Hardy 13 - Plague of Secrets, A

by John Lescroart

  “They don’t like the shelters. They’re dangerous and dirty.”

  “And the streets aren’t? Besides, this may sound like a cruel cli ché, my dear, but where do you think we get the expression ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’?”

  “I can’t believe you just said that. That is so”—Sam dredged up about the worst epithet she could imagine—“so right wing.”

  Wes looked down, went to a knee, and snapped his fingers, bringing Gertrude close in for a quick pet. “It’s all right, girl, your mom and I aren’t fighting. We’re just talking.” Standing up, he said, “She’s getting upset.”

  “So am I. If you try to pet me to calm me down, I’ll deck you.”

  “There’s a tolerant approach. And meanwhile, I hate to say this, but it’s not a right wing, left wing issue here. It’s a health and quality of life issue. Feces and urine on public streets and playgrounds and parks pose a health risk and are just a little bit of a nuisance, I think we can admit. Are we in accord here?”

  Sam, arms folded, leaned back against the windows of the coffee shop, unyielding.

  “Sam,” Wes continued, “when I take Gertie out for a walk, I bring a bag to clean up after her. That’s for a dog. You really think it’s too much to ask the same for humans?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because a lot of these people, they have mental problems too. They don’t even know they’re doing it, or where.”

  “And so we should just tolerate it? You send your kids out to play and there’s a pile of shit on your front stoop? Next thing you know, half a school’s got hepatitis. You don’t think that’s a small problem?”

  “That’s not what’s happening.”

  “Sam, that’s exactly what’s happening. They’ve got to check the sandbox near the merry-go-round in Golden Gate Park every morning for shit and needles. Some of these people think it’s a litter box.”

  “Well, I haven’t heard of any hepatitis epidemic. That’s way an exaggeration.”

  “The point is the alfresco bathroom kind of thing that’s been happening downtown for years. I think you’ll remember we had a guy used our front stoop at the office every night for a month. We had to wash the steps down every morning.”

  “There,” Sam said. “That was a solution.”

  “It was a ridiculous solution. It was insane. To say nothing about the fact that using the streets for bathrooms punishes innocent, good citizens and devalues property.”

  “Aha! I knew property would get in there.”

  “Property’s not a bad thing, Sam.”

  “Which is what every Republican in the world believes.”

  “And some Democrats too. Dare I say most? And for the umpteenth time, Sam, it’s not a Republican thing. You can be vaguely left of center and still not want to have people shitting in your flower-pots. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  “I think they might actually be.”

  “Well, no offense, but you’re wrong. Public defecation and homeless encampments on the streets and in the parks are gross and unhealthy and sickening. I don’t understand how you can’t see that.”

  Sam again shook her head. “I see those poor people suffering. That’s what I see. We’ve got a fire department with miles of hoses. We could deploy them to wash down the streets. The city could get up some work program and hire people to clean up.”

  “What a great idea! Should we pay them to clean up after themselves, or after each other? Except then again, where does the money to do that come from?”

  “There it is again, money! It always comes down to money.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, yes, sometimes it does.”

  “The point is, Wes, these people just don’t have the same options as everybody else.”

  “And they never will, Sam. That’s rough maybe, okay, but it’s life. And life’s just not fair sometimes. Which doesn’t mean everybody else has to deal with their problems. They get rounded up and taken to the shelters whether or not they want to go, and I say it’s about time.”

  Without either Sam or Wes noticing, several others in the line, both male and female, had closed in around them, listening in. Now a young hippie spoke up to Wes. “You’re right, dude,” he said. “It’s out of control. It is about time.”

  A chorus of similar sentiments followed.

  Sam took it all in, straightened up, and looked out into the faces surrounding her. “I just can’t believe that I’m hearing this in San Francisco,” she said. “I’m so ashamed of all of you.”

  And with that she pushed her way through the crowd and started walking up Ashbury, away from her boyfriend and their dog.

