The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin

by Michael Craven

  “And then you hit major traffic on the way back, due to an accident. But you’re on a motorcycle, so you can drive right between the cars that are just sitting there stationary. You can zip right through the clogged section. A legal move in L.A. So it’s as if there isn’t a traffic jam at all. At 6:30, your wife calls the doorman from your home intercom and plays a recording of you—a quick command to watch out for a delivery. Had to be what happened. Then, right around 7:30, you cruise back into La Jolla. Shit, you can do the 120 miles in ninety minutes if you go seventy-five miles an hour, and you have a way to get around any traffic. Then you park the bike down the street. You walk back up the stairs. You’re back in your apartment at 7:40. You walk out your front door at 7:45 and get in the elevator, putting you on camera. Then you go down, get in your car, go to work, get away with it.”

  Treadway said, “John. You just told me that Lee Graves, a meth dealer, a guy who tried to kill you, confessed. You saw with your own eyes that this guy is more than capable of murder. And he confessed. John. Are you one of those people who can’t let things end? Like, you’ll freak out if you don’t have something to focus on? To obsess over? Why are you inventing a preposterous story when you’ve already busted the guy who did it?”

  “I know, it’s insane.”

  Treadway laughed. A laugh of relief. “Yeah. It is.”

  I said, “Problem—for you, anyway—is that I can prove it. It’s insane, but I can prove it. It comes back to the question I was asking earlier: Can a motorcycle make it the whole way on one tank of gas? Well, some could. But the one you were on couldn’t. See, I called the cop I was telling you about, Mike Ott. He gave me a name at the DMV. A person police detectives call when they want driver information. And that person told me that you have a license to drive a motorcycle and that you, at the time of Keaton’s murder, owned one. A 2010 Honda Shadow. A vehicle that, with a full tank of gas, could only cover 110 of the 120 or so miles you needed to go. Which means you’re probably getting off at an exit just north of La Jolla, right off the 5. An exit that coincidentally, or cosmically perhaps, is the same exit I got off to get gas when I left your house with Nancy the morning after we spent the night. Only I was, of course, going in the other direction. Amazing how stuff like that works.

  “But let’s get back to today. Today, I went and talked to the manager of the gas station closest to the freeway when you get off the freeway at that exit. The same gas station I’d gone to with Nancy. The same one. And the manager allowed me to look at the gas station security video of the morning Keaton Fuller was killed. Sure enough, there’s a guy gassing up a Honda Shadow at 7:20 a.m. But you can’t see the license plate because the guy is, wisely, standing in front of it. And you can’t see the rider because he’s wearing a helmet. And then when the driver walks the motorcycle over to a space near the store’s entrance, and then walks inside to pay—in cash, of course—you still can’t see who it is because the person is wearing a hat.”

  I opened my backpack and pulled out a green John Deere trucker hat, the one I’d worn playing beer pong, the one I’d absconded with a half hour ago when I used Dave Treadway’s bathroom. “This hat,” I said. “The driver of that Honda Shadow is wearing this green John Deere hat when he goes in to pay. Your green John Deere hat. I’ve got it on tape. Right here in my bag.”

  Dave shook his head and gave me a dismissive sigh. “That’s what’s holding your story together? A guy you can’t see at a gas station wearing a green hat?”

  “That’s part of the proof, yes. This is the other part.” I pulled the murder weapon out of my backpack. A Smith & Wesson M&P nine millimeter. “See, Dave, the other thing I learned from the gardener was that when people commit crimes to strike back at those who deserve it, the evidence often ends up right where it should. Somewhere people wouldn’t necessarily look, but somewhere that makes total sense. Somewhere that somehow adds to the meaning of it all. That rich old lady’s engagement ring was hidden in the garden right outside the gardener’s apartment. And in your case, the gun was buried at Andrea Cogburn’s grave. See, another thing I did today was, I went and bought a metal detector. Yeah, for a few hours I was the crazy fuck walking around with a metal detector. But I was okay with it. Because when I got to Andrea’s grave and I put the detector up to the soil, the thing started going crazy. And I dug up the gun. The Smith. A very popular gun. One of the most popular guns. Graves had two of them, at least.”

