by Tom Pitts
Steven didn’t try to look.
Panzer asked, “How about that one over there? There’s two dead men here, young man. Do you know them? Did you shoot them?”
Steven didn’t answer. He only asked, “Where’s Teresa?”
“Teresa? Is Teresa a friend of yours? You come here with her tonight?”
When Steven didn’t answer, Panzer stood up and said, “Give him a GSR swab and take him down to 850. Hold him as a suspect until I can get a statement from him. Oh, and don’t let anyone else talk to him. I’m the lead on this one.”
Two sets of arms hauled up Steven and led him away. As they brought him through the side door of the funeral parlor, he saw that the night was lit up with the roving strobes of red and blue. Police vehicles and ambulances crowded the street. The whole intersection of 10th Avenue and Geary had been shut down. There was yellow tape, crowd control, and even a satellite-dish-topped news vans on the perimeter.
No sign of Teresa and no sign of Carl.
Steven’s cuffs were removed and he was asked to place his hands in front of him. Bags were then placed over his hands before they were re-cuffed. They stuck him in the back of a police cruiser and made him wait. No one else spoke to him. No one else looked at him.
When two officers finally joined him, climbing in the front seat with their radios crackling with activity, Steven asked, “What happened to Carl, the older man that was shot outside?”
The officers ignored him and pulled through crowd control and into the San Francisco night.
At the Hall of Justice, Steven was secured in an interrogation room. A friendly-looking policewoman came in to offer him a glass of water.
“I think I’d like to speak to a lawyer,” Steven said.
Her expression turned cold. “You haven’t been charged with anything. You don’t need one yet.”
“I’d like to go to the bathroom.”
“That’ll have to wait,” she said.
He waited alone with the hum of the A/C droning on around him. There was a beehive of activity going on beyond the closed door, but no one came in to speak to him. Other officers came and performed their GSR swab, after which Steven was taken to a different room and fingerprinted.
“Am I under arrest?” he asked the technician.
He was told: “This is for identification purposes.”
Then he was put back in the interrogation room.
It was a long time before Detective Panzer appeared in the room.
“Mr. Mitchell,” he said as he pulled out the chair opposite Steven. He dropped a heavy manila folder on the table and drummed his fingers on it for a moment. He said a few perfunctory words regarding the date and whom he was speaking with, letting Steven know that the whole proceeding was being recorded. Then he said, “Let’s start at the beginning. How’d you come to be at McGovern’s Funeral Parlor this evening?”
“I’d like to speak to a lawyer.”
“Before you talk to me?”
“Yes.”
“Generally that’s regarded as a bit suspicious, Steven. But, whatever you say. What’s his number? I’ll call him for you.”
“I don’t have a lawyer, I need one. Isn’t there someone I can talk to?”
“What, you mean like a public defender? We don’t provide those unless you’ve been charged with a crime. If you’d like to make a statement in regards to your involvement tonight, I could determine whether or not it’d be likely that you’ll be charged, then we can get you someone to talk to.”
“I was there. I can admit that.”
“We know you were there. We were the ones that found you, remember?”
“Is Carl okay? Did he make it?”
Panzer’s expression changed. “You know Carl Bradley? How do you know him?”
“Is he okay?”
“No, he’s not okay. Carl’s in ICU, barely hanging on. He’s got a gunshot wound to the chest. Two actually. Did you fire those shots, Steven?”
“I’d like to go to the bathroom.”
“Steven, if you don’t start talking we’re going to charge you with obstructing a homicide investigation. You don’t seem like the type to be involved with this kind of mess, but if you don’t start telling us what’s going on, this is going to turn very ugly for you real fast.”
Steven didn’t say anything. He held his eyes with Panzer’s. It was a test of will. He thought about what Carl had said about Panzer. He didn’t trust him, and now Steven could tell why.
“Have it your way,” Panzer said. “Pending further charges, you are hereby being held for obstruction of justice.” Panzer picked up the folder, stood up, and walked to the door. Before he opened it, he turned to Steven and said, “I guess you can have your lawyer now.”
***
Steven was left alone again. At one point he yelled to the emptiness that he was going to piss his pants. Five minutes later, a uniformed officer took him to the toilet. The policeman left Steven cuffed while he urinated. Steven didn’t complain. He’d waited so long to pee that he almost couldn’t go. Almost.
