I didn’t get to catch up on my sleep. I was on call, and got sent out to a bar on Union Street in the Marina District at around 2:30 a.m., in the wake of some last-call mayhem. Two men had got into an argument, apparently about an old girlfriend who was long rid of both of them. The argument turned into a fight, and one of them ended up braining the other one against the brick frontage of the bar. The suspect stayed put and was in custody. He was fully soused when first responders arrived, and pretty badly busted up himself. But he was still alive, and his buddy wasn’t.
There wasn’t much point in my being there, at the scene, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Blessing the body, Dr. Kashiman used to call it back in Los Angeles. I told CSI to examine the brick wall for blood and hair samples, but they already knew that, and took offense with my reminding them. The most interesting thing about the scene was the drinks menu posted outside the bar. It was creative. Donna suggested maybe we should all come back sometime, after work. Cam thought they were overpriced, even for the environs. The two of them had this discussion while they zipped our dead guy into his nylon pouch.
I got back to bed around 4:00, but was up again at 6:30 to walk the dog and get into work. Besides the homicide, I also caught two naturals, though one of them was only an external. Ted Nguyen took three solid cases of his own—an apparent suicide, a decomp probable-overdose, and a motor vehicle accident. It was busy for a Thursday. We were delayed a bit, too, after Ted put his decomp through the Quiznos 5000 full-body X-ray rig. The machine tripped the damn circuit breaker again, plunging the morgue into a blackout.
“At least the HVAC came back,” I said, when the power returned. It had been working without a hitch since the last time Denis Monaghan had tinkered with it. I thought back to my bleary morning in his bed, with him joking about how handy he was.
“What is funny?” Yarina asked.
“Funny?”
“You are making a smile.”
“Oh...it’s nothing. Private joke.”
Yarina grunted and went back to her handsaw. When the power went out, so did the electric bone saw, while she was right in the middle of popping the skull on my homicide. Not knowing how long till the juice would come back on, Yarina took the opportunity to pull out the hardware-store saw we hardly ever had occasion to use, and was cutting into the dead man’s skull with it. She did so with vigor, but much griping.
Eventually the lights came back on, and I wheeled the homicide case into the cooler. It was still crowded, but not nearly as critically as it had been the week before, when I’d gone in search of John Doe #15. After stowing my homicide, I helped our young day-shift 2578 move some gurneys around so he could get access to a body he had to release to a funeral home. The fellow on the gurney turned out to be none other than Leopold Haring, finally vacating our morgue. I wanted to wish the 2578 luck dealing with that family, but restrained myself.
Back at my desk, before ducking out for lunch, I checked my phone messages. I had one from Homicide Inspector Daniel Ramirez, time-stamped first thing that morning. I got ahold of him on his cell, somewhere with a good deal of traffic noise and wind.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Listen, uh...about yesterday. If you’re right about the screwdriver, I don’t want to see this whole case fall apart. There’s a spotlight on it as it is, y’know what I mean?”
I did. The story was still bouncing around the local news, and occasionally hitting the national media. Amber Bishop at KnowNowSF wasn’t the only reporter leaving me voice mails, especially now that they had Samuel Urias as a villain for the story.
“So, look,” the detective continued. “This ADA, Jason Bevner, I’ve worked with him before. He isn’t going to give up on the screwdriver. If he’s right about it, we have a good case against Mr. Urias. If you’re right, though—”
“Inspector, if you’re going to try to talk me into changing my stated expert opinion about—”
“No, no! That’s not what I meant, Doc. I wouldn’t do that, don’t worry—I’ve worked with you before too, don’t forget. Here’s the thing. The only way you’re going to get that screwdriver thrown out is by producing another murder weapon. One that’ll stand up better at trial. If this one had Urias’s DNA on it, I might feel different—but you’re right about the thing. It shouldn’t be this complicated, right? If you came up with a weapon that fit the wound better, and maybe had the right fibers, and definitely had somebody’s DNA on it who doesn’t have a solid alibi like this 5150 guy...”
