by Terri Nolan
She didn’t want to like him.
Mostly, she didn’t want him pushing memories of Matt out of her mind.
Ron’s words replayed in her head, “I can’t compete with a dead man.”
Matt’s mere existence had been a protective emotional bubble that stood between her and every man she’d ever been with. Matt was dead. And still in the way.
A familiar image on the television caught her attention. She punched the mute button on the remote.
“… was laid to rest yesterday at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City. Hundreds attended the graveside memorial of the decorated police officer who was on leave due to near-fatal gunshot injuries incurred as the result of a domestic violence call. Authorities say his death is not related. The exact cause of death is not known at this time; however, a family spokesperson says that foul play has been ruled out.
“Officer Whelan and his partner were the first patrol officers who responded to a call in the still unsolved scandal that became known as The Paige Street Murder. Police officer Hugh Jackson lost his life in the shootout and off-duty police officer, Antonio Sanchez, was also killed in the commission of the crime. A second suspect who allegedly shot Officer Whelan escaped and is still at large.
“Officer Matthew Whelan is survived by his parents, six siblings, and numerous nieces and nephews. His father, Frank, is a retired police commander and five of his brothers serve in the LAPD. In other news …”
Birdie switched off the television. Paige Street was located in Montecito Heights, east of downtown. The hilltop neighborhood was an island surrounded by criminal street gangs: “El Sereno” and “East Side 18 Street” were on the east. “The Avenues” were on the north. “Lincoln Heights” and “Clover” on the west.
Young families moved up the hill to buy houses with views, not knowing that they were surrounded by the highest concentration of gang violence anywhere in the city and had to drive through gang territory to get to their homes.
Montecito Heights bordered Ernest E. Debs Regional Park and a smaller local park, Rose Hill. Footpaths criss-crossed and connected the parks. The Rose Hill housing project was located on the eastern edge.
Birdie opened up Matt’s battered Thomas Guide and studied Montecito Heights. She had driven that neighborhood too many times to count. The streets were narrow and curvy. There were many dead ends in the area; including Paige Street, which dissolved into parkland at the northern end. Matt had marked a pencil X where the crime occurred.
Matt would often say, “To solve a crime is to be a mathematician. The process to find the truth is methodical, precise, and in the end, provable.”
She raised the screen covering the massive dry erase board and reviewed the convoluted math formula.
Matt = suicide → pain relief? self-punishment? why promise Birdie?
Key = unlocks secret thing/sin → why be sneaky?
8930 = Paige Street address → why now? something new?
Last entry = ???
To this she added:
Bad Package = stolen evidence $
Matt → Reidy → O’Brien → Matt?
O’Brien = key or alarm? → suicide → WHY?
O’Brien = Matt’s boxes → why?
O’Brien is a key link! What is his connection to Matt?
Off to the side she wrote:
April = ?
She stared at the guys in the snow photo. Despite Patrick’s reassurance it bothered her. Matt tacked it to a shelf beside friend and family photos. Why would he pin one up with a man he’d only met once, and a man he hadn’t seen much since high school? Why give the image significance? She circled the photo and wrote luck of the Irish? next to it. Jacob was the common dominator of the group. He knew Ron through his work as a medical examiner. He had kept in touch with Parker, the childhood friend. He was Matt’s best friend.
Birdie’s eye traveled back to the top line. Matt committed suicide. Of that she was certain. “But,” she said aloud, “he would know that self-death would void his life insurance policy. He wanted to leave me money. His death would have to look accidental so the benefits would pay out.” She picked up a pencil and tapped the board with the eraser. “So, if you wanted to die successfully how do you do it? Hire Jack Kevorkian.” She cackled at her own little joke then suddenly stopped. “Jacob is a doctor. He’d know how. He could help his best friend with a physician-assisted termination.” Holy shit. She put her hands on her head and spun around in shock. “Jacob could’ve Kevorkianed Matt. And they’d arrange it on a day when a friendly detective would be working.”
She talked as she walked to the kitchen to refresh her cold coffee. “Okay, let’s say Jacob helped his best friend. So what? Kevorkian famously said, ‘Dying is not a crime.’ And even Ron remarked, ‘Aren’t cops allowed to die?’ What does that have to do with Paige Street? Were the two events even related? Matt was organized. If he planned his death in a way that would provide me with monetary security, why not also give me the answer to my greatest desire? Paige Street. He must’ve known something. In his journal entry regarding our abruptly halted make-out session from eleven years ago he wrote about a choice I’d have to make. He worked side-by-side with Arthur. Did he discover that Arthur really was the second suspect? The one the cops think escaped through the park?”
She emptied the cold coffee into the sink and poured a steaming cup, took a refreshing sip before returning to the office. “So … what choice? Everything circles back to Paige Street. Matt decided to end his life and arranged it. Organized it good. Since he was going to die anyway why not give me … something … what something? What’s the key, Birdie? Think.”
She moved a magnetic hook next to her work on the dry erase board and attached the DO NOT DUPLICATE key next to the Latin phrase he’d snuck into her pocket. “What do keys work? Duh. Locks. Okay, which lock? What location? Is it to a door or a padlock?”
