Act of Deceit hd-1

by Steven Gore

  “There was one guy there. I think he owned the house. He kept a kind of regal distance from everything, like he was a producer taking in his Tony Award-winning play. Enjoying the perfection of it all. He was older than the other men, maybe mid-sixties. I never saw him doing it with anybody. Some of the boys believed he was impotent, but I wasn’t so sure.”

  Melvin paused for a moment as he stared ahead.

  “Some of those old guys seemed to get off just watching the show.”

  Chapter 49

  W hen Donnally pulled into the driveway of Janie’s unlit house at 8 P.M., he imagined the look on her face when she arrived home to find that he’d brought in another stray. But at least this one wouldn’t be handcuffed in the basement.

  Brother Melvin retrieved his small duffel bag from behind the seat, then followed Donnally up the front stairs and onto the landing, half shadowed by a streetlight.

  As Donnally reached his key toward the lock, a Hispanic man dressed in black stepped out of the darkness. He pointed a semiautomatic at Donnally’s face, then at Melvin’s.

  They raised their hands.

  The man jerked his head toward the driveway.

  Melvin drew back. “You can’t make us-”

  “Shut up,” the man whispered. His accent was heavy, but his words were distinct.

  “Take it easy,” Donnally said to Melvin, then to the man. “What do you want?”

  “We’re going to take a ride.”

  Donnally flicked his keys toward the hedge on the side of the house. They jingled in flight, then rattled leaves as they dropped though the branches.

  “Not in my truck,” Donnally said.

  The man shrugged. “We can walk.”

  Brother Melvin pointed down with his raised hand, “My wallet is in my back pocket. Take it. We won’t call the police.”

  “This isn’t a robbery,” Donnally said.

  “Then what the…?”

  “Sherwyn.”

  Donnally knew he was right, but it didn’t make sense that Sherwyn would have the kind of connections that could put a contract killer on his doorstep.

  In one motion Brother Melvin lowered himself to his knees and pressed his hands together in prayer.

  Donnally tensed, fearing that the histrionic gesture would get them killed right then.

  “Get up, chingaso,” the man ordered, and then bashed Melvin in the side of the head with the gun barrel.

  Melvin wobbled, but kept his balance. “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come.” Melvin’s voice became louder. “Thy will be done-”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “On earth as it is in heaven-”

  “Fucking priests.”

  The gun butt crashed down on Melvin’s head. He slumped toward Donnally, who stepped back and reached for the railing behind him, then jumped over. He hit the ground a fraction of a second sooner than he expected and slammed forward onto his hands.

  A gunshot shattered the neighbor’s window a foot above his head. He pulled his gun, waited for the shadowed figure to lean over the railing above him, then emptied it into his chest.

  Chapter 50

  B lood-soaked Brother Melvin was lying in the back of an ambulance when Lieutenant Ramon Navarro arrived. Neighbors crowded the sidewalk across the street. The crime scene techs had bagged the dead man’s hands and had completed their gunshot residue swabs on Donnally and Melvin.

  “You move anything?” Navarro asked Donnally, who was standing by the fireplace in the living room.

  Janie had arrived home and was sitting on the couch, twisting a Kleenex in her hands.

  “I rolled the dead guy off Brother Melvin, that’s all.”

  Navarro glanced toward the front of the house.

  “They’re telling me that the guy didn’t have any ID,” Navarro said. “You find a driver’s license?”

  “I didn’t look. Just flopped him over, then called 911.”

  “I don’t know, man,” Navarro said. “He didn’t look like a robber to me. Pressed slacks. Slick haircut. New shoes. Helluva nice gun.”

  Donnally shrugged. “Times are weird.”

  A n hour after the police had cleared the scene and Brother Melvin had been transported to SF General for stitches and observation, Donnally walked down to the basement. He reached into a box under the stairs, pulled out a paper bag, and dumped the contents onto the workbench.

  “What’s that?”

