I phoned Marsha Russo from my cruiser. “Two seniors. Members of the football team. Ronald Van Cleave and Paul Henderson. I want you to pick them both up and hold them without bail. Separately. Bring along some backup in case they cause trouble. Let me know when you’ve got them.”
“Charge?”
“Murder.”
“They killed Hank Carson?”
“Uncertain. Were I a betting man, I’d say no. But they’ve got information that in all likelihood relates to the killing.”
“Do I need to involve the D.A.’s office?”
“Eventually. But not yet.”
“Got it. I’ll be back to you when it’s done.”
After the call, I drove around aimlessly for a while. I stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts and picked up coffee and a cruller. I wandered over to Freedom Park and pulled up in the shade of a live oak, in a red zone, within sight of the statue of the former California Governor and later Supreme Court Justice, Earl Warren.
The base of the statue displayed Warren’s most notable quote, It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
An axiom I admired.
I sipped and ate and stared sightlessly out the window. I didn’t like this murder case. It depressed me. Which had to do with the demeaning play parties Henry Carson had organized.
But without having even spoken with them, I didn’t make the football players for the murder, even though their involvement had more than likely changed the game. They understood they could control Hank Carson because his job was at stake. By threatening to blow the whistle on him, they gained the upper hand.
At the outset I’m sure they didn’t grasp all that was in store for them, but when they became participants and realized that a play party was, in reality, a sex party, they seized their opportunity.
Steffi Lincoln told her mother that her informant friend claimed things had gotten rough. Consensual sex was no longer de rigueur. The football thugs were in charge. Roughhousing had become a factor. Rape was a regular occurrence. Somewhere in that dynamic lay the answer to who murdered Henry Carson.
I’d have to present this case to the District Attorney pretty soon, but the last people I wanted to deal with just now were D.A. Michael Lytell and his whipping boy, Skip Wilder.
I acknowledged to myself that often the trials and tribulations of a big city police force were a whole lot less personal than those of a small town. This case was a striking example of that dictum.
Then there was the issue of my father. I knew I had to involve him in these goings-on, but sitting in front of the deteriorating old man, forcing myself to once again watch him fruitlessly standing up to his mortality, always took the starch out of me.
I finished the cruller, took a last sip of coffee, waved goodbye to Earl Warren, and headed for the station, where the idea of making the lives of a pair of malevolent idiots more miserable than my own was suddenly very appealing.