Double Reverse

by Tim Green

  "Excuse me, Richard," Madison said, picking up the phone. "Hello, Gary."

  "Dammit, Madison, I thought you were a straight shooter. Well dammit, if I get the chance I'm telling you right now I'm gonna make your life goddamn miserable. Miserable! How the hell could you do this? I'm going to the bar, Madison! I'm telling you now, I'm going for your license! If I have anything to say about it, you won't try another case in this state! It's a disgrace to everyone!"

  "Gary, what the hell are you talking about?" she said, floored.

  "I'm talking about this tape! How in hell could you keep that from us! Why? Why would you do it?"

  "Gary, Gary, back up," Madison said. "I have no idea what you're talking about. What tape?"

  "It's all over the television. It'll be all over the newspapers by five. The tape! The goddamn Dobbins tape! Don't tell me you don't know about that!"

  "I don't know," she said. "I don't know about anything. I'm telling you, I have no idea what you're talking about."

  This seemed to confuse the DA. "He told the media he was turning the tape over to you."

  "What tape?" Madison said, exasperated, "I've been locked in a meeting all day. I don't know what you're talking about, Gary."

  The DA was silent for a moment. He considered the authenticity of her voice.

  "Dobbins has a hi-8 videotape that allegedly proves Trane wasn't the killer," he said, a little more calmly. "If the tape is the real thing," he added. "I don't know. I'm suspicious of it, but goddammit, the L. A. network affiliates are all running copies of it and people in the media who've seen it are saying it's not something you can fabricate."

  "I ... I don't know about any of this," Madison said.

  "Well. . ." Le Fleur said, his voice even now. '"You better give Dobbins a call, because he's supposedly turning this tape over to you so you can have it examined by an independent lab. Hell, Madison," the DA said with disgust. "Like our labs are going to fabricate their findings! The whole thing's a goddamn disgrace."

  Chapter 38

  The squad room thundered with disapproval, but when Brinson walked in it got quiet fast. He shucked a nut and looked around before popping it into his mouth.

  "Well, godammit, it's true," he said, chewing angrily. There was an eruption of murmuring. Brinson waited for it to pass before he continued.

  "So you know," he said, "I saw the goddamn tape myself. We had our guy and their guy go over it and it's the real thing, goddammit."

  There was another eruption of disbelief. Brinson held up his hands.

  "I know, goddammit, believe me, I thought the same thing, but you guys have known me long enough to know that I'm not bullshitting you. I wanted to nail that asshole more than anyone but it ain't him. Not only is that video timecoded, the fucking fireworks go off in the background at twelve, the real fireworks. Our guy says there's no way someone could have created that on this film, no way. Trane Jones was on that balcony with his agent when our girl got whacked. Twelve midnight, gentlemen. His alibi is now rock-solid. We got zip."

  "Could the ME be wrong?" someone asked. "Could the time be off?"

  Brinson pursed his lips and shook his head. "No. The watch was smashed at the same rime her head was caved in. There's glass fragments from the watch crystal imbedded in her brain. Everything fits, the time she was last seen and the ME's estimated rime of death. I'm sorry, guys, but we been sapped. We got the wrong guy . . ."

  "Now, I talked to the DA, and as you can guess, his ass is swingin' in the wind. He wants a killer. But I don't have to tell you that we got our asses burned here once and we ain't gonna let it happen again."

  Brinson felt constricted. He grabbed the knot of his stubby knit tie and went at it the way a dog shakes a dead rabbit.

  "So what I want is for us to go back at this thing with everything we got. I want every goddamn detail stretched and pulled at and turned inside out. Landover, you take your guys and Colt's and get me more on this giri. I want her goddamn life history. I want every boyfriend, girlfriend, lover, hairdresser, roommate, whatever--anyone connected to her who might have a reason to want to whack her. Cunningham, you and Greeb go over that party list again with your crews. Harper, I want your guys to go back over the employees' statements and question them again. What we've got, obviously, is a very clever guy on our hands, a guy who's not only capable of wasting this girl, but a guy who's good enough to make it look like someone else."

  "Are we looking for a professional, Lieutenant?" came the question from somewhere in the second row.

