Red Line

by Brian Thiem

  He was pulling on the new, overpriced Levis and polo shirt when a knock sounded at the door. Sinclair peered through the peephole and opened the door. Officer Tokepka stood alongside a hotel employee with a room service cart. Tokepka wore a sport coat and tie, his dress shirt stretched tight over a ballistic vest. Sinclair was pleased when he learned Tokepka volunteered for the duty and was assigned the first shift. He couldn’t think of a better person in the department to guard his door.

  “I thought you were going to shower and go to bed, Sarge. You haven’t had more than a few hours of shut-eye in days.”

  “I’m bushed, but I knew if I didn’t eat first, I’d regret it halfway through the night,” said Sinclair. “Why don’t you come in—I can have them bring something up for you.”

  “We’re fine. Besides, our place is outside.”

  “This feels weird. All my life I’ve been the one doing the protecting.”

  “We’re proud to be doing this.” Tokepka stood to the side and the employee pushed the cart inside.

  The attendant placed a tray on the coffee table in the living room and arranged an assortment of plates, glasses, and utensils. “New York strip, medium rare, baked potato, and steamed broccoli. The food service manager wanted you to have this—on the house—as his thanks for all you’ve done.” He pulled a bottle of Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon from the cart and a corkscrew from his pocket.

  “No thanks.”

  He set the bottle and a wine glass on the table. “I’ll just leave it in case you change your mind.” He placed the corkscrew on the table beside the wine.

  Sinclair didn’t argue as the man pushed his cart out of the room.

  He devoured the salad and roll and then cut into his steak as he reviewed the day’s activities. After Phyllis Mathis made a positive ID of her daughter, he had spoken to her on the phone. She held it together, but just barely. Meanwhile, the investigators in San Francisco interviewed the hospital parking lot attendant who noticed Melissa leaving the garage alone in her car. Techs recovered clear latents from the Mini Cooper’s interior, and the crime lab compared them with elimination prints from Melissa and the doper that CHP had arrested driving her car. Three unidentified prints remained, which the lab ran through ALPS, the California Automated Latent Print System. They got no matches, which meant whoever left the prints had never been arrested for anything serious.

  CHP had brought the driver of the Mini Cooper to homicide so Sinclair and Braddock could interview him. The man said he had found the car unattended outside a housing project at six in the morning with the doors unlocked. It started when he pressed the ignition button. When the highway patrol tried to stop him, he panicked and fled. After two hours in room 201, Sinclair was convinced the man was telling the truth and didn’t know anything else. CHP took custody of him and booked him for auto theft and an assortment of traffic violations. When Sinclair returned from his Macy’s shopping jaunt with Braddock and Kim, he sat at his desk and read a hundred pages of reports that had been written by five different police agencies about the shooting and arson at his apartment, the arson of the van, Mathis’s murder, and the recovery of her car. Sinclair had still not received a call from NYPD by the time Braddock, looking as exhausted as he felt, dropped him off at his hotel room.

  Sinclair chewed another bite of the steak and looked at the bottle of wine. With everything he’d been through in the last twenty-four hours, and the many family members he’d broken death news to over the last few days, he was feeling the strain. Mrs. Mathis never expected she’d be a target, but he should’ve figured it out. He was tired—mentally and emotionally exhausted. Thoughts swirled around his head: finding the killer before he took another life, his relationship with Liz, Chief Brown’s scrutiny, his failure to solve Samantha’s case when he should have—the cause of all that had happened.

  Along with everything else he’d done, the killer stole one of the few moments of joy homicide investigators get to experience—the celebration of solving a case. Sinclair didn’t get to feel elation from solving Samantha’s case. He didn’t get to high-five his partners. He didn’t get to pull the paper with Samantha’s number from the case packet, draw a thick red line through it, and pin it on the board for all to see. He didn’t get to go to the Warehouse and drink beers others bought for him. Instead, he was in the midst of the next killing. One of Sinclair’s favorite moments was calling a victim’s mother and telling her he arrested her son or daughter’s killer. Over the phone, he would hear tears of relief and gratitude along with words of thanks and praise.

