by Brian Thiem
“Don’t be flip with me, Sinclair. You know better than to interrogate a sitting city councilmember without running it up the chain of command.”
Sinclair wanted to ask him where in the manual of rules that was written, but decided his best chance for keeping his job rested with a logical explanation. Brown listened for ten minutes as Sinclair laid out the facts that led them to Yates. The rage left Brown’s face, and by the end of the story, he was shaking his head in disbelief. “So Yates was keeping the girl as a mistress and they had a love child together?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And shortly before her murder, she was planning on asking him for greater child support?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“But you don’t think he killed her?”
Sinclair shrugged his shoulders.
“Wait here,” Brown said, and he disappeared into the room with Yates.
Fifteen minutes later, Brown came back out just as Maloney burst into the room out of breath. “It’s about time you got here,” Brown said to the homicide commander.
“Chief, I—”
Brown waved his hand to quiet him. “Last weekend, Yates was in Long Beach with two commissioners from the Port of Oakland for a conference. I know it’s possible that he had someone kill your victim, but it’s doubtful he did it himself. The councilmember will be in my office Tuesday at five o’clock. He will have copies of all of his bank and cell phone records. Come prepared with a list of questions you have for him. He will be there without a lawyer and will answer anything related to your murder investigation.”
Sinclair nodded his approval.
“This stays among us.” Brown made eye contact separately with each of them, and then locked his gaze on Sinclair. “If I find any of you leaked this to the media or said a word to anyone—and I mean anyone . . . I don’t even need to finish that sentence, do I?”
Maloney, Sinclair, and Braddock all shook their heads in unison.
“Personally, behavior of this sort by a government official disgusts me, but I try not to impose my morality on others. The politics of this situation are well above your pay grade. Don’t involve yourself. That’s not just advice; it’s an order. Leave the politics to me.”
*
Skyline Boulevard ran for twenty miles along the Oakland Hills from the border with Berkeley to the end of Oakland’s city limits in the east. Dozens of pullouts offered panoramic views of the Oakland flatland, the Bay Bridge, and on clear days, as far as San Francisco, Alcatraz Island, and the Golden Gate Bridge. William Whitt’s house sat on the south side of the winding two-lane road, high above toney Montclair Village and the city of Piedmont.
After Brown had finished with Maloney and his two investigators, Maloney had taken Sinclair and Braddock outside to add to the chief’s ass-chewing. Sinclair felt bad for putting his lieutenant in the chief’s line of fire by keeping him in the dark, but had he asked for permission to interview Yates, he would never have gotten it. When Sinclair told him of his plan to next interview William Whitt, Maloney gave him permission under the condition that he and Braddock keep it low-key and nonconfrontational unless clear evidence of Whitt’s involvement in the murder surfaced. If he received another call from the chief, Maloney promised them there’d be hell to pay.
Whitt opened the door dressed in a cardigan sweater, tweed slacks, and leather slippers. “Sergeant Sinclair, I’m surprised to see you again so soon.”
“Do you have time to talk?” Sinclair asked.
“Sure.” He held the door open and led them through the foyer to the living room. “I was just downstairs in my office reading a bunch of boring reports.”
Built into the downward slope of the hill, the house seemed as if it had been constructed upside down, with the main floor at street level and bedrooms below. Windows covered the entire back of the house and offered what was literally a million-dollar view. This part of Skyline was above the blanket of fog that lay over Oakland and San Francisco.
“Beautiful place,” said Sinclair, “but I’d always be afraid it would slide down the hill.”
Whitt chuckled. “I’ve lived here for thirty years and felt the same way for the first ten or so, but when it was intact after the Loma Prieta earthquake, I knew it could weather anything.” Whitt offered them seats in the living room overlooking the fog bank that was rolling in across the bay. “Sitting up here, I’ve become a weather watcher. Although it’s calm right now, you can see the weather coming our way.”
