Shallow Grave

by Brian Thiem

  “If you never do anything, you never get in trouble,” Sinclair said.

  “It wasn’t just that,” Jankowski said. “You’d think someone his size could handle himself out here, but he’d make sure he was the last car to arrive on a hot call. The fight was always over by the time he pulled up.”

  “Unlike the macho guys who race to calls at double the speed limit, sometimes wrapping their cars around a telephone pole on the way, just so they could show everyone how courageous they are by being the first one on the scene,” Braddock said.

  “Why are you defending him, Braddock?” Sinclair asked.

  “He didn’t get to where he is by being stupid. He decided early in his career that he wanted something more than pushing a beat car and handling radio calls for twenty years. You must give him credit for knowing the system and gaming it to succeed.”

  “I still can’t believe his crap about personal loyalty,” Sinclair said.

  “Believe it,” Jankowski said. “And watch your back. He’s a vindictive motherfucker.”

  Sinclair’s cell rang. A male voice identified himself as a fire captain. “We don’t send out arson investigators on vehicle fires.”

  “That’s what your dispatch said,” Sinclair replied. “Then I told them this was the car that belonged to our officer who was murdered two nights ago.”

  “Was his body in the car when it was torched?”

  “No, he was shot and dumped in the hills.” Sinclair repeated the same story he told dispatch.

  “Listen, Sergeant, our policy is to only investigate arsons when the dollar value is significant or when the structure or vehicle is occupied.”

  Fire departments’ rank structure was top heavy compared to most police departments. Sinclair knew the authority and responsibility of a fire captain was only slightly greater than that of a police sergeant. “No, you listen, Captain. If you don’t have the authority to make an exception to your policy for a line-of-duty death of a cop, put someone on the phone who does. If you won’t send your people out here to help our tech process the car for evidence and determine the cause and origin of the fire, I guess I’ll have to call the county fire marshal or ask ATF to send out one of their teams from Washington. I bet they’ll be glad to help out us, especially since a cop might’ve been murdered in this car.”

  The line was quiet for several beats. “Okay, I’ll approve the dispatch.”

  Sinclair hung up and walked upwind of the car. The smell of burned rubber and gasoline and the fumes from the toxic mix of plastics and fibers were starting to get to him. “Anything on the caller?” Sinclair asked the uniformed officer.

  “It was a trucker who was passing by and saw the flames. Didn’t see anyone on the street and no vehicles. He just dialed nine-one-one and went about his way.”

  The uniformed officer had been dispatched at the same time as the fire department. Once the fire was out, the officer thought the remains could’ve been a Dodge Challenger, the model of Phil’s undercover car. He called for a tech and notified homicide once he located the VIN and saw it matched the information in the communications order on Phil’s missing vehicle.

  Sinclair walked around the car again, peering into the burned rubble.

  “I don’t know if we’ll find anything in there after the fire,” the tech said. “The firefighters on the scene said they smelled gas even though the gas tank hadn’t leaked or exploded, which means someone doused it with gasoline.”

  “I don’t know either,” Sinclair said. “I’ve got someone from the crime lab coming out. Get the arson investigators to do the grunt work of going through every inch of the car and let the criminalist decide if anything you find has evidentiary value.”

  The tech nodded. “If there’s anything left in the car, we’ll find it.”

  Chapter 13

  Sinclair and Braddock spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon at their desks reviewing the reports and statements in Jankowski’s homicide packet. They couldn’t deny the evidence showing Gibbs was involved in Phil’s death, but there were too many unanswered questions, the main ones being why Gibbs would want to kill him and what Phil was doing that put him in the path of the Savage Simbas.

  Sinclair was mulling those thoughts over when his desk phone rang, showing a familiar 916 area code. His mother’s cell phone, which she hardly ever used. He felt the walls come up around him, that protective shield he’d developed as a kid. He listened. She wanted him to drop everything and rush to Sacramento. He told her about the case and why he was needed here. She begged him. He said he’d try, but he had no intention of doing so.

  He stared into the empty space in front of him and tried to pretend the call hadn’t happened. Braddock’s voice snapped him back to the present. “Matt, what’s wrong?”

  “Ahh, nothing.”

  “Bullshit. I heard your side of the conversation. That was your mom. What’s going on?”

  “My father had a heart attack.”

  “Jesus, is he okay? How serious was it?”

  “I don’t know. He was rushed to Mercy General in Sacramento. They bypassed the ER and took him straight to the angioplasty department.”

  “What did they find? Does he need surgery?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think my mother even knows yet.”

  She placed her hand on his arm and gently swiveled his chair to face her. “You need to be there.” They’d talked about their respective relationships with their fathers at length in the past, and she knew that he and his father hadn’t spoken in years.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s your father, Matt.”

  For a long time, Sinclair had hoped his father would die. Walt and other people in AA had urged him to consider forgiving his father, for his own benefit if for no other reason. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. In the last year or so, he had finally reached a place where he no longer cared what happened to his father. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t exist. Sinclair could never figure out why his mother stayed with him. She knew what he was and that he would never change. “So?”

  “If not for him, then for your mother. She needs you right now.”

