Tom Reed Thriller Series

by Rick Mofina

  All in less than a minute.

  In Chang’s case, it took thirty-seven seconds before the hardened face of a white man glowered from her monitor. She went to the offender’s central file summary and read quickly through his offenses.

  Good Lord. He was released as a PC 290. Sex offender.

  She reached for her telephone. Her supervisor had cleared her to call the primary detective immediately once she had a hit. It was 1:30 A.M. but the line was answered on the first ring.

  “Inspector Sydowski?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nancy Chang. I got a match on a print from the garage. Got a pen?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Delmar James Tribe.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Delmar James Tribe.

  Sydowski studied his CDC photos and read his file.

  Born June 12, 1964, in Tampa, Florida. Height: six feet three inches. Weight: 230 pounds. Race: white. Hair: brown. Eyes: brown. Nationality: American. Aliases: Paul Ager, Robert Franklin, Jack Soller, Mitchell Cantu. Occupations: former sergeant, U.S. Marines, truck driver, construction worker, explosives/demolitions expert. Scars and Marks: missing left earlobe. Tattoos: one left forearm, cobra coiled around a sword on upper left arm, the words No Surrender. On right forearm, The Grim Reaper. On upper right arm, a broken heart in hell.

  “Heads up, everybody.” SFPD Lieutenant Leo Gonzales arrived and kick-started the task force’s early-morning case-status meeting. “Let’s make it quick. Go, Walt.”

  Investigators from the SFPD, FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, U.S. Marshals Service, California Justice, California Department of Corrections, and several other agencies flipped through their copy of Tribe’s file as Sydowski updated them.

  “Shortly after we got the hit on Tribe’s prints we went back on some of Merida’s crew about three A.M.”

  Gonzales held up his hand.

  “For the new faces just coming to this, Merida is a.k.a. Caesar, the drug dealer with the link to Carrie Dawn Addison, our desert homicide who was a clerk at Deluxe Jewelry.”

  Sydowski said, “Merida’s people gave us statements. They said Tribe and the dead driver, Driscoll, knew each other from Folsom, that Tribe was the white boy who saved Jorge’s ass inside. Merida’s guys said Tribe and Driscoll met Merida four or five times to discuss the jewelry store and Carrie Addison. Tribe was accompanied by an unidentified white male who was in charge of the robbery operation.”

  Sydowski hadn’t shaved. He scratched his silver-white stubble.

  “Everybody ran Tribe’s aliases. We got a hit on one, Jack Soller. It was for a traffic beef across the bay. The Soller hit gave CDC and Sacramento an East Bay PO box used by Jack Soller. When they dropped the address through their health and human services data banks they found a prescription check for Delmar James Tribe was sent to the same PO Box.”

  As Sydowski continued, Turgeon carefully reread Tribe’s criminal history to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.

  While posted to Kaneohe Bay at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Sergeant Tribe followed a female corporal from a bar, dragged her into an alley. She fought him, managing to bite off his left earlobe before he raped her, slit her throat, and set her on fire. She survived. After a court martial, Tribe was sentenced to eight years in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

  Upon release, Tribe joined an anti-government militia group. He was suspected but never charged in a spree of armed bank robberies in California, Utah, Florida, Colorado, and Texas. His signature was the use of trip-wired hand grenades. In those offenses, a fifty-five-year-old manager in Los Angeles lost his right hand. In Miami, a twenty-four-year-old teller was blinded. Tribe was also suspected in several violent sexual assaults.

  According to the facts of his last offense, Tribe was arrested and charged after he raped, then stabbed a twenty-six-year-old San Diego real estate agent with a letter opener from her purse. The assault took place in the agent’s family van. She had parked in the lot of a suburban mall where she’d gone shopping for a stroller for her twin baby girls. Portions of the offense were recorded on the lot’s security cameras.

  The mother survived. She testified against Tribe. But his public defender made a compelling case for Tribe’s history of abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father, which led to drug addictions and Tribe’s lifelong mental problems. The jury never heard about Tribe’s criminal history.

  The mother was permanently disfigured, her marriage ended under the stress. Her wounds required her to endure the rest of her life with the aid of a colostomy bag.

  Tribe was given a six-year sentence.

  A psychiatric assessment described him as a violent, sadistic sexual predator. It cautioned that while he presented a facade of harmless charm, he was a psychotic sociopath prone to flashes of uncontrolled, homicidal rage. There was an excerpt of what Tribe told a psychiatrist about his behavior: “Each woman I met wanted me. What I never understood was why they lied about it. It pissed me off. They didn’t deserve to live for what they did to me.”

  There was a supplemental note that said Tribe loved collecting reptiles. He was partial to snakes and was known to attend shows or join clubs and talked of establishing a reptile farm in Central or South America.

  And Tribe was the normal one.

  That’s what Merida’s crew told them last night. Turgeon finished reading, took a breath, and looked out the window. She watched a pigeon perched on the sill. She went to her notes. They didn’t know a single thing about Tribe’s mystery partner. Not yet. She closed Tribe’s folder.

  McDaniel gave the FBI’s update.

