Shallow Grave

by Brian Thiem

  Walt dropped Sinclair off at the back door of his house. He grabbed a diet soda from the refrigerator, noting that Betty had gone shopping and stocked his refrigerator while he was gone. He carried the can of Coke to his bedroom and dumped the contents of the duffle bag on his bed, throwing the dirty clothes into the clothes basket in his closet along with the clothes he was wearing. He dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve dress shirt and worked the combination to his safe. He removed his Kimber CDP II, a compact .45 pistol with an aluminum frame and tritium sights. The single-action semiauto didn’t meet the specification for on-duty carry at OPD, but as much as he liked his Sig Sauer, if he had his druthers, he’d carry this gun instead. Super reliable, extremely accurate, and with its rosewood grips and two-tone finish, utterly beautiful. He threaded a holster onto his belt, loaded the Kimber with one round in the chamber and seven in the magazine, and pushed it into the dark-brown leather holster. He slid an extra magazine into the matching leather pouch on his left side and pulled a light-gray sport coat on over everything.

  As he was adding his credentials, notebook, flashlight, and other tools to his pockets, he heard Amber bark outside. He opened the living room door. She bounded inside with her tail wagging and plopped on the floor at his feet. He bent over and rubbed her belly. “Did you miss me?” he asked.

  She trotted into the kitchen and sat next to the sink. He filled a bowl of water and set it on the floor. She drank some and returned to the spot in front of the sink. He opened the cabinet doors and saw a box of dog biscuits in front of the soaps, detergents, and cleaners. “Looks like Betty bought you some goodies too,” he said as he opened the box and gave Amber one.

  He packed his briefcase and went out the back door to his Mustang with Amber at his heels. “I have to go to work, but I’ll be back soon. You be a good girl while I’m gone.” Amber trotted around the side of his house. As he drove down the driveway to the front gate, he saw her headed toward the mansion’s kitchen door.

  Once he got on the freeway, he called his mother. “Hello, Matt,” she said. “Still busy with your big case?”

  “Busier than ever. How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, as she always did. That was the nature of their conversations, telling each other how fine they were. “They’re allowing your father to go home tomorrow.”

  “Really? He must be doing better.”

  “He is. He’ll still have to take it easy for a while, but he should make a full recovery as long as he does what the doctors told him.”

  “Let me guess—eat healthier, stop smoking and drinking, and begin exercising.”

  “You could’ve been a doctor,” she said. “I think those were his exact words.”

  “Mom, I’ve got a question for you. Did Father really take Lucky to the vet that day when he was sick?”

  “That’s really coming out of the blue.”

  “The place where I’m living—the family just got a dog, and it got me thinking. Did he?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “How do you know?” he asked in the same cold and inquisitive manner he would ask a witness who claimed to know something about a crime.

  “Your father said he did. Plus, I saw the vet’s invoice and paid the bill.”

  “What exactly was wrong with him?”

  “He had a large tumor that was pressing on his heart. The vet did an ultrasound and saw it. The vet said he was in pain, and even if he could’ve operated, the cancer had spread too far.”

  “All that was on the invoice?”

  “Yes, and the shot to put him to sleep. I remember the bill was several hundred dollars. I told your father to never say a word about the money to you or your brother.”

  “What did they do with Lucky after they gave him the shot?”

  “The vet offered to cremate him, but your father insisted on burying him. We talked on the phone, and I told him about the spot down by the river you and Lucky used to go, where you said you taught Lucky to swim.”

  “Really?”

  “He buried him up on the bank and carried a bunch of river rocks up there and stacked them over the grave so that no animals could dig him up. After you and your brother left home, I had more free time and used to go for walks down there. The pile of rocks is still there.”

  Sinclair wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You and your brother never asked, and I figured you didn’t need to be reminded. I thought about getting another dog, but after Billy and then Lucky, I thought you boys had enough death to last a lifetime.”

  “And then I became a homicide detective,” he said.

  She laughed. “And then you became a homicide detective.”

  Chapter 51

  Sinclair arrived at the address Uppy had given him, a nondescript single-story building located in a nondescript business park on Capwell Drive five minutes from the Oakland Airport. A medical supply company’s sign was on the suite at the front of the building. Sinclair followed the parking lot to the rear and saw number 107 on a reinforced glass door. He pushed inside to a small foyer with a reception counter at the back and a camera mounted on the ceiling looking down at him. A stocky man stepped out of a doorway behind the counter. “May I help you?”

  “My name’s Matt Sinclair, looking for Ms. Archard.”

  “ID.”

  Sinclair produced his special deputy marshal creds.

  “Welcome, Matt. Hank Foster, FBI.” He held out his hand. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  Sinclair followed Foster into a large room containing about thirty cubicles with four-foot-high partitions. Roughly half were occupied. Five women and the rest men, some dressed in jeans, others in suits.

  Linda Archard rose from a chair in a cubicle near the front and approached him. She smiled—the first time he’d ever seen her smile. “Matt, call me Linda.” Dressed in a black pantsuit, she was in her midforties and wore her brown hair cut extremely short. “Hell of a caper down there in Hilton Head. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Thanks to Uppy.”

