Shadow Man sb-1

by Cody McFadyen

  She looks at me for a moment with that patented Callie intensity. I don't think she's really buying it, but she lets it go. "So, honey-love, while we're all running around on our assigned tasks, what are you going to be doing?"

  The question brings me back to the purpose of this flight, makes me shiver. "First I'm going to talk to Jenny. I'll take her out to a coffee shop or something." I look at James. "She's good, and she saw the scene fresh. I want to get her firsthand impressions of it." He nods. "And then I'm going to see the best possible lead we have."

  No one asks who I mean, and I know all of them are glad to let me do it. Because I'm talking about Bonnie.

  10

  WE WALK INTO SFPD, ask for Jennifer Chang, and are directed toward her office. She sees us coming. I am gratified as her eyes light up when she spots me. She moves toward us, towing along a male partner I don't recognize.

  "Smoky! They didn't tell me you were coming."

  "It was kind of a last-minute thing."

  Jennifer stops close to me and gives me a once-over, head to toe. Unlike other people, she doesn't bother to cover her interest in my scars. She gives them a frank look.

  "Not so bad," she remarks. "Healed up good. How about on the inside?"

  "A little raw, but healing too."

  "Good. So--is this a takeover, or what?" Jenny is right to business. I have to handle this part well; it is a takeover, but I don't want Jenny or other members of SFPD to get disgruntled about it.

  "Yeah. But only because of the message to me. You know the rules, the e-mail constitutes a threat to a federal agent." I shrug. "That makes it a federal matter. But this has nothing to do with anyone here thinking SFPD can't do the job."

  She mulls this over for a second. "Yeah, well. You guys have always dealt straight with me."

  We follow her into her office, which is a small room with two desks. Nonetheless, I'm surprised. "Your own office, Jenny. Pretty impressive."

  "Best solve rate three years in a row. The Captain asked me what I wanted, and I said this. He gave it to me." She grins. "Kicked out two old-timers to do it too. Didn't make me very popular. Like I care." She points to her partner. "Sorry. Should have introduced you earlier. This is Charlie De Biasse, my partner. Charlie, the feds."

  He inclines his head. De Biasse is obviously an Italian name, and Charlie looks it, though perhaps not pure-blooded. He has a calm, easygoing face. His eyes don't match. They look sharp. Sharp and watchful.

  "Pleased to meet you."

  "Likewise."

  "So," Jenny says, "what's the game plan?"

  Callie gives her a rundown of the various assignments we have laid out. Jenny gives a nod of approval when she's done. "Sounds good. I'll get copies of everything we have so far put together for you. Charlie, can you call CSU and give them a heads-up?"

  "Yep."

  "Who has the keys to her apartment?" I ask.

  Jenny picks up an envelope on the side of her desk and hands it to Leo. "They're in there. Don't worry about contaminating the scene. Evidence collection is done. The address is the one on the front of the envelope. See Sergeant Bixby at the desk. He can get you a ride."

  Leo looks at me, eyebrows raised, and I nod, sending him on his way. I catch Jenny's eye. "Can we go somewhere? I'd like to talk to you about your impressions of the scene."

  "Sure. You and I can go and get a cup of coffee. Charlie can set everyone up here, right, Charlie?"

  "Yep."

  "That would be great."

  "Is your medical examiner any good?" James asks. Of course, since it's James, it doesn't come out as a harmless question but a challenge. Jenny frowns at him.

  "According to Quantico she is. Why--have you heard differently?"

  He waves his hand at her, a gesture of dismissal. "Just tell me how I can hook up with her, Detective. Save the sarcasm."

  Jenny's eyebrows shoot up, and I see her eyes cloud over. She glances at me, and perhaps it's the look of anger she sees on my face, directed at James, that pacifies her. "Talk to Charlie." Her voice is tight and terse. It has no effect on James. He turns away from her without a glance back. I touch her elbow. "Let's get out of here."

  She shoots one last brooding look at James before nodding. We head toward the precinct door.

  "Is he always such a dick?" she asks as we're walking down the front steps.

