Shallow Grave

by Brian Thiem

  Chapter 11

  Sinclair woke at first light, showered, and shaved. Dressed in a Brooks Brothers navy-blue suit, he was out the door with his travel mug filled with French roast at a quarter to six. He started his car and crept down the driveway from the estate’s guesthouse, where he’d been living ever since the Bus Bench Killer firebombed his apartment two years ago. He passed the main house, an eight-thousand-square-foot mansion set on the most exclusive street in Piedmont, a wealthy enclave in the center of Oakland, and continued down the driveway. Just before he reached the sensor that would open the front gate, he saw Walt walking toward the house with two newspapers under his arm and a dog on a leash.

  Walt Cooper and his wife were the caretakers of Frederick Towers’s estate. Sinclair met him at his first AA meeting out of rehab, but it wasn’t until he nearly picked up a drink six months later that Sinclair began to accept Walt’s support and friendship. Walt had been one of the top psychologists in the Bay Area until his drinking and prescription drug abuse nearly destroyed his life when he was in his forties. He served prison time for insurance fraud and lost practically everything. But as Walt had said in meetings for more than twenty years, as long as he had his sobriety, he had everything he needed. Walt had met Fred Towers seven years ago and took him to his first AA meeting. A year later, after his wife and daughter had died in a drunk driving accident and his son from an OD, Fred was living alone in the massive house and asked Walt to move in and take care of the estate. When Fred asked Sinclair to move in, Sinclair expressed his discomfort with Fred’s generosity, but Fred shrugged it off, saying it was actually selfish because having a third sober alcoholic in the house would make it twice as difficult for him to pick up a drink.

  “You’re getting an early start,” Walt said as Sinclair stopped alongside him.

  “Who’s your friend?”

  The yellow Lab sat at Walt’s left side as Sinclair exited his car.

  “This is Amber, a new member of the household.”

  Sinclair bent over and ran both hands over the Labrador’s head until his fingers found the spot behind her ears. Amber stood and wagged her tail so hard her butt shook from side to side. “Hi, Amber. You’re exactly what this place has been missing.”

  “You remember Dean from the Friday night meeting?”

  Amber dropped to the ground and rolled over on her back. Sinclair squatted and scratched her belly. “The guy who’s been going through the messy divorce?”

  “Right. The divorce was finalized last week, and Dean took a job in New York. His wife is moving into her parent’s house, and neither can take a dog, so Fred volunteered to take Amber.”

  Fred Towers was the CEO of PRM, one of the largest corporations headquartered in Oakland. “I never pictured Fred as a dog person.”

  “Back in his previous life,” Walt told him, referring to those days before the death of Fred’s wife and children and before Fred’s drinking nearly took his own life, “he had a Labrador retriever that looked a lot like Amber, except she was a chocolate. There’s a beautiful family photo in his bedroom taken in front of a Christmas tree in the living room with the dog when his children were small.”

  Sinclair stood. Amber rose too, only to sit in front of him, her eyes begging for more attention. Sinclair patted her on the head.

  “Dogs are a good judge of character,” Walt said. “I’m guessing you grew up with dogs.”

  Sinclair smiled as he remembered the small puppy his mother brought home when he was twelve, a few months after his brother died. The tiny ball of fur had been the only bit of happiness that existed in his house after his brother’s murder. Until that, too, was taken from him the day his father returned from the vet and told him his dog was too sick to save. “Yeah, but not for long enough.”

  *

  The office was empty when Sinclair arrived and started the coffeemaker. As he ate a thick slice of banana-nut bread Walt’s wife had handed him as he drove away, he sorted the pile of overtime slips and time sheets he’d gathered from the Intel office the previous night. He printed out monthly calendar pages and began entering Roberts’s overtime by date, looking for a pattern.

  Jankowski shoved the door open a little before seven. From across the room, Sinclair noticed his bloodshot eyes and flushed cheeks. “Sinclair, how the hell are you this morning?” he bellowed.

  “Rough night?”

