Tahoe Hijack

by Todd Borg

  “That’s right. He was drinking O’Douls, non-alcoholic beer. So did JJ start his own lab like he talked about?”

  There was a long pause. “As everyone and anyone who had anything to do with JJ knew, he had no intention of starting a lab. This job was just a side gig to help pay for medical school. He graduated two years ago and is now a resident at a hospital in Oakland.”

  “Sure, now I remember. Except, I forget which hospital.”

  “Of course you would forget because it’s only one of the biggest names. I’m afraid I have to go now.”

  She hung up, and I called various Oakland hospitals. The automated phone system allowed me to go directly to the person of my choice by entering their initials. At the first hospital, the robot voice said it was an invalid entry. At the second hospital, the robot voice asked me to choose between two different JJs.

  I made my selection, waited, and was given another menu. I made another selection. Repeated the process a third time. Then I was put on hold where I listened to a recorded voice tell me that my call was very important to them and that due to unusually high call volume the wait times were long and that I could always find the answer to my question by visiting the hospital’s website, which the recorded voice spelled out slowly and laboriously twice. Then the message repeated over and over.

  I wondered about the writers who wrote phone scripts that contained such multiple, blatant lies. If my call were really important to them, they’d have a real person answer the phone. If the high call volume were actually unusual, they wouldn’t have a permanent recording saying it. And the chance that the answer to my question could be found on their website was about the same as the chance of getting treated promptly in their ER.

  Like lots of businesses, the hospital obviously thought that their customers were of little importance, and they simply wanted us to go away and stop bothering them.

  Eventually, a real woman answered.

  “Nurse Frances, third floor,” she said.

  “Detective Owen McKenna calling for Dr. Jonathon James with a side bonus offer for you. If you actually speak to me and don’t put me on torture-hold, I promise I won’t come to your nurse’s station during your shift and have a messy psychiatric breakdown.”

  “Oh, hon, I’m so with you on that! Besides, you have a nice voice, and your bonus offer is quite enticing. Now let me see his schedule. You’re in luck because Dr. James is working another thirty-two hour shift, so no matter when you call, he’s always here. Not only that, because our residents sleep like Equus, he’ll be glad for the interruption.”

  “What does that mean, sleep like Equus?”

  “They learn to sleep standing up. But unlike horses, they sometimes lose their balance and fall over. Very embarrassing. Especially when they’re assisting in the OR. Oops, I probably shouldn’t say that. So if you’re listening, Big Brother, it was just a figure of speech. Do you think I should spell that, Detective? The robo operator doesn’t have very good voice recognition. They might think figure-of-speech is bigger-a-leech.”

  “I’d pass on the spelling. They wouldn’t recognize that, either.”

  “Anyway, the interruption of a phone call is quite welcome. Except, we have a little problem, you and I. Our PA system is down, and I can’t keep talking to you while I go look for Dr. James. Tell you what, I’ll set the phone down without putting you on hold. Maybe I’ll put a little Post-it note on it saying that if this phone is hung up, the patient on the other end is going to undergo spontaneous combustion. Would that be suitable?”

  “Frances, next time I’m in Oakland, can I bring you a box of chocolates and a rose?”

  “That would be suitable, too.”

  A minute later, I was talking to Dr. James.

  “Sure, I remember that case,” James said, no sleepiness in his voice at all. “The skin sample your people sent us was quite substantial. It included several hair follicles, too. Made the DNA sampling much easier than it might have been.”

  “Was that a surprise, getting hair follicles?”

  “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “Just that the skin came from under a woman’s fingernails. In my experience, it was a lot of skin. Most middle-aged women would not be that successful at gouging their attacker. In your experience, would you agree that it was an unusual amount of skin?”

  “I agree. Although I’ve known some older women who might do Grace Sun one better. Younger women might be stronger, but older women sometimes burn with a hotter fire.”

  “Could the skin have come from someplace else?” I asked. “Would your analysis see that the same way?”

