OFFICER INVOLVED

by Lynch, Sean

  When Jennifer reached the lobby and looked outside through the broken-out front door, she could see the man she’d pursued down the stairs outside on the sidewalk helping another man towards a van. This man was bent over in obvious pain and barely able to walk. In the hand not draped over his buddy’s shoulders he carried a pistol-gripped shotgun.

  Jennifer could also see another man lying on his side in the middle of the street. He was wearing an Oakland A’s baseball cap, was unshaven, and a revolver lay next to him.

  The Hispanic man was opening the passenger door of the van when Jennifer emerged from the building. The two men must have sensed her arrival as they both turned and looked up.

  The shorter Hispanic man pushed his friend aside and fled to the other side of the van. Jennifer couldn’t afford to pay him any heed. The other man had wheeled around and was raising his shotgun.

  She was perhaps fifteen feet away, and slightly above, the shotgun-wielding gunman due to her position at the top of the steps leading into the building. She smoothly assumed a two-handed shooting posture, found the front sight, exhaled and squeezed twice. The revolver again bucked in her hands. The man with the shotgun, like his companion in her father’s apartment, went down and didn’t get up.

  She heard the van’s driver door slam. Its engine was already running. As the van began to screech away, Jennifer dropped her revolver, brought up the Ingram, located its crude front sight, and squeezed the trigger.

  “You’d better run!” she yelled, as she raked the van with fully automatic fire.

  The vehicle sped away as the Ingram clicked empty. Jennifer lowered the weapon, her chest heaving.

  She turned to the person lying in the street. She unslung and dropped the gun and ran to him, ignoring the gunman she’d shot on the sidewalk. His face was ghostly white, and as she knelt on the concrete next to him realized he was lying in the middle of a lake of blood. Blood also poured from his mouth, and his lower abdomen was soaked in crimson.

  “Thank you,” she said, “for the warning. You saved my life.” He nodded slightly and his eyes rolled back.

  Then he coughed and died.

  Chapter 39

  Farrell noticed the first sign of trouble when he couldn’t drive within a block of his apartment. The street ahead was crowded with emergency vehicles. There were at least six or seven marked S.F.P.D. cruisers, a couple of ambulances, a Crime Scene Unit van, and several unmarked sedans he recognized as the type of car he was assigned when he’d been a police inspector.

  He realized the traffic jam wouldn’t allow him to access his underground garage, so he reluctantly parked his Oldsmobile a block away. He figured he could move it to the garage later, once all the commotion had cleared. Farrell presumed it was a traffic collision involving a pedestrian, which were common in San Francisco, and most likely a fatal one by the number of official vehicles at the scene. As he approached on foot, he came to the stomach-dropping realization the police vehicles were all parked in front of his building.

  Robert Farrell was not a believer in coincidence. He headed for his apartment at a run. There was already yellow crime scene tape stretching across the sidewalk from the door to his building, and a throng of onlookers being kept at bay by uniformed patrol officers. As he neared he saw a tarpaulin-covered body in the middle of the street, and brass shell casings scattered everywhere. Another covered body was on the sidewalk directly in front of his building.

  Fearing the worst, Farrell ducked under the crime scene tape and lifted the tarp covering the body in the street. He was relieved to find the body of a man who was not Kevin Kearns.

  “Get away from there,” a uniformed cop ordered him.

  Farrell ignored him and headed for the second body on the sidewalk.

  “You can’t come in,” a different cop said as Farrell ducked under the crime scene tape.

  “Hell I can’t,” Farrell said. He held up his ‘Retired’ S.F.P.D. badge. “I live here.” He didn’t need to look under the second tarpaulin. One of the body’s hands, belonging to a dark-skinned male, protruded from under the plastic sheet. He breathed another sigh of relief.

  The uniformed officer grabbed his arm but Farrell shrugged it off and moved away. He’d seen his daughter sitting at the back of the ambulance, and nothing was going to prevent him from getting to her.

