On my way up the Justice Center stairs to the Major Crime Team’s fourth-floor offices, I passed Jessica Walters on her way down.
“I’m afraid to ask,” I said, looking up at her.
“You should be. The custodies still aren’t done, but at least we got things sufficiently under control for intake to finish on their own. Now I’ve got to deal with whatever the hell’s waiting for me back in Gangs.”
I looked at my watch. Nearly eleven.
“How could they not be done by now with all those extra bodies?”
She scoffed. “Yeah, right, all those extra bodies.” She ticked them off on her fingers one by one. “Jennifer Loving came over from Child Support and spent the whole morning. So did some new guy from the misdemeanor trial row, but he was so slow it barely made a dent. Harding came over from General Felonies, but was suddenly paged back. Kessler was over from DVD, but, lo and behold, he was mysteriously paged away too. Anyway, you get the picture.”
Rocco Kessler was my former supervisor in the Drug and Vice Division, before my promotion to the Major Crimes Unit. I had no problems picturing him, Peter Harding, and most of my other colleagues cooking up fake pages to weasel out of intake duty.
“Even worse, it turns out I’m probably going to have to take a bunch of those dog cases over to Gangs.”
I gave her a puzzled look. The Gang Unit rarely handled misdemeanors, even when they involved gang activity.
“Looks like we had a pack of kids totally out of control up on Northwest Twenty-third after the protests were dying down. They did a shitload of property damage. Bashed in a mess of parked cars, even smashed in a couple of storefront windows. The neighborhood association’s freaking out, so Duncan told me he wants me to handle them as felonies.”
“Good luck,” I offered facetiously. She’d need it. Unless it’s a domestic situation where the victim knows the perpetrator, finding the culprit in a property damage case is nearly impossible. That would not be the answer the public wanted, though. Twenty-third Avenue was the crown jewel of Portland’s burgeoning collection of quaint but happening hot spots. Pillaging there was equivalent to taking a can of spray paint to the Lincoln Memorial. There would definitely be pressure to find the culprits.
“What about you? I take it you had a real reason for leaving?” she asked expectantly.
I looked around to see if anyone was in earshot. For the Justice Center, the place was remarkably quiet.
“You could say that.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “The call-out was on Percy Crenshaw.”
Her eyes widened. “Percy Crenshaw killed someone?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s the victim, bludgeoned to death in his carport up on Hillside, right in those big condos on the heights.”
She looked genuinely stunned and placed a hand on the underside of her extended belly. Reading her expression, I immediately regretted what must have come across as an excited tone.
“Oh, God, Jessica. I’m sorry. Did you know him?”
She sighed and seemed to snap back into character. “No, I guess I wouldn’t say I knew him.”
“But?”
She paused. “Sorry, I just kind of freaked for a second. God, this kid must be making me hormonal. Anyway, Percy did some work on a case of mine about a year ago. He was friends with the vic’s mom, I guess, and I wound up talking to him a few times on the phone. He came in for grand jury too.”
“You called a reporter into grand jury?” I asked. Jessica was known for her doggedness, but dragging information out of a journalist involuntarily was nearly impossible.
“Not as a reporter,” she said. “It was a gang shooting, and he was poking around on the side. He managed to get a lot more out of the victim’s gangbanger buddies than the police ever did. Apparently he was a PI before we all got to know him as a reporter. Still had his license and everything.”
“Raymond Johnson from MCT had crossed paths with him too. Said he was a pretty good guy.”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding, “I think he was. Unless, of course, they’ve found out otherwise already.”
“Nothing yet, but it’s still early. The police haven’t even looked through his place. I’m headed up to review the warrants now.” I pointed up the stairs.
“Well, let me know if you need anything. This one’s going to get some attention.”
Chuck and his partner, Mike Calabrese, were gathered at the unofficial MCT powwow spot, a small conference table situated in the middle of a cluster of detectives’ cubicles. Both were in familiar positions, Chuck teetering his chair at a 45-degree angle, his fingertips pressed against the table for balance, Mike centered solidly in the seat nearest the minifridge.
