by Susan Dunlap
“And the people who have paid are really going to be pissed,” I said. It would be the big brouhaha of the year, the kind of fuss that Berkeley was famous for. “It’ll make a great companion piece to the main story for all those reporters who’ve wasted their Sunday night here: Hostage Negotiation Team outwitted by dummy.”
“You think this is the work of our meter maid vandal?” Samson asked hesitantly.
No one answered, but I would have put money on the same thought filling thirty heads: a news photo of the deflated dummy with a caption TICKETED TO DEATH. I’d have upped the ante to cover thirty minds sure that the Berkeley Hostage Negotiation Team was going to be the laughingstock of the Bay Area, and the press was going to make the whole department a circus until we found the perp who’d collected this load of parking tickets and the perp (maybe one and the same) who’d been staging pranks on parking enforcement carts all over the city.
Bugging meter maids was one thing, but this prank was something else. I couldn’t have said if it seemed that way because this time it was I who’d been had, or if, in fact, it signalled a turn from the playful to the malicious. And indicated a mind that couldn’t see the difference.
CHAPTER 3
IF THERE HAD BEEN any way to avoid it, we certainly would have. But the field operations center was at the Arlington. We had to come back there. And thus, there was no way to avoid having the entire Negotiation and Tac teams emerge from the canyon debacle up the chute, person by hostage-less person, with the regularity of baseballs from an automatic batting machine. After the dark of the canyon, as each one of us hit the blinding lights of four TV crews, we stopped, blinked, and looked like rabbits stunned by headlights.
The adrenaline rush was gone. Now I felt drained and had one of those dull caffeine-hangover headaches that only throb sporadically—as if to remind me that I’d let myself get too caught up in this operation. Every guy on the team looked worn-out and surly; I was willing to bet that at some point in the last hour every one of them had thought that the “victim” was a woman like his aunt or mother or grandmother. But I was the only one on the team who’d thought the “victim” was someone like me.
“What’s the story down there?” Alison Saunders, one of the reporters, shouted leaning far across the second line of tape—the outer perimeter. Behind her cars were still gunning motors for the sharp uphill spurt to the upper lanes of the Arlington. Brakes squealed in the distance as gawkers, drawn by news bulletins, filled the curbs on the far side of the Arlington and doubtless all the streets that fed into it. The crowd had quadrupled in the hour I’d been in the canyon. Earlier it had been mostly neighbors who’d wandered out with glasses of wine. By now some of them had gone home and retrieved the bottles. And there were the crisis junkies who’d grabbed windbreakers and helmets and hopped on bikes, plus the normal array of Berkeleyans: bejeaned ponytailed guys in old flannel shirts and down vests, college girls with used rabbit coats and bare feet in Birkenstocks, shoppers from the stores a block up the Arlington still clutching grocery bags. Clearly our operation was the social occasion of the day.
“Hey, Smith, what went on down there?” Saunders insisted.
Ignoring her, I huddled with Inspector Doyle and McKinley, the field press officer liaison. They’d be the up-front officers with the press. Grayson moved in next to McKinley.
“So you lost him, Grayson,” Doyle muttered.
“Not us, sir. He was probably gone long before we got the go-ahead. The only flashlight signal Smith thinks she saw was over an hour ago. And she’s not sure about that. For all we know, the perp plopped the dummy down there and was home in time for the six o’clock news.”
“And he’ll have a good laugh when he sees you guys on at ten,” Doyle said.
I restrained a smile at Doyle’s support. Grayson made no secret about not liking working with a woman. The woman he most resented was me.
“Sir—” McKinley began.
“Do I take it, Grayson, you’ve got no indication at all where he went? Your Tac Team surrounded the whole canyon and he just walked off?”
“Like I said, sir, he could have been gone before we got here, while the focus was in the hands of Negotiation.”
“Or he could have crept up the hillside while you were coming down.”
