Bury the Past

by James L'Etoile

  “I want a phone call,” Sherman said, his jaw stiffened by the neck brace.

  “Look who’s awake and looking for attention,” one of his escort officers said.

  “If he wants attention, let’s put him on the list for a colonoscopy,” the second officer responded.

  “Let me have a phone call.”

  “No calls and no visitors. That’s the rules.”

  “Then you get on the phone and call your watch commander. You tell him I need to talk to the district attorney,” Sherman said.

  “And why would the watch commander do that?”

  “Because I have information the DA needs on two murders. I know who did it, and I will turn her over to the DA and only the DA.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  John gave Lieutenant Barnes a briefing of the McDaniel drive-by shooting. Even though John didn’t fire his weapon, too many shots rang out to go unnoticed by local media. That likely meant press coverage about the uptick in violent crime in the city, which would lead to questions about city council leadership, which caused phone calls to the chief’s office demanding answers. Answers John didn’t have.

  When is a drive-by not a drive-by? When it’s an assassination. John kept coming back to that conclusion every time he ran the events through his mind. But who would waste time and a hundred rifle rounds on a lowlife like McDaniel?

  The biker crash pad held the barest precursors to a small-time meth lab in a bathroom, but McDaniel was no central player in a drug operation, and the residue in the place wasn’t enough to get on the DEA radar. But if the white supremacists pushed their product in the wrong neighborhood, the delicate balance of Sacramento drug commerce that made the Trans-Pacific Partnership look simple would unravel in a violent fashion. Still, if someone wanted to leave a message, a Molotov cocktail would have been more effective. All those bikers in the driveway to shoot at and McDaniel was the only victim.

  John understood the need for payback the bikers had after an attack that left one of their number bloody in the gutter. But these guys were usually more disciplined and left security behind to keep their home base safe. This time they’d all taken off after the shooter. They were more interested in getting away than taking care of business.

  John picked up his desk phone and dialed Karen Baylor’s extension. The call went to voice mail after a half dozen rings. John glanced at his watch. Karen was gone for the day. He left a message for her to call him whenever she got in.

  As soon as he hung up, his phone rang. He grabbed it, noting the internal extension on the caller ID. “That was quick, Karen.”

  “It’s Paula. You hear?”

  “What’s up? You mean about George McDaniel getting shot? Yeah, I was there. It’s strange, though—”

  “Sherman’s in the hospital. He tried to off himself.”

  “What? How?” John said. A jolt shot down his spine. “When was this?”

  “He and a security detail got to Folsom Mercy Hospital about a half hour ago.”

  The timing of the suicide attempt wouldn’t put Sherman at the McDaniel shooting. John shook the image away—the man was still in prison custody. “Why would he try to check out when the court was leaning toward a new trial?”

  “You saw him. Hell, sound reasoning wasn’t his strong suit,” Paula said.

  “Granted, but even he had to have a glimmer of the consequence of this kind of a move when his appeal was moving forward.”

  “If that asshole cared about consequences, he wouldn’t have been in prison in the first place.”

  John leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temple with his free hand. A tension headache was blossoming fast. “The hospital has him under wraps, right? They have the new security unit for prisoners. It would be just like him to fake a suicide as a means of escape.”

  “The prison has security on him. But you’re right. I wouldn’t put it past him to try something desperate. This might have been a trial run. Maybe we should take a look at all of his prior addresses and associates. Anyone who visited, corresponded—”

  “Shit!” John fumbled with his notebook and grabbed the plastic evidence bag with the letter from Sherman he’d collected after the McDaniel shooting.

  “What?” Paula asked.

  “Correspondence reminded me. Sherman was writing George McDaniel. I found a letter sent from the prison. Let me open it.” John pulled on a pair of latex gloves and laid down a piece of blank paper. He took the letter from the plastic bag and placed it on the center of the paper.

  “It’s already open.” John slid the letter out and unfolded it. “It’s a bunch of numbers. Just random bullshit numbers. 18567, 16583, 14127—”

  “Wait. Say that last one again,” Paula said.

