Probable Cause

by Ridley Pearson

  Quinn pivoted around, staring in complete disbelief at the gaping holes in Dewitt’s police vest, where no blood ran.

  Dewitt said, “We don’t call them suicides, Quinn. We call them DBFs. We don’t call it the beach parking lot. It’s Del Mar. No uniform would ever call me first. They would call dispatch. Nelson gave you away.”

  Quinn stood there in a daze, staring at the empty holes in the police vest. “I shot you,” he mumbled. “It’s over.”

  Dewitt told him to drop the weapon.

  Quinn raised his arm slowly, the gun aimed well away from Dewitt.

  “Drop it!” Dewitt demanded, bringing the bead of his barrel level with the man’s chest.

  In a graceful arc, Quinn brought the barrel level to his own ear. “You think I’d give you the pleasure?”

  Michael Quinn pulled the trigger.

  3

  Dewitt wouldn’t leave Emmy for the remainder of the day. He arranged for the two of them to go whale watching: He needed to wash his mind of the image of Quinn’s head exploding. They rode the determined chop ten miles offshore for two hours. A weather front threatened from the horizon but thankfully left them alone. They sat in silence, father and daughter, while a group of Japanese and a couple from Iowa cackled nervously, awaiting the anticipated show. The Japanese took pictures of the empty horizon. At 3:30 a pod of seven gray whales streamed by the boat, so close that for the first time in her life, Emmy touched one. She remained ecstatic throughout the chilly afternoon ride back to shore, beaming, looking to her father with a permanent grin. To pet the whales had always been one of Anna’s dreams. They sat huddled together like lovers, she cradled inside him, his face in her hair. She fell asleep in this pose. Somewhere close to shore, James Dewitt began to cry.

  That evening, he and Clarence Hindeman were drinking beers in front of a Lakers game.

  “I couldn’t call it in,” Dewitt explained as Magic Johnson took the free-throw line. “Quinn was too savvy for that. Any other action—any cars, any anything—and he would have left Nelson and tried again another time. My mistake was thinking he would be the one inside the car. He fooled me there. I didn’t expect him in Nelson’s uniform, and even though I wore the vest, I didn’t think he would shoot me. I thought he might try to scare me with the gun, scare me into getting Emmy for him so he could return the favor. I misjudged him every step of the way.”

  “His confession was a warning?”

  “According to Christiansen it was.” Dewitt tugged on his bow tie. “He already had his escape planned. He wanted a chance to taunt me, show me how brilliant he was, to lull me into a false confidence that we had him… to explain it all to me. His shot at superiority.”

  “You should have called it in.”

  “I know.”

  “I might have lost a detective.”

  “You might have.”

  “And a friend.”

  “You would have.” Dewitt gulped down another sip of beer. “Just glad he didn’t kill Nelson. Probably wanted a hostage if his trap failed to interest me. A guy like Quinn, we’ll probably never know what he was thinking.”

  “Emmy?”

  “Fine. Better than fine. She accepted the whole Talbot thing without a problem. Accepted Anna. Youth adds elasticity, Clarence. I envy her her youth.”

  “Point Lobos?”

  “Soon,” Dewitt nodded. “Before my testimony, I think. We both want to move on. We both want this behind us.”

  14

  POINT LOBOS

  The fine green needles of the Monterey pine dripped with the remains of the passing storm. After weeks of rain, the sky’s present state of clarity, the crisp vibrant blue, seemed significant to James Dewitt. He took the carryall from her with his one good arm. Emmy wrapped hers around his waist. A team, he thought.

  He had been reassured by his attorney that his twice-delayed grand jury appearance was a formality, something that had to be carried out because the paperwork had been begun and couldn’t be stopped—another quirk in the system. He wasn’t so sure. His preparations continued. He didn’t trust lawyers. He didn’t trust the system.

  The preserve had officially closed a few minutes before; they had special permission to be here. “What about her,” Emmy asked, looking up at her dad. “How come you haven’t even called her?”