  Sam was the director of San Francisco’s Rape Crisis Counseling Center, which also happened to be on Haight Street. Her plan this morning had been to take her early morning constitutional from their home up on Buena Vista with Wes and Gertie, share a cup of coffee and a croissant at BBW, then check in at the office to make sure there hadn’t been an overnight crisis that demanded her attention.

  But now, seething, just wanting to get away from all the reactionaries, she had started out in the wrong direction to get to the center. Fortunately, the line for the BBW stretched down Haight Street, and not up Ashbury, and she’d gone about half a block uphill when she stopped and turned around, realizing she could take the alley that ran behind the Haight Street storefronts, bypassing the crowd and emerging on the next block on the way to her office.

  But first she stopped a minute, not just to get her breath, but to try to calm herself. After an extraordinarily rocky beginning to their relationship she and Wes hadn’t had a fight in six or seven years. She’d come to believe that he was her true soul mate and shared her opinions about nearly everything, especially politics. But now, apparently not.

  It shook her.

  And, okay, she knew that she was among those whom most people would include among California’s “fruits and nuts.” She certainly didn’t too often doubt the rightness of her various stances. She was in her early forties and had seen enough of the world to know that the dollar was the basic problem. The military-industrial complex. Big oil and corporate globalism. Republicans.

  But here now Wes, who had registered Green and hated the right wingers as much as she did, was arguing for something that she just knew in her heart was wrong. You couldn’t just abandon these homeless people who had, after all, flocked to San Francisco precisely because of the benign political environment. That would be the worst bait-and-switch tactic she could imagine. She would have to talk to him, but after they’d both calmed down.

  She crossed back to where she wouldn’t be visible to Wes or anyone else in the line as she came back down the hill. It was the kind of clear morning that people tended to expect when they visited San Francisco during the traditional summer months. Those people often left in bitter disappointment at the incessant fog, the general inclemency of the weather. But today the early sun sprayed the rooftops golden. The temperature was already in the low sixties. It was going to be a perfect day.

  She got to the alley, squinting into the bright morning sun, when here was an example of exactly the thing she and Wes had been talking about—a pair of feet protruded from the backdoor area of BBW. Not wanting to awaken the poor sleeping homeless man, she gave him a wide berth and only a quick glance as she came abreast of where he slept.

  But something about the attitude of the body stopped her. It didn’t seem to be lying in a natural position, the head propped up against the screen door. She couldn’t imagine such a posture would be conducive to sleep. Most of the weight seemed to be on his left shoulder, but under that the torso turned in an awkward way so that both feet pointed up, as if he were lying on his back.

  Moving closer, she noticed a line of liquid tracing itself down over the concrete and pooling in the gap between the cement of the porch and the asphalt of the alley. In the bright morning sunlight, from a distance it could have been water.
But another couple of steps brought her close enough to remove any doubt on that score—the glistening wet stuff was red.

  Leaning over, Sam shaded her eyes against the glare and she saw the man’s face; a face she recognized, had expected to see that morning behind the counter where he always was at BBW.

  Her hand, already trembling, went to her mouth.

  3

  At a few minutes past seven-thirty a sergeant inspector of homicide named Darrel Bracco double-parked on Ashbury. He unhooked his squawk box handset and draped the cord up over the rearview mirror, so that a meter person coming by might surmise that this was a police vehicle and as such shouldn’t get a parking ticket. Just to be double sure, though, he left his business card on the dashboard of his city-issue Pontiac. He knew from bitter personal experience that even these precautions might not be enough.

  A crowd of perhaps sixty souls stood beyond the yellow crime-scene tape that the responding unit had strung across the mouth of the alley and again farther down. Bracco saw that the coroner’s van hadn’t yet arrived, but two black-and-white squad cars also helped to close off the entrance to the alley from the inquisitive populace.

  His badge out, excusing himself as he went, he pushed his way through the mass of people and ducked under the tape. A no-nonsense guy, he met no real resistance—Bracco was forty-two years old, just under six feet tall, clean-cut, casually buffed. He nodded to the two uniformed officers who were keeping the crime scene from being violated.