  Treadway looked at me. I had him, backward and forward, and now he knew it. He might have suspected it before, but now he knew it.

  I said, hitting the nail in deeper, “Eve Cogburn gave me permission to investigate the grave site, and once the grounds manager at the cemetery confirmed this, I gave him my phone and had him film me digging up the gun. And I have him and two people who work for him as witnesses that there was no tampering. I’m sure you cleaned the gun, Dave, but did you really? Or did you wipe it off like they do in the movies? These days, the tiniest bit of your skin, the tiniest section of a fingerprint . . . That’s all they need. And where’d you get it in the first place? Is the purchase clean? The serial number is still on it. I wonder if it can be traced back to you? I bet it can. Yeah, the gun, the hat, the gas station video, the Honda Shadow that you bought. I’d say that’s proof. Rock-solid proof.”

  I was just about to ask him how he pulled off the shot. But then I realized, not now. I would later, but not just yet. Right now Treadway needed to let it settle in, once and for all, that I had him.

  Dave’s face relaxed now, in the way that someone’s face relaxes when they get something off their chest. Even if that thing is devastating, terrible, illegal.

  I said, “Dave, remember how I told you that Graves talked to me one day about the Chinese high-fin in his office? How he told me it was his favorite fish? Well, later, when I discovered the meth, I realized why. Because he was a Chinese high-fin. He was the Chinese high-fin of my story. You know why? Everyone thinks of that fish in a certain way, small and striped with a big fin on its back. Even its name thinks of it that way. But that’s just its image. A short-lived facade. The fish is actually big, and black, with a shark fin that’s actually not too big for its body. That’s the truth. And that’s just like Graves. Understand? A tropical fish broker is the image. A drug dealer is the truth. But see, then, later, amid that whirlwind of connections at the gas station, I realized that no, Graves isn’t the Chinese high-fin. You are. An affable guy. A guy who’s happy, cool with most everything. Easygoing. Charming. Fun. That’s the image. But underneath is the truth. You’re a guy who wanted revenge. And you would kill, and you did kill, to get it.”

  Dave looked at me. He knew it was now his turn to talk. And to his credit, he was now through with the denials.

  “Don’t do this, John. Let it go. Let me go. Don’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look,” he said. “A big part of your life is trying to catch people who did bad things. But more than that, it’s to make people who did bad things pay a price. Right?”

  “Sure. Yeah. I think that’s basically right.”

  “And sometimes—you have told me this—you break the rules to make sure it happens.”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Well, isn’t it okay, then, if other people break the rules sometimes too? In fact, don’t you wish that other people would break the rules a little more often? I mean, wouldn’t you basically be glad if somebody just took out one of these horrible criminals you hear about all the time on the news? A guy who has raped a bunch of kids at a school? A guy like that? Wouldn’t you be glad if somebody just got rid of him? But instead of that happening, we all have to live with it. Go through the agony. Watch the families of the victims suffer. Endure the media coverage, the opinions about what should happen to him, the inevitable denial that always comes, the trial, the whole thing. And after all of it, the guy goes and sits in jail. Wouldn’t it be a service to us all if somebody just took out that child-raping piece
of shit? Doesn’t he just deserve to be gone?”

  I looked at Dave Treadway and said, “You want me to answer that hypothetical question? Well, I can’t say I’d be upset if somebody killed a child molester. No. I wouldn’t be that upset. I think I’d be able to go on with my day.”

