“This who I think it is?” Drowsy, he slurred his words, his voice almost a growl.
“North Bay Services, sir. Sorry to catch you so early, but you told me to call this line if I had any urgent concerns. I’m looking at a rush invoice here, remains outstanding. I was hoping we could close this.”
Without a specific number or identification code to target, it was highly unlikely law enforcement would have a way to focus in on his cell, and the encryption would make it difficult to snag and decode the signal for all but the most sophisticated eavesdroppers. Not much chance of that, this soon after the fires. The order-and-invoice jargon was more to put Bratcher to the test.
“I’m not showing full delivery on that order.” Bratcher had picked up the cue, albeit with a little menace in his voice. The fact he played along, didn’t just jump in discussing the fire, it was a good sign. “And I didn’t order the rush.”
“Code’s been entered here, it’s off our inventory. I think there might be some confusion concerning the back-end service portion of the contract. That what you mean?”
First half buys performance, Ferry thought. Second buys loyalty. Remember?
“Just because it’s off your shelf doesn’t mean we’re satisfied with the product.”
Ferry had caught news reports on the car radio during the trip south. You couldn’t trust the media, of course, but from what he’d heard the fires had done enough damage to qualify as a job well done.
“Could you clarify what you mean?”
“Supposed to be weatherproof, for one thing.”
The rain, Ferry thought. He’d heard about that, too. “What portion of the shipment we talking about?”
“Third at least. Maybe half. I made it clear, nothing but full delivery and complete satisfaction.”
“I think we should turn our attention to the service part of the contract. No support services will be forthcoming until payment is made in full. I think if you review the contract—”
“Contract specified full performance. I’m sick of saying that. Besides—”
“I’m gonna have to be firm here. I expect to see the balance paid by noon. And I think your definition and mine concerning full performance? Let’s just say we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
“No. No, you listen.” The menace switched to anger. “You pushed this, not me. Truth is, your guy, one of your employees, he fucked up. That problem you mentioned—he wasn’t just hanging around, he was involved. You needed to act fast to cover your own ass. You think I don’t know this? You’ve been paid all you’re gonna get paid. You’re damn lucky to have that.”
Somehow, Bratcher had already tapped into the full story on Manny’s involvement in the Carlisle killing. They wouldn’t be broadcasting that through the media yet. That meant juice, no more doubt about it. Feds most likely.
Get off the phone, he told himself.
“I’m gonna give you a chance to reconsider. It won’t get cheaper, in the long run, doing it this way.”
Bratcher laughed and broke the connection. Ferry stared at the cell phone for a moment, puzzled, then enraged. He considered slamming it against the dash but thought better of it. Instead, leaving it on, so they could continue tracking the ping if Bratcher tipped them off to the call, he dropped it outside the car into the sand. Maybe one of the kayakers will pick it up, he thought, take it out into the Pacific with him. That’d make for an interesting hunt.
He cranked the ignition, put the Caprice in gear, and headed back out toward the toll road.
Toby and Nadya spent the night on the floor with Miss Carvela in the basement of Mission Baptist. They’d slept there, shoeless but in their clothes, lying on thin foam mats, polyester blankets for warmth, like dozens of others from Baymont and St. Martin’s Hill.
Dan had left them in the hands of the Red Cross, then walked off to his sister’s office to let her know everyone had survived. There was no point in trying to phone; if one worked it had twenty people queued up to use it.
He offered to come back with another car to take them to Tina’s home, where they could wash, sleep in a bed or at least on a couch, have something decent to eat. Miss Carvela declined, and Toby refused to leave her alone. She needed to be here, she said, where her neighbors and friends, their children and grandchildren, would be. She needed to know who was safe, who needed her prayers. And Francis, he might show up at the shelter, there was that chance.
During the night, dozing off from exhaustion, she’d finally loosened her hold on the tin box and picture she’d insisted on saving from the fire. Toby, who’d slept not at all, reached over at one point and ventured a peek. As he’d thought, the box held letters—penned by someone named Reginald, his words filled with a clumsy boyish tenderness. Toby read no more than a few lines, felt ashamed, then refolded the old brittle paper and returned it to its box.
