Shallow Grave

by Brian Thiem

  “We’ve been dicking around on this case for four days and gotten nowhere,” Sinclair said. “We need some answers before Phil’s funeral. His family and thousands of cops from around the state will be there, and we can’t say all we’ve got is a dead biker’s fingerprints on a garbage bag.” Sinclair crushed out his cigar in the pedestal ashtray by the door. “If she did nothing wrong, she should have no problem talking to us. That’s what good citizens do. But this could go bad, real bad, and I don’t want to take either of you down with me. I can handle this woman alone.”

  “I’ve got more time on the job that any of them fuckers on the eighth floor,” Jankowski said. “What’re they gonna do to me, put me back in uniform? Let’s go pick her up and toss her in a room.”

  “Damn it, Sinclair!” Braddock bit her lip and stamped her foot. “I didn’t hesitate to follow you into that motel room where a bullet was waiting for me. I was right behind you going into that school, even though we knew assault rifles and bombs were waiting for us. I’m your partner, so Jankowski needs to find something else to do.”

  *

  Sinclair and Braddock reentered room 201 and took their respective seats on either side of Rosina Lopez. The last hour had gone as planned. Lopez had been sitting in the back room of the storefront community center turned campaign office in North Oakland when Sinclair and Braddock barged in on her. She resisted their invitation to accompany them downtown until Sinclair presented her with the alternative—ride in the back of a patrol car to the jail and sit with real criminals until she was processed. Once he settled her into room 201, the three of them then spent a half hour chatting and getting to know each other like people who had just met at a dinner party—except there was no food, the table was tiny, and the room needed serious updating. Just as Lopez was getting comfortable, they left her alone in the room for fifteen minutes.

  Lopez was a tall, slender woman of forty with thick shoulder-length hair and a flawless complexion. She had a Spanish accent that she could turn on and off at will. “I know you’re both very busy,” she said, “but so am I, and I don’t appreciate being locked up all alone.”

  Braddock smiled. “Sorry about that, Rose. We had to check a few things before we finished up talking to you, and since there are a lot of confidential investigations being conducted in our office, we can’t leave the door open.”

  “How much longer will this take?”

  “Not much,” Sinclair said. “Since we’re dealing with a murder investigation, it’s necessary that we read you your rights. Is that okay?”

  “Whatever. Councilmember Yates and I are both strong proponents of law and order.”

  Sinclair read the Miranda warning from the OPD form. Once she signed, he said, “I’m sure you’re aware that we spoke to Maureen Yates.”

  She stared straight ahead, deadpan. By not denying it, she confirmed Sinclair’s suspicion. He slid a photo of Animal in front of her.

  “Do you know this man? His name is Reggie Clement. His nickname is Animal.”

  “I heard he killed another man, a member of a biker gang in a West Oakland bar.”

  “Everyone who watches the news or reads the paper knows that,” Sinclair said. “My question is—do you know him?”

  Lopez turned to look at Braddock, who was taking notes on a legal pad. Braddock met her gaze. If she was looking for a friend or ally, Braddock’s blank face made it obvious she wasn’t it. She turned back to Sinclair. “No.”

  Her first lie. Sinclair spent a minute paging through his notes, acting as if he was looking for something, but all he was doing was allowing the tension to build. “Mr. Clement worked as a security officer and driver for Eastman Security. Have you had any dealings or contact with Eastman Security?”

  She stared at Sinclair, obviously trying to determine what he knew, and, therefore, how little she could get away with saying. Sinclair knew his face gave away nothing.

  “Not that I can think of,” she replied.

  Her second lie. A soft lie where she could later say she had contact with him but it just slipped her mind. Sinclair placed a photo of Phil Roberts in front of her. “Have you ever seen this man?”

  “I recognize him from the TV news. He’s the police sergeant who was murdered.”

  “My question was have you ever seen him.”

  “Not in person,” she shot back.

  He placed another photo in front of her, this one of Phil lying in an unzipped body bag next to the shallow grave. She looked at it for a few seconds. Then she pushed it away.

