“The Department of Justice had blood and saliva for the CAL-DNA. We didn’t take any because Sherman wasn’t arrested for a violent crime. So we wouldn’t have anything in the evidence room hanging around.”
“Which reminds me, we need to find out where Karen is on that baggie of pills we found.”
A thin, tattooed barista approached their table. “How was your Brazilian?”
“Excuse me?” Paula said.
“Your Brazilian Blue Pearl coffee. Would you like a refill?”
“Oh, no. No thanks.”
“I’m good too,” John said, although the barista was more interested in his partner.
Once the young man went to another table to collect empty cups, John whispered, “You thought the guy was asking about your Brazilian wax job, didn’t you?”
“Who asks, ‘How was your Brazilian?’ for shit’s sake?”
“I thought you were gonna choke him out.”
Paula’s cell chirped. “Newberry.” She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there in a bit.” She ended the call and tossed the cell on the tabletop. “Speaking of choking someone out, that was LL. He said Kamakawa will be waiting for me in the lieutenant’s office.”
“LL was going to try to get Kamakawa to let him take this one. I guess that didn’t happen,” John said.
“LL said Sammy just left the chief’s office with the DA,” she said.
“Oh, wonderful. Let’s get more politics in the middle of this.”
“This is nothing but politics.” She pushed her coffee cup to the center of the table. “No sense in putting this off any longer. Still wanna be my rep?”
FOURTEEN
Yard time for inmates in the PSU was regulated by federal court mandate. Most convicts locked in the unit would agree to anything to get a few extra minutes in the dog runs. Each caged “walk alone” yard allowed an inmate to get their hour of exercise time without getting involved in a melee with other mentally ill inmates. The arrangement was safer for everyone. Even the inmates who collected a dozen different voices in their minds would rather sit in the sun than grow moss in their cells.
Charles Sherman wasn’t like the others. Sherman had refused yard time on every occasion since his placement in PSU a year ago. The caseworkers wearing the required stab-resistant vests came to his cell door and asked why. They never came away with an answer. Sherman would sit motionless on his bunk and ignore them. He was compliant with custody staff and not among those who “gassed” the officers when they delivered food, tossing urine and feces out the food port at them. Sherman never understood what that was supposed to accomplish, other than earning a good ass-kicking.
Today, Sherman’s refusal to attend treatment sessions and yard time brought a visit from a caseworker, Viki Mendoza. Inmates peered out cell windows when Mendoza entered the dayroom. The unit was quiet until the electric door clanged shut, eliminating any chance that she could come and go unnoticed. Catcalls and demands for attention echoed in the cellblock. She ignored them and walked to Sherman’s cell, 8121.
“Sherman, you declined yard again?”
He didn’t respond.
“You’ve been missing group sessions. That’s something we need to work on.”
Sherman swiveled his head and stared at Mendoza through the cell window. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and a bulky green protective vest largely concealed her white blouse. Even with the vest, Sherman thought she would be attractive to most. He turned away, without a response, and stared at the expanse of gray cell wall opposite his bunk.
“Dr. Lewis has you set up for a one-on-one with him this afternoon,” she said.
He exhaled a deep breath. “Tell him not to bother; I won’t be here.”
Playing along with the fantasies of psychotic inmates was a dangerous line—encouraging the delusional thought framework was a game of psychic Jenga. One misstep and the entire structure could crash down. “Where will you be?” Mendoza asked.
“Free.”
“What will you be free from?”
The cellblock door opened, and a pair of correctional officers entered the unit. They approached Sherman’s cell door. Like the caseworker, they wore the bulky stab-resistant vests, and in addition, they also wore Plexiglas shields to prevent inmates from spitting in their faces.
The shorter of the two hung his hands from the vest’s shoulder straps to relieve a little of the weight. The other asked, “You about done with Sherman? We gotta move him.”
“Yeah, I’m finished. Where are you taking him?” Mendoza asked.
“Court,” the officer said.
Sherman locked eyes with Mendoza, and a slight smile split his lips. The caseworker left the cell front, a little ill at ease from the conversation with Sherman. More notes for an already thick mental health record.
The shorter officer called through the gap at the side of the door, “Sherman, you got court again. Strip and come to the door.”
The officer directed him through an unclothed body search and passed an orange jumpsuit through the food port. A minute later Sherman was in handcuffs, leg-irons, and a waist chain that secured his hands in front of him.
A ten-minute shuffle from the PSU to the prison’s receiving-and-release unit and Sherman was turned over to a transport detail from the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. Each county was responsible for its own court transportation, and Sacramento County had sent a single deputy in the county’s black uniform to claim Sherman. The gold sergeant stripes and the chevrons down his arm testified that this man had been on the job for a long while. He was a heavily muscled, a serious-looking specimen. Not a deputy with whom a prisoner would risk a confrontation.
They loaded Sherman in the Sacramento County van and processed him out of the facility for another court appearance.
The two officers who had escorted Sherman watched the van pull away. The shorter one looked toward the blacked-out windows and said, “That is one strange dude.”
“Anyone who doesn’t smear shit all over themselves is okay in my book.”