The picture was a sepia-tinted black-and-white photograph of a young Carvela Grimes. Slender and small, but with that same proud sadness in her eyes even then, she stood at an auditorium lectern beside a double-chinned matron, both women wearing orchids and sashes and floor-length gowns. Beneath the photograph, a yellowed scrap of newsprint read: “Mrs. Augusta Jones presents Carvela Grimes with the Worthy Miss Sash for Fidelus Chapter No. 9, Order of Eastern Star-Prince Hall Rite of Adoption, Firma Lodge Hall.”
And those were her most perfected memories, he guessed. The love of a young sailor long dead and the recognition that once, years ago, in the aftermath of that sacrifice, she’d been deemed worthy.
Nadya slept fitfully, her fists tucked under her chin. Toby pulled the blanket up above her shoulder, tucked it tighter around her legs. He’d spent the past two months caring for his father. He’d lacked any idea how important the role had become to him, but he felt it now, grateful to have these two women, one old, one young, Black, white, to look after. He anticipated with dread the day they’d no longer need him that way. There’d be his own business to sit with then.
He felt changed. Like he’d turned a corner, but his shadow had continued on in the same old direction. He had no idea what that meant, what he’d do about it. It frightened him, that not knowing. In particular, he cringed at the thought of actually being there when Nadya woke up, opened her eyes. Feared being the first thing she saw. Feared being seen for who he really was.
The detective conducting the shooting review—a Kentucky transplant named Jimmy Johndroe, not a bad guy—wore jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Like Murchison, he’d already been up on the hill aiding evacuation and only sat here because Stluka was dead.
Johndroe worked IA for the Rio Mirada force. They wouldn’t bring in an outsider, not for something as clean as this. He’d started by offering his condolences, then thanking Murchison for sitting down so soon, while the memory was fresh. Murchison ran down what had happened and Johndroe taped it.
The issue of charging uphill without vests came up. Murchison blamed lack of foresight, lack of time. A crisis dictates action, detectives don’t wear vests, there you had it. Secretly, Murchison thought, I hate this, every single bit of it. Hate myself.
After a few follow-up questions, Johndroe recited their names, badge numbers, and the time and date, then turned the machine off. As though it was just the next item on his checklist, he said, “There’s counseling available, Murch. If you want, I can—”
“Maybe in a couple days,” Murchison lied. Counselors were thought of as spies for the brass. And he didn’t need reminding of his limitations as a talker. “We’re undermanned on the hill. Still a lot to get done.”
Johndroe nodded. “No lie to that.” He shivered a little. “Be honest with you? Nothing perks up my pucker factor like fire.”
“Yeah.”
Inwardly, Murchison thought: Fire’s the easy part. He no longer had to guess at what the Lazarenko girl had gone through. Like her, he’d been bloody when the EMTs reached him. And like her, he’d been unable to make it matter. Stluka died right there as Murchison blew worthless air
into his lungs. It had taken forty minutes for help to arrive. They’d had to fight through the crowd and smoke and chaos, find their way through all that to the house. The whole time, the gaunt, feebleminded old woman just stood there, like he and Stluka were invisible, toeing the edge of the porch as she tried to catch rain on her tongue.
“Reminds me of that booby-trapped tank truck full of jet fuel they found headed for Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan,” Johndroe said, shaking his head. “Gives you the willies seeing that kinda thing so close to home.”
Not close, Murchison thought. Home.
“Been catching the radio broadcasts? Worst fire since the Oakland Hills firestorm, they say, and a lot of the same problems. But Stluka’s the only man we lost. I mean, not like that’s some small—”
“It’s okay, Johndroe.” Murchison worked up a smile. “Don’t. Really.”
Johndroe squirmed a few more apologies into his chair, then went on. “Fire companies lost four so far, got maybe five more in critical. Bunch of minor stuff, them and us both.”
“How many people from the hill?”