  "Oh yeah. The word was invented for him."

  We only have to walk a block to reach the coffee shop, something San Francisco seems to have as many of as Seattle. It's a mom-and-pop place, not a franchise, with a relaxed, earthy feel to it. I order a cafe mocha. Jenny gets some hot tea. We settle down at a table next to the window and enjoy not talking for a moment. Sipping at our respective cups. The mocha is exquisite. Exquisite enough, I realize, for me to enjoy it, even with all the death around me. I look outside at the city passing by. San Francisco has always intrigued me. It's the New York of the West Coast. Cosmopolitan, with European influences, it has its own charm and character. I can usually tell if someone is from San Francisco by their clothing. It's one of the few places on the West Coast where you see wool trench coats and hats, berets and leather gloves. Stylish. The day outside is nice; San Francisco can tend to run chilly, but today the sun is out, and the weather hovers in the low seventies. A scorcher by this city's standards. Jenny puts down her tea and runs a finger around the rim of the cup. She seems thoughtful. "I was surprised to see you here. Even more surprised to find out you're not heading up your team."

  I look over my cup at her. "That was the deal. Annie King was a friend of mine, Jenny. I have to stay on the periphery of this. At least officially. Besides, I'm not ready to run NCAVC Coord again, not yet."

  Her gaze at me reveals nothing, but neither does it judge. "Not ready as in you say you're not ready, or the Bureau says it?"

  "It's me saying it."

  "So . . . don't be offended, Smoky, but if that's true, how did you even get authorization to come up here? I don't think my Captain would have let me, in a similar situation."

  I explain to her about the changes that I had felt in myself by virtue of connecting back up with my team. "It seems to be good therapy for me right now. I guess the Assistant Director saw it that way too."

  Jenny is silent for a moment before speaking. "Smoky, you and I are friends. We don't trade Christmas cards or come over for Thanksgiving. We're not that kind of friends. But still friends, right?"

  "Sure. Of course."

  "Then as a friend, I have to ask: Are you going to be able to deal with this case? All the way? This is bad stuff. Real bad. You know me, and you know I've seen a lot. But that thing with her daughter . . ." She shudders, an involuntary spasm. "I'm gonna have nightmares about it. On top of that, what was done to your friend wasn't pretty either. Oh yeah, and she was your friend. I can understand what you're saying about it being healthy for you to test the waters again, but do you really think this is the case to do it with?"

  I am honest in my reply. "I don't know. That's the truth. I'm messed up, Jenny, make no mistake about that. I guess it doesn't make a lot of visible sense for me to get involved, but . . ." I think for a minute. "It's like this. Do you know what I've been doing since Matt and Alexa died?

  Nothing. I don't mean nothing as in taking it easy. I mean nothing. As in sitting in a single place all day long, staring at a blank wall. I go to sleep and have nightmares, wake up, and stare at things till I go back to sleep. Oh, or sometimes, I look at myself in the mirror for hours and trace over these scars with my fingers." Tears prick my eyes. I'm gratified to find that they are tears of anger and not weakness. "All I can tell you is that that--living like that--is even more terrible than what I'll see being involved with Annie's death. I think. I know that sounds selfish, but it's the truth." I run out of words like a clock that needs to be wound. Jenny sips from her tea. The city continues to churn around us, unaware.

  "Makes sense to me. So, you want my impressions of the scene?"

  Th
is is all she says. She is not brushing me off. She is acknowledging me in her way. Telling me she understands, so let's get down to business. I am grateful.

  "Please."

  "I got the call yesterday."

  I interrupt. "As in you, personally?"

  "Yep. Asked for me by name. Voice was disguised, and told me to check my e-mail. I might have ignored it, but he mentioned you."

  "Disguised how?"

  "It was muffled. Like he'd put a cloth over the mouthpiece of his phone."

  "Any notable inflections? Unusual use of slang? Hint of an accent of any kind?"

  Jenny looks at me, a bemused smile on her face. "You going to work me like a witness, Smoky?"

  "You are a witness. For me, at least. You're the only person who actually talked to him, and you saw the scene fresh. So, yeah."

