by Tom Pitts
“What’s up with Patterson?”
He knew it. Couldn’t even take a piss without somebody bringing up this case. You couldn’t tell someone to fuck off. It was a cop-killer case, everybody was concerned. You couldn’t tell them you had nothing; that’d be worse. You couldn’t shrug your shoulders because then you’d piss on your shoe.
“Not much. New eyewitness, I hope.” He kept his head straight down when he spoke. Christ, he didn’t want to make eye contact with someone while he was taking a piss.
“Who, that crack-head? I already heard about him.”
“Actually he’s not a crack-head, he may be a bit of a drinker. But, no, someone else—a kid.” Schmitz turned toward the sinks to wash his hands and watched the other cop move straight toward the door. Obnoxious and unhygienic, nice.
“No shit, a wino and a tyke. Good luck with that, Schmitz.”
Terry felt pressure at his neck. He could feel his pulse beat against the stiff collar of his shirt. He immediately regretted giving up any information. Assholes, he murmured under his breath, and continued washing his hands. This was no toddler. There was something about this kid, something that made Schmitz believe him.
He’d had Oscar Flores picked up while he waited on Mission Street for his bus. They didn’t want him getting lost—or scared—on the way down to the Hall of Justice. Terry watched the patrolmen bring him in through the office. The kid was shook to the core, Schmitz sensed it. Presently they had him stored up in interview room number six. Schmitz was only waiting for the tech guy to set up the recording equipment.
Oscar sat quietly with his hands folded in front of him. The room reminded Oscar of school. The tables, the carpet, the walls. Everything but the two cameras mounted high above him in the corners of the room. His listened to the air blowing through the ventilator. It gave off a pulsating whir. He listened hard for any other sound and there was none. None he could hear, just the loud unsteady whir of the air.
He finally heard a throat clearing. An announcement. The door opened and in came a man Oscar thought could have easily passed for a science teacher at his junior high. The man smiled, introduced himself, and sat down.
“Oscar, I’m Detective Schmitz. You can call me Terry.”
Oscar didn’t say a word.
“Okay then, let’s get started. This is all going to be recorded, all right? First, I’m gonna say our names and what time it is and where we are. Then, I’m gonna ask you some questions, okay?”
Oscar still didn’t respond. He was waiting for the interview to begin. The detective didn’t speak into a microphone. He stated the necessary information to no one in particular, speaking to the open air of the room. Oscar glanced up and saw both cameras had tiny glowing red lights. After the preliminary statements, Schmitz flipped open his yellow legal pad, wet the tip of his pencil on his tongue, and began, “Okay Oscar, let’s start with where you were when you heard the shots.”
“I was in my room.”
“In your room at 799 Capp Street?”
“Yes.”
Terry stopped to write something down.
“What were you doing?”
“Looking out the window.”
“Before that, what were you doing before the shots?”
Oscar paused. This was it. This was the point of no return.
“Watching the game.”
Terry saw his opening. “You a baseball fan, Oscar?” He saw Oscar blink. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was enough. “Hell of a series. Fucking Dodgers, eh?”
“Yeah,” Oscar agreed. The Dodgers comment caught him off-guard. It reminded Oscar of the being at the ballpark, the innocent but gruff exchanges with like-minded strangers. The ice was broken.
“You remember when?” Terry asked.
Oscar thought maybe it was an unfinished question about baseball. He raised his eyebrows and waited for the detective to complete the question.
“The window, do you remember when you got up to look out the window?”
Oscar paused so it would seem like he was thinking about the question, but he knew exactly when. “Top of the sixth.”
Terry wrote this down.
“So why did you get up? I mean, it’s not the seventh-inning stretch. Why take your eyes off the game?”
“I was nervous for them, the team. I always do it when it gets too tense. I pace. I can sit still when we’re winning.”
“Or losing.” Terry’s statement meant that they were moving on.
“What did you see when you look out the window?”
“I saw it.”
“You saw what, Oscar?”
“I saw that policeman get shot.”
Terry looked at Oscar, getting a feel for the weight of that statement, authenticating it.
“Was the officer standing up or already laying down when you saw him?”
“He was standing up, I saw him get shot in the face. I saw him fall. I saw everything.”
“What about the guy doing the shooting? Did you see him, too?”
Oscar nodded.
Terry needed his response on tape. “Oscar, did you see him too?”
“Yes. I saw him. I saw him lean over and shoot that man over and over.”
“Did you see what the guy looked like?”
“When he was finished he turned and looked right at me, right up at my window.”
“What did he look like, Oscar, can you describe him?”
There was a long silence. Once again, the only sound in the room was the air moving through the vents. Terry couldn’t tell if Oscar was forming a picture in his head, reliving the events, or just scared shitless. Terry waited and tried not to seem impatient.
Finally Oscar said it.
“I know him.”
Terry tried to contain his excitement. “You know him? Do you think you could recognize him again?”
“I know him,” Oscar repeated. “He’s my brother.”
The answer flew right by Terry. He sat still, waiting for the boy to give a description. The silence went on.
“He’s my brother. He looked right at me.”
