to? Makes message playback much easier,” Lassiter said.
She parked in her old wood-framed chair, the one that made her a little taller so she could reach all the stacks of files strewn on her desktop.
“I’m sorry, LL. I shouldn’t have taken this out on you. It’s not about you.”
“What was that? Sorry?”
Paula flipped him off and picked up her phone on the first ring. “Newberry.”
She listened and then said, “How is that even possible?” She sank deeper into her chair and slammed the phone down.
“Karen got a match on the blood she found on Burger’s clothing,” Paula said.
“The bloodstain on top of the victim’s blood?” John asked.
She nodded. “It came from Sherman.”
“That’s not—”
“Possible?” she finished. “No, it isn’t, since Sherman’s locked up in prison.”
“There has to be a mistake. I mean, I love Karen, but she got this one wrong.”
LL took a step forward. “How could his blood end up at the crime scene?”
“It can’t,” Paula answered. “I can’t explain it.” She looked to her partner. “Did you notice any cuts on Sherman’s hands yesterday?”
“I didn’t see any, but I wasn’t looking for them, either.”
“How hard would it be for Sherman to escape from the PSU, a prison within the prison, and kill Burger?”
“And get back inside, sight unseen, after the crime? Not very likely. I’m not saying impossible.”
“But his blood was at the scene,” Paula said.
“And on top of the victim’s blood. From a timeline perspective, it means Sherman’s blood transferred last.”
“Karen Baylor was certain about the blood matching Sherman?” LL asked.
Paula rubbed the muscle knot that had tightened at the base of her neck. “Sherman was in the CAL-DNA database. It wasn’t a blood type match; it was a complete DNA match. That was Sherman’s blood at the crime scene.”
“How did Sherman’s blood get there? I can only imagine what the defense attorney will say about someone’s DNA being on the scene when he’s already in prison. It’s bound to be ugly,” Penley said.
“I’m gonna let you detectives deal with this. I’ll see if I can run interference with Kamakawa,” Lassiter said.
Paula nodded.
John pulled his drawer open and grabbed a notebook. He thumbed to the last page. “The DA is going to go ballistic when she gets wind of this. Shit! This is all I need today.”
Paula rested her chin in her hands and looked at her partner. “Trouble in paradise?”
“I shot my mouth off again. Melissa and I are dealing with Kari’s latest rebellion, she made a crack about me not doing the right thing, and I bit on it.”
“She’s still feeling guilty about Tommy. That’s not something she’s gonna forgive herself for quickly.”
“We have trust issues to repair after that. Honestly, I don’t know if we can. Kari getting suspended for punching another girl isn’t helping.”
“I still think the other girl probably had it coming. Go Kari!”
“No. Not ‘go Kari.’ Suspended Kari. She won’t cop to why she got into the fight in the first place.”
“It was over a guy,” Paula said.
“How can you be so sure?”
“It’s always a guy.”
“Let’s get out of here before Kamakawa shows up,” John said.
“Fine by me.” Paula grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair.
“I want to go someplace where I’m not gonna get bitched at,” John said.
“You have a travel brochure in your desk drawer?”
“Something like that—I’m taking us to a nice quiet hideaway.”
THIRTEEN
While not on the beaten path of vacation getaways, the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office was a peaceful place. The sandstone veneer gave the impression of a corporate office rather than a temporary depository for earthly remains. As was his practice, John drove to the rear entrance, avoiding the public lobby and waiting area. Mornings were the time that devastated families collected their loved one’s personal belongings, made funeral arrangements, and faced the reality of futures lost and lives changed.
Through the loading dock and back hallway, there was a bustle of activity as the coroner’s technicians began the prep work for the day’s autopsies, transfers, and cadaver storage. The process relied on the efficient use of dwindling resources and space. The lone chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Sandra Kelly, managed more than one thousand autopsies each year and kept everything running with precision.
John and Paula found Dr. Kelly in the hallway outside her office, reviewing a clipboard. When the doctor glanced up, she frowned at the detectives, then she went back to the clipboard.
“I don’t have anything on the schedule for you, John, and don’t ask me to bump you ahead,” the doctor said.
