by Brian Thiem
Water trickled off his head and down his neck. “Chasing bad guys—that’s what they pay us for. Just wish I was dressed for it.” His pants and the front of his shirt were soaked. Mud caked the knees of his pants and his shoes.
Another uniformed officer was searching the Honda Accord when they pulled up. Sinclair grabbed his fedora and stepped out into the rain.
The uniform said, “The car was stolen from a parking lot in Dublin between noon and one. I found a wallet with ID in the name of Eduardo Rodriquez under the seat. Picture matches our guy. I ran him out. He just did sixty days for probation violation on a burglary. Was released this morning from Santa Rita. Also a bag of weed and some rolling papers in the car’s door pocket.”
“Gotta love it,” Sinclair said. “Guy gets released, steals a car, finds a gun, and a few hours later he’s back in handcuffs.”
“I guess that means he couldn’t’ve killed your victim two nights ago,” the uniformed officer said.
“I appreciate you pointing that out after I chased the asshole through the rain and mud and ruined a nice suit.”
“If you didn’t catch him, you wouldn’t know,” the officer said. “I guess he’s just one of the dickheads who likes to fuck with the whores. They think it’s some kind of a game.”
Sinclair and Braddock stopped at Tanya’s corner and told her what happened. When they got to the PAB, Sinclair went straight down to the locker room and stripped off his dirty clothes. He wiped the mud off his suit pants and was glad to see he hadn’t ripped out the knees of the Brooks Brothers suit, one of the new suits he’d bought last year with the insurance money from his apartment fire. As he stood under the shower, washing mud and strands of grass out of his hair, he wondered if he should go back to wearing cheaper suits to work.
Chapter 11
It was eight o’clock when Sinclair returned to the office dressed in a pair of slacks and an olive-and-brown plaid sport coat, which he kept in his locker for emergencies such as this. Everyone else had gone home hours ago. Braddock was at her desk eating a taco salad.
“I got you a steak burrito,” she said, pointing to a bag on his desk.
He unwrapped the foil, took a bite, and dialed his voicemail. A message from Dawn’s parents asked him to call them back day or night. He dialed the number and had Braddock listen in on her line. A man answered with a hello.
“This is Sergeant Sinclair, Oakland homicide. Is this Mr. Gustafson?”
“Eugene Gustafson, but you can call me Gene.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Gene.”
“Let me get my wife,” he said. A moment later, Sinclair heard the echo-chamber sound that indicated they were on speakerphone. “My wife, Cynthia, is here, too.”
“Hi, Sergeant,” she said. “I’m sorry we get to meet under these circumstances.”
“My partner, Sergeant Braddock, is on the line with us. Before I ask you any questions, is there anything you want to ask me?”
Cynthia asked, “Do you know why she was killed?”
Sinclair replied, “Not yet. I don’t know how much you know about Dawn’s life out here—”
Cynthia interrupted, “You don’t need to tap dance around anything for us. We know she was a prostitute—”
Gene jumped in, “She was in the process of changing her life and putting that past behind her.”
“What do you mean?” Sinclair asked.
“She was going to school,” Gene said. “Studying to be a CPA. She was doing accounting work and had stopped that other business.”
Cynthia said, “Excuse my husband, Sergeant, but Dawn will always be his little girl who could do no wrong. That CPA stuff was a cover. She was still selling her body for a living.”
Gene said, “I never said she did no wrong. But she had changed and was making a real life for herself.”
Sinclair interjected with questions about their background, which he needed for his report. Eugene and Cynthia both lived in Mankato, Minnesota, where they had been born and raised by parents who were farmers. Gene was fifty-five and managed a regional farm-equipment dealership. Cynthia was a year younger and worked part-time at the local library. They married the year Cynthia finished high school and they had three daughters, one older and one younger than Dawn. Both other daughters had attended college and were married, the oldest living in Minneapolis, and the younger living in Mankato.
“Dawn was the wild one,” Gene said. “She always wanted something more than rural Minnesota could offer. We weren’t surprised when she ran away at seventeen.”
“But to California, of all places, the epicenter of immorality?” Cynthia said. “When we got the call from your juvenile officers, we were heartbroken.”
Gene said, “But relieved that she was okay. We flew out there the next day and appeared in court for her.”
Sinclair said, “My records show she was released in your custody.”
Cynthia said, “That’s right. We brought her home. She talked about you a lot.”
“She did?” Sinclair said.
“Oh, yes,” Cynthia said. “You made quite an impression on her.”
Braddock looked at Sinclair with a puzzled look on her face. Sinclair turned his eyes back to his phone. “You mean when I arrested her as a juvenile?”
Cynthia said, “Yes, and—”
Gene interrupted, “We know you only wanted what was best for her, and we’re grateful you arrested her and sent her home to us.”
“What happened after she got back home?” Sinclair asked.
“She was okay for a while,” Cynthia said. “I think the experience frightened her. She went back to school and got her high school diploma that year. She wasn’t up for college, so Gene got her a job in the parts department at his store. She was bright and did exceptionally well. That girl could look at a broken piece of machinery and tell you whether it came from a John Deere tractor or an S-series combine.”