  Donnally spun around, startled by the sound of Janie’s voice. He turned toward her as she walked over.

  “I thought you were asleep,” Donnally said.

  He tried to block her view, but she elbowed by him. Her eyes locked on the Mexican police badge.

  Her voice rose. “He was a cop?”

  She started to reach for it, but then pulled her hand back.

  “Gregorio Cruz from Quintana Roo,” Donnally said, turning toward her. “Cancun.”

  “What do you think you’re doing? Why didn’t you give this to-”

  “You want your name in the news as part of an international incident? You want the FBI knocking on your door? You want diplomatic shadowboxing to block me from finding out what’s going on?”

  Janie didn’t have an answer.

  “I don’t know how he did it,” Donnally said, “but Sherwyn is behind this.”

  She pointed at the badge. “How do you know he wasn’t sent to get even for the Mexican pot grower who got hurt?”

  “Because they don’t know who I am and I wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Cartels view guys like him as expendable.”

  Donnally turned back toward the bench. “Somewhere in here is the connection to Sherwyn.”

  He separated out the items: wallet, cell phone, passport, scraps of paper, and a Budget car rental key.

  Janie pointed at the phone. “Maybe Sherwyn’s number is in there.”

  Donnally smiled. “That only happens on television.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t know what you’re smiling about. I’ve haven’t seen a dead person since I did my residency, and there was one lying on my porch tonight.”

  He reached around her shoulders. “Sorry. I didn’t think Sherwyn had it in him to try something like this.”

  “It pisses me off.”

  He pulled his arm away. “I said I’m sorry. What else can I-”

  “Not you. Sherwyn. When I think of the lives he’s destroyed. And what he’s willing to do now to protect himself.”

  Janie shuddered and looked up at Donnally. “Are you sure he won’t try again?”

  “I’m sure he will. I think it might be better if you stayed at a hotel for a couple of days.”

  Her face flushed. “I’m not going to let that man force me out of my house.” She glanced at the Mexican cop’s possessions, then turned and walked toward the stairway. “Do what you have to do.”

  A fter she returned upstairs, Donnally searched the called and received logs in Cruz’s cell phone. All the calls were placed from within Mexico or from the U.S. back to Mexico. He made a list of the numbers and the dates and times, then used Janie’s computer to run them through Internet telephone databases. All were unlisted.

  He then checked for text messages and found only one. It showed his addresses in San Francisco and Mount Shasta, and Brother Melvin’s in Vancouver. It, too, originated from a Mexican telephone.

  How did Cruz communicate with Sherwyn? Donnally asked himself as he bagged up everything again except the car key. It had to be through an intermediary.

  But who?

  Donnally went out to his truck and cruised the midnight streets until he located the shooter’s rented brown Taurus parked in the dark driveway of an empty house for sale a few blocks from Janie’s. He searched it hoping to find a hotel room card key, but found nothing.

  His cell phone vibrated as he locked up the car. It was Brother Melvin.

  M elvin smiled up at Donnally from where he sat in a chair next to
the hospital bed, then pointed at his bandage-ringed head.

  “I know you were hoping I’d have it examined,” Melvin said, “and it looks like I just did.”

  “That’s not what I had in mind.”

  “I hope not.” Melvin’s smile faded. He gazed out of the third floor window toward the city lights, then looked back at Donnally. “I didn’t like lying to police about what happened.”

  “What makes you think you lied?”

  “I told them he was robbing us.”

  “How do you know he wasn’t?”

  “He said-”

  “No. I’m the one who said he wasn’t there to rob us.” Donnally smiled. “He never actually addressed the issue.” He handed Melvin his duffel bag he’d brought with him from Vancouver. “You want me out of here while you change?”

  “It’s okay, I’m used to the communal life.”

  Donnally sat down on the edge of the bed as Melvin slipped off the hospital gown.

  “What was the idea with the praying?” Donnally asked.

  Melvin shrugged, then grinned. “I thought I was supposed to. I’m not sure whether I read it somewhere or saw it in the movies.”

