Be Mine

by Rick Mofina

  “You of all people know how critical this is right now.” Tom’s focus bounced between Molly and Sydowski. “We’ll work things out as we go,” Tom said.

  “I’ve got your word?”

  “You’ve got my word we’ll work things out.”

  “All right. Take Molly home. There’s a news conference set for the Police Commission Hearing Room in fifteen minutes.”

  “You got a suspect or recover a weapon?”

  “It’s too soon. Take Molly home.”

  Before they took the elevator down, Ray Beamon caught up with them in the corridor. Although Beamon had joined the detail a few years ago, the others considered him the rookie. His hair was messed. Lines of anguish were carved into his face.

  “Molly.” His red-rimmed eyes found hers. “If you remember anything--”

  “It’s okay. I told her,” Sydowski said.

  “He was my partner, you know.”

  Molly gave Beamon a hug.

  “He thought the world of you,” she said before stepping into the elevator with Tom. During the ride down she put her head on Tom’s shoulder. He put his arm around her, smelling traces of perfume in her hair.

  When the doors opened Simon Lepp stood before them. “Hey, guys, what’s going on?”

  “I’m taking her home,” Tom said. “You’ve got the news conference.”

  “Yes, but what’s going on?”

  “This isn’t a good time,” Tom said as they headed for the door.

  “Wait! Do you have a minute?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t talk now.”

  Lepp walked with them. “They’re saying you knew him.”

  Tom and Molly stopped.

  “Before I came here,” Lepp said, touching his glasses, “I swung by the scene. The TV people and a guy from the Chron are floating the rumor he was a detective. Some were saying you’re the one who found him. That he’s the cop you were dating.”

  Tom and Molly exchanged glances.

  “Holy cow,” Lepp said. “It’s true. That’s why you’re here.”

  “We can’t say anything right now,” Tom said.

  “We work for the same paper, don’t we?”

  “It’s complicated right now. I’ll catch up with you later,” Tom said.

  Molly nodded to a KGO-TV crew that had its camera trained on them.

  “We have to go,” Tom said.

  “Wait.” Lepp’s face was filled with concern for Molly. “It must’ve been horrible, finding him. I mean, I just cannot imagine.” He touched her shoulder. “Are you going to be okay?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “We have to go,” Tom said.

  Molly lived alone on the top-floor apartment of a restored Victorian mansion at the edge of Russian Hill. It had a view of the bay and Golden Gate Bridge.

  “I need a hot shower, then we’ll talk,” she told Tom. “Help yourself to anything. Let the machine get any calls.” Ever since she was hired from a small Texas daily, Molly had been Tom’s partner at the Star. They sat next to each other, worked with each other, knew the details of each other’s lives. She had a master’s degree in English literature and was an outstanding writer and reporter.

  Tom had first become her mentor, then her friend and confidant. During his darkest drinking days when Ann took Zach and moved out, Molly made no secret of her willingness to help him through his nights. That was long ago. He never acted on it. Instead, he repaired his life and his marriage while managing to keep his friendship with Molly intact.

  He dropped his notebook on her kitchen table. Strange he thought, gazing at the bay. They’d been through so many stories together, nightmares that turned their world inside out. Now this one. Man, it was brand-new territory. He took in her living room, the bookshelves with the framed picture of Molly standing between her mother and father, clutching her degree. There was a plaque for her Texas statewide creative writing award, a framed print of her first front-page newspaper story, a feature on a blind farmer. Then a small photograph of her between Cliff Hooper and his partner, Ray Beamon. The Star would kill for that one, he thought as it hit him full force.

  This was a murder among friends.

  FIVE

  After a few hours of sleep and refueling on coffees from a McDonald’s drive-through, Sydowski and Turgeon guided their unmarked Impala back to Hooper’s neighborhood for more legwork.

  They came to an uphill house overlooking Hooper’s staircase, the sixteenth address on the list. The woman who answered the door was Dora Mahoney, a sixty-nine-year old retired high school history teacher who said well, yes, come to think of it, maybe she did see something last night.