  Jennifer was seated on the rear bumper and being attended by a female paramedic. She was still wearing Farrell’s thick white bathrobe, except it wasn’t very white any more. Her feet and knees were scraped and bleeding, she had wood chips and dust in her damp hair, and her abraded face was being disinfected by the paramedic.

  “Dad,” she said when she saw Farrell. Jennifer stood and went into his arms, just as the cop he’d shoved moved in to grab him

  “That’s enough,” a detective cut in, blocking the uniformed officer from seizing Farrell. Farrell recognized him as a detective who’d been assigned to the Inspector’s Bureau, in the Homicide Unit, less than a year before he retired. “It’s okay, I’ll take it from here,” he said to the uniformed officer. The beat cop grudgingly retreated.

  “Bob Farrell, isn’t it? Retired out of Burglary a couple of years back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Mark Treyhorn,” the inspector said. “Homicide.”

  “I remember you,” Farrell said, stepping away from Jennifer and shaking his hand.

  “Dad,’ Jennifer began, “I had to-”

  “Don’t say a word,” Farrell cut her off.

  “I’m afraid your daughter is a suspect in the deaths of at least two men,” Treyhorn said, gesturing around at the scene. “We’ll need to get her statement.”

  “I know the drill,” Farrell said, noticing his own .41 revolver lying on the steps and marked as evidence. “Not now. She’s been through enough for one night. Give me your card. I’ll make her available to you tomorrow morning. I promise.”

  “That’s not protocol,” Treyhorn said, “and you know it.”

  “I don’t give a shit,” Farrell said. “You know who I am and how to find me. It ain’t like she’s going to change her name and run off to Mexico. Besides, she has a right to legal counsel before giving her statement, so you wouldn’t be getting her side of the story tonight anyway.”

  Treyhorn nodded. “All right. But don’t make me come looking for her.”

  “Like I said, we’ll meet up tomorrow.”

  Treyhorn gave Farrell and Jennifer permission to enter his apartment and retrieve some of her clothes, even though it had been roped off as a crime scene. He escorted them up.

  When Farrell entered, holding his daughter’s hand, he showed no emotion at the carnage within. The body in the middle of the living room floor was uncovered, unlike those outside and subject to public view. Crime Scene technicians were collecting evidence and taking photographs, and a uniformed officer manned the door. Farrell told Jennifer to get her things and to do it quickly. She scurried into the spare bedroom.

  “Hell of a firefight went down in here,” Treyhorn said, surveying the bullet-scarred apartment.

  “So it would seem,” Farrell said. “Another one outside.” Looking around, he envisioned the horror of what had transpired inside his home. The mental images of his daughter enduring the ordeal single-handedly, and somehow miraculously surviving, were not comforting. He struggled to control the fury welling within him.

  “The dead guy outside on the street is a cop,” Treyhorn said. “He’s a deputy with-”

  “-the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office,” Farrell finished the sentence. “I know.”

  “That makes this an officer-involved shooting,” Inspector Treyhorn said.

  “There’s an officer involved, all right,” Farrell said.

  Chapter 40

  When the door to Judge Callen’s house opened, Kearns was surprised to find Norm Hynds standing before him. He was further surprised to find a Colt AR-15 rifle in the husky gunsmith’s hands, and a .357 revolver on his hip. It was a littl
e after two in the morning.

  “C’mon in,” Hynds said. “Bob and the Judge are waiting for you.”

  Kearns closed and locked the door behind him, and followed Hynds through the large house into the study. There he found Farrell at the bar and the Judge seated at his large mahogany desk. An ornately-engraved, nickel-plated, .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver was on the desktop next to a tumbler of scotch. Leaning against the desk next to his cane was a similarly-engraved Browning twelve-gauge shotgun.

  “The place looks like a scene from Rio Bravo,” Kearns remarked.

  “We’re going to the mattresses,” Hynds said. Kearns nodded.

  Across the room, Farrell was standing with his suit jacket off and a telephone receiver to his ear. In addition to the ever-present Smith & Wesson five-shot Bodyguard on his hip, he was wearing a large-framed revolver in a vertical shoulder holster.