  Over by the body, obvious enough on the ground by the back door to one of the local establishments, another uniform with graying hair and the start of a gut, undoubtedly the lieutenant from Park Station, was standing talking with Bracco’s new partner, Debra Schiff. Debra was thirty-eight, wore her sandy hair short, and possessed a very good if tough-looking face that looked tougher without makeup. For which reason she never wore any.

  Bracco flashed his badge and stuck his hand out. “How you doin’, Lieutenant? Darrel Bracco.”

  “Bill Banks.”

  “Nice to meet you. Thanks for holding down the fort. I miss anything fun yet?”

  Schiff answered, shaking her head no. “Waiting on the techs. Story of our lives, huh? You’d think these people would have the good grace to get themselves shot during regular business hours. But here it is, first thing on a weekend. Time the techs get mounted and rolling, they might not get here till noon.” She turned to Banks. “But Darrel and I can handle things here, Lieutenant, if you want to get back to your station or go home. Your call.”

  Banks clucked and shrugged. “Thanks, but if you don’t mind, I’ll just hang awhile. See where this goes a little.”

  “He was just telling me he knows the guy,” Schiff said.

  Banks nodded. “Everybody in the neighborhood knows him. Dylan Vogler. He managed this place.”

  “And what place is that?” Bracco asked.

  “The coffee shop, Bay Beans West. Takes up the whole corner.” Banks pointed. “This is the back entrance he’s up against. Also, I was just showing Inspector Schiff, see on the side wall that hole in the stucco . . .”

  “The bullet. But, hmm . . .” Bracco moved over to look more closely.

  “What?” Schiff said.

  Bracco, his face right up against the wall, said, “No blood?”

  Schiff, now over next to him, pointed down and said, “Backpack.”

  “Backpack.” Bracco repeated. “That’d do it.” Then he went down into a squat.

  “Darrel,” Schiff began, a warning note in her voice.

  But he put out a hand. “I’m not moving him, Debra. If my eyes don’t deceive me, that holster on his belt’s got a cell phone in it.” He flipped the leather top open. “Aha!” Extracting the device from its holder, he stood back up and opened it.

  “Ice?” Schiff asked.

  Pushing buttons on the phone, Bracco nodded.

  Banks’s gaze went from Bracco over to Schiff. “Ice?”

  “ ‘In case of emergency,’ ” Schiff said. “ICE. They’re telling everybody to put that in their cell phones now. You don’t have that in yours?”

  Banks shook his head. “I’m lucky if I can keep the damn thing charged.”

  “Here you go.” Darrel pushed the send button and held the phone to his ear. “Hello,” he said after a brief moment, then identified himself. “I’m calling because you’re the emergency number on a cell phone in the possession of a man named . . .” He raised his eyebrows at Banks, a question, and got the name again from the lieutenant.

  “Dylan Vogler.” Bracco paused, listened. “Yes. Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid so. Well, at the moment I’m in the alley behind his place of business. Sure. Just tell the officers who you are and they’ll let you through. No, you don’t want to bring your child. Can we send someone up to your house to get you? Okay, then. Okay. There’s no hurry, ma’am. We’ll be here.”

  Closing the phone, he shrugged and let out a heavy breath. “The wife.” Then, cocking his head and checking his watch, he turned to Schiff. “Not too bad for a weekend. There’s a siren now.”

  By the time the first cops had arrived, there had been no question that Dylan Vogler was completely and absolutely dead—no hint of a pulse, the skin just warm to the touch, his eyes wide open and unresponsive to light or other stimulation. Nevertheless, the first responding squad car cops got some EMTs down to pronounce him. The photographer took a couple of dozen photos, memorializing the scene, before anyone else touched the body at all.