  “14127.”

  “That’s my badge number—14127.”

  “The others must be too. Let me run this by personnel—”

  “Read them off again. I can run them against the armory records here in the gun cage.”

  John read off the first number, and he heard keyboard clicking in the background.

  “No. Nothing.”

  After reading off the second number, Paula confirmed it as Bobby Wing’s badge number. Paula’s number was next on the list. The fourth number didn’t register as a Sac PD badge number.

  “Hang on for a second,” Paula said.

  John heard her flip through a file, the paper making a snap with each brisk page turn.

  “That last one was Joseph Ronland’s badge number. He wasn’t one of ours, so it didn’t pop on our database. Give me that first one again.”

  John read off the number.

  “Larry Burger. What is McDaniel doing with a list of SSPNET badge numbers?” John said.

  “And mine. I’m more concerned about where they came from. Sherman. That guy is one brain cell away from needing a drool bib, and he sends out a hit list to McDaniel?” Paula said.

  “Sherman sees everyone on the list as playing a role in his downfall. Burger and Wing are dead. That leaves you and Ronland left.”

  “Even if McDaniel wore one of his old Sheriff’s uniforms, that wasn’t him in the truck stop video. He wasn’t the one who got tough with Burger. McDaniel doesn’t match the description Bullet gave us of the person at the Burger crime scene. And I can’t see him as Sherman’s bagman, can you?” she said.

  “McDaniel got shot a couple of hours ago. That happened before Sherman went to the hospital.”

  “McDaniel was hardcore back in the day. He wouldn’t have testified against Sherman. He was one of those ‘I’m not gonna rat on my brothers’ guys, even though Sherman was the reason he got nabbed.”

  “Okay, so let’s say, for the sake of argument, that McDaniel got the list of badge numbers from Sherman. What was he supposed to do with them? I mean, how would he know who those numbers represented?” John asked.

  “He’d have to do what we did. Someone would have to run the numbers for him. And who’d do that for a dirtbag like McDaniel?”

  John tapped on the letter once more. “Sherman couldn’t have committed this to memory. He had to copy this from somewhere. Feel like a ride out to the prison in the morning? I’d like to go through his personal effects and see what he’s got. If he had an appeal going, the court filings might have had the badge numbers of the officers involved.”

  “Makes sense. If McDaniel was subpoenaed as a witness, he might have used the appeal as a key to unlock the hit list from Sherman.”

  “Until then, I’m gonna have a patrol unit sit on Ronland’s place and make sure Sherman doesn’t try and bust out of the hospital to take a shot at someone. And you need to stay away from your place for the night. Wanna stay with Mel and me?”

  “I’m not gonna let a shit stain like Sherman keep me out of my own house. If he comes, I’ll be ready. Come by and pick me up in the morning.”

  Paula hung up, but John had an uneasy feeling leaving his partner out in the open, like tethering a sheep outside for the tiger.

 
TWENTY-FIVE

  Paula was sitting in an Adirondack deck chair with a mug of coffee when John arrived at her place. After he’d parked, John strode up the walkway and noticed her service weapon on the table next to a coffee press. The glass cylinder was empty, but the condensation on the inside meant that it hadn’t been that way for long.

  A second cup with steam lofting up from the rim sat on the other side of the table. She motioned him to the cup and the other wooden chair.

  John took the coffee and drew a sip. Paula let the silence pass. She looked worn. The dark circles under her eyes betrayed that sleep hadn’t come easy last night.

  “Could I have been wrong?” she said.

  “Narrow that down a bit for me.”

  She put her mug on the table. “All this. Did I get everything wrong about Sherman? What if they’re right and he’s innocent?” She sat on her hands and hunched her shoulders forward. It made her look small and fragile.

  “Why would you even ask? Worse yet, why would you lose sleep over Sherman? He’s a low-life piece of—”

  “He tried to kill himself because of me. If I really caused that—I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about what happens after we close an investigation. Old cases go away, and new ones pile up. An unending supply of misery and pain. What if I got it wrong?”

