Counterfeit Road

by Kirk Russell

  ‘Get the fuck off my property you sonofabitch!’

  Drury wobbled to the wall behind him and then stared at Branson with a look that was eerie. Raveneau picked up on that and stepped between them as Drury moved sideways. La Rosa watched him grab a trophy displayed on a shelf on the wall, some sort of industry thing, an insurance company sponsored award for the firm with the most miles without an accident. She read the inscription when she and Raveneau first arrived. Drury grabbed it off the shelf with his right and punched out the window nearest him with the trophy’s heavy base. Glass shattered and fell on the concrete outside.

  He swung the trophy first at Raveneau, then at Branson, and Raveneau moved. He moved like nothing she’d ever seen in him before. Raveneau was maybe six foot one, and you didn’t know it looking at him, but he was very quick when he needed to be. She learned that playing one-on-one basketball against him, and she’d played point guard at Santa Clara College. But Raveneau wasn’t young. He was in his fifties. Drury caught Branson on the left bicep with a corner of the trophy, and then he was on the ground, the trophy across the room and Raveneau leaning over him, repeating, ‘You don’t want to take this any farther.’

  ‘I’m going to call the local police,’ la Rosa pulled her cell as Branson begged her not to.

  ‘Please don’t, I just want him out of here.’

  ‘He was swinging at your head. I’m going to call it in.’

  ‘I just want him out of the yard.’

  She glanced at Raveneau. She read his eyes. She called it in.

  ‘I’m not pressing charges,’ Branson said. ‘I don’t work that way. We settle things like men. Get out of here,’ he told Drury, and Raveneau answered.

  ‘He waits.’

  A police report got written and Drury didn’t say anything, not a single word. He was handcuffed and led to the back of a Martinez police cruiser. She watched him try to stare down Raveneau before the cop holding him pushed him into the back seat.

  ‘You OK?’ Raveneau asked Branson.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Is he going to come back here?’

  ‘I’ll get his check cut, that’ll end it. He got into it with another driver at a fuel stop a few years ago and I believed his version, but I don’t think I should have. He’s got a thing about him. On some mornings he’s angry at the whole world. He doesn’t think he should be driving. He said something to me once and I thought he was joking and laughed and it made him angry for three weeks.’

  ‘Yeah, what was that?’

  ‘Oh, he said Elvis Presley was a truck driver before he was a successful singer and he was better than Elvis and that he was going to become an actor. There’s some movie star he thinks he looks like. He had photos taken of himself. He showed them to me and other drivers here and sent them to a talent agency. When they didn’t contact him and weren’t taking his calls he got angry. I had to sit down and talk with him about it.’

  ‘When was this?’ la Rosa asked.

  ‘Last spring, April, right around tax time, and he had a two thousand dollar charge on a credit card for the photos. He was very angry about that.’

  She wanted to know more about them.

  ‘What were they? What kind of photos? Were they head shots, poses, what were they?’

  ‘Some were head shots but one was in swim trunks that tied together in the front and it was kind of loosened like they were ready to come off. That’s the photo they laughed at around here. But he got himself in great shape. What’s the word used now? Ripped, he’s ripped. He’s strong.’

  Branson turned to Raveneau. ‘How did you take him down like that?’ La Rosa didn’t think Raveneau heard him. Raveneau was somewhere else. He was staring at the truck Drury delivered the plywood in. She pushed Branson to keep talking.

  ‘He was looking at modeling also. He talked about getting his foot in the door.’

  ‘Not happy as a driver.’

  ‘That’s not really true either. On and off, he was happy or seemed to be and then he’d get blue and then angry. I’ve seen this in other drivers. There’s a point where life isn’t quite working out the way they expected and they get angry. I lost everything and I picked myself back up off the floor. That’s what you have to do.’

  ‘Has he ever threatened anybody here?’

  Branson shook his head and la Rosa glanced at Raveneau who was outside now at the truck.

