“We’re gonna take a walk through and see if we can’t put our eyes on this guy,” Paula said, putting her phone away.
John took the printed manifest, and Paula grabbed John by the elbow, urging him past the security checkpoint. She whispered, “SO. Coming this way.”
“Gate twenty is down that way on the right,” the supervisor said.
“Thanks,” Paula responded. They’d already started walking.
They passed the sheriff’s deputy and heard him ask the supervisor if there was a problem. They couldn’t hear her response as they kept moving toward the gate near the end of the concourse.
“Why didn’t the DA flag this ticket purchase? They hit on the SFO ticket, but not this one. But she wanted me snatched up, if I showed up. That doesn’t make sense,” Paula said.
Two gates away, they spotted Sherman. He sat across the aisle watching his gate. He wore a dark-blue hooded sweat shirt, jeans, and a backpack. They ducked into a closed restaurant, and Paula started to make an approach.
John grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back. “You run up on him, and he’s gonna bolt.”
She shook free and went to the edge of the restaurant, still in the shadows of the closed commercial space, but close enough to see Sherman’s leg bounce in a nervous twitch. His eyes darted between loud conversations, to a coffee cup dropped into a trash can, and to the airline gate agent.
“Man, he’s wound up,” John said.
“Let’s see how far we can wind him up before his spring breaks.” Paula pulled Simmons’s cell phone from her jacket, removed it from an evidence bag, and brought up the message screen. She entered Sherman’s new burner cell number from the ticket information the lieutenant had provided and paused while she composed a message. She spoke as she typed. “You have my money.”
They watched as Sherman read the new text message. He shoved the phone back in his pocket.
Paula tapped out another message: “You’re no better than Simple Simpkins, and you know how that ended.”
“Simpkins? The guy the AB had Sherman kill?” John said.
“Yep. Look.”
Sherman went for the phone and stiffened in his seat when he saw the message. He shifted, clearly uncomfortable. Sherman paused, then started tapping a response.
The new message came through on Simmons’s phone: “Simpkins didn’t deserve that.”
Paula went into another message. “This one should do it.” She typed, “With all my money, why aren’t you flying first class?”
Sherman casually looked at the message and shot to his feet. He looked for Simmons or anyone who looked like one of his biker prospects.
“That struck a nerve.” John laughed.
A stern voice from behind the detectives sounded. “What’s going on here?”
John and Paula turned and faced two sheriff’s deputies.
“TSA says you’re looking for someone. Anybody we need to be concerned about?”
“Material witness,” John said.
“Bail jumper,” Paula said, running over John’s answer.
The deputy furrowed his brow. “Which is it?”
“A witness who’s jumped bail before,” Paula responded.
The deputy sidestepped toward the main corridor so he could get a better view of the passenger area. “You see him yet?”
Sherman noticed the cop in a black jumpsuit scanning the waiting area. He stood, slung his backpack, and ambled to the gate counter. When he didn’t spot one of Simmons’s thugs in the passenger area, Sherman looked back to the deputy. If he kept looking, it wouldn’t be long before he spotted John and Paula.
“Could you give us some space here?” Paula said. “We don’t want to draw any attention.”
“I’m gonna need to see some ID, guys.”
“Now?” Paula said.
“Yeah, and why don’t you come with me back to security,” the deputy said.
John and Paula fished out their badges and showed them.
Sherman seemed to notice the movement in the darkened restaurant. He pulled up the hood on his sweat shirt and turned back toward the seat he’d come from. He made a few steps toward the seat, then bolted to his left to the gate where a plane was preparing to board.
“Shit, there he goes,” Paula hissed.
A cry went up from an airline employee who Sherman bowled over in the gateway.
“Down the ramp!” John said.
The deputy tried to grab Paula’s arm, but she pulled away, nearly spilling the bigger man to the floor. She ran to the gate, and John was a few steps behind her when a shrill alarm sounded in the jetway.