“They say we need all the rain we can get,” Braddock said.
“Yes, but not this kind.” Whitt walked to the window and looked out. “The meteorologists say we’re going to get hit with the bottom edge of a Pineapple Express system. Do you know what that is?”
Sinclair wanted Whitt to talk and relax, so he prompted, “Tell me.”
“It’s an informal term for a strong flow of moist air coming from the waters around the Hawaiian Islands. It usually brings warm torrential rain. This one’s pointed at Portland. We’re just getting a few inches. It’s bad news for the snowpack and skiers, since rain’s expected all the way up to six thousand feet.”
When Whitt turned from the window, Sinclair said, “We came here to talk to you about Dawn Gustafson.”
“I figured as much.” Whitt sat in an upholstered Queen Ann chair that looked uncomfortable. Sinclair and Braddock sat in two swivel chairs across from him. “I was heartbroken to hear of her death. She was an extraordinary young woman.”
“Can you tell us how you knew her?”
“Since you’re here, you already know the answer to that. I saw her profile on the website for Special Ladies Escorts, called the service, and requested her. That was probably seven years ago.”
“How many times did you see her?”
“Detectives, I know the way this makes me look, but the reality is, after my wife died, I was lonely. I’m not particularly good-looking and I don’t have the time nor skill to do the bar scene. Where does a man meet a woman these days? I don’t like to mix business with pleasure. You know the old adage about not dipping your pen in the company inkwell. You’re probably thinking I’m a dirty old man or a sex fiend. She’s just a few years older than my son, after all. But she made me feel good about myself. I would arrange to see her weekly. Sometimes all we did was talk. She was a great listener.”
“Can you give us an estimate, Mr. Whitt?” Braddock asked.
“In the hundreds. About five years ago, she quit the agency. I tried other escorts, but none were Dawn. She called me when she returned to the agency, and we began seeing each other again. She was trying to change her life. We talked about her business plan and I fully supported it, so when she quit the agency, I was the first in line to sign up for her personal finance business. It allowed me to still spend time with her, and her hourly rate was much lower.”
Braddock picked up a framed photo from the coffee table of a young man dressed in a tuxedo. “Is this your son?”
“Travis.” Whitt smiled. “He had it rough after his mother died, but he turned out okay. Finally.”
“Losing a mother must’ve been hard on him,” Braddock said.
“He was ten, maybe eleven, when his mother died. The year before she died was difficult as well. I’m sure you’ll find out. It’s all out there, so I might as well tell you. I had an affair with Travis’s fourth-grade teacher. Susan, my wife, found out and filed for divorce. It was public and messy. I entered counseling, did everything she asked of me. We were reconciling. It’s all in the court records.”
“The teacher’s name?” Sinclair said.
“Lisa Harper. That was a huge mistake for both of us. I haven’t heard from her in years, but I imagine she’s still teaching at the Caldecott Academy. When Susan made my indiscretion public, the school terminated Lisa. She was teaching at the public elementary school then. I helped her get the job at Caldecott and, out of guilt and a sense of responsibility, I paid the difference in her salar
y and benefits for a number of years.”
“How’d your wife die?” Braddock asked.
“Car accident. Drove off the road on Grizzly Peak Boulevard. The car ended up three hundred feet down the cliff.”
“Where were you?” Sinclair asked.
“It was all investigated and I wasn’t there. But I’m still responsible.”
Sinclair raised his eyebrows.
“I told you we were reconciling,” Whitt said. “Well, it was a process. Susan put the divorce proceedings on hold and I was going to move back into the house at the end of the month. I was staying at the corporate apartment. Cal Asia had two at the time, mostly for overseas partners who were engaged in lengthy business here. Sunday morning I came to the house to take Travis for the day. She threw down a bunch of photos. It seems she had hired a PI to watch me, and they got photos of Dawn entering the corporate apartment. I tried to explain it was a one-time thing—a relapse. I had called my therapist the day after it happened. Susan was angry. I don’t blame her. I left with Travis. Took him canoeing at Lake Chabot. Later that day, the police called and said she ran off the road over a cliff. She had a temper and was known to drive crazy when she was mad. Probably took one of those hairpin turns too fast.”
