“Billy, got a minute? Something’s come up on the Baymont fires.”
Bill Reeves was a former cop out of San Francisco, night school law degree type. He was smarter than most of that breed, talked to you like a human being while deciding whether to go forward with a case or not, always bought a round for the rank and file. Murchison had worked at least a dozen major crimes with him.
In the hallway, Murchison ran down what Francis Templeton and Tina Navigato had told him about the fires and about Ralston Polhemus. It came out ragged, he had to backtrack once or twice to claim a neglected detail. Reeves cut him short.
“Murch, Murch. Let me stop you, okay? First, what you’re telling me here? I gotta be honest, it’s a little, I don’t know, untidy.”
Murchison nodded. “Been a long night.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“Jerry’s dead.”
Reeves sagged. “Ah, Jesus. I didn’t hear—”
“I was there.”
Reeves stared at him like he was nuts. “What are you doing on-duty? Murch, go home. You look like hell.”
“If I had a nickel for every time—”
“I’m serious. Go home.”
“Billy, I’m okay. Fine. This guy, his story. He wants immunity on his parole beef.”
“No doubt. But if he’s the only guy who can tell this story, he’s out of luck. He needs a corroborating witness. A credible one. He’s a convicted felon.”
“What about the bit with Polhemus?”
“He’s a wank, what can I tell you? He’s on a Bratcher slate, which means he’s tied in with Wally Glenn and Bob Craugh and just about every other redevelopment whore around here. They’ve been wanting to sink their teeth into that hill for ages. So? Now they’ve got their chance, they’re a little greedy about it. The commission on the bond float alone on a redevelopment deal that big’ll have brokers and lawyers on their knees for a piece. Polhemus, what he did, it’s tasteless, he’s got bad timing. Not a crime.” He reached out for Murchison’s shoulder, squeezed. “You need some sleep.”
Murchison averted his eyes. “Easier said than done.”
“Try.” Reeves, a big man, broad and hard, spoke with a strangely gentle concern. “One more thing? Way I’m hearing it, nobody in our office is gonna move on those fires till every agency involved gets its ducks in a row. The last thing, absolute last thing, we want is a bunch of cases heading into jury rooms with different fact patterns. That’d be a disaster. For everybody. So nobody’s going to grant your guy immunity unless every other prosecutor involved signs off on it. That means federal and state. Okay?” He patted Murchison’s shoulder. “Now go home.”
24
Ferry crossed the Rio San Miguel before noon and entered the Valle de San Quintín. Extinct volcanoes encircled the flatlands under a bright coastal sun, with the Sierra San Miguel to the east, Isla San Martin offshore. Hundreds of tottering shacks lined the road—fashioned of scrap wood and tin, with lashings of chicken wire. Indians from Oaxaca and Chiapas flocked here to work the vegetable farms that thrived among the irrigation canals fanning across the plain.
Soon he passed between the lines of stucco and clapboard stores along Mexico 1 that comprised San Quintín itself. One of the town’s curiosities was its Internet café—not as colorful as the cholo’s storefront he’d visited in Tijuana, just strange for its location here, on the final edge of civilization before the Baja wilderness.
He pulled in and parked, ignoring the two khaki-clad infantrymen from the Sixty-seventh Battalion loitering with minutas at an ice wagon. Ferry felt no threat, despite the carbines slung from their shoulders. American law enforcement didn’t trust the Mexican military enough to ally them in a manhunt, not on such short notice. He withdrew his laptop from the trunk of the dust-caked Caprice and headed up the café’s wood plank stairs.
Inside, an overhead fan spun lazily over a scuffed wood floor. The proprietor, a light-skinned Mexicana of matronly girth, breathed deep from a cactus blossom, eyeing Ferry as he took a seat, plugged in his laptop, and logged on.
Even an arrogant pirate like Bratcher deserves a second chance, he thought, checking his trust account. As expected, though, it still showed no activity. All right then, Ferry thought. Have it your way. He E-mailed the Pennington executive with whom he did business, provided his confirmation code, and ordered all funds be transferred into a new account in conformance with the trust documents on file with the bank. In keeping with past practice, he then sent a second message, repeating the request, using a second confidential code.