  "Fair enough." I see her thinking about my question for a moment.

  "I'd have to say no. In fact, I would say just the opposite. There was an absence of inflection. His voice was very flat."

  "Can you remember what he said, exactly?" I know the answer to this question is yes. Jennifer has an unusual memory. It's as scary in its own way as my skill with a handgun, and is feared by defense attorneys.

  "Yeah. He said: 'Is this Detective Chang?' I said it was. 'You've got mail,' he said, but then he didn't laugh. That was one of things that got my attention, first. He didn't push the melodrama of it. Just said it as a flat fact. I asked who this was, and he said, 'Someone's dead. Smoky Barrett knows them. You've got mail.' And then he hung up."

  "Nothing else?"

  "That was it."

  "Hm. Do we know where the call originated?"

  "From a pay phone in LA."

  My ears perk up at this. "Los Angeles?" I think about it. "Maybe that's why he needed three days. So either he's a traveler, or he's actually from LA."

  "Or he's just messing with us. If he is from LA, then my guess would be that he came up here for Annie." Her face looks strained and uncomfortable as she says this. I know why.

  "Which would mean I was the person whose attention he wanted to get." I have already accepted this possibility--no, make that probability--although I have not confronted it emotionally. The fact that Annie may be dead not only because of what she did but because she was my friend.

  "Right. But that's all conjecture. Anyway, so I go and check my e-mail--"

  I interrupt her. "Where did he send the e-mail from?"

  She looks at me, hesitant. "He sent it from your friend's computer, Smoky. It was her e-mail address."

  This sparks a sudden, unexpected wave of anger in me. I know he did this not just to cover his tracks, but to show that what was Annie's was now his. I push it aside. "Go on."

  "It gave Annie King's name and address, nothing else, and there were four attachments. Three were photos of your friend. The fourth was the letter to you. At this point, we are taking it seriously. You can fake anything when it comes to photos these days, but it's like a bomb threat--you evacuate just in case. So my partner and I gathered up some uniforms and went over to the address." She sips her tea. "The door wasn't locked, and after some knocking without any answer, we pulled our weapons and entered. Your friend and her daughter were in the bedroom, on the bed. She had her computer set up in there." She shakes her head, remembering. "It was a bad scene, Smoky. You've seen more of that than I have, that kind of methodical, intentional killing, but I don't think you'd have seen it differently. He cut her open, removed her insides, and bagged them. Slit her throat. But the worst of it was the daughter."

  "Bonnie."

  "Right. She was tied face-to-face with her mother. Nothing fancy. He just put them stomach to stomach, and wrapped rope around them both until she couldn't move. She was there like that for three days, Smoky. Tied to her own dead mother. You know what happens to a body in three days. The air-conditioning wasn't on. And the fucker had left a window cracked. There were blowflies."

  I do know. What she's describing is unimaginable.

  "The kid is ten years old, and the smell is already bad, and she's there with flies all over. She'd turned her head so her cheek was resting on her mom's face." Jenny grimaces, and I get a hint of the horror she felt at that moment. I'm thankful, so thankful, I wasn't there for that. "She was quiet. Didn't say a word when we got into the room. Not while we were untying her. She was just limp, and stared. Unresponsive to questions. She was dehydrated. We got EMS over right away, and I sent her off with an officer. She's fine physically, and I have a guard posted at the door of her room just in case. I got her a private room, by the way."

  "Thanks. I appreciate that. A lot."

  Jenny waves it off, sips her tea. I'm surprised to see the smallest of trembles as she does this. She is truly, deeply affected by the memory, as tough as she is. "She hasn't said a word since. Do you think she'll ever get over it? Could anyone?"

  "I don't know. I'm always surprised at what people can live through. But I don't know."

  She gives me a speculative look. "I guess so." She is silent for a moment before continuing. "Once we had her off in the ambulance, I shut the place down. I called CSU in, and I kicked their ass, hard. Maybe a little harder than I needed to, but I was just so . . . pissed. That's not even a good word for how I felt."

  "I understand."