  "I don't know what we're looking for," Brinson said, his heavy jowls drooped in a frown. "I just know we're looking and we're looking hard. I got calls from the DA, the mayor, and the chief to prove it. . ."

  "Now listen up you guys," Brinson went on. Although his voice was gruff, his eyes shifted nervously. They were brimming with emotion. "I never said this to you, an you know I been around long enough so there ain't much I ain't said, but I'm sayin' this now . . . My ass is on the line. I want you to know it. We don't come up with somethin and somethin' good, I'm takin' the bullet for all the political shitbirds."

  The room filled up with heavy silence.

  "Now it won't be the first time some lieutenant takes one for the bosses, but goddamn I like this bunch, and I don't want to lose you ... That's it."

  Brinson couldn't help judging their reaction to his words as a measure of how much he was respected and liked. So of course the way they shot up out of their chairs brought a smile to his face.

  "Kelly, Arnsbarger," he said through the din of scraping chair legs and shuffling feet. "Come with me."

  The two sergeants followed him silently up the hall and into his own office.

  "Sit down, boys."

  Brinson handed them each a file folder across the desk. "Read this report," he said. "I interviewed this guy myself. I don't want to get crazy with this, but I think this guy might be over the edge. He's a big holy roller who says all the right things, but when you get down to it, his pretty white girlfriend was takin the high hard one from Trane Jones."

  "You think he's our guy, Lieutenant?" Arnsbarger wanted to know.

  Brinson looked at his man calmly. "I don't know if he is. He could be. Whoever did it--and I'm like you, believe me--I find it hard to believe it's really not Trane, but I saw it with my own eyes... Anyway, it wasn't him, and whoever did it must have had access to Trane's golf clubs. That could be anyone at that tournament, but they also had to have access to Trane's car keys to plant that club in his trunk."

  "But that means a friend of Trane's, and you said yourself that these guys hate each other," Arnsbarger said.

  "But in a locker room," Kelly pointed out, "anyone could get their hands on another guy's keys. Just wait till he's in the shower or the training room or something and you grab 'em."

  Brinson nodded at the logic. He'd been thinking the same thing. "And anyone could be Clark Cromwell," he said. "So what I want you two to do is turn this guy's life inside out. I want you to talk to every teammate, every friend, his family, his religious buddies, whoever, and find out what was going on between him and Annie Cassidy. I gotta believe that this guy blew a gasket when he found out she was bangin' Trane Jones, so get me a statement from someone who knows about it. I'm going to find the guy myself and see if I can't get him to sign a consent to search. If he gives it to me, we'll go through his place and see what we can find. If he doesn't, we'll need more than a hunch to get a search warrant."

  Brinson looked at his watch. "The team offices should still be open. The players won't be there today, but you two shoot over there and see if Armand Ulrich will help us out with a list of the players' home phone numbers and addresses. Talk to the coaches and the trainers and find out who Cromwell's buddies are, then get started with his closest friends first. If I get him to sign the consent I'll radio you guys and get a fbrensics crew and we'll go through the house."

  "You think this guy'll let us search his place, Lieutenant?" Arns- barger asked
.

  Brinson pulled a nut from his right pocket and looking through its cleft at the greenish meat said, "This guy's a holy roller. He thinks he's God's right-hand man. If he didn't do it, he'll let us search. If he did . . ."The lieutenant shrugged. "Who knows. If he did it he must be thinking he's pretty clever setting up Trane Jones the way he did. He might think the Big Guy will protect him from a couple of snoopy detectives and let us in anyway. I've seen crazier things."

  Chapter 39

  Brinson got in his car and headed for Clark Cromwell's house. No one was home. On his way down from the top of Palos Verdes, he got a call from Kelly.

  "The trainer told me the closest guy to Cromwell is this guy Tom Huntington," Kelly said. "He's a former Oakland Raider who was a wacko, drugged out and everything. But I guess the guy found Jesus and now he's the religious guru for half the damn team. And by the way, they have their big prayer meetings on Tuesday afternoons at Huntington's house."

  "You got an address for this guy?"