I had been around Inspector Doyle a lot more than Grayson had. Doyle had had his own hesitations about a woman in Homicide Detail, but we’d worked through most of them. Now, I said nothing to draw attention to myself, or remove Grayson from the line of fire.
“We’ve got deadlines, you know!” Saunders called.
“Put a sock in it, Saunders. We’ll get to you,” McKinley yelled. To me, he said, “So, Smith. Is there a connection to the meter mangler?”
“Good chance,” I said, “not that that’s much help. As far as I know, there’s no decent lead on those cases either.”
In a remarkably ill-conceived effort to reduce traffic by making driving more difficult for its citizenry, the city fathers had installed cement-roadblock flower pots at intersections and parking meters at every commercial site in the city. Rapidly three things became apparent: First, there were no fewer cars on the streets. Second, it was not an iota easier to find a parking place. But third, there was lots more money in the city coffers.
The city’s reaction had been to raise the parking meter rates to the highest in the area. The citizens’ reactions had been to grumble about meter maids (of both sexes) lying in wait for the meter to run out, meter maids ticketing when the meter had run out but another quarter had been added, meter maids in general.
So when a vandal began stealing chalking wands from carts, slashing meter cart tires, chaining meter carts to meters, he became an instant hero. When he hijacked a cart, stranded it in a mudhole, and left an ersatz ticket in its windshield, he moved to All-Star. And when he deposited one in a pile of fresh manure, he became Most Valuable Player.
Until this week the meter maid cases had been considered pranks and given low priority. Sworn officers, who’d gotten their share of tickets in the two-hour zones around the station, hadn’t fallen over one another to be first to remove the burr from the butt of parking enforcement. It was only last Wednesday that Doyle had told us that the chief figured it was a matter of time till the pranks became assaults. He was leaning toward assigning the case to one of us in Homicide-Felony Assault Detail. As one, Jackson, “Eggs” Eggenburger, and I had inched back in our chairs. But lying low isn’t easy in a small room.
“Well, Smith,” Doyle said now, “clear up what you’re doing and make this meter maid thing your priority.”
I wasn’t about to give Grayson the pleasure of hearing me sigh. Before the Tac Team head had a chance to catch my eye and savor his triumph, Doyle added, “And while you’re at it, Smith, you can take the paper on this operation.”
So much for the joy of Doyle’s support. I nodded, and deliberately ignored Grayson, who probably wouldn’t be able to resist a grin of satisfaction at the thought of me rounding up reports from every one of the team members involved. Doyle’s assignment also meant that he was entrusting me with the assistant field commander’s—lieutenant’s—work. In a successful case, that would have been a coup for me. In this case it just meant work. And the danger of being swamped by the flashiest disaster in years.
For Grayson it provided a virtually risk-free chance to sabotage me by letting word out that there was no rush on reports. If the paper wasn’t in on time, only I would look bad. It was the type of subtle harassment women dealt with in departments across the country.
“So, sir, what’s the official line?” McKinley asked.
“No hostage,” Doyle snapped. “The witnesses were mistaken. We found shoes, but no hostage, no hostage taker. We don’t want to speculate what the witnesses saw. But we’ve searched the canyon and we’ve got a team checking every house on the canyon rim. And, McKinley, no mention of the meter maid business. Press’ll make that connection soon enough without our he
lp.”
McKinley nodded. When he turned to the reporters, he wouldn’t be saying the perp could be hiding in any of those houses, he’d be couching our search in terms of reassuring homeowners.
“Grayson,” I said before he could leave, “your guys have any ideas on the perp’s likely route out of the canyon?”
Grayson hesitated. Maybe he would have shot back a retort if Doyle hadn’t been there, maybe not. As it was, he said, “That nursing home was lit up. In panic these guys either head for the darkest spot or the brightest.”
I shrugged. “We’ve got seven acres of dark. I’ll give the light a try.” If I was going to be taking the paper on this operation, I needed to have as broad a view as possible.