Sinclair looked at the photograph of Travis. Tall, thin, good-looking kid. “Where’s Travis now?”
“It was tough at first, raising him alone. When he graduated from middle school, I sent him to a college prep school in Connecticut for his high school years. Great school with plenty of direction. He was accepted to MIT from there, and got a degree in computer science and engineering. He’s been working as a software designer at Google down in Mountain View for the last three years. I think he still holds me responsible for his mom’s death.”
“If we wanted to talk to him, how do we reach him?” Sinclair asked.
Whitt recited his cell number. “If he doesn’t answer, text him. Kids never listen to their voicemails today.”
Sinclair thanked Whitt and signaled to Braddock that it was time to go.
When they started down the hill, Braddock said, “I had some more questions for him.”
“I want to dig a bit deeper into Mr. Whitt before we talk to him again, maybe check out the court file on the divorce, pull the traffic collision report, and talk to Lisa Harper. See if everything in his story matches up.”
“He appeared pretty up-front.”
“Yeah, he’s really good at appearing that way.”
Chapter 27
Once in the guesthouse, Sinclair stripped off his coat and tie, pulled on a fleece jacket, and walked to the main house with an umbrella. It was only six o’clock, but the house was quiet. Sinclair got a cigar from Fred’s humidor in the library and walked out the side entrance, where a portico covered the driveway and service entry.
He sat on a step and typed a text to Alyssa:
Was up all night with a break in case. How are you?
All day at niece’s BDay party. How R U?
Tired but I’ll be ready for a run later this week.
Sounds fun. Let me know.
OK. Good night.
Nite.
Sinclair put his phone away and heard the door behind him open. He looked over his shoulder to see Walt.
“You want some company?” Walt asked.
“Sure.” Sinclair lit his cigar and waited for Walt to shut the door. “What do you think about men who engage the services of prostitutes?”
Walt buried his hands in his jacket pockets. “I look at the place and time when it occurred and try to understand the emotional and spiritual condition the man is in.”
Sinclair took a few puffs on his cigar and looked out at the rain pelting the driveway. One thing he liked about sitting with Walt was that periods of silence weren’t awkward. Sinclair was searching for a simple answer, not a “depends on the circumstances” response. But Walt seldom gave simple answers to such questions.
“Times have changed,” Walt continued. “When I was in Vietnam, most soldiers used prostitutes at one time or another. It was accepted. We can’t judge men in the past by our standards today.”
“What about the men who pay for escorts?”
“It’s the same, except those men have more money, and the girl receives greater compensation. That makes it more palatable to some people. But the reasons are the same. Some do it to try to fill an emptiness within them. Some enjoy the power that their money can buy.”
“Did you ever?”
Walt sat down on the step beside Sinclair. “In Vietnam. When I reflected back on it as I got older, I felt nothing but shame. What about you?”
“I’ve never paid for sex.” Sinclair puffed on his cigar and stared at the rain.
Walt glanced at him. “However . . .”
“I don’t know how you can always tell when there’s more to the story.”
Walt smiled.
Sinclair had heard people in AA say, “You’re only as sick as your secrets,” and he’d been holding this one in too long. “I’d been back from Iraq less than a year, and Jill started on my case again to open up and talk about it.”
“Jill, your ex-wife?”
“Yeah. I thought I was fine. War changes you. You know that. It doesn’t mean you have PTSD or are about to go postal. Anyway, that’s what I thought at the time. Finally, her nagging got to be too much and I moved out for a while. One of the guys in CID had converted his uncle’s garage in Alameda into an apartment and rented it out short-term to fellow officers going through the suitcase drill with their wives. It was available, so I moved in. I’d been there about a week when I got a call from Dawn. She was scared, but wouldn’t tell me of who. Wouldn’t tell me the details other than she couldn’t go back to her apartment and had no one to turn to for help. I’d never done this before—taking someone from my work life into my house—but I gave her a spare key to the apartment and told her to stay there until I got home.”
