Tell No Lies

by Gregg Hurwitz

  A-Dre’s upper lip twitched in a literal snarl as he reversed course and came up on Daniel. “Make sure I don’t break into one of these nice foreign cars.” He flicked his head at the Audi behind Daniel.

  The Audi that he made sure never to drive on workdays. But today wasn’t a workday. Daniel wasn’t supposed to be here any more than A-Dre was.

  “Nice wheels,” A-Dre said. “The counselor biz must be paying well these days.”

  “It pays fine.”

  “Not S-series fine. No, you got some dollar. You dress down, don’t you, afore you slum your ass in here? The worn jeans. The faded T-shirts.” A-Dre came up on Daniel, breathed down on him.

  Daniel took a step to the side, and A-Dre shadowed his move, blocking him again. He was in no frame of mind to engage A-Dre properly right now; he just needed to get away cleanly and quickly.

  “Step back, A-Dre.”

  In his three years of running groups, he’d never had a confrontation with a member erupt into violence. A-Dre crossed his arms, glowering.

  First time for everything.

  Daniel held the glare well past the point of comfort. Finally A-Dre laughed and sidled off him. “Just playin’.”

  As Daniel headed to the elevator, A-Dre stood in place, staring after him. A power play. Unless there was some reason he didn’t want Daniel to see what he drove. When Daniel got into the elevator and turned around, A-Dre was still there, watching him across the quiet parking lot until the closing doors wiped him from view.

  Before the car could rise, Daniel flicked the emergency stop toggle switch and waited, listening. Footsteps ticked across concrete. A pause. And then the unmistakable roar of a motorcycle coming to life.

  Daniel stood with his hands pressed to the cold metal doors until the sound of A-Dre’s motorcycle faded away.

  Hardly incontrovertible evidence. But still.

  The toggle switch clicked back loudly, and Daniel rode the elevator up to the lobby, passed through security, and took the stairs to the second floor. Moving down the hall, he found himself in a haze of suspicion, studying each face as it floated past. He hadn’t considered how it would feel being back here in the building.

  Unsettled, he paused by the out-of-service water fountain to call Cris. “Just checking that you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine, babe.”

  “Don’t sound fine.”

  “Corrupt landlord, illegitimate eviction notices, driving the families out one at a time.”

  “So … a normal day.”

  She made a noise of amusement. “How are you doing?”

  “A bit rattled, still. But okay.”

  Over the line he heard elderly voices arguing in Tagalog. “I gotta jump, mi vida, or there’s gonna be a matricide in my office.”

  He watched a rat scuttle along the seam where wall met floor, then vanish through a crack in the baseboard. “Okay. Just … be careful today.”

  “You’re telling me?”

  Pocketing his phone, he continued to the administrative offices. The receptionist blew on her painted nails and head-tilted him through to the vast metal file cabinets paneling the confidential-records room in the back.

  He dug out A-Dre’s paperwork and thumbed through until he found an informed-consent form filled out by pen. Sloppy handwriting, but definitely not a match for the death-threat letters.

  Big exhale. He figured he would have recognized that scratchy penmanship if he’d seen it before. Okay. Suspicion averted.

  He started out. Halted in the doorway.

  There were five more group members.

  That creep of paranoia, termites beneath the flesh. This, he thought, is how it begins.

  Back to the cabinets, pulling files for the three remaining men, confirming what he already knew. Then he checked the handwriting of the two women just for good measure. In case—what? This was getting ridiculous.

  Sheepishly, he retuned the files, shoved the drawers closed. All right, then. His people were in the clear. That was that.

  Unless the killer had someone else write the letters for him. Which would be a smart move if you were, say, a seasoned criminal planning a murder.

  He gazed at the floor-to-ceiling banks of cabinets. Thousands of files. He recalled his own words. There’s no one in the building who wouldn’t be a suspect.

  So what had he learned snooping on his clients like a low-rent Big Brother? Not much.

  His gaze snagged on one of the drawer labels: KAAL–KEANER.

  That scrawled name—lyle kane—bobbed up from the dark waters of his mind. The man who was going to be killed tomorrow night at midnight. The man who, according to SFPD, didn’t exist.