John put his hands up in surrender. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Doc. We need to talk with someone with a sound mind.”
“You’ve come to the wrong place. Nobody matching that description here.”
“It’s more of an I’m-about-to-lose-my-mind situation,” Paula said. She shifted weight from one foot to the other. “Can we talk about blood transfer?”
Dr. Kelly’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you have crime scene people for that? Karen—Karen Baylor is very good at interpreting blood spatter and velocity.”
“Karen already gave us her ideas, and I need more—context, I guess,” Paula said.
“Walk with me.” Dr. Kelly tucked the clipboard under an arm and began down the hallway. “Okay, lay it out for me.”
“Our victim had blood from two different people on his clothing,” Paula said.
“Not unusual. The victim and assailant were likely both injured in the course of the struggle. But you know that. What else?”
“Here’s where it gets complicated. The blood from the ‘alleged’ assailant is layered over the victim’s blood. Karen rattled off some science-y gobbledygook about the hydration, viscosity, and proteins and which one was older. Basically, the ‘alleged’ killer’s blood is older than the victim’s blood. How does that happen?”
Dr. Kelly frowned. “Did she mention the presence of bilirubin, by chance? It’s a by-product of extravascular hemolysis—a fancy way of saying recycling. The old blood breaks down, and iron in the form of bilirubin is absorbed into the liver, other proteins are turned into amino acids—that kind of thing. The appearance that blood is broken down by hemolysis is affected by a couple of factors, only one of which is time. The level of hemoglobin can cause blood to lose moisture content. The humidity and heat all affect drying time. That’s why we don’t rely on bloodstains or clotting to determine the time of death. There are too many variables.”
“The blood sample Karen found—there must be an explanation because the ‘alleged’ killer—”
“You keep saying ‘alleged.’ What’s up with that? If the blood was found at the scene, on the victim, it likely came from the killer.”
John sighed. “Except it couldn’t this time. The DNA came back to a guy already in prison.”
“Well that’s a damn good alibi,” Dr. Kelly said.
“Kinda,” Paula said.
“Now I see why the age of the bl
ood transfer is an issue.”
“How can we be sure it came from him?” Paula said.
“If the DNA says it’s his blood, then it’s his blood,” Dr. Kelly answered.
Paula started to respond, but the doctor stopped her. “There are only two ways it happened. Your guy was there, or his blood was transferred from something else. That’s it.”
“Could the DNA be wrong?” Paula said.
“I know the media makes hay out of DNA evidence being thrown out from time to time. It’s usually a collection error—a contamination that taints the sample. It’s possible, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. I’d find an explanation for how your suspect got to the crime scene from prison,” Dr. Kelly said. “Or how his blood did.”
“If our suspect’s blood showed signs of hemo-sa-whatsit—”
“Hemolysis,” Dr. Kelly said.
“That—how would it get layered over more recent bloodstains at the crime scene?” John asked.
“That is a detective question, Detective. Now if you don’t mind, I need to get started. What’s your victim’s name? I’ll let you know when I’m ready for his postmortem.”
John gave Dr. Kelly the information on Burger, and she jotted a note in the margin of her schedule.
On the way back to their car, they passed the usual morgue hallway traffic of draped gurneys being rolled into place in the autopsy suite. Each lumped form represented unfinished stories and interrupted dreams. John often heard people talk about closure and the need for answers. But detectives know that sometimes the answers made things worse.
“Wanna go grab a cup? I don’t need the office politics this morning,” John said.
“God yes.”
He found a parking spot near Naked Coffee on Fifteenth and put in their order while Paula lurked over a table until two women felt uncomfortable enough to leave. John brought two cups to the table, an Americano for himself and a black coffee for her.
Paula wrapped her hands around the paper cup. “Since we know Sherman wasn’t on a work furlough release from the prison, where did his blood come from?”
“I kinda doubt Sherman is a blood donor. When you donate blood, they always ask if you’ve been incarcerated over the past year because of the high rate of blood-borne pathogens in prison, like hep C and HIV. Even if the blood bank had his blood, who would have access to get to it and have reason to kill Larry Burger?”
Bury the Past Page 6