  “I left about two. No OPD brass came around, which meant the Warehouse could continue serving its medicine to the troops.” Jankowski poured himself a cup of coffee, brought the pot to Sinclair’s desk, and filled his cup.

  “I hope everyone made it home in one piece.”

  “I’m gonna do my damnedest to clean up this biker murder today so I can help out on Roberts,” Jankowski said as he plopped into his chair and started his computer.

  Braddock came through the door a few moments later. Even though her and Sinclair’s normal start time was eight, he knew she’d be in early too. Once she had her coffee, he filled her in on his midnight foray to Intel with Fletcher.

  “You seem pretty sure his murder was over one of these sensitive cases,” she said.

  “I’m not sure of anything, but when people try to hide shit from me, it only makes me look for it harder.” He was accustomed to the direction of murder investigations changing frequently in the first few days. Investigators who weren’t agile and flexible often grabbed onto one lead and ran with it while ignoring other possible leads. Right now, it felt like the most promising motive stemmed from a case Phil had been working.

  She nodded, but Sinclair couldn’t tell if she agreed or was merely humoring him. As she went about her morning routine of listening to voice mails and checking e-mail, Sinclair began reading the technician’s report from the crime scene. The techs had searched and processed the scene thoroughly. Even though they went over an area the size of several football fields with a metal detector, they’d found nothing they could connect to the crime. The dry ground and pine needle–covered forest wasn’t conducive to footprints, but they had photographed areas of disturbance in the ground cover, which may have indicated one or more people shuffled from the road on the other side of the gate to the gravesite. That was consistent with carrying a heavy load, such as a body, in the darkness.

  Sinclair was on the last page of the six-page report when John Johnson, the veteran police beat reporter for the Oakland Tribune, dropped a copy of today’s paper on his desk. “Anything new on Phil’s murder?” Johnson had known every sergeant that worked homicide during the past fifty years, and he was one of the only reporters they trusted.

  Sinclair shook his head.

  “We were nearing deadline when OPD released his name last night, but I’ll be doing human interest stories about Phil over the next week. I’d like to talk to both of you later on,” he said, referring to him and Braddock.

  They both agreed. Sinclair picked up the paper. The headline read, Body of Oakland Police Sergeant Found in Shallow Grave. The article had no more details about the murder than those he’d included in his vague press release. It was important to keep certain details from the public so that if he was fortunate enough to interview those responsible, Sinclair could be sure the suspect wasn’t regurgitating information he or she had read in the paper.

  Johnson wrote that the department was especially tight-lipped about their investigation, inferring the motive may have stemmed from some of the sensitive work his section was involved in, such as terrorism, gangs, and narcotics. The remainder of the article talked about Phil’s long assignment in homicide and some of the major cases he solved. It also discussed the investigators he’d trained, mentioning Sinclair and Braddock by name. Below the fold was the beginning of an article titled, Motorcycle Gang Member Killed in Biker Bar Shooting. Had it not been for Phil’s murder, that story would’ve probably been the headline.

  By eight o’clock, all the investigators were at their desks, and Maloney stepped out of his office. “Listen up, everyone
. I don’t need to tell you that Phil’s murder is our top priority. Sinclair is primary, so anything he wants, do it. You don’t need to ask for permission to work overtime, but no all-nighters unless we have the suspect in our sights. I’ll handle media inquiries. No discussing this case with anyone outside this office. I’m meeting with the chief and the OPOA later today,” he said, referring to the Oakland Police Officer’s Association. “I imagine there will be a full line-of-duty funeral, probably early next week.”

  Sinclair tasked four investigators to pull all of Roberts’s homicide cases and go through them to find anyone with enough of a beef to kill him. It was a long shot, they all knew. He tasked another team with going through all recent crimes and police activity in the area where the body was found, just in case Phil had stumbled upon a crime in progress. That was even more of a long shot. He didn’t believe Phil was killed anywhere near the PAL camp, and he doubted someone who killed Phil during a chance encounter would take the time to bury him, but he had no better direction in which to point his fellow investigators. Phil being buried at a camp operated by OPD wasn’t lost on him. It could’ve been the work of someone pissed at the department—there was no shortage of them—but nothing else so far indicated the burial site had any meaning to the killer other than being an isolated place to bury a body.