  “It sure ticked him off. Makes you wonder if maybe he had a problem with a priest when he was young.”

  Melvin slid into a pair of pants, then rose and buttoned them. He then pulled out a long-sleeve dress shirt from the duffel bag.

  “I thought you guys had to wear the… uh…”

  “It’s called a clergy shirt, but not when we do detective work.”

  “Detective work? I figured you’d want to put this behind you and you’d be asking me to take you to the airport.”

  “I’ve spent a lot of years thinking about suicide,” Melvin said, “but homicide I’m not so thrilled with, especially my own.”

  A nurse’s aide entered, pushing a wheelchair. She waited for Melvin to tie his shoes and collect the plastic bag containing his bloody clothes, then walked along with them as Donnally rolled him down the silent hallway toward the exit.

  Chapter 51

  A t five in the morning, Donnally parked the Mexican cop’s Taurus in front of William Sherwyn’s house. He left the rear extending two feet into the driveway. The back half of the car was illuminated by a streetlight. The front was shadowed. He then climbed out and snatched Sherwyn’s San Francisco Chronicle and brought it back to the car. He paged through it until he found the article about the shooting:

  UNIDENTIFIED MAN KILLED IN ROBBERY ATTEMPT

  Sherwyn emerged from his front door an hour later. He surveyed the landing, the front steps, and the grass for his newspaper, then looked up and spotted the Taurus. He glared at it as if annoyed by a negligent neighbor. The gesture satisfied Donnally that Sherwyn had never seen the car before.

  Sherwyn reentered his house.

  Donnally walked up the stairs thirty seconds later and tossed the newspaper against the front door. He then concealed himself in the shadow outside the range of the porch light.

  Sherwyn stepped outside, picked up the Chronicle, then skimmed through the pages until he found the story. His brow furrowed in puzzlement as he read. Donnally guessed that Sherwyn already knew that the killing hadn’t turned out as planned, perhaps because Cruz hadn’t called to confirm that he’d done it or come to collect his fee, but Sherwyn wouldn’t have been able to figure out why Cruz hadn’t been identified by the police.

  Donnally stepped forward. Sherwyn lurched away from the shadow falling across his newspaper, then spun around. His eyes widened and his hand clenched the paper. Donnally pulled back his jacket to show his semiautomatic, then reached into the house and turned off the light.

  They both glanced toward the street as a Berkeley Police patrol car cruised by.

  “Don’t even think it,” Donnally said.

  The officer turned left at the corner and drove down the hill toward the flatlands.

  Donnally tilted his head toward the Taurus.

  “What are you going to do?” Sherwyn asked. “Kidnap me and leave my dead body in the woods?”

  “Seems only fair. You tried to do me in just the same way.”

  Donnally drew his gun and pointed it at Sherwyn.

  Sherwyn hesitated, but then walked down the steps and across the grass. He looked up and down the sidewalk as he approached the car, as though hoping to spot a neighbor.

  Donnally chambered a round.

  “I’m just as happy to drop you right here,” Donnally said. “I can have your body in the trunk before it even crosses anyone’s mind that it was a gunshot and not a backfire.”

  Donnally stepped around Sherwyn and opened the passenger door. Sherwyn slid in, then Donnally climbed into the driver’s seat and pointed the gun at Sherwyn.

  “Put your hands where I can see them.”

  Sherwyn raised them.

  “No,” Donnally said, “against the dashboard.”

  Sherwyn complied.

  “The problem is that we’re sort of at a stalemate,” Donnally said. “Even if the police identify the guy you sent to murder me, there’ll be no way to connect him to you. You’ve spent enough years studying homicide files to figure out how to get away with one.”

  Sherwyn didn’t respond.

  “Don’t worry,” Donnally said. “I’m not taping this. I don’t want to leave any evidence behind of what’s going to happen next.” He held up a gloved hand. “Not even any fingerprints.”

