Shallow Grave

by Brian Thiem

  Chapter 36

  Sinclair parked his Mustang in front of the No Colors Motorcycle Shop in Concord. A sign on the door said they were closed on Sundays, but he checked the door anyway. Locked. He peered through the window. Lights off—no activity. He didn’t have much of a plan. If Irish Mike was there, he could tell him he was in the neighborhood and stopped by to talk more about doing performance work on his bike. Maybe Mike would let him in and he’d see something that further linked the shop to Phil’s murder. If the word had filtered back to Mike about two bikers chasing Tiny just moments after he and Fletcher were at the shop asking about him, Sinclair would have to do some fast-talking.

  Sinclair pounded at the door in case Mike or someone else was inside working. When no one came after a few minutes, Sinclair drove down the alley to the back of the shop. The chain link fence gate was locked with a heavy chain and padlock. The lawn chairs and old car seats at the back of the shop were unoccupied, and the space where a row of Harleys had been parked was empty. He looked around for cameras, alarms, or signs of a dog but saw nothing.

  People who install a fence and a locked gate have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Absent exigent circumstances, police would need a search warrant before entering the shop yard. But Sinclair was no longer a cop according to Chief Brown. If the Concord police caught him going over the fence, they’d arrest him for trespassing or, more likely, for attempted burglary. Telling the officers he was an Oakland cop suspended from duty wouldn’t help one bit.

  He pulled himself to the top of the ten-foot fence, swung his leg over, and dropped to the ground on the other side. He waited for a few seconds. If someone inside poked his head out the back door, he figured he could get back over the fence and flee. The absence of a gun digging into his right hip felt strange. But it was the absence of his police badge and the authority that accompanied it that was the most unsettling. He scurried across the cracked asphalt surface to the back of the building. He tried the back door, but it was locked. He looked in through a dirty window but saw no movement. Under the overhang and scattered among the car seats and lawn chairs were two trash cans and a few plastic bins filled with old motorcycle parts.

  He reached into the first trash can and dug to the bottom, looking for anything of interest. He did the same to the second one, wishing he had gloves on as he searched through used oil filters and cigarette butts. The first bin contained two engine pistons inside a broken-down cardboard box. Sinclair yanked the cardboard from under the heavy pieces of metal and saw several filthy and badly worn light-blue shop rags.

  Sinclair retraced his steps, climbed back over the fence, and got into his car. He drove to a McDonald’s a half mile away, where he washed his hands and ordered a large ice tea. He wiped the grease and dirt off his steering wheel with a handful of napkins and pulled out his cell phone.

  “I was wondering if Jankowski and Sanchez had any luck out at Santa Rita today,” he said.

  “Not really,” Braddock replied, “but they’re whittling away at the list of the Simbas who have guard cards or are in line to get them. No big revelations yet.”

  “Have you seen any more of the US attorney, Archard, or other Feds?”

  “No,” she said. “And I tried to talk to Assistant Chief James. He kinda hung you out to dry. But he’s not returning my calls. You doing okay?”

  “Yeah. I’ll call an LDF attorney tomorrow. Even if they sustain me for insubordination, what’s the worst they’ll do? Give me a couple days of suspension? I can handle that.”

  “If IAD sustains the complaint, the chief will transfer you out of homicide. What will you do then?”

  Sinclair hadn’t fully considered what might happen to him professionally. He’d weathered so many IA complaints, he figured he’d survive this one as well. But Braddock was right—Brown wouldn’t let him off this time. He couldn’t dwell on that, however.

  “You haven’t told anyone about Sheila Harris and the money, have you?”

  “I still don’t know what I should do. I did a work-up on her and might know where she lives. I went by an address, but there was no answer. I’ll try again first thing in the morning.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Matt, you need to trust me to handle this.”

  Giving up control and trusting others was not something Sinclair did well, but if he pushed any harder, he risked Braddock totally cutting him off from the investigation. “The real reason I called was I just remembered I forgot to put something in my notes.”

  “That’s not like you.”

  “Do you remember the color of the shop rags in the garbage bag?”

  “Yeah, baby blue,” she said. “We have photos of them.”

  “When Fletcher and I did the UC visit to the No Colors Motorcycle Shop, the owner, Irish Mike, had one in his pocket, and I saw a bunch of old, greasy ones in a plastic bin filled with old parts around the back of the building.”

  Braddock was quiet for a few counts. “You’re just telling me this now?”

  He felt a bit guilty about manipulating Braddock, but he couldn’t exactly tell her he had to jump the fence and do an illegal search to confirm the color of the rags. Besides, they might find something else inside the shop or get someone there to talk. “We were pretty fucking busy after visiting the shop, in case you forgot. And then poof—I was no longer a cop. I was intending to have you and Jankowski go back there, badge the guy, and ask to look around. I didn’t want to do it myself because it would’ve burned Fletcher and his informant.”

  “How uncommon are those rags?”

  “I’ve only seen that color twice—at that shop and with Phil’s body.”

  “So that means Gibbs probably got them from the shop,” she said. “Does he have any connection to the place?”