  Braddock wheeled her chair next to him. “I hear you and Alyssa talked last night.”

  She and Alyssa were close, so it didn’t surprise Sinclair that Braddock knew the most recent scoop on his love life.

  “Just talk. Nothing happened.”

  “Just because you didn’t get laid doesn’t mean nothing happened.”

  “Come on, Braddock. You know that’s not all I’m after with Alyssa. But still, we’ve been dating since before Christmas.”

  “And she’s been gone most of that time. She’s back to getting to know you.”

  “Jeez, she’s known me most of her adult life.” Sinclair put down his pen and turned to Braddock. “Except for my time in a combat zone, this is the longest I’ve gone without since I was sixteen.”

  “Sixteen?” Braddock raised her eyebrows. “So you’ve been a man-whore that long.”

  “I prefer the term male slut.” He grinned.

  “Are you saying you were faithful when she was gone?”

  He was accustomed to Braddock’s protectiveness over Alyssa, but he was in no mood for it this morning. “Even if I wasn’t, it’s not like we made some kind of promise before she left. How do I know she was, off in Europe with those French doctors and spending her down time in her grandparents’ little village with a bunch of horny Italian men running around?”

  “You know Alyssa’s not that kind of girl. She really cares about you, but you need to give her time. She’s been through a lot working in the refugee camp.” Braddock plucked several short yellow hairs from his pants.

  “It’s dog hair, Braddock.”

  “It looks good on you.” She smiled. “You’re always dressed so perfectly with your nice suits, pressed shirts, and freshly polished shoes. It’s nice to see some blemishes. They make you more human.”

  Sinclair’s desk phone rang. Criminalistics appeared in caller ID. “Sinclair.”

  “Good morning, Sergeant. We examined the trash bag for DNA yesterday and collected some samples. It’ll be a day or so before we know if we have anything beyond the victim’s we can submit. We fumed the bag for prints and recovered a number of latents. We entered all of them into the system and got a hit on three of them. I’ll give you the name and PFN when you’re ready.”

  He picked up his pen. “Go.”

  “Last name of Gibbs. First name, Shane. DOB—”

  “I’ve got his info. He was murdered last night in a biker bar. You’re sure about this?”

  “Positive match.”

  Chapter 12

  Maloney, Sinclair, Braddock, Sanchez, and Jankowski sat at one end of the small conference table in Chief Brown’s office. When Maloney finished his briefing, Brown clasped his hands behind his head and stretched. He then leaned forward and pulled down his monogrammed cuffs so that his gold cuff links faced outward. “This is great work. Let me see if I’ve got this straight—Gibbs was killed at the bar last night by a fellow Savage Simba gang member named Reggie Clement, known as Animal. Gibbs murdered Sergeant Roberts, meaning Roberts must have been involved in some sort of investigation into the motorcycle gang. He apparently got too close, so Gibbs killed him.”

  “We can speculate that’s the scenario,” Maloney said. “But Animal didn’t waive his rights, and no one else in the club is talking.”

  Brown jotted some notes on a pad. “It doesn’t matter. What’s important is we know Sergeant Roberts was killed in the line of duty, and we can give him the funeral he and his family deserve. We have our murderer.”

  “All we have is a man’s prints on the garbage bag,” Sinclair said. “If we took a case like this to the DA, he’d laugh at us.”

  “But Gibbs is dead, so there’s no reason to present this to the DA. You still have that clearance, called Death of the Offender, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Maloney said. “But the standards are identical. We must have the same degree of proof to close a case whether the offender is dead or alive.”

  Brown waved his hand as if he were shooing away a fly. “Nonsense.”