  ‘I think he really believed that talent agency was going to call him. In the first week when he was waiting for their call he was very upbeat, unnaturally so. Then he was just as down.’

  Raveneau came back in and they left a few minutes later. That afternoon he and la Rosa sat down with Ortega and Hagen. Ortega asked if they heard his press conference this morning. Raveneau nodded.

  ‘We heard you on the radio on the way out.’

  ‘How did I sound?’

  ‘Like you’re doing your best and you’re handling the media but that we have no idea who killed four cabinet makers or why they did it.’

  That quieted the room. It sent a signal from Raveneau to Ortega and she wondered why he was as hard as he was sometimes. Or maybe it wasn’t being hard. Maybe it was the truth. Either way, Ortega’s feelings were hurt and Ortega wasn’t a bad guy. He was a good inspector and it was just a style thing with him and Raveneau.

  Raveneau didn’t care whether everybody liked him or not. He had no problem telling Ortega now, ‘I didn’t hear you ask for the public’s help. We don’t need to be talking to the media telling them what we don’t know. We need someone who saw something unusual on Sixteenth Street to come forward.’

  ‘All right, Ben, but I’ve still got to talk to the press. How did the Drury interview get so screwed up?’

  ‘I pushed him when I didn’t need to. He wants to be appreciated before anything else and I wasn’t sending that signal. I was asking for details of the day of the delivery and I should have asked him first how he felt and apologized for following him. He’s that kind of guy.’

  ‘That fits with something the owner said about his acting aspirations,’ said la Rosa, and then recounted what the trucking firm owner had told her.

  ‘He may not be getting from society what he feels he’s owed.’

  Now Cynthia stuck her head in and said, ‘Your friend Ryan Candel is holding for you.’

  Raveneau stood. ‘I’ve got to take this.’

  As he left and shut the door, Ortega asked, ‘So did Raveneau blow it today?’

  Her first reaction was to defend her partner but she caught herself and tried to be objective. Everything mattered. The San Francisco Homicide Detail was basically nowhere on this case with a lot of pressure to solve it.

  ‘He pushed him,’ she said, ‘but Drury didn’t quit his job today because of Raveneau. He felt betrayed by his boss and said so. He said he was tricked into coming to the yard.’

  ‘But Raveneau just said he blew it, that he was too aggressive?’

  Now she did find herself defending her partner. He had a completely different style than her, and sure, he pushed Drury. But then as he did they saw a part of Drury they wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Where it would go she didn’t know and neither did anyone else in this room, but Raveneau had a way of getting people to reveal themselves and Ortega knew that the same as her. She figured Ortega was still smarting over the press conference comments.

  ‘You and Ben are done on this one,’ he said. ‘We’ll take over with Drury.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘After what happened, it makes sense, doesn’t it.’

  ‘I don’t have any problem with it, it’s your investigation.’

  ‘Will Raveneau?’

  She shook her head. He wouldn’t. Before they walked in here Raveneau told her Ortega will take over Drury today.

  ‘OK, so we’re in agreement,’ he said, and they were, but that’s not how it worked out.

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘Hungry?’ Raveneau asked Candel as they sat down at a table on the
small deck above the sidewalk.

  ‘I’m always hungry.’

  ‘OK, order whatever you want and order me a beer and a burger. I’m buying. I’ve got to return a call but it won’t take long. What made you call me? I didn’t know if I’d hear from you again.’

  ‘I remembered some other things.’

  ‘Good. I want to hear about them. I’ll be right back.’

  Raveneau called the crime lab and asked for Lim but it was several minutes before Lim picked up. When he did, he said, ‘Some information for you. The first is we got a good fingerprint from one of the photos.’

  ‘It’s probably mine.’