  “We have information that indicates you placed a phone call to Eastman Security on Monday shortly after three o’clock.” Sinclair removed two forms from his notebook, filled out a few lines, and slid them in front of her. “This is a consent-to-search form, authorizing us to look at your cell phone. The second one authorizes the phone company to release call data on your home and office phones.”

  “Why should I sign these?”

  “You said you had no contact with Eastman, yet I believe you did. Signing these will allow us to determine if you’re telling the truth.”

  “I’m not about to let you snoop through my personal phones or those at the campaign headquarters. Who we speak to during this campaign is highly sensitive.”

  “The information will be kept in the strictest confidence.”

  Lopez’s eyes moved upward and to her right. “I have nothing to hide.”

  For years, interview and interrogation consultants taught investigators eye movement up and right was a sign of deception. Sinclair never believed it. Determining when a person was lying or telling the truth wasn’t an exact science. Eye movement, polygraphs, and voice stress analyzers had all been used with varying degrees of success, but none was perfectly reliable. Other studies showed that experienced police investigators, those who had spent thousands of hours interviewing deceptive people, could detect deception as accurately as the artificial devices. Sinclair didn’t know if it was the way Lopez shifted in her seat, the way her eyes moved, the crack in her voice, or something else, but she was definitely lying when she said she had nothing to hide.

  Sinclair smiled. “If you have nothing to hide, let’s get your cell phone from my partner’s desk, where we left it with your other personal items, and look at your call registry for the twenty-four hours beginning Monday at two o’clock.”

  Her eyes danced around the room. He had her backed into a corner. She had to either allow them to look at her phone or admit she was lying. Miniscule beads of sweat formed on her upper lip. She looked at him but couldn’t maintain eye contact. She pushed her chair back and jumped up. “This is bullshit. You can’t force me to do this.”

  Sinclair lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’re right. We can’t force you to give us consent, but we can and will keep your phone and apply for a search warrant. That way, we’ll be able to download everything on it—phone calls, texts, e-mails, and GPS locator data.”

  She crossed her arms and snapped, “How am I supposed to function without my phone?”

  “I think our murder investigation trumps any inconvenience to you.”

  “Do you know who I am?” she shouted. “I demand you release me immediately.”

  Sinclair had to struggle to keep from laughing. In this room, he intimidated people for a living. He had the power to control her freedom. He smiled. “Ms. Lopez, do you think you have diplomatic immunity or something like that because you work for a politician? Do you think your position gives you the legal right to lie to me? Do you really think that I’m scared of you?”

  She spread her feet shoulder width apart and put her tiny fists on her hips. “I want to see an attorney.”

  Sinclair pulled a consolidated arrest report from his notebook and began filling it out. “How tall are you?”

  “Five feet ten inches. Why?”

  “And your weight?”

  “One thirty-five,” she said. “What do you need that for?”

  “For the arrest rep
ort I’m completing. You asked for a lawyer, so we can’t talk anymore unless you change your mind. Since you decided not to cooperate with our murder investigations, I have no reason not to book you on the warrant.”

  Chapter 26

  Sinclair and Braddock exited the city jail, walked through the sally port, and opened the door that led into the back of the patrol division. Day shift workers were gone for the day, and the area was quiet except for a uniformed officer examining a red journal, known as the OTA book, searching for an open slot for an extra day off he could take in exchange for all the overtime hours he’d compiled.

  They made their way into the front lobby. The patrol desk officer waved at them from behind the twenty-foot-long counter at the front of the kiosk.

  “Do you think she’ll change her mind and call?” Braddock asked.

  Sinclair thought Lopez’s resolve had cracked when she walked out of the elevator into the women’s booking area. Female prisoners shouted from the cells down the hall. Others cried and wailed. The stench of urine and unbathed bodies filled the air. Lopez had looked at Braddock, as if pleading for her to intervene. Braddock slipped her business card into Lopez’s pants pocket and reminded her that all she had to do was tell the jailer she wanted to talk.