  Behind Bracco and Schiff the three-person crime-scene investigation unit under Lennard Faro continued scouring the alley and its environs for evidence, although within the first minutes they’d already called Faro over to identify and bag as evidence a .40-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol that had recently been fired and a brass bullet casing that probably went with it. After watching them poking around and letting the assistant coroner and the photographer finish, at long last Bracco got to the body.

  The first thing he did was take off Vogler’s light blue backpack so he could turn the body over and look at where the shot or shots had entered. He then turned the backpack over to verify the location of the bullet hole. And there it was, high up in the fabric adjacent to where the slug had exited Vogler’s body, surrounded with the bloom of blood that Bracco had expected and failed to see around the hole in the stucco. After he flipped the backpack over and saw the corresponding exit hole on the other side, he sat back and turned to his partner, squatting next to him.

  “I love opening presents.” Bracco undid the clasp, pulled the top up, and held it open.

  “Well, look at that,” Schiff said.

  “I am.” The pack was filled to about the two-thirds mark with sandwich-size baggies of marijuana. Bracco removed one of them, opened it, smelled it again, and passed it over to his partner. “What I don’t get,” he said, “is why they didn’t take this.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know it was in there,” Schiff said.

  “They definitely didn’t know it was in there,” Bracco said. “They couldn’t have known about this much weed and just left it. That’d skew my whole worldview.”

  Someone tapped him on his shoulder, and Bracco half turned. “Sorry, Inspector,” Banks said, “but the wife’s here.”

  Nodding, Bracco sighed, then straightened up. “Hide that backpack,” he said to Schiff. “We don’t know nothing about no stinking backpacks.”

  “Got it,” his partner replied.

  Debra Schiff dropped the backpack onto the asphalt out of sight behind Banks’s squad car. Turning around, she saw that her partner had already gone over to greet the widow, who was standing just inside the crime-scene tape next to one of the uniformed officers.

  From Schiff’s distance the woman appeared young and very pretty. Her shoulder-length black hair, still wet—her morning shower?—framed a face of pale beauty, with wide dark eyes, strong cheekbones, red lips. She wore a long-sleeved 49er T-shirt tucked into her jeans, but the blousy
shirt camouflaged neither her breasts nor her tiny waist.

  Coming closer, though, Schiff saw something else around the eyes too—a swelling that might be from the crying but might have another source. And under the swelling did she discern a faint yellowish cast to the skin? An ancient, or not-so-ancient, bruise?

  “I can see that it’s him from here,” she was saying to Bracco. Her left hand—no wedding band—was at her mouth now. “I don’t know if I can . . . if I need to go any closer.”

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Vogler.” Schiff inserted herself into the conversation, identifying herself and laying a hand on Bracco’s shoulder.

  “I’m not Mrs. Vogler.” The woman corrected her right away. “My name is Jansey Ticknor. We’re not married. Weren’t married. But just call me Jansey, okay?” Her shoulders sagged. “God.”

  Schiff wanted to get her away from her immediate reaction. “My partner mentioned a child when he talked to you.”

  Ms. Ticknor nodded. “My son, Ben. He’s with our boarder. He’s fine.” Her eyes went back to the body. “My God, how did this happen?”

  “We don’t know yet, ma’am,” Bracco said. “We did find a gun. Did your husband own a gun?”

  Jansey Ticknor blinked into the sun for a moment. “He couldn’t.”

  “He couldn’t? Why was that?” Schiff asked.

  Jansey’s face went flat. She looked from one inspector to the other. “He served some time in jail when he was younger.”

  “What for?” Bracco asked.

  She shrugged. “He was a driver in a robbery. It was the only time he ever did anything like that. Anyway . . . he went to prison. So, no, he couldn’t have a gun.”

  Schiff threw a quick look at Bracco. There was a real difference, they both knew, between going to jail, which meant the city and county lockup downtown, and spending time in prison. Prison was hard time, and in San Francisco, the probation capital of the Western world, time in the joint argued strongly against Jansey’s description that it had been the only wrongdoing of Dylan Vogler’s life.