  “Very well,” Farrell said into the phone. “We’ll meet up tomorrow and I’ll brief you in detail. Thanks, Steve.”

  “How’s Jennifer?” Kearns asked, after Farrell had hung up.

  “Alive, thankfully.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s upstairs asleep,” the Judge answered. “In Paige’s old room.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s as well as can be expected,” Farrell said. “Rattled as hell, and scraped up, but it could have been worse.” He poured himself a drink and offered one to Kearns, who declined.

  “A lot worse,” Hynds said. He set his rifle against the door and took a seat. A half-consumed cup of coffee was on the table next to him.

  Kearns approached Farrell and noticed his face was pale. There was something in his eyes, too; something he’d seen in the older man before.

  “I’m sorry, Bob,” Kearns said, his head slumping. “What happened to your daughter is my fault.”

  “No it isn’t,” Farrell said, putting his hand on Kearns’ shoulder.

  “I should have been there.”

  “Clearly the gunmen thought you were,” Judge Callen said.

  “It’s actually my fault,” Farrell said. “I misjudged. I should have stayed.”

  “What do you mean ‘stayed’? You weren’t even in the city.”

  “You’re wrong,” Farrell said.

  “Huh?”

  “When I asked you to escort Jennifer to dinner tonight because I had something to do,” he said, “I only told you half of the truth. I was following you.”

  “You were following me?”

  “Actually,” Farrell went on, “to be more specific, I was following Sergeant Vincent Avery, who was following you.”

  “I’m confused,” Kearns said.

  “Me too,” said Judge Callen.

  “I shadowed your protection detail because I wanted to know more about Avery. Somebody within the sheriff’s department fingered you for the hit at Paige’s townhome.”

  “We know that already,” Kearns said. “We just don’t know who.”

  “We didn’t until now.”

  “Who is it?” Kearns said. His jaw tightened and his fists involuntarily clenched.

  “Denny Conley told me it was Avery’s idea to set up the protection detail.”

  “But Avery acted like he was reluctant to do it,” Kearns said. “He told us he was only following orders.”

  “That’s what should have tipped me off,” Farrell said, “but it wasn’t until he offered me a smoke that it hit me. I spotted four dots tatted on the web of Sergeant Avery’s right hand. They were old and faded. You could barely see them.”

  “What does a tattoo of four dots mean?”

  “In Hispanic gang parlance it means, ‘Mi Vida Loca.’ My crazy life.”

  “You believe Sergeant Avery is in a gang?” Kearns asked.

  “He must have been once,” Farrell said. “What’s so hard to believe about that? We all have secrets in our past. Those tats tell me he used be a banger. Those are lifelong ties. Unlike most gangsters, Avery was probably smart enough to avoid getting arrested and generating a police record.”

  “Maybe he never severed those gang ties,” Callen offered. “Blood in, blood out, they call it. Maybe he’s still running with a crew?”

  “Or running one,” Farrell said. “Think about it. As Alameda County’s Vice and Narcotics supervisor, and head of the Narcotics Enforcement Task Force, he’d be above suspicion and in an ideal role to cover his tracks. He’d also be in the perfect position to run interference regarding enforcement action against his crew, and could obtain valuable intelligence on rival gangs. Not coincidentally, Denny told me Avery is especially good at producing asset-forfeiture booty. What better way to root out where the big-time drug dealer’s illegal goods are stashed than to have your own crew’s eyes and ears out on the street feeding you the information?”

  “He wouldn’t be the first corrupt sworn officer I’ve encountered,” the Judge said. “Nor the first gang member I’ve seen infiltrate a law enforcement agency.”

  “Don’t forget he was Detective Brian Mendenour’s supervisor,” Farrell said, “and used to be Bernie Trask’s, before he got busted back to patrol deputy and booted out of the Narcotics Unit. According to Denny Conley, both were slovenly employees with drinking problems. Maybe the set up in San Lorenzo was Avery’s way of cutting his ties with them?”

  “How sure are you about this?” Kearns said.