  “So far from our work through the jewelry and gem database, none of the stolen product has emerged. But we’ve picked up several leads on the potential buyers in New York, Chicago, Houston, Boston, Detroit, Miami, and Atlanta. We’re aware dealers will tip us to bring heat on a competitor.”

  “So where do you go with that?” Sydowski said.

  “We’re circulating Tribe’s information and we’ve started the process of getting search warrants in all the listed jurisdictions for all the telephone numbers of the potential buyers,” McDaniel said.

  Gonzales turned to Kay Lowenstein, a supervisor with the California Department of Corrections in Sacramento, for a report.

  “Tribe was released on supervised parole three years ago. He was PC 290 and registered. The Board of Prison Terms and his parole agent indicate he met all conditions and counseling requirements. Complied with his drug test schedule and was clean. No violations,” Lowenstein said, meaning he was not our mistake.

  “Except we don’t have a valid address for him?” Turgeon said. “Parole and community services is required to keep an accurate location history.”

  “Would you like me to stop to debate parole agent caseload with you now, Inspector Turgeon? Tribe satisfied the requirements of his parole conditions. He obviously intended to deceive us on his last address.”

  Sydowski got between them. “Please continue, Kay.”

  “Folsom is assembling an inmate list to give us a pool of whom Tribe may have associated with, or which gangs he was allied with, while serving his sentence. Bearing in mind that Folsom is a level-four maximum-security institution with a shifting inmate population of some three thousand, this could take time. They’re focusing on C Yard, where he did much of his sentence.”

  “What about his employers, his circles on the outside, all the people in addiction counseling groups? He may have befriended his partner in rehab,” McDaniel said.

  “Tribe’s parole agent is on it.” Lowenstein closed her file.

  “Anyone or anything else before we get back to work?” Sydowski said.

  McDaniel stated the FBI was expecting Tribe’s court-martial transcripts, his Leavenworth records, and his Marine records from St. Louis. “We'll go through his unit albums, his entire file for associates. NIS and the U.S. Marshals Service is helping us find his buddies who testified in his defense.”

  McDaniel pulle
d his cell phone from his pocket, read an e-mailed alert to the task force. “A federal arrest warrant by the United States District Court, Northern District of California, has just been issued for Delmar James Tribe,” McDaniel added. “I’ve talked to our NHQ, we’ll get the ball rolling to put him on the FBI’s Most Wanted list today. “

  “We’re set,” Gonzales said. “We’ll hold a news conference as soon as we can to put out everything we have on Tribe. His picture, his history, we’ll get it out across the country. Finally, before we get back to work, I just want to remind everyone of the obvious. Tribe is only one half of our problem. We need to nail down his partner to double our chances of grabbing them, finding Ann Reed.”

  Files were collected, cell phones were put to use, as the meeting broke.

  “Walt, can I see you?” Turgeon pulled Sydowski aside. “We’d better tell Reed about Tribe, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, he’s going to find out. Might as well be from us.”

  “How do we tell him this? After what he’s been through?”

  “We just tell him, Linda, that’s all we can do.”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  The thread of hope named Angela had disappeared into the night on the Oakland waterfront. And the vehicle that had been watching them had pulled away when they spotted it.

  “Tom, maybe this whole thing was a setup,” Wilson said as they drove back to San Francisco.

  “She was too specific about Donnie Ray Ball.”

  “But someone was watching.”

  “Could’ve been police. I don’t care. I’ve got to follow this. Let’s go to the paper.”

  “Now?”

  Reed shot Wilson a look. She pushed the gas pedal and the city loomed.

  The Star newsroom was deserted. They smelled micro-waved popcorn wafting over the sea of empty desks, silent keyboards, and computer monitors whose screen savers flickered in the tranquility.

  Chad, the twenty-year-old news assistant, was the sole person on duty. His Nikes were crossed atop an early edition on the metro assignment editor’s desk. He was reclined on the swivel chair in front of the big-screen TV, watching a John Wayne movie. A portable police scanner clattered next to him, its sound turned low. More interested in keeping his mouth filled with popcorn, Chad glanced at Reed and Wilson. Reed detected a pungent hint of marijuana.

  “Paper’s gone to bed. What’s up, man?”

  “We’re not here.”

  “Hope they find your wife, Reed, so you can kick some serious ass.”

  Wilson went to the coffee room to make a fresh batch. Reed went directly to his desk, logged on to the Star’s computerized article archives, uncertain if they went back far enough to contain that series he did. Scrolling through story after story. It was hard to concentrate.

  Think hard. Stories from way back, about guys thinking they got away with murder. The guy is in your stories—you met him.

  Trouble was, Reed had written hundreds, maybe thousands of stories on crime, murders, rapes, robberies, fires, quakes, mud slides, victims, criminals, profiles, trends, reports, investigations, features on tragedies, anniversaries, and executions. He searched subject, keywords, checking dates, names, or bizarre aspects that stood out. Data flowed by in a blurry river of information. It’s in here. It’s just got to be in here. You met him.

  Reed had met thousands of people. Interviewed them at their homes, offices, schools, jobs, at crime scenes, at hospitals, at funerals, the cemeteries, courthouse steps, and prisons.

