by Paul Charles
When Grace went away to fetch the file, Kennedy took the opportunity to ask Mactoo, “Would these kids have been doing drugs?”
“A bit of dope; maybe they’d been very adventurous and dropped an E at a weekend party,” Mactoo replied. “I’d say the alcohol might be a bigger problem though. Apart from anything else, it’s much easier to get. All they need do is steal it from their parents’ liquor cabinets.”
“Would such violence, amongst girls, be unusual in Half Moon Bay?”
“Five years ago - what am I talking about? - eighteen months ago it would be unheard of, but the girls these days… well, it’s become part of their culture.”
“Right,” Kennedy said, happy to move on. “Any other cases you and Steve were working on?”
“Traffic violations, shit like that; nothing happens here. We’re the city (beside the city) that time, and criminals, have forgotten.”
“Were you Officer Scott’s primary partner?” Kennedy asked.
“Not really. It doesn’t work like that here,” Mactoo began. “There are eighteen sworn officers here - that figure includes a reserve of auxiliary officers - and three non-sworn officers. We’re all competing with each other to see who can find and caution the litter louts first.”
“Have you had any theories about Steve’s death yourself, Mactoo?”
“At first I thought it must have had something to do with drugs,” he started; “you know, drug dealers. Taking out a police officer is a serious crime up here, so someone wouldn’t have lightly made the decision to kill him. But then when we didn’t turn anything up - and I have to tell you for about three weeks this place was crawling with city police officers - and not even the slightest clue was turned up, I started to think that maybe Steve had just found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I want to ask you about the men who hang around Mac Dutra Park, on the corner of Main Street and Kelly Ave.”
“Yeah,” Mactoo said with a sigh, “they’re all Hispanic, mostly Mexican.”
“Are they legal?” Kennedy asked.
“I would guess that most are in the country illegally.”
“I saw about thirty of them there this morning. Are there many more in the group?” Kennedy asked.
“Probably about fifty tops,” Mactoo answered, doing a mental head count.
“Would any of them be involved in anything illegal?”
“I wouldn’t think so, Inspector Kennedy,” he replied quickly. “The vast majority of these men are hard-working, law-abiding citizens. When we do discover illegal aliens that are gang members or who we know have committed crimes, we have to use the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents to deal with them.”
By the time Officer Grace Scott had returned, MacCormac and Kennedy had finished their chat. Mactoo left, claiming he had the rest of the day off. Grace had the case notes for Florence Asher’s assault.
When they were by themselves, Grace said, “You don’t know how hard it is for me not to ask if you learned anything?”
“I’m glad you’re not,” Kennedy said, “but in exchange I promise to keep you up to date.”
“Deal,” she said, offering Kennedy a high five. When he didn’t respond she added, “We’re outta here,” before he had even a chance to open the file. “We’re meeting Coach Goldberg in five minutes for lunch.”
“With all this eating, how do you manage to keep your figure?” Kennedy said innocently.
“You shouldn’t have noticed,” she replied very seriously and quietly. If it hadn’t been for the obvious exaggeration in her swagger, Kennedy would have put it down as a reprimand.
Chapter Fifty-Three
By the time they reached Barbara’s Fishtrap up at Princeton, Coach Goldberg was already seated in a booth in the bar section sucking on a bottle of Heineken. Police officers and taxi drivers seemed to be comfortable in the bar. The décor was naturally rustic, the space was comfortable, the food was great, the jukebox played an amazing selection of music, and tourists were rarer in the bar section than water hydrants in the streets around Tiger Woods’ home.
“You know, with your condition, you really shouldn’t be drinking at lunchtime,” the tipsy middle-aged woman was saying to Coach.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Coach Goldberg replied. “I often come in here for a Heineken. I find it helps me mind my own business. Would you like one?”
“What condition is this, Coach?” Grace asked as they joined Coach in the booth.
“Oh, apparently I suffer badly from a disease known as retirement. I have it on very good authority it’s terminal.”
Grace shoved him playfully on the shoulder.
“Careful, Grace,” Coach shouted. “Mind my retirement.”
Eventually, introductions over, Kennedy and Coach ordered the salmon burger while Grace opted for a mixed salad. She also extended further restraint, not to mention decency, by not looking down her nose at Kennedy when his order arrived with a very generous portion of chips.
“You were first on the scene when Officer Scott’s body was found?”
“Actually, there were a couple of tourists who spotted Steve first,” Coach began. “A bit of a crowd was building up, and I was worried about securing the scene of crime. Then I realised I couldn’t be 100 per cent sure that Ste… that Officer Scott was dead, so I ran around into Stone Pine Road, straight into the park and down through the bushes to the river to see if I could help him. As I got closer, I could tell from the greyish colour that he was dead.”
“Was he cold?” Kennedy asked.
“Totally, his skin was very cold to the touch. He’d been dead a while.”
“How long had Steve been missing?” Kennedy asked Grace.
