A Hard Place: A Chauncey Means Novel

by Sean Lynch

  “Angry men don’t think clearly; they make mistakes. Mistakes are how I’ll catch him.”

  “And when you catch him,” Reyna said, her eyes now challenging mine, “what then?”

  “I’m not sure I understand your question,” I said to her, even though I did.

  “When you catch him,” Reyna said, her mouth hardening with her eyes, “does he not have rights? Does he not then go to a trial? Does he not get a lawyer, like Mr. Greg or Mrs. Amanda? And then does he not learn where the family of Marisol lives?”

  Reyna reached out and took my arm with a surprisingly strong grip. “I have lived in San Leandro a long time, Mr. Chance,” she said. “By catching this man, who already killed my Marisol, do you not risk reprisal against Belicia? This man will have friends.” She gave my arm an even harder squeeze. “I have known people, growing up in this neighborhood, who reported crimes to the police. And before they could testify in the courtroom, the friends of the criminal did terrible things to their family.”

  “I have seen that myself,” I said.

  Reyna let go of my arm and turned to face Marisol’s candlelit shrine.

  “I am a God-fearing woman, Mr. Chance. I have always honored the Sabbath and lived a Christian life. I have lived through my share of hardship, and never did anything but thank the Lord for his blessings. But when the Oakland police detective drove me downtown to look at my little Marisol, on that silver table, I felt as if God had abandoned me.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut. Not always something I’m good at.

  “My faith has taught me that I am to forgive those who trespass against me,” Reyna continued. “And turn the other cheek.” She turned face to face me, her eyes blazing. “This I can no longer do.”

  “Me either,” I said.

  “If you find this man, who killed Marisol, will you kill him?”

  It was my turn to hesitate before answering. “It’s best if I don’t tell you.”

  Reyna Sandoval’s lip curled in contempt. “Then I must ask you not to search for him,” she said. “Abandon your investigation. What this man has done can only be paid for in blood. I will not have you put Belicia’s life at risk because you made a promise.”

  “I already told you I’m no longer a cop,” I said to her. “I don’t play by a cop’s rules. When I find this man, and I will, I’ll see to it he never hurts another child again.”

  Reyna’s eyebrows lifted. “Have you done such a thing before?”

  “I have.”

  “Ojo por ojo,” she said. “It is God’s will.”

  I headed for the door. Before I reached it I gave Reyna Sandoval my card.

  “Thank you for the tea. Please call me if you need anything. If I’m not home, you can leave a message and I’ll return your call within a day or so.”

  “What happens now, Mr. Chance?”

  “I keep on doing what I do. I’d like to speak with Belicia, if you could arrange it?”

  “I will ask her,” Reyna said. “As I told you, she is very rebellious these days. I am sorry for this. She may not wish to talk to you.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” I said. “I get that a lot.”

  Chapter 9

  Marisol Hernandez’s most recent report card, which I’d found pinned to the bulletin board in her room, listed her Creative Writing and Homeroom teacher as the same person, but by last name only. PEARSON was all the card read. I didn’t know if Pearson was a Mister, Missus, Ms., or something in between, which made it awkward when I asked the woman in the attendance office at San Leandro High School to speak with ‘Pearson.’

  “Ms. Pearson is currently in class,” said the curt, horse-faced woman at the attendance office. People who work in schools often forget to talk to adults differently than the kids they oversee. “Are you a parent?”

  “I hope not,” I said.

  “Then what do you wish to speak with Ms. Pearson about?” she demanded.

  “It’s a private matter,” I said. “When does she get off duty?”

  The attendance clerk, a stiff-looking matron wearing glasses which hung around her neck by a faux gold chain, said, “I’m not at liberty to divulge that information. Certainly not without knowing the reason for the interruption.”

  “Like I said,” I told her. “It’s private. Is there a school resource officer available?”

  “I’m not sure if Officer Boyer is indisposed or not,” she said. “If you tell me what this is about, I will determine if the matter warrants interrupting him.”