The ramp’s thin metal skin echoed with each pounding footfall. The shrill alarm came from an open door at the base of the corridor. The thick pressure door of the waiting plane was open and ready for boarding.
Paula darted down the metal stairs from the open door to the tarmac. John bounded into the plane.
She caught a glimpse of blue sweat shirt near the landing gear, under the belly of the plane. Blue-and-red lights flared in the distance and headed toward the compromised gate. Sherman ran through a spotlight, across the taxiway in front of a 777 coming into an empty gate. The plane shuddered when the pilot hit the brake to avoid hitting him.
Paula pursued him across the taxiway and took cover behind the 777. The jet exhaust was hot against her skin as she passed under the wing. She had to close her eyes when the dust kicked up behind the plane, and she lost track of Sherman. The roar of the jet engines masked the sound of footfalls on the hard surface.
A light in the distance blacked out, then another. Sherman had run in front of them, headed to the east end of the terminal buildings.
John climbed down the stairs to the tarmac after he cleared the plane. Paula waved at him until she caught his attention, and then she took off in a dead run after Sherman.
Red-and-blue lights came from the east side and forced Sherman to hop a fence into another portion of airport property. Paula arrived at the fence as the airport sheriff’s cars skidded to a stop.
She held her badge up so they could see she was one of them.
Spotlights blinded her, and orders were shouted at her from two different officers. “Get down.”
“On your knees.”
“He’s getting away!” she answered.
“Get your ass down, now!”
John ran interference and jogged between Paula and the spotlights. “Sac PD.”
Paula hit the fence of an airport fire department training yard and bounded up and over in seconds. She dropped on the other side, and the smell of smoke and burnt plastic hit her senses. The outline of a jet fuselage, ghostly in the dim light, loomed in the center of the enclosure.
Paula ducked behind a storage building, out of the reach of the spotlights, and let her eyes adjust to the shadowed darkness. A few husks of vehicles used in fire simulation training littered the yard with pried-open doors and hoods. More sheriff’s units arrived and ringed the fire training area. The red-and-blue lights pulsed through the holes in the broken back of the jet fuselage.
A shadow shifted in one of the windows.
“Gotcha,” Paula said under her breath.
She ran to the edge of the plane’s airframe, rested her back on the cold metal, and drew her weapon.
“Sherman, it’s over,” she called.
When he didn’t respond, she raised her weapon and peered into the door’s oval opening. A cold shock raced up her spine when she saw the huge open gap in the opposite side of the plane.
A rustle in the air behind her. Paula turned as a metal pipe cut through the air and struck her on the right shoulder. Her arm went numb, and her gun toppled from her grip.
Sherman took another step forward and raised the pipe overhead. Paula dropped to the ground, rolling under the plane for cover. The pipe cracked down on the tarmac inches from her head.
She scrambled under the scorched fuselage as far as she could. Trapped under the plane’s remains, Paul
a had no escape. A burning sensation came from her right arm—a jagged piece of steel tubing from the plane’s hydraulic lines had jabbed in her arm above her elbow.
Sherman swung the pipe, and the curve of the plane’s side kept most of the impact away from Paula’s left side, but she got enough of the blow to wince in pain. She caught a glimpse of her weapon on the ground behind Sherman. If he got ahold of it, she was finished.
Paula tugged a section of the steel tube loose and passed it in front of her face to her left hand, the one closest to him.
Another blow from the pipe rained down, and it caught her on the left hip. Sherman got on one knee and grabbed the back of her pants at the waist.
Paula moved and struck like a snake, jabbing the sharp steel pipe into the closest fleshy target—Sherman’s upper leg.
The metal pipe cut through the thick muscles on his thigh. He staggered back and stood, looking at the section of pipe that went through his leg.
Paula scrambled out from under the plane and crawled to her weapon.
Sherman staggered to Paula, tried to kick her with his injured leg, and howled in pain.
