Inheritance

by Joe McKinney

  “Hey.”

  Paul flinched.

  He looked to his right and saw Wes standing there, leaning against the boxcar.

  “You okay?” Wes asked.

  “Yeah,” Paul admitted. “Sorry, you startled me.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s understandable. You’ve been through a lot.”

  Paul nodded.

  “Garwin sent me over here,” Wes said. “I’m supposed to stay with you in case the news tries to talk to you.”

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks, I guess.”

  “I’m not doing you a favor. It’s required. Read your General Manual.”

  “Oh.” Paul waited for Wes to say something, but he just stood there. “So, is Garwin gonna be coming around any time soon?”

  “Eventually,” Wes said.

  Wes dug his phone out of his pocket and went back to his Facebook page. Paul watched him, then looked across the train yard, where CSI technicians were retracing the path of his foot pursuit with cameras and other equipment he didn’t recognize.

  He turned back to Wes. “So, what happens next?”

  Wes looked up from his phone. He seemed annoyed. “Huh?”

  “I’m sorry. You’re busy.”

  Wes nodded, then went back to his phone.

  Paul let his legs swing free, like a little kid in a big chair. He hated this, the feeling that he’d been put on the back burner and left to simmer.

  He said, “Hey, Wes?”

  Wes put the phone down. “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry, I just feel a little, you know...what am I waiting here for?”

  “For Garwin.”

  “Yeah, I know that. But, why?”

  “Because that’s how these things are handled. You talk to Garwin, then Homicide, then the DA. I’d make sure you have your attorney with you when you talk to Homicide and the DA, though.”

  Paul was confused again.

  “Wait. What do you mean, how these things are handled.”

  “These things,” Wes said. “An in-custody death. You know?”

  No, he didn’t know. Paul felt dizzy. There was too much coming at him at one time. He wanted to scream out loud that he needed a time out, that he needed everyone to just go away and let him think. But of course, he had just spent the last twenty minutes doing nothing but sitting and thinking, and it hadn’t gotten him anywhere.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then made his best effort to sound focused. “So, this is an in-custody death?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But I didn’t do anything to that kid. I didn’t have him under arrest. I was just chasing him. How can this be an in-custody death?”

  Wes shrugged. “I’m not really supposed to talk to you about this.”

  Paul waited, but Wes didn’t offer anything more. Just went back to his phone.

  For a moment Paul managed to pull his mind away from his parents and turned to this new problem, the in-custody death. He’d heard plenty about in-custody death investigations while he was a cadet, but in almost every one of those cases, the suspects had died after a physical arrest had been made. In other words, after the guy was handcuffed. It usually happened in drug cases, where the suspect swallows a large amount of dope and the baggie ruptures inside his stomach and he overdoses in the backseat of the patrol car. But that didn’t fit his situation at all. He hadn’t come anywhere near putting his hands on the kid. And, worse, his suspect hadn’t overdosed. He’d been murdered.

  Still, despite the fact that nothing fit, knowing that the others were thinking this was an in-custody death made part of the picture a little clearer. He’d been wondering why one of the evidence technicians had come by and photographed his hands and scratched the dirt from under his fingernails into an evidence envelope.

  Paul interrupted Wes. “Someone said earlier that I might get sued. You think that’s true?”

  “Probably,” Wes said, and shrugged again. “You know what they say. You’re not a real policeman until you’ve been sued. Don’t worry about it. If somebody sues, you’ll probably beat it. As soon as they throw in the bit about the guy doing the drive-by, you’ll be off the hook. Plus, you saw his chest. The kid was murdered. If you didn’t do that, and I don’t see any blood on you, then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Yeah, right, nothing to worry about. I got a charge to keep, whatever the hell that means. Tell me how that’s nothing to worry about.

  Paul looked down at his hands, at the Barber fifty cent piece rolling over his knuckles, and thought again of his father and all the storm of hatred and terror and love—yes, even love—that came with that.

  ***

  Through the crowds of officers and crime scene people and Medical Examiner Investigators and contract ambulance guys in white plastic rain suits waiting to remove the body, Paul saw Sergeant Garwin.

  He didn’t look happy.

  The sergeant stopped a patrolman walking through the area and apparently asked where he could find Paul, because the patrolman turned and pointed right at him.

  “Well, there he is,” Wes said.

  Paul followed Garwin with his eyes as he made his way over to them.

  “Yep.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” Paul said.

  Wes patted him on the shoulder again and walked off, leaving Paul with Garwin.

  Garwin stopped in front of him and shook his hand. “You doing okay there, bud?”

  “Yes, sir,” Paul lied.

  “This is hard stuff to deal with. You don’t ever get over it, believe me.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Garwin crossed his arms over his chest and nudged a pebble around on the ground with the toe of his boot. He seemed to be planning his questions out in his head.

  “Listen,” he said, “this is complicated. A lot of stuff is gonna be happening because of what went on here tonight. A lot of people are gonna be asking you questions. You’re probably gonna have to answer the same questions over and over again. You understand that, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Did anyone tell you to make sure you talk to your attorney before you give your statement?”

