It took less than five minutes to confirm that Sergeant Wallace was on duty and was finishing up booking in a prisoner at the main jail. His shift was scheduled to end in an hour.
John and Paula circled the area around the jail and located the silver Ford pickup registered to Wallace two blocks away. John parked on a side street where they could watch the truck.
“So what’d you and the lieutenant have to talk about?” John said, breaking the silence.
“I needed to know that the lieutenant still believed in me, trusted me even in the light of all this crap. I’m not sure I trust me. I needed to hear it from him. I told him everything I know and told him to expect something pretty damning from Karen.”
“He hasn’t pulled you off on admin leave. That has to mean something. Besides, isn’t it enough that your own partner trusts you?”
“You don’t have a choice,” she said. A gathering of people waited at the crosswalk, three blocks down. Paula squinted. “You didn’t think to grab the camera, did you?”
“Backpack, in the back seat.”
She leaned over the seat and grabbed the camera. The telephoto lens focused in on the pedestrians. One of them wore a black Sacramento sheriff’s uniform. “There’s our man.”
They waited until he was a few yards away from his truck before they approached.
“Sergeant Wallace. We need to talk,” Paula said, holding her badge up.
“And I’d rather not do it out here on the street.”
“What’s this about, anyway?” Wallace asked.
“We need your help on an old case,” John said.
Wallace cocked his head. “Really? Which one?”
“Let’s take a drive and we’ll talk it over,” John said. He gestured to their car.
“I’ll follow you,” Wallace said.
Wallace gave the appearance of cooperation when he agreed to go with John and Paula. That appearance was short-lived. When they arrived at the detective bureau, Wallace told them to get his union representative or he wasn’t going to say another word.
It took more than an hour for Parker, the union rep, to sober up and creep out from some watering hole. A telltale odor of booze swept in the door with Parker when he arrived. A terminally pissed-off ex-cop, John got the sense Michael Parker popped from the womb an angry man. A perpetual scowl, tight jaw, and sarcastic demeanor were a package of unpleasant times for everyone.
“Parker, I didn’t know you repped for the sheriff’s department,” John said.
“What you don’t know could be measured in metric tons. What are we doing here? And why are you interviewing Sergeant Wallace and not the sheriff’s internal affairs unit?”
“We’re not conducting an internal affairs investigation. We were going to talk to the sergeant when he said he wanted you here first.”
“I want it noted that Sergeant Wallace came here on his own free will.”
“Noted.”
Paula led them to a small break room, deliberately not one of the rooms used for interrogation, to keep Wallace as compliant as possible. A table near the back kept them out of the traffic hitting the microwave and vending machines. Paula pulled out a chair and set a file and notebook on the table.
Parker dropped into another chair. He unbuckled his belt and let his gut breathe. “So let’s get on with it.”
After everyone had settled, Paula ran a hand across the file. Everyone’s attention went to the internal affairs stamp on the front. It was Parker who bit first.
“I thought this wasn’t an IA witch hunt against the sergeant?” Parker said.
Wallace eyed the file under Paula’s hand. Something in his expression darkened. He’d seen his share of IA files.
“Do you smoke?” Paula asked.
Wallace tilted his head. “What?”
“What the hell does his need for a smoke got to do with anything?” Parker asked.
“Just making sure the sergeant’s need for a smoke break is attended to.” The word smoke was loud and clear. “Sergeant, how long have you known Charles Sherman?” Paula continued.
“I dunno, why?” Wallace asked.
“Sherman, the ex-cop?” Parker said.
“Or former prison inmate,” John added.
“You can’t say how long you’ve known Sherman? I mean, you guys go back to Solano County, and you both worked the SSPNET task force.”
“Yeah, so?” Wallace said.
“I’m just saying you know him, is all,” Paula said.
“So?”
“When’s the last time you saw Sherman?” Paula asked.
“Last time I worked with him was about two, maybe three years ago.”
Paula leaned forward. “That’s not what I asked. I don’t care when you worked with him. I asked when you last saw him.”
Wallace shrugged. “Couldn’t say.”
“And why’s that?” John asked.
“Listen, I have nothing to do with him. He’s why I got out of the task force. I saw what he was doing, and I didn’t want to get caught up in all the bullshit.”
