Close Case

by Alafair Burke

  A holler from across the parking lot interrupted us. “Detectives, when you got a sec, we got something you might be interested in.”

  After exchanging glances with Walker, Johnson volunteered—“I’ll go”—and started a slow jog toward the patrol officer.

  “Anyway,” Walker continued, “we’re keeping the car-jack scenario as a possibility, but usually they take the car, plan gone wrong or not. We found the keys right there.” He pointed to a numbered evidence placard marking a spot by the driver’s side door. “Crenshaw probably dropped them during the attack.”

  I looked more closely then at the area surrounding the Benz. Low spatters of crimson marred the barren white Sheetrock of the carport. A wet stain that might otherwise be mistaken for oil spread beneath the front tire like a Rorschach test. I suspected that the matte smear down the side of the car’s waxed front panel was also blood.

  I turned back to Walker. “Was he shot?”

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it. He was beaten real bad. Unclear whether the technical cause of death’s going to be the internal bleeding or some real nasty damage to his head, but I’m guessing there was a weapon involved. Maybe a bat or a crowbar.”

  I swallowed, relieved that I hadn’t arrived a few minutes earlier, before the gurney was covered. “So what are you working on?”

  “We’ve got patrol officers canvassing the complex in case a neighbor saw something. Doubtful, though. In a place like this, someone would have called it in.”

  “Did you notify the family?”

  “Not yet. We’re working on that as a priority. We’ve got the place closed off, but it won’t be easy keeping this quiet. I assume everyone in the complex knows whose car that is, and it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here.”

  “He’s single, right?”

  “Yeah. Ray put a call in to the Oregonian for next-of-kin information. Hopefully his family’ll hear it from us before it hits the news.”

  “Have you gone into his place yet?”

  “Working on that too. He lived alone, so we’re getting a warrant. Should be easy.”

  “Who’s working on the applications?” I asked. Judges routinely sign warrants for a homicide victim’s home and office, so the paperwork was straightforward.

  “Mike and Chuck are taking care of it now, back at the office. They’ll page you when they’re ready for you to look at it.” Detectives Mike Calabrese and Chuck Forbes were partners, also in the Major Crimes Team. I’d seen the latter just three hours ago when he rolled out of my bed, pulled on his clothes, and kissed me goodbye. In addition to his position in the bureau, Detective Forbes also filled the role of my current boyfriend. And, technically, I suppose he rolled out of “our” bed, because as of a week ago we were officially shacked up.

  “Any legal work you need me to do?”

  “Not yet.” He squinted at me, anticipating what was coming.

  “So why am I here?”

  “Appearances,” he said bluntly. “I called Frist as part of the usual procedure, but I told him we didn’t need anyone at the crime scene.”

  “And he said?”

  “Something along the lines of”—Walker channeled his best Frist—“‘Uh, that’s fine, Detective Walker, but, you know, the news’ll be all over this one. Why don’t I go ahead and ask you to get Kincaid out there; it’ll be easier down the road if something comes up.’”

  “Your impersonation’s better than ever.”

  “I’m pleased that you’re pleased. Now, as for why he dimed you up instead of someone else in the unit, I can only guess.”

  “And your best guess?”

  “Honestly? To see how you’ll cut it. You’ve got to admit, the one other time you got handed a hot potato, your approach wasn’t exactly traditional.”

  He was referring, of course, to the aforementioned case of the missing judge. By the time that one played out, I had leaked information to a defense attorney and helped him subpoena some of the biggest mucketymucks in the county. Yes, I suppose Walker was correct: My boss wanted to put me to the test.

  Ray Johnson walked back to the carport with his black leather steno pad open in front of him, Montblanc pen in hand.

  “They find a neighbor?” I asked.

  “Looks like we’ve got a possible girlfriend.”

  That got Walker’s attention. “I thought the guy at the paper told you there was no girlfriend.”

  “So maybe Percy didn’t tell the guys at work everything. A couple nights ago, one of the neighbors came home late to find a car parked in her designated spot. She got ticked and took down the plate so she could complain the next day. Later on, she saw Percy walk the lady to her car. He gave the neighbor the mandatory apologetic wave, so she let it go, but she’s still got the plate for us.”

  “Good,” I said. “Run it and find out her story. Anything else?”

  “That’s it from the patrol so far, but Chuck just called. He and Mike are working last night’s PPDS entries from the area.” The Portland Police Data System is the clearinghouse for every piece of information collected by the bureau. Generating a list of arrests, stops, and traffic tickets in a given location during a stated time range was a snap.

  “Anything worth following up on?” I asked.

  Johnson glanced at his notes. “Yeah, maybe. They’re still culling through the full list, but there’s a couple that jumped to the top. A broken taillight on a two-time car thief down on Twenty-third Avenue. A stop-and-talk with some kid at the bottom of the hill; we still need to get the details from the patrol officer.” He flipped a page of his notebook. “Another stop farther up Burnside; that one’s for drugs. We’ll see, right?”

  He closed his notebook and switched gears.

  “Also, I finally got through to the human resources chick at the Oregonian. Crenshaw’s local emergency contact is just a friend. Closest family’s his parents down in Cali.”

  “I’ll do this one,” Walker said quietly.

  Johnson tucked in his lower lip and nodded. I knew how much they hated notifying the families. “Oh, before I forget,” he said, pointing at me, “when I talked to Chuck, he and Mike were just finishing the warrant applications.”

  It was time for me to head down to MCT.

  2

  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 m
e 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.”