by Brian Thiem
He turned onto Fourteenth Avenue, deciding to avoid the freeway since it was approaching rush hour. Braddock stared out the window silently as he drove.
“I was pretty hard on you,” she said, breaking the silence.
“I know. Why’d you set this up, anyway, if that’s how you feel?”
“Matt, I love you like a brother. I trust you with my life.”
“But not with your best friend?”
“You’re an awesome guy. You just don’t know how to do relationships. I don’t want to lose either one of you. And I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”
“Maybe this was a bad idea.”
“She hasn’t been with anyone since her divorce and isn’t ready to date. She enjoys outdoors stuff—running, kayaking, hiking. When we get off standby, and if this rain ever lets up, maybe the four of us can go hiking or something.”
Braddock went back to staring out the window.
Sinclair remembered hiking up Mt. Diablo years ago with a group of cops and nurses, watching Alyssa’s tight butt in a pair of hiking shorts. Although Alyssa might be all goodness, as Braddock said, she was still damn sexy.
Chapter 9
Sinclair listened in as Braddock placed a call from her desk phone. She was much better at getting people to talk to her on cold calls than he was. When Sinclair did it, people all too often got pissed off and hung up on him.
“Special Ladies Escorts,” said a woman with a husky smoker’s voice.
“This is Sergeant Braddock, calling from the Oakland Police Department,” she said, pausing to let the woman take in what she said and reconcile it with the caller ID that surely appeared on her phone.
The woman’s tone changed from friendly and flirtatious to cold and professional. “How may I help you?”
“One of the women who works for your agency was murdered in Oakland Saturday night, and I’m trying to gather information on her.”
“Do you have a name?”
“She’s known as Blondie on your website. Her actual name is Dawn Gustafson.”
Sinclair heard the clicking of keys on a computer keyboard. A moment later, the woman said, “I can’t confirm or deny that Dawn Gustafson is an employee of the company.”
“Is there someone there who can?” Braddock asked.
“Hold please.” A Rihanna song, “The Monster,” beat over the phone for several minutes until the voice came back. “I’m sorry, but there’s no one here with that authority.”
“Do you have a number where I can reach the owner?” Braddock asked.
“I can pass on a message to her.”
“What’s her name?”
“I’m not at liberty to reveal that. Would you like to leave a message?”
Braddock gave her the office phone number and repeated her name. “When can I expect her call?”
“I wouldn’t know. I will pass on your message.” The woman’s voice lost a touch of its edge. “If I may ask, how was she killed?”
“She was murdered and hung naked from a tree in East Oakland.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that. I’ll pass your message on immediately.”
Braddock hung up. “Do you think she’ll call?”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Sinclair said. “These escort services are tough to crack.”
“Didn’t vice used to work them back when you were there?”
“We worked a few, but they were labor intensive. I was one of the UCs on a few operations my first few months there, but then I went over to narcotics.”
“Undercover in an escort operation. Every guy’s fantasy.”
“Yup. Sitting in nice hotels, drinking room-service wine, and waiting for sexy women to come to my room, take off their clothes, and tell me what kind of kinky things they want to do to me.”
“And then you’d arrest them,” Braddock said.
“And offer them a way to stay out of jail if they flip on the higher ups that make all the money.”
“Did vice ever make any cases?”
“A few actually got some prison time,” Sinclair said. “But most cases fell apart somewhere along the way. Usually, the agency shut down and reopened under a different name. When the department disbanded vice, didn’t SVU pick up that responsibility?”
Braddock huffed. “In theory. But when I was assigned to the special victim’s unit, we couldn’t even keep up with the rape and child abuse cases, so there wasn’t much time to take on major investigations like that.”
It still riled Sinclair when he thought of how the department had been decimated by budget cuts and reorganizations demanded by the Oakland City Council over the years. When he came on, vice-narcotics had three squads, one totally committed to prostitution and gambling enforcement. A half-dozen investigators out of the youth services division handled child abuse cases, and another four sergeants handled sexual assault cases out of the criminal investigation division. Today, the responsibility for all those crimes, as well as domestic violence, fell on the newly created SVU with half the personnel.