She inched forward, looking over her shoulder at the movement. Sherman grabbed the pipe he’d dropped and held it overhead with both hands. His eyes glassed over and burned with anger. Paula closed her eyes and grabbed for the gun.
Three quick blasts knocked Sherman backward, legs in the air, dropping him on his back.
Paula held the gun in her hand, but she hadn’t pulled the trigger.
John came into view with a 12-gauge shotgun in hand.
“You okay, partner?”
“I will be,” she said.
John held the shotgun trained on Sherman while a deputy rolled him over and put handcuffs on the man. Sherman moaned.
“How the hell did he—?” Then Paula saw the blue-colored stock on the shotgun. “Beanbags? You used frickin’ beanbags?”
A paramedic came to Paula, and she pushed him away. She got to her feet and wobbled an unsteady step until John held her up.
“Took you long enough,” she said to her partner.
“You seemed to have things under control.”
Another team of paramedics applied a tourniquet on Sherman’s leg and hefted him to a gurney.
“Newberry,” Sherman croaked.
“Hold on a sec, guys,” she said to the paramedics.
“I’ve got you now.”
“What the hell do you mean?” she snapped.
“I’ve got you right where I want you. You won’t be able to get away with what you’ve done to me in front of all these witnesses.”
“What I’ve done? We’re talking about you here. You tried to kill me.”
“I was defending myself.”
“Yeah, just like you were defending yourself when you did Simpkins in prison. We have a witness, and you’re gonna go down for that too.”
Sherman’s eyes looked uncertain.
“What did you do with the drug stash?” Paula asked.
Sherman grinned. “You already have it. Unless the DA found it first.” He started laughing, more of a mad wail really, and said, “I got you, I got you.”
“Get him the hell outta here,” John said.
Paula limped to the side, her hip starting to stiffen from the beating.
“That is one crazy asshole,” John said.
Paula looked at the side of the burnt-out plane and didn’t respond.
“Paula? You okay?”
“I know where the drugs are, and we need to get there fast.”
SIXTY-SIX
Lieutenant Barnes arrived at the location Paula gave him over the phone. John’s knuckles turned white against the steering wheel when she told the lieutenant the address: her home.
When they pulled up, John couldn’t park in the driveway because crime scene tape blocked the entrance and ran to the front of the house. Someone had screwed plywood over the broken front door, but it didn’t cover the angry smoke stains that crept out of the threshold.
“I haven’t been back here since the fire,” Paula said.
John pointed down the driveway to her garage, where the lieutenant and crime scene techs had gathered.
Paula got out of the car and ducked under the tape while John found a spot a few houses down to park. Looking at her own home, soot-stained and violated, she couldn’t see a way to rebuild. All the sweat and time she’d poured into the place—and Sherman had taken it away from her.
She took a few steps down the drive, and John trotted to catch up.
“That nosey old busybody next door was watching me like I was going to steal her newspaper,” he said.
“Nothing goes on around here without her knowing about it,” Paula said.
The lieutenant saw them approach and strode up the drive to meet them.
“You called it, Paula. Sherman’s entire stash of stolen drugs is here,” Barnes said.
They all walked to the garage door, and the flash from a crime scene tech’s camera lit up the dark space. The light reflected off of steel and chrome and plastic reflective surfaces. Karen Baylor moved to take another photo. A blue panel van, identical to the one they found at the bust with Simmons, sat in the center of the garage.
The back doors were thrown open, and SSPNET evidence bags were stacked floor to roof.
“That’s what a half million buys on the street these days,” John said.
“Probably worth three times that amount,” Barnes said.
“That’s the other van we saw in Wallace’s garage,” Paula said.
“Explains why we lost the GPS track. This one never had the tracker, and we got the runaround chasing after a decoy,” John said.
“The bullshit van,” Paula said.
“Speaking of bullshit,” Barnes said. He jutted his jaw up the drive.
