Sinclair took a few puffs on the Rocky Patel Churchill and looked across the pool to the main house, which was dark except for a few night-lights inside. “By the time they proned me out, patted me down, and found my badge, Tiny was long gone. I can’t blame the officers. I would’ve handled it the same way. Fletcher had called it in, but the info didn’t make its way from the CHP nine-one-one dispatcher to the different police jurisdictions we were passing through in time. They assumed the bad guy was the one chasing the other one.”
“And your friend,” Walt asked, “Officer Fletcher. Is he okay?”
“Only his pride was hurt. His motorcycle is banged up a bit, but it’s repairable.”
Walt took a sip of his coffee. “How’s your dad?”
“They’ll probably move him from ICU to a cardiac care floor tomorrow.”
“Will you go up and see him?”
Amber rose from the grass where she was lying, picked up a tennis ball, and dropped it on Sinclair’s lap. He threw it across the yard and watched her sprint after it. “I’m more than a little busy right now.”
“I understand.” Walt took another sip of his coffee and watched as Amber scooped up the ball in her mouth at a full run.
“Besides, my visiting him last night was more than he deserves.”
“So you’re not ready to forgive him yet?” Walt grinned.
Amber returned and dropped the ball at Sinclair’s feet. He picked it up and held it. She sat down in front of him, watching the ball intently.
“Shortly after I got sober,” Walt said, “I was harboring serious resentments against a lot of people. I blamed everyone else for my predicament. I was wasting a great deal of emotional energy on hating people. I knew I needed to make amends—apologize—for my part to a number of people. It wasn’t as if some of them didn’t do things to me that weren’t right, but I needed to focus on what I’d done. Once I’d made apologies to most of these people, it sometimes opened a dialogue, and I started feeling differently toward them. I had begun forgiving them for what they’d done to me.”
Sinclair threw the ball again. “And what if I don’t want to forgive him?”
“I’m just sharing my experience. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
*
Sinclair had been waiting in the PAB’s jail sally port since 6:30 AM. If this were a regular commercial building, this is where a loading dock for supplies and maintenance would be located. But a police station had additional needs and requirements. The vehicle entry door, located on Sixth Street, rose fifteen feet, high enough to accommodate the bus-like mobile command post and SWAT vans, which loaded and unloaded their equipment alongside a freight elevator that went to the basement, where the shooting range and storage rooms were located. A pedestrian door led from the open parking area to the rear door of the jail. Prisoner vans—called paddy wagons in the old days—parked there to unload arrestees. Another pedestrian door led to the first floor of the PAB, directly into the rear of the bureau of field operations, the uniformed division of the department. Powered, rolling metal doors could be lowered over the vehicle entrance and exits to seal off the sally port area, useful when moving a large group of prisoners into the jail or when loading the tactical operation team’s vehicles out of sight of the public. In addition to parking spaces for special-purpose vehicles, five spaces were reserved for the highest-ranking brass in the department: the police chief, the assistant chief, and three deputy chiefs.
At 6:40 AM, a black unmarked sedan pulled into the space marked Assistant Chief, and a broad-shouldered white man with close-cut gray hair got out. Charley James turned fifty last year, a fact that he made known to everyone at City Hall, reminding anyone who considered messing with him that he could retire tomorrow. Unlike the others at the “chief” level, who spent most of their careers working IAD and OIG, the office of the inspector general, James worked his way up through the uniform ranks—patrol at the officer, sergeant, lieutenant, and captain level and a member of the tactical operations team as an officer, sergeant, and lieutenant. Chief Brown elevated him to the assistant chief position and made him responsible for the day-to-day operation of the department because, as much as he didn’t like James’s old-school mentality, he needed someone on the eighth floor who understood police work.
Sinclair’s best memory of James was when Sinclair was a member of the SWAT entry team years ago and was going after a murder suspect holed up in an apartment. It turned out the suspect wasn’t there, and his family members made a complaint to IAD and the CPRB, the citizens police review board, accusing the entry team of unlawfully entering a house without a warrant or probable cause. James, who was the tactical commander and the lieutenant of the special operations section at the time, marched down to IAD. He demanded that the officers be removed from the complaint and that he be named as the subject officer since he ordered it, and he insisted that officers such as Sinclair were merely following orders. The CPRB held a hearing, viewed as a kangaroo court by OPD, and suspended James for three days. Although it took a year for his suspension to be overturned once it was shown the entry was legal, the officers in the department never forgot the lieutenant who was willing to sacrifice his career for his men.