  “You think your department faked up the evidence? Like the victim didn’t really have skin under her nails?”

  “No. Grace actually had skin under her nails. That I know. What I mean is, what if someone planted the skin there?”

  “You don’t have a very high opinion of your fellow cops,” James said.

  “No, that’s not what I mean. I’m wondering if her murderer planted the skin there.”

  “You mean to frame someone else?”

  “Yeah. The killer could have pulled out someone else’s skin and packed it under her nails. In your opinion, if that had happened, would it have affected your test results?”

  James was silent on the phone. “I’m just running our procedures through my mind. As long as the skin wasn’t contaminated by a third party’s DNA, I can’t see how your scenario would change anything. So no, I don’t think it would change the results of our tests.”

  “What if the skin under her nails came from a part of a person’s body that a victim normally wouldn’t scratch during the course of an attack?”

  “Like where?”

  “Someone’s leg, for example. Would that affect your tests compared to, say, skin from someone’s face?”

  Another pause. “This is unfamiliar territory for me, Detective. As a scientist, I’m reluctant to speak on a subject on which I’m no authority.”

  “Then just give me your gut sense. Off the cuff.”

  “Off the cuff, I’d say that skin from a person’s shin would of course have the same DNA but would look different from skin from a person’s face. However, the difference would probably not be easy or even possible to scientifically identify. Usually, we just get some skin cells. If we had a big enough chunk of skin, it might look different. Coarser. And lighter if their face and arms had more sun coloration than their legs did. Although that might not apply if the person was African American.”

  “What about the hair follicles?” I asked.

  “Hair and hair follicles from a leg would probably be heavier and courser than from an arm. But not as heavy as a beard. I don’t recall the sample enough to remember that.”

  “One more question. If someone were framed by skin evidence that was planted, is there anything about DNA testing that would reveal it?”

  “Not that I can think of. Unless the victim actually did scrape the skin of the attacker before the attacker planted more skin under their nails. Then we might have noticed tissue from two different sources. I don’t recall anything like that. But it would say that on the report. Does that answer your question? Because I’m late for an appointment.”

  “Yes. Thank you very much for your time. And doctor?”

  “What?”

  “When Nurse Frances comes up for review, put in a word for a raise, if you can. You’ll want to keep her around as long as possible.”

  “You noticed, too,” he said. “Or, as she would say, ‘Oh, hon, I’m so with you on that.’”

  When I hung up, my sense that Thomas Watson didn’t kill Grace was even stronger. I couldn’t prove it. But I could see how it could have happened.

  Watson had winced when he stood up from the jail cell bench. He rubbed his leg. Pulled up his pants to reveal an ugly old wound. Without any apparent guile he simply explained that he had tripped and hit his shin on a curb while he was in San Francisco. It happened around the time o
f Grace’s murder.

  A murderous opportunist – whom I now believed to be Nick O’Connell – could easily have been following Watson. Maybe that was how O’Connell had learned of Grace in the first place, by overhearing Watson talk to Grace at the library. O’Connell could have watched Watson stumble, then collected some of the skin that got scraped off on the curb.

  How O’Connell came to kill Grace was a mystery. Perhaps he broke into Grace’s apartment, surprising her when she came home. But that wouldn’t explain the presence of the tea. It was possible that Grace, calculating how better to survive, had struck up a conversation with the intruder and even made him tea. But it seemed unlikely.

  O’Connell was a knife man. So why did he hit Grace with the frying pan instead of using his knife? Did she use the frying pan to knock his knife out of his hand? Did he take the pan from her and hit her over the head? He may not have assumed that he was going to kill her. But he came prepared just in case such an event happened. He brought along the bits of Watson’s skin and rubbed them under Grace’s fingernails, framing Watson for the murder.

  Three years later, frustrated that the authorities never brought Watson in, Nick O’Connell hijacked the boat to get me to catch Watson. Now, with Watson in custody, O’Connell would have been free to act on whatever information he’d gotten from Grace without worrying about Watson getting involved. That is, if he hadn’t fallen off the Tahoe Dreamscape.