  “Yeah, it’s nice having a real street agent on our team. Let’s get you settled.” She escorted him to a workspace in the middle of the room. “This was Phil’s cubicle. We’ve gone through his computer and drawers. He didn’t keep any personal items here, but if you find a pack of gum or a cigar, I’m sure he’d want you to have them. Let me introduce you to the crew.”

  There were no private offices at the task force. It didn’t matter if you were an AUSA, a supervisory agent, a street agent, or an analyst—everyone got a cubicle the same size. The large room had a drop ceiling and florescent lighting, and the floor was covered with industrial-grade carpeting that looked so tough, you could probably play soccer on it and not see any wear. Sinclair met three assistant US attorneys, two FBI analysts, two deputy US marshals, and several agents from the FBI, homeland security, and IRS. Archard said he’d meet others when they returned from whatever they were doing in the field. She showed him a large conference room behind a closed door. Behind another closed door, two men wearing earphones sat behind computers with multiple monitors.

  “This is the wire room,” she said. “We have six agents assigned here, two on duty at a time.”

  “Whose phones are you up on?” Sinclair asked.

  “Business, home, and cell phones for Kozlov and Yates and a few other outliers.”

  “Getting anything good?”

  “We have enough for a RICO case on both of them with what they’ve said on the wire alone. Plus we’ve heard enough to seek grand jury indictments on a dozen other people who work for the city of Oakland and a bunch of other politicians and business executives.”

  “Any from OPD?”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “We recorded conversations between your police chief and Yates where Yates promised to keep him on as chief if he’s elected. Brown flatly refused some of Yates’s requests, such as opening investigations on opponen
ts and businesses when it was obvious their only crimes were being political enemies of Yates.”

  “What about shutting down my investigation?”

  Archard pursed her lips and said nothing for a moment. When she spoke, Sinclair could tell she was choosing her words carefully. “We weren’t up on the wire when he told you to leave Yates alone during your Thrill Kill investigation, so we don’t know what transpired. But Yates called him last week after you visited his wife. Brown said he’d look into his complaint and called him back to say you were reprimanded. When you dragged his campaign manager in, Yates called him again, very irate that time, and said that if Brown couldn’t control his officers, he’d find a chief who could when he became mayor.”

  “That’s what prompted the chief to take my badge and gun,” Sinclair said.

  “It wasn’t that simple. Brown told Yates that a homicide sergeant’s never been fired for following a lead on a murder investigation and that with your history of awards and commendations, firing you would look very bad. Yates came back saying that Brown might need to decide whether you stay in homicide or he stays in the police chief’s office.”

  “And then he came downstairs and relieved me.”

  “At that point we knew we could trust you.”

  Sinclair understood. “No talk about Phil’s murder?”

  “Brown asked Yates if he had any idea why you suspected his wife and campaign manager of having knowledge of Phil’s murder.” Archard led Sinclair from the wire room to a folding table inside the main room holding a coffeepot. “Yates said he didn’t, that it had to be your continuing vendetta to destroy his reputation over your obsession with a dead hooker.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got nothing solid on the chief.”

  Archard poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup and handed it to him. “When we initiated this investigation last year, US Attorney Campbell and I met with your chief, told him we were looking into possible corruption at City Hall, and asked for officers for the task force. He assigned Phil. In our first sit-down, Phil agreed to keep his briefings to Brown about the task force’s progress extremely vague.”

  “You’re telling me a police chief, conspiring with a crooked businessman and politician to cover up Phil’s murder for his own gain, will get away with it.”

  Archard smiled. “For now, let’s focus on Phil’s murder and taking down Kozlov and Yates.”

  Sinclair followed Archard to her cubicle, where he sat in a guest chair and sipped his coffee. “Uppy said I could continue working to find out who killed Phil.”

  Archard leaned back in her chair and crossed her right ankle over her knee. “I had one of our analysts pull together everything we know about the murder. That night, Shane Gibbs called Reggie Clement, who you know as Animal. Cell tower triangulation showed he was in the vicinity of Kozlov’s residence in Oakland. We can only pin it down to within two hundred yards. A few minutes later, Gibbs called Bobby Richards, the man known as Tiny. If we believe Phil was at Kozlov’s house and Gibbs either killed him or moved the body, then it’s likely he got some help either for the murder or to dispose of the body.”

  “We know Animal didn’t leave the bar,” Sinclair said.

  “That leaves Tiny as the likely accomplice. He only used his cell phone once since you chased him on that motorcycle.”

  “Jeez, you guys know about that too?”

  “You have the knack of leaving a wake of destruction in your path, so you’re not hard to track,” she said. “Tiny called a Tyrone Hammond a few hours after the chase.”

  “That’s T-bone. I arrested him on one of the Savage Simbas search warrants after the bar murder. He’s back out?”

  “Yeah, he bailed on the drug charges but didn’t show up for his court date. One of our surveillance teams has eyes on him. We could pick him up if you want to interview him again to see if he’ll tell you where to find Tiny.”

