Shallow Grave

by Brian Thiem

  “They said they US marshals. And why they bring me here? I’m no parolee.”

  “You know what the US marshals do, T-bone?”

  “They arrest federal fugitives and shit.”

  “That’s right. Did you know the police officer you guys killed was also a federal agent?”

  “I didn’t kill no one,” T-bone said. “What you mean, federal agent?”

  “That’s why the US marshals are working with us. This is a federal crime. And we’re talking here so we can protect your confidentiality and not parade you through the police station or the FBI office.”

  T-bone nodded. Sinclair continued, “What we want to know is why you, Shane, and Tiny killed a federal agent.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! I didn’t kill no one,” T-bone said. “And who’s Tiny?”

  Sinclair leaned across the table toward T-bone. “I can accept you denying the murder—that’s what people do. But don’t insult my intelligence by denying you know Tiny.” Sinclair slid a photo of Bobby Richards in front of him. “This is the Savage Simbas Motorcycle Club member nicknamed Tiny. This is the man who I chased on a motorcycle in Concord last week. This is the man who called you after that to come and rescue him.”

  “Now I know you lying,” T-bone said. “I know Tiny. ’Course I do. But it was two HAs chased him in Concord. Not the police.”

  “Maybe one of them was a Hells Angel. Don’t you think the FBI has informants in the HAs? Don’t you think we could get one of our informants in the Angels to introduce us to people who knew Tiny? And tell us where Tiny was eating barbecue? Then Tiny took off. The HA with his fancy bike crashed. I was the other guy, the one on the old Heritage Softail. The one who outrode Tiny on his high-powered chopper. The guy who caught up to him on every corner because Tiny can’t ride. The guy who pushed him so hard that he lost control and dropped his bike and then ran off like a little bitch before the police came.”

  T-bone sat there quietly.

  “I know Tiny told you all this, but he didn’t know it was us chasing him,” Sinclair continued. “If you can’t see that you’re mixed up in something way bigger than you, you’re pretty dumb, T-bone.”

  “I didn’t know Tiny was a federal fugitive when I came and got him.”

  “I can probably get the US attorney and the DA to believe that,” Sinclair said.

  “And I had nothing to do with that cop that was killed. I wasn’t even there. It was an accident is what it was.”

  “A police sergeant working as a federal agent was shot in the head and it was an accident?” Sinclair asked.

  “Lookie here. Shane is working for some white dude. Driving him and watching his back. Something happens with the officer—or whatever he was—and Shane’s gun goes off. They can’t just leave him there. Get the man Shane’s working for in trouble. So he calls Tiny to come help him. Tiny and him load him in the van and go bury him. They didn’t even know he was a cop until after he was dead. He was black. How they supposed to know he was police? Tiny said he had an Oakland police badge. Didn’t say nothing about him being a federal agent.”

  “If you weren’t there, how do you know this?”

  “Tiny told me. When I picked his ass up in Concord, he tells me all this. Shane was supposed to get a bunch more money from the man for burying the officer and stuff and split it with Tiny. Then he ends up dead. Tiny now shit out of luck. He gets nothing, and now he has to hide from the police, from the HAs, from the Simbas. From everyone.”

  Sinclair pressed him for another fifteen minutes, asking him where the shooting occurred, the name of the man Shane was driving for, and any additional details, but T-bone continued to deny knowing anything further. “The only person who can verify what you told me is Tiny,” Sinclair finally said. “Where can we find him?”

  “Oh, man. I ain’t no snitch.”

  “Look, T-bone, everybody is in this mess because of the people actually responsible. They’re getting away with it and leaving the blame on dudes like you. You didn’t do shit but pick up Tiny and listen to his story. Tiny only helped a friend move a body. Shane shot the officer, and since Shane’s dead, he can’t take the blame. This man he was working for, who might be the one really responsible, is probably sitting at home watching TV with his wife, not a care in the world because everyone else is taking the fall for him.”

  “He’s staying with his cousin, Crystal. Girl he grew up with out on Sunnyside.”