“Since you didn’t have time to work them, what did you do when you came across information about escort services or major prostitution rings?” Sinclair asked.
“We passed on the info to Intel in the hopes they could coordinate with the Feds and take down the organizations.”
“Did they ever get the owners of the escort services?”
“I don’t think the department’s targeted anything but street-level prostitution in years.”
“If the department wants to address the problem, they need to do more than a couple of operations a month picking up the girls who are dumb enough to solicit an undercover,” Sinclair said.
“What about the johns?” Braddock asked.
“Bust them, too,” he said. “They’re half of the problem. You remember when we used to do the john sweeps? We’d put a female officer that wanted to play hooker for a night out on the corner and snatch up every dude that solicited them.”
“I loved watching other officers I worked the streets with hang up their uniforms and slip into their hooker getups in the locker room. They made bets on who could snare the most johns.”
“I never saw you out there.”
“Not my kind of thing, but I respect the gals who did it.”
“I think the record was something like thirty-four johns in one night.”
“That was Jane Oliver,” Braddock said.
“Where’s she working now?”
“Still patrol in East Oakland. You’d never know how hot some of our female officers are when you only see them in uniform.”
Sinclair’s desk phone rang.
“This is number seventy-three in radio,” a dispatcher said. “We just received a nine-one-one call from a woman who said her name was Tanya and she’s helping you on a murder case.”
“Yeah, well, sort of,” Sinclair said.
“She said some really sketchy dude just approached a few of the girls at Thirty-Third and Market, showed off a gun in his waistband, and asked if any of them wanted to take a drive to Burckhalter Park and party. Isn’t that where your murder occurred?”
“Yeah. Did she give a description?”
“Male, Hispanic, twenty-five to thirty, five-ten, slim build, driving a black Camry, partial plate six-four-three.”
“Did you broadcast it?” Sinclair asked.
“I assigned two units to check the area. The caller said she wouldn’t talk to uniformed officers—only you. She’s waiting inside the Cajun restaurant in the thirty-one-hundred block of Market.”
Sinclair hung up the phone and said to Braddock, “Let’s go. Tanya might’ve spotted our killer.”
Chapter 10
Sinclair cruised north on San Pablo Avenue, scanning left for the black Camry, while Braddock scanned right. The sun had set more than an hour ago, making it difficult to distinguish car makes and models through the rain-streaked windows. The wipers beat rhythmically, ending with a squeak at the bottom of each
sweep that reminded Sinclair that they were far beyond their useful lifespan. He could drive out to the city corp yard and wait an hour for a city mechanic to do the five-minute job, or stop at an AutoZone and change them himself as he usually did. He took a slight right onto Market Street and pulled to the curb in front of a fast-food restaurant that advertised Cajun chicken and fish. Tanya waved at them from inside the door and trotted to their car with short high-heeled steps.
Braddock lowered her window and Tanya leaned inside. “I think he the muthafucker.”
“The man you described to the dispatcher?” asked Braddock.
“Yeah, the Mexican.”
“Did you see a gun?” asked Braddock.
“He put his hand on it under his shirt.”
“But you didn’t actually see it?”
“No, but I know when a dude’s packing.”
“What did he say, Tanya?” asked Sinclair.
“He said he wanted to take me or some other girls to the park and party like he did with Blondie.”
“Let’s get a better description.” Braddock opened her notebook and poised her pen. “You told the dispatcher that he was Hispanic—”
“Yeah . . . there he is!” Tanya shouted, pointing at a dark-gray car creeping past them on the street.
Sinclair yanked the shift lever into drive as Braddock grabbed the radio microphone and said, “Thirteen-Adam-Five, we see the possible one-eighty-seven vehicle southbound thirty-one-hundred block of Market.”