  ‘It’s not, I checked. Second is I scanned in that landscape photo and ran an app that compares a photo to a database of hundreds of thousands of photos. It comes up with a percentage probability of a location. The app recognized the terrain. It is the north-west shore of the Kohala coast on the Big Island. Check a map and you’ll see there’s one road that cuts through from above. That’s where the photo was taken from. The last thing is I did more research and I’m sure these photos were taken between 1981 and 1990. I know you want it closer but that’s the best I can do.’

  ‘Thanks for what you’ve done.’

  ‘What about the fingerprint? What do you want to do with it?’

  ‘Put it somewhere safe. I hope to send you prints to compare it to very soon.’

  When Raveneau came back out on to the deck he saw Candel had zipped his coat and turned up the collar. The sky was white with winter fog this afternoon and it was chill on the deck, but they could talk easily out here.

  ‘Sorry I was drunk last time we met,’ Candel said. ‘I rip through cocktails way too fast.’

  ‘I used to have that problem.’

  ‘How did you get rid of it?’

  ‘I started making sure my first drink lasted at least twenty minutes.’

  ‘Like you just changed overnight?’

  ‘Took about fifteen years.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘You’ve got to want it.’

  ‘I’m getting there.’

  ‘You’ll know when you’re there.’

  ‘Were you a cop then?’

  ‘I’ve been one so long I don’t remember what it’s like not to be one. But cops are people, Ryan. Listen, I’ve got a question for you. If your dad turns out to be a good guy, how will you deal with that?’

  ‘He won’t be.’

  ‘What if he is?’

  ‘He and my mom had other problems. He dumped her but she was leaving anyway. He was big-time into political stuff, like seriously over-the-top right wing action, which was a major problem for her. His friends too, same deal with them. They had meetings and planned shit. That’s what I didn’t tell you that night.’

  ‘In laid back Hawaii?’

  ‘Yeah, it tripped her out. You should have talked to her about how laid back Dad and his ex-Nam buddies were.’

  ‘Give me a story she told you?’

  The waitress came out before Candel could answer. She brought the beers. When the deck door closed he said, ‘The word they used was interdiction. They liked that word. They did interdictions and there was like a small group of them. She thought they killed two draft dodgers, American dudes who went to Canada. She thinks they killed them after the war was over, as in went up there and found them. She was pretty sure that happened.’

  ‘This doesn’t sound like your mom the way you’ve described her up until now. She doesn’t sound as in love with Captain Frank.’

  ‘She was. It’s all true. What I told you was true. She mentioned this other stuff more as I got older.’

  ‘Your mom loved him, so how bad could he be?’

  ‘She also said he smuggled things for people in his luggage. I guess they didn’t use to check a pilot’s luggage. A pilot could like walk on a plane carrying his bag.’

  ‘Any idea what he smuggled?’

  ‘No clue.’

  ‘OK, well, thanks for this and I’ll do what I can to check out that Canada story.’

  Truth was Raveneau was disappointed. After their earlier phone conversation he thought Candel had something more substantial. He pointed down the street toward the Ferry Building. ‘There used to be a freeway here.’

  ‘I kind of remember it.’

  ‘Commuters would park in a lot underneath it. Alan Krueger was shot and killed not far from that lot and between two support pylons for the freeway. Very recently someone sent a videotape addressed to me, probably because I’m in the Cold Case Unit. It’s a videotape of the shooting of Krueger.’

  ‘Like a snuff film?’

  ‘In a way I guess you could say that. But I think it was proof that Krueger had been dealt with, though I wonder if the shooter knew the video was being made. In the video is a partial profile of the shooter, not a very good one, but enhancement techniques are much better now and I’ve had photos of your dad compared.’

  ‘I knew it.’

  ‘It’s not your dad. Your dad didn’t shoot Alan Krueger. He may have known him but he didn’t kill him. When your mom talked about his friends did you ever hear the name Alan Krueger, or any nickname that might sound something like his name? If your dad was called Captain Frank it’s possible his friends had nicknames too.’

  ‘I don’t remember any.’ He was quiet now then said, ‘So he didn’t kill this Krueger, but it’s still weird stuff and he was around. I don’t think he’s going to turn out to be a good guy. I’m friggin’ afraid of what I might find out about him.’