The traffic on the Arlington was still diverted to the top of the embankment. Even though the word that the negotiation was over had spread, the crowd of neighbors hadn’t dispersed yet. I rolled the patrol car and headed to San Antonio, the first downhill street in Berkeley. It was dark now; on the north side streetlights cast odd solitary islands of light that faded into the thick fog between. On any other night lamps in windows would have taken up the slack. Then the fog would have smoothed the corners of houses and softened the lights and given the street the aura of a candlelit restaurant. Normally all the houses would look as inviting as linen-clothed tables with Chardonnay already uncorked. But tonight the houses that backed the canyon were dark; behind the thickening fog they stood like medieval castles with walls, thick and forbidding. The only lights were the flashers from patrol cars bleeding into the fog. Homeowners had been evacuated from their houses; they stood in groups across the street behind the outer perimeter line. As they spotted my patrol car, they started toward me, clearly hoping for word that their discomfort had been rewarded with a spectacular collar. I kept moving.
Across from the nursing home the contain officer gave me a thumbs-up.
If it hadn’t been for him and its lights, I would have had a hard time picking out the nursing home. It looked like just another house on the canyon rim—pale stucco, door in the middle, and two windows on either side. Originally the door would have led in to a foyer between the living room and study. But when I walked up on the stoop I could see that the study had become an office. I had barely pressed the bell when the door opened.
The man in the doorway looked to be about twenty with dark hair cut short for Berkeley where ponytails are still in fashion. By Berkeley standards he was well dressed: fresh plaid cotton shirt and newish jeans with creases pressed in. By any standards he was pissed off. I’d barely introduced myself when he said, “You’ve made a mess of our schedule. We’ve got sick people in here. By dinnertime they’re tired. It’s all they can do to watch the news or talk to a friend if one calls. They don’t have the strength to tell them to call at a sensible time. I have to do that—when I can.”
“You’ve had what?—one?—visit from a police officer?” I asked, careful to sound more amazed than irritated. Public relations is a big part of police work—sometimes the hardest part. “And you didn’t have to turn your lights off like everyone else did.”
“And where do you think the neighbors wanted to go in the dark? Two or three of them marched right up here and leaned on the bell, like we were a drive-in movie for the show you guys put on in the canyon. Like our residents’ lives were so meaningless that it didn’t matter who marched through their rooms to stare out their windows. They would have walked right over me if they could.”
I found that accusation of callousness hard to believe in an old, settled neighborhood. “Your next-door neighbors?”
“Right. Both sides.”
“People who know the owners here? And maybe the patients?”
“People who had no business trying to get in here after dinner. I told them that. Our residents need their rest.”
We were still standing in the doorway. Inside I could see the office—dark wood, red Oriental carpet, the promise of warmth. The dark-haired man didn’t seem to notice the chill, but after my hour in the canyon I felt like it had migrated into my spine. “I need to ask you a few questions. Inside?”
“Can’t they wait—”
“Look, we’ve had a dangerous situation down in the canyon. We need your help. I’d like to ask those questions inside,” I said so as not to give him grounds for saying I’d forced my way in.
The first thing that struck me inside was the smell of orange. It took me a moment to recall that odors I usually associated with nursing homes were of urine and defeat. I’d assumed that after a point there was no way to vanquish them. Clearly I’d been wrong. I looked down at the sparkling linoleum and wondered if the orange was in the wax. From somewhere in the back came muffled sounds of a newscast.
What I had taken to be the office turned out to be part office and part sitting room. But it wasn’t a place where visitors waited for patients or vice versa. The one padded chair faced the windows. Next to it was a table and next to that was space for a wheelchair. “It provides a change of view for our residents.”
“The patients?”
“The residents. This isn’t some shabby nursing home where people warehouse their maiden aunts, you know.”
