Close Case

by Alafair Burke

  “Jesus, Sam. You could have at least called him yourself.”

  “After the way he’s treated me lately? I haven’t forgotten that comment he made about you walking out on me.”

  “He’s sorry he said that.”

  “Well, he hasn’t told me he’s sorry.”

  “The two of you,” he said, shaking his head. “Let’s just say you’ve both got some seriously whacked tantrum-to-contrition ratios, and I’m stuck in the middle.”

  I moved to the sofa and stretched myself out next to him, hoping he’d accept the gesture.

  “Hard day, huh?” he said.

  “Hard week. I hate the way things have been with us.”

  “Yeah, me too. I should have listened when you said this was hard on you. Is Duncan pissed?”

  “We wound up looking OK on Hamilton, so that was OK. But, yeah, he was upset about Crenshaw. He thinks you and I are a little too cozy,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck.

  “He does, does he?”

  “He says I would have sent Calabrese back in for a better confession if he hadn’t been your partner.”

  “Ah. And what do you think about that theory?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  He pushed a lock of hair that was tickling his face behind my ear. “You’re good at what you do, Sam. The guy’s lucky to have you in his office.”

  “I know, but I made a mistake.”

  “We all did. Christ, it was three in the morning. When was the last time Duncan tried working at that time of the night?”

  “You always defend me.”

  “That’s because I know you’re perfect.”

  “And I feel the same way about you. And maybe that’s why Duncan might have a point.”

  “So what are we supposed to do? Stop working together?”

  “No, I’m just saying it’s something we should both think about,” I said, kissing his neck and rubbing my foot against his ankle.

  “I see. And in this hypothetical world where we didn’t work together, would I still get to live here with you? And do this to you?” He slipped his hands under my blouse and ran his fingertips along the small of my back.

  “But of course,” I said, pressing my body against him.

  “Keep doing that, and I’ll work property cases the rest of my life if that’s what makes you happy.”

  Still, when neither of us made the next move, it was clear we had taken a step backward.

  “I’m sorry I let Lisa get me all worked up with her conspiracy theories.”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” He paused before explaining. “I went back and talked to Matt again about his timeline Sunday night.”

  “Already?”

  “Hey, I messed it up. I should have pulled his partner’s call sheet too.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That’s what’s bothering me. At first, everything seemed fine. Patrol was smoking, and he must have gone to another call from City Grill. Then, when I started pushing him to name the guys he took calls with that night, he freaked out on me, like I was an ass just for posing the questions. I tried explaining that I was trying to jog his memory, and he said something like You’re in IA mode.”

  “Matt said that? To you?”

  “I know. Totally fucked up. When I called him out on it, he starts making weird comments like maybe Alison wasn’t the only one with secrets.”

  “Like maybe he was fooling around too, on duty?”

  “That’s what he was suggesting, but he never even hinted at that when he seemed so upset about her and Percy before. I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like he killed Percy—”

  “No, of course not.”

  “—but he seemed weird. So: bad news if Russ and Duncan start looking at him.”

  I was disappointed. “If he does come under the micro-scope—and hopefully it won’t get to that—I assume he’d fess up to whatever he had going on the side.”

  “Let’s just hope it doesn’t get to that.”

  20

  At two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, Heidi attended the monthly meeting of the Buckeye Neighborhood Association at the Kennedy School.

  Even before the meeting was called to order, the room was filled with noisy talk about the grand jury’s decision not to indict Geoff Hamilton. Who were these grand jurors? people wanted to know. How could they just let him go without at least having a trial? Was it true that the man was suing and that the bureau was going to fold, putting him back on the street with a gun and a badge? And why did the District Attorney let the officer testify? None of the men they knew was ever allowed to meet the grand jurors who weighed his fate.

  Once the meeting was called to order, the president, a woman named Janelle Rogers, filled everyone in on the previous day’s events, separating fact from fiction, reality from rumor. But it wasn’t until the group’s secretary, Selma Gooding, weighed in that the group seemed convinced. Selma spoke especially highly of the woman prosecutor on the case, Samantha Kincaid, emphasizing how wonderful she had been to Delores’s mother. Heidi kept her opinion to herself.

  At the end of the meeting, Janelle asked if anyone had any announcements or new business for the group. Heidi rose from the seat she had taken in the back of the room and introduced herself. “I’m a reporter from the Oregonian. I’m working on a story about drug enforcement in the Portland neighborhoods. If any of you are willing to stay afterward, I’d love to speak with you about what you’ve seen in the Buckeye district: drug activity in the streets, your experiences with the police department, that kind of thing.”

  “What’s there to say?” an older man called out. “Everyone in Portland knows Buckeye’s the place to go when you’re looking for drugs. So we got lots of po-lice up there creating a presence, as they say. But when you got all them people driving around with money in their pockets, willing to spend it, and no good jobs, there’s going to be other people willing to sell all those drugs no matter what you tell them.”

  Several in the group expressed their agreement with Uh-huh, You said it, and Go on.