  "While all that was happening, I called and talked to Alan, and here we are. I don't have much more than that. We're at the dead beginning of it, Smoky. Evidence collection only. I haven't had time to slow down and really look at anything."

  "Let's step back a little. Let me walk you through it like a witness."

  "Sure."

  "We'll do it as a CI."

  "Okay."

  By CI I mean "cognitive interview." Witness recollections and accounts are one of our bugbears. People see too little, or don't remember what they've seen, due to trauma and emotion. They can remember things that didn't really happen. Cognitive-interview technique has been in use for a long time, and while it has a specific methodology, its application is more of an art form. I'm very good at it. Callie is better. Alan is a master.

  The basic concept behind the cognitive interview is that simply walking a witness through from the start of the event to the end, over and over, does not, as a rule, lead to more recollection. Instead, three techniques are used. The first is context. Rather than starting from the beginning of the event, you take them prior to it. What their day was like, how it was going, what life worries/happinesses/banalities were running through their head. Get them to recall the normal flow of their life prior to the abnormal event you want them to remember. The theory is that this serves to put the event you want them to recall into context. By grounding them in memories prior to the event, they are more able to move forward through the event and will remember in greater detail. The second technique is to change the sequence of recall. Rather than starting them from the beginning, start them from the end, and go backward. Or begin in the middle. It makes the witness start and stop and reexamine. The last part of a good CI is changing perspective.

  "Wow," you might say, "I wonder what that looked like to the person standing by the door?" This shifts their inspection of the event and can jar more facts loose.

  With someone like Jenny, who is a trained investigator with excellent memory, cognitive interviewing can be very, very effective.

  "It's late afternoon," I say, starting. "You're in your office, doing . . . ?"

  She looks up toward the ceiling, remembering. "I'm talking to Charlie. We're going over a case we've been working on. Sixteen-yearold prostitute, beaten to death and left in an alley in the Tenderloin."

  "Uh-huh. What are you saying about it?"

  Her eyes get sad. "It's what he's saying. About how no one gives a shit about a dead whore, even if she's just sixteen years old. He's mad and sad, and venting. Charlie doesn't do well with dead kids."

  "How did you feel at the time, listening to that?"

  She shrugs, sighs. "About t
he same. Mad. Sad. Not venting about it the way he was, but understanding. I remember looking down at my desk while he was ranting away, and noticing that the side of one of the photos from her file was sticking out. It was a picture from the scene, where we found her. I could see part of her leg from the knee down. It looked dead. I felt tired."

  "Go on."

  "Charlie wound down. He finished spewing, and then he just sat there for a second. He finally looked over and gave me that silly, lopsided smile of his, and said he was sorry. I told him it was no big deal."

  She shrugs. "He's listened to my ranting in the past. It's one of the things partners do."

  "How did you feel about him, at that moment?"

  "Close." She waves a hand. "Not lovey or sexual, or anything like that. That's never come up between us. Just close. I knew he'd always be there for me and vice versa. I was happy to have a good partner. I was about to tell him that, when the call came in."

  "From the perp?"

  "Yeah. I remember feeling kind of . . . disoriented when the perp started talking."

  "Disoriented how?"

  "Well, life was--normal. I was sitting there with Charlie, and someone says 'you got a phone call' and I say 'thanks' and pick it up--circumstances and motions I've experienced and done a thousand times. Normal. Suddenly, it wasn't. I went from the usual to talking to something evil"--she snaps her fingers--"just like that. It was jarring." Her eyes are troubled as she says this.

  This is the other reason I decided to use CI technique with Jenny. The biggest problem with witness memory is the trauma of the event. Strong feelings cloud recall. People outside law enforcement don't understand that we experience our own trauma. Strangled children, chopped-up mothers, raped young boys. Talking to murderers on the phone. These experiences are shocking. They are filled with emotion, however well suppressed. They are traumatic.

  "I understand. I think we have context here, Jenny." My voice is smooth and quiet. She's letting me put her in the "then," and I want to keep her close to it. "Let's move forward. Take it from when you are walking up to the door of Annie's apartment."