He was returned to the room and cuffed to the table. It was almost two hours before the door opened again. A man walked in and introduced himself as Herman Chu, San Francisco County Public Defender.
“Have you given any statement, Steven?”
Steven said he had not.
“Do you understand the charges that have been brought?”
“Obstruction? I think so. But when the whole story comes out, I think it’ll be okay.”
Herman Chu looked confused. He opened a folder that he’d been holding under his arm. “Steven, it says here you’ve been charged with two counts of murder, possessing an illegal firearm, possession of a stolen vehicle, kidnapping, attempted murder, murder in the commission of a felony, and unlawfully discharging a firearm within the city limits.”
Steven felt a pit in his stomach as Chu slowly read off the charges. It wasn’t until hearing the last one that he decided it was a ruse, an attempt to scare him. “Discharging a firearm within the city limits? Are they serious?”
“Mr. Mitchell, murder in the commission of a felony is a capital offense. They are very serious. You could be looking at the death penalty here.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The case was slow to unravel at first. With the rapid rash of deaths in the city, the police were reluctant to link them all together. But within days it became apparent that they were all linked. Friedlander, the woman in the trunk of her own Mercedes and the junkie in her front seat, Joe-Joe, Sofia, Raja, and the unlucky guitar player, all of them were linked to Quinn and thus to the two murders at the funeral home and the missing, but presumed to be dead, Peters. Last to be linked were the killings of the wealthy vintner in Calistoga, Julian Hyde—also known as Oulilette, and the owner of Quinn’s gray truck from Clear Lake. Over a dozen killings in less than a week were enough to keep reporters working double-time for months.
When Panzer’s number was discovered on three of the cell phones at the scene at McGovern’s, he was first removed from the case, then put on administrative leave. He remained tightlipped about his involvement, preferring a police department lawyer make his denials for him. Charges began to filter down. He would delay his day in court, but it was inevitable. His career-ending disgrace dwarfed even Tremblay’s.
The story Friedlander wrote came out early in discovery. What they found on the hard drives of the computers in Manuel’s trunk was duplicated on the flash drive in Carl’s jacket pocket. It changed everything. It was leaked to the Chronicle, its original intended destination, and the entire city was enthralled and repulsed at the inner workings of corruption at city hall. Story after story came out in the fevered hunger for corroboration. The DNA tests Quinn and Teresa took were discovered, validated, and the twisted details of the paternity were revealed. The sordid tale of retired Assistant DA Julian Hyde and his servitude to Alvarez was laid out—how his loyalty was rewarded with a new identity and a vineyard in Calistoga. The media fed all
of it to the public in bits and bytes, making the whole saga seem like a real-life soap opera. Then, in an information avalanche, the secret empire of Mayor Ronald Woo was exposed and scrutinized.
The mayor faced charges for conspiracy to commit murder, participating in a murder for hire, accomplice after the fact, and conspiracy to defraud civic government. As the trial was scheduled, more charges stacked up. And although he announced his intention to fight them all, the evidence was too damning. He was finished. The scandal had set in motion a zealous hunt through all his business activities and soon everything he’d touched was tainted. It was only a matter of time before the mayor himself was behind bars.
Gutiérrez was the state’s key witness. Being the only surviving member of Alvarez’s hierarchy—thanks to his early arrest on Alabama Street—he was quick to put pieces of the puzzle together for the prosecution and keep his own ass out of the fire. He was cleared, barely, of killing Sofia when it was shown that the call Quinn made on Sofia’s cell was made outside the house and after her presumed time of death. The jury inferred that the killer might not have stayed on the premises—where Gutiérrez was found. Reasonable doubt. It was through his testimony that Panzer’s full involvement came to light. Payoffs, hidden bank accounts, and tampered evidence. Also, Gutiérrez was the only one able to unlock the encrypted mysteries of Alvarez’s financial shell games. He was Alvarez’s tech wiz and he led investigators wherever they wanted to go. Assets were seized. Accounts were emptied. Soon the doors were padlocked on no less than fifteen restaurants and bars in the Bay Area.
Buried deep within Friedlander’s files was Quinn’s confession for the murders he committed on behalf of Mayor Woo and Alvarez. Late in coming to the fore, it was the most damning portion of Friedlander’s document. The defense team for Ronald Woo said it’d never hold up in court, but it was too late. It detailed Quinn’s involvement, gave the specifics of the killings committed years before, and worst of all, a play-by-play description of the murders.