“Fifty-one-fifty guy, Curtis Burton, was already dead and decomposing when his DNA got on that screwdriver, Daniel. The whole thing is nuts.”
“That’s what I’m saying. It’s always bugged me that we got that warrant off an anonymous tip. I was surprised the judge approved it. When we told her the doc said the wound came from a screwdriver, I think she decided we had enough there to pursue the search, since the building site was bound to have screwdrivers, right? Between the tipster and your statement about the type of wound, it was enough for the warrant, but I always thought it was pretty thin.”
“Bevner likes it.”
“Yeah. But he... Well, like I said, once that guy sets his mind to a theory of the crime, you won’t convince him otherwise. But if you can come up with another weapon that matches the wound, you might have a chance.”
So why aren’t you out there searching for the goddamn thing, Detective, I wanted to ask. I didn’t, though. I knew why he was turfing it to me. Daniel Ramirez and Keith Jones had delivered Samuel Urias to the assistant district attorney, and the ADA liked Urias for the murder. If the ADA didn’t want to listen to reason in light of new scientific evidence, Ramirez couldn’t go reinvestigating the case on his own, especially considering that he and Jones were probably juggling half a dozen other homicides by now. Still, Inspector Ramirez felt bad for Samuel Urias. I had managed to inject reasonable doubt about his guilt into one man’s head, anyhow.
I heard a truck barrel past wherever Ramirez was standing, and a distant voice call his name. “I gotta go,” he said into his cell. “Think about what I said.”
And he hung up.
“Cops,” I muttered. Ramirez claimed the judge had approved the warrant because I had told him the murder weapon was a screwdriver. I hadn’t said that. I had said that the wound was made by a penetrating weapon with a round shaft, at least five inches long and approximately one-quarter inch in girth. If the detectives had gone to the judge asking to look for crossbow bolts, she would’ve laughed them out of her office. They didn’t. They told the judge that this body found on a construction site had been stabbed with a screwdriver. And now one of them was having second thoughts, while a man who was probably innocent of the murder sat waiting to go to trial for it. What did Ramirez expect me to do about it? Go find the murder weapon, he says. Sure, I’ll get right on it.
Zasrane to życie. I would, too. I knew it. I couldn’t help myself.
A text from Sparkle pinged onto my phone, asking if I was free for lunch. It was unexpected—I figured she would be tied up with funeral plans for her uncle.
Need a break from all that, she replied.
We got tacos, as usual, from the El Herrador truck, and walked them over to the only park anywhere near Baby Mike Bail Bonds, a grassy rectangle with some basketball courts, a kiddie playground, and picnic benches set in a little garden. The garden sometimes had people passed out or sleeping in it, and I had once accidentally interrupted a sex act taking place in a stall in the public bathroom, but on the other hand the park had sunshine on even the foggiest day, so I liked it.
It wasn’t foggy that afternoon. The high clouds were back, wispy and distant. The wind was light. It was a lovely autumn day. Sparkle looked worn out. I had to prompt her to eat her tacos.
“I keep thinking about him,” she said. “But only the good things. He was the fun uncle. He didn’t have kids of his own, so he had all this energy for us—chasing us around when we’d all get together, putting one kid on his shoulders, one piggyback, while grabbing two more under each arm, you know? Like that. He had this terrible illness, and it dragged him down—but he never let it drag us down. He was always there for us when we were kids. That’s what makes it so hard that...we let him down. We weren’t there for him.”
“Hang on to those good things, honey. Is your mom holding up?”
Sparkle looked away. “No. This was always her biggest fear, and now here it is. But she’s...she’ll be all right. Funeral’s gonna be hard.” She shook her head and sighed. “Thanks for asking—but, like I said, I need a break. Tell me what you’re working on.”
“You really want to know?”
“As long as it’s not too graphic.”
“Okay. Well, I have this problem case...”
