Linda Clarke stepped to the podium. “Thank you, Chief. We must be transparent, even in times of difficulty and in times of shame. My office was less than diligent in vetting the evidence against Charles Sherman. As a result, he was not afforded a fair and unbiased legal process. The city council and the county board of supervisors have agreed to a settlement with Mr. Sherman to help atone for our missteps in this matter. In addition to a financial settlement, we are taking steps to rectify the problem and hold those who were responsible accountable for this travesty.”
Paula’s soul turned to ice, and it shattered into crystals when Sherman took the podium. He played the victim to a tee. Chin down, eyes searching up for the camera. What a crock.
“I appreciate the district attorney’s sentiments. But that can’t change what was taken from me. My life, my career, and my future are gone. Because of one person. While the terms of my settlement prohibit me from disclosing anything further, she will get what’s coming.” A steely glint formed for a moment, then he returned to character. “As for the money. I’ll be donating it. All of it will go to homeless services here in the city.”
“Huh, didn’t see that one coming,” John said from over Paula’s shoulder.
“What’s he planning? He’s always got something going,” she said.
“I don’t have to be a fortune-teller to see how this one ends—he’s untouchable.”
“I guess my time is running out. That had to be part of his deal.”
The interior hospital doors opened once more. Instead of another doctor looking for a patient’s next of kin, a uniformed Sacramento police officer entered, carrying a large brown paper bag.
“That must be Ronland’s guy.”
John waved him over.
“You need a ride back to your car? I understand you rode in with Ronland.”
“That’d be great. I don’t want to call my sergeant for a lift. He’s already giving me a load for letting Ronland get hit under my watch.”
“You didn’t let anyone get hit. From what my lieutenant said, if you hadn’t found Ronland, he would’ve been toast.”
The officer set the bag on the floor next to the sofa. The top was open, exposing the plastic evidence containers with bloody clothes and the hilt of a butcher knife.
Paula pulled the rim of the bag open an inch more, taking a look at the contents. She bit her lip and let go.
“Where did you get that knife?” she asked.
“That was stuck in Ronland’s chest when I found him. I thought he was gone, man.”
Paula got up and took a quick step away. John sensed her agitation and took her by the elbow.
“Hey, what’s up?” he murmured.
“That knife. John, it’s mine.”
FORTY-EIGHT
A shattered television screen gave up the ghost with a final crackle and spark after Wallace threw a beer bottle through it. In his mind, Wallace nailed Sherman in his holier-than-thou face.
Good for you, asshole. Now what about the rest of us?
“Hey, you gotta pay for that!” The bartender whacked the bar with a yellowed baseball bat.
A pair of pool players stopped and got behind Wallace. One held a cue stick and laid it alongside the bar to make his presence known.
“What the hell is wrong with you, dude?” the stick-wielding man asked.
“Call the cops on this dick,” someone said from behind Wallace.
“Nah, take his ass out back and beat some sense into him.”
“I get paid first,” the bartender said. The baseball bat tapped in front of Wallace.
“How much you want?” Wallace said.
“How much you got?”
Wallace got up from his barstool, and the men behind him pressed closer.
“Easy, boys.”
Wallace peeled two hundred dollars and tossed it on the bar, and while the cash distracted everyone, he pulled a pistol from his waistband and pushed it against the head of the man with the cue stick.
“Drop it or die,” Wallace hissed.
The pool cue bounced off the wood planked floor.
The bartender gathered up the loose cash. “Hey, this don’t cover it.”
“Close enough. Or do we have to talk about it?” Wallace pushed the muzzle of the gun hard into the pool player’s forehead. A red ring formed on the skin under the business end of the pistol. Wallace took the man by the shoulder and walked backward to the front door, keeping his eyes on the malignant crew in the bar.
When he felt the door at his back, he kicked it open with his foot, pulling the pool player with him. Daylight made the pool player squint, and Wallace glanced back to make certain there was no one between him and his motorcycle.
The man was about to say something before Wallace pulled back his gun hand and coldcocked him in the forehead with the bottom of the pistol grip. The man’s face bled from the split skin, and Wallace gave him a boot to the stomach, pushing him back inside the doors.
He kick-started his bike, and the tire tossed gravel as he tore out of the parking lot. Wallace sped away from the biker bar and let up on the throttle when his rear view lost sight of the place.
Wallace cruised past his home and slowed when he noticed a black-and-white patrol car blocking his driveway. An officer stood behind his Ford truck and looked to be running his license plates. He kept moving and turned right onto the next street. Another car blocked the alley entrance. The house was off-limits.
But he finally knew where to head next. There was no way he was going to let Sherman win. He’d worked too long to make sure his secret stayed buried with the dead.
Wallace cut a path toward the police station, where the news broadcast showed that pious son of a bitch basking in the media’s adoration. With all the attention, it wouldn’t take long before a zealous journalist started digging into Sherman and his time with the SSPNET task force. Hell, they’d probably already signed a movie deal for the inside story. That could not happen.
