Olivia hadn’t even confided in Will until recently, after one too many beers at the Hickory Pit. “Yeah. But you were eight.”
“And you are an officer of the law. You swore an oath to do the right thing.”
“The right thing. I thought I knew what that was. But how could the right thing end up so wrong?”
Olivia squeezed his arm. She drew him to her with those green eyes, the soft curve of her lips; pulled him straight into her gravitational field again, where he lost all common sense. No use fighting it, he leaned toward her.
She cleared her throat and returned her hands to the folder on her lap, sending him crashing back to earth. “I looked through the case file. I agree that those photos are the key.”
Still reeling, he managed to nod, while she produced the first snapshot and pointed to the pickle jar vase. “Poppies bloom in Northern California in early spring. Same for the yellow violets.”
“Hmph.” He hadn’t thought of that, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of admitting it. Not after he’d just embarrassed himself. “Any ideas about that last photo?”
“It’s so out of place with the others. These are all understated. Like she’s a quiet observer.” She flipped through the stack to the end, her voice darkening. “But this one. It’s jarring. It’s loud. It’s angry.”
He didn’t disagree. “So, what next? Let me guess, you want to go visit my father in Bernal Heights, to ask about those Confidential Informant receipts.”
Olivia passed the folder to Will and buckled her seatbelt, its definitive click the only answer he needed. “If you’re okay with it…”
He wouldn’t back out now, even if he wanted to. “It’s long overdue. But we should take your car, so I can’t chicken out.”
With a sympathetic smile, she steered them toward the tower, where he’d deposited his service weapon. “What about your case?” she asked.
“It can wait. I’ll see Winters after. Besides, I’m counting on you to break it wide open.”
“Should we have called first?” Olivia sounded as uncertain as Will felt. But he already had one foot out of the car door.
“It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid. Best to get it over with.”
She tucked the envelope full of receipts under her arm and followed him up a set of stairs which led from the sidewalk to the tiny patch of weeds that passed for a yard in San Francisco. A lawn chair took up most of the real estate, its thatched bottom sagging with age. Beneath it, a few beer bottles had been turned upside down and stuck into the earth. They leaned sideways like the markers in an old graveyard.
Will’s eyes lingered there but he didn’t slow down. They’d come here to ask her questions, but there were answers he needed as well.
He raised his fist to the door and summoned his past with three loud knocks.
Fifteen
The last time Will had stood on this porch there’d been a welcome mat. There’d been ferns in the planters and a fresh coat of yellow paint on the stucco. Grass, not beer bottles, growing in the front yard where his dog was buried.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Henry Decker glared at them from behind the screen door, the butt of a gun protruding from the waistband of his plaid pajama bottoms. Will wished he could hide, the way he and Petey had always ducked behind Ben.
“Nice to see you too, Dad.”
“I thought I made it clear you aren’t welcome here.” He opened the door anyway, just wide enough for Will to take in the sour smell of him. To spot the towering stack of newspapers by the recliner. To hear the drone of a police scanner, dispassionately delivering the bad news his father could never get enough of.
“Actually, what you said was, ‘You’re a disgrace to the badge, son. You’re not a Decker anymore.’” Will pointed to the shiny detective badge he’d clipped onto his waistband. It glinted in the sunlight. “Funny, I still have this. And you’re still pickled drunk.”
His father scoffed, his eyes darting to the watch on Will’s wrist. The one his dad had given him the day Will had taken his oath. “That badge is nothin’ more than a participation trophy. Like that watch I gave you. Just because you have it don’t mean you deserve it. I heard you let that serial killer, Devere, escape. You ever get wind of me letting any bad guys get away?”
“Congratulations. You were all about the job, and you lost your family in the process. Now look at you.”
“Is that why you came then? To judge me? You wait. Give it another thirty years. You’ll turn out just like your old man.”
Will burned from the inside out, his blood forged like steel and weighting him to the spot. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t. Just stood there like a tin man, daring himself to say something he’d really regret.