I paused in the doorway and took a good look at Chuck. After adjusting to my divorce a few years ago, I had sworn that my French bulldog Vinnie would be the closest thing I’d ever have again to a housemate. But last spring Chuck and I took the leap from gratingly platonic flirtatiousness to an in-your-heart-and-guts thing that had begun a decade and a half ago at Grant High. I resisted the change at first, but somewhere over the summer I stopped analyzing our budding relationship and resolved to enjoy the ride. By the end of August, Chuck was dropping hints that the rent on his apartment was going to waste, and by October I had invited him to move into my Alameda bungalow. We celebrated our first night as live-ins by dressing up Vinnie in his cow costume and doling out candy to the kiddies on Halloween. I suspect Vinnie found the whole thing emasculating, but Chuck and I had a blast.
“There she is!” Mike hollered out, when he saw me lurking. “Ray told us that Frist was putting you front and center on this one.”
Chuck eyed me mischievously but maintained his promise not to spill the beans about my birthday. “And we all know how much Samantha Kincaid loves to be in the spotlight.”
“Well, that all depends on what it’s for, doesn’t it? Hopefully, this time around it’ll be because you find the bad guys and hand me a slam-dunk case.”
“We’re trying,” Mike said. “Meanwhile, though, Frist’s looking to shine himself by going after our boy Hamilton.”
My boyfriend’s protective tendencies kicked in. “C’mon. If Sam could control Russ Frist, there’d be a whole lot about her office that would change.”
“What? I can’t kid her like any other DA?”
This was precisely why I had insisted from the very beginning that Chuck leave the rest of the law enforcement crowd out of the loop about the change in our domestic arrangements. Our ability to maintain a professional distance was questioned enough as it stood. Chuck being Chuck, he was more cavalier about the line between our personal and professional lives, seeing the subject as one more humorous opportunity to see me sweat.
“Hey. Guys. Yoo-hoo.” I threw in a little wave. “Still in the room. And for what it’s worth, Calabrese, as the new kid in the MCU sandbox, I haven’t exactly been consulted on the resolution of your boy Hamilton’s situation.”
Cops are never happy when their use of force is questioned, but they are especially incensed when the criticism comes from prosecutors who bill themselves as the real crime fighters without ever dealing with the rough stuff. Mike Calabrese wasn’t ready to let the subject of the bureau’s most recent police shooting drop. “Yeah, well, you got to admit: Every fuck in your office creams at the idea of going after one of us. It’s a direct route to superstardom in this PC little hippie town.”
Mike was a transplant from the NYPD and would probably never fully adjust to a population that favored community policing over Giuliani-style street-crime sweeps. He may have been right that a few cop-prosecuting DAs had jumped on the fast track to become judges and politicos, but I still resented the accusation.
“Maybe you should rethink your meaning of us, Mike. I would certainly hope you’d never put a bullet in an unarmed woman’s head during a traffic stop.”
“Unarmed, my ass. A moving car’s just as lethal as a loaded gun, and if you were ever on the street—”
“Yo, time out.” Chuck made a T with his hands, bringing his chair back down to all fours. “Why don’t we agree to disagree, since the last time I checked we had other things to deal with. Besides, none of us know a damn thing about what happened out there with Hamilton.”
“Knows,” I said, after a pause.
“What?” Chuck didn’t hide his irritation.
“None of us knows a damn thing. Singular. You said know.”
Mike laughed. “Now that’s fucking funny. If the two of you ever decide to tie the knot, you should have one of those reality shows, like that girl who asked her husband if Chicken of the Sea was really chicken. I could watch this shit for hours.” He folded his arms in front of his chest and smirked.
“Glad we could amuse you,” I said, throwing an uncomfortable look at Chuck. “You guys done with the warrant applications?”
“Hot off the presses,” Chuck said, handing me a set of papers for review.
It was the standard packet of forms we used for searches after a homicide: a warrant authorizing a search of the victim’s home, cars, and office and a bare-bones affidavit about the crime. I signed off on the DA line, and Mike volunteered to find the nearest judge for the signature that actually counted.
“How’s the birthday so far?” Chuck asked, once Mike had left.
“Word hasn’t leaked, so it’s been fine under the circumstances.”
“Why are you being so secretive?”
Maybe this guy didn’t quite get me after all. “Because.”