  I made a call to the District Attorney of San Francisco County. It took some convincing to get them to transfer me through.

  “Madam District Attorney, former SFPD Inspector Owen McKenna calling,” I said when she answered. We’d previously met, but I didn’t expect her to remember me.

  “Roberta to you, Owen.”

  “The power of your office hasn’t gone to your head.”

  “It’s just a job, and a pain-in-the-ass job at that. What’s up?”

  I told her why I was calling. She was polite and generous with her time, and, in an unusual break from my expectations, she didn’t interrupt.

  When I was done, she said, “Of this scenario that you present, how much of it is your wish versus belief predicated on evidence?”

  “Actually, I have no evidence for this notion. I originally wished for – and believed – that Watson was guilty. And the only evidence we have in this crime points to his guilt. But I’ve changed my belief because of everything I’ve learned in the meantime.”

  “So this is all about a hunch that directly refutes the DNA evidence?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But before you dismiss my idea, consider how many times in your career that your belief about someone’s guilt or innocence was in conflict with the current evidence.” I wanted to elaborate, to sell her on the idea, but I decided to leave it alone and just let her think about my question.

  “Okay,” she said. “A second question. What do you think is the likelihood that you will eventually obtain evidence to support your idea?”

  “A strong likelihood. If I had to put a number to it? Seventy percent.”

  “Then you may say that I will take a hard second look at the situation if the suspect cooperates and the information he provides leads to credible evidence indicating that he is not the murderer.”

  “Thank you, Roberta,” I said.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Two hours later, Spot and I were stuck in the permanent slow-and-go that is I-80 near Berkeley. Eventually, we got through the toll booth and onto the Bay Bridge. I always felt sorry for Oakland the way it had to play second string in the city lineup just like San Jose, yet without San Jose’s claim to being the high-tech epicenter of the world. But when you see San Francisco’s hills and skyscrapers framed through the Bay Bridge’s towers, you have to concede that The City gets to play Varsity Ball just on looks alone. Fair or not, people don’t go to California from around the world and then send home postcards of Oakland.

  I took the Ninth Street exit, made the three lefts for 8th, Bryant and 7th, and found a parking place near the San Francisco County Jail. I told Spot to be good, went inside and did a lot of talking before they let me talk with Thomas Watson in an interview room.

  Watson was carrying a book. He set it on the table next to him. The cover said Langston Hughes.

  “Poet, right?” I said.

  “Actually, this is a biography.” Watson sounded aloof, as if intellectual gunrunners read biographies, and cops just read comic books. Or didn’t read at all.

  “Did you know that Langston Hughes wrote fifty books?” Watson said. “And a play that was performed on Broadway over three hundred times? He was also a newspaper columnist and a war correspondent and a novelist and children’s book author. And he wrote amazing poetry.”

  “Got a favorite?”

  Watson thought about it. “I keep going back to the one about holding fast to dreams,” he said, no doubt knowing that I’d have no clue what the poem was.

  “The sentiment is appropriate to the reason I’m here,” I said.

  Watson gave me a long look. “You talking about your dreams or mine?”

  “We have strong evidence against you in the murder of Grace Sun. If you have entertained any thoughts of acquittal, they would not seem like reasonable hopes but more like dreams. I’m here with an offer of a quid pro quo, something much more concrete than that dream.”

  “I’m listening.”

  I decided to stretch the truth a bit. “The San Francisco County DA has intimated that if you come clean with me, if you tell me all you know about Grace Sun and Nick O’Connell, she will consider dropping the murder charges against you.”

  Watson opened his eyes a bit wider.

  “This means you think I’m innocent, in spite of the DNA evidence?” The way he said it, it sounded like he knew he was guilty.

  “Innocent of murdering Grace? Probably. But if the information you give me suggests that you’ve committed other crimes, then that is a separate issue.”