“Still counting. Sixteen dead we know about. About two, three dozen in ER for burns, a lot of them critical. One seven-year-old boy, he’s touch and go. Father carried him in a blanket all the way down into the command center, screamed out, ‘Somebody, please, help my son!’ Chief looked at him like he’d pulled a knife. But they got the kid to ER quick enough to save his life, for now any rate. Won’t know the whole story, on him or the hill, for days.”
The rain had slowed but not stopped the fires. Given the mismatch in hydrant couplings, the nearby fire companies had been forced to stand down, providing manpower for support while their trucks stood helplessly idle, their pumper engines all but useless beyond five minutes. Helicopters had been called in, filling their monsoon buckets in the river, then flying over the smoldering houses. HAZMAT crews had made it to the top of the hill and were laying foam into the sewers to sit on the gas fumes. Meanwhile, clear through dawn, officers trudged door to door—some from in town, the whole force on mandatory overtime, others called in by the Office of Emergency Services from as far away as Santa Rosa and Oakland—trying to root out the hideaways, the stay-behinds, the ill and crippled not yet accounted for.
“The Roderick guy you mentioned, one who shot your partner, now there’s a real piece of work.”
Murchison stared blankly.
“You wouldn’t believe what they found inside that house.”
“Sure I would.”
While still at the scene, Murchison learned from an EMT that the old woman wasn’t just undernourished, dehydrated, and mentally ill. A brief inspection suggested she’d also been subjected to repeated sexual assaults. The EMT said his wife worked for the ombudsman, you saw that kind of thing more and more—old women with dementia pimped off by family members for drug money.
“And the botched tanker heist up top of the hill? Your perp in the Carlisle killing got found there. Or at least they think it’s him, pending dentals and prints, if they can get any off him. Did you know that?”
“I heard. Yeah.”
The gas from the tanker had flooded the sewers but left only a film at the station itself, so when a spark source hit it only a surface fire caught, and that got handled by the rain. Luckily, none of the vapor inside the empty tank compartments went up. Too rich a mixture. It meant they had a relatively intact crime scene, complete with three dead men—singed by the fire but not burned to char and bone, they’d be identified—plus a long-bed van. They’d found, too, a .357 and a Smith and Wesson 645, both now being matched against the Carlisle ballistics through IBIS, and a knapsack containing the personal property of one Manuel Turpin, aged twenty-one, with an Oregon conviction for felony arson.
“FBI’s arrived, because of this Turpin mutt. They’re keen on him in a weird way.”
“How so?”
“You’ll find out. They want you in on the big sit-down once they’re through with their preliminaries. ATF’s in town now, too, because of the way the houses went up. Some kind of bomb they’ve seen before, but only in Mob jobs.”
“Fed’s sharing anything real?”
Johndroe laughed. “Get serious.”
Murchison got up from his chair. “Holmes paged me from the hill. He’s got something he wants me to see.”
Johndroe didn’t stand up. “Holmes, he’ll probably get that detective shield now. Got the vacancy, with Stluka gone. Chief’s got no reason not to put Holmes in his place. God knows they’ve both been eager. Might even make him your partner. How’s that sit with you?”
The question, folksy in tone, had insidious intent, but Murchison couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just imagining. Still, he knew pretty soon the nicknames would start. Ebony and Ivory. Ugly and Uglier. And it would be odd, going from partner to the most unapologetic racist on the force to partner of its first Black detective. There was a mood swing for you. But he knew it wouldn’t make him look versatile. It’d make him look like he wasn’t even there.
He shrugged. “Holmesy’s a good cop. Why?”
Johndroe gestured for Murchison to sit back down. “Just a few last questions.”
He didn’t bother to flip the recorder back on. Murchison sat.
“Did Stluka slug one of the kids taken into custody for trespass at the warehouse fire near Dumpers?”
Murchison sagged in his chair. “Kinda late in the game to be asking that. Can’t sue a dead man.”
“Department’s still on the hook.”
“Then I’ll wait for a lawyer. No offense.”
