OFFICER INVOLVED

by Lynch, Sean

  “I don’t want you risking your career. You just got it back, remember?”

  “To hell with my career. Far as I’m concerned, it’s already over. I’m not going to work for an agency that’s harboring a murderer, or alongside deputies I can’t trust. And I’m damn sure not going to let what happened to Jennifer last night go unanswered. Somebody’s got some whoop-ass coming.”

  “What are you going to do?” the Judge said.

  “Whatever it takes,” Kearns said.

  “They nearly murdered my daughter,” Farrell said to the Judge. “We both know you’ve been in my shoes. What would you do, in my place?”

  “You can count on me,” The Judge said.

  Kearns suddenly realized where and when he’d seen that look in the older man’s eyes before; during their hunt for Vernon Slocum. Farrell glanced around the room, meeting the scrutiny of first the Judge and then Hynds.

  “So what’s the plan?” Callen repeated.

  “I’m done playing nice,” Farrell said. “Somebody’s going to pay for what they did to my little girl.” His burning eyes landed on Kearns. “I’m going to war.”

  “Wrong,” Kearns corrected him. “We’re going to war.”

  Chapter 41

  When Jennifer entered the kitchen, everyone stood. Farrell and Kearns rose from where they were seated at the kitchen table, and Hynds and the Judge from where they sat on stools in the nook. The Judge was the last to rise, since he had to lean on his cane. The room smelled like coffee and maple syrup.

  It was a little after 8:00 A.M. in the morning and Jennifer was barefoot and sleepy-eyed. She was clad in an oversized Cal Berkeley sweatshirt and a pair of jogging shorts, which displayed her extraordinary legs. The purple hue around her left eye was finally beginning to fade to yellow, but the fresh abrasions on her forehead, chin, and knees made up for it. Her lustrous red hair was swept up, and despite the fatigue, she looked quite beautiful.

  “Good morning,” she was the first to say. “Coffee smells good.”

  “Coming right up,” Hynds said. He grabbed a fresh mug and reached for the pot.

  Farrell embraced his daughter. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Dad,” she said. “Really I am.”

  “That’s my girl,” he said, giving her a hug.

  She turned to the Judge. “Thank you for taking me in.”

  “Think nothing of it,” the Judge said. “It was my good fortune to finally meet you, despite the unfortunate circumstances of the introduction.”

  “I borrowed some things from a drawer in the room I slept in,” she said. “I assume they’re your daughter’s. I hope she won’t mind.”

  “Not in the least,” Callen said. “Seeing you in them reminds me of her.”

  “Thank you for taking us in,” Farrell echoed. “With all the excitement last night I neglected to express my appreciation.”

  “Nothing to thank me for,” Callen said. “Nice to have the company.”

  Kearns walked up to her, the anguish plain in his eyes.

  “Jennifer,” he began, “I’m so sorry for-”

  “Shut up, Kevin,” she said, not unkindly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  She accepted a cup of coffee and a hug from the burly Hynds, and turned back to the forlorn Kearns. When she put her hand along the side of his face, it was warm from the heated mug.

  “Those men came to Dad’s place to kill you,” she said. “Whoever they are, and whatever they have against you, it isn’t over.”

  “It sure ain’t,” Farrell said. “This coffee klatch is finished. We have to talk.”

  “We’re listening,” Kearns said.

  Farrell motioned to the kitchen table, and the notes he’d laid out among the pancakes, fruit, and biscuits. He spent the next half-hour explaining his plan and issuing directives. Hynds, the Judge, and Kearns listened intently, occasionally interrupting with questions. Jennifer wordlessly sipped coffee. Farrell had almost finished when his pager beeped.

  “I’ve got to take this call,” he said, heading towards the phone in the hallway.

  “Is he really going to go through with this?” Hynds asked, once Farrell had left.

  “If you have to ask,” Kearns replied, “you don’t know Bob Farrell.”

  “You can say that again,” Judge Callen said.

  “I’ve known Bob a long time,” Hynds said. “Almost thirty years. We’ve burned a lot of powder together, and tilted a lot of glasses. But what he’s planning to do is downright crazy.”