  “Yes, sir. Mike did, sir.”

  “That’s good. He’s looking out for you.” Garwin said, “Look, bud, what I’m about to ask you is different than your statement. You have the right to an attorney, just like anybody else, but because you’re a policeman, you also have a responsibility to tell me exactly what happened so that we can get this investigation going. You understand that that’s a condition of your employment, separate from your civil rights under Miranda, right?”

  Not really, Paul thought. But he nodded anyway.

  Garwin said, “Now tell me what happened.”

  Paul babbled something about seeing the Cadillac at the drive-by back at the Witherby Courts.

  “I know about that,” Garwin said. “Tell me what happened here.”

  Paul sighed. “I saw the kid in that boxcar jump out of the Cadillac and run this way. I followed him. When I got to that line of cars over there, he turned and pointed his gun at me. I ducked down behind another boxcar and waited. When I turned around, he was dead.”

  Garwin waited.

  Paul could feel him dragging the moment out, hoping on the silence to coax more details out of him, but Paul held his silence.

  “That’s it?” Garwin said at last.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What about the goat?”

  “I saw that when I started to advance on the boxcar, sir.”

  “And the kid, what about him?”

  “Sir?”

  “Did you see him at all?”

  “Not until I got to the boxcar, sir.”

  “Did you hear anything, any screaming?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “The kid is ripped open less than thirty feet from you and you didn’t hear anything?”

  “No, sir,” Paul said. But he had. He had heard the
kid scream. Why was he lying? Why was he continuing to lie?

  He didn’t know.

  Garwin looked him square in the eyes.

  Paul looked down at the Barber fifty cent piece in his hand. He didn’t know why he’d lied about the screaming he’d heard. There was a voice inside his head telling him to be quiet about it. He didn’t understand it, but he obeyed it.

  “Do you mind telling me how that’s possible, bud?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Maybe...I don’t know. I was scared. I mean I was really scared. He just pointed a gun at me, you know? I might have heard something. It’s hard to say. The helicopter was right above me. It was making a lot of noise. Maybe there was a scream and I just blocked it out. I don’t know.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “No, sir. No one.”

  Garwin went silent again.

  Finally, he said, “Hey bud, I want you to look at me. Look me in the eye.”

  Paul did. It was hard to hold Garwin’s stare, but he did.

  “Listen very carefully to what I’m about to say to you, okay? What happened here tonight is more important than the death of some piece of shit gangbanger. You understand that, right? What happened to that kid in there is the exact same thing that happened last night at the Morgan Rollins Iron Works. The exact same thing. You understand the significance of that, right? Tell me you do.”

  Paul nodded.

  “Tell me. I want to hear you say the words.”

  Paul swallowed the lump in his throat. The connection to the Morgan Rollins Iron Works was something he’d already thought long and hard about.

  Paul said, “I understand you, sir.”

  “Good,” Garwin said, and when he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper. “Bobby Cantrell, one of the detectives who died last night, was a good friend of mine. One of my ex-wives founded the Police Officer’s Wives Auxiliary with his wife. Bobby and I have been friends for the last twenty years. I care about him. I care about what his wife is going through right now. I need you to tell me everything you saw here tonight. If you saw anything at all, it might help us figure out who killed one of the best officers this Department has ever had. Now tell me, please, if you’ve left anything at all out.”

  Garwin stopped there, and waited.

  Paul felt like he was going to throw up. All he wanted to do was run and hide his head in the sand somewhere, to get out of the spotlight.

  He said, “I’ve told you everything, sir,” and then he waited for Garwin’s response.

  Garwin searched his face for more. Paul faced him as best he could.

  “Okay, bud,” Garwin said. He put a hand on Paul’s shoulder. “Okay, that’s fine. Why don’t you come on over here with me? The Shooting Team’s over there by your car. They’re gonna want to talk to you, too.”

  ***

  From the top of the Kingsbury Street Bridge, Keith Anderson could see the entire Seguin Railway Yard. There were police cars everywhere, and the scene was lit up like a neon Christmas by the cruisers’ red and blue LED lights. Three helicopters circled overhead. One of them, moving very close to the ground, was almost certainly Hawkeye Bravo. The other two, higher up, were bound to be news crews. They were going to be a lot more of them, he knew, as soon as word got out that they were dealing with another situation like last night’s mass murder.

  Anderson had always hated the east side. There were a few pockets that were really nice—ranch lands crisscrossed by slow-moving streams and dotted with thick copses of trees—but for the most part, the east side of San Antonio was densely-packed urban decay at its worst. Everywhere you looked you saw slums. Gangs and drugs and poverty had worked together on the east side, eroding it like water through limestone, until the vast majority of what was left looked more like a war-torn third world nation than something you expected to see in the seventh largest city in the United States. And it came as no surprise to him that so many of his cases came out of these streets. Life was treated cheaply here.

  He looked off to his left, beyond the Seguin Train Yard, and could see the crumbling smokestacks of the Morgan Rollins Iron Works. He was, he figured, less than half a mile from where he had spent most of the previous night. What was it about this place, he wondered. What in the hell was going on here?