  I was getting tired of this. I understand the need for screening people who are trying to gain unlawful access to the school, but if I were a bad guy, would I check in at the attendance office?

  San Leandro High School, ‘Home of the Pirates,’ is on Bancroft Avenue in San Leandro. Though not as rough as East Oakland, it’s not Disneyland, either. The school is in Norteno country, and infested with half a dozen or more hardcore gangs. Surrounding the school as I drove into the parking lot were any number of seedy adults and high-school age dropouts, loitering in parked cars or cruising around in them, looking to recruit, sell dope, pursue grudges against rival gangsters, or pick up on the high school girls. And here I was, a well-dressed, clean-shaven man in his mid-thirties with all my teeth and no facial tattoos, getting the third degree from the Herman Goering of high school attendance clerks.

  I handed the woman my card. She looked at it as if there was a booger on it.

  “Would you please call the SRO? Officer Boyer, I think you said his name was, and inform him I’d like to meet. I’ll wait right here.”

  “I’m not going to call him until you tell me the nature of your business,” she said, lifting her nose.

  “You call him,” I said, “or I’ll do something to make you call him.”

  “Such as?” she said indignantly.

  “Who knows? I’m a zany guy. Maybe I’ll piss in the corner. Maybe I’ll kiss you. Maybe I’ll throttle you with your eyeglasses-chain.”

  Her eyes widened and she began dialing a phone. I smiled my Perry Como smile and kept my hands out of my pockets and in view. Sure enough, within a minute or two, a uniformed San Leandro police officer came walking purposefully from an entrance to the attendance office somewhere behind the clerk. The Geritol Nazi stood up and pointed a bony finger at me.

  “Afternoon, Officer,” I said. The officer didn’t reply. He was a medium sized guy a few inches shorter than me. His name tag read BOYER. He had his baton in his hand. He approached to within arm’s-length distance and remained in a bladed stance. He tapped the baton gently on his thigh.

  “What’s the trouble, Betty?” he said, keeping his eyes on me.

  “This man threatened to sexually assault and assault me,” she said.

  “Which is it?” the cop asked her. “Sexual assault or assault?”

  “Both,” she accused with a scowl. I turned up the voltage on my smile.

  “What’s your story?” the cop asked me.

  “The clerk has my business card,” I said, “and if you’ll allow me, I’ll get my identification. My name is Chauncey Means. I’m a private investigator. I came here today to speak with a teacher who is employed at the school and got stopped by the sentry here.” I pointed to Betty the attendance clerk with my chin. “I neither threatened to assault, nor sexually assault her.”

  “He most certainly did!” she exclaimed.

  “Believe me,” I said, “I’m not that brave.”

  “Chauncey Means,” the cop said. “That ain’t a name you hear every day. Didn’t you used to be a cop?” I handed him my driver’s license.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “I thought I recognized you. You used to teach a tactical handgunning class for the Department of Justice, down at Fort Ord, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I took your class. I was on the S.W.A.T. team back then.” Officer Boyer extended his hand and I shook it. “Dave Boyer,” he said. He gave me back my
I.D.

  “Chauncey Means,” I replied. “My friends call me Chance.”

  “Aren’t you going to arrest him?” Betty demanded.

  “Not today, Betty. It’s all right; I’ll handle this.” Officer Boyer took my arm. “Come on, Chance, let’s go to my office. We can talk there.”

  I don’t think the phrase ‘fuck you’ was in Betty the attendance clerk’s vocabulary, because if it was, she’d have uttered it. Especially after I gave her a wink and blew her a kiss as I strolled past. School Resource Officer Dave Boyer escorted me to a door behind the attendance office and unlocked it with a key from his belt.

  “I’ve only got a few minutes,” he said, motioning me inside. “The final bell is going to ring soon and I’ve got to be outside showing the flag when it goes off.”

  I understood why. If there was going to be a gang fight or a drive-by, it would go down immediately after school. Often an SRO from a school in a troubled district would get nearby beat officers to roll by in their marked cars when school let out for support. Better to suppress trouble than spend hours documenting it afterwards. When classes cut loose the School Resource Officer needed to be outside flashing his badge.