  “Not for him,” Kearns said. “Not if you knew some of the stunts he’s pulled in the past.”

  “What he’s got lined up is a felony,” Hynds admonished. “You’re all okay with that?”

  “Most certainly,” Judge Callen said. “Bob and Kevin saved my daughter’s life. What kind of man would I be if I wasn’t prepared to do the same for them and theirs?”

  “And you?” Hynds asked Kearns.

  “Damn straight I’m okay with it,” Kearns said. “It isn’t just my life that’s at stake now. It’s Jennifer’s, too.” His eyes met hers. “The gloves are off. I won’t lose a wink of sleep worrying about breaking the rules. You can’t very well play by the rules when the ones making them up are also the ones breaking them. Besides, it wouldn’t be anything Bob and I haven’t done before.”

  Jennifer looked up from her coffee. “I want that bastard who got away dead,” she said.

  Hynds rubbed his chin. “Since you put it that way,” he said, “count me in. All the way.”

  Farrell suddenly burst into the room. “You’ve got to get out of here,” he blurted at Kearns. “Immediately.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “That was Denny Conley on the phone. He paged me to warn us that a squad of sheriff’s deputies are on the way over to arrest you.”

  “Arrest me? What for?”

  “I’m an idiot,” Judge Callen said. “I should have seen this coming.”

  “Denny said they don’t want you walking around a free man where you can’t be readily located or controlled,” Farrell explained. “Especially after their botched protection detail last night. They can’t fire you because you’ll go to the press and embarrass them. So they’ve trumped up the notion that you’re involved in a criminal conspiracy.”

  “A conspiracy to kill myself?” Kearns said. “That’s ridiculous. How are they going to prove that?”

  “They don’t have to prove anything,” Farrell said. “All they have to do is imply the attempts on your life are potentially reprisals, and that you might be part of the same gang-related mess involving Mendenour and Trask everyone is whispering about. The implication alone is enough for the media and citizenry to draw their own conclusions.”

  “And for a sympathetic, hand-picked judge to issue an arrest warrant,” Callan added. “Sadly, I know more than a few former colleagues susceptible to such political pressure.”

  “I can guess where the pressure is coming from,” Kearns said.

  “Denny said after the death of another deputy in San Francisco last night, the sheriff’s office is officially under siege by the media. Arresting you would be a way to divert blame away from the sheriff’s office and on to you.”

  “This is Fresco’s doing, isn’t it?” Kearns said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Farrell said, pushing Kearns towards the back kitchen door. “Three shootings in three different jurisdictions in three days, which are all linked to you, might be thin, but it’s enough to give a deputy district attorney-”

  “That son-of-a-bitch Derlinger-” Kearns said,

  “-probable cause to issue a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Don’t worry,” Callen said. “Such an arrest would never stand up beyond the preliminary hearing.”

  “It wouldn’t have to,” Farrell said. “Santa Rita Jail is infested with Nuestra Familia-affiliated Nortenos gang members. Kevin wouldn’t live long enough to reach the preliminary hearing.”

  “You think I�
��d be murdered while in-custody?” Kearns said, incredulousness lighting his expression. “That I’m being set up again?”

  “I’m betting that’s what’s this trumped-up arrest has in store for you.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You want to bet?” Farrell said. “You’d be wagering your life.”

  “No,” Kearns said, grabbing his coat and shrugging into his shoulder holster. “I trust you, Bob. You’ve been right too many times to count.”

  “You’d better go, Kevin,” Jennifer spoke up.

  “Do as she says,” Farrell commanded. “You know the plan and what to do. We’ll communicate by pager and pay phone. Ditch your car as soon as you can, and get yourself some new wheels.”

  “Right.”

  “Here,” Farrell said, kneeling down and removing the ankle holster containing his Beretta .25 semi-auto. “Take this.”

  “Bob-”

  “Shut up and take it; there’s no time to argue. Get going.”

  To Kearns’ surprise, Jennifer grabbed his arm as he reached the door, halted him, and kissed him hard on the mouth. Then she pushed him out. Hynds, the Judge, and Farrell’s eyes widened. Particularly Farrell’s.

