Moratorium

by Chuck Sampson

  Chapter 16

  The fire near Goleta wiped out nearly a hundred acres of brush and oak trees on the east side of the 101, near the foothills. At least three firemen were hospitalized due to smoke inhalation, and the flames destroyed five homes in an exclusive hillside development. The county Fire Marshall confirmed that the blaze was an act of arson. The incendiary device used to start the blaze in Goleta matched the one used in the arson fire at the car lot in Laguna Beach. So Jeff Moon, aka Professor, was the prime suspect.

  Cyrus spent most of the next morning writing reports on the Ombudsman homicide. He had Max take the squad car to the repair shop to get the windshields replaced and two bullet holes repaired. Afterwards, they drove up to CMC and took Dana Mathers into protective custody. Cyrus convinced Rudy that bringing Dana to the station and holding him there as a material witness was necessary to protect him. Rudy hesitated at first, but after Cyrus also agreed he and Max would have someone watch him twenty-four seven, he relented.

  It wasn’t until the early evening the next day that Max and Cyrus arrived at the address Briana Carswell had on her driver’s license. Her apartment was located in Carpentaria, a couple of blocks from the beach. It was part of a dog-yellow, flat-roofed, box-shaped, duplex. Six domiciles lined a horseshoe shaped roadway just off Main Street.

  The blinds of the apartment in question were closed and there were no cars in the driveway. The sections on either side were dark, but the windows and doors were wide open. They could hear young girls laughing inside the cottage next to Briana’s on the right. A couple of wind boards lay out in the front yard of the cottage. The apartment manager’s office sat across the street.

  “I’ll check out the manager and see what he knows about Briana and her visitors,” Max said.

  Cyrus nodded and then walked over to the duplex from which they had heard the girls laugh. “Hello, hello,” Cyrus called out in a pleasant tone, “anybody home?”

  He peered inside the open door. The pungent smell of sweetly perfumed board wax mixed with the odor of popcorn swirled about him. Two young, sandy-haired, girls who were sitting on an old futon in the middle of a very small, dimly lit living room, sat up and stared at Cyrus with a mystified look: like curious natives seeing a stranger for the first time.

  First thing Cyrus noticed about them was that they weren’t poor. This dilapidated shack, located so near to the beach, was probably renting for a couple of thousand a week. They were wearing IZOD t-shirts and high-priced, worn-look, fashioned jeans. The smaller girl had on a large earring of solid high-quality, yellow gold. The watch she wore was worth more than the police cruiser.

  “We’re home. What do you want?” The big girl with the pearl blue eyes and tan swimmer’s shoulders said in a serious tone, like she was scolding a bad dog.

  “I am looking for a young lady named Briana Carswell; she told me that she lived next door. Do you know her?” Cyrus stood back from the doorway as he spoke and tried his best to not look intimidating. He didn’t want to get the big girl on the defensive. She got up, walked over to the doorway where he was standing, and quickly tried to shut the door in his face. Cyrus stuck his foot in the entrance before the door built up enough momentum to hurt his foot.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” He said.

  “Go away, before I call the police,” The big girl said.

  “I’m a detective with the Santa Barbara Police and I need your help.” Cyrus said.

  The big girl stared at the badge Cyrus was holding out for her. After reading it very carefully, she opened the door and stepped out onto the small slab of broken concrete that served as a front porch. She stood eye level with Cyrus, which was somewhat intimating for him since most of the women he met, even in California, didn’t usually grow that tall.

  “Yeah, we know Briana; she’s a good friend of ours, why? Is this about that surf-bum Mathers?”

  “Not really, I just wanted to ask you if you knew where Briana usually went in the evening.”

  “You can ask her yourself,” the big girl said as she pointed towards Briana’s apartment, “She’s pulling into her driveway now.”

  Briana got out of her flat brown, vintage Chevy S-10 pickup and waved to Cyrus smiling. Her wind board and sail were in the bed of the truck.

  Cyrus noticed by the way she shivered that she probably had been in the water for a long while and was tired. She grabbed her sport bag and walked over to the porch where the big girl and Cyrus were standing and said, “Hello Detective Fleming, what a nice surprise to see you”.