  “You didn’t.”

  She hung her head. “Someone thinks I’m to blame. Bobby Wing was killed with my hammer, for God’s sake. Checks were issued to Burger under my name. All because I should have let it go.”

  John took a sip from his mug. “This isn’t bad. I’ve gotten used to that swill we have at the office.” He tried to change the downward spiral of the conversation. When she didn’t respond, he put his mug down next to her weapon. “What’s this for? Keepin’ solar-panel salesmen away?”

  She glanced over. “If Sherman’s guardian angels wanted to pay me a visit, I thought I’d meet them halfway. Yeah, I’ve heard the guardian angel talk.”

  “You stay out here all night?”

  She nodded. “Except to make you coffee. It’s Brazilian, by the way.”

  “Brazilian? You see your coffee shop friend?”

  A hint of a smile graced her face.

  “I withdraw the question,” John said.

  Paula grew serious again, and the wisp of something positive evaporated. “I’m not afraid of Sherman’s avenging angels. If they want to bring it—fine.”

  “What are you afraid of then?”

  The question took her by surprise. She sat forward and tensed. “If I fucked up the case, that’s one thing; I’ll take my lumps.”

  “But—”

  “That’s why I asked you if I was wrong. I’m afraid that I’m gonna lose the one thing that I can do: be a cop. If they take that away from me . . .”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “The district attorney, the chief, the lieutenant. You heard the DA. If the Sherman case falls apart, she wants my ass on a platter.”

  “Clarke is a politician and a blowhard. We have to keep plugging on the Burger murder, and that will collapse this mess right on Sherman. He had a hand in those two murders—we even have DNA on Burger’s body.”

  “You’re forgetting about his ultimate alibi—he’s already in prison.”

  “Except for right now. He’s in the hospital,” John said.

  Paula stiffened. “Yeah, he is. If he manipulated his move to the hospital, then it’s part of his grand plan to screw me. How well guarded are those wards in a local hospital?”

  He shrugged. “You’re talking about a rescue? Someone busting in and breaking him out? I don’t know. Why do something that desperate when his appeal might do the same thing without the risk?”

  “I still think we should go out to the prison. I want to get a look at anything he has in his cell that might have referenced those badge numbers he sent out to McDaniel,” she said.

  “I’m sure the chief deputy warden will help us get a peek at his property. I’d like to see what they have to say about his correspondence with McDaniel too.”

  Paula got up and worked the stiffness from her knees, holstered her weapon, and told John she’d be right back. She gathered the mugs and the coffee press and locked them up in the house.

  John tossed her the keys. “You drive while I give Griggson a call and let him know we’d like to take a look around his prison.”

  Twenty minutes later, thanks to light traffic, they pulled into the prison entrance gate, signed in, and locked up their weapons. Griggson left a message with the gate officer to have them park and take the shuttle to the A/B sally port.

  Lieutenant Amber Rendon met them at the sally port and guided them through the multiple layers of security fencing, gates, doors, and control rooms to the bunker that controlled the facility, to housing unit 8, the psychiatric services unit.

  “Is it always this busy?” John asked. There were clinical staff moving about the unit, officers collecting food trays, and inmates in holding cages awaiting movement to some other part of the prison. “I’ve seen other units here, but this is different.”

  “It’s always active here. The mission of this unit is mental health treatment for inmates with the highest need coupled with a risk to themselves or a danger to the prison. If they weren’t mentally ill, they would be at Pelican Bay or Corcoran SHU.” The lieutenant pronounced it “shoe.”

  She must have recognized the confusion on Paula’s face. “SHU means ‘security housing unit.’ It’s like a prison within a prison. The PSU gives them the best chance of treatment in a high-security safe setting,” Lieutenant Rendon said.

  “It’s louder than I thought it would be,” Paula said. The cries and catcalls from the cells were punctuated with moaning and pleas against unseen torment.

  The lieutenant turned and surveyed the activity in the unit. She shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  An inmate banged on his cell door, pale from the lack of sunlight, eyes wide and wild. “The bugs! Get them off me!”