Sinclair pulled from the curb, cranked the wheel to the left, and punched the accelerator. The big Crown Vic spun in a 180 on the wet pavement. The gray car ran the light at San Pablo. Sinclair flipped on his emergency lights and siren and took off after him.
“Code thirty-three,” the dispatcher said. “Thirteen-Adam-Five is in pursuit of a possible one-eighty-seven vehicle southbound thirty-one-hundred block of Market. Confirm this is the Toyota Camry, black, partial plate six-four-three.”
“It’s actually a dark-gray Honda Accord,” said Braddock. “I’ll get you a plate when I can. Turning westbound on Twenty-Sixth.”
Sinclair braked hard and felt the chatter of the ABS that prevented the Ford’s wheels from locking up and sending them into an out of control slide on the wet pavement. The Honda fishtailed in the turn. It then straightened and sped down Twenty-Sixth Street. Sinclair powered out of the turn, finessing the gas pedal to keep the car below the speed where it would break loose. Within a block, he gained to within three car lengths of the Honda.
“California license Five-George-Lincoln-Henry-Six-Four-Three,” Braddock said over the radio. “Turning north on Chestnut.”
The Honda took this turn more slowly. Sinclair stayed right on its tail.
“Plate shows a ten-eight-fifty-one reported stolen out of Dublin today’s date,” said the dispatcher. “Speed and conditions when you can.”
Braddock knew the liability game they were forced to play as well as Sinclair did. If they were honest and said they were going fifty in a twenty-five mph zone with heavy early evening traffic and people on the street, some patrol supervisor or commander more concerned about lawsuits than catching murderers would order them to abort the chase. “Forty in a twenty-five, light traffic, no pedestrians,” Braddock said as they zipped past two people standing next to the stop sign that the Honda sped through without slowing.
Sinclair followed the Honda to the next street, where it turned right. It ran the stop sign at San Pablo. A truck going southbound screeched to a stop to avoid hitting it. Sinclair weaved around the truck and onto San Pablo. He then shot across the four-lane road just in time to see the Honda turning left onto Market. It was going too fast to make the turn. The Honda spun around and slid onto the sidewalk and into a low chain link fence that surrounded a vacant lot.
Sinclair slammed on the brakes and stopped two car lengths behind the crashed car. The driver bailed out and sprinted down the sidewalk on Thirty-Second Street. The normal protocol for two-officer cars was for the passenger officer to pursue fleeing suspects on foot, while the driver takes the car around to the next block to contain him. But Sinclair was the faster of the two by far.
Sinclair threw open the door and yelled, “Cut him off!” to Braddock. He then yelled the obligatory, “Police! Stop!” to the suspect and sprinted down the sidewalk, his open raincoat flapping behind him. The man had a hundred-foot head start, but Sinclair cut the distance with each step. He was confident that Braddock was climbing into the driver’s seat and advising every unit on the radio that her partner was in foot pursuit, stressing that he wearing a suit and a black London Fog raincoat to prevent a blue-on-blue shooting accident.
The man cut between two parked cars and ran into the street, apparently hoping open ground would increase his chance of escape. Sinclair followed into the street and began gaining even more now that he was off the broken and cracked sidewalk. The man’s arms pumped up and down as he ran, and Sinclair could see his hands were empty. If he was armed, as Tanya alluded to, his gun was tucked in his waistband or a pocket, so Sinclair didn’t draw his own gun, preferring to keep his hands free.
The man looked over his shoulder at Sinclair, surely surprised to see a cop gaining on him. Although Sinclair had lost a few ticks in his forty-yard dash split since he played wide receiver in high school and junior college, he was still fast enough to stay with all but the most fleet-footed criminals during the first minute or two of a foot chase. After that, most street thugs ran out of steam. Sinclair didn’t.
Sinclair heard the roar of the police interceptor V-8 behind him before his car shot past. When Braddock was a few houses past the man, she swung the Ford across the street, flung open the door, and drew her gun.
