They waited at the city park four blocks from Crystal’s house in the 9200 block of Sunnyside. Sinclair and Braddock were in their OPD car, with Braddock driving. Uppy and Archard were in a bureau car driven by Uppy. Sinclair got out and stood outside Uppy’s car, listening to him talk on the radio as another task force team fed him details of the house from his recon of the area.
Uppy gathered the four of them together for a briefing. Even though Archard was the supervisor, she didn’t try to take over. She reminded Sinclair of Maloney in that way, both supervisors who knew their limitations and trusted their subordinates to do what they did best. Maybe she wasn’t the bitch he’d thought she was last year and, like Phil, was just doing her job when she had iced him out when he was pressing her for information.
“We don’t have a warrant, so it’ll be a knock and talk,” Uppy said. “If Tiny’s in a public place or we’re invited inside, we can arrest him on probable cause. We’ll try to talk him into the back seat of a car rather than fight him. We don’t want to advise OPD we’re here, so let’s not get into the shit where we need to call the cavalry out to rescue us. Linda and I will meet the other two agents in front of the house and go to the front door. Matt and Cathy, I want you guys out of sight in case OPD does come by. You’ll take the back, just in case Tiny decides to squirt out when we put pressure on the front. Questions?”
They all nodded their understanding. “We’re not anticipating trouble, but let’s vest up just in case,” Archard said.
Braddock popped their trunk, and he was glad to see she still carried his gear. They pulled on their vests and slapped the Velcro straps in place. Braddock was pulling on her OPD raid jacket when Archard came around the back of their car with two FBI windbreakers. “If anyone calls in, all I want them to be able to report is people in jackets with big yellow FBI letters. Remember, you’re not OPD today, so practice in your head yelling, ‘FBI, stop! FBI, drop the gun!’”
They pulled the windbreakers over their vests and trailed Uppy’s car down the street. Sinclair had been in this neighborhood hundreds of times in his career. He’d handled several homicide scenes on this street alone over the years, every one of them drug related. As they crept down the street, he felt the eyes of the neighborhood watching them, wondering whose house they were going to hit, who they were going to haul off to jail, or whose drug stash they were going to seize.
The intersection of Ninety-Fourth and Sunnyside was empty, the street corner dealers normally camped out there long gone. If the dealers knew they were the FBI, they wouldn’t have been concerned; the FBI doesn’t hit corners and chase down drug dealers.
Uppy stopped behind the bureau car that was scouting the area. The four FBI agents got out and walked up to the house. Sinclair and Braddock followed with guns drawn. Like most houses in this neighborhood, a low chain link fence surrounded the front yard. As the agents walked toward the front door, Sinclair and Braddock peeled off and crept down the side of the small stucco house toward the back.
The rear door was covered with a metal security gate, and bars covered the windows. Three concrete steps led out of the house to the backyard, which was nothing but dirt and weeds with rusted bicycles and old car tires scattered about. Sinclair couldn’t find any decent cover from where they could see the back door, so he knelt at the corner of the house, his gun trained on the back door. Braddock stood over him with her gun pointed in the same direction.
Sinclair heard the agents knocking at the front door and the buzz of an old-fashioned doorbell from within the house. Voices at the front door. Uppy and then a woman. “FBI? What you want? Tiny? Who’s that?” Footsteps headed their way. Heavy footsteps.
The back door sprang open. A huge black man appeared in the doorway, every bit of the six foot six and two hundred eighty pounds that his driver’s license indicated. He stood on the doorstep for a second. Blue jeans, leather boots, black T-shirt. No weapons in his hand, only a black duffle bag slung over one shoulder.
Sinclair wasn’t concerned that this big man would be able to leap the back fence and lose him in a foot chase. Better to allow him to get all the way out of the house and fight him in open ground if that’s how he wanted to go rather than let him slink back inside the cramped interior of the house. Sinclair ducked out of sight around the corner so Tiny would think he had an open escape route.
A few seconds later, the metal door slammed shut. Sinclair stepped around the corner with his gun up. Braddock followed at his side. Tiny stood ten feet away, halfway to the corner of the house where he thought his escape route was clear.
“Tiny, you’re too big to fight,” Sinclair said firmly. “So if you don’t put your hands up right now, I’m going to shoot you.”
Tiny dropped the duffle bag and put his hands in the air.
*
While Tiny sat in an interview room at state parole, Sinclair spread out his belongings on a desk outside. They’d searched him and removed a cell phone, wallet, and a ring of keys from his pockets. Sinclair went through the wallet but found nothing interesting. He missed the days when they could search a suspect’s cell phone incident to an arrest, but the Supreme Court recently decided police now needed consent or a warrant. Another time-consuming hurdle to do their job. He unzipped the duffle bag and pulled out shirts, underwear, and socks. He removed a pair of jeans, laid them on the table, and unrolled them. Inside was a compact Glock pistol and an Oakland police sergeant’s badge etched with Phil’s badge number.
Braddock hugged him. Her eyes were welling up. “We got him, Matt,” she said. “We got Phil’s killer.”
Sinclair wished it were that simple. They needed more. Sinclair got a pair of gloves and evidence bags from one of the marshals babysitting T-bone. Sinclair unloaded Phil’s gun, noting it was still fully loaded and hadn’t been fired. He placed the magazine and cartridges in a bag, the gun in another bag, and the badge in a third.
When they began working together two years ago, Sinclair would never have allowed Braddock to lead a suspect interview when the outcome was so critical. Her anxiety and apprehension would’ve been all over her face. But Braddock was no longer that rookie homicide investigator. They discussed their strategy for a few minutes and entered the room.
Tiny had moved a chair to the corner of the room where he sat facing the door. “Mr. Richards, would you stand up, please?” When he did, Braddock moved the chair back to the table, patted it, and said, “Please have a seat.”
Tiny sat down, looked at Sinclair on his right, and turned to face Braddock on his left. She placed a tape recorder in the center of the table and turned it on, opened her notebook, and slid out a legal pad and a statement form containing the Miranda warning. Even though the room was cool, Tiny was sweating profusely.
“Mr. Richards, my name is Sergeant Braddock. I’m assigned to the homicide unit of the Oakland Police Department. This is my partner, Sergeant Sinclair, who is now assigned to an FBI federal task force.”
“I don’t—”
Braddock held up her hand, and Tiny stopped speaking. “There will be plenty of time for you to talk later, but right now we need to complete some formalities. I’ll ask the questions, okay?” She smiled.
“Okay,” he said.
She went through the standard routine: name, date of birth, address, and other questions. She slowly printed his responses on her legal pad and the statement form. She set her pen on the table. “Mr. Richards, you’re being detained right now as a suspect in a homicide investigation. The murder of Oakland police sergeant Phil Roberts. You are not free to leave.”
“I know you went through my bag and found his stuff,” Tiny said. “I swear to God, I didn’t kill him.”
Braddock patted him on his huge forearm and smiled. “We want to hear what happened and how you came into possession of a murdered police officer’s gun and badge, but under the law, we must first read you your rights. Is that okay?”
Braddock’s smile and soft voice drew Tiny in. She conveyed empathy in a way Sinclair never could. She read him his rights and asked, “Do you understand each of these rights I have read to you?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Is there any part you’d like me to read again or any part you don’t understand that I can explain to you?”
“No, I understand.”
She smiled again. “Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us now?”
“I want to tell you I didn’t kill your friend.”
“And we’ll be glad to listen. First I’d like you to place your initials on the form in these two places and sign your name here.”