  Lieutenant Rendon asked the floor officer, “You call in a psych tech yet?”

  The officer nodded. “Yeah, we’re on hold while they handle a cell extraction over in the CTC.”

  “Let me know if you need another S&E to sit on him.”

  “CTC, S&E? You guys have your own language,” John said.

  Rendon laughed. “I guess it sounds like that. It makes for easy communication with staff and eliminates any confusion. CTC is the correctional treatment center. It’s more of an intensive clinical setting where we manage inmates after suicide attempts or those who refuse medication. S&E is a search and escort officer—kind of a utility officer we can redirect to cover the staffing needs.”

  “I’ve seen cell extractions when a guy refuses to come out of his cell or won’t give up a food tray, but what would cause the need for an extraction in the CTC?” John asked.

  “Some inmates are extreme. If they stop taking their meds, they completely fall apart. They’ll rub feces on themselves, set fires, attempt suicide. Granted the CTC limits their ability to cause that kind of problem, but they still try.”

  “Man, what a screwed-up place to work,” Paula said.

  “Better for them and us.”

  An officer stepped over to Rendon. “Lieutenant, you wanted a printout of inmate Sherman’s movement history and approved correspondence?”

  She took the manila envelope and handed it to John. “This should give you what you were looking for.” Then to the control booth officer, “Pop 121!”

  The cell numbers were painted onto steel doors, and 8121 was on the lower of two tiers. The door slid back, driven by an electric motor.

  The lieutenant gestured at the cell. “That’s your boy’s house. Take your time, and we’ll have the control booth officer secure the rest of the section. Just give him a shout when you’re done.”

  John and Paula entered the concrete box where Sherman lived. The ten-by-six-foot cell had a single bunk, a table, and
a combination sink/toilet. Tall, thin rectangular windows at the back and a glass panel in the cell door were the only sources of outside light that spilled into the concrete cavern.

  The mattress was bare, which seemed unusual until John put together the fact that Sherman had used his bed sheets to hang himself. He turned to the door and found the vent opening over the toilet. One of the metal grates bowed outward, bent from Sherman’s body weight.

  A lidless cardboard box sat under the metal bunk. Paula pulled it out and laid it on the mattress. She wasn’t about to sit on the bunk where Sherman slept, so she stood and flipped through the papers in the box.

  “Hey, Paula?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re gonna want to take a look at this,” John said.

  She turned and came face-to-face with her own image drawn on the cell wall.

  “I think you made an impression,” John said.

  Paula centered herself with the drawing, crossed her arms, and tilted her head. “It’s so . . .”

  “Angry?” John followed.

  “I was about to say ‘big.’ Do I look like that when I’m angry?”

  “I’m gonna take the fifth on that one, partner.”

  “That’s intense.”

  A voice from the cell door said, “It’s you.”

  A correctional officer at the opening looked at Paula and then back to the drawing. “Wow, I thought it was a girlfriend from the outside. You’re not—”

  Paula cut him off. “Oh, hell no! How long has this been here?”

  “I first saw it about three to four days ago. He’s been assigned to this cell for about six months. They aren’t supposed to deface the walls, but it was pretty good, and that was the least of his problems.”

  “How so?” Paula said.

  “I’m not saying it’s art therapy or nothing. But if an inmate’s occupying his time drawing, then he isn’t gassing us.”

  John moved to the box of paper work on the bunk while Paula spoke with the officer. Most of the contents looked like trial transcripts; the pages where Burger testified were dog-eared and worn. Letters from attorneys, turning down his request for representation on his appeal, and handwritten pages of Sherman’s summary of his own case stuffed the cardboard container. Technically, there was an attorney-client privilege for an inmate’s legal work, but they weren’t reading any of the man’s legal briefs—they were looking for something that didn’t belong. He dumped the box on the mattress and pulled out the cardboard square from the bottom of the box. It was supposed to support the weight in the box, but it was also a place to hide a few documents.