  Cyrus’s face flushed pink. “Hi Briana,” he said, “I was just asking your friend here-” He looked up at the big girl, “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Lisa. I am Lisa and this is Ramona.” The big girl responded and then smiled. Briana’s presence evaporated the tenseness of the moment. Ramona got up from the futon and walked over to the doorway. She was giggling and laughing so hard there were tears in her eyes. Lisa also seemed to be holding back a laugh. Cyrus assumed that the giggles they were suppressing had something to do with Briana being so friendly with an old timer like him, or maybe that is just what girls do sometimes for no reason whatsoever.

  “Nice to meet you both. As I was saying, Briana, I just needed to verify some minor details about the Mathers case. Just routine paperwork. I have some papers I need you to sign, and some discrepancies in my report that need to be clarified.”

  “Oh,” Briana said, “I was so hoping this was not an official visit.”

  Cyrus’s face turned a bright scarlet. Lisa and Ramona walked out of their doorway past Cyrus and Briana, onto the front yard and headed for the beach.

  “See you on the beach Briana, nice to meet you Cyrus!” Lisa called out as they walked away, giggling and laughing. It seemed to Cyrus that they were amused by some inside joke. Cyrus and Briana nodded to them as they left.

  “Please come over to my apartment, Cyrus. I will be glad to answer any questions that you might have. Just give me some time to shower and change,” she said as she walked toward her apartment. Cyrus could not help but watch her as he followed behind. She walked with a graceful, feminine stride, her one hand on her sports bag and her other hand arced in the air to keep her balance. When she reached the rear of the truck she put her bag down, lowered the tailgate, and grabbed the sailboard.

  “Let me help you,” Cyrus said as he reached across her and took hold of the sailboard. “In fact I’d be glad to put this up for you, if you just tell me where.”

  “There’s a rack on the side, the top rack is for the sail and the bottom is for the board. I will go and change. Thank-you, Cyrus- you are such a gentleman.” She kissed him on the cheek and hugged his neck. She walked quickly into her apartment, leaving the door open. As he was putting away the sail, his cell phone rang, it was Max.

  “She knows Duncan. You were right; the manager described him perfectly and said he comes around all the time-yeah, O.K. buddy, here you go.”

  “Who’s your buddy?” Cyrus asked.

  “It’s that homeless guy, you know the one that Dana knows and the one who ripped me off for twenty bucks; he was here in the lobby watching T.V.”

  “You sure it’s the same man?”

  “Oh yeah, you can’t miss the odor. I gave the guy five dollars.”

  “Tightwad. How come you’re friends now?”

  “Who says we’re friends? You want to waste time on this guy?”

  “Right. Do me a favor Max, keep your phone on and listen in while I go talk to Briana.”

  For several moments Max did not answer, Cyrus said, “Max did you hear me?”

  “I wish I hadn’t. We need a court order to place a bug.”

  “I know. You got your PDA?”

  “It’s in the car.”

  “Get it and tell Rudy to go ahead with the warrant. I applied for it a couple of days ago. They can issue it on the PDA. It’ll take five minutes.”

  “Five minutes? How’s that possible?”

&n
bsp; “One of the five houses Moon torched belonged to the State Superior Court judge who issues these warrants. It won’t take much for Rudy to convince her we need a warrant for a roving wiretap.”

  “I’ll go out to the car and get my recorder.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t hang up the phone.”

  “Got it.”

  Cyrus walked back around to the front of the apartment. Briana walked out onto the front porch and asked him in. The sun was already getting low in the sky and the wind was picking up.

  Once inside, Cyrus looked around the living room and saw an impressive array of beautiful oil paintings hanging on the walls. He noticed that the initials BC and the date were clearly marked at the bottom of all of them except one, which was marked DJ. All the BC paintings were of ocean related subjects: a man holding his daughter playfully up in the air just high enough to escape the impact of a blue and white foaming, breaking wave, a group of sea lions and seals lounging peacefully on some grey colored boulders with the sea crashing in the background, a dilapidated fishing vessel bedecked with brightly colored chaffing gear on its large wing net and a lone windsurfer tacking against the wind into the curve of a large wave in the purple and pink rays of the morning sun.