  ***

  Levy was waiting for him near where the Cadillac had high-centered on the tracks, its front and rear passenger doors still hanging wide open.

  He looked worn down, haggard. He hadn’t combed his hair, or what little there was of it to comb, nor had he changed his suit. As Anderson got out of the car and closed the distance between them, he couldn’t help but notice the bags under Levy’s eyes and the sweat stains spreading across his white shirt.

  They shook hands.

  “Jesus,” Anderson said. “You look like hell.”

  Levy grunted.

  “I haven’t been to sleep yet. I made it home at two a.m., and then they call me back for this fucking mess before I could even take off my damn tie.”

  Anderson nodded. He hadn’t had any sleep either. “You said this might be related to the deal last night?”

  Levy pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “Keith, I got a bad fucking headache,” he said. “It’s this damn heat. What is it, like ninety-five degrees out here? It’s ridiculous. This is no way for a man to live.”

  “Yeah man,” said Anderson, smiling, doing his best imitation of Bill Paxton in Aliens, “but it’s a dry heat.”

  Levy gave him a dirty look.

  “Cute,” he said. “I’m fucking dying out here and you’re making jokes.”

  “It’s your own fault, Chuck. You’re working me to the bone. How else am I supposed to deal with the stress?”

  Levy smiled, but without humor. A look passed between them. They’d spent a good part of the previous night at Bobby Cantrell’s house, talking with Jenny. It had been horrible.

  Levy put a hand on Anderson’s shoulder and guided him over towards the boxcars.

  “I’m pretty sure this is related to the Morgan Rollins mess last night. We got the same two East Patrol guys from last night. They’re trying to make an arrest for heroin back at the Witherby Courts. They see this Cadillac here doing a drive-by at the intersection of Wedding and Hall. They chase the Cadillac to here, where they wreck out on the tracks. After that, Mike Garcia—you know him?”

  Anderson nodded. There was plenty he could say, but instead he let the nod stand.

  “He and his partner chase the guys on foot. Mike catches his guy over there,” and pointed off to the left of the Cadillac, “while his partner chases the backseat passenger over there, towards those boxcars.”

  “What’s the partner’s name?”

  Levy took a small, sweat-sodden notebook out of his shirt pocket and flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for.

  “Paul Henninger,” he said. “I don’t know him.”

  “Me either,” Anderson said. “Must be new.”

  “Yeah, like that matters. I’ve been off Patrol for so long I don’t recognize half the uniforms I see anymore. They all look like kids to me.”

  Anderson nodded.

  “Was there anybody in the front passenger seat?”

  “Yeah. He took off towards the north fence line. Hawkeye Bravo got him on video scaling the fence and then going into the ditch over there. East is doing a quadrant for him now, but they’re stretched pretty thin with this shit here.”

  “We get a name on him?”

  “The driver said he only knows him as Pops, but you know how that goes. We’ll get the name later.”

  “And Henninger’s chase? What happened there?”

  “Well, that’s the big question,” Levy said. “Henninger chases him over that way. He says the kid pulled a gun on him then ducks behind a train. When Henninger comes out from behind cover, he sees another one of those weird looking goats from last night. Then he goes inside the boxcar and sees the kid dead, splayed open, same
as Cantrell last night.”

  “They find the gun?”

  “Yeah. It’s been fired recently, too. Probably used in the drive by.”

  Anderson nodded to himself.

  “What do you suppose is up with the goats?” he asked. He remembered how strange the one from the night before looked—the long, curly whitish-gray hair, almost like dreadlocks.

  “Fucked if I know. But everything was the same as last night. Both the goat and the kid were ripped open, their hearts torn out. You know, I’m wondering if it’s not some sort of cult we’re dealing with here.”

  Anderson looked out across the scene, at the acres of rusted railway cars everywhere. He could see Hawkeye Bravo making another lap over the scene.

  “You said Hawkeye was over the scene during the chase?”

  “Yeah. Nelson, the pilot, tells me they got the whole thing on video. I’ve been trying to download it to the computer in my car, but so far I got nothing.”

  “Figures. The Department won’t hire enough people to do the job, but they don’t have a problem spending too much money on equipment that doesn’t work.”

  “Don’t even get me started,” Levy said.

  “So Henninger’s over there now?”

  “Yeah. You ready to talk to him?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Okay,” Levy said. “Talk to him in your car, though. Okay? I want to get him away from all the rest of the Patrol guys as soon as we can.”

  ***

  Alone again, Paul watched as the scene started to wind down. Most of the picture takers and evidence collectors had cleared out, and the officers on post were looking bored. Helicopters continued to circle overhead, but they were up high enough that their props were barely audible. A hot wind blew through the train yard, sending streamers of brown dust between the boxcars like snakes trying to find their way out of a maze. He was sweaty and hot and mentally exhausted, and he just wanted it all to end.

  He was practicing a few variations on the standard two-handed vanishings when a man in dark gray slacks and a maroon shirt came up to him. He didn’t wear a tie, but his shirt had the Homicide Unit’s logo on the left breast. He had a detective’s silver and black badge, but no gun or radio on his hip.