  Donnally started the engine.

  “The guy looked to me like an LA gang type,” Donnally lied. “I can’t figure out how someone like you could get hooked up with somebody like that.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, just like you didn’t know who Melvin was.”

  Donnally drove to the stop sign at the end of the block, then accelerated around the corner. Sherwyn pulled his hands away from the dashboard and braced himself against the console and the door.

  “Put your hands back where they were,” Donnally said, raising the gun.

  Sherwyn again placed his hands on the dashboard.

  Donnally took the next right, then pulled over. He didn’t speak right away.

  “Now that I think about it,” Donnally finally said, “maybe you’re worth more to me alive than dead.”

  “Blackmail?”

  Donnally laughed. “That sounds like a confession. You should’ve said extortion. That would make you look like a victim.”

  “How much do you want?”

  “Let me think… let me think… how about five hundred thousand for Melvin for what you did to him and five hundred thousand for trying to kill me.”

  “Where do you think I’m going to get a million dollars?”

  Donnally looked over at Sherwyn, grinning. “So now we’re negotiating?”

  “Call it whatever you want.” Sherwyn smirked. “I knew you had an angle. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. If I had known it was only money we could’ve worked this out already and saved ourselves a lot of trouble.”

  “You mean like hiring a hit man?”

  “Construe it any way you like.”

  “What’s your counteroffer?” Donnally asked.

  “Half a million divided between the two of you and a signed statement from Melvin that nothing ever happened.”

  “How about two hundred for Melvin and four hundred for me?”

  Sherwyn nodded.

  “But this all assumes you have the money,” Donnally said. “Do you?”

  “That’s not your problem. I can get it.”

  Donnally put his gun back into his holster, then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen.

  “Write out an IOU. Make it out for services rendered. Due in two days.”

  Sherwyn wrote the sentence, signed below it, and handed it back to Donnally, who then shifted into drive and pulled back into the street. He took two more right turns and stopped in front of Sherwyn’s house.

&nb
sp; Sherwyn opened the car door and stepped out.

  Donnally lowered the passenger window as the door closed, and said to Sherwyn, “Nice doing business with you.”

  Sherwyn looked up and down the street to make sure no neighbors were outside and leaned down.

  “What makes you so sure I won’t walk inside and call the police?”

  “Because you know how tomorrow’s headline will read. ‘Priest Accuses Prominent Psychiatrist of Child Molesting, Sordid Tale of Abuse Poised to Destroy Careers.’ ”

  D onnally drove down the hill and stopped at a phone booth to call Janie.

  “How’s my alibi?”

  “You’re drinking coffee in bed and watching the news. I’ll have the recording for you to study when you get back. And twenty minutes ago you called your father from your cell phone. How’d it go with the doctor?”

  “We’ll see. He’ll be trying to get some money together. Probably not as much as he agreed to, but who’s counting?”

  D onnally traveled back using the same route he’d come. Over the north bay, down through Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and to the house where he had found the Taurus. He sealed up the car, stuck his gloves into his jacket pocket, then walked back to Janie’s.

  She handed him his cell phone when he stepped into the kitchen. He punched in a telephone number.

  “Ramon, this is Harlan. I found a rental car ignition key under the front steps. I thought you might be interested.”

  N avarro called twenty-four hours later as Donnally was replacing his neighbor’s shot-out window.

  “You were right, man,” Navarro said. “We located the car a few blocks away from you. It had been rented with a forged credit card. We lifted fingerprints matching the shooter in the car. And guess what? We found William Sherwyn’s all over the passenger side.”

  “Did you knock on his door yet?”

  “Yeah. It was weird. I told him I was investigating the shooting at your place and were wondering about some fingerprints we found. His face just went white. In twenty years investigating homicides, I’ve never seen anything like it. Then he started babbling and saying that you kidnapped him and forced him to touch the inside of the car. When I asked him why you would do something like that he clammed up and said he wanted to speak to a lawyer.”