“What do you think about Sherman having a stash of stolen drugs?” John asked as he backed the car from the hospital lot.
“McDaniel knows how bad we want Sherman. The kind of action he was talking about—someone would have noticed that. You can’t take half of a drug seizure without someone asking questions. The dealers they arrested would start to squawk about the missing product so they didn’t take the fall from their distributors. It doesn’t hang together for me.”
“It could explain what was in the bag Sherman got from Junior.”
“Burger would have known where it came from,” Paula said.
John turned on Twenty-First and headed downtown. He glanced at his partner as she bit her lower lip.
“You remember Burger’s dead, right?”
“Don’t be an ass. I haven’t lost my mind, yet,” Paula said.
“Just checking. Why bring up Burger at all? How’s that gonna help us now?”
“Burger put in dozens of hours prepping for testimony. Drilling for the questions the DA was gonna ask him. The whens, wheres, and whodunits. Clarke and her team handled that. I wasn’t there. My part of the case was over. I wanna go over my notes in the files and compare what Burger told me against what came out in his testimony. He might have hinted at how the missing drugs were handled.”
“Wouldn’t the evidence room records flag missing drugs?”
“If the drugs never hit the evidence room, the records wouldn’t show anything. The books would balance out.”
“Sherman’s off-the-books stash.”
Paula shrugged. “Maybe. But the kind of stash McDaniel was going on about wasn’t gonna fit in that gym bag Sherman picked up.”
The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department headquarters building looked like it was designed as a fortress. The long slit windows reminded John of those on the prison cells in the PSU. Nothing remotely welcoming for public access; even press conferences were held outside the building.
“You know Connie Newhouse?” John asked.
“She’s the administrative captain, right? I met her once. What does she have to do with Sherman? He was Solano County Sheriff’s Department.”
“It’s his new BFF, Wallace, I’m curious about.”
“Really? Is BFF part of your vocabulary now?” Paula said.
John nosed the car into a tight parking space in the garage across the street from the sheriff’s building. “Yeah, so? Kari says it all the time. I’m hip.”
Paula undid her seat belt. “You’re closer to breaking a hip. She’s a teenager, and old folks do not say ‘BFF.’”
John got out of the car. “You just call me old?”
“You need a hearing aid too? Come on, Gramps; let’s see what Captain Newhouse can tell us about Wallace. Or are you gonna file an elder-abuse complaint?”
He shook his head and pretended to be hurt by her comments, but he was actually glad to see Paula loosen up a bit considering the pressure the case and the DA had put on her. Paula was at her best when she was quick, when she kept two steps ahead.
The administrative captain’s offices were buried deep in the complex. From there, she managed the department’s communications, records, and human resources. Captain Newhouse came out of her office to greet them.
“John, what brings you to the dark side?”
“Just a little interdepartmental cooperation. Some simple background info, that’s all.”
The captain put her hands on her hips and gave him a stern look. “It’s never ‘simple’ with you.”
“Come on. This way.” Then to Paula, “Detective Newberry, isn’t it?”
Paula shook Newhouse’s hand.
“I’m sorry for your burden,” Newhouse said.
“Sorry?”
In the captain’s office Newhouse continued, “John didn’t tell you? He and I used to be partners back in the day, before I transferred to the county.”
Paula glanced at her partner. “No, he didn’t tell me that.”
“I’m painfully aware of what it’s like to have a partner who is moody, keeps things to himself, and likes coloring outside the lines.” Newhouse grinned when she was done.
“But you made it out alive!” Paula said.
“Come on, Connie, it wasn’t that bad,” John said.
“He must have mellowed a bit since then,” Newhouse added.
“If you say so,” Paula said.
Newhouse sat behind her desk, which was piled with paper work. “What can I do for you?”
“One of your deputies is involved with a suspect,” John said.
“Okay. Isn’t that more of a matter for our detectives or internal affairs division?”
“That’s not what I’m after. That kind of inquiry would trigger a formal request from our chief to your sheriff, and everyone would get their boxers in a twist. I’d like to keep this low key. I’m only interested in this guy and his connection to our suspect.”
Newhouse put on a pair of reading glasses and pulled her computer keyboard in front of her. “Let me have it.”
“Wallace. Mark Andrew Wallace,” John said.
Newhouse typed in the employee’s information. “Yep, got him here. Sergeant Mark Wallace.” She turned the screen to show the photo displayed on the screen. “This look like the guy you’re interested in?”
The man’s face was unmistakable—he was a bit thinner now, but the pinched expression and tight jaw gave him a presence that could only be described as “cruel.”
“That’s the one,” Paula said.
Newhouse swung the screen around. “Now quid pro quo, why you looking at him?”
“He’s an associate of a man connected to a couple of homicides,” John said.
“Associate of—connected to? Pretty thin to go around poking at another law enforcement officer.”
“He picked up our suspect from prison and drove him to a meth house connected with the Aryan Brotherhood,” John said.
“Go on.”
“We think he’s the sheriff’s deputy we caught on tape with Larry Burger a few hours before Burger was found beaten to death.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all. I want to know if there is any connection between Wallace and our suspect. Something to explain why a sheriff’s sergeant would be so willing to pal around with a freshly released prison inmate.” John decided to keep Wallace’s possible role in the McDaniel shooting to himself at this point. An allegation like that would draw in the detectives or internal affairs and spook Wallace altogether.
“Who’s your suspect?”
John paused a moment. “Charles Sherman.”
Newhouse pushed back from her desk. “That Sherman? The one who’s been all over the news?”
John nodded.
“I need to turn this over to internal affairs.”
“Connie, I’m asking you to hold off for a bit. Let us put a case together.”
“What do you need?”
“Give us two days to wrap this up, and I’ll make sure you know when we have anything solid on Wallace.”
Newhouse shook her head. She scrolled into Wallace’s information. “Huh.”
“What?”
“When did Sherman go down for that task force bullshit?”
“About three years ago.”
“Wallace transferred to Sac County three years ago. His prior work history includes sergeant in the Solano County Sheriff’s Department. Also SSPNET task force supervisor.”
“He must have gotten out of Dodge before the task force blew up,” John added.
“That’s our connection,” Paula said. She was excited now. Her foot started to bounce.