“Are you the first police officer who brought someone like her into their home?” Walt asked. “In AA we do it all the time.”
“We had this sergeant years ago who was a born-again. He and his wife took plenty of prostitutes into their home to try to save them. But that was different. Everyone knew his intentions were pure.”
“And yours weren’t?” Walt asked.
“I gave her the couch and I slept in my bed. She said she was in trouble and it was because of the choices she had made. She didn’t want to discuss her past or concern herself with what she was going to do in the future for now. She didn’t ask me to talk about my past either. It was as if we could both exist fully in the present and use the opportunity to take a breath before we had to figure out what to do next. We took walks on the beach, held hands, drank wine, and talked late into the night.
“She’d been there almost a week when I heard her sobbing one night. I sat on the couch next to her as she cried. She said she’d have to make a decision soon about her situation and was afraid it would be the wrong one. I didn’t pry or try to give her advice. I just sat with her until she fell asleep and then went back to bed. A little bit later, she knelt next to my bed and said she didn’t want to be alone. She slipped into bed with me. I held her and after a while, one thing led to another.”
“Two people clinging to life by its threads made love and took comfort in each other,” Walt said. “Is that wrong?”
“I think I had fantasized that because she was a professional she would do things to me that no woman had ever done, that it would be the most mind-blowing sex in the world. It wasn’t. It was soft, quiet, and, if a man can use that word, sweet. We slept together the rest of her time there. We made love as soon as I got home from work every day and again before we went to sleep. It was as if we couldn’t get close enough to each other. She pulled me into her as deep as she could, but it was never far enough. Yet at the same time, we gave each other everything we could. When I came home from work one evening, she was gone. She left a note.”
/> “What did she say?”
“She thanked me for being there for her and saving her from herself. Said I was the kindest and most loving man she’d ever met. And she had met a few. She added a smiley face. She said she made her decision, knew it was the right one, and what we had was special. She ended by saying she had never loved a man as much as she loved me and hoped that I would find that kind of love myself someday.”
“Did you ever try to find her?”
“No, it didn’t seem right. Not long afterward, Jill filed for divorce and I got caught up in that and then work stuff, and of course my drinking took over. I’d thought about her occasionally and hoped she found happiness. I ran her name a few times and was glad when I never found her in the system. I figured she left Oakland for good. And then I saw her hanging from the tree.”
Chapter 28
“How’s your shoulder?” Braddock asked when Sinclair arrived at the office Monday morning an hour late.
He had called earlier and told her that the shoulder he was shot in years ago was acting up and he needed to see his physical therapist on the way to work. At least the part about seeing a therapist was the truth. In his session with Dr. Elliott, he had gone through the ambush in Baghdad again and begun talking about his brother’s death. He felt a bit lighter after bringing that incident to the surface.
“It’ll be okay,” he said to Braddock. Another thing he’d lied to her about.
She headed over to the court building to pull a copy of Whitt’s divorce proceeding, while Sinclair went downstairs to beg a police records specialist to pull a sixteen-year-old traffic collision report. Sinclair found an empty desk, opened the dusty accordion folder, and pulled out the collision form. It listed Susan Whitt as the driver and William Whitt as the registered owner of the 1998 BMW 750i four-door sedan. The incident time was listed as between 1300 and 1500 hours, and it was reported at 1510 when a passerby saw the car upside down in a canyon. The report prepared by the traffic accident investigator described the laborious process by a fire department rescue team to get to the wreckage and pronounce the driver dead. In multiple pages, it detailed the recovery of the body and the recovery of the car, which took most of the following day.