Last, he checked news reports of the fire. Unlike the radio accounts, here the names of some of those killed and injured were provided. A fleeting discomfort trickled up from somewhere, then he reminded himself it wasn’t his fault. I don’t dream these things up, he thought. I just do what I’m paid to do. There’s hardly fault in doing it well.
How many years had the city put off repairs of the sewers and storm drains, upgrades to the hydrants? How many years had they scotched the street work that would have made simple an effective evacuation and firefight? And there were reports of collateral “opportunity” fires, people torching their own places once they saw the hill go up. You can hardly blame me for that, he thought. Part of the rage people would be lathering themselves in would be solely to disguise their own guilt. The virtuous always scream loudest. They’re the most dishonest.
Glancing down the list of the dead, he came upon the name of Detective Gerald Stluka. It stopped him. He wondered if he read right. Checking again, he saw it was true, and logged off. He was still musing on how unforseen that was, how useful it might prove, as he settled up with the ample Mexicana, trying not to stare at her cleavage.
He drove south toward Lázaro Cárdenas, then turned west on a gravel road just beyond the Benito Juárez military camp. About seven miles in, just past Monte de Kenton, he followed a still smaller road, this one of rutted dirt, forking left toward the fishing village of Pedregal. Soon he was parked at the tidal flats at the north end of the Bahía Falsa, not far from the airstrip that brought the fishermen here from up north.
He reached into his duffel, pulled out a satellite phone, figuring he was too far from any transmission towers to make a cell phone usable. He dialed the Rio Mirada police department, and once the operator connected he asked for the voice mail of Detective Dennis Murchison. Soon he was listening to Murchison’s outgoing message, then came the beep.
Ferry found himself curiously unable to speak for a second. Collecting himself, he began: “This message will serve as my full confession.”
By midday, the war of words had commenced.
The chief, squaring himself before a battery of microphones and television cameras—flanked by Peterson on one side, Gladden, the CDF’s arson man, on the other, an ATF agent standing in the wings—read from a brief prepared statement.
“‘The investigation to this point indicates that all but a handful of the fires last night in Rio Mirada were the direct result of a sabotage plot against a local subprime lender named Frontline Financial. The fires were caused by a number of sophisticated incendiary devices planted in empty foreclosure properties and gasoline released from a tanker trunk that the perpetrators had hoped to hijack, then explode outside a local Frontline branch office. The principal saboteur, Manuel Turpin, was found dead at the scene of the failed hijacking. He was a convicted felony arsonist with suspected involvement in a number of incendiary fires in Northern California. He also had known ties to radical environmental groups, and the investigation is continuing, particularly concerning the possible involvement of one or more accomplices with similar ties.’”
In the question and answer period that followed, one of the reporters asked if the incendiary devices used were similar to others employed by radical greens. Gladden, showing a little initiative, stepped up to the microphone before either the chief or Peterson could stop him.
“No,” he admitted. “And they don’t match the kind
of devices described in the bomb-making manual the ELF posted on its Web site, either. We’ve seen these before mainly in arson fires believed to have been related to organized crime.”
Peterson stepped forward. “You shouldn’t read too much into that.” He reclaimed the microphone, nudging Gladden aside. “The use of increasingly sophisticated methods is no more surprising than the increased level of violence and harm. Terrorism escalates. It’s what it’s meant to do.”
The denials came almost instantly. An organic grocer in Boulder, Colorado, who disavowed membership in the ELF or any of the targeted organizations but who admitted serving as an ad hoc spokesman, rendered a statement on their behalf, which he claimed he’d received anonymously over the Internet.
“‘The Baymont fires,’” he read, “‘did not and could not have been the result of any effort by environmental direct action advocates or their allies. The parties responsible for the fires made no attempt to educate the public concerning the damage being caused by the targeted bank, and no effort was made to protect human life. These are two core requirements of all direct action.