A block from the station, a news van passed Wallace in the other direction. Wallace drove his bike into the parking lot, and the engine rumble vibrated, causing a few heads to turn. Most turned away. An expensive street bike was pretty common in cop circles. But one man kept staring at the approaching rider—Sherman.
Wallace saw Sherman’s eyes widen in recognition, and he tried to back into the knot of people gathered at the podium.
The bike slowed, and Wallace drew his pistol.
Sherman yelled and pointed at the gun.
Wallace let loose three shots at Sherman. He rocked back on the throttle and saw Sherman collapse. A gunshot from one of the nearby officers flicked off the side of his bike’s frame. Another caught the bike’s seat an inch below his butt. He’d felt the heat from that one.
He braced for another shot, and it didn’t come. He sped out the downtown corridor and hit the freeway before every patrol car in the division was on him. He gripped the handlebars as the relief bled between his fingers. He’d put down the only threat left that could expose his role in the SSPNET.
FORTY-NINE
Paula held the plastic evidence bag with the blood-smeared butcher knife and turned it over in her hands.
“There are hundreds, if not thousands of knives like that, Paula,” John said.
“Not like this.” She rotated the bag so the hilt was against the plastic and an elaborately embossed monogram showed through. In the center of the scrollwork, the initials P. N. stood proudly. “My mother got these for me when I bought my house. They were a housewarming gift.”
John caught the monogram in spite of her trembling hand. “There has to be an explanation for this. The break-in you had, your garage—this could have been taken at the same time.”
“This was in a butcher block on my kitchen counter. Sherman had to have taken it when he was in my house.”
John took the evidence bag and rolled the top closed. He gave it back to the officer. “Get these to Karen Baylor in the forensics investigati
on unit, got it?” John tossed him the keys to his sedan.
“Yeah, got it.”
The hospital employee behind the counter waved them over. “Mr. Ronland is out of recovery.” She gave them the room number and directions to the fourth-floor ward that served surgical patients.
After two elevators and a serpentine path through pale-colored hallways, they finally found Ronland in a room with another recovering patient.
A sheet covered Ronland from the waist down, exposing a heavy gauze pad on his chest, three inches to the right of center and about a fist’s width from his collarbone. Patricia sat at her brother’s side, and she didn’t look happy to see the detectives.
“Has he woken up yet?” John asked.
“No. The doctor wasn’t sure how long he’d be out.”
“How’d he do in surgery?” Paula said.
“Punctured lung and an embolism. Lost a lot of blood.” She flipped a hand to the IV pole, which held four different bags: blood, pain meds, anticoagulants, and antibiotics.
The sight conjured bad memories for John of when his son was tethered to a similar hospital bed by wires, tubes, and monitors.
“I’m glad he’ll be okay,” Paula said.
“You call this okay? He almost died. And for what? Because of you people. You don’t give a damn about him or his life. You guys just bleed him for what you can—literally—and leave him for dead.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it.” Patricia got louder as the exchange continued.
“What did you mean about us bleeding him for what we could? Other than—” John started.
“My brother made mistakes. He faced them and took his medicine like a man. He paid his debt and was doing his probation like he was supposed to, and you guys wouldn’t leave him alone.”
“I only talked to him for a few minutes at the car wash.”
“You guys picked him up and took him downtown, threatening him to cooperate in another case against one of the people he worked with.”
“Charles Sherman?” Paula asked.
“That sounds right,” Patricia said. “My brother claimed that man was the one responsible for bringing everybody down back then. George tried to put it all behind him, and you wouldn’t let him.”
“Who took him ‘downtown’?” John asked.
“How the hell should I know? All I know is we were having dinner, and they showed up at my house and dragged him off.”
“Who?”
“Who, who, who. You sound like a goddamned owl. The police took him. The officer with that black uniform, all Nazi-acting—”
“Black uniform? Sheriff’s department?”
“It doesn’t matter who took him. Police is police. He cooperated with a roomful of white cops and look where that got him.”
A moan came from Ronland.
Patricia turned to her brother. His eyes were open, small slits peering back at her.
“Patti, what’s a guy gotta do to get some sleep around here?”
She hugged him, and he groaned.
Ronland noticed John and Paula in the room.
“No, I don’t know who did it. So you don’t have to waste time with me. Didn’t see him. He came from behind. White guy—that’s all I know.”
“Your sister said something about you getting picked up and brought downtown. What was that about?” John asked.
Ronland’s eyes shifted to his sister and then, with some difficulty, back to John. “She did, huh? She should mind her own business.”
“It was Wallace, wasn’t it? The guy who picked you up in his sheriff’s uniform?”
He nodded. “Yeah, it was. He had Sherman in the car with him to prove that he knew what he was talking about.”
“What’s that?”
“He wanted to get the band back together. Wallace still had an inside track on contraband and drugs seizures—not as big as before, but he wanted to continue where we left off.”
“What was Sherman’s role in this new operation?”
“Sherman didn’t say much; it’s like he was preoccupied or didn’t want to be there. I don’t know. It was weird.”