  “And you’re doing this why?” The aloofness had shifted toward suspicion. Maybe contempt.

  “Same old cliché. I’m a law guy. I want justice done. You may be an evil person. But if someone else killed Grace, I want him or her caught.”

  “And whether or not the DA drops the charges will be based on what you tell her? Your judgment?” He scoffed.

  “I can’t make any promises, but I can give her my recommendation. It’s all you’ve got.”

  “How do I know you’ll follow through on this?”

  “You don’t. It’s a risk you’ll have to take. But unless your information reveals that you are guilty of other crimes as serious as murdering Grace, it’s a no-lose situation for you. If you don’t cooperate, you will face life in prison with no chance of parole at best and death row at worst.”

  “Okay. What do you want to know?” He sounded cagey.

  His attitude instantly infuriated me. “I’m offering you a huge possibility and you respond by playing games? I just told you what I want to know! Everything about the case! How you know Nick. How you know the Red Blood Patriots. Why Grace was killed. Tell me every detail, damnit!”

  “Okay, okay!” Watson took a moment to calm himself.

  I waited.

  Finally, Watson spoke. “The story is basically about Nick. Nick the Knife O’Connell, the most dangerous man I ever met.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Thomas Watson was sweating.

  “Several years ago,” he said, “I met Nick O’Connell at a gun show in Vegas. O’Connell said he wanted to buy a bunch of gear for a paramilitary group. Full auto AK forty-sevens. Ammo. Flash suppressors. Ranger Armor Vests. Helmets. Some night vision equipment.

  “I was able to acquire most of it. I met with Nick several times over the course of our transactions. He was quite the talker. I’m a good listener. We both like Margaritas. I learned about the Red Blood Patriots and their dues-paying members. These men are basically a bunch of disaffected white guys who hate people with brown skin, and really, r
eally hate people with brown skin who have good jobs. And they also think women are lower class citizens than their dogs.

  “They love belonging to the Red Blood Patriots because the group makes them feel powerful, and it gives them purpose. It elevates their hate to a sense of mission. And best of all, the group encourages them to play soldier and fire their weapons. Most of these men probably couldn’t get into the Army, although if they had they would have chafed at the discipline and probably would have gone AWOL. So they’re happy to pay monthly dues to Davy Halstead in return for some kind of meaning, no matter how vile it is.”

  “Davy is the leader,” I said, keeping things in present tense so that he wouldn’t guess that Davy had been murdered. I didn’t want him to think about anything other than telling this story.

  “Right. Davy is their general, their minister, their father figure, maybe even their direct line to God. Davy created the Red Blood Patriots in the manner of a church. He is like many charismatic cult leaders, using a calculated mix of commandments and cajoling to get what he wants. And the fealty of his flock is unquestioned.”

  “And Nick was part of this group,” I said.

  “Only in name. He was too smart to be a member in spirit. But he was happy to take their money and serve as a weapons procurement agent.”

  “If he didn’t believe in the mission, didn’t they see through him?”

  “I think Davy did. But Davy is smart. He could see that Nick, with his weapons skills and his mercenary background, could teach them a lot. So he basically hired Nick to bring the Patriots into the big leagues in regard to weapons. Maybe Nick taught them some tactics, too. Nick told me he had extensive military background, but he wouldn’t give details.”

  “If Nick had Special Ops experience, wouldn’t dealing with the Red Blood Patriots be a big step down in street cred?”

  “Ten years ago, sure. But we all age. When he was twenty-eight or thirty, he probably could write his own ticket to wherever he wanted to go. But you get a little older, you no longer have the physical authority to go with your knowledge. So you segue into running a private contracting business and sell your services to the military or big business. Or you get a regular job and forget about your past until it comes time to write your memoir. In Nick’s case, he was too much of an outsider to do either. So he picked up whatever jobs he could. Less pay and less respect, maybe. But it fit his personality.”