by Allan Folsom
The thought gave him comfort, and he realized that for all the darkness surrounding him he had one thing in his favor: the mistake the police had made in killing Donlan. The why of it was not important; the fact that they had done it was. The single resounding gunshot had been enough for him to guess. It was a conjecture substantiated by the facial expression and body language of the young detective, John Barron, when he’d joined them in the police car moments later. Confirmation of it had come in Barron’s quick and angry response at the end of the booking procedure when Raymond had questioned his state of well-being. So yes, the police had killed Donlan. And yes, Barron had been markedly shaken by it. How or if Raymond could use the information, he didn’t know, but Barron was the key, the weak link. He was young and emotional and troubled by his own conscience. Barron was someone who in the right circumstance might well be exploited.
22
HOLLYWOOD COFFEE SHOP, SUNSET BOULEVARD.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13. 1:50 A.M.
“Let me go over this again.” Dan Ford adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses and looked to the battered pocket-sized spiral notebook in front of him. “The other cardplayers were William and Vivian Woods of Madison, Wisconsin.”
“Yes.” John Barron glanced down the length of the diner. They were in a rear booth of the all-night diner they had nearly to themselves. The exceptions were three teenagers giggling at a table near the door and a silver-haired waitress chatting across the counter with a couple of gas company employees who looked as if they’d just come off work.
“The conductor’s name was James Lynch, L-Y-N-C-H, of Flagstaff, Arizona.” Ford drained the coffee from a cup at his elbow. “He’d been an Amtrak employee for seventeen years.”
Barron nodded. Particulars about what had happened on the Southwest Chief and the names of the people involved, so far withheld from the press pending further investigation and notification of next of kin, were what he’d promised when Ford called him at home sometime after eleven. Barron had been awake, watching television after having spent the last hours trying to think through how to leave the squad and get out of L.A. Where to go and how best to do it with Rebecca. A call to her psychiatrist, Dr. Janet Flannery, had not been returned, and when the phone rang he expected it to be her. Instead it was Dan Ford calling to see how he was after his first real shift with the squad, and then to ask if he could talk about what had happened.
He’d started to ask if Ford had talked to Lee or Halliday or any of the others but caught himself. Dan Ford was his best friend, and at some point he would have to talk to him, and, if Ford was willing to leave Nadine, his pert French wife, who, after two years, he still called his bride and treated as such—this was as good a time as any. Besides, it got him away from thinking about the media coverage of the aftermath of the killings on the Chief and the chase and death of Frank Donlan that seemed to be on every TV channel. He’d seen the train, stopped in the rail yards, seen the bags containing the bodies of Bill Woods and the conductor brought off, over and over. He’d seen the parking garage and the unmarked Ford with Halliday at the wheel, glimpsing himself in the rear seat sitting next to Raymond, driving off through the army of media, seen the coroner’s van bearing Donlan’s body in the same setting, seen Red McClatchy at Parker Center standing alongside Chief of Police Louis Harwood, as Harwood reiterated Valparaiso’s tale of Donlan’s “suicide” for the cameras—Marty’s version at once the official version, as Barron knew it would be.
“The so-called hostage identified himself as—” Again Ford looked to his notes. “Raymond Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E, from New York City. He’s being held in custody until positive identification is established.”
“He has a hearing at eight-thirty this morning,” Barron said. “He’ll either walk or he won’t. Depends on what checks out.” It was clear that Red’s order to keep silent about the finding of the Ruger automatic in Raymond’s bag was in force, because if anyone outside the department could know about the gun, it would be Dan Ford.
Barron looked to the coffee cup cradled in his hands. So far he had done alright, giving Ford the information he could, not letting his emotions get the best of him. But he didn’t know how much longer he could do it. He felt like a junkie. If he didn’t get a fix soon he was going to jump right out of his skin. In his case the fix was looking Ford in the eye and telling him everything.
Reporter or not, Dan Ford was the only person in the world he kept no secrets from, who from the moment of his parents’ murders had taken care of him like a brother even when Ford had gone off halfway across the country to Northwestern University.
Even then at long distance Ford had kept helping, working with Barron to fight through the impossible tangle of state and local agencies, insurance companies, and organizations, to make it possible for Rebecca to remain at St. Francis and to fund her considerable and ongoing psychotherapy as well.
And he’d done it all without grudge or malice toward the friend who had caused Ford to lose his eye when they were boys—ten-year-olds fashioning a short length of pipe as a rocket launcher, packing it with nails and BBs, then using two huge, illegal firecrackers for propulsion. Firecrackers an excited John Barron had ignited prematurely, blowing out a neighbor’s garage window two blocks away and somehow propelling a nail backward and into the pupil of Dan Ford’s right eye. The hell they had to pay for that had been purchased with half of his best friend’s sight.
Now, sixteen years after that fateful afternoon, here they were, huddled in a back booth of an all-night diner on Sunset Boulevard at an hour approaching two in the morning, with Barron expected at Parker Center at eight to make out the report on Frank “Whitey” Donlan’s “suicide”—and Barron needing Dan Ford probably more than he ever had in his life, desperately wanting to tell him everything.