  “Because of the grand jury, Em. Everyone thought it better that we don’t communicate.”

  “But you like her?” she asked.

  He glanced down at her, but she was no longer looking at him; she was eyeing the woods. “Do you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, of course it does.”

  “I like her, Dad.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Is she transferring to the city, too?” she asked.

  He laughed. “No. We’re not even sure we are, right? Clarence has been trying to talk me out of that. He says the forensic work won’t be as fulfilling now that I’ve been a cop. There’s pressure on Capp to step down. That job may open up.”

  They walked without speaking for the next few minutes, the only sounds the distant pounding surf, the birds, and the wind. The more he thought about the urn in the carryall, the tighter his throat became. A family cut in half in a little less than a year. He forced it out of his mind temporarily and thought instead of how grateful he was to have Emmy and all that was around him.

  They climbed up the narrow dirt trail, beneath the twisting limbs of arthritic trees, shadows flickering across their faces, and came to rest on a point of rocks overlooking the Pacific. The turbulent turquoise water churned white with foam. The wind was pleasantly warm, announcing the impending arrival of spring.

  Emmy took the bag from him, removed the urn, and handed it to her father.

  “I’ll do this, Em, but I thought you wanted to,” he offered.

  She reached into the handbag and came up with a second urn.

  “Mom,” Emmy whispered, turning the ceramic vase slowly in her small hands, studying it. “She belongs here with Anna and Rusty, Dad. This was her place,” she said hoarsely.

  Dewitt attempted to speak but found himself only able to nod. He watched through a blur as his daughter popped the lid off of his wife’s ashes; he did the same for Anna.

  “Are you going to say something?” she asked, hair blowing off her face. She looked more like Julia each day.

  He shook his head no.

  “It’s all right, Dad,” she said, suddenly the strong one.

  Emmy raised her mother’s urn toward him. They bumped the two urns together in a toast-like fashion, the dull click of pottery lost on the wind.

  She counted to three. They threw them in unison, and then tangled in an embrace, watching as the ashes spread in the wind, as the urns tumbled end over end, growing inexorably smaller, finally swallowed by the waiting sea.

  15

  GRAND JURY

  Dewitt had borrowed a suit from Saffeleti and he looked good. His attorney’s assistant, Howard Carstien, sat next to him in the hallway of the Sacramento courthouse. His appearance before the grand jury was pro forma. There were questions to answer, but the likelihood of any charges being brought against him was insignificant. Carstien, a tall man with black curly hair and bright eyes, asked somewhat nervously, “Did you hear about Mahoney?”

  He was trying to pass the time and it bothered Dewitt. “No.”

  “Turns out she obtained the grand jury evidence improperly. Had no right to it. Word is she’s likely to be disbarred. Even if she isn’t, she’ll end up a PD in East LA or something.”

  Dewitt said nothing, although he smiled.

  The door opened. It was Clare. She was smiling. “James, they’re ready for you now.” Dewitt stood.

  They passed in the doorway, nearly touching. She looked incredibly good today. Beautiful as always. They stopped, eye-to-eye. He missed her and he told her so, then turned and walked through the door held open by a uniformed court guard. “See you tonight,” she said. He he
ard the door close shut behind him. The table on the dais was enormous; the jurors were staring at him.

  A moment later, he stood by the witness chair.

  Jessie Osbourne was in the gallery. The withdrawal of her candidacy had been announced the night before in a dramatic televised press conference where she had called Dewitt a hero. Her presence in this courtroom was a very good sign indeed. She caught his eye and nodded reassuringly.

  “State your name please,” said the bailiff.

  He didn’t trust a system that could let Quinn be released, that could retire a man like Capp with honors, that could turn Marvin Wood back into society with nothing more than a slap on the hand. However, at the moment, he couldn’t think of anything to take its place.

  He tugged the handkerchief from his pocket first, then removed the glasses and let his other hand do the polishing. He squinted at the bailiff, who was holding the Bible.

  “James Dewitt,” said the man in the chair.