  Sinclair copied down Crystal’s full name, her address, the description of her house, and everything T-bone knew about the house and occupants. They left the two marshals to babysit T-bone and drove back to the task force headquarters.

  When they walked inside, Archard was sitting in her cubicle with Uppy, who had just arrived from the airport. Sinclair filled them in on T-bone’s interrogation.

  “These two dudes are for real, Matt?” Uppy asked. “T-bone and Tiny. You’re not making up these names, are you? And T-bone is like two-fifty, yet a man named Tiny’s the bigger one?”

  Sinclair needed the laugh. “If I were gonna make up fake witnesses, I’d be more original.”

  Archard remained serious. “Do you believe him?”

  “It fits with what we know,” Sinclair said. “The round grazed Phil’s scalp and probably rendered him unconscious. The doc said he could’ve appeared dead to a casual observer. Cause of death was suffocation, resulting from putting the garbage bag over his head. Shane saying it was an accident fits. But this is double hearsay. We’ve got Shane telling Tiny what happened before he got there, who then tells T-bone.”

  “If we pick up Tiny and he tells the same story, all we still have is hearsay,” Archard said. “So aren’t we just wasting our time?”

  Sinclair shrugged. “We won’t know until we talk to him. He might’ve given T-bone a line of shit. He might tell us he was there. Maybe he was even the one who pulled the trigger and Shane only helped move the body.”

  “Let’s go and see if he’s home,” Archard said.

  Chapter 53

  They waited at the city park four blocks from Crystal’s house in the 9200 block of Sunnyside. Sinclair and Braddock were in their OPD car, with Braddock driving. Uppy and Archard were in a bureau car driven by Uppy. Sinclair got out and stood outside Uppy’s car, listening to him talk on the radio as another task force team fed him details of the house from his recon of the area.

  Uppy gathered the four of them together for a briefing. Even though Archard was the supervisor, she didn’t try to take over. She reminded Sinclair of Maloney in that way, both supervisors who knew their limitations and trusted their subordinates to do what they did best. Maybe she wasn’t the bitch he’d thought she was last year and, like Phil, was just doing her job when she had iced him out when he was pressing her for information.

  “We don’t have a warrant, so it’ll be a knock and talk,” Uppy said. “If Tiny’s in a public place or we’re invited inside, we can arrest him on probable cause. We’ll try to talk him into the back seat of a car rather than fight him. We don’t want to advise OPD we’re here, so let’s not get into the shit where we need to call the cavalry out to rescue us. Linda and I will meet the other two agents in front of the house and go to the front door. Matt and Cathy, I want you guys out of sight in case OPD does come by. You’ll take the back, just in case Tiny decides to squirt out when we put pressure on the front. Questions?”

  They all nodded their understanding. “We’re not anticipating trouble, but let’s vest up just in case,” Archard said.

  Braddock popped their trunk, and he was glad to see she still carried his gear. They pulled on their vests and slapped the Velcro straps in place. Braddock was pulling on her OPD raid jacket when Archard came around the back of their car with two FBI windbreakers. “If anyone calls in, all I want them to be able to report is people in jackets with big yellow FBI letters. Remember, you’re not OPD today, so practice in your head yelling, ‘FBI, stop! FBI, drop the gun!’”

  They pulled the wi
ndbreakers over their vests and trailed Uppy’s car down the street. Sinclair had been in this neighborhood hundreds of times in his career. He’d handled several homicide scenes on this street alone over the years, every one of them drug related. As they crept down the street, he felt the eyes of the neighborhood watching them, wondering whose house they were going to hit, who they were going to haul off to jail, or whose drug stash they were going to seize.

  The intersection of Ninety-Fourth and Sunnyside was empty, the street corner dealers normally camped out there long gone. If the dealers knew they were the FBI, they wouldn’t have been concerned; the FBI doesn’t hit corners and chase down drug dealers.