  “There’re still too many unanswered questions,” Sinclair said. “For all we know, Gibbs handled that garbage bag days ago and had nothing to do with the murder. Even if Roberts’s body was in it when Gibbs handled it, it doesn’t mean he did anything more than transport a body. It took more than one person to move and bury Roberts, so even if Gibbs was one of them, there’s still another suspect out there. And we’ve got nothing saying Roberts was investigating the Savage Simbas. To the contrary, Officer Fletcher, who’s the outlaw motorcycle gang expert, says he would’ve been the case officer if there was an investigation.”

  “What about other physical evidence that can corroborate this?” Brown asked.

  “The lab’s doing a rush on the gunshot residue kits from Gibbs and Animal,” Sinclair said. “If the kit from Gibbs’s hands test positive, it’s something, but it only means he fired a gun or was near one that was fired, not that he fired the shot that hit Roberts. If Gibbs was involved, I need to know what Roberts was doing that night that put him into the path of the Savage Simbas.”

  Brown began to speak but stopped. Sinclair could tell he was rethinking his push to close Phil’s murder by pinning it all on Gibbs.

  “There must be some clue as to what Roberts was working in his office—maybe in his desk, his files, or his computer.” Sinclair knew the moment he continued talking he should’ve kept his mouth shut. “But there’s some IA lieutenant sitting in Roberts’s office invoking your name and keeping me from investigating the murder. If that happened any place else, I’d slap cuffs on the person for one-forty-eight PC, obstructing and interfering with an officer in the performance of his duties.”

  Brown glared at Sinclair. “Are you challenging my orders, Sergeant?”

  “I never heard you give an order, Chief. Only some pencil-pushing LT said it was your order.”

  Brown locked eyes with Sinclair for a few seconds, then turned his attention to Maloney. “I’ll make my orders clear. Lieutenant Farrington is the acting commander of the intelligence unit. He is working directly for me, and anything he discovers that might be connected to Sergeant Roberts’s death will be conveyed to you, Lieutenant Maloney, immediately. I trust him explicitly to carry out my orders.”

  “What are you afraid I’ll find in his office?” Sinclair asked.

  Brown leaned in closer to Sinclair, as if his size and proximity would intimidate him. His lips tightened. He then smiled slightly and turned to Maloney. “I previously inquired as to whether Sinclair was too close to lead this investigation. You assured me he was the best one for the job. Your own future might be dependent on that assessment.”

/>   Maloney nodded without saying a word.

  “Do you know which of the departmental values I prize the most in my subordinates?” Brown’s eyes swept from Braddock to Jankowski to Sanchez to Sinclair to Maloney. When not one of them spoke, he said, “Loyalty.”

  Sinclair shot back, “Loyalty along with duty and selfless service are values I learned in the Army, and I can assure you of my loyalty to the department, the city, and our police profession.”

  Brown grinned. “The department’s leadership seminars say loyalty must be earned and never demanded by leaders. However, in the real world, workers who aren’t loyal to their leaders are lucky to keep their jobs.”

  *

  An hour later, Braddock, Jankowski, and Sinclair stood on a West Oakland street corner, a block from the old Amtrak station. A hulk of burned metal, upholstery, and rubber that had once been Roberts’s car was still dripping from the thorough soaking courtesy of the Oakland Fire Department. A uniformed officer wrote notes on his clipboard while an evidence technician took photographs.

  “I still can’t get over the arrogance of that prick,” Sinclair said.

  “Jeez, Matt.” Braddock sighed. “You’ve got to stop fighting with the chief. You can’t win with him, and when you piss him off, he’ll get you for it.”

  “We were officers together in patrol,” Jankowski said.

  “You mean for the minute he was in patrol before he became a building rat and got promoted?” Sinclair said.

  “He’s not the only person in the command ranks who figured out that the way to the top required taking assignments outside of patrol and investigations,” Braddock said.

  “He didn’t take an ounce of pride in handling the calls on his beat and didn’t do shit proactive,” Jankowski said. “Dudes could be slinging dope hand over fist on his beat and he wouldn’t even get out of his car and talk to them.”