  He pulled a report from the pile on his desk and began reading it.

  “Matt, you need to go.”

  “I have a case to investigate. The murder of one of us. One of our brothers. This is my family, and this is where I need to be.”

  Braddock picked up her cup and headed toward the coffeepot without saying another word. He went back to the report and tried to focus on his mission.

  A few moments later, Maloney called his name. Sinclair slumped into a chair across from the lieutenant’s desk. “Cathy told me about your father. I want you to leave your desk exactly as it is. Braddock and Jankowski will pick up the case until you get back. There’s nothing you’re doing that they can’t handle.”

  Braddock wasn’t satisfied with just meddling in his love life; she had to stick her nose into his relationship with his parents as well. “There’s nothing more important than solving Phil’s murder. You said that yourself.”

  “There’s nothing more important than family,” Maloney shot back.

  “You don’t know my family.”

  “What I do know is that if your father dies and you’re not there, you’ll never be able to change that. Your mother called because she needs you. Your relationship will never be the same if you aren’t there for her.”

  Sinclair knew he was right. He was so focused on his hatred toward his father, he hadn’t considered what his mother must have been going through. While Sinclair should be feeling sadness for his father’s condition or fear that he might die, all he felt was anger. Anger that his father would do this to him at a time like this. “Okay, but I’ll be back first thing in the morning. By that time, he’ll either be out of the woods or dead, and if he’s dead, there’s nothing else I need to do there.”

  *

  Sinclair jockeyed his Mustang GT through the stop-a
nd-go traffic headed toward the Caldecott Tunnel. The clock on his dash read 4:04, and he knew the only fast way to get to Sacramento at this time of day was by helicopter. It would take at least fifteen minutes to travel the mile to the tunnel. He’d then speed along until the traffic screeched to a halt as it entered Lafayette. It would pick up again until he approached the 680 Freeway, where it would be stop and go for ten miles. What took less than an hour and a half without traffic could be a three-hour drive at this time of day.

  Braddock had driven him home, where he gave her the Crown Vic. He changed out of his suit and into jeans and a polo shirt, gave Amber a belly rub when she showed up and barked once to be let in, and headed out the gate in his Mustang.

  Although he still missed his old Mustang, a month after the Bus Bench Killer firebombed it along with his apartment, he had test-driven a new one. The redesigned Mustang was a vast improvement over the old model with its archaic solid live axle, and the body looked more like the classic Mustangs from the sixties. The salesman tried to convince him to get the automatic, saying its performance matched the six-speed manual and would save his clutch leg in Bay Area traffic, but sports cars were meant to be shifted by the driver.

  The thermometer read seventy-three degrees as he left Oakland and picked up speed entering the Caldecott Tunnel. It would be twenty degrees warmer by the time he reached Sacramento. Sinclair pressed a few buttons on the steering wheel. The ringing cell phone sounded through the car’s speakers. “Any news yet?” he asked.

  “The doctor just came out.” Her voice was surprisingly calm. “He said there were some major blockages that would require surgery. They’ll be moving him to the OR in a few minutes.” Sinclair had been on plenty of heart attack calls. Many heart attack patients were treated with balloon angioplasty and stents right in the hospital cath lab, so open-heart surgery meant this was serious.

  “What happened anyway?”

  “He got home from work and was in the bedroom changing clothes. I heard a crash. I ran in and there he was, lying on the floor, breathing fast and complaining of chest pain.”

  “So you knew?”

  “I fix him oatmeal for breakfast and then find out he stops for sausage and eggs on the way to work. If I make something healthy for dinner, he’ll put a steak on the grill. He still smokes, and well . . . you know about his drinking. I’ve been expecting this.”

  “You did all you could.”

  “I called nine-one-one. The paramedics shocked him with the defibrillator on the way there. I don’t know why because he was still breathing.”

  “I’m sure he’s in excellent hands.”

  “I have to go. They want me to sign some paperwork. When will you get here?”

  The GPS said he’d arrive in an hour and ten minutes. “It’s rush-hour traffic, Mom, so at least two hours. Is anyone with you?”

  “A lady from work, but she’ll have to leave by dinner time.”

  His mother had become quite an entrepreneur in the last few years. Born in California’s Central Valley to a mother who came from Mexico as a migrant worker and a father who managed a small farm, she’d worked as a hotel maid until Sinclair was born. When his youngest brother started school, she began working part time as a domestic so she could arrive home before Sinclair and his brothers got home. She then cleaned their house, did laundry, cooked dinner, and helped with homework while his father sat in front of the TV drinking beer. Now she ran her own house-cleaning business with twenty employees and a full-time office manager. “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

  *

  It was past nine o’clock when a nurse finally led Sinclair and his mother into the ICU. With her smooth skin and dark-brown hair cut stylishly short, his mother appeared much younger than her sixty-two years. Sinclair got his dark eyes and complexion from her, but while she was clearly of Hispanic descent, few people guessed he was anything but white—or maybe part Italian. She hung tightly on his arm as they stepped into the room.