Terry was still. He was looking hard into the boy’s eyes. He was searching for pain, the electrical impulses that resonated into the eyes, the tamped-down emotion that is so virulent that the irises seem to vibrate. Terry knew instantly there was truth in what the boy was saying. The suspect had looked right at him to check. It was instinct. The perp was looking back at his own home. Like the dope fiend who glances at his stash when cops show up, he probably couldn’t help it. The killer peeked at the only place his conscience was able to shine a pinhole light, his home right across the street. And his little brother, this kid sitting right in front of Schmitz, saw the whole goddamn thing.
“Your brother is Ramon Flores?” Detective Schmitz speaking for the record again.
“Yes.”
“Describe him.”
Forty-five minutes later, Terry had to piss. The kid was doing fine, it was Terry who needed a break. The cold air of the men’s restroom cleared his head. For once it was quiet in there. He drew a deep breath that was scented with disinfectant. He pissed. Schmitz was already washing his hands before being interrupted by another detective coming through the door.
“Hey Schmitty, I hear you got the kid in there.”
“Oh yeah, I got him. The kid is the case. We’re hanging on to him.”
“Really? Sounds solid. What did he say?”
“Says his brother is the shooter.”
“What? Get the fuck outta here. It’s bullshit. Why is he coming in three days later?”
“That’s exactly why he waited. His brother is a fucking psychopath. Guy still lives in the same house, which is across the street from the crime scene, by the way. No wonder the kid’s a little nervous.”
“Seems a little too easy, Schmitty. Give up anything else? Hand you the gun, too?”
Terry turned off the faucet and shook the water off his hands. He turned and, for the first time, look
ed into the eyes of the other detective.
“Anything else? Anything else? Fucking eyewitness to the crime, positive ID that matches two other witnesses, one of whom is a goddamned cop. I’d say that’s pretty good. It’s enough for an arrest, that’s for sure.”
“Well, thank god for that, Schmitty. Maybe this city can get some sleep now.”
The detective disappeared into a stall. Terry hated being called Schmitty. He never let it happen when he was a kid and another cop was the only one who could get away with it now. Maybe after his inevitable promotion he’d make these assholes address him by rank only. They were colleagues, not friends. All of them, he reminded himself.
Terry Schmitz looked at himself in the mirror, knowing that soon his face would be on TV. He looked at his face, trying to imagine what people would see when seeing him for the first time. He was handsome, he thought, clean cut, chiseled. He had a look, the look of authority, the look of a problem solver. He had the look of a hero. This case was going to move this face forward.
In the interrogation room, Oscar sat looking at the mirror, too. He was wondering who was behind the two-way glass framed across the room from him. He imagined a small team of tech experts with headphones covering their ears. They were probably back there tweaking knobs and adjusting levels. He thought about them. He didn’t think about Ramon. He didn’t think about his mother. He looked hard at the two-way glass, trying to look through it. He could only see himself.
• • •
“C’mon, Salty, enough. Pass that thing over.”
The sweet smoke of the tobacco, mixed with the fruity smell of the green bud, set off a Pavlovian response in Ramon. His mouth actually watered. He hated it when Salty lit the blunt. It took him forever to pass it.
“C’mon, greedy-ass.”
Ramon and Salty sat on top of two plastic milk crates in the parking lot of a small supermarket a couple of blocks from Ramon’s house. They sat sharing a blunt, each of them with a 40-oz. beer wrapped in the obligatory brown paper bag clutched in their hands. Ramon took his first hit off the long, thin, brown cigar and felt the hot smoke expand in his lungs. The familiar acrid burn was immediately comforting. He held it there for a few seconds before emitting a stream of grey-blue smoke.
“Man, Ramon, I’m telling you, I could grow this shit in my closet at home. It’s easy. An extension cord for the lights. My old man would never know.”
“Bullshit,” Ramon said, clearing his throat, “He’d smell that shit in a heartbeat.”
“Nah, man, he never goes up there, he hates seeing me in my natural habitat, drives him crazy.”
“It drives him crazy ‘cause he pays the rent on your habitat, dumbass.”
“Whatever—,” Salty interrupted himself to take another hit off the blunt. Short, quick, audible hits, like little sips, sucking right off the end of the blunt, it looked like he was kissing it. It drove Ramon crazy. No wonder Salty’s old man couldn’t stand him.
Salty finally passed the blunt back to Ramon, who drew deeply and held the smoke tight in his lungs.
“Don’t fucking move,” was the next thing he heard. There was only a second to register that it was not Salty. It was someone else’s voice. Then there was a hot, white explosion of pain at the back of his skull. Someone had hit him, hard. That same someone was now tackling him forward, pushing him off the milk crate, collapsing him to the ground. He felt the bits of loose gravel and ground-up glass scrape his face while his cheek was pushed against the pavement. Blunt smoke expired out of his lungs.
The world was horizontal now. He felt someone holding his head down, pushing it hard with the palm of their hand. His limbs were being pulled out from under him. He felt many sets of hands on his body. He heard radios transmitting. The static language of police code. He saw boots. They weren’t the kind of footwear that patrolmen wear. They looked like military issue, the kind the SWAT team wore. And there were a lot of them.