  So many.

  It was true. He’d carry the details of some stories until the day he died. Like the way a mother cradles the picture of her murdered child, the way a belly chain sounds when a convicted murderer sits down for his interview on death row, or the way a gun pressed to your head feels when a drug dealer has his finger on the trigger.

  Still, there were stories he couldn’t recall until, for one reason or another, the actual article he wrote popped up in his face.

  “Here, Tom.” Wilson set a mug of black coffee down on Reed’s desk. “Any luck?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Angela said it has something to do with stories you did about people who thought they had gotten away with murder.”

  “I recall a series I did years ago, but no details. Zach’s got a promotional poster for it in his bedroom.”

  “Got your picture on it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Wilson got on her hands and knees to prospect in the long-forgotten junk zone between their desks. She sifted through the stacks of yellowing editions of the Star, movie posters, a couple of classics from Fillmore West, others for Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones. One for the pope. Wilson got up, unfolding one with tattered edges.

  “This it?”

  It was an old poster with Reed’s head and shoulders over a stylized lead, Did they get away with murder...It had gone into Star boxes years ago to promote his investigative series on unsolved homicides...To find out, read Pulitzer Prize-nominee Tom Reed. Only in the San Francisco Star.

  “That’s the one.”

  “It was here when I moved in,” Wilson said.

  “It hasn’t any details. And I just can’t remember a single name. What’s wrong with me? I’m drawing a blank on this.”

  Wilson went to her keyboard.

  “Tom, I think I referred to one of the cases from your series in one of my old features on Roberta Mind.” Wilson entered the archives and pulled up a single hit under her byline, then displayed the item. The reference was near the bottom. “Roberta Mind,” Wilson read aloud, “killed her husband in a domestic dispute in the late 1980s. Tom, your files would be in the dungeon.”

  “The dungeon? I never go down there.”

  “Chad!” Wilson called. “We need the keys to the dungeon, they should be in the assistant’s supply desk.”

  The dungeon was at the very bottom of the Star building, a vast basement warehouse area on the same floor as the presses, which were now rolling with the Star's final edition, making the building tremble and hum.

  Wilson and Reed unlocked the battered steel door, threw on the lights, and walked down the rows of chicken-wired storage stalls, each with its own door and lock. Every journalist at the Star had a unit for storage. Each one measured four feet by eight feet and had shelves filled with discarded files and material. Editors who were in divorce proceedings hid personal treasures here, like cash, rare coins, or game balls autographed by Bonds, or Montana.

  The vibrating presses made the lights flicker and raised dust.

  “This place stinks. It’s musty,” Wilson said. “Here we go.” She tapped on a stuffed unit whose door read 647 TOM REED.

  “I’ve never come down here, I just sent junk down,” Reed said, pulling out his keys. “I think it’s this one.” The key worked.

  Wilson entered. Large cardboard file boxes, stacked six high, filled the unit. Each one was dated.

  “This one, this one, this one.” Her pen squeaked check marks on the boxes to start searching. Reed grunted, hoisting them to the floor, tearing them open. They were jammed tight with files, notebooks, printouts, papers.

  “Look for Roberta Mind,” Wilson said, climbing to a higher shelf where she tore open a box. “That should lead you to the others.”

  “They’re not even in alphabetical order. I just heaved stuff in here. Most of the dates are wrong.”

  “Keep looking.” Wilson was fast. “Together we can get through this stuff. Come on. Anything with Roberta Mind will lead us to the others.”

  The lights flickered as the presses droned, making the room shake. Minutes became half an hour. Half an hour became an hour, then another hour as the pile of boxes searched became larger than the remainder.

  Reed flipped through file after file, dust and sweat stinging his eyes, his body aching, until he came across a file with Roberta scrawled in large letters. It was thick. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  He scanned the draft of a story from a dot matrix printer. Rober
ta Mind was a hairdresser acquitted of killing her husband because of a history of domestic abuse. But detectives said she’d planned his death, plying him with booze and taunting him, even though he had completed four successful months of counseling. Reed remembered that story.

  But according to Donnie Ray Ball’s tip, Ann’s kidnapper was a man Reed had met. That ruled out Roberta. Reed caught a note in her file saying her case was among four in the series he did.

  The next one was about Elonzo Haze, a pimp suspected of murdering one of his hookers who was going to testify against him. That one came back to Reed. It involved voodoo or something occult. People who’d had info on the case kept disappearing before detectives could question them. It was never solved. A real bone-chiller. Reed talked to Elonzo on the phone a few times but they’d never met.

  A note on the file folder said More series material in box 3312.

  “That one, Molly.” Reed pointed to the box on the top shelf in the corner. “Get that one. Look for two stories from the series. The folders might have something written on them.”

  Still on the higher shelf, Wilson heaved the box nearer, opening to the case of Cyras Makepeace. “Remember that case, Tom? Wilderness guide whose customers died hiking?”

  “Yeah, it’s all coming back. Cyras arranged to make himself a beneficiary on their insurance policies before his clients had wilderness accidents. They never charged him even after a couple of exhumations.”