  A breathing tube was taped in place over his father’s mouth, and an assortment of tubes and wires ran under his blanket from IVs and machines arranged on one side of his bed. Monitors showed numbers representing his pulse, blood pressure, and other vitals. He looked frail and small, nothing like the man Sinclair had feared for years.

  The last time Sinclair had seen his father was more than ten years ago. Sinclair was lying in a hospital bed in Oakland after being shot during an undercover drug deal that went bad. His father didn’t say a word to him that day. Just shook his head.

  Sinclair grew up as the oldest of three brothers. Although his father always drank, his habits got worse when Sinclair’s little brother was shot and killed when Sinclair was twelve. As a teenager, he hated the hours between his father getting home from work and falling asleep. He grew to fear each slam of the refrigerator door, knowing that one of them might signal his father’s nightly visit to his room where he and his brother did their homework—or pretended to, anyway.

  Everything changed one Friday evening, as Sinclair sat on his bed listening to music and beating himself up over dropping a pass that would’ve been the winning touchdown for his freshman team. His mother was making dinner. He heard the yelling, first about dinner being late, and then about how Sinclair embarrassed the family on the football field. A moment later, his bedroom door banged open, and his father, drunk, loomed in the doorway. He wanted to tell him about the three passes he caught, not expecting praise from his father—that never happened—but to lessen his anger.

  “You’re no Sinclair,” his father yelled. “You’re a pussy—a girl.” He pulled back his hand. Instead of waiting for the slap as he had for years—slaps that were never so hard to leave a mark but nevertheless left deeper wounds—Sinclair stood and raised his arm, blocking the blow. His closed fist struck his father’s forearm with such force that he felt the shock up his arm and into his shoulder.

  His father pulled his hand back again for another strike. Sinclair raised his fists in a boxer’s stance. “Come on! Try it!” he growled.

  They stood like that for what seemed like an eternity. Then his father simply turned and walked away. After that, his father never uttered a word of praise or criticism to him again, not when he broke a school record with five touchdown receptions in one game, not when he graduated from high school, not when he got married, and not when his life crashed and burned due to his own alcoholism. In his youth, Sinclair had vowed he’d never become like his father, but he had in too many ways, especially the way he drank.

  Chapter 14

  The ICU didn’t allow overnight visitors, and the nurses urged Sinclair’s mother to go home and sleep, telling her that the bypass went well and her husband was sedated and would sleep through the night. Still, she wouldn’t leave the hospital. Sinclair sat next to her in the waiting room, dozing for a few minutes at a time until the sun blasted its morning rays through the window a little after 5:30. Sinclair wandered the hospital maze and returned with two coffees and pastries. They ate silently until a nurse came in.

  “Your husband is doing well,” she said. “His vitals are good and he’s resting comfortably. The doctors expect to see him this afternoon, and I suspect they’ll allow him to wake up and then remove the breathing tube.”

  His mother jumped up and hugged the woman, spilling half of her remaining coffee on the floor. The nurse patted her on the back and gently pulled away. “Now would be a good time to go home, maybe take a shower, and get some rest. I’ll call you if there’s any change.”

  Sinclair’s phone vibrated. He moved to the other side of the room and said, “Good morning, Braddock.”

  “How’s your father?”

  Sinclair summarized the nurse’s report.

  “I’m glad,” she said. “I left a message for Phil’s wife last night, and she just called. She’s available to talk at eight this morning. I’m headed into the office to meet Jankowski and take him with me to interview her.”

  “My mother’s going
home to rest for a while and there’s nothing for me to do here. I’ll meet you there.”

  On the walk to his mother’s car, Sinclair asked, “Have you heard from Jimmy?”

  She shook her head. “I left messages at every number I have for him. You know your brother.”

  Jimmy was a year younger than Sinclair and had been in and out of treatment centers since he was eighteen for oxycodone and heroin addiction. The last he heard, Jimmy was living in Seattle and working as a cook at a neighborhood coffee shop. “You want me to try to find him?”

  She pursed her lips. “I’m sure he got the message. I’m just glad one of my sons came.”

  Interstate 80 was only a mile away. As he left the hospital, he put the convertible top down and felt the wind and warm sun on his face as he cruised down the freeway and wound through the rolling hills to the Green Valley Country Club.

  Sinclair hoped Phil’s wife would be able to shed some light on his work activities, but Phil might’ve been as good at keeping secrets from her as he was at keeping secrets from his coworkers. He followed his GPS’s directions through a well-established neighborhood with spacious yards to an older sprawling ranch-style home overlooking the twelfth green of the golf course.

  Braddock was waiting in their Crown Vic. “How was traffic?” he asked.

  “Piece of cake. Going against the commute.”

  A slender woman with honey-colored hair and a porcelain complexion answered the door. Sinclair already had her particulars from the DMV: Abigail J. Roberts, 47, 5′8″, 135, blonde, green. A two-year-old BMW SUV registered to her, with Phil listed as the “and.” She was the “and” behind Phil on a four-year-old Corvette and a ten-year-old Harley. Makeup did a poor job concealing the dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. She forced her thin lips into a smile. “Matt, Cathy, I so regret the conditions under which we’re finally meeting.”