It seemed like a perfectly satisfactory explanation to me, but Chuck was clearly looking for more. “Why in the world do my coworkers need to know that I managed to live another year?”
“Beats the alternative, right?”
“Trust me,” I said, “those guys at the courthouse are always looking for an excuse. They get one inkling that it’s my birthday, and my office will be plastered with birthday cards featuring five-by-seven glossies of naked geriatrics.”
“Hmmm,” he said sheepishly. “I may need to run out and get you another card.”
“Funny. Hey,” I said, changing the subject, “you weren’t kidding about your buddies having a bee in their bonnet over the Tompkins shooting.” I glanced toward the door Mike had just used. “What’s up with him? Are he and Hamilton tight?”
“Not that I know of.” He pulled a PPDS report across the table toward him.
“So what’s his deal?”
“He’s a cop. Hamilton’s a cop. Delores Tompkins was not a cop. That’s enough for some people.”
“Some cops, maybe.”
“Are you trying to start a fight with me? I told you last night, people are getting pissed that your office is even looking into this. They expected Griffith to have issued a statement by now saying the shooting was good.”
“With what’s been going on in the streets? You have to know that’s ridiculous.”
“I see both sides. I just told Mike that, right?”
“Not really. You said we should agree to disagree.”
“And I also said we have work to do. I’m still going over the PPDS entries from last night.” He waved the green printout at me.
He was right. The two of us weren’t going to settle the question of whether Officer Hamilton should be prosecuted for shooting Delores Tompkins. Better to focus on Crenshaw.
“Anything interesting?” I asked, sitting on the tabletop to get a better view of the printout. “Johnson said something about a few stops near the condo.”
“Maybe. It’s been slower going than usual, though. Take a look at how thick this thing is from just one night. Fucking protesters.”
“Tell me about it. Until I got called up to Crenshaw’s, I was stuck at intake dealing with the custodies.”
“So you understand what a cluster fuck it is. When I restricted the search to just a few blocks around Crenshaw’s up on Hillside, I only got a few hits.” He pulled a different, thinner printout toward him. “Nothing obvious, but I circled a few worth looking into. Best one’s probably a traffic stop on a guy with a couple UUV pops.”
“Johnson mentioned that one.” Given the carjacking-gone-bad scenario, the proximity of a defendant twice convicted of Unlawful Use of a Vehicle was at least interesting.
“I don’t have high hopes, though,” Chuck said. “The guy was stopped heading east, which would put him on his way to Crenshaw’s place. Possible a guy would try to pull something off right after being stopped by a cop, but—”
“Not likely,” I agreed.
“Right. So then I expanded the search to include a mile around the vic’s place. That’s when I got this massive thing,” he said, holding up the thicker report again. “We wind up hitting downtown and all the crap from last night. It’s taking me awhile to get through it all.”
“You going out on the warrants?”
“You bet. Ray and Jack will take the car and the condo, but Mike and I are doing the office.”
“Call me if you find anything?”
“But of course, madame.”
“And make sure the other boys keep me in the loop too?”
“No one’s out to get you, Sam.”
“Just make sure they don’t shut me out.”
“Consider it a birthday present.”
Chuck was right. Even for cops like Calabrese, the ribbing I was getting was just collateral damage from bombs directed at the man who walked into my office a couple of hours later.
Russ Frist is best pictured as a young Kirk Douglas in a Brooks Brothers suit, if Kirk had been built like a side-by-side Sub-Zero. I told him the other day that any more time on the weights and his seams were going to burst open à la Dr. David Banner, but without all the incredible green hulkiness.
Frist rapped his knuckles against my open door before plopping his dense body down in my guest chair. “You keep any aspirin in this dump?” He grabbed a mail-order running-gear catalog from the corner of my desk and started flipping through it, propping one wingtip on the unoccupied chair next to him.
“You comfy there?” I asked. “Can I get you a pillow? Maybe some chamomile tea?”
“Tea’s for wusses.” He looked up from the magazine to give me a self-mocking tough-guy look while he shifted his weight to rest both feet on the ground. “Got an aspirin?”
“Sorry, can’t help you.”
“I feel sore all over. Advil, Tylenol, Aleve, anything?” I was shaking my head as he rattled off pharmaceutical products. “Come on, Kincaid, even you must get the occasional ovary-induced cramp.”