“Really? That’s all it takes to make you happy?”
“Most days, that’s enough. What you think of that transportation sergeant? He strike you as a little odd too?”
The officers walked back toward the PSU for the next escort on their list. The short officer shrugged. “Didn’t notice. He didn’t try talking to Sherman like most of them do.”
“Whatever. Who’s next?”
The officer pulled a paper from the zipper of his vest. “Johnson in 8220 to the infirmary. Oh, man.”
“See, I told you. He’s gonna cover himself in his own filth, and we get to do the old cellblock slip and slide.”
“Let’s pick up a spit hood to toss over his head and a couple of biohazard suits for us on the way.”
“Great.”
When the pair entered the cellblock, the floor officer assigned to the unit was finishing up a search of Sherman’s cell. “Hey guys, come here for a sec, would ya?”
They leaned on the open cell door, and the taller one said, “I’m gonna go roust Johnson. How’s he doing today?”
The floor officer flipped Sherman’s mattress and checked for broken seams indicating hidden contraband. “He’s been quiet today, been taking his meds. Don’t go winding him up.”
The shorter officer pointed at the wall opposite the bunk. “I didn’t know Sherman was the artsy type.”
A pencil drawing of a woman, appearing to be in her thirties, easily four times life-size, gazed back at the officer: dark shoulder-length hair, deep dark eyes, and a serious expression on full lips.
“Well that’s new,” the floor officer said. He released his grasp on the mattress and stared at the wall art.
“Not bad. She’s a looker.”
“And imaginary.”
The officers left the cell and signaled for the control booth to slide the door closed. The shadow of the sliding door sank down over the woman’s portrait, over Pau
la Newberry’s likeness.
FIFTEEN
Lieutenant Barnes sat at his desk trying his best to ignore Sammy Kamakawa pacing across the width of the office. The rail-thin IA man stopped every time someone entered the detective bureau. When Paula and John finally arrived, Kamakawa waved them over like an impatient schoolmarm.
“Finally. You’ve deliberately kept me waiting,” the IA man said.
John ignored Kamakawa and pressed past him to the lieutenant. “We heard back on the blood samples. There was a DNA match. Charles Sherman.”
Barnes pushed back from his desk. “How is that possible? Sherman is in prison.”
“One of our forensic people confirmed that Sherman’s blood was on the victim,” John said.
Barnes rubbed a tense spot on his temple. “Is it worth sending the blood sample out to the Department of Justice labs?”
“That’s where she got the results. She called in a favor and got the fastest turnaround I’ve ever seen on a DNA sample. Karen Baylor knows her stuff. If she says it belongs to Sherman, then it does. I can’t get to the how is all, with him sitting in a prison psych ward.”
“Excuse me. I need to begin my interview with Detective Newberry,” Kamakawa interjected.
“I’m sorry if real police work is getting in your way,” Barnes said.
“Lieutenant Barnes let me use his office as a courtesy to Newberry,” Kamakawa said, directing his attention at Paula.
“Because you’re all about courtesy, Sammy,” John replied.
Barnes stood and gathered an armful of reports. “Don’t measure the drapes yet, Sammy. Get this done quickly. I need Newberry back on the Burger investigation.”
John remained standing.
Kamakawa nodded to the door.
“I’m staying. I’m her rep on this one.”
Paula sat in one of the office chairs and grabbed another with the heel of her boot, pulled it closer, and crossed her feet on it.
“John, I don’t need a rep on this. I’ll see what Sammy has to say and be done with it.”
“We talked about this.”
“No, I don’t need you trying to fix up something that doesn’t need fixing. I’m better on my own. I can handle this.”
John paused. “Paula—”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’ve got this.”
John nodded and left Paula with Kamakawa in the lieutenant’s office. The IA officer closed the door, took a seat, and began his interview.
Barnes sat at a side chair pulled next to John’s desk, the pile of reports in his lap. John dropped his notebook on his desktop and sat.
“Is she taking this seriously?” the lieutenant asked.
John leaned back, and the old desk chair creaked. He stared at a chipped ceiling tile above his desk. “I sure as hell hope so. I don’t like her going in there without a rep.”
“She should be careful. We both know that Kamakawa has his sights set on bigger things. He wants to be the chief someday, and he’ll do anything to get there.”
“And sacrifice anyone in the process,” John finished.
An officer piloted a dolly loaded with file boxes to the desk. One wheel had a flat spot that gave off a muffled thump on each rotation. “I have case files for Detective Newberry,” the officer said.
John shot a glance at the four file boxes and caught the case name written on the side, “SSPNET Sherman, et al.” “Park them over there.” John pointed to Newberry’s desk.
The officer looked at Paula’s wasteland of a desk—with empty paper coffee cups, an overstuffed in-box, and a pile of sweat shirts and jackets on the floor behind her chair—and turned back to John. “Someone works there? I thought it was a crime scene training tool.”
“Just stack them next to the desk.”
The officer dumped the files near Newberry’s desk and looked around to see if he was the target of some practical joke.
“Thanks,” John said.