“Shouldn’t you be investigating a murder instead of hanging around in the bowels of the PAB?” James asked.
“I was wondering if you had a minute to talk.”
“Famous last words.” James removed his suitcoat from the back seat and slipped it on. “I come in early so I can lock myself in my office and get work done before everyone arrives and wants a minute.”
“Sorry, Chief, but it’s important.”
“I’m just busting your balls, Matt. Do you want to come upstairs?”
“I thought it might be best if you weren’t seen with me.”
“Maybe it’s actually the other way around, but go ahead. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m trying to figure out what Roberts was working when he was killed, and I’m hitting a brick wall.”
“One erected by my boss?”
“I don’t want to be insubordinate.”
“That’s one of your best qualities,” James said in his gravelly voice. “The chief didn’t bring me into the loop when he assigned Farrington to Intel.”
“They’re hiding something,” Sinclair offered.
“Some units report directly to the chief. IAD and Intel are two of them. I get involved with most of the IAD cases since they generally involve officers assigned to patrol and other operational units. I also get involved in most of what Intel’s doing because it’s related to operations, but there are some investigations or inquiries I’m not privy to.”
“Such as Intel case number D-eighty-four?”
“How do you know about that?”
At that moment, Sinclair feared he’d made a huge miscalculation. James was the number two in the department after all. He owed his position to Brown and thus his total loyalty. “Look, Chief, I’m just searching for the truth—trying to find out who killed one of our own and why—but they’re shutting me out.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He couldn’t squirm out of this. If James told Brown he was disregarding the order to leave this alone, he was finished. But he needed to trust someone. “Roberts wrote the number on his overtime slips citing surveillance and meetings every Friday night and usually another evening for the last few months.”
“You obviously don’t want me to mention that you know about D-eighty-four, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I never said what I’m about to tell you.”
Sinclair nodded.
“I met with Phil once a week or so, usually when he delivered his unit’s time sheets and overtime slips to my admin. I asked him about the case since I noticed all the overtime he was submitting on it. He said it was one of the top-secret-I’d-have-to-kill-you-if-I-told-you cases, and if I preferred, he could submit his overtime directly to the chief. I told him I’d ask the chief about it myself. When I did, the chief told me the investigation was between him and Roberts, and he would tell me about it when the time was right.”
“And the time hasn’t been right yet?”
“Guess not,” James said. “What makes you think this has something to do with his murder? I thought the Savage Simbas were responsible.”
“We have one likely suspect based on fingerprints, but there’s no motive. Besides, if Phil was working some investigation involving them, Fletcher would’ve known about it.”
“Unless Phil was doing something deeper on the Simbas and that’s what D-eighty-four was about.”
“I guess that’s possible, but if so, why would the chief withhold that information from me? Would he really let a cop killer walk?”
James studied his shoes for a moment. “The chief is a lot of things, but not that.”
“I’ve been doing this long enough to know that people lie and withhold the truth for all kinds of reasons. One of those is because they’re responsible for the crime. I’m not saying the chief’s responsible, but he might be withholding a key piece of the puzzle without even knowing it.”
“I’ll ask him again about D-eighty-four. On another note, I’ve been asked to give the main speech—I guess they call it the eulogy—at Phil’s funeral since I was his day-to-day supervisor. That is, after all the political ones by the mayor, the chief, the attorney general, and anyone else from Sacramento that shows up. You two were partners for a long time, so I thought you might like to say a few words.”
“I don’t think so,” Sinclair said. “I want to devote all my focus to solving his murder.”
“Understood. And, Matt, I know no one will prevent you from looking under all the rocks to find the truth.” James slammed his car door. “Just don’t kick the rocks over and cause a rockslide if you can quietly peek under them when no one’s looking.”