“What did Wallace want from you?”
“He didn’t say until after he dropped Sherman off. Then all he wanted me to do was follow Sherman and find out where he was hiding his stash back from when we were skimming off the task force. I said I wasn’t interested.”
“Follow him? Wallace wasn’t with him?”
“No. Wallace had to drop Sherman off and leave. That was the only way Sherman would agree to work. No one but him could know where he hid his stash.”
“What’s up with that? He didn’t trust Wallace?” Paula asked.
“Sherman didn’t trust anyone. The deal was that Wallace would get Sherman out of prison on these little field trips, and he’d hand over some drugs to sell to the white boys. Then Wallace would take him back to his cage.”
“How many trips did Sherman make?”
“I don’t know. It looked like Sherman had done it a lot, because they had their act down tight.”
“He happen to mention anything else?”
“This was after Bobby Wing got killed and Wallace made some comment about no one having the heart to take a risk anymore. Rich coming from the only one of us who didn’t go to jail or prison for that bullshit.”
A spark lit in the back of John’s mind.
“Paula, how did the case against the SSPNET begin?” John asked.
“An informant.”
FIFTY
The trauma center waiting room had thinned out as the morning bled into midday. The mothers with sick little ones were gone, and amputated fingers were glued and stitched as much as possible, but the crews of opposing gang members remained.
When John and Paula pressed through the double doors, the gang colors were brighter than they were in the dark morning light. Or there were more of them. The red bandanas and Cincinnati Reds ball caps of a local Bloods gang set outnumbered the Crips in their blue T-shirts and Dodgers paraphernalia, and it wasn’t a friendly baseball rivalry.
Paula pointed to the knot of Crip members with hands that snaked into their pockets as the provocation continued.
“Is that Deshawn Cooper?” Paula asked.
John found the youngest Crip in the group, Deshawn, who had turned eighteen a month ago.
“Let’s see if we can’t de-escalate the situation here,” John said.
Paula nodded, and they walked between the two opposing sides.
“Deshawn? What’s going on?” John asked.
The teenage gang member didn’t like the attention, and the other members looked at the interaction with the police with suspicion. “’Sup, Detective?”
“How’s your mom? She still selling her art? I might drop by her place and pick up another one.”
“She paints?” Paula asked.
“You know that cityscape we have in the living room? Deshawn’s mom did that.”
“I thought that was some computer Photoshop thing from a photograph. There’s so much detail.”
“Moms doesn’t use software to do that. It’s all by hand,” Deshawn said.
“Damn.” Paula was impressed.
The boy looked proud for a moment and then remembered where he was. A false front shut the emotion down.
“I’m glad she’s still painting. After your brother died, painting is what kept her going,” John said.
“I guess.”
John sat on one of the waiting area seats, careful not to sit in anything left behind by bleeding, vomiting, or contagious patients.
“Deshawn, what’s going on here?” John asked.
“Just waiting on someone.”
“Got anything to do with those guys?” John asked. He tipped his head toward the red-clad group.
Deshawn shrugged.
“Damn right it does,” the Crip next to Deshawn said. “We was minding our own business, and they come and
disrespected us.”
“How’s that?” John asked.
“They was in our hood flying their colors where they don’t belong.”
“That’s it? Their fashion choice?” John deliberately minimized the gang color. “Hell, kids can’t wear anything but damn near green plaid because of all this.”
“That’s enough for us.”
Lives lost and broken in defense of imaginary lines and perceived slights of disrespect. Generations sucked up into the gang life because nothing else existed in the community for them. Deshawn followed in his brother’s footsteps, and how much longer before a trigger pull would put him in an early grave?
“You still haven’t told us why everyone is having a street criminal convention here,” Paula interjected.
“Jo-Jo went out in the street,” Deshawn answered. “They run him down with their broke-ass ride.”
“They ran him over?” Paula asked.
“Yeah, busted him up pretty good too. At least one leg was all twisted up and shit. Bleeding from his head from where he hit the pavement.”
“And they was laughing about it. Who gonna be laughing now, punk?” the other Crip said, loud enough to get a reaction from the other group.
“Who you calling a punk?” a Blood responded.
Paula turned to the closest Blood and pointed her finger in his face. “Knock that shit off! Now!” With the mad dog neutered, she turned to the other Bloods.
“What are you doing here?”
“Those bitches shot Lil Bobby.”
“Bobby Steves from Third Avenue?” Paula said.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Bobby is supposed to be lying low on his association with you guys because he just got out of jail. It’s a condition of probation.”
“Man, who else is he gonna associate with? He lives, sleeps, and breathes red.”
“How bad is he?” Paula asked.
“Can’t keep Lil Bobby down. He’ll be back.”
“The cops get who shot him?”
“Yeah. But—”
“No ‘but.’ It’s done. You’re even. One-for-one. You can leave one man here to take Lil Bobby home if they release him, but the rest of you gotta go.”
Bury the Past Page 21