Birdie sighed and sat at her desk to get a wider perspective of the giant board. She rested her head on her hand and mindlessly looked at the map book open on her desk. On the preceding pages he had written notes in the tiny margins. An address of a good restaurant in Los Feliz. The location of a favorite bookstore in West Hollywood. A cheap parking garage. Some notes were directly on the page. Always in pencil. As evidenced by smudges he had erased and remarked. She smiled. Such a low-tech way of keeping track. She had a GPS navigator in her car. Matt was old school.
Little circles and squares and stars surrounded oblique locations and intersections—some with address notations, some not. Man, how could he see what he had written? She ran a lighted magnifying glass over sections. Some pages had many marks and some were completely blank. Others were flagged, or a rare Post-it note would make an appearance. One street, Santa Monica Blvd., had a lot of pencil marks. Made sense, it was a long street. She noted that it was historic Route 66. A fact she knew, but had forgotten. She flipped pages forward and back, slowly moving the lens over the entire street as it cut across the city. Then she came across an odd notation written in the margin on the ring side of the page. The gutter, if you will. It stuck out because he had not marked up the gutter of any other page. It read: EZ-Stor/66#B19.
EZ-Stor was a franchise of storage units. Birdie looked up at the key on the board. How are units secured? With padlocks. She rolled her chair to the shelf containing a collection of phone books. In this way, she was old school, too. She flopped the heavy tome on her desk and flipped to storage. The first listing was located on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was simple: the EZ-Stor on Route 66, unit B19.
Could it be that Matt had left her something hidden in a storage unit? Something to do with Paige Street? Only one way to find out.
_____
Birdie drove carefully: she avoided drawing attention—excluding the massively stupid road trip in the rain last Saturday to get to Lake Henshaw—she drove the speed limit, properly maintain
ed her car, made sure the lights and indicators were functioning, made sure her cell phone was off. She drove defensively with two hands on the steering wheel safely placed at nine and three.
Forget a fix-it ticket for driving without a license. She couldn’t even afford to get pulled over. A standard check would reveal she had a suspended license for DUI. Further checking would show she was on probation: if caught driving she’d go straight to jail for one year. Not a harsh sentence considering that she tried to kill Denis. Still, she was thankful the negotiation point allowed her to skip a rehab facility, months of psychobabble, and a twelve-step program in exchange for at-home detox and no driving for two long years. So she took her chances and drove like a saint.
The EZ-Stor was surrounded by a cinder block wall topped with razor wire and a screened rolling gate with a keycard console. Access to the entrance was only available via a right turn. She made a U turn at the next traffic signal hoping to catch a vehicle at the gate.
A ratty blue sedan made the turn in her wake and sped around her when she slowed to check out the facility again. A glimpse between the gate and the wall revealed drive-up units. After a succession of U turns she abandoned hope of following a car in. She parallel parked on a side street right in front of the same ratty blue sedan. A man sitting in the driver’s seat looked up as she parked, then returned his attention to a foldout map. As she turned the corner a black car drove through the gate. She jogged down the street and jumped in sideways just as the gate closed.
Large numbers were painted on the end units designating rows. The units were numbered like a residential street: 1, 3, 5 … 13, 15, 17 … by the time she came to number 19 she had stopped breathing. She leaned her forehead against the metal door and took deep, cleansing breaths.
The large convex traffic mirror at the end of the row reflected no approaching vehicles. She was completely alone on row B. The roll-up door had locking eyes at waist height that were secured with a square padlock. Brass. Much larger than the average gym-sized lock. She palmed it. Heavier, too. She slipped the DO NOT DUPLICATE key into the hole. It slid in easy. Easy now. She turned the key to the right and the link clicked open. She opened the door.
It was empty. Completely and utterly empty.
Not a trick of the light.
No trinket lay hidden in a dark corner.
No Latin words on the walls or ceiling or door.
She ran her hand across the steel walls. They were bare. The floor wasn’t even dusty.
She hated Matt right then. Matt knew her to prefer logic over emotion, fact over supposition. It’s what made her a driven journalist. He’d know that she would follow his clue A to Z. So why deliver a cipher that would end on this hollow errand? What would have happened if she didn’t see the EZ-Stor reference in his map book? How long would she have looked for a lock that fit the key? She didn’t know what protocols Matt left in place.
Birdie slammed the door shut. The metal siding shook and clanked and popped back open. She slammed it again. Then kicked it repeatedly and punched it a few times. Arthur was right. Hitting was an excellent stress releaser.
“I’m sorry,” said a voice behind her. Familiar. Yet out of place here and now.
She chilled down to the bone with the all-knowing sensation that her life was about to make another permanent change—in a way she didn’t see coming nor could have predicted. Still, she didn’t flinch. Her skin didn’t itch. Her hands didn’t quiver. She didn’t even need to contemplate this change of course or her calm reaction. Birdie simply got into the zone. Imagined press credentials around her neck. Put on her game face.