But he couldn’t.
He’d known it from the moment he’d walked in and seen Ford already there and waiting. Right then he knew that if he shared the things inside him, he would put Ford in very nearly the same position he was in himself. Once Dan Ford knew, friendship would supersede his professionalism and he would say nothing. By his own silence he would become an accessory himself.
It didn’t matter that Barron planned to quit the squad. Right now he was still a policeman and a member of it, and because of what the squad was and who Red McClatchy was, if the truth of what happened ever came to light, the scandal would be colossal and anyone even remotely involved with the accused would be under the glare of a hugely intense, public spotlight. Reporters, prosecutors, and legislators would look under every rock, turn every pebble, and there wasn’t a Los Angeles journalist or detective working Central Division who didn’t know about the long Ford and Barron friendship. A local television station had even done a story about them for the six o’clock news. No matter where Barron might be later, that day he had been a member of the 5-2 and had been in the garage when Donlan had been shot, and Ford would be asked what Barron might have told him about it. If Ford avoided answering, his circumvention would raise a red flag, and there would be little doubt the prosecution would call him to answer the same questions under oath. Barron knew his friend far too well to think that, even then, he would say anything. In denying what he knew, Ford would be committing perjury, or, if he took the Fifth Amendment, it would be the same as admitting guilt. Either way it would be the end of his career, his livelihood, his future. Everything.
So the only way out was to give Ford nothing more than the information he’d promised, then say he had to get some sleep and end the meeting as quickly as possible by calling the waitress for the check.
“Talk to me about Donlan.”
“What?” Barron looked up sharply.
Ford had put down his notebook and was peering over his horn-rims. “I said, talk to me about Donlan.”
Barron felt as if the floor had suddenly collapsed under him. He struggled like hell to keep his composure. “You mean on the train.”
“I mean in the garage. For one th
ing, you’ve got four detectives and only one Whitey Donlan. And not just any four detectives—Red McClatchy, Polchak, Valparaiso, and you. The best there are. Now I realize Donlan had a lot of experience with guns and handcuffs, but suddenly he’s got a hide-gun these four detectives missed?”
“What are you getting at?” Barron stared at him, his mind and emotions turned upside down, the way they had been the moment Donlan was shot.
“The details you gave me are available from almost anyone at Parker Center.” Dan Ford’s eyes, the glass one and the real one, crept up to hold on Barron’s. “I was there when Halliday drove you away from the garage. You were sitting in back with this Raymond what’s-his-name. You saw me, you looked away. Why?”
“If I did, I didn’t realize it. A hell of a lot was going on.”
Ford suddenly looked away. The waitress was coming toward them with the coffeepot. Ford shook his head and waved her off, then looked back to Barron. “What was going on, John? Tell me.”
Barron wanted to leave right then, get up and walk out, but he couldn’t. Suddenly he heard himself pour out Valparaiso’s words almost verbatim, the same way they’d come out on television from Chief Harwood.
“Nobody knows. Somehow Donlan managed to have a snub-nosed twenty-two hidden in his pants. When we tried to take him downstairs he got one of his cuffs off, he yelled, ‘This is as far as I go,’ and there was the gun and—bang.”
Dan Ford stared at him. “Just like that?”
Barron stared back, unwavering. “I never saw a man kill himself before.”
23
3:13 A.M.
Barron lay in the darkness trying to forget the way he’d lied to Dan Ford—Valparaiso’s explanation of Donlan’s murder erupting from inside him as if it were his own. His lie had horrified him almost as much as the murder itself, and he’d left as quickly as he could, forcing himself to look Ford in the eye and telling him he was bone tired, then giving the waitress a twenty-dollar bill to cover a four-dollar-and-fifty-cent check for the coffee, simply because he couldn’t bear to stand there and wait for change. Then he was gone, getting into his vintage 1967 Ford Mustang and driving home through the empty streets.
Once there he checked his answering machine. There were two calls. The first had come shortly after he’d gone out to meet Dan Ford and was from Halliday, telling him Lee had visited Raymond at Parker Center and their “victim” had denied any knowledge of the automatic found in his bag. More than that, neither the weapon itself nor the two ammunition clips had fingerprints. All were perfectly clean, as if whoever had used them had either wiped them down thoroughly or worn gloves when handling them. “This guy is something, John,” Halliday had finished. “What, I don’t know but we’re gonna find out. See you in the morning.”
The second call had been from Dr. Flannery. It had been too late to call her then, and he knew he would have to wait for morning, the same as he would have to wait to do anything more about the logistics of leaving the squad. How he would do it and when and where he would go all centered on finding a facility for Rebecca, hopefully as far from L.A. as possible, and that was something he had to put fully in the hands of Dr. Flannery. So, with the second worst day of his life behind him, he had gone finally and gratefully to bed.
3:18 A.M.