“No problem,” the officer replied as the dolly wheel thumped away.
The lieutenant’s cell phone sounded. He looked up to see if it was Kamakawa saying he was through, but the IA man and Newberry were still holed up inside the office.
“Lieutenant Barnes,” he answered.
He dropped the file he was reading on the top of the pile. John saw a flush run up his boss’s collar. The lieutenant saw John watching and slowly shook his head. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.
“I’ll put Penley on it.” A pause, then, “He will, Chief.” The call ended.
“What did you sign me up for?”
“You remember Bobby Wing?”
“Wingnut? Sure, who’d forget that crazy ass. He had to hold the record for the most use-of-force complaints. I thought he went out on disability last year.”
“Well, he may have started one too many fights. His body was just found in Southside Park.”
“No shit? That was one of his old hangouts. He’d meet informants by the lake.”
“According to the first on scene, a kid chased a soccer ball to the edge of the lake and saw him facedown in the weeds.”
John stood, pulled his jacket on, and grabbed a fresh notebook from his bottom drawer. “So what did you promise the chief that I ‘will’ do?”
“The chief knows your track record and trusts you to keep a lid on this one. You have to handle it solo. Paula needs to sit this one out,” Barnes said in a low voice.
“And the chief is going to let them nail Paula for the DA’s case going to hell?”
“He’s pushing back as much as he can; the IA investigation will determine the outcome. The chief is taking a wait-and-see approach. But with Kamakawa on the IA side of things, the scales might be a bit uneven.”
“I get that, but why pull her from this new case? Wing’s got nothing to do with the Burger investigation.”
Barnes rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Wing and Burger were partners on the SSPNET task force.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Very deep ‘oh, shit.’”
Barnes glanced at Paula through the office window. She was explaining some point with her hands. She only became animated like that when she was upset.
“Is the chief ordering you to put her on admin leave?”
“Not yet. She’s gonna be riding a desk in the office until we get this cleaned up.”
“I’m gonna head out to Southside Park. I’ll call you with an update. I don’t want to be here when you tell Paula she’s grounded.”
“You can tell her; it’d be good practice for you as a parent of a teenaged girl,” Barnes said.
“That’s why you’re the lieutenant and get the big bucks.” John headed out. Paula saw him leave without her from the lieutenant’s office. She stiffened and tried to give him a nod, but it ended up looking like an abandoned child watching hope leave.
John gestured with his palms down: Relax, it’ll be okay. He hoped it would, for Paula’s sake.
SIXTEEN
Southside Park, once a hotspot for hookers and the drug trade, was still resisting all gentrification efforts and boasted an annual “floater” in the lake, as a reminder to the city fathers that building condos wasn’t the answer for everything.
John pulled his sedan into an empty slot on the east side of the park along Fifteenth Street. A body turning up in the park was so common that the joggers on the trails that encircled the nineteen-acre green space kept their pace in spite of the police activity. The big network television outlets rarely bothered covering crimes in the park because it wasn’t news—it was simply a regular day in the park.
Yellow crime tape staked out a twenty-yard swath of green from a bocce ball court to the water’s edge. Vegetation at the shoreline was a foot tall but not enough to conceal the outline of a potbellied man on his back. A crime scene technician lugged a set of screens to hide the body from view and protect what was left of the victim’s dignity.
John immediately spotted Karen Baylor on a knee, taking a photo near the bod
y. After he had signed in on the crime scene log, he ducked under the tape and circled around the bocce ball court to a storage building, keeping a wide berth of Karen and the body. Behind the building, four numbered yellow markers on the ground identified blood spatter and a possible weapon: a yellow-handled hammer. The “possible” disappeared upon a closer inspection. The hammer’s handle was half-covered with blood, and a chunk of flesh clung to the claw end of the tool.
“Did you know Sergeant Wing?” Karen said from behind him.
“Some. Never actually worked with him.”
“Looks like a smash-and-grab—literally. Bashed him with that hammer and took his wallet,” she said.
John and Karen walked to the spot where Wing ended his existence on earth. They followed along a trail of bent grass and blood. The ex-cop had crawled to the water’s edge after he was attacked.
“Was he faceup like that when he was found?” John asked. A ragged divot in Wing’s forehead was a match for the claw end of the hammer. The skin at the bottom of the wound was lifted and torn from the blow.
“He was facedown according to the kid who found him. Officer Tucker has the boy and his mom over by the picnic tables. He figured you’d want to get a statement from them.”
“He figured right,” John said. “So facedown, crawling away from his attacker?”
“Looks like it. The front of his pants are covered in grass and mud, and he crawled to where you see him.”
“The first hammer strike didn’t put him down. Wing was an obstinate bugger. Second wound?”
Karen nodded. “Back of his head. A round wound, probably from the hammer again. Dr. Kelly will tell you it’s a depressed fracture of the anterior cranium.”
“Any word on that med school admission?”
“Not yet. I’m getting kinda stressed that I might not make it through the process. It’s so competitive.”
“Don’t worry yet. If you don’t get in, Dr. Kelly and I will both go pay the dean of admissions a little house call.”
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