  “Dead sure,” Farrell said. “I wasn’t before last night. I followed Avery while he was following you. I figured the deputies shadowing you wouldn’t themselves suspect somebody was shadowing them, and I was right. Tracking the two vehicles was a piece of cake.”

  “Two vehicles?” Kearns said. “I only saw a green Ford Granada.”

  “That was Avery’s car. He didn’t care if you saw him. His job was to divert your attention away from the other vehicle. There was a Toyota pick-up truck tailing you too. It was parked across the street and down the block.”

  “You were with us all evening?”

  “I watched you have dinner and take Jennifer back to my place. Once you went inside, Avery took off. He must have figured you were going to stay the night. I tailed him.” Farrell took another large gulp of bourbon. “I wish I hadn’t. I wish now I’d stayed on you.”

  “I was only at your place for a few minutes,” Kearns said. “Honest. I don’t want you to think Jennifer and I were-”

  “Forget it,” Farrell said. “It’s the least of my worries.”

  “Where’d Sergeant Avery go?” Judge Callen asked.

  “He was heading back to the Bay Bridge,” Farrell said, “or so I thought. Not three minutes after leaving my apartment he pulled over at a pay phone on the Embarcadero and made a phone call. Call only lasted a minute.”

  “That’s a bit suspicious,” Kearns said.

  “I thought so.”

  “What do you think Sergeant Avery had to say that couldn’t wait until he got home?” Judge Callen said.

  “Where I was,” Kearns said.

  “Exactly,” Farrell said. “What I misjudged was someone taking a crack at you so soon. I didn’t think anybody would direct a hit on you with a deputy stationed across the street watching. I was wrong.”

  “Maybe Avery didn’t send them?” Hynds said from across the room. “Or if he did, maybe he didn’t expect them to strike so soon?”

  “In retrospect, I believe you’re right,” Farrell said. “I showed Jennifer a picture of Arturo Cervantes. She positively identified him as one of the gunmen last night. The one who escaped.”

  “That’s three times that son-of-a-bitch has had a run at me and gotten away,” Kearns said. “There won’t be a fourth.”

  “I think Norm is on the right track,” Farrell said. “Arturo Cervantes is off the leash. His motive appears to be revenge for his brother’s death at Kevin’s hands. If Avery and the Cervantes brothers were affiliated for business purposes, it might be that Avery can’t control him anymore, in the aftermath of his brother’s
death. Avery might be under pressure to feed Kearns to Arturo. Maybe even under threat of exposure.”

  “Wouldn’t there be records of some kind documenting Sergeant Avery’s previous contacts with these Cervantes characters?” Judge Callen said.

  “If such records exist, Avery is too smart not to have sanitized or eradicated them long ago,” Farrell said. “I doubt we’d find anything incriminating, even if we could get access to those records, which we can’t.”

  “Where did Avery go after his phone call?” Kearns asked.

  “He drove to a very nice two-story house in the Castro Valley hills. He parked in the garage, so I presume it was his place. After that I headed back to my apartment. I got there shortly after the fireworks.”

  “How did you know I was at the Eden Township Station?” Kearns asked.

  “I didn’t. I simply called your new pager number.”

  “I’m glad you did. And I’m grateful Jennifer is all right.”

  “Amen,” Judge Callen said.

  “Ditto,” Hynds called out.

  “What’s the plan?” Callen asked.

  “If you don’t mind,” Farrell said, “you’re going to escort Jen to the San Francisco Police Department later this afternoon to give her statement. She’ll need your counsel.”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” Callen said. “I would insist.”

  “Norm has kindly agreed to accompany you,” Farrell explained. “He is now officially in my employ. He will not leave Jennifer’s side.”

  Norm raised his coffee mug in acknowledgment. “Don’t you worry about Jen,” he said. “Anybody taking another shot at her is going to have to go through me. Nobody got past me at Pleiku.”

  “What about you and Kevin?” the Judge asked.

  “Kevin’s going to lay low. He’s still a target.”

  “Hell if I am,” Kearns said. “I’m going with you. I’ve got more reason than ever to get some payback.”