  “These are wonderful. I like paintings about the sea. How long have you been at it?”

  “Since I was twelve years old. It’s just a way for me to relax. I have been able to sell one or two on occasion. I had a display at the art center in Ventura once. I did okay.” She pointed to the one painting that didn’t have the initials B. C. on it. “That one is by Deidra Jones,” she said, “She is a very famous writer. Have you ever heard of her?”

  “Yes I have. It’s somewhat melodramatic, don’t you think?”

  “You mean stupid, don’t you?”

  Cyrus just shrugged his shoulders. It was a large portrait of a blonde-haired woman’s face, sort of. The facial proportions were unbalanced and the features were exaggerated so that it looked more like a caricature than a painting. He guessed it was an attempt at cubism, but he wasn’t sure. All he could tell from the “My Scarred Heart” portrait was that the woman had white-blonde hair, thin, blue, slits for eyes, and a long, pronounced jaw. In the middle of her cleavage was a faint outline of heart. What caught Cyrus’s attention was the shape of the break in the woman’s heart. He’d seen that shape somewhere before, he just couldn’t remember where.

  “It’s all right, I agree with you. I bought it because of her celebrity.”

  “I guess she realized she wasn’t going to be so famous a painter,” Briana said. “That may be the only painting she ever sells. Who knows, one day it might be worth something.”

  “Not until after she’s dead, right?”

  Briana laughed, but when she nodded in agreement, she put her hand to her eye and bent her head down.

  Cyrus drew close and put his hand on her shoulder, “Are you all right, Briana?”

  “Oh, yes I am fine. My stupid contact lenses.” She blinked her eye several times as she adjusted her lens back into position. “There,” she said, “I’m good now.”

  Briana brought Cyrus a cup of vanilla bean coffee. He sat down on her large, white leather couch; it filled up a good portion of the room. She sat down across from him on a matching chair and set her coffee on the end table. The apartment was a sophisticated arrangement of live plants and polished hand-made oak furniture. It was the typical California beach house-plain and worn on the outside, but well built and eye-pleasing on the inside. Cyrus took a sip of coffee and set it down on the glass covered table in front of him. He didn’t want to interrogate Briana; he really wished it had been a social call.

  “Briana, did you ever belong to an organization known as Black Bloc?”

  “Yes, I did,” Briana said, “When I was young and I did not know any better. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious,” he said, “I saw an old documentary a couple nights ago with you as the star.”

  “A documentary about what? I do not remember anything about being in any documentary. If it was about the WTO riots then yes, that was probably me. The old me, I am not proud of those things I did. I told you before, I was young and I made a mistake.”

  “I made a few mistakes myself when I was younger; I guess everybody has. Why did you join up with a group like Black Bloc?”

  “Is this part of your investigation? Do you have to bring up something from so long ago?”

  “No, and you don’t have to answer. I was just curious about it that’s all.”

  She sat back in her chair, took a sip of coffee, and then said, “It is not all that unusual, you know. My white father adopted me because he and my mom both thought she could not have children. They were on vacation in Jamaica. They were helping out the missionaries from their church and I was a two year old orphan that the church had taken in.

  The reason for joining up with the black blockers had nothing to do with politics. I really didn’t understand much of it anyway. They said they were for global peace and I was for that. So what could be wrong with being for peace? I did not know they were going to go out and break people’s heads and destroy things. I was a black woman with rich, white, parents. I had to prove to everyone I wasn’t an Oreo, you know, black on the outside and white in the middle.”

  “When did you decide to leave Black Bloc?”

  “When I found out who my real parents were, it changed everything. My real father was a prominent leader in the Jamaican Constabulary Force. He and my natural mother were murdered by a gang of drug dealers. The missionaries convinced my adoptive father to take me away to America so they would not find me and kill me too. I did not worry about being an Oreo anymore after I found out about that. I no longer wanted to throw things at policemen and give them a hard time. So I quit.”