  “I’m pretty sure I saw a man leaving the apartment. I’ll show you.”

  Dora led them through her home to French doors that opened to a rear balcony. It offered a stunning view from her terraced yard. In the distance, over a thick hedge, a stand of eucalyptus trees framed Hooper’s building and the stairway to his upper apartment.

  “It was dusk. I saw a man going down those stairs.”

  “Describe him, please.” Sydowski pulled out his note-book. And as her cat threaded its way around his ankles, he took down every detail he could squeeze from Dora.

  A white man. In his thirties. Wearing a T-shirt and jeans. It wasn’t much but it was something, Sydowski told Gonzales when they returned to the homicide detail.

  “All right. Good.”

  “Hear from Crime Scene or the M.E. yet?” Sydowski asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Where’s Ray, I want to talk to him.”

  “I sent him out. Would you step into my office now?” His tone alerted Sydowski. Whoever was in his lieutenant’s office was going to make for an unpleasant meeting. He popped a Tums in his mouth and rolled up his sleeves.

  “You know Ms. Sareena Fortune with the Office of Citizens’ Complaints.”

  She was a civil rights attorney. Wore an expensive tailored power suit. Had hair styled like Cleopatra.

  “My condolences, Inspector.”

  “And Dan Taylor, with Management Control.”

  “Everyone sends their best,” Taylor said.

  As he shook hands, Sydowski’s guard went up at the presence of Fortune with Taylor, the SFPD’s assassin who probed internal affairs. Taylor practically worked foot in boot with OCC, to plant it on the neck of most cops who failed to say “have a nice day” while arresting psychos who tried to kill them. Sydowski ground on his Tums.

  Fortune said, “Inspector, it’s no secret the department and OCC have been at odds lately.” Fortune picked a thread from her suit. “I thought this was a critical time for my office to show its support and pay respects to the people who risk their lives every day for this city.”

  “And here I was afraid I’d misread this as OCC trying to exert some warped sense of its mission that might be defined as obstruction,” Sydowski said.

  “Walt,” Gonzales warned.

  “Did some sewer dweller complain already? Or are you just hopeful?”

  “Walt.”

  “It’s a little early to get in my face. Cliff’s not even in the ground yet.”

  “Inspector,” Fortune said, “you’re taking this the wrong way. This is a visit of compassion.”

  “Ms. Fortune,” Sydowski said, “do you personally, or does your office, have any information that has a direct bearing on the homicide of SFPD Homicide Inspector Clifford Hooper?”

  “No, Inspector.”

  “Does OCC have any blue folders that relate to, or could in any remote way be material to, the homicide of Inspector Hooper?”

  “None.” Fortune smoothed her skirt.

  “Thank you for your heartfelt support,” Sydowski said. “Dan, does MCU have anything to offer us on this case?”

  Taylor held up an SFPD personnel folder.

  “This is Hooper’s file. That’s the extent of what I’m here for.”

  Fortune stood, indicating they’d fi
nished.

  “Again, our sympathies. Lieutenant. Inspector,” Fortune said before she left with Taylor.

  Gonzales closed the door behind them. Sydowski shook his head. “What in the hell was that?”

  Gonzales leaned back in his chair, his weary eyes going round his cramped office to the file cabinets, vacation and duty schedules, the bookshelf jammed with departmental regs, the Penal Code, California statutes, then his poster of the Rockies.

  “It’s politics and bullshit,” Gonzales said. “Plain and simple. A detective is murdered. It sets the stage for agendas, so the watchdogs come out. Automatically smell corruption. They figure Cliff had to be doing something wrong to just go out and die like that.” Gonzales gritted his teeth and looked at the mountains.

  “Well, if they know something we don’t they’d better damn well tell us.” Sydowski turned the pages of Hooper’s file. “ ’Cause there’s nothing in here. He was in Narcotics, Vice, the Tac team, worked in Taraval, Mission, Ingleside, the Loin, before coming here. Spotless record. By all accounts, he was outstanding.”