  Kearns ran out of the house and across the lawn. He hopped over the fence encircling Judge Callen’s property with the taste of Jennifer Farrell and coffee on his lips.

  A little less than two minutes after the sound of Kearns’ Jeep faded from earshot, several sedans marked with the emblem of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office roared down Dayton Avenue. They came to rest in front of Judge Callen’s house.

  Farrell and The Judge opened the front door before the deputies knocked.

  “You guys want coffee?” Farrell said to the mob of uniforms. “It’s fresh.”

  Chapter 42

  Sergeant Vincent Avery stood on the ladder and hoisted the heavy cardboard box down from the concealed compartment in his garage ceiling, careful not to drop it or lose his balance. That’s all he’d need right now; a fall from a ladder and a busted leg or cracked head. Such a calamity would certainly be in keeping with how his day had been going.

  It was early Saturday afternoon, and Avery had just arrived home from work. He was still wearing his suit, but had removed his revolver from his belt, taken off the suit jacket and ditched his tie. He’d tossed the items on his kitchen table upon entering and went back into the garage. He hadn’t slept in almost thirty-six hours and he felt it.

  Avery hadn’t been home more than an hour last night when his pager beeped, and he was summoned to the sheriff’s headquarters in Oakland. That’s when he learned about the disastrous attempt on Kearns’ life in San Francisco and the death of Ed Cason. He’d spent the remainder of the morning getting grilled by Pickrell and having his ass chewed by Fresco. Not that he didn’t deserve it.

  Arturo had really fucked up this time, and Avery knew it was his own fault. He’d fucked things up even worse himself by allowing the impulsive gangster yet another shot at the rookie. He should have known better than to believe the rabid, PCP-smoking Norteno would follow orders and stick to the plan. Especially after Arturo’s two previous attempts at taking out Deputy Kearns had ended in such spectacular disasters.

  Avery had been quite clear with his instructions over the phone when he told Arturo Kearns’ location. Cervantes was supposed to go in quiet, from the rear of the building, where the lone undercover sheriff’s detective posted on Lombard Street wouldn’t see him. Avery had even provided a window of over an hour for the moron and his sidekicks to get it done before the next surveillance team arrived to relieve Detective Cason. But the most explicit command he gave Arturo Cervantes was that under no circumstances was any harm to come to the sheriff’s deputy. Avery had been crystal clear on that point.

  Now, thanks to Arturo’s failed frontal assault on an apartment building in the heart of downtown San Francisco, a deputy under Avery’s direct supervision was dead, and he was under internal investigation for allowing it to occur. To make matters worse, two more of Cervantes’ crew had also been killed during the gun battle. Ironically, through all that, Deputy Kevin Kearns had once again managed to escape death.

  He’d spent most of the night and morning trying to explain to Undersheriff Fresco and Lieutenant Pickrell how his abandonment of his post at the protection detail in San Francisco was merely a minor administrative oversight, despite the fact had it had cost a fellow deputy sheriff his life. Avery didn’t think he’d made a convincing argument.

  He wasn’t too worried. Not yet, anyway. Fresco would cover for him. He’d have to. The undersheriff had no choice.

  He descended the ladder, straining under the weight of the carton. A gale force shitstorm was underway at the sheriff’s office, and Sergeant Vincent Avery found himself smack-dab in the middle of it. Clearly he couldn’t count on Cervantes, who had gone from major nuisance to critical liability in record time. It was now up to him to fix the problem before it got any worse.

  The needless death of Detective Cason was the last straw. Four murdered cops within three days was simply too much heat, and the inferno was spreading. Since two of the killings occurred in locations outside Alameda County jurisdiction, the investigations weren’t being run by the sheriff’s department. As a result, those investigations couldn’t be monitored or contained. That was bad news for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, and worse news for Avery.

  The sheriff, and Fresco, and everybody else at the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office were now besieged from all sides. In addition to the media frenzy swirling around the deputy deaths, and the current California Department of Justice and Attorney General’s investigations, not to mention the Alameda and San Francisco police investigations, the governor had, as of this very morning, formally called in the F.B.I. The shitstorm had officially become a typhoon. If Avery didn’t do something to slow its advance, he was going to get sucked in and blown away.