  “Okay. Then let’s talk about Keaton Fuller. He destroyed people’s lives. He killed animals. He killed his own pet. He got Greer to choose one of their guinea pigs, just told Greer to pick one without telling him what he was up to. And then he shot it. Killed it. Greer told me that once when he was hammered beyond belief. I don’t think he even remembers telling me. But how fucked up is that? He also date-raped a girl. Maybe more than one. Or let me say it the way it should be said: He raped a girl. He beat up his own mother. His own mother. And if you ask me, he killed Andrea Cogburn. An amazing girl. An incredible girl. Who was smart and cool and filled with this . . . light. He got her hooked on blow, and then crack. And you know what else he did? Made her fuck his friends, John. Made her fuck his friends. He crushed her self-esteem. Then told her to fuck off. So a few years go by and she ‘overdoses.’ Wrong. She killed herself. She told me she was going to do it. I begged her not to. But she did it anyway. Which in turn basically kills her mom. You’ve met Eve. That woman is dead too.”

  “Well,” I said. “What about Jackie Fuller? Didn’t your killing Keaton kill her? Ever seen the look in her eyes?”

  Treadway said, with total sincerity in his voice, “Jackie Fuller has had that look in her eyes ever since Keaton started shitting on people. That guilt? That pain on her face? That’s from creating someone so bad and wondering how it happened. I swear, John, at Keaton’s funeral she was relieved he was gone.”

  “Then why’d she hire me?”

  “Rich people don’t like it when someone does something to them that’s out of their control.”

  I thought about Muriel Dreen sending Tony Lewis and his big crooked-eyed friend over to see me after she’d gotten her ring back. I’d found her ring, but she’d lost control of the story.

  Shit, Treadway might be right on that one.

  He looked right at me. He gave me the look a friend gives another friend when he needs a really big favor.

  “Don’t send me to jail, John. The world is a better place without Keaton Fuller. I’m positive of that. He basically killed— No, he killed two people. Don’t send me to jail.”

  I looked around the cove. At the people walking along the shore. At the snorkels poking up out of the ocean. At the sky as the day ended, turning that amazing shade of Southern California orange-pink-blue.

  I looked back at Dave Treadway.

  He said, “Don’t do it, John. Please. Think about Davey. And Jill. For the record, Jill had no clue what I was doing. Later she did. But when I asked her to play that recording, she just thought I was out of the house really early, surfing. And that I wanted the instructions about the couch to come from me, because some of the staff have the annoying tendency to take me more seriously.”

  “But when the police eventually came around, you had to tell her the truth. Because talking to the staff of your building from inside your apartment, not taking the elevator up and down, all the moves you made to not get caught—that was your alibi.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. And Jill was totally shocked at first. Stunned. Obviously. But then I told her everything about Keaton, and I guess she understood in some way. And then, after a little while, we slowly started to move on. And then we did move on. It’s surprising, amazing, how people can move on from things. Before we knew it, we were just living like it never happened.”

  He took a moment, a memory registering in his eyes. “When we met you, we wanted to be friends with you. It’s crazy, but we really did. I, Jill and I, thought nobody would ever find out what I’d done. I’d covered my tracks so well. But beyond that, we had sort of started believing, and living, like I hadn’t done it. To the point that we didn’t even think it was a risk to reach out to you. Of course it occurred to us that befriending you could help to just totally eliminate your being suspicious of us. But that’s not why we pursued the friendship.”

  I thought about what Treadway had said and wondered if maybe somewhere down in his subconscious I had represented what he’d done, and he’d used me to get closer to it. Like the way people return to the scene of a crime. To experience it again, to feel the sick rush of the sin, even though it makes absolutely no sense to do so.

  Treadway switched back to the bigger issue and looked at me with a combination of seriousness and hope. “Don’t do it, John. Don’t do it to my family.”

  I said, “I’ll tell you what, Dave. Let me think about it. Give me a night to think about it. Don’t make any moves. Don’t call your lawyer. And don’t try to make a run for it, either. I’ll be watching, and I will catch you. Just like I caught you now. Just go home, and stay in your apartment with your family. Okay?”

  “Okay, John.”

  We walked back to his building. He went up. I went down to the garage, got in the Focus, and left.