“None taken. Got anything you want to tell me about Officer Gilroy’s handling of the Thigpen arrest?”
How did he know these things, Murchison wondered. “I wasn’t present during the arrest.”
“Anything at all? The hospital? The fact you tore up his booking sheet?”
Murchison felt his mouth get dry. “Like I said—”
“Did you tell this Thigpen kid’s mother you had an eyewitness?”
It was a prickling sensation along his neck Murchison felt now. Sarina Thigpen, she’d already complained. Maybe hired a lawyer. Everybody’d be hiring lawyers.
“That’s permissible deception, Johndroe.”
“The kid’s mother? How about this—you continue to question her son after he made a clear and unequivocal request for counsel?”
“He wasn’t a suspect in the shooting at that point.”
Johndroe rolled his eyes. “Ah, Jesus, Murch—”
“A material witness, I don’t—”
“Murch, stop. You had his clothes. The door was locked. You know better.” Johndroe edged closer. Same as Murchison had with Arlie. “Not like we hide the SOP binder.” Standard Operating Procedure—a three-ring binder filled with the latest great idea on how to avoid the last big blunder. Fifty Years of Fuckups, it got called. “You nuts? You want to lose your house?”
“Over the piddly beefs you just brought up?”
“You want to answer any of my questions?”
Murchison wondered where all this was headed. Whatever he did in the room with Arlie Thigpen seemed wildly irrelevant at this point. What charge was the kid facing, resisting arrest? That would depend on Gilroy, and it seemed pretty obvious he’d decided to hedge his bets and get down first with Johndroe. The Carlisle killing would stay unsolved or get pinned on Manny, depending on the call from IBIS with the ballistics match, unless somebody came forward with something different. Even if Murchison’s questioning of Arlie got admitted in whatever prosecution came up—and that was doubtful—no evidence resulted. Reversible error, if that. Even a civil suit would get settled fast for next to nothing.
Then Johndroe laid out his cards. “Like I said. It’s not just us now. The feds are falling all over themselves. This fire on the hill, it’s a very big deal. Rumors are flying everywhere, the whole town’s scared or pissed or both. Gonna be a feeding frenzy.”
“Yeah. But, Johndroe, this thing he
re, between you and me—it’s a shooting review.”
Johndroe finally stood up, his eyes strangely sad and cold at the same time. “I know. That’s why the recorder’s off. But if any of that other stuff comes up, it won’t be me running the show, okay? They’ll bring somebody in from outside. Just a heads up.”
That was Johndroe. Not a bad guy.
21
Murchison lowered his window and showed his badge to pass through the various checkpoints outside Baymont. Some were manned by MPs from the National Guard brigade out of San Francisco, called in by the sheriff. The uniforms evoked an eerie sense of déjà vu that stayed with him as he drove on. It accentuated the awkward unreality of driving itself. Stluka had been the wheelman so long it seemed not just backward but, in a certain sense, wrong to be steering the car himself.
The Red Cross had set up shelters in local schools and church basements, but a lot of the crowd still waited out on Magnolia, restless, combative. Stirred by rumors of looting, they argued with the officers manning the perimeter, wanting permission to go back to their homes, get clothes and valuables left behind. Some, sick of the runaround, slipped over the stonework fence and tried to steal uphill unnoticed—thus becoming themselves suspected looters. Murchison saw a few of them sitting on curbs as he drove up the hill, women as well as men, all ages, dressed as they’d been when fleeing their homes, their hands now secured behind their backs with come-alongs.
On top of the hill, firemen still battled a line of house and underbrush fires, but elsewhere the destruction was done. Here a line of homes reduced to blackened timber and brick and smoldering char, then one untouched, grimed from smoke but still standing, eerily whole. This neighborhood gutted, that one spared. Hundreds of trees had burned down to scorched shafts, horror movie stuff, while others looked as green as yesterday. It felt a little like mockery, that randomness. Meanwhile, the heavy stench of smoke hung everywhere, stinging the mouth and throat and lungs, while grayish swirls of ash fluttered through the air, like fine dry snow.
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