  “Not that I know of,” Sinclair replied. “But we know Tiny came into the bar with Gibbs that night. Half of CID probably takes office supplies home. Tiny worked at the shop. Wouldn’t a mechanic take shop rags home?”

  “And use them to wipe his bloody hands after he murders someone,” she said. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll take Jankowski and Sanchez out there, collect some of those rags as evidence, and question everyone who works there. It will also give us something to hold over Tiny’s head should we ever get him into an interview room.”

  “Exactly my thought. Are you still in the office?”

  “Just leaving,” she said. “We’re fried, so Jankowski, Sanchez, and I decided to call it a day and start at six tomorrow morning.”

  *

  A half hour later, Sinclair parked his Mustang a few blocks west of the PAB and walked down Seventh Street to the side door leading to CID. He was glad they didn’t take his key card and that no one thought to delete him from the system. The only people working Sunday evenings in CID would be homicide if there’d been a callout. The lights were off in homicide, so there hadn’t been a fresh murder. Sinclair unlocked the door and went to his desk. He started his computer and did the same for Braddock’s.

  While they were warming up, he took the Roberts homicide packet from Braddock’s desk and paged through it. He went to the copy machine and made copies of his handwritten log and the additional notes written in Braddock’s handwriting. He copied some other papers that wouldn’t be in the computer, such as Phil’s overtime and expense paperwork and criminal history printouts. By this time, his computer was up. He copied all the files related to the Roberts case onto a flash drive. He signed into Braddock’s computer with her password and copied all the files she had on the case as well. Once finished, he shut down both computers, slipped the thumb drive into his pocket, and returned the case packet to Braddock’s desk. He removed the cigar box he’d found in Phil’s locker from where Braddock had stashed it in the back of her top drawer and made a photocopy of the spiral notebook pages. He then replaced it in the box and relocked the box in her desk. Braddock’s deadline was on Tuesday, when she would take the box to the lieutenant. He had until then to fin
d the truth.

  Sinclair made it out the side door and back to his car with only a few uniformed officers seeing him. He doubted they even knew he’d been relieved of duty or would think twice about seeing a homicide investigator on a weekend.

  Sinclair returned to the mansion and set up his laptop in the library. He inserted the flash drive and read through Braddock’s investigative follow-up report and notes to reconstruct what she and Jankowski had done since Friday afternoon. On Friday, they interviewed two Simbas who were among those identified by Pelletier. Both said Animal approached them at the clubhouse one night and asked if they’d ever been arrested. When they said no, he suggested they take a training course to become security guards and promised he would soon have a lot of work for them. That was about all they knew about it.

  Braddock’s handwritten log indicated that about an hour ago, she’d run Sheila Harris in LRMS and other databases. She discovered Sheila had no presence on the web, which didn’t surprise Sinclair. If a girl was going to be an escort and didn’t want any of her clients to learn her true identity, she’d have to keep a very low public profile—no blogging, YouTube videos, Twitter, Facebook, or other social media. She had never been arrested and had no contacts with the Oakland police, not even as a crime victim or witness. Sinclair was beginning to think Sheila Harris wasn’t her real name until the next entry in Braddock’s report indicated she found a similar name in DMV records.

  A driver’s license in the name of Sheila Harris included identifying information for a woman thirty-two years old, five foot ten, and 135 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes and an address on Lee Street. Sinclair thumbed through the papers he had photocopied and found a black-and-white copy of her driver’s license photo. She was without a doubt the same person in the photo he’d found in Phil’s locker. A four-year-old Honda Accord was registered to her, but there was nothing else in the DMV file on her—no citations, previous addresses, or other vehicles.

  Next, Sinclair went to the photos. Since the evidence techs posted scene photos onto a central server that investigators had access to, there was little reason for investigators to download all the images onto their personal computers. But Sinclair had gotten into the habit of doing that in case he might need to access them when out of the office. Braddock was much more computer savvy than Sinclair, and she often downloaded an assortment of photos to her desktop computer, and from there she’d e-mail them to herself so she could view them on her iPad when they were in the field. Sinclair found the photo of Sheila that Braddock had manipulated from the sexy swimsuit photo, e-mailed it to himself, and also printed a copy.

  Chapter 37

  The Adams Point neighborhood was one of the more desirable areas for young, single people to live in Oakland. A hundred apartment buildings, most plain concrete or stucco boxes, dotted the hill north of Lake Merritt. A mile from downtown and close to mass transit, shopping, restaurants, and nightlife, the cheapest one-bedroom apartments in the area started at $2,000 a month, with two bedrooms another thousand higher.

  Sinclair cruised by Sheila’s DMV address on Lee Street looking for parking. Since he didn’t have a police car, he didn’t dare park in a yellow or red zone. Not only didn’t he want an eighty-three-dollar ticket, he didn’t need any official record of his car in this area. He cruised the area and eventually found a place to park a block away.

  He pressed the buzzer for 206 and waited. No answer. If he had his badge, he would’ve buzzed the apartment manager next, but he couldn’t come up with a plausible story to convince him or her to give out information on a single woman living in his complex. He took out his cell phone, pressed it to his ear, and waited. About ten minutes later, a thirtysomething hipster-looking man came out the door. Sinclair continued to carry on his conversation with the imaginary person on the other end, caught the door, and said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be right up.”