“‘Furthermore, as was seen in the attempt to frame Earth First activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in 1990, and as revealed in the resulting civil trial this past year—a trial which resulted in a multimillion-dollar judgment against the FBI and Oakland police—these law enforcement agencies, along with private security forces working on behalf of corporations and others, are willing to fabricate evidence, lie under oath in support of illegal search warrant affidavits, and even stage violent acts themselves in their attempt to discredit the entire environmental movement. Such tactics are increasing—in one year alone, over one hundred intentional acts of violence or harassment were perpetrated not by, but against, environmentalists.’”
At his desk, the recriminations and disavowals Murchison suffered were more personal in nature. Trying to make headway through paperwork, he kept seeing Stluka, eyes howling with pain, shoving his bloody side arm into Murchison’s hand. Worse than the image was the wretched sick feeling, the pit of his stomach dropping out and his throat clamping shut in a gag reflex. Like he was still kneeling there. Like time meant nothing. Right now was back then, forever.
His mother tried to contact him, but he refused to have the call patched through. He did not much see the point of speaking with her. When Willy had died, he’d attempted, just once, to feel her out, see if solace might be offered. She’d stared at him with a cold bewilderment. “It’s not all about you,” she’d said.
He was unable to duck Joan’s call. She phoned from her parents’ home in Granite Bay and told Gump it was an emergency. Gump sent up one of the operators to stand at Murchison’s desk till he agreed to pick up.
“It would have been nice, Dennis, if you’d called yourself, instead of having someone else do it for you.”
He heard his mother’s voice, buried inside his wife’s. The one brittle in its despair, the other stiffly confident, two sides of the same obstinacy, he supposed. But both disappointed in him. No real surprise to that—wasn’t it the eternal curse? We marry our most pathetic secrets.
“I’m not much up for blame right now, if you don’t mind.”
“Blame?” She sounded genuinely hurt. Misunderstood. She did that. Then her voice softened, as though finding the direction she’d meant to take all along. “I heard about Jerry. I’m sorry.”
With unforeseen intensity, he hated her. “Are you, now.”
She caught it, the shift in his voice. “Dennis—”
Now he hated himself. A lot of that today. “I’m sorry. That was—”
“It’s all right, Dennis. Really.”
Murchison felt ashamed and yet unable to apologize. Something unsaid too long lurked just out of reach. He feared what that might be. He’d barely begun puzzling it through when Joan said, “Why don’t you drive up, Dennis? There’s no need for you to stay down there. Take a leave, you’re owed that. My God. The girls have seen the news. They’re scared. You’ve needed a break for ages. If you can’t take one now, I don’t know …”
Her voice was oddly, mechanically resilient, even cheerful. Murchison let the receiver slip in his hand, away from his ear. He could still hear her voice, though her words became unintelligible, just a rhythmic hiss of sounds that echoed strangely with another conversation, one from a year before. Joan again, but she hadn’t been speaking to Murchison.
She’d been at the bedside of a childhood friend, a woman named Chessy, dying of cervical cancer. The woman, only forty-five years old, lay in her sour bed, gaunt from chemotherapy-induced nausea, her head shaved. They’d gone to the hospital to visit. Joan brought flowers, held the woman’s hand, looked into her ravaged face, and spoke in tones much like she was using now, on the phone. Her sister, Ellen, was there at the time and in the middle of Joan’s monologue got up abruptly and left. Chessy seemed hurt, Joan looked puzzled. Murchison excused himself, following Ellen into the hallway to see if anything was wrong.
He found her in the waiting room, by herself, arms folded so tightly around herself it looked like she was afraid she might literally come apart. She was two years younger than Joan, middle child, the family misfit—a childless divorcée with dirty blonde hair cut close, quick temper, wild laugh, six years sober. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater, no makeup. Murchison sat down next to her.
“Everything all right?”
She looked at him like he was insane. “How do you live with her?”
Murchison flinched, feeling accused by the remark and yet spared, too. “I don’t know what—”
“You don’t see it, do you?” She shook her head, wiped at her eyes, which were raw and red. “The way she acts, the way she talks. Like she’s performing for the class.” She reached into her pocket, dug out a handkerchief, and blew her nose. “Chessy was our closest friend in the neighborhood growing up. She spent more time at our house than her own. It’s not some stranger in there.”