  Uppy stopped behind the bureau car that was scouting the area. The four FBI agents got out and walked up to the house. Sinclair and Braddock followed with guns drawn. Like most houses in this neighborhood, a low chain link fence surrounded the front yard. As the agents walked toward the front door, Sinclair and Braddock peeled off and crept down the side of the small stucco house toward the back.

  The rear door was covered with a metal security gate, and bars covered the windows. Three concrete steps led out of the house to the backyard, which was nothing but dirt and weeds with rusted bicycles and old car tires scattered about. Sinclair couldn’t find any decent cover from where they could see the back door, so he knelt at the corner of the house, his gun trained on the back door. Braddock stood over him with her gun pointed in the same direction.

  Sinclair heard the agents knocking at the front door and the buzz of an old-fashioned doorbell from within the house. Voices at the front door. Uppy and then a woman. “FBI? What you want? Tiny? Who’s that?” Footsteps headed their way. Heavy footsteps.

  The back door sprang open. A huge black man appeared in the doorway, every bit of the six foot six and two hundred eighty pounds that his driver’s license indicated. He stood on the doorstep for a second. Blue jeans, leather boots, black T-shirt. No weapons in his hand, only a black duffle bag slung over one shoulder.

  Sinclair wasn’t concerned that this big man would be able to leap the back fence and lose him in a foot chase. Better to allow him to get all the way out of the house and fight him in open ground if that’s how he wanted to go rather than let him slink back inside the cramped interior of the house. Sinclair ducked out of sight around the corner so Tiny would think he had an open escape route.

  A few seconds later, the metal door slammed shut. Sinclair stepped around the corner with his gun up. Braddock followed at his side. Tiny stood ten feet away, halfway to the corner of the house where he thought his escape route was clear.

  “Tiny, you’re too big to fight,” Sinclair said firmly. “So if you don’t put your hands up right now, I’m going to shoot you.”

  Tiny dropped the duffle bag and put his hands in the air.

  *

  While Tiny sat in an interview room at state parole, Sinclair spread out his belongings on a desk outside. They’d searched him and removed a cell phone, wallet, and a ring of keys from his pockets. Sinclair went through the wallet but found nothing interesting. He missed the days when they could search a suspect’s cell phone incident to an arrest, but the Supreme Court recently decided police now needed consent or a warrant. Another time-consuming hurdle to do their job. He unzipped the duffle bag and pulled out shirts, underwear, and socks. He removed a pair of jeans, laid them on the table, and unrolled them. Inside was a compact Glock pistol and an Oakland police sergeant’s badge etched with Phil’s badge number.

  Braddock hugged him. Her eyes were welling up. “We got him, Matt,” she said. “We got Phil’s killer.”

  Sinclair wished it were that simple. They needed more. Sinclair got a pair of gloves and evidence bags from one of the marshals babysitting T-bone. Sinclair unloaded Phil’s gun, noting it was still fully loaded and hadn’t been fired. He placed the magazine and cartridges in a bag, the gun in another bag, and the badge in a third.

  When they began working together two years ago, Sinclair would never have allowed Braddock to lead a suspect interview when the outcome was so critical. Her anxiety and apprehension would’ve been all over her face. But Braddock was no longer that rookie homicide investigator. They discussed their strategy for a few minutes and entered the room.

  Tiny had moved a chair to the corner of the room where he sat facing the door. “Mr. Richards, would you stand up, please?” When he did, Braddock moved the chair back to the table, patted it, and said, “Please have a seat.”

  Tiny sat down, looked at Sinclair on his right, and turned to face Braddock on his left. She placed a tape recorder in the center of the table and turned it on, opened her notebook, and slid out a legal pad and a statement form containing the Miranda warning. Even though the room was cool, Tiny was sweating profusely.

  “Mr. Richards, my name is Sergeant Braddock. I’m assigned to the homicide unit of the Oakland Police Department. This is my partner, Sergeant Sinclair, who is now assigned to an FBI federal task force.”