  With Samantha, there was no mother to tell. Even if Jane were alive, Sinclair doubted he could feel much joy from telling her he solved a case he should have put a red line through many months ago.

  He did feel good about surviving the killer’s attack. That in itself deserved a celebration. He deserved a reward after all he’d been through. He uncorked the bottle and held it under his nose, breathing in the oaky aroma. One glass wouldn’t hurt. It would help him sleep. And he desperately needed a good night’s sleep. He poured a half glass of wine, stared at it for several minutes, and poured the glass and then the bottle out in the sink.

  Chapter 51

  At six sharp, Sinclair heard a knock at the door.

  Officer Randy Norris stood in the doorway. Norris had joined the department five years before Sinclair, and they served together as officers on the SWAT team. He now worked in the training division as a firearms instructor and range master, but last night he took an overtime shift guarding Sinclair’s door.

  “Looks like you have a visitor and breakfast,” said Norris.

  Norris ushered Walt and the hotel worker into the room and stood by as the room service attendant arranged food and coffee on the table in the living room and then escorted him back out.

  Norris said, “When my relief comes on at eight, I’m heading to the range to run qualifying shoots for day shift.”

  “On a Sunday?” asked Sinclair.

  “No shortage of overtime these days. I’ll do your gun inspection if you stop by. That’ll satisfy the officer-involved shooting protocol, and you won’t have to leave it and carry a loaner gun.”

  Sinclair told Norris he’d try, and Norris returned to his post in the hallway.

  Sinclair poured coffee for Walt and him. “I’m sorry I bothered you last night.”

  “You almost picked up a drink,” said Walt. “You can call me anytime for that.”

  Sinclair picked at a bowl of melon and strawberries. “I don’t know why I poured that glass of wine.”

  “You’re an alcoholic. That’s what alcoholics do.”

  “That simple, huh?”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t drink. That’s the biggest step toward the solution.”

  Sinclair finished the fruit and started on the scrambled eggs. He wondered if a different job was the solution—one without the emotional upheavals of homicide.

  “How long will you stay here?” asked Walt.

  “At least until we get this guy. It’ll take months to repair my apartment, but I can’t go back there. My neighbors used to feel safe having a cop next door. Not now.”

  “I spoke to Fred. He’d like you to stay with us,” said Walt. “The guest house in the back has been empty since his daughter died. I think you’d find it more comfortable than a hotel room.”

  “As long as the killer’s out there, anyone near me’s in danger.”

  “The estate is very secure. You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.”

  “Right now, I’m just focusing on getting through today.”

  Walt grinned. “One day at a time.”

  “I just need to catch this asshole and . . .” Sinclair stared at a landscape print on the wall.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Failure. That was the crux of the thoughts swarming around his head. How his failures caused people around him to die. After his brother’s death, he thought he had escaped it. He had become a polic
e officer. He thought he had made good. Then he got called back into the Army. He was part of a small team of soldiers sent to capture an Iraqi insurgent who had planted an IED that took out part of an army convoy. He knew the mission required a platoon of forty, but he didn’t challenge the order to do it with a squad of ten. He ignored the other signs: the deserted outdoor market, the absence of kids in the street, the doors of houses closing when they rolled into position. The people in the neighborhood knew the insurgents were there and that there would be a fight. He should’ve pulled them back, but he didn’t. Five men died because of his failures that day and more died in the months to come because the bomber they failed to capture buried even more IEDs.

  Sinclair shook his head. “This was the same way I felt when I was going after a different killer. That’s when my alcoholism started.”

  “Events don’t cause alcoholism. Sometimes we stop caring and then stop controlling our drinking because of tragedies in our life, but many people get through them without drinking.”

  “Before that point in my life—before I shot that killer—I controlled it . . . well most of the time. I know I started drinking a lot more after Iraq, but I was keeping it together. Just barely at times, but I was doing okay. At least I thought so at the time.”

  “Not that shooting someone under any circumstances isn’t traumatic, but what was different about this?”