“Overnight,” she said plaintively. “It was his gym night, so he was off there after his shift. He was due in late. I’d pulled an early shift, so I didn’t wait up. When I woke up the next morning, I realised he hadn’t come home.”
“Did you notice any footprints around the body?” Kennedy asked Coach.
“Not that I could see, but the whole area was waterlogged, and the creek was still quite high. What with that and all the bushes, there wasn’t a lot of standing room on either side of the water.”
“What did you do next?” Kennedy asked.
“Once I realised I couldn’t help Steve, I stood back carefully. My shoes and the bottom of my pants were soaking, so I went to higher ground and rang Grace’s dad at the station house and supervised the area until he could get the troops down.”
Coach had a very honest smile. Kennedy noticed that he wasn’t scared to eyeball the person he was speaking to.
“Did it look to you as if Officer Scott had come off the bridge?”
“No, it didn’t,” Coach replied without hesitation, “nor were there any visible marks or bruises on him.”
“I believe the top half of his torso was in the river, but his legs were on the bank. Did you notice if his trousers were wet?”
“All his clothes were soaking,” Coach replied immediately. “It was like he’d jumped into a swimming pool fully dressed.”
“Have you any theory about how he might have ended up there?”
“Well, the water was very high and was flowing furiously. I imagine he was probably put in the river upstream. Then as he came around the corner just before the bridge, the momentum he’d built up on the way down deposited him on the bank.”
“But why would they do that?” Grace wondered aloud. “Why dump him in the river? If they’d buried him up in the hills, he’d never have been found.”
“Laziness, I imagine,” Kennedy suggested. “It’s a lot more work than you’d imagine burying a body; all that digging, then moving the body. Maybe they panicked…”
“Or were disturbed before they a chance to hide the body properly,” Grace interrupted, “so they just dumped him in the river hoping he’d be carried to the sea.”
“Where does Pilarcitous Creek run into the sea?”
“How far away is that?” Kennedy continued.
“A bit over a mile, at the max, up the coast,” Coach replied solo.
“Which properties does the river run through?” Kennedy asked.
Coach looked at Grace.
“My father’s ranch, Asher’s Triple W ranch, and Highland’s Baywood Park.”
***
As they were leaving, Coach said to them, “Most people, particularly men, are very territorial about their fries, yet Grace here was picking from your stash. You both appeared very comfortable with that.”
“And your point?” Grace asked, good-humouredly.
“No point,” Coach said with a wry grin, “just an observation, kids. But remember: platonic is only passion with the brakes on.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Kennedy and Grace left Coach to return to doing what he’d been doing when they’d arrived: sucking on his beer and minding his own business. It didn’t take them long to nip back into Half Moon Bay.
“Okay. What I’d like to do,” Kennedy started as they got out of the patrol car just outside of the Half Moon Bay Inn, “is to go down to the bank of the creek and then either work our way back up the river, or drive up and work our way down.”
“Sounds like an idea. What size are you?” Grace said hopping back in the patrol car.
“Sorry?”
“Your feet, Inspector. What size are your feet?”
“Oh right,” he said. “Nine, I’m a nine.”
“Okay, dainty feet, that’s a size eleven in the US. I’ll go down to the station house and pick us up a couple of pairs of waders. I’ll leave the patrol car down there and we can walk up the creek and get my car back down.”
“Or walk back down.”
“Or, as you say, walk back down, country boy,” she said through a false sweet smile.
Kennedy walked down Main Street towards Highway 92 and turned right at Stone Pine Road and into the park. Kennedy felt that the word “park” was more than a little generous to honour the overgrowth. He had to fight his way through dense bushes in order to get to the water’s edge of the creek. He walked downstream about twenty yards until he was level with the bridge again and approximately in the spot where Patrolman Steve Scott’s body was found.
Coach had been right; there wasn’t much room to manoeuvre. Coach had also been correct that it would have been impossible to deposit the body on the bank. Kennedy still reckoned the body hadn’t been thrown off the bridge, which meant, by process of elimination, that Coach’s theory made sense: the body was dumped in the creek upstream, was carried downstream by the current and eventually banked under the bridge. He searched and searched for the ten minutes it took Grace to return but could find nothing of interest from his position on the bank.
Five minutes later, both Grace and Kennedy, decked out in all-in-one fisherman’s waterproof trousers, were wandering out into the middle of the creek. Even though the sun was shining, Kennedy felt the coolness of the water through his waders. At its deepest mid-creek, the rapidly flowing water came to just above Kennedy’s mid-thigh.
Grace studied Kennedy studying the location. “You look like you have an idea,” she said eventually.
“No, not at all,” Kennedy admitted, as he continued his examination.
“What are you looking for then?”
“I’m looking for an idea,” Kennedy said. “The scene where the body was found may not give up any clues of its own, but that in itself could be a clue. It also means we can now eliminate the scene from our investigation.”
“I think I get you,” she replied as she hunkered down on the other bank and continued to examine Kennedy examining the scene. “No, sorry, I don’t, Inspector. What exactly do you mean?”