“And just when I was feeling sorry for you. Besides, you probably did this to yourself. Did you lift yesterday?”
“Yeah, that’s probably it.”
“Then suck it up, Mister Marine. Don’t you jarheads always say that weakness is wanting pain to leave your body?”
He laughed. “I think you mean ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body.’ But point taken: All whining will cease. So did you make it up to Vista Heights this morning?”
“Yes, I made it up there, thank you very much. The trip was a total waste of time. I’ll be requesting reimbursement for mileage, you know.”
“What are you complaining about? It saved you from intake, didn’t it?”
“Speaking of which, it was mighty convenient that I drew our unit’s short stick on that one. Where were you this morning?”
He interrupted the browsing again and laughed, shaking his head. “Convenient, you say? You don’t know me at all by now, do you, Kincaid? What time do I usually get in?”
Russ was the only attorney in MCU who often beat me into the office in the morning. “You are such a little shit.”
“It was a near miss, though. I actually saw you walking to the courthouse just as I was sneaking out to Marsee’s. Nestled into a cozy little table in the back, I almost felt guilty, knowing what was waiting for you on your voice mail, but the cheese Danish got me past it.”
“Did you come in here just to torment me, or is there actually a purpose to this little pop-in?”
“I wanted to see how things went on the Crenshaw case this morning.”
There was no right answer to that question yet. Early in a case, it’s impossible to tell if an investigation is getting any traction. You go through the usual motions of checking out the victim, scouring the neighborhood for witnesses, and shaking down any shady people whose names crop up along the way. You’re working the case, but for all you know you’re climbing the down escalator. But once you hit the right piece of evidence, all the early effort pushes the case into hyperspeed, potentially hurling the investigation forward too quickly from its own momentum.
It was too soon to tell if we’d get to that point on this case, but we certainly weren’t there yet. I told Frist as much, bringing him up to speed on where the investigation stood.
“Here’s a question for you, though. When Walker called you about the case, why’d you send him my way?” A high-profile murder like this one would usually be hoarded by the head of the Major Crimes Unit.
“Give yourself some credit, Kincaid. You’re a good lawyer. You’re thorough with the cops, you’re one of the very best around here in trial, and you’re great with victims.”
“Would you mind repeating all of that while I transcribe it for my next evaluation?” I said, pretending to grab for my legal pad. “Seriously, I wasn’t questioning whether I’m qualified to handle the case. I know I am.”
“Modesty never was your forte.”
“What I mean is—unless you’re saying I’m better than you at all those things—why didn’t you keep the case for yourself? You’re not exactly someone who backs down from publicity.”
A frustrated defense attorney once told the Oregonian that the most dangerous place to stand in Portland was between Russell Frist and a TV camera. Apparently, his fascination with the media began early. According to the rumor mill, when Russ was still on misdemeanor row, he grew impatient waiting for the spotlight that often singles out career prosecutors. Halfway into a trial against a medical school professor accused of picking up a prostitute on Sandy Boulevard, he recognized a crime-beat reporter at Veritable Quandary, a favorite downtown drinking institution. Russ forwent his regular VQ booth, planted himself at a table behind the reporter, and gabbed away to a coworker about every last detail of his pending trial, down to the good doctor’s impounded Porsche 911 with the DR LOVE personalized plate. The morning after Russ got his guilty verdict, that same reporter ran the story on the front page of the Metro section, “exposing” the blur between Portland’s elite and the city’s seedy side.
Ever since, Russ’s trials have had a way of grabbing headlines. If he was ducking a case as big as Percy Crenshaw’s murder, there had to be a reason.
“Is there a problem I should know about?” My question was blunt, but I can be blunter—and I was. “If you’ve set me up to eat a plateful of shit you’re trying to avoid, the least you can do is tell me it’s coming.”
The straight tack—coupled with the requisite prosecutorial profanity—always did the trick with Frist. “It’s not quite that bad, but there is something. That’s why I came in, actually.” He leaned back in his chair and shut the door behind him. “I talked to the boss about the assignment this morning. We’re taking heat on this Tompkins shooting, big time. Duncan’s just being cautious, but he figured it would look better if we had separate DAs working on the two cases.”