Gene laughed, “Something I couldn’t often do myself without looking at the parts catalogue. And the customers loved her.”
“What wasn’t to love?” Cynthia said. “She was absolutely beautiful. Every young man in the county wanted to marry her. She had a wonderful way with people—charming, sweet, unpretentious.”
“But something happened,” Sinclair said.
“One day she didn’t show up for work,” Gene said. “When Cynthia got home from the library, Dawn’s car and all her clothes were gone. She called a month later and said she returned to San Francisco. Said she just couldn’t live in our barren farm country another day.”
“Did she say what she was doing out here?” Sinclair asked.
“She was vague,” Cynthia said. “But I knew she was back in the prostitution life.”
“Did she stay in touch?”
“At first she called most Sunday afternoons,” Gene said. “She knew we’d be home from church and preparing Sunday dinner. Her sisters were usually here with their families.”
“But then the calls became less frequent,” Cynthia said. “Soon we only heard from her on birthdays and holidays.”
“What did she talk about?”
“Nothing about her life,” Cynthia said. “She asked about us and her sisters. And she talked about you.”
“Me?” Sinclair said.
“You have to understand Dawn,” Gene said. “She thought she possessed some sort of inner sense about how the universe worked. I think of it as fate, but to her it was more than that. For instance, she thought you arresting her was something like God’s will—that you were some sort of knight in shining armor who rescued her from the streets of Oakland and put her on the right path.”
“But she went back to the streets,” Sinclair said.
“My understanding is that when she returned to San Francisco, she became a call girl or escort,” Gene said. “Certainly not what we wanted for her, but better than standing on a street corner.”
“Did you have an address for her?” Sinclair asked.
; “She had a PO box,” Cynthia said. “She never would tell us where she actually lived.”
“Is there anything else you know about her life out here—a boyfriend, other friends she spoke of, any places she frequented?”
“No, not really,” Gene said. “She was very private about her life. She always sounded the same, though, very upbeat, always happy.”
Cynthia said, “The only person from out there she ever mentioned by name was you.”
Gene cut in, “It was like you were a celebrity—one she’d met and was therefore special to her. She followed your career, which I guess was pretty easy with all the media exposure you’ve had.”
Sinclair said, “The coroner noticed she had a scar from a Cesarean. Did you know she had been pregnant?”
Sinclair heard muffled whispering between Gene and Cynthia for a moment. “You didn’t know?” Cynthia asked.
Sinclair kept his eyes on the telephone to avoid a look he was sure Braddock was giving him.
“Three years ago, she just appeared at our front door one day,” Cynthia said.
“It was actually three-and-a-half years, because she was a few months along and Maddie will be three next month,” Gene said.
“Maddie?” said Sinclair. “So she did have a baby?”
“Yes,” Gene said. “Madison was a healthy eight-pound, six-ounce, girl. The only thing Dawn said when she came home was she had been in a relationship with a man who turned out not to be who she had thought he was. They had been together for over a year. She was going to school full-time and living in a nice apartment. But when he found out she was pregnant, he wanted nothing to do with it.”
“Dawn must’ve remembered a few things we taught her,” Cynthia said. “She was adamant about having the baby.”
Sinclair’s mind raced—three summers ago—the year after he returned from Iraq.
“She was equally adamant about not telling us who the father was,” Gene said.
“Where is Madison now?” Sinclair asked.
“She’s with us,” Cynthia said. “When Maddie was six months old, Dawn signed over legal guardianship to us and left.”
“She left her?” Sinclair said, and immediately regretted his reaction.
“What kind of mother would abandon her daughter?” Cynthia said, choking through sobs.
“She was confused—troubled,” Gene said. “She felt her destiny lay in San Francisco. But she came home several times a year to visit Maddie, always for several weeks in the winter to encompass Christmas and Maddie’s birthday, and again in the summer. She was a great mom when she was here, but always toward the end of her visits, she grew restless. Said she felt suffocated.”
“She felt suffocated!” Cynthia exclaimed. “Anyone can play mom for a few weeks at a time. Try raising three little girls when two are in diapers at the same time, when your husband’s gone twelve hours a day, and there’s two feet of snow on the ground, and the temperature never gets above—”
“Honey, I know it was hard,” Gene said. “But it’s the past.”
Sinclair caught Braddock’s eye. She wrote postpartum depression / childhood abuse? on a slip of paper and slid it in front of him. He nodded in agreement.
Sinclair asked, “When did you last see Dawn?”
“She came home the first week of August,” Gene said. “The county fair is a big thing out here, and Maddie was finally old enough to walk on her own and enjoy it.”
“Did Dawn talk any more about her life or what she was doing?”
“She said she’d be finished with school in a year or so and was working on plans for her future,” Gene said.
“You weren’t there,” Cynthia said, with an edge in her voice. “You were hanging out with the farmers at the equipment demos. Maddie was petting the lambs and baby horses at the 4-H exhibit when Dawn asked her if she wanted to come and live with her in San Francisco.”
“That must have been a surprise,” Sinclair said.