  Daniel tugged out the weighty drawer, his fingers scrabbling across the tabs. Kanatzar, Kandt—then a jump straight to Kaneko.

  So there was no Lyle Kane on Bay Street or anywhere else in San Francisco, nor was there a Lyle Kane who’d ever availed himself of services at Metro South. And yet a quick glance at the clock brought a mounting dread. Wherever the guy was, the killer had promised to make him bleed in thirty-four hours and change.

  And Daniel’s little Nancy Drew excursion to the records room wasn’t going to affect anything. He headed out, locking the door behind him.

  As he passed her doorway, Kendra glanced up from her desk. “You got that form for me, Daniel?”

  “No. Distracting night last night. Sorry. I’ll get it to you.”

  She gave him a mock-glum look over her teal spectacles. “One of your group members was just in here dropping off his paperwork. Maybe I should let him run the group—”

  “Was it A-Dre?”

  She seemed a bit surprised at his intensity. “Yeah. Looks like he’s in for the duration.”

  And looks like A-Dre did have a legitimate reason for being here on a Tuesday. That made one of them.

  Kendra was still studying Daniel with puzzlement as he withdrew.

  The rubber tread of the rear stairwell squeaked underfoot. Daniel’s jitters made the windowless back corridor of the ground floor feel even more desolate than usual. As he neared the mail room, a hoarse murmuring became audible, bouncing off the white walls. He slowed, on edge.

  A few cautious steps brought him even with the door to the janitor’s office, which remained slightly ajar. The murmurs issued through the gap. They seemed to be in Spanish, but he couldn’t distinguish the words, only a current of husky sounds and the cadence of an accent.

  Daniel reached over and gave the door a gentle push. It creaked open, revealing the janitor sitting on a little bench before a set of three banged-up clothing lockers. Hispanic, sleek ponytail, his head bent as he pulled on one sock, then another. A familiar figure around the building at all hours, pushing a mop, hauling trash, making small, meticulous repairs as the structure at large deteriorated all around them.

  At first Daniel wondered why the man didn’t look up, but then he noticed: His eyes were closed. His canvas overalls were unclipped and peeled down to his waist, the wife-beater undershirt showing off bulging shoulders capped with Gothic-cross tattoos. A bare dangling bulb cast light across his profile, shadowing the thin line of hair extending from his sideburn and framing the angle of his jaw before rising into a pencil mustache. His lips twitched, the stream of words coming with almost schizophrenic intensity.

  Daniel glanced around the tiny room. Stained basin in the corner. A stack of drilled acoustic ceiling tiles. An open cardboard box held packs of pens and pads and—yes, there—a set of unused department-gray envelopes. Daniel felt his heart rate tick up another notch. Why would a janitor need so many office supplies?

  Daniel started to lean back from the door when the murmurs abruptly ceased and the janitor pivoted his head to fix on him there in the doorway.

  “Sorry,” Daniel said. “The door was open, and I heard you talking…”

  No response, just a dead stare. The unvented air smelled of sweat and chemicals. Daniel had to concentrate not to let his eyes dart over to the tell
tale envelopes.

  He cleared his throat, tried to retrieve a name. “Alberto, right?”

  “No.” The man lifted his heel to the bench and began lacing up a black boot.

  The sight of the boot froze Daniel. He rewound to that moment of suspended terror in Marisol’s house when the assailant turned and charged him. Dark boots pounding the foyer. But what precisely did they look like? That same itch came on beneath his skin, like a scab that wouldn’t heal.

  He realized that a response was due, so he forced himself back to the present. “I’m sorry—your name is…?”

  “Angelberto. On. Hell. Bear. Toe.” The man stood and tugged the overalls up over his sweat-shiny skin.

  “You work long hours.”

  “Day shift. Night shift. I am here. I am here until my work is done.” He stooped to pick up the cardboard box and walked out, forcing Daniel to step back out of the doorway.

  Angelberto locked the door behind him. Daniel waited for him to turn, then pointed at the jumble of supplies in the box. The gray envelopes were right there on the top. “What’s all that for?” Daniel asked.