  “I don’t—”

  Braddock held up her hand, and Tiny stopped speaking. “There will be plenty of time for you to talk later, but right now we need to complete some formalities. I’ll ask the questions, okay?” She smiled.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She went through the standard routine: name, date of birth, address, and other questions. She slowly printed his responses on her legal pad and the statement form. She set her pen on the table. “Mr. Richards, you’re being detained right now as a suspect in a homicide investigation. The murder of Oakland police sergeant Phil Roberts. You are not free to leave.”

  “I know you went through my bag and found his stuff,” Tiny said. “I swear to God, I didn’t kill him.”

  Braddock patted him on his huge forearm and smiled. “We want to hear what happened and how you came into possession of a murdered police officer’s gun and badge, but under the law, we must first read you your rights. Is that okay?”

  Braddock’s smile and soft voice drew Tiny in. She conveyed empathy in a way Sinclair never could. She read him his rights and asked, “Do you understand each of these rights I have read to you?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Is there any part you’d like me to read again or any part you don’t understand that I can explain to you?”

  “No, I understand.”

  She smiled again. “Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us now?”

  “I want to tell you I didn’t kill your friend.”

  “And we’ll be glad to listen. First I’d like you to place your initials on the form in these two places and sign your name here.”

  Chapter 54

  Although their strategy had called for Sinclair taking over the interview once Braddock got Tiny to waive his rights, she’d developed such a good rapport with Tiny, he signaled for her to continue. She started with questions about his background to keep him relaxed and talking. People like to talk about themselves, and Braddock had a way of making people feel like she truly cared about getting to know them better. Tiny had started tinkering with motorcycles when he was twelve. He worked as a mechanic for Oakland Harley Davidson for a few years but left after he got into an argument with the manager. He went to work for Irish Mike part time while doing motorcycle service, repairs, and custom engine modifications for club members on the side. His goal was to save up enough money to open his own shop one day. Tiny had worked the afternoon of the murder at Irish Mike’s shop. He quit at six o’clock, went out for dinner, and came back to drink beer with the guys when Shane called him around eight.

  “Shane was talking a million miles a minute. Said he took Animal’s place on some security job and there was a horrible accident. Shane called Animal, but he said it was his mess so he had to clean it up. Animal told him to get me to help.”

  “Did he say what the accident was?” Braddock asked.

  “Not then, only to bring my van and some shovels.”

  “To where?”

  �
�He texted me the address.”

  “Is it still on your phone?” Braddock asked.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Can we look at your phone to see?”

  “Yeah, whatever it takes to prove I didn’t do this.”

  Sinclair left the room and returned with Tiny’s phone. He loved how smoothly Braddock had gotten his consent to search it. Tiny scrolled through his messages and handed the phone to Braddock. She looked at it and handed it to Sinclair. Kozlov’s home address.

  “What happened next?” Another open-ended question to avoid leading him in any given direction.

  “I drove there. Parked on the street. Started walking up to the house. Fancy place. White neighborhood. Shane was on the side of the house. Yelled my name when he saw me. There, under some trees, behind some bushes, was a body. Shane said he saw this man sneaking around with a camera. Man was black, so he knew he didn’t belong in the neighborhood. Shane pulled out his gat and grabs the man. The man and him wrestle and bang! Shane said it was an accident. Shane said people from the house came out when they heard the shot. They found his police badge and said he was dead.”

  “Why didn’t they call nine-one-one?”

  “Shane said he wanted to, but the white man said if they called an ambulance, the police would come and they’d all get in trouble. Besides, the bullet hit him in the head, so he was dead.”

  “When you got there, how’d you know he was dead?” she asked.

  “He’s lying there in the dirt, blood all over his head, not breathing.”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t breathing?”

  “It’s not like I checked or nothing. But he ain’t moving at all. I didn’t see his chest going up and down. And Shane said he’s dead.”

  “Who else besides Shane was there?”

  “The white man I told you about and a Mexican lady. Both standing there by Shane.”

  “What did the man look like?”

  “About forty, pale, like he never goes in the sun, small, skinny, dark-blond hair.”