  “What can I do for you,” Boyer said, once the door was closed.

  “I’m looking into the death of a girl who was a student here. She was gunned down in Oakland a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Marisol Hernandez?”

  “You knew her?”

  “Not really,” he said. “I knew who she was. Sophomore class. Quiet kid. Real pretty. In my role as SRO, I generally only get to know the troublemakers.”

  “Marisol wasn’t a troublemaker?”

  “Not that I know of,” he said. “That’s why it was a shock to hear about her death. She wasn’t the type of kid who typically gets an obituary. And we lose more than a few students each year, let me tell you.” Boyer opened a small refrigerator and offered me an assortment of soft drinks. I declined with a wave of my hand. He selected a Red Bull and went on.

  “When one of our students dies in a drug overdose, or a suicide, or a crash, or gang-related stabbing or shooting, it’s rarely a surprise. The victim usually has a record. Hell, half the student population here at San Leandro High aren’t San Leandro residents; they’re Oakland kids whose parents lie about their address when registering them for school.”

  “Can’t blame a parent for that,” I said. “Would you want your kid going to school in Oakland if you didn’t have to?”

  “Hell no,” Boyer agreed. “But San Leandro isn’t much better. As a result of having our student body comprised of kids from all over the East Bay, we have a serious gang problem. And not only the local Nortenos, either. We’ve got gang influences from Oakland all the way down into Hayward. And a lot of the youth mayhem occurring in other jurisdictions has its roots in conflict at this school. If a Norteno and a Sureno get into a beef at SL High, they sometimes throw down here at school, but just as often they’ll trade bullets or blades in Oakland, or Alameda, or Berkeley, or San Lorenzo, or wherever they’re from.”

  “But as far as you know, Marisol Hernandez wasn’t into that stuff?”

  “I never saw any evidence of it. Marisol kept to herself. She was a good student, and I never heard anything to indicate she was hanging out with the wrong crowd. Her sister, Belicia, is another story.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “She’s a freshman. Just as pretty as her older sister, but that’s where the similarity ends. Caught her a couple of times cutting class, hanging around with some of the bad boys, and I’m sure her grades weren’t anywhere near Marisol’s. Good athlete though; already a shoe in for varsity soccer next year.”

  “Was Belicia a smoker?”

  “Yeah. When she cuts class I can usually find her across Bancroft Avenue puffing away with some loser in the back seat of his sled. She seems to favor the gangster types.”

  “Could she be gang affiliated?”

  “I can’t say for sure. She definitely fits the profile of the type to get recruited. She’s a looker, and there’s no shortage of gangster shitheads trolling the school for bitches. Have to admit, when I heard about Marisol getting killed out on the Track I was surprised. Didn’t see that coming. If it had been her sister Belicia, not so much.”

  Officer Boyer looked at his watch. “Sorry to cut this short, but I have to get going. You wanted to see one of the teachers?”

  “That’s right. I came to see Marisol’s homeroom teacher, Ms. Pearson.”

  “Good instructor,” he remarked. “Squared away. Not the usual Northern California liberal hippie the school district typically inflicts on the kids. Easy on the eyes, too. She was pretty torn up about Marisol’s death.”

  “Any chance I could speak with her?”

  “Follow me,” he said. “I’ll introduce you. Her classroom is on my way.”

  Boyer led me through a labyrinth of hallways, finally stopping at a classroom. He knocked on the door, checking his watch again. A moment later it opened.

  The woman who stepped out was in her early thirties, and looked at Officer Boyer and me through large, intelligent, brown eyes over a sharp nose and full lips. She had thick, shoulder-length, black hair and stood no more than 5’2” at most. She was dressed in flat shoes, a modest skirt, and a blouse which did a lousy job of hiding her outstanding figure. I’m not sure if she knew she was channeling Salma Hayek, and didn’t care. On the one-to-ten Hubba Hubba Scale she rated somewhere in the vicinity of fourteen. I tried not to stare, and prayed she didn’t see my Adam’s apple bounce when I gulped.