  “I sort of went off like the lone ranger. Alonzo Moore had killed at least three people. All young black men. One was a competitor—dealing crack on Moore’s turf. Another was one of Moore’s underlings who smoked up the crack he was supposed to sell. The third also worked for Moore and let a tossup steal the money he made from selling Moore’s dope.”

  “What’s a tossup?”

  “A slut, in street slang. Or in this case, a woman who exchanges sexual favors for a few hits off a crack pipe.”

  “I wonder what I might have been willing to do for a drink or drug if I hadn’t stopped,” said Walt.

  “I flipped someone in Moore’s organization who witnessed all three murders. The case was going to trial when my witness was killed. Everyone on the streets knew Moore did it. He wanted everyone to know—you deal on my turf, you lose my drugs or money, you testify against me, you die. There went the case.”

  “That must have been hard to swallow.”

  “Everyone else in the unit told me to let it go—that I’d done all I could do—but even though the victims weren’t exactly pillars of society, no one had the right to take their lives. My first partner in homicide said it was our responsibility to speak for the dead. That the lives of every victim mattered, no matter who or what he was. He was right about that, and I couldn’t allow Moore to kill without consequence.”

  Walt’s face tightened. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t go out and whack him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Sinclair, seeing the concern in Walt’s face. “I started following him, waiting for him to screw up. I did it on my own time because the lieutenant wouldn’t allow it. Since I was technically off-duty, I couldn’t use a department undercover car, and my unmarked car would have been made a mile away in that part of town. So, when I got off shift, I took off my suit coat and tie, pulled on a windbreaker, and cruised West Oakland in a rental to see what Moore was up to and who he was associating with. I figured that, eventually, one of his associates would get arrested for something and I could turn him, or Moore would make a mistake himself and I’d be there when it happened.”

  “Sounds like you were determined.”

  “Obsessed is more like it.”

  Chapter 52

  Sinclair filled their coffee cups and settled into the upholstered chair. He took a deep breath and began to tell Walt the parts of the story he’d never told anyone, the parts of the story that still woke him at 3:00 a.m. like a gunshot through his bedroom window.

  A year ago, after following Moore for two weeks, Sinclair had spotted his car one evening on a trash-strewn residential street behind a rusted pick-up truck with four flat tires. Sinclair parked his rental down the street and slouched into the driver’s seat to observe. Alonzo Moore appeared in the doorway of an old, brown stucco house and pranced down the steps, through the chain link gate, and onto the street. Sinclair watched as Moore got into his banana-yellow Cadillac and crept down the street, his stereo blaring. Sinclair knew his routine. Moore would stop off at each of his spots, chat with his crew, and accept a roll of money. Sinclair followed, staying well back to avoid being spotted. According to the narcotics officers Sinclair had spoken to, someone else made the drug deliveries to Moore’s spots, and Moore never touched the drugs himself, so Sinclair knew he wouldn’t catch him holding. Moore stopped at Thirty-Second Street, and Sinclair pulled his car to the curb a block away.

  The sun had set an hour earlier, and the street lights cast a sickly, yellow glow over two rail-thin teenagers who Moore approached. Moore yelled something at them, but Sinclair was too far away to make out the words. Moore got into the face of one of them, still yelling, then grabbed him by his jacket with his left hand, stepped forward, and landed a powerful roundhouse to the side of his head. The young man slumped to the pavement as Moore pulled up the waistband of his black jacket and came out with a gun.

  The adrenaline shot into Sinclair’s system. He simultaneously pulled the gear shift lever into drive as he keyed the handset of his portable radio and yelled into it. “Thirteen-L-Five, Code Thirty-Three.”

  The dispatcher, hearing Sinclair’s excited voice, immediately responded. “Thirteen-L-Five, you have the air. What’s your nine-two-six?”

  “Thirty-Second and Linden. Man with a gun. Two-forty-five in progress,” said Sinclair, using the code for assault with a deadly weapon, as he mashed the accelerator to the floor, rocketing directly toward Moore.