Olivia stepped up from behind him, pushing him aside. “I need to talk to you about Martin Reilly.”
“And just who do you think you—”
She silenced him, pointing to his signature on the expense voucher in her hand. “I’m Olivia Rockwell, Martin Reilly’s daughter. Judging by these receipts, he worked for you as a CI for at least two years. I think you owe me a conversation.”
“Do I now?” Age had only improved his father’s poker face. “I’m sixty-two years old. Forty years on the force, I had my fair share of informants. My memory ain’t what it used to be. And I don’t owe nobody a goddamned thing.”
“He was a member of the Oaktown Boys. They called him Mad Dog.”
“Mad Dog, huh? Wasn’t he the one who got busted up at the Double Rock for slicin’ up that hooker?”
Olivia nodded, impressing Will with a poker face of her own. Probably something they’d taught her in shrink school.
“And you say he worked as my informant, huh? Surprised he’s lasted this long in the joint.”
Will decided right then he’d sooner eat his gun than turn out like his dad. The brown eyes he had passed on to all three of his boys had gone cold as marbles. His chest, empty as a steel drum. Will imagined his father’s heart shriveled inside it like a raisin. He regretted bringing Olivia here, but she barreled on, determined as ever.
“Could you tell me what sort of information my father might have given you? Was it about the gang?”
“They call ’em CIs for a reason, honey. It’s confidential. You get it? Even if I could remember, I wouldn’t tell you. And I certainly wouldn’t tell that rat fink. What’s this all about, anyway?”
Will recoiled, absorbing his father’s blow like a jab to the face. Rat fink. At least he knew where he stood. Beneath the steel toe of his father’s boot, same as ever.
“My dad kept these receipts in a safety deposit box for twenty-seven years, hidden from me and my mom and my sister. There must be some reason for that.”
“Well, here’s an idea. Why don’t you just ask him?”
Olivia lowered her head, released a shaky breath. “I wish I could. He died yesterday in prison, serving time for a murder he didn’t commit. They said it was a suicide.”
“Let me guess. You don’t believe it.”
“I don’t know what to believe. That’s why I’m here. I’m sure you can understand wanting justice for someone you love. Even if that someone disappointed you.”
Grumbling, Will’s father waved them inside the door with strict instructions to not go snoopin’ around, while he disappeared into the back. Will didn’t move, a part of him still fearing the belt that had hung on a brass hook inside his parents’ bedroom. But Olivia stepped into the hallway, surveying the wall Will’s mother had hung floor-to-ceiling with family photographs, but was now peppered with faded, blank spaces. All evidence of Will’s existence, gone. Same as Petey’s. Only a few pictures of Ben remained.
Olivia looked back at Will with questioning eyes.
He’s an asshole, Will mouthed. I’m sorry.
She kept his gaze, even as she called out to his father. “Is this you in your dress blues, Mr. Decker?”
His father surprised him, rounding the corner wit
h a binder in his hand and a sheepish grin on his face. “That’s the day we got married. My Virginia was always a sucker for a man in uniform. Now, have a look at this, will ya.”
A pile of unopened mail tumbled to the hardwood as his father swept his hand across the console table to clear a space. “SFPD started a gang task force back in 1990. They put me in charge. I reckon that’s why I recruited Mad Dog. If I recall, he was a heavy hitter back in those days.”
“I can’t imagine my dad breathing a word to the cops. He never met a law he didn’t break. Or a cop he didn’t run from.”
His dad’s hearty chuckle came as another surprise. “Everybody has a price. Back then, Oaktown was just makin’ a name for themselves. There were a lot of power plays at the top. I still remember the day we arrested Chris Desoto. They called him Baby Face, on account of those cheeks he had, chubby as a newborn’s. A numbskull name for a gangster, if you ask me.”