“I took her aside and told her in no uncertain terms that Maddie was not leaving Mankato to live with a San Francisco hooker,” Cynthia said. “I regret my choice of words, but I was angry. I was scared for Maddie. I knew at that point I needed to begin adoption proceedings so she didn’t drag Maddie into her demented California lifestyle.”
“Honey, I told you that was unnecessary,” Gene said. “That we could all discuss it as adults.”
“Unnecessary?” Cynthia’s voice cracked.
Sinclair heard her crying over the phone and pictured Gene trying to comfort her.
“Unnecessary?” Cynthia said again between sobs. “If we had allowed her to take Maddie, she’d probably be dead, too.”
“I think we better stop,” Gene said. “Can we talk again in a day or two?”
Braddock spoke for the first time. “I’m very sorry for your loss. I’m wondering if you could send us a copy of Maddie’s birth certificate, medical records of her birth, and some of her photos?”
“I’ll e-mail it to you,” Gene said. “Sergeant Sinclair, I’m sure Dawn is looking down on us right now, knowing the search for justice in this matter could not be in better hands.”
Sinclair hung up the phone and kept his eyes on his desk, letting Gene’s final words sink in. When he finally looked up, he saw Braddock looking at him intently.
“Is there something I should know?” she asked.
He grabbed his mug and walked to the coffee pot. He pulled out the pot, sniffed it, and put it back, turning off the burner. “She called me from the jail when she was arrested on the B-charge six years ago,” Sinclair said, referring to 647b, the penal code section for prostitution. “I was new in homicide and asked her if she had any information on any murders. She said maybe, so I pulled a copy of the report.”
Sinclair sat on a desk two rows from Braddock’s desk. “The report said that the officers from the area crime reduction team were assigned to an undercover operation on San Pablo Avenue due to complaints about blatant prostitution activity. It said two officers, working undercover in an undercover car, stopped next to a group of four women that they knew were prostitutes based on their appearance and demeanor. There was some back-and-forth bantering until an officer asked the women if they wanted to go to a bachelor party and have sex with the men there for fifty dollars each. They agreed and the officers signaled the arrest team. The arrest team ran the women and found three of them had recent prostitution arrests and the fourth one, Dawn, admitted she had been arrested for prostitution four years earlier as a juvenile.”
“Let me guess,” said Braddock. “There was no wire, or it didn’t work.”
“No mention of a recording in the report. I had the jail pull Dawn from her cell and put her on the phone. She said she hadn’t worked the streets in years, and that she was just visiting her old friends that night when two guys came up talking shit. She said she certainly didn’t solicit them. She admitted to me she was still in the business, but only doing outcalls and wouldn’t even consider doing a bachelor party for less than five hundred. I believed her. I talked to the sergeant who ran the operation. He confided that they were playing fast and loose to make an impact and get the city councilwoman in that district off their backs. He suspected the DA wouldn’t file charges on most of their arrests. I told him Dawn was an informant of mine. He had no problem with me cutting her loose, so I went back to the jail and filled out the eight-forty-nine-B paperwork.”
“But she wasn’t really your informant and didn’t have any info on murders?”
“No, but it wasn’t the first time we cut someone loose on a bullshit arrest that we knew wouldn’t be charged in order to cultivate them as an informant.”
“Fair enough,” Braddock said. “Did she ever come through for you?”
“She’d call me occasionally and want to talk, but I told her I was too busy unless she had something on a case for me. Then she called me one time and said she was in trouble and needed help. When her parents told us about her returning home pregnant,
I thought about the timing and figured that was what her trouble was.”
“Was the trouble more than just being pregnant?”
“We met and she said someone, or maybe a group of people, were causing her problems. She never mentioned she was pregnant. She wouldn’t tell me who this person or persons were or the nature of the problem, only that she was afraid and didn’t know what to do. I tried to get her to open up, but she wouldn’t. I figured it was over some john or maybe she got mixed up with some major players. I told her maybe this was a wake-up call telling her it was really time to change her life. She said she couldn’t go home, that she felt dead when she was there. I talked to her a few more times over the next few days, and I guess she realized it was more important to go home and feel emotionally dead than stay here and end up physically dead. That was the last I saw her until the park.”
Braddock crossed the room and sat on the desk beside him. She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sinclair thought for a minute. “I guess I knew my relationship with her wasn’t fully professional. I couldn’t really call her an informant because she never provided any info, yet I was helping her out.”
Braddock laughed. “So you felt ashamed because you helped out a citizen for no reason other than she needed help? Jeez, Matt, isn’t that what police are supposed to do? Not every interaction with a citizen has to lead to the arrest of a bad guy. Maybe you’re afraid you’re reputation as a tough, law-and-order-only cop would get tarnished.”
“There’s also what she was.”
“In this city, just about everyone we come across is involved in some kind of crime. As long as you’re not banging her and then looking the other way when she robs banks or something, what’s the big deal?”
“Just the same, I’d prefer you keep what I told you between us.”
“Mum’s the word. Not that you don’t take every case personal, but I’ve had the feeling this one was more personal than most.”
Sinclair nodded in agreement.
“What do you say we call it a night?” Braddock said. “We’re still on standby, and the city’s overdue for another killing.”