it.
Once I saw lights coming on inside the house, I pulled out of the
driveway. My car was racking up more miles tonight than it usually saw
in a month. I got back onto 1-84 and drove into downtown. Cones of
red and green rippled on the Willamette, reflecting the lights of the
Hawthorne Bridge. I grabbed a parking spot on the street across from
the Justice Center and took the elevator to the MCT offices on the
fifth floor.
Chuck was sitting at his desk, his attention focused on his computer
screen. He didn't hear me, and I paused a moment to take a good look
at him. I suddenly realized that for years I hadn't been seeing him
clearly. In my mind, he still looked like he had in 1978; he had
simply exchanged his football uniform for a badge and a shoulder
holster. But the twenty extra pounds of bulk he'd carried as a kid
were gone. His face was thinner, and lines had begun to mark his
forehead and the corners of his eyes, just as they had mine.
Working as a cop wasn't this year's sport. Whether he entered law
enforcement initially for the thrill, to rebel against his family, or
out of sincere dedication, he was in it now for real. With his
father's contacts, he could have taken any career path he wanted in
this city. But here he sat fifteen hours into his workday, at a metal
and cork board cubicle, in front of an outdated monitor, waiting for
his first lover to review his warrant so he could prove that a dirtbag
like Frank
Derringer had brutalized a thirteen-year-old heroin addict and
prostitute in a Buick built while we were still making out under the
Grant High School bleachers.
For the first time, I was seeing Chuck Forbes as a man, not as an icon
of a glorious time in my life that was over. I felt tears in my eyes,
blindsided by the sad realization that Chuck and I were no longer kids
and by the profound honor I felt upon finding myself walking a common
path with him as adults.
I hate that I get so sappy when I'm tired.
I must have made a noise, because Chuck stopped reading and looked over
his shoulder. Swinging his chair around, he said, "Hey, you, what's
the matter? Did something happen when you were with Kendra?"
I swallowed and got ahold of myself. "No, everything's fine. Just
zoning out."
"Good job with her tonight," he said. "It was nice to see you act like
yourself with someone on the job. Seemed to work, too."
"How's the warrant coming?"
I'd ignored his comment, and he had the good sense to pretend not to
notice. "Good. I'm done and just went over it again. If it's alright
with you, I incorporated by reference all the affidavits from the
warrant for Derringer's place, then I drafted a quick affidavit
containing all the new info we got tonight."
"That should be fine. Does the warrant authorize removal of the seats
and carpet if that's what the crime lab needs to do to look for
blood?"
"Yeah, it's got the works. The car will be in pieces by the time the
lab's done with it."
"What did you find out about the registration?"
"Plate comes back to a guy named" he grabbed a computer printout from
his desktop "Carl Sommers. Last time it was registered with DMV was a
couple of years ago. The tags expire next month. Anyway, Sommers
filed a statement of sale with DMV about seven months ago saying he
sold the car to a guy named Jimmy Huber."
"What's a statement of sale?"
"It's just a piece of paper from the registered owner saying he doesn't
own the car anymore. It's a CYA thing in case the buyer doesn't
re-register the car. Anyway, Sommers's sheet is clean, and it looks
like this Huber guy never did register the car."
"What do we know about Huber?"
"Hold your horses, now. I'm getting there. I ran Huber in PPDS. He
looks like a shit. Couple of drug pops and a bunch of shoplifting
arrests and domestic beefs. He just checked into Inverness in December
to do a six-month stint for kicking his girlfriend in the head in front
of their baby."
"Nice guy. What's his car doing on Milwaukee?" The Portland Police
Data System is a fountain of data derived from police reports.
"That's the good part. Looks like he knows Derringer's brother,
Derrick. PPDS shows Derrick and Huber together as custody associates
on a disc on last summer at the Rose Festival."
Your average drunken delinquent has at least a few downtown arrests for
disorderly conduct. For a certain type of man, the party hasn't begun
until you're screaming and puking your guts out in an overnight holding
cell.
As I looked over the PPDS printouts for Huber and Derrick Derringer,
something was bothering me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I
started thinking out loud. "So, Huber knows Derringer through his
brother and sold him the car. But Derringer was still in prison when
Huber got hauled off to Inverness."
"Right, but he could've given the car to the brother, who then gives it
to Frank when he gets out. The exact mechanics don't really matter.
The point is we can tie the car to Derringer through his brother."
He was right. In my exhaustion, I was losing sight of the big picture
and, as usual, convincing myself that I was missing something. "No,
you're right. It's good. You put that in your affidavit?"