As Will’s father bent his balding head, busying himself turning the sheet protectors inside the binder, Will craned his neck to see into the living room. His dad still hadn’t gotten rid of the patterned sofa they’d climbed on as kids. They’d used the cushions for fort-building and whacking each other senseless. They’d burned a hole in the arm, lighting up the cigars they’d snuck from their father’s nightstand. And once, they’d left their mother there, sleeping, to play baseball at the park down the street, and come back to find her gone without a trace, their dog Max whining at the door.
Will shook his head, scattering the memories, sending them back down the hole where he’d banished them. He focused on the soothing, flat tone of the police scanner in the background. When he located the source of the sound—a laptop computer balanced on the sofa’s giant arm—he took several surreptitious steps toward it, gaping in disbelief.
First, that a stubborn dinosaur like his father had learned to use the Internet. But mostly, at the screen itself, and the large block print, which read: Now Playing: Fog Harbor Police. Beside the computer on an index card, his father had printed a list of frequencies from several major cities in Northern California as well as tiny Fog Harbor.
“Found it!” His dad smacked the page with his palm, cracking the air like a starter pistol. Will’s heart beat even faster. “You might be interested in this one.”
San Francisco Post
“Oaktown Boys Gang Member Arrested in Brutal Slaying”
by Bobby Long
San Francisco police arrested Christopher “Baby Face” Desoto in the gang-related shooting of Jorge Pedron, who was gunned down outside his home in the Mission District. Desoto was known to police as the leader of the Oaktown Boys street gang, whose members have been linked to an increase in violent crime and drug trafficking in the Double Rock Projects in downtown San Francisco. Pedron was identified as a high-ranking member of the rival Los Diabolitos street gang.
Pedron’s murder had remained unsolved for several months until detectives received a tip from a confidential informant identifying an eyewitness in the investigation, as well as the location of the murder weapon, a Smith and Wesson .38 Special Revolver, found in the air-conditioning vent of an abandoned building in the Tenderloin District.
The motive for the shooting remains under investigation but San Francisco Police Detective Henry Decker, who arrested Desoto early this morning, called the crime gang-related. “Since Desoto took over the Oaktown Boys, they’ve terrorized the Double Rock and started an all-out war with Los Diabolitos. We’re lucky an informant came forward to help us get this monster off the streets before he hurt someone else.”
Sixteen
Olivia snapped a photo of the San Francisco Post article with her cell phone. She kept her focus there, preferring it to the steely brown eyes of Henry Decker. “Was my father the informant?”
“Can’t say I recall for certain.” He tapped his head with his finger. “I told you this old thing doesn’t work like it used to. But if he ratted out Desoto trying to claw his way to the top, he would’ve had a target on his back. Snitches get stitches, you know.”
She winced at the sudden image of her father on the autopsy table. “If you think of anything…”
“I don’t do much thinking these days. But if something pops up, I’ll let you know.”
Olivia saw the tension tightening Deck’s shoulders as she followed him to the door. With his hand on the knob, he spun suddenly, glaring at his dad. “Why are you spying on me?”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
Deck pointed back toward the living room. “You don’t want anything to do with me, but you’ve got Fog Harbor on your police scanner. Sounds like somebody can’t get his story straight.”
“Just waitin’ for your next screw-up. I heard about that body you found in the barrel up there. Helluva thing. You ID the vic yet?”
Deck’s jaw tensed. It seemed his father knew exactly where to aim and exactly when not to stop.
“That’s what I thought. You know what I taught you. If you know the victim, you know the killer. You gotta figure out what a young pregnant girl was doing up there in the middle of nowhere. I’d start with the guy that knocked her up, if you can find him. Husbands, boyfriends, lovers. That’s always a sure bet. But then, what do I know? You never did listen to me. Probably why you didn’t last in the big city. Did ya hear Amy Bishop’s got your job now? How’s that feel?”
With a guttural groan, Deck pushed through the door, slamming it behind him so hard the pictures rattled on the wall.
“It’s probably not my place to say this—” Olivia mustered the courage to turn around and face Henry Decker.
“Then don’t.” Two words spoken in a voice hard as nails. But a familiar pain softened his eyes.
