Reporters scrambled across the sloping field of the cemetery, joined by bystanders, and together they outnumbered the local gendarmes ten to one.
Reverend Grandgeorge held up his hands and asked for the commotion to stop in the name of God, but he had no chance against those who believed deeply that Paul Baron was filth and the others, friends of the Greeleys, who reasonably saw the funeral as sacrosanct.
Barefoot and bleeding, I retrieved my gun from the grass and ordered Anderson to stay facedown on the ground. Conklin intervened. As I rubbed my jaw and tried to clear away the fog behind my eyes, Conklin arrested Anderson for assault on a police officer and read him his rights.
Jacobi helped Anderson to his feet and marched him to the car across the road. The noisy crowd followed.
Conklin said loudly, “Who else wants to go to jail?”
I got into the passenger seat of the unmarked car, and Jacobi took the wheel. He backed out of the churchyard and pointed us southeast toward San Francisco, about an hour away. But he had a hard time keeping his eyes on the road.
“Are your knuckles broken?” he asked. “Let me run you by the emergency room.”
“Jacobi. I’m fine. Really.”
I knew without looking that I had a fat lip, a swollen eye, a scraped cheek, and a pulsing ache in my right ankle. I didn’t think I had broken bones, but I was pissed.
I held my bloody right fist in my lap and picked up the mike with my left hand. I reported to dispatch that we were on our way back to the Hall. The dispatcher’s voice came over the radio along with a big pile of static, and she confirmed.
I dialed down the noise, rotated my bad ankle, and looked out the car window, ignoring the kicking and cage rattling from the back seat. Anderson was freaking out, but he was cuffed. The doors were locked, and no one had been shot or maimed.
An hour later we were back at the Hall.
I washed up and iced my face, and after Anderson was booked, he was brought to Interview 2 in an orange jumpsuit. He didn’t ask for anything, not a cold drink or a phone call or even a lawyer. Good. Jacobi and I were experienced working together, and we gave Anderson a thorough three-hour interrogation with tape rolling.
Since Anderson punched me, I was throbbing all over. Maybe I just wanted it all to be done with, but I believed Anderson’s story. He had no independent knowledge of the Barons’ drug involvement, but he’d seen the news. His story was short and bitter. He had loved Ramona when they were in high school. And he hated Paul. He put his head down on the table and cried.
“Lock me up,” he said. “I deserve it. There’s no other place I want to be.”
By then we knew that Anderson didn’t own a gun, had never been in the military, had no priors or outstanding warrants. He didn’t even have a computer, owing to the iffy wireless service in the area. He wasn’t one of the Moving Targets shooters, but we were keeping him in lockup while Greeley got a lawyer and pressed charges.
As a guard took Anderson to holding, he said to me, “I’m sorry about…hitting you. I’m sorry for what I did.”
“Tell it to the judge,” said Jacobi.
Back at my desk, I slumped down in my chair and said to Conklin, “It’s still Saturday, right?”
My partner grinned at me. “Want to go out to dinner with me and Cindy?”
“Thanks, but no. I have a date.”