"Yeah. I think I'm done with it. You want to read it and get out of
here? You look tired."
"I am. I don't know how you guys pull these crazy shifts. I'm about
to fall over."
"It's all about the adrenaline, baby." Chuck does a mean Austin
Powers. "You want me to rub your shoulders while you read?"
Grace's masseuse says I have a bad habit of storing stress in my
shoulders. Funny, I think I store it in my ass along with all the food
I pack down when I'm freaking out. But I do get big knots in my
deltoids after a long day, and Chuck's back rubs were heavenly. Turning
one down was painful. "Um, I don't think that's a good idea. We're at
work and everything."
"Your call. If it makes you feel any better, the bureau has a woman
come in once a month to do chair massages. It's just a relaxation
thing, not foreplay."
"I know. Thanks anyway."
I finished reviewing the warrant. It was a quick read, since we were
reusing the affidavits MCT wrote to get the warrant to search
Derringer's house. The only new material was the information Chuck had
added about the car.
"Looks good," I said, as I signed off on the DA review line of the
warrant. "Who's on the call-out list tonight?" The judges rotate
being on call to sign late-night warrants and put out any fires that
might arise.
"Lesh and Hitchcock."
Lawrence Hitchcock was a lazy old judge who smoked cigars in his
chambers and pressured defendants to plead out so he could listen to
Rush Limbaugh at eleven and then close up shop early to play golf. I'd
rather swallow a bag full of tacks and wash them down with rubbing
alcohol than risk waking up Hitchcock at eleven at night.
David Lesh was the clear preference. He'd been a prosecutor for a few
years after law school, then jumped ship to the City Attorney's office
to work as legal advisor for the police department. He was a couple of
years older than I was and had been an easy pick for the governor to
put on the bench a few years back. He had a good mix of civil and
criminal experience and was known throughout the county bar for being
as straight-up and honorable as they come. Best of all, he hadn't
changed a bit since he took the bench. He still worked like a fiend
and went out for beers with the courthouse crowd every Friday. Lawyers
missed talking to him about their cases, but we were better off having
him as a judge.
"Call Lesh," I advised Chuck.
"No kidding. I had that lazy fuck Hitchcock on the Taylor case,
remember?"
I always forget that cops know as much about the lives of judges as the
trial lawyers do. I suspected they gossiped about the DAs as well. In
this specific instance, Chuck had good reason to know about Hitchcock.
He'd presided over the very complicated trial of Jesse Taylor, a case
that had landed Forbes on the MCT. Taylor's sixty-five-year-old
girlfriend, Margaret Landry, confessed to Forbes that she and Taylor
had killed a girl.
When I started at the DA's office, Landry was the big talk around the
courthouse. The local news covered the case's every development. Most
stories started with the phrase, "A Portland grandmother and her
lover...." Headlines spoke of murderous Margaret. If you asked them,
most people who followed the case would tell you they were fascinated
that a sixty-five-year-old grandmother and hospital volunteer
eventually confessed to helping her thirty-five-year-old alcoholic
boyfriend rape and then strangle a seventeen-year-old
borderline-intelligence girl named Jamie Zimmerman.
Forbes had stumbled into the case fortuitously. Landry initially told
Jesse Taylor's probation officer that she read about Jamie Zimmerman's
disappearance in the Oregonian and suspected her boyfriend's
involvement. At the time, Chuck was working a specialty rotation,
helping the Department of Community Corrections track people on parole
and probation. If not for the cooperation agreement between the bureau
and DOCC, Taylor's PO might never have told the police about Landry's
suspicions, because Landry used to call him at least weekly to try to
get Taylor revoked. Her claims were always either fabricated or
exaggerated.
Despite his hunch that Landry was at it again, the PO mentioned the tip
to Chuck because this was the first time Landry had accused Taylor of
something so serious as a murder. Chuck and the PO had followed up
with several visits, and each time Landry changed her version of the
events leading up to her accusation. The two men kept returning in an
attempt to get her to admit that she was lying. But then she threw
them for a loop: The reason she was sure Taylor had killed Zimmerman,
she said, was that she helped him do it.
The continuing amendments to Landry's story after she was arrested only
served to whet the public's appetite. She subsequently retracted her
confession and accused Forbes of coercing the statements from her. But
after she was convicted by a jury, Landry confessed again and agreed to
testify against Taylor to avoid the death penalty. When Taylor was
convicted and sentenced to die in one of Oregon's first death penalty
cases, she once again recanted.
