The Big Exit

by David Carnoy

  “She wants what’s best for her family. That includes me and Henry Jr. and Bella, but it also includes a bunch of other folks. Guys like you and Billings got these side gigs. He wanted me to go in with him on a couple of places in EPA, but I just couldn’t do it in the end. Probably stupid on my part.”

  One of the advantages of being a cop is that you have block-by-block, even house-by-house, insight into transitional neighborhoods. Many were thinking that it was only a matter of time before once-troubled places like East Palo Alto and Belle Haven, which border fairly affluent neighborhoods, became gentrified. And they gradually are. But you really have to know the spots that have the most potential and will give you the lightest headache as a landlord because you aren’t looking at a quick flip. You’re looking at a five- to ten-year hold, maybe longer.

  Lyons smiles. “Bills has got that whole long-term view going, God bless him. I wish I had that kind of patience. He doesn’t have an ex-wife sending his kid to private school just to spite his ass.”

  “Well, you did cheat on her.”

  “People make mistakes.”

  Once is a mistake, Madden thinks. Multiple times is a girlfriend on the side. But he doesn’t say that to Lyons. Instead he asks, “How’s Sam?”

  “He’s doing good,” Lyons says. “He’d do just fine in public school, too, just like your kids. I don’t know how a gimp like you produces an all-star pitcher and I have a kid that’s a klutz, but such is the way of the world. Gotta tell you, though, your wife never struck me as a ball-breaker. When you first got married, I remember some of the guys talking about how you imported your wife, she didn’t speak English, she was your housekeeper. But the few times I met her I thought she was good people—and good-looking.”

  Though he knows Lyons is paying him a compliment, it always makes him feel uncomfortable, talking about how he’d met his wife. People are always getting it wrong. She was a housekeeper, but when they first met, she was working for Pete Pastorini. She never worked for him. They barely understood each other at first—and were an unlikely match. But their marriage had gotten better as she became more fluent in English and he in Spanish. Now, however, the extended family situation has developed into something he hadn’t quite bargained for.

  “The thing is,” Lyons goes on, “you hit with an iPhone app now, you can make in two weeks what Bills would make in ten years on his little real-estate transactions. Two fucking weeks. I’m telling you.”

  “If it was that easy,” Madden says, “everybody would be doing it.”

  “Everybody is doing it. That’s the problem.”

  When he’s through logging the evidence, Lyons walks Madden over to the autopsy room. Before opening the door, Lyons stretches a pair of surgical gloves over his hands.

  Madden has only been in this room a few times, and he isn’t too keen on going in there again. In spite of the state-of-the-art ventilation, the smell, which he once described to someone as a mix of formaldehyde and raw sewage, is decidedly unpleasant when you first encounter it, though it fades as you acclimate to it.

  The body is in a refrigeration unit, lying on a stainless-steel gurney and covered with a sheet. Lyons rolls the gurney out and pulls the sheet down to waist level, exposing McGregor’s arms. On the inside of each arm, at the elbow, are a few small, asymmetrical red dots. They look a little like mosquito bites that have been scratched, the telltale sign of track marks.

  “Any idea what he’s been shooting?” Madden asks.

  Lyons shakes his head. “We’ll know soon enough. Used to be heroin but now we’re getting people shooting all kinds of shit. Oxy-contin’s been popular lately. Had a kid in here who OD’d last month,” Lyons says. “Was shooting it between his toes so his parents wouldn’t find out.”

  Madden, keeping his eyes focused on the dots, replies, “We popped a guy about three months ago who was selling it out of the Marsh Road Chevron. Guy was a full-service pharmacy.”

  Lyons has opinions about the efficacy of the delivery method. Shooting it doesn’t enhance the experience; it just makes it more dangerous, opens you up to infection.