  "Yeah. Ten twenty-nine Alexandria Court in Newport. It's not far from the beach."

  "I'm on my way there," Brinson said.

  "To talk to Huntington?"

  "No, to get Cromwell to sign this consent to search while he's filled with the Holy Spirit."

  Kelly let loose a guttural laugh and they both hung up.

  Brinson waited on the street until players started spilling out of Huntington's house. It was a nice house, nicer than any of the twelve apostles had ever owned. Brinson would bet on that. He stared intently at the players through his little round wire-framed sunglasses from the front seat of his Caprice. Most of them noticed him but moved on without so much as a second glance. Brinson recognized them to a man and even knew what college each of them had played jet. He was a true fan.

  If it wasn't for the burgundy Expedition on the street in front of Huntington's house and Cromwell's religious fervor, Brinson would have thought the fullback had skipped the meeting. But finally, a good fifteen minutes after everyone else had gone, Clark appeared on the semicircular front steps of the house with a tall, lanky, gray-haired man whom Brinson presumed was Tom Huntington. He watched the men embrace, and then Cromwell went down on his knees. Huntington put his hand on the top of the player's bowed head and moved his lips in prayer. Brinson bit into a pistachio without shelling it.

  "Fuck," he said, spitting shards of shell and slimy crushed meat into his hand.

  The detective watched Clark get into his car. He waited until the player's truck was around the corner and down the next block before he pulled up alongside and motioned Clark to the curb. Brinson got out of his car and hiked his pants before sidling up to the Expedition.

  "Hello, Lieutenant," Cromwell said through the open window. "Can I help you?"

  "Fact is you can," Brinson said with a big smile offsetting his tiny round glasses. He leaned against the truck until his big face hovered menacingly just outside the window. "You can sign this consent form so I can have some men take a look through your house in a real decent manner. Or you can make me wait until I get a search warrant and then go through it the way they do in the movies. You know, when they cut open the mattresses and all that?"

  Clark scowled at the detective's lighthearted threat. "Why?" he asked.

  "That's a fair enough question," Brinson responded. "Because now that your buddy Trane is free and clear, you're the next best candidate for the job. You know what I mean?"

  "You mean you think I killed Annie," Clark said, his upper lip stretching across his face in what Brinson knew was either rage or fear. The player's incandescent eyes made it impossible to know which.

  "I told you before," Brinson said. "My job's to be thorough. That means I check out all the angles, even the bad ones. It's just my job. Like I said, you sign this, we go look things over real nice like, then we leave. You got nothing to hide, right?"

  "Of course not," Clark spat. "But I should be able to have my privacy. That's a law."

  "Fourth Amendment, to be sure," Brinson said. "The bane of police work everywhere, but you're right. You can wait until I've got a warrant from a judge, and the way this city feels right now about finding a killer, I bet it won't take me too long. Meantime I'll have someone following you every second of every day . . . figuring you've got something to hide, of course . . ."

  Brinson stared for a moment and then slapped the form on Clark's dashboard, offering him a pen. "Better this way," he said.

  Clark licked his lips, and as he signed he said, "I've got nothing to hide."

  "Good," Brinson said, unable to let up. "I'm glad you feel that way."

  He snatched the form back from Clark and suggested that he go get a drink somewhere. "A Coke or something. If you're allowed to have caffeine."

  ""Vbu got a problem with me, Lieutenant?" Clark said.

  "I got a problem with anyone who might have killed that girl until I know he didn't," Brinson said. "So, yeah, I guess I do got a problem with you . . . You got a key?"

  Clark took it off his keychain and handed it to him. "Go ahead and look all you want. I didn't kill Annie," he said with a nasty sneer. "She brought whatever happened to her on herself."

  "Meaning what?" Brinson said, his instincts perking up like a pointer picking up the scent of a bird.

  "Meaning God judges us all," Clark said. "And God is just. He punishes the wicked and rewards the good."

  "You saying she was wicked?" Brinson said, his blood rising. He wished he had a wire going.

  "No," Clark said, suddenly calm again. "That's not for me to say. That's for God to say. I'm just telling you that if God felt she was wicked . . . it's His will either way. That's all. It's His will."