John pulled the prison body receipts from a file and pushed them, one at a time, across the table. He let Wallace stew for a minute before he spoke. “These prison records say something else. You definitely had something going on with Sherman.”
Wallace picked up one of the receipts, glanced at it, and pushed it back to John.
“I picked up a prisoner, so what?”
“You knew who you were picking up at the prison?”
“I go where they tell me to go and pick up who they tell me to. Simple as that.”
“And you picked up Sherman six times over the last year?”
“If you say so.”
“According to the prison records, you were the only transport officer to pick up Sherman for his court appearances. Is that unusual?”
Wallace shrugged.
“So what? Prison inmates go out to court all the time,” Parker said.
“How’s that work exactly?” Paula asked.
“The court issues an order for removal, and the sheriff’s department picks them up,” Parker responded.
“That’s right. Except, in this case, all the removal orders from the court were fakes. There were no court appearances, and Sherman was never booked into the jail for holding. So how’s that work?” Paula glanced from Parker to Sergeant Wallace.
“I just transport who they tell me to. It ain’t my job to call the court and see if they still need them or not,” Wallace said.
“So where did you and Sherman go? You didn’t book him into jail. So was it a nice romantic moonlight drive?” Paula said.
“I pick ’em up and drop ’em off. If someone’s telling you they don’t have any booking record, then that’s on them, not me.”
“Where is Sherman?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“Because you picked him up from the hospital and took him to your place,” Paula said.
“As a favor.”
“I thought you didn’t have anything to do with him,” John said.
Paula lifted the lip of the internal affairs file and peeked inside. “You left the SSPNET task force just before the shit hit the fan, didn’t you?”
“If you mean before you and the rest of the rat squad railroaded those guys, then yeah, like I said, I got out just in time.”
“How long had all the skimming of drug seizures gone on?”
“Don’t know nothing about that.”
Paula patted the file again. “Really? Because what I have tells me you were the senior man on the task force when you left. You’d have to know something was going on. Everything you’d set up, Sherman managed to screw up. Was he too greedy?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that. You’ve got nothing to say I do, or I’d have gone down with the rest of them. What Sherman did, what those guys did, skimming evidence, I guess they were greedy.”
“Where were you when Larry Burger and Bobby Wing were killed?” John asked.
“Working.”
“Don’t you need to know the dates of the murders before you know if you were working or not?” John said.
“I’m always working,” Wallace said.
“You don’t have any idea where Sherman is?” John said.
“Nope. You want me to tell him anything for you if I see him?”
“Sure, tell him I can’t wait to see him in prison again,” Paula said.
Wallace nodded. “If he’s done what you say he has, killing righteous cops and such, that’s where he belongs. You want me to go find him? He might trust me.”
“No, we have that all locked down,” Paula said. She kicked her partner’s foot under the table.
Wallace nodded again. His expression went from pissed to depressed in ten seconds.
“So if you see him, let him know we’re onto him,” Paula said.
“I don’t think I’ll be seeing him.”
“Why’s that?” Paula said.
“He’s got no reason to see me, and I got no reason to see him neither.”
“We about done here?” Parker asked. “I got another appointment.”
“Yeah,” John answered. The only appointment Parker had was a two-for-one happy hour special at a local cop bar, John figured.
Paula stood and grabbed the file from the table. “Thanks for your time, Sergeant.”
Parker and Wallace strode out of the break room.
“You notice Wallace almost swallow his tongue when he saw your IA file? I thought all these were burned at your place,” John said.
“Yep. They were.” She opened the file and dumped the take-out menus on the table.
“He thought he missed one.”
John’s cell rang. “Penley.” He smiled and said thanks. “Karen got the GPS tracker on Wallace’s truck.”
“Now we can let Wallace lead us to Sherman. Did Karen have any issue putting that tracker on his truck without a warrant?”
“She knows we need this to get you out from under the Sherman case. We’ve got your back, Paula.”
“Wallace was a little eager to help find Sherman, don’t you think?”
“Maybe he figured with Sherman gone, he’d take over Sherman’s stolen drug stash. He had to know about it from the task force work.”
John grabbed one of the food delivery menus. “You hungry?”
“I’m too pissed off to eat.”
“How would you feel about delivering to a poor shut-in?”