The confession was a love letter from Quinn to his daughter. He begged for forgiveness while stating he was freeing her from the life she’d been shackled to. Toward the end of his confession, he said she could be alone now and that’s what God intended. No web of lies holding her to a sadistic and cruel beast like Alvarez. He made his case for the bloodshed being a noble gift. A gift, he knew, he’d never be around to see her appreciate.
As for Carl, his recovery was slow. It took him a few days before he regained consciousness and the first thing he asked about was his dog, Buford. Eventually he was allowed to leave the hospital and the neighbor who’d been looking after Buford ended up looking after Carl too, stopping by daily to check on the retired policeman and his dog and drop off groceries and other household supplies. Carl, for the most part, stayed on his couch, flipping channels and eating eggs and trying not to buckle under the burden of guilt he felt for encouraging his old colleague—his friend—Peters to take the wild ride to San Francisco.
***
It was months before Steven saw Teresa again. It was at a pretrial hearing. They were both only witnesses now. During the endless hearings, depositions, and statements, their paths had come close, but never crossed. It was as though their handlers saw to it they stayed apart. But now, in the cold and crowded halls of the state courthouse, their eyes finally met.
She’d obviously cleaned up. Her eyes were clear and her skin blossomed with color. The two-tone dye job had been redone with a less radical, but still vivacious, red. Steven thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. She was dressed up, as she’d been instructed by her lawyer. Gone were the torn jeans and the ragged T-shirt, replaced with a subdued beige skirt and blouse. However, Steven noted her witness stand outfit clashed with a pair of tough-looking, but new, boots.
“So you’re clean, I mean, you’re off the stuff.”
“Shit, that happened in jail. Fuckin’ awful. Worst way in the world to kick.”
“You look great.”
“I know,” she said with a smile. “So do you. You look so grown up in a suit.”
“It ain’t me. I feel ridiculous.”
“You kiddin’? When’d you ever think you’d see me in a skirt?”
“To be honest, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Dress or no dress.”
“Technically it’s a skirt, not a dress. Speaking of no dress, we still got some unfinished business we started in the park.”
Steven blushed. She was so bold, so comfortable in her own skin. He wanted to kiss her right there and then. It must have shown on his face.
“After this thing,” she said. “What are you doing? I mean, where are you staying?”
“I’m back home with my parents in Humboldt.”
“Living with the hippies, huh?”
“Yeah, sort of. It’s not so bad. They let me come and go. I’m not a kid anymore.”
Herman Chu waved to Steven from across the hall, letting him know the hearing was about to start. The heavy oak doors opened and people began to file into the courtroom.
“Maybe, if you want, you can come up there. Visit for a bit. My parents won’t mind.”
“And get outta this town? I thought you’d never ask.”
She reached out to touch him, to let him know she was serious, that she’d be waiting for him after the hearing. On her forearm, he noticed a new tattoo. It was a cartoon red devil holding a pitchfork. Stenciled across the devil’s chest was the word Dad.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There’s a lot of people I’d like to thank for this novel, but at the top of the list are my wife Cheryl, my daughter Lula, and my boys Logan and Dane, especially Dane, who had to listen to me yammer on about who was chasing who and who was going to die as I paced around in front of his screen and interrupted his gaming.
And thanks to Eric Beetner, for not only giving me a great cover (again) but putting up with my fickle back and forth while we created it. Great big thanks to Eric and Lance at Down & Out Books for showing me how a press should run. And Clifton Shoemaker for getting me a gun when I really needed it (for the cover, honest!). Thanks to Ro Cuzon, Joe Clifford, Steve Lauden, Bob Pitts, and all the other beta readers who took the ride with me. And of course, Rob Pierce, who can spot a typo at a hundred yards.
And a special thanks to my agent Amy Benson-Moore at Meridian Artists who always encourages me, and never says something can’t be done.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Pitts received his education on the streets of San Francisco. He remains there, working, writing, and trying to survive. A new edition of his novel, Hustle, is also out from Down & Out Books.
Find links to more of his work at TomPittsAuthor.com.
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BOOKS BY TOM PITTS
Hustle
American Static
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OTHER TITLES FROM DOWN & OUT BOOKS
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