I was still suspicious. “You’ve had two big cases going at once before. What gives?”
“This is not two garden-variety big cases.”
I gave him a blank look.
“You know,” he said.
“I really don’t, Russ.”
“The African-American thing,” he said, whispering the hyphenated adjective the way you might say cancer under your breath during proper dinner conversation. At least he hadn’t used air quotes.
Still, I laughed at him. He deserved it.
“I’m trying, OK?” he said.
“Fine, but the logic’s still just plain stupid. So what? We’ve got two black victims. Since when is that enough to warrant calling in the big boss himself to separate the two investigations?” As District Attorney, Duncan Griffith was the public and political face of this office and supervised all hundred-and-some-odd deputy prosecutors. He rarely involved himself in individual cases, let alone the micromanagement of doling them out.
“It’s not just their race. Jesus, Sam, haven’t you picked up a paper in the last week? Hamilton stuck three bullets into that woman’s head through a fucking windshield. People are seriously pissed. Those same people love Percy Crenshaw. Duncan’s being cautious, is all. Having two bodies on the cases might keep them from getting clumped together out there in the public mind.” He tilted his head toward the window, as if the glass were all that separated us from the ignorant and manipulable masses.
“Your call,” I said, sounding unintentionally dismissive. “I’m happy to have the case.”
The ring of the phone saved me from any further paranoid political overanalysis. According to the digital readout, the call originated from Lockworks, a hair salon owned by my very best friend, Grace Hannigan. Grace and I say we’re like the sisters we never had, even though she in fact has a screwed-up half sister who turns up occasionally for money. The day I pass up a call from Grace for run-of-the-mill work talk will be the day I officially deserve a smack upside my Lockworks-coiffed head. Fortunately, Frist took this as his cue to leave, mouthing I’ll talk to you later as he headed out the door. I picked up.
“What’s up?”
She got straight to the matter at hand. “Percy Crenshaw’s dead?”
“I would’ve told you tonight.” One of the defining ingredients of the friendship I share with Grace is gossip. I hear the city hall and court juice first, while she keeps me up-to-date on the socialite scene. “It’s going to be my case, actually.”
“Yeah? Well, your case is on the news.”
“Already?” Senior prosecutors pine for the good old days, when they could rely on a tight lid until at least the five o’clock news cycle. No such thing anymore as a safety period, given today’s nonstop informational stream. Thanks to the cable news practice of designating programming time to local affiliates, even a regional story like mine could pop up any time, 24/7. “What channel?”
“Headline News,” she said. “Oh, and before you hang up, happy birthday, girlie.”
One of the advantages of a best friendship is the license to be rude when necessary. As she knew I would, I cut the call from Grace short and rushed down the hall to the conference room, the site of the office’s only television set. A couple of the guys from Drug and Vice were watching a repeat of Pimp My Ride, where humble little Corollas are transformed into full-fledged pumped-up badass-mobiles. Picture a vehicular makeover by Snoop Dogg but without the class. I silently cursed Chuck Forbes and his cable addiction for poisoning my brain.
Ignoring the protests of my former DVD colleagues, I grabbed the remote and started flipping for the news. I didn’t recognize the correspondent, a perky, twenty-something brunette positioned at the periphery of the parking lot. From the looks of her enormous umbrella and rain-inappropriate clothing, she was probably new. Soon enough, she’d have a hooded Gore-Tex jacket like the rest of them. Behind her, I did recognize the carport where I had stood just that morning. The carport, I reminded myself, where Percy Crenshaw had lost his life last night.
The news now had one more crime story to add to the pile of coverage about Delores Tompkins and last night’s protests. She covered the basics: location, apparent cause of death, the early morning discovery of the body, the victim’s semicelebrity standing, the lack of any current suspects. It was pretty much what I would’ve expected, given the investigation’s early status. Until, that is, she began interviewing a self-described neighbor.
The neighbor was definitely new to Portland. Or, as she put it with a nervous smile, “We’re new to these parts, so this whole thing’s got us darn near ready to head back down to Louisiana.”
One of the DVD peanut gallery couldn’t resist. “Right, because I hear purt’ near nothin’ goes wrong in them thar parts—”
“Jesus, you sound like Jethro Bodine,” I said, turning up the volume.