  “Mr. Carpenter ask me to deliver these to Domestic Violence on floor five. You can check with him. They’re not stolen.”

  Daniel felt his cheeks flush. “I didn’t mean…”

  But of course he did.

  And already those black boots were tapping away down the hall.

  He stood there maybe a full minute, gathering himself, the hum of the overheads the only sound breaking the quiet. Then he resumed his walk to the end of the hall, where the mail room waited. It wasn’t until he paused at the threshold that he realized how much he’d been dreading this moment. Holding his breath, he entered, the cubbyholes drawing into view.

  His mailbox. Empty.

  On his tiptoes he poked at the outgoing mail, then finally gave in and started rifling through it. The sight of a gray interdepartmental envelope caused a flash of anxiety, but he turned it over to see a neatly printed label.

  He was just shoving the mail back when his iPhone rang, startling him.

  UNKNOWN CALLER. He slid to answer.

  “What the hell are you doing, Brasher?”

  He tapped the outgoing mail stack back into line. “Who is this?”

  “Inspector Dooley.” The voice lowered a few octaves. “Do I need to inform you that tampering with mail is a federal offense?”

  The hidden security camera she’d had installed. He spun in a circle, searching, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Oh, this is great.” She laughed. “The expression on your face. You find any Scooby snacks in the outgoing mail?”

  He smirked at himself. “You should’ve seen me earlier.”

  “Jumping at shadows?”

  “Today it doesn’t take a shadow.”

  “I can imagine. We’re on the same side of town. Meet me at Philz in twenty. I have a proposition for you.”

  “Sounds scandalous.”

  But she’d already hung up.

  Chapter 13

  “So normally there’s a whole clever approach where I play on your guilt and appeal to your desire to be a good citizen to leverage you into doing this,” Dooley said. “But you’re smart and I’m smart, so let’s just pretend we did that part already. Good?”

  Daniel said, “Good.”

  They waited for their order at Philz, the best coffee joint in the Bay Area. Outside, the Mission honked and revved in all its sunny, grimy glory, Twin Peaks parting the fog to let through all that color. Vibrant murals of saints, earth mamas, and migrant workers brightened alleys and garage doors. Trolleybus cables sliced and diced the sky above each intersection. Every hair sash a cultural celebration, every panhandler sporting a tattered poncho, every lowrider thrumming gangsta rap that even the rising rents couldn’t muffle. More Central Americans lived here than anywhere else besides … well, Central America, so if you weren’t going in for a mint-mojito iced coffee at one-cup-at-a-time Philz, you could grab a pupusa or Mission-style burrito that would make you change religions.

  Inside, Philz was a mash-up of the City at large. A hot-dotter with a BlackBerry implanted in his head bellowed sell orders, the bumper sticker on the wall behind him serving as a personal caption: SUPPORT THE MISSION YUPPIE-ERADICATION PROGRAM. A nanny shoved wailing twins in a double stroller. Two Norteños with their ’banger-red 49ers jerseys eyed Dooley and her two colleagues haughtily. And Daniel, along for the ride, was doing his best to keep up with the cops’ conversation.

  “Confidentiality in your department’s a bitch,” Theresa was saying. “And we can’t subpoena all those records. So. If and when we get a bead on a suspect, we may need you to check certain files for us.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” Daniel said. “And you have plenty of access to those files. Everyone who comes through our department is a convicted criminal with a parole officer. Talk to the POs and they can pull whatever records you need released. There’s a process.”

  “A process that’s more time-consuming.”

  “Than having me break confidentiality?” A wave of remorse came on at his own hypocrisy—less than an hour ago, he’d been digging through the files himself with less-than-professional motives in mind.

  “You were rooting through the mail.”

  “I never swore an oath not to root through outgoing mail.”

  One of Dooley’s colleagues—the one she’d referred to as Rawlins—made an annoyed noise in his throat. She hadn’t bothered to introduce either of them, but they seemed to fit the Homicide mold—fifties, white, rugged good looks eroded by age and stress.