  “Any units, two-forty-five in progress, Thirty-Second and Linden. Thirteen-L-Five on the scene,” the dispatcher relayed to all patrol officers in the sector.

  By the time the first kid hit the ground from Moore’s blow, the other was several steps into a full sprint. Moore fired two shots at him before he disappeared from Sinclair’s view and then swung the gun back toward the one on the ground. Sinclair saw him lining up the barrel on the motionless form on the ground as his car roared toward them.

  Sinclair was bracing for the gunshot, when Moore suddenly turned toward the sound of the rental’s engine racing toward him. Sinclair knew that Moore only saw two headlights coming at him—the car and Sinclair invisible behind his high beams.

  Moore swung the chrome handgun toward Sinclair’s car, and Sinclair jabbed the brake pedal and swung the steering wheel to the left. The tires fought against the ABS and the asphalt, and the car screeched and skidded sideways down the street. Sinclair ducked just as Moore’s gun spat out a fireball into the darkness, and the passenger window and windshield exploded, showering Sinclair with glass. The car jerked to a stop, and Sinclair rolled out of the driver’s door while smoothly drawing his Sig Sauer .45 from the leather holster under his windbreaker.

  Sinclair poked his head over the hood. He was greeted with a bright muzzle flash and loud pop from less than fifty feet away. He ducked down, crawled to the front of his car, and peeked around the front bumper.

  Moore was running. He crossed the sidewalk and onto the front yard of a house as Sinclair fired two quick shots toward him.

  Sinclair jumped up and gave chase.

  Moore was in full stride, crossing the small strip of crabgrass and weeds that pretended to be a front yard, and disappeared between two houses. As Sinclair sprinted across the sidewalk, he brought his portable radio to his mouth and yelled in short bursts through his heavy breathing. “Shots fired. At me. Suspect westbound through the yards. Male black, twenty-two. Six-foot, one-sixty. Black jacket, blue jeans. Name—Alonzo Moore.”

  The two houses were no more than fifteen feet apart. As Sinclair rounded the front corner of the first house, he saw a flash of movemen
t disappearing over the fence. Two seconds later, he hit the fence with his left foot and catapulted himself over. He landed hard on both feet and scanned the backyard, seeing a dark form sprinting toward the far fence. Moore vaulted the six-foot wood fence without hardly slowing.

  Sinclair sprinted across the yard, dodged an old Weber grill, and nearly tripped over a rusted tricycle in the dark. He grabbed the top of the fence and was ready to throw his right leg over but then stopped. There was no noise from the next yard.

  He peeked over the decaying wood fence into another backyard, and a gunshot exploded in front of him. The bullet whizzed inches from his face.

  He dropped back down, crouching behind the fence. His breathing came hard, his heart pounded.

  A moment later, he heard the sound of splintering wood on the far side of the yard and peered over again. Overgrown weeds and junk covered the backyard. At the front of the lot sat an abandoned house. The back door swung on a broken hinge. “Thirteen-L-Five,” he whispered into his radio.

  “Go ahead Thirteen-L-Five.”

  “He made the first yard and turned north. I think he went into the rear door of a nine-oh-five house on Thirty-Second, between Linden and Filbert.”

  “Copy. All units, suspect possibly entered abandoned house on Thirty-Second Street between Linden and Filbert. First unit on the scene, advise,” the calm voice of the female dispatcher relayed.

  Sinclair threw his right foot onto the top of the fence and gracefully swung himself over. He dropped softly to the ground in a crouch and listened. He heard the police sirens in the distance and a dog barking several houses away. An interior door banged against a wall inside the house.

  He crossed the yard in a half crouch and stopped at the rear door. Fear and common sense told him to remain there and wait for the responding units. If Moore was smart—and no one survived on the streets of Oakland by being stupid—he would make his way out the front door and across the street before the patrol units got into position. However, if Sinclair moved to the front of the house, Moore could slip out the back and disappear before the units set a perimeter. Sinclair knew that one police officer cannot surround a house alone.