  Brinson stared at him for a month-long minute. Then he brandished the consent form and said, "I'll get this over with right away. It won't take more than a couple hours."

  "Fine, Lieutenant," Clark said. "I'll go back to Tom's house until seven. It's just around the block if you need to take me away in handcuffs. Otherwise you can leave the key under the mat."

  Brinson snorted through his nose, uncertain now. "I'll make sure everyone's careful," he said, backing way down and feeling like a fan again.

  Brinson didn't want to do any of the dirty work because he felt he'd do it with a jaundiced eye. He let his forensics people and his two sergeants dig through Clark Cromwell's underwear drawer and under his kitchen sink. But what he did do was stand in the middle of it all assessing Cromwell's lifestyle. The refrigerator was empty except for some milk, a few condiments, a six- pack of Beck's with one bottle gone, and several Styrofoam takeout boxes. The view out almost any window in the house was like something you saw in a magazine, and the pool out back was obviously cared for by a service. The living room was spotless, unlike the bedroom where the unmade bed and strewn- about clothes suggested a college frat house. In the bathroom the toothpaste tube lay uncapped beside the sink and the toilet paper hung all the way down to a pile on the marble floor. While the furniture was made of expensive wood and leather, the walls were bereft of anything more than a few chrome-framed Ansel Adams prints.

  His people moved through the house like bloodhounds, sniffing and snooping and uncovering everything. The forensics people worked with magnifying glasses and screwdrivers while the detectives used their eyes and their intuition. Kelly found two drawers in the bedroom full of women's clothes.

  "Must have broken it off on bad terms," he commented out loud. "She never got her stuff. Unless he's got a new one . . ."

  Brinson put his hands behind his back and shuffled out into the main part of the house again to enjoy the view. That's when Arnsbarger called out from the garage.

  "Lieutenant!"

  Brinson moved fast, bumping his hip on the corner of the couch and almost upending a lamp table on his way into the garage. Both of the overhead doors were open and sunlight spilled in. Arnsbarger was standing in the back corner where the Sheetrock didn't quite meet the poured concrete foundation.

 
"There's something stuffed up in there," Arnsbarger said.

  "Get some pictures," Brinson said to the tech who'd followed him in. After a few shots Brinson knelt down, testing the seams of his pants. He reached up under the wall. The tech whipped off a shot as Brinson extracted a thick gray Juggernauts sweatshirt. Clark's number, forty-three, was embroidered into the breast. The sleeves were speckled with brown spots of dried blood. In the large front pocket was the trunk key to a Mercedes.

  Chapter 40

  Since they missed the last flights out before the red-eye, Madison and Chris decided to spend the night in L. A. They were both worn out. After catching a 6 a. M. flight out of Austin they had spent the morning with the video experts and then the afternoon fielding questions from the media. Not that they were the center of attention. Dobbins had cornered that market.

  Madison put her menu down. "I'll just have a glass of Mer- lot," she said.

  Chris ordered, and when the waiter left he asked her why she wasn't earing.

  "Truth?" she said.

  "Yeah."

  "It sounds like a cliche, but I'm sick over this whole thing," she said.

  "Why? We got the hundred-thousand-dollar retainer and we got great publicity. Yeah, I know you didn't get to go to trial like you like, but there'll be other trials after this and the agency is going to be stronger than ever. You can't buy publicity like we got."

  "I know," she said. "It's not pragmatic, but I can't shake the feeling. Did you see Dobbins turn this thing into a racial crusade? I mean, saying that the only reason Trane was arrested was because he was black. And look, you know me. I'm the first one to cry foul when race comes into play, but come on. We won. His guy got off. But with his relationship with the girl, and the bloody club, and Trane's past, of course they're going to arrest him! Who wouldn't?"

  "That's Dobbins's lifelong theme," Chris said.

  "I guess it is . . ."

  Madison's wine came, along with a cold Michelob for Chris. Madison took a sip and looked around them at the elegant dining room. They were staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Rey, so there had been no reason for them to go out anywhere else for dinner. The people around them were dressed elegantly and spoke in low, intimate tones. The quiet ambiance made Madison miss her husband.