When I’d finished telling her the whole tale, Sparkle said, “Wait, this is the one with those weird rocks you were asking about, right?”
I nodded. “You sent me to see your friend the cement expert. He confirmed what a guy at the Department of Building Inspection said about the rocks, that they were a special type of fast-setting concrete, not something you’d find on a job site like the one where we recovered the body.”
“But your dead man was carrying them.”
“In a zippered pocket.”
“Why would he do that?”
We both thought about it. Then I said, “He was collecting evidence of something.”
“Okay...”
“Haring was infamous for micromanaging his jobs, and he was always hanging around, yelling at the builders. Maybe he’d found that rocky aggregate somewhere that he didn’t like seeing it, and he was...what was he going to do with it?”
“Bring it to Department of Buildings and make a huge stink,” Sparkle said.
“Could be.”
“You showed it to the guy at the DBI, right?”
“I did.”
“And...?”
“He...he clammed right up.”
“Oho now. You don’t say.”
“His name was... Peter? He had these horrible pointy sideburns. I showed him the rocks and he told me right away what they were. Then he asked me where they came from. When I told him it was SoMa Centre, he handed me some bullshit form to fill out, and made himself scarce.”
“What was the form?”
“He said it was so they could start their own investigation.”
“And you never heard back from them again.”
“That’s right.”
“He’s on the take,” Sparkle said with an offhand flip of her napkin. “All those guys at the DBI are on the take.”
“Come on, Sparkle.”
“Oh, I’m serious. You know how much money is getting spent on a new skyscraper in San Francisco? Money. Lots and lots. Yeah, I’ll bet your Peter with the pointy sideburns is taking a bribe to sign off on this special cement getting used there.”
I chewed and thought about it. “I have to go back to the scene. To do that, I need either a police warrant, which I ain’t gonna get, or a pass from the Department of Building Inspection. If I go into the DBI to ask for one, they’re going to hand me off to Pointy Peter again, since he’s in charge of that job card. He’s just going to give me more runaround.”
“Why you want to go back to the scene?”
“I’m sure that screwdriver is not the murder weapon, but I can’t point to what is.”
“So you want to go poke around and look for...what? A screwdriver that fits the wound?”
“Maybe. I don’t know exactly.”
“Well, honey, that’s not good enough. I mean, it’s been weeks since the murder, there’s been an everloving earthquake in the meantime, and you don’t know what you’re looking for.”
“I know what I’m looking for. A rod-shaped weapon a quarter inch in diameter, maybe with blood on it, and maybe with fibers. Ideally, the blood will belong to Leopold Haring and only Leopold Haring this time.”
“You think you’re going to find another screwdriver somewhere?”
“I don’t know, Sparkle! I have to try. Otherwise, Samuel Urias might go to prison over a piece of false evidence that someone planted in his truck. If that happens, then I will have played a part in putting him there. I’m not going to let that happen if I can help it.”
Sparkle nodded in a sage way. “This is Anup rubbing off on you.”
That knocked me back. “What...?”
“Anup. With his appeals of factual innocence. Those are people like this Samuel guy—like he’s going to be, anyhow, if they go ahead with the trial and if the ADA is right about the screwdriver evidence convincing a jury.”
Psiakrew. Sparkle didn’t know about the breakup. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her about it. If she had known, she never would have thrown that in my face.
She was right, though, just the same.
“What’s Samuel’s last name again,” Sparkle asked.
“Urias.”
“He have an accent?”
“Yes.”
“Brown skin?”
“Kinda.”
“Okay, then. You’re right. He’s going to prison.” Sparkle wiped her fingers, pulled out her phone, and started thumb-typing while she talked, as she does. “I guess I don’t blame you for wanting to help him—or to try, at least,” she said, “considering the wrongful-conviction horror stories Anup probably tells you over dinner. I’ve seen some of my clients go down like that.” She pressed something on the phone with satisfaction. “I’m gonna hook you up.”
“What do you mean?”