  37

  I wasn’t worried about Dave Treadway doing anything stupid. In my mind, he trusted that I was going to think about it overnight and get back to him. Plus, I’d told him I was going to be watching. But I wasn’t even going to do that. I really didn’t think I needed to. In his mind, he makes any kind of move I can see, and I call the cops. He makes any kind of move I can’t see, web searches, phone calls—it just makes him look guilty later. The guy was trapped. And not going anywhere.

  So why had I done what I’d just done? Good question. Truth is, I wanted to put everything on him and see what happened. See what he would do, what he would say. See if he’d give me his side of the story. Well, now he had.

  And now I needed to think about what I was going to do about it.

  Yeah. I needed to think. To go somewhere and think this through a bit. I found my way over to the Pacific Coast Highway and took it north for five miles, past the cliffs of Torrey Pines, then went another five to Del Mar. Del Mar is a beautiful, and very high-end, beach town. It’s one of those places about which people always say: It’s got the most expensive real estate in the country. You know those places? Paradoxically, there are a few of them. Del Mar is one. That said, it’s got a lovely public beach. Which is where I went. I parked in the lot, then got out and walked down to the sand.

  I sat down, took a deep breath, looked around. Night was just starting to fall over the sand and the ocean and sky. There was a warm beach breeze. Some gulls were gathered up high, swaying, getting pushed around by the wind. No one was near me—there were just a few people on the beach, some dots in the distance. I leaned back, put my back against the sand. I was totally flat, looking straight up at a now deeper orange, a fiercer pink, and the very last of the blue.

  I was thinking, People don’t go to the beach enough in the late afternoon, or at night, even. It’s so nice. And when it’s sparsely populated like this, it’s such a break from the tension of daily California life, especially in L.A.

  And then I thought, looking up at the last bit of light in the sky, the colors hanging on, just about to be usurped by darkness: I’m so tired. I closed my eyes. I listened to the waves. I could see them in my mind as I heard them. Rising up, breaking, pushing toward me on the sand. Then getting sucked back out. I fell asleep.

  I woke up to a beach totally devoid of people. I was alone out here. A half-moon hung in the sky, and it, along with the stars like pinpricks in the blackness, provided enough light for me to see clouds sitting up there too. Big, wispy gray clouds moving slowly by. You don’t think of clouds at night, and I lay there contemplating them, admiring their beauty.

  I sat up and I had a thought. What do I know about right and wrong?

  I walked down to the shore, looked out at the ocean, the moon and the stars putting highlights on the white water when the waves broke.

  What do I know about right and wrong?

  I stood there
looking at the water, and that transported me to another time I was looking out at a big body of water. A time a few years back, when I was working a case in Florida. When I’d finished the case, because I was in Florida I thought: I should go look at the Everglades. Ever been? It’s incredible. Incredible.

  So I drove down to Miami, from Jacksonville, where I’d been on the job, and hung a right until I got to the largest swamp in the world. There I paid a guy, a guy of Seminole Indian descent, to take me out into the middle of it on his airboat. At one point, he stopped the big fan and we just sat there, deep in the Everglades, in silence. I looked around. There were vast sections of grass coming up through the swamp. Trees coming up out of the water too. And there were prehistoric-looking birds with colossal wingspans soaring around.

  And alligators. Everywhere, alligators.

  One surfaced right by our boat. His whole body, all fifteen feet of it, appeared all at the same time. I looked at the coarse, thick, seemingly impenetrable skin on his back. I looked at his head, at his exposed teeth, at the two black marbles that were his eyes. I was locked on him, transfixed by this lethal-looking creature floating six feet away from me.

  The Seminole man said, “You know how long they been around?”

  I let him answer instead of guessing.

  He said, “Thirty million years.”

  I looked back at the alligator. Thirty million years. I stared at it. And I swear I think it was staring at me. Thirty million years. Sitting there on that boat, looking at those black dots sitting in that violent-looking head, thinking, We’ve been around, what, a few thousand? And we’re supposed to know what’s really happening? What’s really fucking going on? I’m supposed to be able to get my head around just exactly what’s right and what’s wrong?