  “He was.” Gonzales blinked. “Now you know why I sent Ray out. It would have been a bad scene with him.” Getting back to work, Sydowski slapped Hooper’s file on his desk. Turgeon was on her phone, taking notes. Sydowski was helping himself to coffee when Beamon returned.

  “How you doing?” Sydowski asked.

  Beamon hesitated for a beat as the older detective looked into his bloodshot eyes. The guy was a mess. Gonzales had ordered him off the case and called the staff psychologist, but Beamon had put off talking to her.

  “I had to step out to take care of some things. I talked to Cliff’s sister.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “She’s taking it hard. She’s all the family he had. She’s a paramedic. On her way up from Los Angeles with her husband to make arrangements as soon as the M.E. releases the body.”

  “Shouldn’t be too much longer. What’d you do to your fingers?”

  Beamon was rubbing the knuckles of his right hand, feeling Sydowski’s attention on them.

  “This? Oh, I was working on my car.”

  “Your Barracuda?”

  “Yes. Changing the plugs. I must’ve skinned ’em. Funny. I was going to drive over and see him last night. But I stayed home.”

  “You didn’t see him after your shift?”

  “I never left my house.”

  “Look. I know you want to help us.”

  “I want to find the mother who--”

  “All right. Take it easy,” Sydowski said. “I saw you last night after you’d finished. You ran after Cliff, chased after him to the elevator.”

  Beamon listened for a question.

  “What was that about?”

  “I just wanted to see if he was up for a beer.” Sydowski’s eyes traveled all over Beamon, absorbing his body language and his eyes.

  “What was Cliff’s demeanor like?”

  Beamon shrugged and said it was fine.

  “I noticed you were in the hall for a minute or two. What did you and Cliff talk about?”

  “What did we talk about?”

  “Yes. Your last conversation with him. What did he say? What was on his mind when he left the detail last night?”

  “He was going out with Molly. That’s why he didn’t have time for a beer.”

  “That it? That’s all you talked about? He didn’t mention any problems, or beefs with anybody?”

  “No. I just don’t know who or why anyone would do this.”

  Sydowski stared at Beamon.

  “It might be better if you took some time off.”

  “No, I just can’t.”

  “Okay, why don’t you go back over all your cases? Think of anyone you took down who had it in for Hoop. Anybody who made threats, anybody who wanted to take a run at you. Think you can do that?”

  Beamon nodded.

  Sydowski stood to his full height, drawing himself up until his shadow fell over Beamon. “And you better damned well tell me now if Cliff was into anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. No one was tighter to him than you and Molly Wilson, so if you know something you damn well tell me now, because I’m going to find out. I usually do, Ray.”

  “Jesus. You know that Cliff was a Boy Scout,” he said. “And I--”

  Sydowski tuned his radar to its maximum and wouldn’t release Beamon from his concentration, taking in his face, his bruised knuckles. “Want to go in an interview room and tell me what’s on your mind?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s--” Beamon looked at Hooper’s empty desk and chair, the notes Hooper had scribbled on his calendar about court dates, 49er games. “It’s like, this didn’t happen. This isn’t real ...”

  Sydowski let the silence play for a while, giving Beamon the chance to fill it. Finally, he placed his hand on Beamon’s shoulder. “If you want to tell me something, you call me. Anytime. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excuse me.” Turgeon finished her call and indicated she needed a private moment. They went downstairs to the cafeteria where she opened her notebook.

  “I spoke with the M.E., Crime Scene, and Ballistics. The full autopsy will be completed tomorrow, that’s when they’ll recover any rounds from the body.”

  “What about the round in the wall?”

  “They got that but it’s badly damaged,” Turgeon said. “They need more time. All they can confirm at this stage is that it’s a .40 cal.”

  “A .40?” Sydowski repeated.

  Worry crept into the corners of Turgeon’s eyes and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Not just a .40. It looks like it could be an SXT Talon, 180-grain. The exact type issued to every cop on the force.”

  SIX

  It was late afternoon when Tom left Molly’s apartment and returned to the San Francisco Star.