“Ellen, I think Joan knows—”
“No. No, you don’t get it. Listen, Dennis—it’s not just the way she talks, the way she acts. Chessy’s been here three weeks. A bunch of us, we’ve traded off, taking turns to stay with her at night, spell her husband so he can take care of the kids. It’s hard, okay? For all of us. Chessy can’t sleep. Doesn’t matter how much morphine they give her, she’s in pain. So we walk. We get up and walk the halls. All night, sometimes. And she’s not all there anymore. The medication, it’s got her loopy, she hallucinates, she’s paranoid. She vomits and pisses the bed and hears stuff that isn’t there. It’s just—it’s the hardest thing imaginable, okay? Joan hasn’t offered to spend the night once. Not once. Today, this visit? It’s only the second. In three weeks, our best friend growing up, like family. Two visits in three weeks. She’s going to die, Dennis.”
“It’s my fault,” Murchison said, not hesitating to take the blame. “My hours, they’re unpredictable. Joan can’t be sure I won’t get called in the middle of the night—”
Ellen shook her head. “Dennis, stop it. I offered to stay with the kids if that became a problem. That’s not it.” She sniffled, shoving the handkerchief back into her pocket. “Joan’s just incapable of dealing with anything that can’t be solved by pretending it isn’t important. You know that, right? A positive attitude and busy-busy-busy solves everything.” She laughed caustically, thought for a moment. “She ever talk to you about your job? I’m serious. She ever ask you to tell her the really awful stuff, the stuff you can’t tell anybody else?”
Murchison couldn’t respond. Not because he didn’t know the answer.
“It’s not that she’s scared. Christ, we’re all scared. It’s that she’s such a phony about it. I mean, I wonder sometimes, I really do, if Joan came across a drowning man, whether she’d even think of diving in the water. Or if she’d just go and buy the guy a tasteful card.”
Sitting at his desk, Murchison felt it hard not to think of the memory as a premonition. He bobb
ed the receiver in his hand, tilting his head a little closer to listen.
“… time away plus rest, Dennis. It’s what you need. It’s what you’ve needed for a very long time. Everyone knows that. I spoke to my mother about—”
He pictured a future filled with that voice, sincere in its own false way, and couldn’t bear the thought of pretending it would be okay anymore. He lifted the receiver. “I have to go.” His heart pounded, he felt sick to his stomach. “I’m being called into a meeting. Something’s come up. I’ll call back later.”
“Dennis—”
He pressed the plunger, cutting off the connection. A second later, lifting his hand, he listened to the hum of the dial tone, feeling unpleasantly numb. He sat there like that for what seemed a very long while. Finally, he noticed the receiver clenched in his hand like a weapon. He set it down in its cradle. The hum of the dial tone went away, but not the numbness. It occurred to him, then, what it was Stluka had tried to say as he died.
Not “Macon Bay.”
“Make them pay.”
He tried to bury himself in the Carlisle murder book. It seemed a drudge task now, writing up reports on his dead-end interrogations of Toby Marchand, Arlie Thigpen. A lifetime ago, he thought, kneeling in that man’s front yard, walking through his house. Jerry’s lifetime.
I should be up on the hill, he thought, not here. With Holmes. Except he doesn’t want you.
The station house was thronged now, everyone on duty, everyone buzzing about, ignoring him. He reached for the phone, dialed his voice mail, hoping for a callback from Joan—wanting to hear her relentless cheerfulness again, convince himself he was wrong about it. Instead he heard an unfamiliar male voice. The voice said the following message would serve as a full confession to the Baymont fires.
Murchison pressed the receiver close, listened to the entire recitation, ran it back, played it again, cupping a hand to his other ear to shut out the background noise. He rummaged a microcassette recorder from his desk drawer, stuck the suction cup microphone to the earpiece of the phone, and played the message back a third time, recording it now, wanting to make sure he had at least one copy in his own hands. He played the tape back to make sure it was audible and complete. He then recited his own name, the date and time and place, at the end, and rewound the tape. After writing down this same information on the cassette label, he placed the tape in an envelope and sealed it shut, then stuffed it into his pant pocket.
Done for a Dime Page 34