  “I was hoping the walk over would do it,” Sinclair said. “If she makes it through the first hour, she’ll gut it out until she’s released.”

  “I wish she hadn’t called our bluff.”

  “She did this to herself. All I asked for was the truth.”

  Sinclair stopped and looked at the black marble wall to his left. Below the oversized OPD badge, a seven-point silver star, high on the wall were the words, In Tribute to Oakland Police Officers Who Have Given Their Lives in the Line of Duty, etched into the marble. Names of fifty-one officers and their end-of-watch dates were engraved in the wall below those words. Six names had been added to the wall since Sinclair joined the department fifteen years earlier. He knew them all, worked with them, and even drank a beer or two with most of them. In the ten years before that, six more officers died in the line of duty. Soon, Phil Roberts would be added to the wall.

  A black stand with the OPD shield on the front sat between the American and California state flags. On top of it was a leather binder containing summaries of how each officer was killed. Sinclair had read them all many times. Another page would be added. It would include a photograph of Phil in his uniform. It was up to Sinclair to ensure there was something to write beyond the fact that Phil was found buried in a shallow grave and investigators were still trying to determine how he got there.

  Braddock squeezed his arm and gave him a knowing glance. They crossed the lobby to the staircase that led to a balcony, a sort of open hallway that overlooked the patrol desk kiosk and memorial wall. Sinclair trudged up the stairs. He’d been so hopeful that they could flip Lopez—that she would open the door to the secrets surrounding Phil’s murder. Even if a judge signed a warrant for her phone, it might take the computer forensics lab a week or more to access the data, assuming they could unlock her password. From there, he might need to enter search-warrant hell, where he’d have to write warrants to get phone number subscriber information, wait ten days for the phone companies to respond, and then write more warrants to get call and locator information. He’d seen it take months and thirty or forty hours of work to track phone calls one or two levels out from the target phone.

  They passed through the double glass doors that led onto the second floor. The sliding window where the Criminal Investigation Division receptionist sat during duty hours was closed for the day. They followed the hallway to the right and through the door to the homicide unit. Jankowski and Sanchez sat at their desks. Jankowski’s face said, “Oh, shit!” and Sanchez’s said, “Run for your life.”

  Sinclair took two steps inside the room and saw the reason for his coworkers’ panic standing in Maloney’s office. Even though his back was to them, there was no mistaking Chief Clarence Brown. Maloney stood behind his desk, a look of utter defeat on his face. He waved them in.

  Brown waited until they crowded into the small office and then shut the door. “This feels like déjà vu,” Brown started. “Didn’t I tell you to leave Councilmember Yates alone months ago?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Sinclair. You’re going to tell me that you’re following the leads as they take you and this is murder—the ultimate crime—and you have some sort of God-given mandate to do whatever is necessary. I don’t buy it. You’ve been out to get this man forever. Now you’re harassing the people close to him to get at him.”

  “That’s not true,” Sinclair said. “Ms. Lopez is smack-dab in the middle of this.”

  “I don’t care. I made it clear to your lieutenant that you were to get permission for any interviews or arrests of the councilmember or those in his circle from us. Did you not make that clear to him, Lieutenant?”

  “I told him the councilmember—” Maloney said before being cut off.

  “What part of ‘This murder is solved’ don’t you understand?” Brown asked.

  “But it’s not,” Sinclair said. “A man’s prints on a garbage bag doesn’t make him a murderer.”

  “Then you should have been pursuing the real murderer among his fellow motorcycle gang members rather than harassing city officials.” Brown turned to Braddock. “And you, young lady—I expected better from you.”

  “It was my idea,” Sinclair said. “She tried to talk me out of it.”

  Brown looked at Maloney. “Did you know what Sinclair was up to?”

  “No,” Sinclair said without hesitation. “I didn’t tell him we were picking up Lopez.”

  “When this is all over, we may need to review your position as well,” Brown said to Maloney. “This unit needs a strong commander—someone who can control this bunch of prima donnas.”