  He took the stairs to the second floor and followed the open walkway around the inside of the building. Below was a lush courtyard filled with plants and small trees in large pots and a few small tables. He pressed the doorbell on apartment 206 and knocked. He waited a minute and knocked again.

  A door opened behind him and a voice said, “She’s not home.”

  Sinclair turned and faced a plump blonde in her late twenties. “Yeah, I see that. I’m a friend of Sheila’s from Napa. I was in the area and thought I’d surprise her.”

  “From Napa?” Her voice indicated she wasn’t buying it.

  “I’m Matt,” he said, giving her his best smile, the one Braddock said caused girls to get weak-kneed. “I had dinner with Sheila last weekend in Napa. She hasn’t mentioned me?”

  “Oh, we’re not that close. But I’ve wondered where she’s been going every weekend.”

  Sinclair winked, hinting that he and Sheila might be more than just friends.

  She stepped out of her doorway onto the balcony. “I think she left on vacation or something.”

  “Maybe that’s why she’s hasn’t answered her phone.” Sinclair looked down at his feet. “I guess I’m making a fool of myself, but I thought we had something.”

  Her eyes softened, obviously understanding how it felt to be rejected. “Sheila’s really hot, but she’s nice too. I don’t think she’d lead you on.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “It must’ve been last Saturday or Sunday. She just got back from Napa.”

  “That was our weekend,” Sinclair said, looking down again.

  “No, wait, I saw her at the bus stop Monday morning.”

  “Going to work?”

  “Yeah, I often run into her at Perkins and Grand. We both take the number twelve and get off at Twelfth Street. I get on BART and head into the city. She must work somewhere downtown because I see her walking in the opposite direction.”

  “I seem to know so little about her,” he said. “I don’t even know what she does for a living.”

  “I think she’s in business administration. Maybe an office manager or something. She always dresses very professionally.”

  “Any idea where she was going on vacation?”

  “My roommate might know. She’s watering her plants while she’s gone.”

  “Is your roommate around?”

  “No, she’s out with her boyfriend.” Her look said she wished she had a boyfriend to be out with on a Sunday evening.

  “Do you think you could ask your roommate where Sheila went and if she knows when she’ll be back?” Sinclair shuffled his feet and looked at her with his best awe-shucks look. “I hope you don’t think I’m a stalker or something, but I really like her.”

  “A guy like you doesn’t need to stalk women,” she said. “What’s your number?”

  Sinclair gave her his cell number, which she entered into her phone. “Call me so I can make sure you got it right.”

  A second later, his phone buzzed. “Hi, this is Matt, who’s this?”

  She giggled. “Lori.”

  Sinclair entered her name into in his phone. “Well, thanks, Lori.”

  “If things don’t work out with Sheila, and you wanna . . . you know—”

  “I’ve got your number.”

  Sinclair walked back to the staircase, feeling Lori’s eyes on him as he walked away. He continued down the steps to the underground parking garage. He spotted a Honda Accord and verified it was the same license as the one registered to Sheila according to the DMV printout. Although he wanted to go door to door and talk to other neighbors, if Lori saw him, it would blow the story he’d concocted and any chance she might pass on something her roommate knew. Besides, this was Oakland, and someone would call the police after they saw him knocking on multiple doors. He’d be in a world of shit if he was discovered working the case while on suspension. As he was walking back to his car, he wondered how much more successful Braddock would be with Sheila’s neighbors and the manager by showing her badge.

  He drove down Van Buren Avenue, passing cars parked bumper t
o bumper on both sides of the street. A dark-green sedan followed about a block back. He’d noticed the car parked a few buildings down from Sheila’s apartment when he came out and thought he’d spotted it sitting in a yellow zone when he went inside. Too far away to be sure, but it looked like two men inside. He turned right on MacArthur Boulevard. The car turned behind him, remaining about a block back. Probably nothing—plenty of people live in this area, and it wouldn’t be unusual for someone else to be leaving by the same route.

  Sinclair stopped at the light at Grand Avenue. The green car had slowed to let two other cars get in front of it. A classic surveillance technique. Definitely two people in the car. Looked to be a Chevy Malibu. His first thought was that the FBI was tailing him to see what he was up to after he rejected their offer. If so, he was getting sloppy because they had to have picked him up at his house and been following him ever since. He should’ve noticed the tail earlier. But he crossed out that possibility since they wouldn’t have been sitting in front of Sheila’s apartment when he got there. If he was working, he would’ve gotten on the radio and had a patrol unit stop the car and check them out. But that wasn’t an option. Before he did anything else, he’d have to be certain he was being followed and not just being paranoid.

  At the next block, he made a left onto Lakeshore Avenue. If it wasn’t the FBI, he didn’t want to lead them to his house, so he put on his left turn signal as he came out from under the freeway and made a quick left onto Lake Park Avenue. The Malibu drove past him. He turned left onto Grand Avenue and made another left to get back on MacArthur Boulevard. If the car was in fact following him, he had lost it.