• • •
The SF Examiner’s headline read Got Him! It quoted DA Harris promising swift justice and had the Police Chief Buchwald claiming there was never any doubt the killer would be apprehended. There was talk of the death penalty and outrage that the suspect was only twenty years old. Details were vague, but it didn’t matter. The tone of the information and comments from police sources were triumphant. The case had been solved.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were gettin’ paid to stay home.”
The officer standing in front of Alvarez’s desk was cheery enough, but Vince was startled. He’d just logged onto the interdepartmental computer and his focus was on the screen.
“I’m just here picking up some shit out of my desk.”
“You hear the news?”
Everyone had heard the news. Alvarez saw the headline plastered against the front of the newspaper machines as he walked into the Hall of Justice. (He’d already heard about the boy witness. Although he wasn’t at the office, he wasn’t out of the gossip loop entirely.) Every cop he was friendly enough with to give a passing nod felt the need to say something to him about the arrest. The accolades rubbed him the wrong way. Vince felt as though he was being exonerated for something he never did.
“Yeah, I heard.”
“You should get outta here and enjoy your time off. This investigation’s gonna be over soon and you’re gonna be back on the beat.”
“I’ll do that.” Alvarez smiled as a way of ending the conversation. The well-wisher took the hint and walked away. This guy, thought Vince, telling him he should be enjoying himself right after his partner was gunned down in the street. What an asshole.
With his colleague gone, Alvarez went back to the police database—the real reason he came from the Sunset all the way down to the Hall of Justice. He tapped in the name he remembered Patterson saying. The name of the thug they’d run into that day: Miguel Martinez. The screen quickly clogged with a long list of arrest records with the name Miguel Martinez. Alvarez blew out a gust of air and started going through them, trying to shorten the list with an estimated birthdate.
It took a few minutes, but he finally clicked on the Miguel Martinez that seemed to fit the bill. A scowling mug shot filled the screen. It was him, the kid they saw on Capp Street right before the shooting. Vince scrolled down to the attached arrest record. Possession of narcotics, conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest. The list went on. Vince wondered why this punk was still on the street, but the story was all there. The ratio of arrests and convictions was out of balance. Miguel Martinez had served mostly jail time with a short stint in prison for commercial burglary.
Vince pulled up Miguel’s picture again and stared at it. The dark eyes scowled back from the monitor. Vince felt a terrible pit in his stomach. Could this be the man that murdered his partner? If so, who were they holding? Had the boy witness seen this photo? He’d told Schmitz they’d run into Martinez before the shooting, but Schmitz didn’t seem interested. He seemed more concerned with why Alvarez wasn’t at his partner’s side. Fucking Schmitz would rather hang a fellow officer out to dry than chase down the real perp.
He grabbed a few items from his desk—stuff he didn’t need, but thought would bolster his excuse for being there—and headed for the door. From the moment he’d walked in, he couldn’t wait to get out of the Hall Justice.
As he stood up from his desk, his cell rang in his pocket. Vince dug it out and looked at the ID. A 553 number. SFPD. He hit the answer button and said hello.
Schmitz’s voice came over the line.
“Vince, this is Terry Schmitz. How’re you doing today?”
“What do you want, Schmitz?”
“We’re putting together a line-up this afternoon and I’d like you to be there. Can you make it?”
Asking was Schmitz’s way of letting Vince know it was not a request, but an order.
Vince Alvarez took one last look at Miguel Martinez’s face before reaching over and poweri
ng down his computer.
“I’ll be there.”
Ria Flores was picked up from the salon where she worked about twenty minutes before they got Ramon. Terry Schmitz had her sealed off in an interrogation room, the same room where he had interviewed Oscar. She sat crying before the two-way glass, watching her mascara run in its reflection.
Terry Schmitz sat behind the glass watching the video-feed. He saw her clearly through the two-way, but with the video he could zoom in and watch the shifting emotions on her face. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He did this when he didn’t know what else to do. He wanted to glean something from the mother, read her for some kind of clue, but he had no idea what. She sat, bewildered, sequestered, weeping steadily for the last two hours. They were running out of stalls. It was only fear that kept her in that seat; the fear that if she stepped out of that room she’d have to face it all over again. She might have to hear that it was true, what she’d been told. Terry could see she believed, in the deepest way, that her son was innocent, that he was inside her home when the crime occurred. How could she see it any other way? Terry watched, listened to her sobs, and rubbed his chin.
What Ria Flores didn’t know was that both her sons were being held in that building. The identities of both witnesses, Oscar and Bobby Reese, were withheld from the media. Ria had no idea where Oscar was; she hadn’t seen him since last night. But she knew right where Ramon was. Terry watched her quiver in the monitor and wondered if it meant something.
Terry had spent the last hour talking to reporters, giving guarded information and trying not to get tripped up by any questions. Playing department spokesperson wasn’t as easy as it looked, but he could get used to it. They’d try the old one-two: toss you a softball, and then hit you with another question before you took a breath. Suddenly you were answering when you should be keeping your mouth shut. They’d been at their jobs longer than he’d been playing media star, but he knew he was smarter. He could handle the press. They were, after all, only citizens.