“Wait, you didn’t let me get to the punch line. There’s no crime there unless you count the pumpkin cases. Get it? Pump kin?”
I shushed him and turned up the volume some more. All of Russ’s cautious talk had gotten to me. Leave it to the local news to transform one anomalous case into a sign that the entire city had become a war zone.
“I feel just awful today wondering if there was something I could’ve done,” the neighbor continued. “Percy lives upstairs from us, so I’m right across from his carport. I was taking my dog Quincy out for his nighttime tinkle, and I saw Percy coming in. He waved at me, which was his usual way. As I was going through the door, I heard someone say something like ‘Nice car, Snoop.’ You know, that’s what he had on his license plate, the word SNOOP. Well, I didn’t think anything of it, but now I’m wondering whether it could have been whoever…well, whoever did this to him.”
Great. Reporters were finding our witnesses before the police. I’d need to call MCT right away to make sure they interviewed this woman.
As it turned out, MCT got to me first. The voice-mail light was on in my office. My pager, which I had left on the desktop, had vibrated its way onto the floor. I picked it up: four missed pages, all from Chuck’s cell. I assumed he was checking to make sure I knew the news had broken, but I called him right back anyway.
“Kincaid?”
The voice was familiar, but it wasn’t Chuck’s.
“I was calling for Chuck Forbes?”
“Yeah, it’s Mike. We’ve been trying to call you.”
“Sorry, I just ran down the hall to watch the story. A friend of mine actually beat you to the punch.”
“About what?” Mike asked.
“The news. She saw the story and called me.”
“The news about what?”
Talking to Chuck’s partner was making my head hurt. “The Crenshaw case. The news got hold of it already. I thought that’s why you were calling. Someone needs to get out there and interview Crenshaw’s downstairs neighbor, by the way. Or has it been done already?”
“Shit. I dunno. We’re dealing with something totally different.”
A beeping on my phone told me I had another call coming in. I let it go to voice mail.
“What’s up?”
“We’ve got a problem searching the vic’s office.”
“I signed off on that this morning,” I said, specifically remembering that the warrant application included not only the victim’s house and car but also his office at the paper. “The judges should all know it’s standard.”
“That’s not the problem. Judge Schwartz signed it this morning, right after I took it in. We called the Oregonian a couple hours ago to make sure they knew what was going on and that we were coming.” That probably explained how the media had found out about the case before the bureau’s public information officer had released it. “Now that we’re here, they’re telling us not to go in.”
“They know you’ve got a warrant?”
“Faxed over a copy this morning to the facilities manager. It didn’t sound like a problem then, but it must have hit a bump somewhere up the road. They say they’ve got their lawyers looking at it.”
“Shit.” The involvement of lawyers is always bad. Unless, of course, the lawyer is me. “Did they say why?”
Another beep for another call. When it rains, it pours. I ignored it again.
“Not really. Sounds like a load of bull to me. We don’t let anyone else pick and choose whether we execute signed warrants. Chuck thought we should call you before we barged on in, though.”
He thought right. Even though the warrant entitled the police to use any reasonable means necessary to conduct the search, the bureau was already stressed about the front-page photographs of cops in riot gear dispersing tear gas into last night’s crowds. We didn’t need Chuck and Mike splashed across the paper tomorrow, strong-arming their way past a pack of Jimmy Olsens and Peter Parkers.
“Did they say who the lawyer was? Maybe David Bever from Dunn Simon?” I was pretty sure Bever’s first-amendment practice included work for the Oregonian.
“Yeah, that sounds right,” Mike confirmed.
“OK. Hold tight. I’ll call him and see what’s up. In the meantime, can you call Johnson and Walker? I just saw Crenshaw’s downstairs neighbor on the news. They need to talk to her.”
When I hung up the phone, I realized that Alice Gerstein was standing patiently at my door. Of course, Alice always appeared patient. As the senior paralegal for the Major Crimes Unit, she had learned to maintain her cool.
“Judge Wilson’s clerk was trying to get through. An attorney from Dunn Simon’s down there asking for a temporary restraining order on one of your cases.”
I was already out of my chair, knowing exactly which case she was talking about.