By then, however, common sense had prevailed, the hype died down, and
people realized that Margaret Landry's confession spoke for itself. The
grandmother who looked like Marie Callender was as deviant and sadistic
as any man who comes to mind as the embodiment of evil. Last I heard,
both Taylor and Landry were maintaining their innocence, and Taylor
still had appeals pending.
At the time, the public interest in the Jamie Zimmerman murder was
chalked up to tabloid curiosity. I didn't see it that way; in my
opinion, people were riveted because Margaret Landry scared them. When
they saw her interviewed, they saw their aunt, the woman down the
block, or the volunteer going door-to-door for the Red Cross. If she
could abduct, rape, and murder a young woman, then locking our doors,
moving to the suburbs, and teaching our children to avoid strange men
would never be enough to protect us.
Chuck's mind clearly had wandered in a different direction. "I had a
hard enough time swallowing a death sentence on a case I worked on, but
when it comes out of the court room of some ass like Hitchcock, I
almost hope it does get thrown out."
After decades without a death penalty, the Oregon legislature had
approved one in 1988. The relatively gentle jurors of Oregon had
delivered capital sentences to only a handful of people, and most
people assumed that those defendants would die natural deaths in prison
before Oregon's courts would permit an execution to be carried out.
Despite the unlikelihood of an Oregon execution, handling murder cases
in what was now theoretically a death penalty state still bothered
Forbes and other people in law enforcement with mixed feelings about
the issue. Like me, Chuck could not definitively align himself with
either side of the debate. Unlike most knee-jerk opponents, he
recognized that an execution could bring a kind of closure to a
victim's family that a life sentence could not. But he continued to be
troubled by the role of vengeance and the inherent discrimination that
too often lay at the heart of the death penalty's implementation.
"Where is that case anyway?" I asked.
"Last I heard, Taylor hated prison so much he'd fired his attorneys and
waived his appeals, but the State Supreme Court was still sitting on
it. I almost hope they throw the sentence out. As long as the
conviction stands, it's still a win for us."
Maybe Chuck had finally taken a position on the issue after all.
"Hey, enough of this. Why don't you head on home?" Chuck suggested.
"No, I'll stay here. I'm OK."
"You've got less sense than a thirteen-year-old. Do I have to talk to
you like you talked to Kendra?" He counted the multitude of reasons I
should go home on his fingers. "I probably won't even do the search
tonight. There was a shooting a couple hours ago up in north Portland,
so the night-shift crime lab team is probably tied up out there. The
car's in the impound lot, so it's not going anywhere. Go home. Vinnie
misses you."
Vinnie is my French bulldog. He moved in with me a couple of years
ago, the day my divorce was finalized. He gets upset when I stay out
late.
Chuck wrinkled up his face and pulled out his ears, like a mean-looking
pug with bat ears. In other words, he looked like my Vinnie. "I can
picture him right now. He's going, "Mmm, these curtains taste good.
This carpet looks a lot better soaked with a huge puddle of French
bulldog piss." " For whatever reason, Chuck had decided that if Vinnie
could
speak he'd sound like Buddy Hackett.
"You're right. I'm going home. And the search can wait until
tomorrow. Don't you work too late either," I said.
"Aye-aye," he said, waving his hand in a quick salute.
I stopped as I was walking toward the door. "Will you be able to get
your car OK?"
"Yeah. I'll get a patrol officer to take me out there."
I turned around again at the door. He was making copies of the
warrant. "Hey, Chuck."
"Huh?"
"You're really good at what you do."
His face softened, and his eyes smiled at me. "Thanks. Back atcha,
babe. Now go home. You're only this sweet when you're tired."
I drove home smiling.
Five.
By the time I got home, it was almost midnight. Vinnie was waiting for
me at the door, very disappointed. In my head, I heard Chuck's Buddy
Hackett impersonation, scolding me for being out so late.
I threw off my coat, picked him up, made all sorts of embarrassing
cooing noises, and scratched him ferociously behind those big goofy
ears. When the snorts began, I knew he'd forgiven me.
Vinnie's basic needs are met when I'm gone. He has his own door in
back that goes out to the yard. An automatic feeder keeps him portly.
He's even capable of entertaining himself. I'm pretty sure he thinks
his rubber Gumby doll is his baby. But at the end of the day, he's a
momma's boy and needs me to talk to him.
Between work, keeping in touch with the few friends who are willing to
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