It occurred to me that that was how I viewed all nursing homes: warehouses for the commodities the undertaker couldn’t get to yet. I had visited my grandmother in one, and then only once, when I was eleven. I hadn’t liked her beforehand, and an hour with her complaining, next to a bedridden woman who moaned constantly, by a hallway that seemed like a moving exhibit of the possibilities of human deterioration, had stamped the feelings so deeply in my brain that I had become physically sick the remaining few times my family had visited.
“Canyonview isn’t a nursing home at all, in the official sense,” he continued. “It’s a co-op. The residents are owners.”
“And when they die?”
“Their heirs get a financial settlement and the right to the room reverts to Delia. Delia’s the manager.”
“And you are?”
“Michael Wennerhaver. Look, I have a lot to do,” he added, maintaining his pique. I’d taken him to be no more than twenty, but now I realized he was older. It was the pouty quality in his voice and his wide flat cheeks and small, full-lipped mouth that gave him the air of a boy not used to being told no.
I settled in the chair and took out my notepad. From one of the rooms I could hear low sounds of music. Not television background, the tempo was wrong for that. Maybe from a radio. “Your address?”
“I’ve got a room downstairs. I take care of the grounds, too, so I have to be here. Can we make this quick?” He propped his bottom on the desk and stared at me, opening and closing his right hand as if squeezing the excess water from a sheet.
“What’s the rest of your job?”
“LVN, licensed vocational nurse. Look, I have to check on the residents. I don’t want them unnerved knowing the cops are in here.”
I found myself writing the three letters of his job title down slowly. For a guy on the edge of a hostage negotiations operation, Michael Wennerhaver was remarkably uninterested. Most people would be dying to know the details, and even the least curious would ask whether the perp was still on the loose, possibly in their own backyard. Careful not to change my tone, I asked, “And where were you for the last hour?”
“Here in the office.”
“Who was with you?”
“No one. I told you the residents are tired by this hour.” He was still squeezing and releasing his hand, his skin reddening and paling with the movement. “I did take a couple calls. You want to know who I talked to? Their phone numbers? So you can verify I was here, is that it?”
I tore off a page from my pad and held it out to him.
He grabbed it, smacked it on the table, and began flipping through the Rolodex.
I made a note to myself: I hadn’t considered Wennerhaver a suspect, and still would stick him at the bottom of the list. But he was making such an effort to move up.
“No!”
I could have pressed him, made him sit and pretend to think. But I’d seen this kind of response often enough to know that nothing but circuitous coaxing would elicit anything. And right now that was more of an effort than I could bring myself to make. I didn’t even ask the question foremost in my mind: What’s a reasonably bright, middle-class guy who clearly is not a social charmer doing working as an LVN? He could have made more money, a lot more, sweeping streets. And Michael Wennerhaver didn’t seem the type to opt for the helping professions. More suitable to him was work as a guard dog; not a Doberman, though—too sullen for that. Or, I thought, glancing at his closing hand, maybe a milker at a farm that mistreated their cows.
I stood up. “I need to check with the people who had views of the canyon. Are they awake?”
“No,” he said automatically.
“None of them?”
“No.”
“Then maybe you should turn off the radio back there,” I said walking into the hallway that divided the street side of the house from the canyon rooms.
On the far side I’d expected to find two residents’ rooms, with windows facing into the canyon. Instead I found myself in a large dining room and looking through the doorway into the kitchen—just like a regular house. “Where are the residents?”
“Upstairs. There’s an elevator. When they feel up to it they can come down, like they did in their own houses. Almost like going home.” He blushed and suddenly looked twelve years old. “It can never be like home, we all know that. It was dumb of me to say.”
I shrugged, searching for something to say to alleviate his discomfort. But when I looked back at him, he was an adult again. The transformation was so complete that if I hadn’t trained myself to observe witnesses so carefully, I would have wondered if I’d imagined that blush. With him I had the sense of dealing with an adolescent who hadn’t learned to control his impulses and whose threads of personality hadn’t yet woven into one cloth.