“What you need is someone who knows how DBI works. Even better, a DBI contractor who can go into their office with you and pull some strings. It would be a further bonus if this contractor was, say, a physically imposing individual who is hard to ignore.”
“Sparkle, what are you—”
My phone chirped.
“Group text,” Sparkle said.
I pulled it out. She had included me in a miniature conference with a number my phone didn’t recognize.
“My cousin Michael,” she said.
“Baby Mike?”
“That’s right.”
“He works for the Department of Building Inspection?”
“He’s a security contractor with them.”
“I thought you said he moves refrigerators.”
Both our phones chirped, and Sparkle started texting again. “He does that, too. It’s a gig economy, honey, ain’t you heard?”
Baby Mike was working on some of their uncle’s funeral arrangements, but agreed to meet me at the DBI as soon as he could. I texted that he didn’t have to come if he was busy, but he replied that he was eager to help. I got the impression that, like Sparkle and her call for tacos, Baby Mike was eager for some distraction from the family’s grief.
I headed right over to the Department of Building Inspection. With the slew of earthquake demolitions and repair jobs the city still had ahead of it, the place was busy. Sure enough, it was Peter with the sideburns who met me when my turn came at the permits counter. He didn’t seem to remember me right off—but he sure did once I mentioned SoMa Centre.
“Oh, right. You came in with a chunk of HAC concrete.”
“I did.”
“What can I do for you today?”
I told him I needed to get back onto that site as part of an ongoing death investigation.
“Okey dokey,” he lied, and turned to a computer monitor. He made a serious face while he pretended to look something up, then made a frowny face, and turned back to me. “I’m afraid I can’t let anyone onto that site. It’s under investigation.”
“I know. I’m investigating it.”
“No, I mean our investigation. We don’t open sites to other agencies when we’re conducting an inspection audit.”
I laid my badge on the permits counter. “Peter, I am investigating a homicide. I promise I won’t get in the way of your engineers down there. In fact, if you can point me to the spot at the site where they’re looking into this HAC stuff, I’d certainly appreciate it.”
His folksy facade was slipping. “Why would you want to do that?”
“I suspect the HAC that I pulled out of the pocket of a dead man might have something to do with the way he ended up dead. You see, the dead man was Leopold Haring, the architect on the project—”
“I know who Leopold Haring was.”
“Great! Then you might have heard rumors about what a stickler he was for things being done the way he wanted them done. It could cause some real headaches for the nonarchitects who actually had to implement his plans...”
“Ma’am,” Pointy Peter said, nodding toward the mob beyond the reception window. “You might have noticed how much the earthquake has impacted what we do around here. I’ve told you that I can’t let you onto that site, so now I’m going to ask you...to...”
He trailed off, with a look I’ve seen before when Baby Mike fills a doorway.
“Hey, Doc,” the big man said, and held out his massive hand for me to shake. I did. He was wearing a generic SECURITY jacket, with an ID lanyard around his oak-trunk neck.
“Hey, Peter,” Baby Mike said to Peter. He didn’t offer his hand.
“Um,” said Peter.
Baby Mike scanned the empty permits counter. “You get what you came here for?”
“No. Peter here says he can’t help me.”
“Oh,” said Baby Mike, and nodded slowly. “It’s like that.”
Baby Mike glared at Peter, then slid his immense form across the length of the permits counter while running his fingers under its lip. Something clicked, and Baby Mike lifted the counter’s pass-through hatch.
He passed through.
“Wait...” Peter clucked. Baby Mike ignored him and strode straight past the desks behind the counter to a frosted-glass door with somebody’s name on it. He threw open the door without knocking, and closed it good and solid behind himself. We heard raised voices through the door and saw shadows moving back and forth. The voices got louder, and it sounded like flesh got smacked a few times. The shadows merged, and one of the voices went on for a minute. Then the frosted-glass door opened.
Baby Mike emerged, a sheet of paper in his hand. An older man followed him, beaming. “Fill that out however you need to, Michael,” he said. “Great to see you!”