Sleep still refused to come. In its place was the slowly churning turmoil of wondering how he had become so alone as to have only one person on the earth he could talk to. His friends from the past, from high school and college, had gone their own ways, and his adult life, while still distantly focused on the idea of one day getting a law degree in criminal justice, had been directed by his responsibility for Rebecca. He’d had to find a secure job and do the best he could at it, which he had with the LAPD. And while there had been relationships among the patrol officers and detectives he’d worked with on the way up, none had lasted long enough to develop into the kind of genuine friendship that came from years of shared experiences. Nor were there the other people and resources that so many others had—relatives, clergy, even psychological counseling.
Both he and Rebecca had been adopted in infancy. Their adoptive mother and father had been from Maryland and Illinois, respectively, and their own parents were long dead. Rarely did they speak of, let alone have contact with, other members of the family, so if he had distant aunts or uncles or cousins, he didn’t know it. Moreover, his adoptive father had been Jewish, his mother Catholic, and they had raised their children with no religious bent at all; therefore he had no pastor, priest, or rabbi in whom to confide. The fact that Rebecca was being cared for by nuns was only happenstance, reflecting the reality that St. Francis was the best, and perhaps only, place for her that was close by and that he could afford. As for counseling, in her eight years at St. Francis, Rebecca had seen five different psychotherapists, and not one, not even her current psychiatrist, the seemingly very capable Dr. Flannery, had been able even to begin to lift her from the plane of deep trauma where she lived. It made turning in that direction hardly an option with which he could feel comfortable.
So there it was, of the billions of human beings on earth, he had a grand total of two he felt close enough to open his heart to—Rebecca and Dan Ford. And for reasons most obvious, he could talk to neither.
3:34 A.M.
3:57 A.M.
Finally he began to drift off. As he did and the darkness began to comfort, he saw a shadow rise and come toward him. It was Valparaiso, and he had a gun in his hand. Then he saw Donlan, standing terrified, clamped in Polchak’s viselike grip. Valparaiso walked right up to him and put the gun to his head.
“No, don’t!” Donlan screamed.
Bang!
24
PARKER CENTER. STILL WEDNESDAY,
MARCH 13. 7:15 A.M.
The 5-2 squad room was small and utilitarian, furnished with six old and scarred steel desks and worn swivel chairs to match. On each desk was a state-of-the-art computer and multiline telephone, while a shared printer near the door rested on a table under a large wall-mounted blackboard. A second wall was corkboard and filled with notes and photographs of people and locations of cases under investigation. Another wall was a bank of windows covered by venetian blinds drawn against the morning sun. A detailed map of the city of Los Angeles covered the fourth wall, and it was in front of this fourth wall that John Barron sat, alone in the room, staring at the computer screen on his desk. And what he had entered on it.
DATE: 12 March
FILE NUMBER: 01714
SUBJECT: Frank “Whitey” Donlan
ADDRESS: Unknown
REPORTING INVESTIGATOR: Detective II, John J. Barron
ASSISTING INVESTIGATORS: Commander Arnold
McClatchy; Detective III, Martin Valparaiso; Detective III, Leonard Polchak
Barron stared for a moment longer and then coldly, mechanically, began typing. Picking up where he had left off, doing as Commander McClatchy had instructed. Doing it for himself, for Rebecca, even for Dan Ford. Taking the only way out he knew.
OTHER INVESTIGATORS: Detective III, Roosevelt Lee; Detective III, James Halliday
OFFICE OF ORIGIN: 5-2 Squad, Central Division
CLASSIFICATION: Suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wou
Abruptly Barron stopped. Selecting the last, he hit the DELETE key, and “Suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wou” vanished from the screen. Then he angrily typed in:
CLASSIFICATION: Homicide
COMPLAINT: Execution of suspect-in-custody by Detective III, Martin Valparaiso
Barron stopped again. Selecting the entire document, he hit the DELETE key, and the screen went blank. A second later he sat back and for the fourth time in the last fifteen minutes looked at his watch.
7:29 A.M.
It was still early. He didn’t care.
7:32 A.M.
Barron entered a small, brightly lit mini-cafeteria—a room with several vending machines, a half-dozen Formica tables, and a number of plastic chairs. A uniformed ser
geant sat chatting with two secretaries in civilian clothes at the table nearest the door. Other than that the room was empty.
Barron nodded politely toward them, then went to a coffee machine and dropped in three quarters. Afterward he hit the MILK AND SUGAR key and waited as a cardboard cup dropped into place and began to fill. Cup full, the machine clicked off. He picked up the coffee and carried it to a corner table where he sat down, his back to the others.
He took a sip of coffee, then slid his cell phone from his jacket and dialed. On the third ring the phone was picked up and a familiar female voice answered. “This is Dr. Flannery.”
“Dr. Flannery, it’s John Barron.”
“I called you back last night. Did you get the message?”
“Yes, thank you. I had to go out.” Barron glanced up at a boisterous laugh from the threesome across the room. Immediately he looked back to the phone and lowered his voice. “Doctor, I need your help. I want to find another facility for Rebecca somewhere away from L.A., preferably out of California.”