  “Truth is, you’re better off snorting oxy,” he says. “But people do crazy shit. One guy tells another you can get a euphoric high shooting it and he believes him. It’s an opioid, so it’s easy to convince someone there’s a benefit to shooting it. But it’s got all kinds of impurities in it. The goddamn coating on the pill is nasty, so you gotta dissolve it at just the right temperature and skim the shit off the top before you inject it.”

  “Could that have killed him?”

  “Nah. For starters, these weren’t fresh injections. However, I did find a couple pills in his stomach. Only partially dissolved. Probably took them fifteen, twenty minutes before he was killed. So they didn’t kill him either. I think taking out his jugular and emptying his blood onto the floor probably didn’t do him much good.”

  Madden lets his eyes drift up the body. Now that they’ve been cleaned up, the wounds look even more gaping, though not as grotesque as they had back in the garage. The way McGregor’s cheekbone and nose have been smashed, leaving his face partially caved in and both eyes black and blue, was tougher to absorb. He puts his hand up to his mouth and lets out a little cough.

  Lyons cracks a smile, slightly amused. “You okay?”

  Madden turns to his left, looking away from the body. “You think a diver’s knife could have made those wounds?”

  Lyons shakes his head.

  “Looks more like a hatchet to me. Or even one of those tomahawks. You ever seen those? Amazon sells them.”

  Madden has seen them. They’re modern variations on the Indian tomahawk. Lighter than an axe, with a thinner, sharper blade.

  “But what do you think hit him in the face?”

  “Blunt object of some sort. Not a big diameter.”

  “How ’bout the back of an axe? Or a tomahawk?”

  “Possible. Some of those have sharp backs but some have hammerlike backs.”

  “Well, let’s see if we can narrow it down.”

  Madden starts to walk toward the door, but Lyons calls him back.

  “I got one other thing to show you. That tattoo you were telling me about.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  When they’d asked Beth Hill whether her husband had any distinguishing marks on him, she said he had a small snake tattooed horizontally to his right hip, just below his belt line. Though she’d identified the body, it was standard protocol in any suspicious death to look at any distinguishing characteristics such as tattoos, moles, or scars, as well run a fingerprint analysis (Lyons got a thumbprint match from the DMV), call in dental records, and create a DNA profile.

  Lyons lifts the top corner of the sheet, exposing McGregor’s right side. “Well, like you said, he has this little snake here. But what’s kind of interesting is that I looked at it with a magnifying glass and there’s actually a word in the snake and some numbers. You gotta look closely.”

  He takes out a lighted magnifying glass and shows him what he means.

  Madden reads aloud the characters, carefully enunciating each letter and number. “S … E … D … I …” When he’s finished, he puts them together. “Sedition 1918,” he says quizzically, lifting an eyebrow. It rings a bell but he doesn’t know from where.

  “Sound familiar?” Lyons asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “I looked it up. There was something called the Sedition Act of 1918. During the First World War. Woodrow Wilson was president.”

  “What the hell is that about?”

  “Did the wife say anything about the word?”

  “No, just the snake,” Madden says.

  “I mean, it’s possible she didn’t even see it. You really have to look.”

  “Sedition 1918,” he repeats again.

  With that, Lyons slides the gurney back into its refrigeration unit. After they leave the autopsy room, Madden asks how long it will take to process and analyze the items from Forman’s
apartment along with other crime-scene evidence.

  “I’ve got a few folks coming in any minute to help out. I can’t promise anything, but I know you want this stuff expedited as quickly as possible.” Contrary to what the TV dramas show, crime labs work at a slow, deliberate pace. DNA evidence takes weeks to process. “We should have some preliminary toxicology results late today and we’ll just bang on all this stuff hard. I’m going to go home in a little bit, take a shower, and head back down to the crime scene for another look-see in the light.”

  Lyons locks the evidence bags in a locker, then walks Madden out.

  “What is it, Hank?” Lyons asks when they get outside. He takes the remaining half of his cigarette out of his coat pocket and lights it. “You’ve got that worried look on your face, like something isn’t right.”