The district attorney, Linda Clarke, came down the drive, her heels tapping a self-important cadence. She ignored John and Paula and confronted the lieutenant.
“My informant told me I could find my evidence here. I’m not surprised,” Clarke said.
“That’s funny. My detectives just arrested your informant trying to leave the country,” Barnes said.
“How is it that Sherman got his passport back so fast after getting out of prison?” Paula asked.
“What is she doing here?” Clarke said.
“What are you doing here?” Paula asked.
“Why isn’t my prisoner in handcuffs?” DA Clarke turned, hands on hips, and faced Paula. “She is responsible for this.” She gestured to the van full of stolen drugs. “Newberry was complicit in the murders of three former law enforcement officials. I have evidence—”
“Newberry was set up by Sherman, your own informant,” John said.
“How am I supposed to explain how confiscated drugs ended up on the street?” Clarke stepped within inches of Paula. “You were working with Sherman and the rest of them. You hid their contraband for them.”
Lieutenant Barnes looked over his shoulder and gestured. A plain-clothed officer came from behind the van, and when he stepped from the shadows in the garage, Paula stiffened as she recognized Sammy Kamakawa, the IA investigator.
“When my detectives advised me that Wallace was taken into custody, I got a warrant to search his place,” Barnes said.
“What warrant? No request for a search warrant came through my office,” Clarke said.
“No. It didn’t. I got a federal magistrate to issue the warrant to avoid any confusion.”
Clarke tensed.
Kamakawa handed Barnes three clear evidence bags. “This explains how detective Newberry’s DNA appeared on our murder victims. Wallace had her hair brush.” He held up the bag with a woman’s brush.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked John, pointing at some red sludge wrapped in a plastic bindle.
“That depends on if you think it’s blood. Sherman’s blood, to be precise. We think Wallace planted the blood as well, to throw off the invest
igation. You see, he wasn’t looking to frame Newberry. His deal was to keep Sherman from finding out that he was the prime witness against all the SSPNET officers.”
“Conjecture,” Clarke hissed.
“Here is Burger’s written testimony implicating Wallace—and you.” Barnes patted the last envelope, which held three hand-scribbled pages from the dead man.
“That’s what Wallace took from Burger’s locker at the truck stop,” Paula said.
“You backed Sherman’s play to get out of prison on some bullshit technicality. Did he blackmail you about the missing drugs from the task force prosecutions? Is that why you personally decided not to prosecute Sherman on a frickin’ murder?” John said.
“The evidence didn’t support—”
“Don’t give me that line. Sherman played you. Wallace got rid of potential witnesses who would expose his role and left a trail of breadcrumbs to my doorstep that even you could follow. Sherman set you up because he knew you’d never admit you made a deal with him to not fight his appeal,” Paula said.
“How can you explain the check you had cut for Larry Burger’s testimony?” Clarke asked. She wasn’t nearly as confident as she’d been minutes ago.
“I did some digging into that,” Lieutenant Barnes said. “Detective Newberry didn’t have anything to do with that. Turns out, Wallace has a girlfriend who worked in the city controller’s office. We found the paper trail on that check. She’s agreed to cooperate. She’s saying the order came from you.”
“That’s ridiculous. That will never hold up.” Clarke’s lips thinned, and a lack of conviction appeared in her eyes.
“Try explaining this one.” John rustled a copy of the Aeroméxico flight manifest in front of Clarke. “Looks like you missed your flight tonight too.” A yellow highlighted name stood out on the page: “Linda Clarke.”
Relief set on Paula’s face. A few of the creases that had worked their way across her forehead over the past few days started to relax.
“I can travel anywhere I damn well please.” The polished veneer wore thin now. “Arrest her. Arrest Newberry for Burger’s murder.”
No one made a move to cuff Paula. “Remember the spike strip?” Barnes said. “An officer checked it out. He used your name.”
Bury the Past Page 28