  The newsroom was humming.

  He enjoyed a small private victory. An intern was now fused to the police radios. That’s better, he thought. Editors and reporters were working at their keyboards or taking notes over the phone while news flickered from TVs on overhead shelves, harmonizing with clatter as the first deadline loomed, along with Irene Pepper.

  She was making her rounds, clipboard in hand, gathering story updates for the editors’ news meeting to decide tomorrow’s edition. Spotting Tom, she raised her taut chin, signaling that she was still smarting from their episode over the scanners.

  “What’ve you got?”

  “I spoke to Molly.”

  “Good. I’ve been trying to reach her. How’s she doing?”

  “She’s shaken up pretty good. I took her home.”

  “I’ll call her later.”

  “Meeting!” the deputy managing editor called from the boardroom doorway.

  Pepper glanced at a newsroom clock.

  “I don’t have much time. So fill me in.”

  “I interviewed her. It’s an exclusive.”

  “She give you a lot of detail?”

  “I got mostly color and time line. She couldn’t provide a lot of details.”

  “Why not? She’s the one who found him, according to Simon.”

  “That’s true but as you can imagine, she’s pretty shaken up.”

  Pepper frowned.

  “But what I have is good,” Tom said. “It’s really good. And it’s all ours.”

  “They have any suspects?”

  “It’s too soon.”

  “Motive?”

  “Again, too soon.”

  “What about old enemies?”

  “It’s early in the investigation. They’re pretty tight-lipped.”

  “Can you get someone to speculate in print as to who would want to kill a homicide detective in his home?”

  “Sure, but speculation’s meaningless.”

  “Readers love to play amateur detective.”

  “I know some profs at Berkeley who could do some psychological profiling.�
��

  “Good.” Pepper glanced at her notes. “We’ve got a pretty strong package coming. Simon Lepp’s got a bio on Hooper that looks really nice. We’ve got a Winston Jones column coming and Della’s doing Bay Area cop killings. Mickey Chang got some nice shots of you and Molly leaving the Hall of Justice. Henry Cain has some great crime scene art.”

  Pepper waved to acknowledge the impatient deputy managing editor who was gesturing for other editors to move more quickly to the meeting room.

  “Tom,” she said, “I want you to think about an idea I have for Molly.”

  His stomach began to tighten.

  “Did she go to pieces? Or can she write a story for me?”

  “You want a story from her?”

  “A first-person account, taking us into the cop’s death house.”

  “Meeting!” the deputy managing editor called from the boardroom doorway.

  “She’s in no shape to do that for you today.”

  “No. Not today. But soon.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “This is the biggest story in the state right now, we own it, and I’ll be damned if we’re going to blow it.” Pepper checked her watch.

  At that moment Violet Stewart, the managing editor, interrupted them on her way to the meeting. “Excuse me, Irene.” Stewart turned to Tom. “I heard how you recovered our fumble on the detective murder. Nice work.”

  “Thanks.”

  Before leaving them, Stewart shot a cool glance at Pepper, who responded to her supervisor with an equally cool smile.

  After Stewart was out of earshot, Pepper said to Tom, “I want Molly to do a first-person feature.”

  “I think you’re overcompensating for us missing the jump on the story.”

  “Watch it, Tom. Just remember to inject your piece with emotion.”

  “Emotion.”

  “Make readers feel something,” Pepper said. “Put them in her footsteps when she makes her sensational discovery. Take them where the competition can’t. Give me every minute detail. Make my hair stand on end. Got it?”

  Tom nodded and went to his desk where he loosened his tie and went to work crafting a lead. The minutes ticked by as he carved out the first sentences. He paused to consider them along with Molly’s empty desk and the bouquet that had arrived that morning. Letters and gifts were common in the newsroom and Molly received more than her share--Tom assumed because of her great looks and regular TV spot. But these flowers were unusually gorgeous and expensive for your run-of-the-mill reporter groupie. Where did they come from? he wondered, just as his computer beeped with a story sent to him from Simon Lepp.