She wouldn’t look away again. “The only thing anger will get you is a lifetime of regret. Take it from someone who knows.”
Olivia kept quiet as she drove away from the Decker house in Bernal Heights, taking her directions from the monotone voice of the GPS. At least it made the silence less awkward. Kept her attention on the road ahead of her, not lost in her thoughts, branching like paths in a maze. At the elusive center, Martin Reilly: Father, gang member, police informant.
Deck’s eyes hadn’t moved from the folder in his lap. He’d been reviewing the same police report for the last ten minutes, occasionally huffing out a frustrated breath.
Olivia risked a glance in his direction. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“About which part? Me storming out? The beer bottle garden? Him calling me a rat? Or the laptop police scanner tuned to Fog Harbor?”
“Isn’t that a good thing? The scanner, I mean.”
He cocked his head at her, unsmiling, as she made the final turn down the crowded Embarcadero, nearing Second Chance Halfway House, a high-rise building across the street from Pier 25. Your destination will be on the right.
“I mean it. He’s checking up on you, giving you advice. Your dad still cares even if he doesn’t show it.”
“Didn’t you hear him? He’s just waiting for me to fail so he can rub it in. Did you forget his parting shot?”
The fire in Henry Decker’s voice was impossible to forget. “Who’s Amy?”
Another drawn-out sigh.
“That bad, huh?”
“The day after I testified, she chucked her engagement ring out the window. It fell into a storm drain, and I had to bribe a city worker to fish it out. So, you tell me.”
“Ouch.” Olivia smirked. “How many carats?”
“One and a half.”
“She must’ve really hated you.”
“Thanks,” he deadpanned. “You sure do know how to make a guy feel better.”
“I wasn’t finished.” She gazed at her own ringless finger, remembering the two-carat monstrosity her ex-husband, Erik, had bought her with his father’s money. Too bad the vows he’d said after he’d slipped it on her finger had been worth less than cubic zirconia. “Amy is obviously not that smart. Or she would�
�ve kept the ring and pawned it like I did.”
He raised his eyebrows, the clouds lifting from his face. “You’re saying it could’ve been worse then?”
“At least you didn’t catch her in a broom closet with a bridesmaid.” It was out of her mouth before she could stop it. The memory, too, untethered; Erik’s mouth lingering near the neck of her bridesmaid. Just helping pack up the gifts, he’d said. As if that explained the lipstick on his collar, his zipper undone.
“True.” Deck paused for a beat. “Though some lesser men might be into that.”
Chuckling, Olivia pointed up ahead at the sign for Second Chance. Pulling into an open parking spot near the door, she felt a tiny spark of life inside her weary heart. At least she could help Deck find this poor girl’s killer. “Ready to have a go at Winters?”
“I think you should wait in the car.”
“Chief Flack made me a part of the team, remember?” Olivia’s quick thinking in the Seaside Strangler case had earned her the chief’s respect, along with a permanent spot as Fog Harbor PD’s resident forensic psychologist.
“As a profiler. Not a cop. You’ll have to leave Chuck Winters to me. I do the interviewing.”
Olivia kept pace with Deck as he hurried toward the building on the corner. Second Chance Halfway House, halfway between prison and the free world. She couldn’t argue with him. But she couldn’t stay in the car either, alone with her thoughts. “Who said anything about interviewing?”
“Just reminding you, I’m the detective.”
“Pretty hard to forget with that badge clipped to your belt. But it’s the chip on your shoulder that really gives you away. Is that standard issue?”
He waited until they reached the door to level her with those brown eyes. “I thought you liked a man in uniform.”
“What gave you that idea?” Technically, she’d never witnessed Deck in his dress blues, but that didn’t mean she and her friend, Leah, hadn’t scavenged the Internet after a few glasses of wine. They’d hit the jackpot with a photo from an SFPD fundraising gala a few years back. And now, Olivia had a name for the pretty brunette she’d seen on his arm: Amy.
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