She turned around to face a man she knew, but didn’t know well. Ralph Soto.
twenty-four
Instead of talking at the storage facility, Birdie and Ralph Soto arranged to meet at Kipling’s Koffee Kasbah. Birdie entered the café. The warm aroma of ground coffee and just-baked spice cookies filled the entrance. She felt a glimmer of resilience, a can-do attitude she hadn’t felt in over eight months. It manifested in her assured stride across the rugs covering the floor. She spied Soto at a tiny table in the far corner. He was speaking with a server and waved her over.
“Double espresso with ginger, and an order of cinnamon cookies,” said Birdie.
“Whole or half order?” said the server.
“Whole.” Breakfast and lunch.
Something in Soto’s life had changed since Tuesday night. He wore the stress in the sag of his shoulders, the purple half moons under his eyes. Birdie wondered how she wore her own stress and if Soto could see it.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” said Soto. “I know the timing’s bad, but it’s important we have a discussion.”
Birdie moved the chair to the side so that her back wouldn’t face the door. Soto smiled with amusement. “Gerard taught you well. I read that you’ll be seeing Alejo tomorrow.”
“He was happy to meet me on a Saturday. Fewer admin around.”
“No doubt.”
“Where do we begin?”
“With the acknowledgment that this conversation is off the record and confidential.”
“Okay. I agree. How’d you know I’d be at the EZ-Stor?”
Soto’s eyes scanned the ceiling. “This is difficult to say. Please, don’t take this the wrong way.” His mouth formed a tight smile of embarrassment. “I’m having you followed.”
Birdie squinted her eyes in displeasure. “The guy in the blue sedan?”
“Affirmative.”
“Why?”
“I’m looking for evidence connected to an old investigation that was in Matt’s possession before he died. And I’m not the only one looking. Your safety is part of the surveillance.”
Birdie hugged her messenger bag. Visualized the gun inside. “Paige Street?”
“No.”
“What then?”
Soto sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Alright, let’s try another question. Why do you think I’d have the evidence?”
“You’re Matt’s beneficiary.”
“How did you know?”
“He told me.”
“Why didn’t you simply ask me?”
“I didn’t want to involve a civilian.”
“So you sent O’Brien to my house to look for this so-called evidence?”
“God, no.” Soto seemed genuinely put out by the suggestion. “He was sent by the people we’re investigating.”
“Who exactly?”
Soto held up a finger. The server came and placed their items on the table. Soto had ordered black tea. Birdie noted the deliberateness with which he poured hot water from the tiny teapot, scooped tea into the spoon, snapped it shut, placed it in his cup, and gently swirled it to brew.
Birdie took a burning sip of espresso. It was like swallowing a shot of whiskey. She involuntarily quivered at the strength.
Soto lowered his voice. “Since Matt trusted you with the key to the storage unit, he obviously trusted you with the contents.”
Birdie looked at him wide-eyed. “The storage unit was empty.”
“Matt’s death was sudden … took me by surprise. So I emptied it.”
Birdie leaned away from Soto and stuffed a cookie into her mouth.
Soto split the difference and leaned in. “After Paige Street Matt agreed to work undercover. We had strong convictions that the second suspect was Arthur so I put him and Matt together at Rampart. We hoped Arthur would eventually learn to trust Matt and reveal his role in the incident. But Matt discovered something bigger. More sinister. More terrible than Paige Street. Bigger than the CRASH stuff.”
CRASH was the acronym for Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums comprised of cops that worked out of Rampart. It was a member that accused some CRASH officers of misconduct that dominoed into the Rampart Scandal and forced the department to
operate under a consent decree.
“Are you saying Arthur is involved?”
“I still think he was the second PS suspect. But this is something else entirely.”
“Go on,” she said.
“For many long and painful years Matt and I whittled away, chip by chip, from the inside. The investigation often crawled, stalled, and then picked up, and so on. It was torturous. We had the storage unit tricked out with fireproofing and a battery operated alarm. That’s where we stored the evidence. Don’t be offended, but I had a feeling you’d find it, and I didn’t want a civilian contaminating our evidence and chain of custody.”
Birdie’s hibernating journalist ambition stuck its nose out of a hole and began to sniff a story. A big one.
“You followed proper police procedure without involving the department? There has to be some kind of official directive higher than you. Unless … the person with the oversight was involved … oh, no … bad cops.”
“At the highest level. Secreted into administrative divisions. We didn’t know all the players and couldn’t take the chance of discovery. So I devised this plan.”
“You’re retired.”
“The case isn’t.”
“Let me get this straight. Matt left me a key to a storage unit containing evidence of bad cop behavior, but you already took it. So what do you need me for?”
“On the Friday before he died, I got a call from Matt about a box he was going to put in the unit. He seemed hurried. Unfocused. He couldn’t give me details except to say that it contained the key piece of evidence that would take our case to the next level.”
“Indictments?”
Soto nodded. “He died before dropping off that last box.”
“Someone thought the boxes I received from Martin Reidy were the actual evidence?”