The man did a stutter step and glanced over his shoulder at Sinclair. It looked like he was about to give up. Instead, he cut left, leaped across the sidewalk, and raced between two houses. Sinclair continued the pursuit, now no more than forty feet behind as they entered the backyard of a house.
As Sinclair pivoted around a rusted washing machine, his leather dress shoes slipped in the wet grass. He planted his left hand on the ground to keep from falling. By the time he was back in stride, he had lost the distance he’d previously gained. Sinclair knew Braddock was racing around the block to the next street and calling in his location so that responding units could set up a perimeter. All Sinclair had to do was keep the suspect in sight.
The man ran around a detached garage set behind an old, falling-down Victorian. For a second, he lost his visual with the man as he disappeared into the shadow of a large tree. Sinclair stopped. The man could be drawing his gun and lying in wait for him. He wiped the rain from his eyes and scanned the darkness. With his hand on his pistol, he was ready to clear the leather holster and begin a methodical search.
The man reappeared out of the shadows and sprinted into the pool of light emitted by the next house. Sinclair continued the chase. The man ran down the long driveway of a house that fronted Brockhurst Street, the next street north. He was starting to lose steam. Except for the initial sprint, Sinclair had been pacing himself, steadily gaining on the man as he tired. When the man popped out of the yard and hit the street, Sinclair was only thirty feet behind him.
Hoover Elementary School took up the entire block on the opposite side of the street. A ten-foot metal fence, which was topped with outward-facing rods specifically designed to keep the gangsters and drug dealers off the property, surrounded the entire school ground. Had the man been from this neighborhood, he would have known that, too. In the darkness, he nearly ran into the fence. At the last second, he turned and ran up the sidewalk paralleling the school fence. Sinclair was only three steps behind.
Sinclair saw the headlights of a car speeding toward them and heard the unmistakable sound of the police interceptor engine. Braddock shot past them and stopped in the middle of the street to block the suspect’s path. The man cut left, ran diagonally across the street, and made a valiant attempt to esca
pe into the backyards once again.
Sinclair burst forward and grabbed the man’s left shoulder just as the man’s foot hit the slick grass of a front yard. Sinclair pulled him down and back. He finished the tackle by wrapping his right arm around the man’s chest, and using his forward momentum, he threw his full weight onto the man’s back.
Sinclair heard a “whoosh” as the air rushed from the man’s lungs when Sinclair’s 170-pound frame slammed the man to the ground. He grabbed the man’s right hand and twisted it behind his back. Braddock dropped her knee into the man’s back and twisted the suspect’s left hand behind his back. They handcuffed him and pulled him to his feet just as two marked units pulled up.
The uniformed officers took over, pulled the Hispanic man to the nearest marked unit, and searched him. One officer pulled a rusted, blue-steel revolver from the man’s waistband, snapped open the cylinder, and handed it to Sinclair.
“Not even loaded,” the officer said.
Sinclair examined the .38 Rossi snub nose. Even brand new, Rossi revolvers weren’t worth much, and with the heavy rust pitting the barrel and frame, it wouldn’t fetch more than fifty dollars on the street. Even in that condition, though, Sinclair had little doubt the gun would fire. “What’re you doing with this?” asked Sinclair.
The man said nothing. The officer continued searching him and handed Sinclair a folded piece of paper he pulled from the man’s pants pocket. It was a property receipt from Santa Rita Jail in the name of Eduardo Rodriquez.
“Eduardo, what were you in jail for?” Sinclair asked.
“No speak English,” Eduardo replied.
“Bullshit,” replied Sinclair. To the officer, he said, “Stuff him in your car. Let’s regroup back at the Honda.”
Sinclair climbed into the passenger seat of his car. As Braddock drove, he retrieved a wad of paper towels from the glove box and dried his face and hands.
Braddock glanced his way and laughed. “You’re a mess. But was it fun?”