  “Unless,” Dooley said, “the personal safety of another person is at stake.”

  “Absolutely. And if I find out anything like that, your phone will be ringing two seconds later. Believe me.”

  “So that’s what you’re doing? Running your own investigation? Tiptoeing into the mail room on your day off?”

  “Tiptoeing? Was it really that obvious?”

  Theresa charged on. “And this whole ‘run-in with the janitor’ routine—”

  “I’m telling you,” Daniel said. “Something’s off about the guy.”

  “Is that a professional opinion?”

  “Yes.”

  “We ruled out the janitor,” Rawlins said. “He punched in the night of. Worked a late shift.”

  “Can’t a time card be faked?” Daniel asked.

  “Yes. Which is why I made sure to track down someone who personally saw him at the building. Around midnight. Last night. Airtight alibi. We’re covering more angles than you can think of, Brasher. It’s not the janitor. It’s one of the other ten thousand people at Metro South who wear work boots.”

  “What’s a janitor supposed to wear on the job?” the other inspector said. “Huaraches?”

  “Maybe they’re special teleporting boots,” Rawlins said. “Got him from Metro South to Marisol Vargas’s place with a click of the heels.”

  This was running the risk of turning into a routine.

  Daniel held up his hands. Uncle.

  Dooley was enjoying all this. “Look, Brasher, I know you stumbled into this thing and wish you hadn’t. But it’s grabbed you now.” She flashed that grin. “So why not use your superpowers for good?”

  Before he could respond, the barista called out her name and she skated off to claim her coffee. Daniel stared at the gang tattoo on the guy in front of them—a sombrero struck by a machete, dripping blood. The Norteños were nothing if not subtle. Rawlins’s phone chimed, and he pulled it out, deleted a text. When the background screen came back up, Daniel noticed it was a digital clock, counting down. To midnight tomorrow.

  The killer’s deadline.

  Rawlins followed his stare, then pocketed the phone quickly. They stood there awkwardly for a moment. “We can’t find a goddamned trace of Lyle Kane.” Rawlins’s voice was strained, confessional. “Nothing.”

  “Maybe the killer won’t be able to find him ei
ther,” Daniel said. “He did have the wrong address for him.”

  “I’d rather not bank on that. The Tearmaker’s one highly organized—”

  “The Tearmaker?”

  Rawlins winced—he hadn’t meant to drop the nickname. “Brainchild of one of the reporting officers. It’s become a cop-shop tag. Can’t accuse us of being unpredictable.”

  “Pretend you never heard it,” the colleague said to Daniel, a touch threateningly. “That nickname leaks to the press, it’ll blow up. And so will the captain.”

  Daniel nodded. “I never heard it.”

  “The suspect,” Rawlins continued, “is planning these entries, bringing gear, executing clean exits. He’s got an eye on the victims ahead of time. Which means he’s probably found Lyle Kane by now. Remember—he picked these folks for a reason. Which means he knows where to look for them.” Rawlins watched Dooley across the shop, stirring sugar into her coffee. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and take down the piece of shit before the deadline. We’re kicking over a lot of rocks.”

  “Anything interesting on the mail room’s security footage?”

  “Aside from you?” Rawlins said. “Nope. But Dooley’s lead on the case, and she’s good.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “Yeah. She may have gotten the job ’cuz she’s black and a woman, but I got this shit ’cuz I’m white and a man, so the way I figure, it all comes out in the wash.”

  The other inspector said, “I’ll take her over O’Malley or Gubitosi any day.”

  Dooley returned, sipping her drink, resuming the conversation as if there’d been no break. “So, Brasher, I get it. The confidentiality end run’s not gonna work. Fine. I’m just saying, maybe we can help each other out.”

  She offered her hand, and they shook.

  He started for the door, and she said, “Your drink’s not up yet. What’s the rush?”

  “I have to get across town to see my mother. I’d rather be the one to tell her about last night. No imagining what kind of shitstorm she’ll kick up when she hears about it.”

  “We kept your name out of the media,” Dooley said. “How’s she gonna find out?”

  Daniel said, “She hears about everything that happens in this city.”