  “If they want to find drugs,” one woman offered, “they should go on up to that Jay-J’s. My niece tells me there’s all kinds of dope going in and out of that joint. The owner Andre knows all about it, but the police don’t do nothing because it’s all the rage now with the rich white people from the west side.”

  Heidi wasn’t the least bit surprised that the occasional drug deal went down at a club as popular as Jay-J’s.

  “But in your experience, do the police generally try to do something about drugs in Buckeye? One of the things I’ve been looking into is the fact that the police seem to do a lot of searches, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into arrests.”

  There were knowing laughs in the room.

  Selma Gooding spoke up. “It ain’t nothing but a revolving door. We see these people hanging out on the corners—and at places like Jay-J’s”—she added for the benefit of the previous speaker. “Sellers looking for buyers, buyers looking for sellers. The police come by and run them off, but they just come right on back. Even when someone gets arrested, you see them back out there—on the same corner—two hours later. Then you’ve got the police stopping innocent people all the time, searching them for drugs they don’t have.”

  More sounds of agreement.

  “But why do you think that happens? Are the police trying and failing, or do you think they intentionally let people go?”

  At that point, the room broke out into cacophony. As people spoke and even yelled over one another, Heidi sensed a deep divide in the neighborhood between those who respected the police and wanted more help from them and those who saw the police as nothing more than state-backed gangsters. To Janelle Rogers, for example, the police appeared to be doing everything they could do. The problem was judges who cared more about the rights of criminals and overcrowded jails than her community’s need to feel safe. As others told it, the police were haphazard in their enforc
ement, shaking down every young black man on the street, guilt be damned. One man went so far as to suggest that cops were simply stealing drugs and money off suspects for themselves.

  Eventually, impatient participants began leaving the room, and Janelle Rogers announced a formal adjournment of the meeting, inviting those who wanted to continue the discussion to stay. Everyone left except Selma Gooding.

  “Didn’t realize you were opening up such a can of worms, did you?”

  “Absolutely not. I’m sorry. I feel like I totally took over your meeting.”

  “Those kinds of things happen when people are angry and fed up and feel like nothing they ever do is going to change anything.”

  Heidi followed Selma as she walked to the parking lot. “I didn’t mean to stir up a controversy. I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “Well, there is,” she said, unlocking the door to an older green Chevy Cavalier. “Once you figure out what you want to say, you can write a story about it. Did you know Percy Crenshaw?”

  “I did. Not well, but he was very good to me at the paper. In fact, I was the one who packed his office up for his family. I talked to you when the boxes were ready.”

  Selma’s face glowed with the recognition. “Well, bless your heart, darling. Yes, you are indeed the one who called me.”

  “So you knew Percy well?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by well, but, yes, I suppose we thought of him as a part of our little family up here. But the reason I asked you about him is that he did people an awful lot of good with the stories he’d write. Now, I know how things worked. He’d tend to come up with a good guy who wasn’t so good, and a bad guy who wasn’t so bad, and sometimes he’d jazz the whole thing up to get some attention. But the point is, he used his position to open people’s eyes to things they were blind to. That’s a mighty powerful thing. We’re going to miss Percy dearly, and we are really going to miss the help he gave us too.”

  As Selma launched into specific stories Percy had written about race and class in Portland and about the Buckeye neighborhood in particular, Heidi noticed a police patrol car on Ainsworth slow as it passed the parking lot. Heidi did not want to look away from Selma while she was speaking, but as the car turned onto 33rd Avenue in front of the school, she noticed that the officer had wavy brown hair. Before she could tell if it was the same officer from Northeast Precinct, the car was gone.

  “Is everything all right?” Selma asked. Heidi’s attention had clearly drifted.

  “Fine. Sorry. Actually, the story I was thinking of writing about drug enforcement was something that Percy was working on.” Heidi began to describe it in the same vague terms she’d used with the district attorney and the neighborhood association, but then she realized that hadn’t gotten her anywhere so far. This woman seemed trustworthy enough, and, besides, it wasn’t like she could beat her to the story.

  “Percy compiled evidence showing disparities in enforcement between Northeast Precinct and East Precinct.” She explained how searches didn’t necessarily turn into arrests in Northeast Precinct, particularly for African-American suspects.

  “Well, isn’t that a new twist?” Selma laughed, slapping the top of her car hood. “We’re the ones getting the breaks? Don’t hear that too often.”

  Heidi explained her theory that some police officers might be working with the dealers who controlled the crack trade in the neighborhood, filling out their stop-and-search cards as required but letting the drugs and the dealers stay on the streets.

  “Hhmph, hhmph—so we get the short end of the stick after all. That would certainly explain why there seems to be more and more of that rock cocaine around here, no matter how much we call the police.”

  “Well, as you can imagine, I’m eager to put everything together, but it’s difficult to prove. Did Percy ever talk to you about it? He had a couple of names written in his notes that seem to be connected. If I could just figure out who his sources were, maybe I could pick up where he left off.”

  “Oh, I don’t know anything about that.”