  “I don’t know.” He stands there, reflecting on the previous night. He pictures Richie Forman in the club singing, the words to the one song still running in his head.

  Somebody said “just forget about her.” So I gave that treatment a try …

  “The guy can sing,” he says.

  “Who?”

  “Richie Forman. He’s a Sinatra impersonator.”

  “No shit?”

  “He was good. Seems like he was doing okay for himself. Aside from the obvious, I just don’t know why he’d go ahead and do something like this. And it just seems too neat and too messy at the same time. Does that make any sense?”

  Lyons takes a drag on his cigarette. “Sure,” he says, exhaling. “But anyway I look at it, this wasn’t a random killing. Someone was making a statement. Someone had something against this guy. You got the method of the slaying and then the whole ‘hack’ angle. It was personal.”

  “But I don’t know if that’s just a red herring, you know? I mean, whoever did it left the wallet to make it look like a robbery. Why not dash off ‘Hack’ while you’re at it?”

  “Well, there’s a couple meanings to the word. Hack, as in you’re mediocre. Hack as in to write code, you know, program, which is what Zuckerberg meant when he put the word up on the wall at the Facebook offices. A hack in a malicious sense. Identity theft. Malware. Virus creator. Hack as in hacker, bad guy.”

  “That’s three, not two,” Madden points out.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Anyway, I’m not sure where McGregor fit in on the scale. I’ve heard him talk before. If anything, you could argue he was mediocre. I mean, he talked a good game, but like a lot of these guys, he had a bullshit quotient. Guy probably did a mean PowerPoint. You saw him at the trial. He was slick, right?”

  “Yeah,” Madden answers, though his thoughts are elsewhere. He needs a witness. And he needs to know who the Tongans are and if they were really working for McGregor and why.

  Just then a car pulls into the lot. A petite, dark-haried woman gets out and nods a curt greeting to Lyons.

  “One of yours?” Madden asks.

  “That’s Sue Romero, one of my technicians. Not the cheeriest of personalities. But at least the reinforcements are starting to roll in.”

  “Look, I don’t need to say this, Greg, but you know the scrutiny level we’re looking at on this thing. You’ve got to be buttoned down all the way on this. Batten down the hatches. You understand?”

  “We always do.”

  “Well, we know Colletti has had his issues. You guys didn’t look so hot for a while.”

  The coroner is an elected position and Drew Colletti is going on his fourth term. But he faced vigorous challenges in the last election after his office was hit with a sexual harassment suit and several workers were accused of looking at pornography on their work computers.

  “Come on, man,” Lyons says. “Ancient history. Just bullshit politics.”

  “Well, you got that ‘chief’ in your title because of bullshit politics.”

  That’s true. Colletti needed a fall guy, and the previous chief deputy had been that guy.

  “Look, Hank, I’m well aware what a big deal this is. I wouldn’t have been here at the crack of fucking dawn if I didn’t. You get any security-camera footage from the neighbors yet? There’s gotta be one camera on that block that caught something.”

  “We’re working on it. Billings is going through some footage this morning.”

  “You think Forman will submit to a polygraph?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t suggest it yet. The first thing we gotta do is get him to turn off the Sinatra act.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s still doing his goddamn impersonation routine.”

  “Under questioning?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it fades in and out, but it’s getting a little ridiculous.”

  “You think it’s a tactic?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Just then Madden’s phone rings. Caller ID shows the main number for the Menlo Park police station.

  “Madden,” he answers.

  “Billings,” Billings answers back.

  “What’s up?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Still up at the coroner’s, talking to Lyons.”

  “Forman’s attorney showed up.”

  “When?” Madden asks.

  “Five minutes ago,” Billings says.

  “He or a she?”

  “He. And you’re not going to believe who it is.”

  “Who?”

  “Marty Lowenstein.”

  Madden falls silent. He doesn’t know any local attorneys named Marty Lowenstein. The only Marty Lowenstein he knows is the famous Marty Lowenstein.