  “I’d like to have my partner with me on the interview.”

  “Uppy mentioned that. We’ve already vetted her, and Braddock’s about as straight and narrow as they come. If she comes over, it’s with conditions: I meet with her and feel her out first, she agrees to total nondisclosure, and we come up with a plausible excuse for her to be away from OPD without attracting attention.”

  “I’ll set up the meet,” Sinclair said.

  Chapter 52

  Sinclair ate the last bite of apple crisp pie and piled the plate on top of the one that had once held his double cheeseburger and fries. Denny’s was only a mile from the task force headquarters, so it had become a regular lunch spot for the Feds. After operating on about four hours of sleep over the past three days, Sinclair’s body needed fuel to keep going, and he wasn’t particular as to the quality of it right now. As long as he pumped in enough coffee to get him through the sluggish feeling that accompanied this much food, he should be good to go for a while longer.

  After they’d talked for forty-five minutes, Braddock said to Archard, “I’m in. I never use my kids as a work excuse, but this is an unusual situation. I’ll tell Jankowski my daughter’s really sick and I have to take her to the ER. He’ll tell the lieutenant if he has to. Have the files Sheila stole been useful?”

  Archard looked at her phone, scrolling through an e-mail, something she’d been doing every five minutes during lunch. “When Uppy sent me the link to her cloud drive last night, I immediately called in our IRS special agent and one of our bureau guys who understands financial crimes. All they could say after opening each file was, ‘Oh, my god.’ It would’ve taken them weeks to analyze everything Sheila provided, so I made a few phone calls and got a team of accountants and agents back in Washington to work on this. The last update says we can show the money trail connecting every target of our investigation.”

  “So this isn’t going to be one of your typical operations that goes on for years?” Sinclair asked.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” Archard said, “but we’ll have enough to make arrests, freeze assets and bank accounts, and hit a half dozen locations with search warrants by tonight if needed. I just don’t want to jump the gun if it’ll jeopardize your murder investigation.”

  “We could always continue to investigate after you make your case,” Braddock offered. “Charging some of the Simbas or people at Eastman Security federally could motivate them to talk.”

  “That never works,” Sinclair said. “They get an attorney, we sit in an office with the AUSA on one side and the suspect and his slime-bag attorney on the other, and the lawyers play Let’s Make a Deal, but nobody ever gives up a murderer.”

  Archard snatched up the check the second the waitress put it on the table, waved Sinclair away, and put her credit card down. “Honestly, who do you think killed Phil?”

  Sinclair preferred keeping an open mind and letting the evidence point him toward the right suspect. But the Feds needed to know what he was thinking if he expected their help. “I think Tiny might’ve been involved, but I suspect he and Gibbs were just the worker bees. The fact that Phil died from suffocation makes the issue of motive fuzzy. Kozlov and Yates had the motive to kill Phil to keep him from discovering what they were up to or to keep him quiet about whatever he already discovered.”

  “Do you really think they ordered the murder of a police officer?” Braddock asked. “They’re crooks and all, but killing a cop?”

  Sinclair held up his empty coffee cup to a passing waitress. Once she left he said, “I don’t know, but I don’t want to see a couple of foot soldiers take the fall if they’re not responsible.”

  “I’ll help any way I can,” Archard said. “What’s your plan?”

  “Have your guys bring in T-bone,” Sinclair said. “We’ll see if he can lead us to Tiny. Then we see what Tiny says and go from there.”

  Archard looked at her phone. “He’s waiting for you in an interview room. Shall we go?”

  *

  Two plainclothes deputy US marshals met them at the state parole office. Since the locati
on of the task force had to remain secret, they certainly couldn’t bring crime suspects or witnesses there, so they had an arrangement with the nearby parole office to use their interview rooms. Parolees filed into the office all day long to meet with their parole agents, so having a few additional seedy-looking people in the building was no problem.

  They had decided that Braddock should begin the interview to avoid any legal issues arising later because of Sinclair’s suspension. The interview room was larger and cleaner than the ones at the PAB, the tables were less scarred by graffiti, and the chairs were more comfortable. T-bone’s eyes opened wide when they entered the room.

  “Do you remember us?” Braddock asked as she and Sinclair sat down and opened their notebooks.

  “Fuck yeah. You two are like a bad toothache that just won’t go away.”

  “Remember when we talked last week and my partner here told you he wasn’t much concerned about drugs and guns?” Braddock asked.

  “And here I am. I was charged with drugs, and now you all arrest me because you say I missed my court date. My lawyer said he was gonna get it continued.”

  “Well, we’re still not concerned with drugs,” she said. “As a matter of fact, we’re not even concerned about Animal having murdered Shane.”

  T-bone’s face showed no surprise. Sinclair winked at Braddock.

  “My partner will tell you what we’re concerned with,” Braddock said.

  “The murder of a police officer,” Sinclair said.

  “I don’t know nothing about that.”

  “Let’s see,” Sinclair said. “Harboring a fugitive. Accessory to murder. Do you know who those two men were that picked you up and brought you here?”