  “Karen, I’m sorry to interrupt your class,” Boyer said. “This is Chauncey Means. We used to work together back in my S.W.A.T. days. He’s a private investigator now, and he’s looking into Marisol Hernandez’s murder. He’s also a friend. He was hoping to speak with you.”

  At the mention of Marisol’s name, she blinked and her smile faded slightly. We shook hands. Her grasp was firm and her short nails weren’t painted. “Karen Pearson,” she said.

  “It’s good to meet you,” I managed to say without drooling.

  “Class is almost finished for the day,” she said. “I can see you in a few minutes, if you don’t mind waiting?”

  “Of course,” I managed to babble. For her, I would have waited on the deck of the Titanic. Karen Pearson disappeared back into her classroom.

  Boyer gave me a sly grin. “Told you she was easy on the eyes,” he chuckled. “She’s single, too,” he added. “Divorced, anyway.”

  “Be still my heart,” I whistled.

  “Gotta run,” Boyer chuckled, extending his hand. “Good luck. If you need anything, give me a call.” We shook hands and traded business cards.

  “I’m in your debt,” I told him. He took off in a jog, and a second later the bell rang. Doors all around me opened and a flood of kids poured out.

  Police officers like Dave Boyer reminded me how many good cops there were out there. Sometimes it was easy to forget. In the over fifteen years I was on the job, I’d come to believe that cops fit into a Bell curve. A percentage of the cops at the top of the curve were a credit to the profession, and I was lucky to serve with them. These law dogs were honorable men and women who did the right things for the right reasons, and often against incredible odds. At the other end of the curve was the small percentage of officers who give all cops a bad name. Many of these cops were nothing more than criminals with badges, and chose the profession because it gave them the power and authority to prey on others. You wouldn’t trust these cops with your wallet or your wife, much less your life. The rest of the cops I knew, the greatest percentage, fit somewhere between the two poles. Dave Boyer was the first kind; one of the cops at the top of the curve. Most of the S.W.A.T. cops I’d worked with were.

  In less than a minute the halls were empty, and the cacophony of escaping youth faded into silence. Karen Pearson popped her head out of her open classroom door and motioned for me to come in. I re
sisted the urge to test my breath in the palms of my hands before entering.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” I said. “I apologize for the intrusion.”

  “It’s no problem,” she said. I tried not to stare at her butt when she walked away from me into the room. I failed.

  “I’ve only met one other private detective before,” she said. “He was the creep my ex had following me around during our divorce.”

  “I don’t do fidelity work,” I said.

  “That’s one point in your favor,” she said. “What kind of work do you specialize in, Mister Means?” There was no challenge in her tone; she merely wanted to know.

  “When I was a cop, I worked in sex crimes and homicide details. My private work tends to run in those areas.”

  “Why aren’t you a cop anymore?”

  “Methodology conflict,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means the powers-that-be didn’t like the way I did things.”

  “How did you do things?” she asked.

  “Until they were done.”

  “And your bosses didn’t like that?”

  “Sometimes I did them real hard,” I said. I thought I detected a faint smile.

  “You certainly look the part,” she said. She sat down behind her desk and pointed to a chair nearby. It was just as well; it was getting hard to keep my eyes off her outstanding legs.

  “You’re investigating Marisol’s death?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m glad somebody is,” she said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  She ran her hands through her hair; a good sign. “Sadly, student deaths aren’t that uncommon around here,” she began. “The victims aren’t usually a surprise. Marisol was.”

  “That’s what Dave Boyer told me.”

  “He’s right. Over Christmas break one of our students died in a crash during a sideshow in Oakland, and another was killed in a gang-related shooting in San Lorenzo. Both were known gang members; troublemakers who only came to school to play their gangster games and recruit other kids into their lifestyle. I understand if the cops don’t devote a lot of energy and time to those kinds of deaths. As tragic as they were, these kids made choices that courted an early grave. But Marisol Hernandez was not like that. Somebody needs to be held accountable for her death. Yet I can’t help feeling as if not much is being done to find her killer.”