  16

  EPILOGUE

  James Dewitt was sworn in as Captain of the Carmel-by-the-Sea Police Department on the same day Buford Nelson took over as detective sergeant. There was a minor celebration in a local bar, with beer and drinks bought by Clarence Hindeman. Retired Commander Karl Capp showed for the ceremony but not the drinks. He and his wife had scheduled a nine-month RV tour of the southwest.

  District Attorney Bill Saffeleti missed the swearing in but not the drinks. He showed up with Leala Mahoney on his arm. There were plenty of rumors but no confirmation on exactly how Saffeleti had salvaged Mahoney’s career. She was now a deputy district attorney. There were other rumors going around about Mahoney and Saffeleti, but there were rumors about O’Daly and Dewitt, as well, and he knew there was no substance to these, so he didn’t trust any of the rumors.

  Clarence Hindeman became so intoxicated at his party for Dewitt that while he and Dewitt stood side by side at the urinals, he announced his engagement to Tona.

  “Have you told this to Tona?” Dewitt asked.

  “No,” Hindeman replied, “but she’ll be the next to know.”

  Clare was nowhere to be seen, and it began first to irritate and then to concern Dewitt. There was supposed to be a dinner party following the drinks, although by the look of those involved, the condition of the party was quickly degenerating. At any moment, someone would order a burger and there would go the dinner party.

  The door opened promptly at seven o’clock. Hindeman held the group’s attention with a hair-raising yarn about a rafting adventure. With Dewitt’s back to the door, he missed the entrance of Clare and his daughter; but when Clarence spotted them, he stopped mid-sentence. Dewitt turned slowly around in his chair as he heard Clare say, “Nothing, no one, can ever take the place of anyone else, James. This is intended as a gift, a new beginning. Congratulations.”

  Emmy stretched out her arms, her eyes bubbling joyfully with tears. The gathering applauded. Dewitt accepted the puppy into his arms and engulfed its soft fur into the crook of his neck. The blue bow around its head got caught in his bow tie and was the source of great amusement.

  “It wasn’t easy finding a shepherd/collie mix,” Clare added. “It was Em’s idea.”

  “What are you going to call him?” Emmy asked anxiously.

  Dewitt considered this a minute. “Lobos,” he said to his daughter.

  ***

  The job of captain came to Dewitt with great effort. Although it provided him endless excuse to spend his mornings talking to Clarence over coffee, he envied Nelson the fieldwork. He settled into the job uncomfortably, eventually amending his job description to include more case work. Ever so slowly, his paperwork began to pile up and he was missing from his office more and more, out on a case with Nelson. Hindeman discussed the backlog of paperwork with him and made some suggestions on job balance, but it became clear to both men that Dewitt belonged in the field. Without telling Dewitt, Hindeman wrote a few letters.

  ***

  Lobos sat curled by the filing cabinet, chewing on a rawhide bone, trying to break in his puppy teeth. Dewitt, reading through one of Nelson’s stolen property reports, made some corrections that included involving him more directly in the case next time.

  Clarence Hindeman knocked on the open door, a grave expression on his face.

  “Hindy?” Dewitt asked. “Why the glum look? Paperwork again?”

  “I’ve just had a request to loan you out,” he said. “The state task force.”

  “Loan me out?”

  “There’s an investigation. They need you. You remain captain here, but your duties are suspended until the investigation is through.”

  “The state task force?”

  “It’s quite an honor, James.”

  “What investigation? What are you talking about? They don’t just ask for you.”

  “I wrote a few letters. I didn’t want to lose you. I thought it worth submitting your name for the task force. Give you something to sink your teeth into every now and then.”

  “What investigation?”

  “Harvey Collette electrocuted a guard while the guy attempted to repair his VCR. He stunned two others with the guard’s stun stick and escaped Atascadero an hour ago. The AG wants you to head up the task force. He’s a trapper; you’re viewed as the resident expert. What do you want me to tell him?”

  Lobos gave up on the bone, rolled over, and sighed. After a long and heavy silence, James Dewitt said, “Tell him I’m on my way.”