“You too, Jerry,” Baby Mike said. Then he stopped and swiveled back, and gave this guy Jerry a slap on the shoulder. Jerry returned the slap to Mike, and grinned even wider, and the two of them went in for a brief, manly hug, with more slapping.
Baby Mike went back around the desks and across the pass-through, ignoring Peter, and cocked his head at me. I followed in his wake as he carried right on into the lobby, plowing through the crowd to a counter supplied with pens on dirty string leashes.
“Fill this out and I can get you a walk-on.” He handed me the form. It was specific for the SoMa Centre job card and listed Haring & Symond, Architects, right up top.
After the display of violence I’d seen in the conference room at Haring & Symond, I couldn’t discount Oskar as a suspect in his father’s murder. But, apart from his volatility, there was no evidence against him—and Pointy Peter’s stonewalling about the job site in general and the yellow block of HAC in particular had pushed another theory to the top of my list. Peter was covering for somebody. Natalie Haring and Jeff Symond had money. If something had gone awry in the construction of SoMa Centre, something they wanted buried, they could be paying him off. And if Leopold Haring had tried to expose the construction flaw, then Jeff and Natalie had a good motive to shut him up—and to cover it up with the pipes, as an accident. Natalie could file for double indemnity on that workplace fatality rider, after all.
The screwdriver still didn’t make sense, though. Why would Natalie and Jeff frame Samuel Urias with such a sketchy piece of manufactured evidence? Why not drop the real murder weapon in the back of his truck?
Baby Mike broke my trance. “You almost done? I told my aunt Gayle I’d be back by four, and if I’m late, she’ll worry. I’m not going to let her worry.”
“Sorry,” I said, and went back to the form. It had a release of liability and a list of boxes for a conflicts check, with the site superintendent listed as representative for the general contractor. Under his name were a bunch of others, the subcontractors. One of them jumped out at me.
Monaghan, Denis.
I put down the pen.
“What’s the matter?” asked Baby Mike.
I thought back to what Denis had said, about our jobs being similar. He always had balls in the air, multiple projects on multiple sites, just like I always had autopsies, lab results, and death certificates to juggle on multiple decedents. Denis had been working at SoMa Centre at the same time he came in to fix our HVAC. Facilities maintenance had given him key-card access to the Office of Chief Medical Examiner. I had seen him tag himself into the autopsy suite—the very day I met him, when I jumped down his throat about wandering in there without any PPEs. Once he was in the autopsy suite, he had access to the cooler.
“Doc, are you gonna fill this out, or what?” demanded Baby Mike.
“I need a minute. I promise—just one minute.” I pulled out my phone and dialed Inspector Daniel Ramirez.
“Hey,” I said, as quietly as I could in the crowd. “That anonymous tipster, the one who pointed you to Urias—he told you that Urias was a pain in the ass, right?”
“He said Urias beefed with lots of folks down there, especially Leopold Haring.”
“Is that true?”
“For sure. We interviewed everyone at that place. The laborers, the guys who spoke Spanish, loved Urias. They all told me he looked out for them, and he was the only one. Management, though—they hated the guy. The site superintendent was always rushing the pace, and Urias was always pushing back, to slow it down for safety’s sake. I got the impression there was a lot of friction.”
“What about the subcontractors? How did they feel about Urias?”
“Hated him.”
“They all did?”
“Yup. The subcontractors were all real clear about that—Urias was slowing them down, and that meant he was going to cost them. Time pressure is serious on these big jobs, they said. There’s a per-day bonus, big money, if you deliver the project early, and penalties if you’re late. It’s written into all their contracts.”
“And how’s the time pressure on the subcontractors now that Urias is out of the picture?” I asked.
There was a pause. “That’s a good question.”
Well, I thought—there’s an easy way to answer it.
I hung up, went back over to the counter to join Baby Mike, and rushed right through the rest of the job site inspection form.