“Well, if there are no clues here, then it raises the question: why is the body here?”
“Well, there wouldn’t be any clues here anyway, because the high water of the creek would wash them all away,” she offered.
“Exactly, and that could be our clue. The body could be here because someone wanted the water to wash away the clues.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” she replied, nodding her head. “Am I bothering you asking you these questions while you do your work?”
“No, not at all,” Kennedy replied, although normally he liked to do this part of his work alone with his own thoughts. “I find it helps to eliminate as much as possible. According to the gospel of Sherlock Holmes, ‘Eliminate the impossible; whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
“But what about your suspicions and a detective’s legendary gut instinct?”
“It’s been my experience that gut instincts only get in the way. The investigation must be about amassing information and then, when you’ve collected all the information possible, you stand back and see how it all fits together.”
Grace nodded to herself.
“Let’s move upstream,” Kennedy suggested a few minutes later.
Grace called out the names of Johnston Street and San Benito Street as they passed them. Next landmark was where Arroyo Leon Creek flowed into Pilarcitos Creek from the south. Kennedy stopped at the junction and studied it in great detail.
“Coach was right,” Kennedy announced eventually, “the body definitely came down Pilarcitos Creek. Look, it got caught in those bushes...”
“That’s a piece torn from Steve’s shirt,” Grace said in shock. “How did you know it was Steve’s shirt?” she eventually asked in a controlled voice.
“It’s in the report,” Kennedy replied. “If he had come out of this side of the creek,” Kennedy continued, pointing up Arroyo Leon Creek, “he’d have been carried too wide by the current to have hit here. So his body must have come from further up Pilarcitos Creek.”
“How did my people miss all this?” she asked herself as much as Kennedy.
“You have to be looking for something before you can miss it,” Kennedy replied, “but in fairness it would be logical to assume the body had been thrown off the bridge. Your people were personally involved in the case and with Steve, so the temptation is to focus in on ‘Who did this to Steve?’ They were concentrating on the bigger picture. Whereas I always find it best to...”
“Just chase the small clues first?” she offered, sounding upbeat.
“Exactly.”
The creek was shallower but trickier the further they travelled upstream. As it veered to the left, Grace announced, “Okay, there’s my dad’s ranch to the north, and Asher’s to the south on the right.”
The creek twisted and turned through the two ranches for about three quarters of a mile, until eventually Kennedy said, “The creek is too shallow now to carry a body. The body must have been placed in the creek somewhere between here and back down at the bridge.”
“So the body came from our ranch or the Archer ranch,” Grace stated. “But why would Steve have needed to be on the Archer’s ranch?”
Kennedy smiled. “What I’d like to do is to walk back down the creek again. You can study Archer’s bank and I’ll study your dad’s bank, and we’ll see if we can spot any movement of earth, stones, or branches - anything that might suggest recent activity.”
“But why bother with our side of the creek?” she asked, and then, “Elimination, I get it, elimination. I like this approach, Inspector. It’s tiring, wading through all of this water and all, but I like the approach.”
“But what about this though,” she said after five more minutes of wading downstream: “what if, and I am talking hypothetically here, what if my dad was involved? But... being a policeman he was aware someone would be doing this, checking the bank, so he was clever enough not only to tidy his side of the bank, but also to tamper with Asher’s bank so it appeared a body had passed through it?”
“Good question and very valid, so we must view the evidence accordingly.”
“And you have already been doing th
at?”
“Why, yes,” he replied.
Half an hour later they arrived back at the Arroyo Leon Creek junction.
“Still nothing my side, Inspector.”
“Nor mine.”
“There were a couple of sections back there though, with high banks, rocks and stuff, where I couldn’t really tell. I’d need to be up on the edge of the bank to see for sure,” she said as they climbed out of the creek.
“Similarly on your dad’s side.”
“Okay, what next, Inspector?”
“I’d like you to walk along the creek until it reaches the ocean at Elmar Beach.”
“Looking for what?”
“You’ll know when you see it,” was all he’d say.
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to have another chat with Chief Donohue.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
I heard you took some time out to go fishing,” Chief Donohue laughed as Kennedy was shown into his office.
“Sorry? Oh right,” Kennedy stuttered, as he sat in the seat directly in front of the chief’s desk.
“Do you do a lot of fishing, Inspector Kennedy?”
“After a fashion,” Kennedy replied. “I’m always fishing for information.”
“So how can I help you?”
Kennedy was a little surprised the chief hadn’t asked him if he and Grace had turned up anything.
“I wanted to ask you about...Asher.”
“Okay. Any particular reason?”
“Officer Scott and I discovered that Steve’s body had been put in the creek somewhere between your two properties.”
“How did you discover that?”
Kennedy went on to describe how he and Grace had come to their conclusion.
“That also means the body could have come from my side of the creek.”
“Yes,” Kennedy replied. He was impressed that Donohue didn’t hesitate to put this topic on the table. “I’d like to get your impressions on Steve Scott, sir.”