  “You can’t do that,” Sinclair said. “This isn’t his—”

  “I can’t? This is my department. Sergeant Sinclair, you are hereby relieved of duty.”

  Sinclair’s jaw dropped. He half expected the chief to pull him off the case, but not this.

  “I am placing you on administrative leave with pay, pending the completion of an investigation for insubordination, for failing to obey orders from your superiors. Surrender your ID, badge, and pistol to Lieutenant Maloney.”

  Sinclair removed his police ID card from his wallet, pulled his badge clip from his belt, and placed them both on Maloney’s desk. He swept his coat aside and gripped his Sig Sauer. “This is my personally owned firearm.”

  “I don’t care,” Brown said. “You no longer have police powers and can’t carry a gun, so turn it over. If your lawyer wants to get a court order forcing us to return it, so be it.”

  Sinclair drew his gun, pressed the magazine release, and set the magazine on the desk. He racked the slide, caught the chambered round in his hand, and placed it and the gun on Maloney’s desk.

  Chapter 27

  After Braddock dropped him off at home, he changed into jeans and sneakers and sat by the pool for a while, a thousand regrets swirling around in his head. He was pissed. Pissed at whoever killed Phil. Pissed at Yates, Lopez, and all the bikers who’d lied to him. Pissed at Brown for suspending him. Pissed at Phil for whatever the hell he did to get himself killed. But most of all, Sinclair was pissed at himself.

  He didn’t know if he thought he was bulletproof, that not even the chief of police could hurt him because he’d survived so many political squabbles or that because he’d always produced results on the big cases, they’d let him slide this time too. When Brown called the homicide unit a bunch of prima donnas, he wasn’t too far off. Everyone in the unit certainly had an overinflated opinion of themselves at times. To even want to work homicide, you had to. You had to believe you were up to the most difficult and important task in law enforcement. He didn’t know where to draw the line between confidence and arrogance, but he’d defiantly cros
sed over to the arrogance side on this case. He’d heard people in AA describe the personality of a typical alcoholic as an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. That was exactly how Sinclair felt right now.

  As he was sitting by the pool, his phone buzzed every few minutes with calls from Braddock, Jankowski, and Maloney. He listened to their voice mails. They all wanted to make sure he was okay. They probably wanted to make sure he didn’t dig out one of his off-duty guns and stick the barrel in his mouth. Alyssa called too, wanting to know how he was doing. He sure wished Braddock would stop feeding his personal business to her. He didn’t care if Alyssa and Braddock were best friends—they needed to find another subject to talk about other than him. At least when he told Walt he didn’t want to talk about it, Walt respected it and left him alone. His only meddling was handing him Amber’s leash when he headed out the driveway for a walk.

  Sinclair didn’t know how long he’d been walking, but the sun had disappeared below the trees. Amber was a perfect companion for the mood he was in. She heeled perfectly at his left side and sat whenever he stopped. She didn’t care that he was angry or sad, as long as he walked and allowed her to stop and sniff things occasionally. And she never asked him how he was feeling or tried to fix him, unless she was intentionally trying to make him smile when she looked up at him and wagged her tail every few minutes of their walk.

  He left her outside the Peet’s Coffee Shop in Montclair and went inside to get a large decaf. When he returned, Amber was lying on her back receiving a belly rub from a young couple.

  “What a great dog!” the woman said. “What’s her name?”

  “Amber,” Sinclair said.

  Amber rose and sat at his side. She looked up at him as if awaiting his next command. The man went inside and returned with a bowl of water. Amber lapped up half of it. “Bye, Amber,” they said in unison as they walked down the street.

  Sinclair sat on a wooden bench in front of the coffee shop. Laughter from groups of people seated outside a Greek restaurant next door filled the air. He smelled grilled meat from a burger place next to it. It was well past dinnertime, but he wasn’t hungry. By the time he finished his coffee and got up, a closed sign covered the coffee shop’s door.