  “He never mentioned it at all? I got the impression that he came to a neighborhood association meeting recently, either last month or maybe the month before.”

  “That’s right, he most certainly did. Two months ago, he was here. He was fairly regular about attending, just to see what was going on. And, you know, that was one of the things everyone was talking about the last time he was here. About how you’d call up the police about some drug dealer outside your house. And it’s just like people were telling you today: The police come, you see them with the boys spread-eagle on the car, and then, soon enough, you see those same boys out on the same corner just a couple hours later. We didn’t know if the police were letting them go, or if the jail was too full, or what was going on. But, yeah, I guess I could see Percy looking into something like that.”

  “Do you know who he might have spoken to about it? He seemed particularly interested in two officers named Powell and Foster.”

  “Now I don’t know who they are. Janelle, she works with the community policing officers, but I don’t think those are their names. And Percy—well, he knew so many people. I can only imagine. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but Percy didn’t get where he was by telling stories to an old woman like me.”

  “You don’t seem so old to me,” Heidi said. Just then, she saw the patrol car turn the corner onto Ainsworth, pausing again near the parking lot.

  “Well, aren’t you sweet?”

  Heidi craned her neck to get a good look at the driver, but she was just too far away. This time, the car turned right on 33rd, heading away from the school.

  “Selma, did you notice that officer loop around the school twice, just since we were standing here?”

  “Welcome to the neighborhood, child.”

  Heidi watched Selma climb rigidly into her little car, a trail of exhaust following her down Ainsworth. On the drive back to northwest Portland, Selma’s words echoed in Heidi’s head. Once you figure out what you want to say, you can write a story about it. As Heidi was falling asleep that night, she thought about Selma’s reverent tone as she spoke about the way Percy used journalism to help people. With just a few words, Selma had reminded Heidi why she’d chosen this low-paying, uncelebrated career path in the first place.

  And, on Sunday morning, Heidi thought about Selma again when she opened the front door of her townhouse and found a story from that morning’s Oregonian taped to it. According to a short In Crime sidebar, community activists Selma Gooding and Janelle Rogers had been shot in a late-night drive-by.

  21

  I had big plans for Sunday. After a long run, I’d gorge myself on dim sum at Fong Chong over a leisurely read of the New York Times, then top it all off with a large bucket of balls at the Westmoreland driving range. Perfect.

  It started well enough. I woke to kisses on my neck from the back half of my bed spoon. Before long, Vinnie had been evicted to the hallway, and Chuck, in his own special way, was loosening up my back for my golf swing.

  The start of the optimistic day came to an end, however, when I walked into the house after my run, damp with drizzle and sweat. Chuck was at the dining room table with a Coffee People java, black, and Vinnie unusually content at his feet. Progress.

  “Hey, what was the name of that woman you were telling me about?”

  “Um, a little more specificity please?” I kicked my shoes off at the door and pulled off my shell, stripping down to my sports bra and tights.

  “The one you met at that thing about the Tompkins shooting, who called Duncan saying how great you were?”

  “Oh. Selma Gooding. Salt of the earth, that woman.”

  “Then you need to see this.” He pushed the open Metro section of the Oregonian across the table toward me and pointed to a short side column. The headline—Drive-by Shooting Targets Activists—leaped out, along with two familiar faces. Late Saturday night, an unidentified gunman had fired multipl
e bullets through the window of Selma Gooding’s house, landing her and her houseguest, Buckeye Neighborhood Association president Janelle Rogers, in critical condition. Although the article was too brief to draw any conclusions, the mention of the women’s activism against the neighborhood gangs and street crime suggested the possibility of retribution.

  “You haven’t heard anything?” I asked Chuck.

  “Nothing. Pager’s been quiet.”

  “Can you find out what’s up?”

  “Yeah, sure, no problem.” He made a few phone calls from the kitchen as I eavesdropped, trying to ascertain from his uh-huhs and yeahs what was going on. A few minutes later, he told me that Selma was in serious but stable condition at Emanuel Legacy Hospital. He interrupted my sigh of relief with a second piece of news: Janelle Rogers was dead. An image of her offering me cookies and fruit salad flashed in my mind like a hologram.

  Two detectives from the Gang Team had been assigned to the shooting. I pulled my DA call list from my briefcase and dialed Jessica Walters’s home number. “Jessica, it’s Sam Kincaid. Sorry to call you, but did the Gang Team happen to call you about a shooting last night? In Buckeye?”

  “They paged me last night around one. Might not actually be a gang thing, but we’re handling it for now. What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to make sure someone in our office had it. I’ve met both the victims, and—well, I guess I was shocked this morning when I read about the shooting.”

  “The younger one didn’t make it, but the old lady’s fine.” Another shooting wasn’t much to Jessica.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, the detectives tell me she’s totally out of the woods. Don’t worry, we’ve got it under control. You done interrupting my weekend, Kincaid?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Not a problem. Go run a marathon now or whatever the hell you do on Sunday.” She hung up without saying goodbye.