  Avery set the box on the floor, slightly out-of-breath. Before opening it he donned a pair of latex gloves and lit a cigarette.

  Inside the box were stacks of U.S. currency, in thousand-dollar packets of hundred-dollar bills. There was nearly four-hundred thousand dollars in the container. Avery withdrew forty thousand and set it aside. Then he re-sealed the carton and ascended the ladder, replacing the box in the cache behind the panel he’d cut out in the drywall. The secret door was behind a shelf laden with camping supplies. Vincent Avery had never been recreationally camping in his life.

  Before closing the panel, Avery withdrew a large Tupperware container which was also in the hidden compartment. He opened it and removed several single-gram plastic bags of Mexican brown heroin from among a pile of more than twenty, and a quarter-kilo bag of cocaine from among a dozen similar-sized bags. He set the items on the top of the ladder and returned the re-sealed Tupperware to its previous hiding place.

  Avery took a moment to stir the cedar chips littered within the hidden compartment. The chips were to mask any scent a drug detection K-9 might potentially pick up, despite the fact that all of the narcotics in his stash were in carefully-sealed plastic bags and secreted inside a Tupperware bin. Not that Avery expected any drug dogs to be sniffing around in his garage, but he’d survived this long by being both paranoid and prepared. He’d learned from his mentor in Viet Nam to cover every contingency, however unlikely. Fail to plan, plan to fail, was his motto. He closed up the hidden compartment, covered it with camping gear, and climbed down. He’d put the ladder away later. He was too tired.

  Still wearing his latex gloves, Avery put the money and drugs into a paper bag which hadn’t been contaminated with his fingerprints. Then he put the bag in the trunk of his car, removed the gloves, and went inside, his head throbbing.

  When he walked from his garage into the house, turning the corner into his kitchen, he found he had a guest. Arturo Cervantes was seated at his kitchen table, a stainless-steel Taurus 9mm pistol in his left hand. Avery’s .357 revolver was on the table-to
p at Artie’s fingertips. The rear sliding-glass door was ajar.

  “Good afternoon, motherfucker,” Cervantes said, mumbling around the wad of bloody fabric in his mouth.

  “Hello, Artie,” Avery answered. He tossed his cigarette into the sink.

  Arturo Cervantes looked like hell. His skin was jaundiced, and a thick sheen of sweat covered his face and matted his hair against his head. The right side of his mouth was stuffed with gauze. Avery could see where a bullet had entered at an oblique angle along his jawline and exited under his ear. He could only imagine how many of Cervantes’ teeth had been destroyed in the bullet’s destructive trajectory.

  Cervantes’ eyes were glazed and hot. Even across the kitchen Avery could tell his pupils were blown. He guessed the wounded Norteno was using Oxy, or PCP, or meth, or all-of-the-above, to manage the pain.

  Avery noted why the Hispanic gangster was holding his weapon in his left hand. Cervantes’ jacket was draped over his shoulders like a cape, and he was clamping a large wad of bloody cloth against the meat below his right armpit. This act, and the obvious agony it was causing him, rendered his right hand virtually useless. He realized another bullet had entered and exited the tissue beneath his arm.

  Avery had seen countless gunshots wounds during his law enforcement career. It did not escape him that both the facial and torso injuries were in roughly a vertical line. Cervantes had been standing when he got shot, and most probably firing a weapon at the time. He remembered the briefing he’d heard earlier at the sheriff’s headquarters, where what few details of the shooting in San Francisco were discussed among the investigators. That’s when he learned the pretty, red-headed woman he and Cason had tailed along with Kearns had been armed, and had put up a fight. It’s also when he learned she was Farrell’s daughter.

  “I’m all fucked up,” Cervantes said, stating the obvious.

  “I can see.”

  “It’s your fault,” Cervantes said, suddenly pointing his pistol at Avery. Avery couldn’t tell if Arturo was trembling with rage or in pain. Neither was a good sign.