  ‘Do you want to see this video to know what this case is about?’

  ‘Why do you want to show it to me?’

  ‘You were five years old in 1989 and that’s old enough to have memories. Alan Krueger may have been a friend of your dad’s. He may have known your mom, so seeing him might jar your memory. It’s a longshot, but it’s possible.’

  But it was more than that. Raveneau was hoping Candel would feel something for the man gunned down and it would stay with him.

  ‘OK, I’ll do it, but when?’

  ‘How about tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ve got a music gig tonight. I’ll be up all night.’

  ‘Then call me in the late afternoon.’

  ‘OK. All right, I’ll call you. I want to know more about this. I want to know who this Krueger guy was.’

  EIGHTEEN

  As Celeste washed new bar glasses her face was lit and happy. She had passed the inspections. Bo, the new cook was there and with the lights down low, the space looked all but complete. And she was no longer looking for a big crowd on opening night. Raveneau wasn’t sure why the shift in expectations had come, but it sounded right. She spoke of a soft opening and word of mouth to get people here. He worked alongside them setting up the back bar until late in the night.

  Early the next morning he drove to the Hall. Ortega called as he got upstairs to Homicide. It gave Raveneau a chance to apologize.

  ‘Sorry about yesterday afternoon. I know you’ve worked this thing non-stop.’

  ‘No, I’m the asshole letting the press thing go to my head. This is the biggest investigation I’ve ever worked and I’m still trying to get my head around that. Despite what I said yesterday, I’m calling this morning to ask for your help. We’re going to have to give Khan back the building in a couple of days. His lawyer is on us and now the judge is too. Khan is going to lose his business if he can’t get in there and make cabinets, but I want to go through it again.’

  ‘Search the building again?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m wondering if you could come down and help us.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Eight o’clock.’

  ‘See you then.’

  It was the last thing he wanted to do this morning and he’d come in early to get a clean start on the day. But at eight o’clock Raveneau stood behind the other inspectors and listened as Ortega explained what he wanted to accomplish. When he finished Hagen started in on Khan.

&nbs
p; ‘Khan is a naturalized citizen, but his wife doesn’t look like she’s got all of her papers in order. I’m getting this from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I’ve got a friend who works for ICE. We can use this with Khan and I think we should. He needs to tell us why he’s still alive.’

  Raveneau disliked the immigration angle. He disliked the way it had grown after 9/11 and again as the recession put the heat on illegal Hispanics. It was an excuse not to do police work, but he did agree that the owner, David Khan, was the one with the opportunity to kill the four employees. If any motive arose everything would focus on him. He listened briefly, then walked over to Ortega.

  ‘Where do you want me?’

  ‘I want you to go through Khan’s office again.’

  ‘Hasn’t it already been searched twice?’

  ‘Even more than that, but let’s do it again. We’re not going to get another chance.’

  ‘You got it.’

  It wasn’t hard. The computer wasn’t here and neither were most of the files. Raveneau sat at Khan’s desk and looked through his pencils and rubber bands. He looked through the window at what Khan saw every day and tried to imagine a believable motive for Khan to kill his four employees, including one who had been with him since the start of the business twelve years ago. Drugs, smuggling, something illicit, but Ortega’s team was coming up with nothing. Interviews with the contractors and architects on Khan’s contact lists painted a picture of a hardworking man who strove to please his clients.

  Raveneau went through a file cabinet that still held older records of past jobs and invoices. Khan’s small careful handwriting was easily identifiable. The records for 2008 and forward were missing and he confirmed with Ortega they were at Homicide and would also have to be returned soon. The employee records were at the Hall as well. There wasn’t much of anything in the office. Even the trash can was empty. The carpet that once sat under the desk was at the crime lab where blood was matched to one of the employees, but it was old blood and he doubted it was anything more than the employees cutting themselves while working.