  Cyrus was about to ask her about the blonde she saw standing over Mike Tanner’s body, when her face changed to one of surprise. Turning, he saw a man standing in her doorway. He did not like to be sitting down when anyone else in the room was standing, so he got up.

  The young man wore thick soled, dirty construction boots, a plain light blue shirt, and rough look Wrangler jeans. They were dirtied at the knees, like he had been climbing. He strolled through the small hallway and into the living room, leaving big dirty footprints on the wood floor. Cyrus disliked him instantly. He could not abide a man who had no respect for another person’s property.

  “Hi Briana, who is this?” he said stopping in front of Briana and staring at Cyrus, “What are you doing here? Do you have a warrant? Is this cop bothering you Briana? Do you want me to call your lawyer?”

  “There’s no reason to get excited. I was just asking Briana a few simple questions. She invited me to come in.” Cyrus said as he stepped forward and closer.

  The man looked surprised and stepped back from Cyrus without a word. He stood there in the middle of the living room with Cyrus, looking at Briana, as if he expected her to say something in his defense. She sat silently, took a sip of coffee, and smiled. Exasperated, the young man spoke first, “You’re socializing with cops now, Briana?”

  “This is Detective Fleming, Duncan. He is the nice man who helped me with my testimony against Dana Mathers, remember?”

  “Oh yeah, that playboy surfer who whacked Mike, I remember. He confessed, so what is there to ask about?”

  “We were just chatting, Duncan, don’t worry. I’m just glad it’s over. No more annoying reporters. Would you like a cup of coffee?” Briana asked.

  “No thanks, no time, I have to get you to the airport remember?”

  “Oh yes, maybe you should go back to your truck and wait until Cyrus and I are finished talking.”

  As Briana and Duncan continued arguing about whether or not he should return to his pickup, Cyrus walked over to the kitchen area and dropped his cell phone into Briana’s purse, sitting on the bar. When he turned around he walked up slowly behind Duncan.

  Involved in their squabble, Briana and D
uncan didn’t notice him. Cyrus spotted a small spider tattoo on Duncan’s wrist, there were three small blood colored teardrops which circled the spider’s legs. He observed that Duncan had a slight bulge near the top of his jeans in the back. He could see a small piece of his holster that he had on his waist under his shirt. Deftly reaching under the back of Duncan’s shirt, Cyrus pulled out a nine millimeter Glock 17 pistol. When Duncan turned around, Cyrus brandished the weapon in his shocked face. Cyrus glared at him and said, “Do you have a permit?”

  Setting down her coffee, Briana quickly slipped behind Duncan and Cyrus, and went into the kitchen. Cyrus glanced back toward her and once he saw she wasn’t going anywhere, he returned his attention toward Duncan. He pressed down on the magazine release lever and it fell to the floor, full of cartridges. Cyrus inched up closer to Duncan and backed him against the wall. He really did not like rude and intrusive people. He hoped sincerely for Maverick to make a wrong move so he could have an excuse to hurt him.

  “I don’t have a permit, Detective; I had just finished using the weapon out on the range. I never go anywhere with it concealed. I just forgot I had it with me, it was a mistake.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “Just for protection, I take Ms. Carswell to the airport through some rough sections sometimes at night.”

  Cyrus chuckled, stepped away, and then he said, “There aren’t any rough sections in Santa Barbara. Go down to a firearms dealer and have him help you fill out an application for conceal and carry.” He motioned for Duncan to have a seat on the couch and he complied.

  Cyrus remained stood in front of him and said, “You work for the Senator now?”

  “Yeah, driving cars is a lot safer and easier than flying a chopper. My flying days are over thanks to Tanner ratting me out to the FAA.”

  “Then it should be no problem. In the meantime keep the weapon in the limo. If you get stopped tell the officer you have a gun immediately.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what do you mean about Tanner ratting you out?”

  “The jerk fired me. He did his best to make it look like I killed those three roustabouts.”