  “Yeah, that guy,” Billings says.

  “The DNA Dude?”

  He looks over at Lyons, who’s in the process of pulling the cigarette toward his mouth for a final drag but suddenly freezes with his hand is a few inches away from his lips.

  Billings: “Yeah. Just flew in from LA.”

  “How did he get him?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Okay, I’m on my way back. Gotta make one stop. But I’ll be there by eleven. He talking to Forman now?”

  “He just went in,” Billings says. “There’s also some kids here with cameras. Came with him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Couple of kids, one male, one female, showed up with Lowenstein. Say they’re working on a documentary.”

  “You’re kidding me. I hope you kept them out.”

  “Sure I did. They’re upstairs. With the guys from Channels Five and Two.”

  “Shit,” Madden says. “I’m on my way. Call me with any updates.”

  He hangs up and looks over at Lyons, who doesn’t seem so relaxed and nonchalant anymore.

  “Did I hear you say what I think I heard you say? The DNA Dude? Marty Lowenstein?”

  Madden nods.

  “How the fuck did he get him?”

  “I just asked Billings the same question.”

  A smile creeps across Lyons’s face. “Well, shiver me timbers,” he says. “Marty fucking Lowenstein. I always wanted to meet him.”

  “Well, you may just get your chance.”

  “This is awesome,” Lyons says.

  Madden doesn’t think it’s awesome. In fact, he thinks it’s the farthest thing from awesome.

  “Greg?”

  “What?”

  “You got your A game on, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s not going to be good enough. Add another gear.”

  Lyons doesn’t take kindly to the comment.

  “You find another gear, Hank. I got plenty of gears. This thing’s on you. It’s your fucking case. I’m just the support team. Chill, man.”

  “I don’t do chill, Greg.”

  “I know you don’t, Hank. But don’t stress on me. I got enough stress. I’m trying to quit smoking.”

  “That seems like it’s going really well.”

  “It was,” he laments. “Until last night.”

  16/ TALK TO THE MITT
>
  “FORMAN, WAKE UP.”

  He’s been lying on the thin green mat, his cuffed hands resting on his stomach, staring up at the ceiling in the small room where he’d spent the night, when the door opens. Billings, the detective, pokes his head in and tells him that his attorney is here.

  Still lying there, he turns his head to see a face he knows looks familiar but can’t place at first. He sits up on the bench. Once vertical, he realizes who it is.

  “Goddamn if it isn’t Marty Lowenstein, the DNA Dude.”

  “Marty,” Marty Lowenstein says, extending a hand. “Call me Marty.”

  He’s shorter than Richie had imagined. Heck, he’s practically eye to eye with the man before he even stands up from the bench. The guy has to be like five-three, five-four, with a head, nose, and ears that seem disproportionately big for his body. He has a mostly full head of tight, curly gray hair and is wearing a navy blue suit and a crisp white shirt, but he doesn’t have a tie on, which gives him a hipper, more casual look, which is only accentuated by the fact that he appears to have a baseball mitt under his arm.

  “Lourdes gave me a call last night and said you were in some trouble. I happened to be in L.A. Got here as soon as I could. Ashley picked me up at the airport.”

  Richie can’t stop smiling.

  “Marty fucking Lowenstein,” he says.

  “Marty,” Marty says.

  “Sorry. She here—Ashley?”

  “Upstairs. With her boyfriend. He tells me he’s doing some sort of documentary about you.”

  With the intonation of his voice, he might as well have said, What the fuck is up with that?

  “That isn’t official.”

  “Well, we’ll talk about that later. You make any statements?”

  He answers with a little shrug. “Nothing bad,” he says quietly.

  “Nothing bad? If I had a nickel every time a client said, ‘nothing bad’ or ‘I just told them the truth’ I’d have a pile so big I could ski down it. You know the part that goes, ‘Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law?’ Well, strike the ‘can.’ It will be used against you.”