[Tom Reed and Walt Sydowski 01.0] If Angels Fall

by Rick Mofina

  Eventually, the number of bodies on the case dwindled. Sydowski saw less of Rust and Ditmire. Everyone knew it was Sydowski’s file. They left him alone. After Wallace’s suicide, he had painstakingly rebuilt pieces of the case. No one envied him. But they understood.

  After his darkest days, he would go home and sit in his aviary, listen to his birds and think. What was he doing wrong? He came to the hall at all hours, worked at the computer, reread files, and went out on interviews. Nothing clicked.

  That had been his year since Tanita Marie Donner’s murder, a year in which he rarely took a day off. But he had today. And sitting with his old man at the Coliseum watching the A’s and Yankees felt good. For a few hours he tried to give his mind a rest. As he chewed on the last of his hotdog, he considered going back for another.

  Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

  He switched off his pager, went to a phone and called the duty crew at the hall.

  “Homicide, Jackson.”

  “It’s Sydowski.”

  “Walt, we got a boy abducted just now by a male stranger.”

  “Got a body?”

  “Nope.”

  “No body. That’s General Works. Why call me?”

  “It’s an order. Comes from the brass. Leo wants you in on this with General and the feebees, right from the get-go. The kid was grabbed from his father on BART at Balboa.”

  Balboa.

  “It’s looking bad, Walt.”

  Sydowski felt his heartburn flare. “Balboa?”

  “They’re setting up at Ingleside Station on John Young.”

  “Okay, I’m coming from the Coliseum.”

  Sydowski hung up and found a uniformed Oakland police officer. He showed him his badge, asked him warmly to make sure his old man got a cab to Pacifica, then gave him several crumpled bills for the fare.

  “Consider it done,” the cop said.

  Sydowski returned to his old man.

  “I got to go to work, Pop.” He pointed to the officer. “This guy will get a cab home for you.”

  His father turned to him, nodded, and adjusted his ballcap.

  “Sure, you go to work. You do a good job.”

  Driving across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, grateful to beat the ballgame traffic, Sydowski was struck by one thought. He wondered if Reed ever got around to figuring out that short, anonymous call he got nearly a year ago had come from Tanita Marie Donner’s killer.

  FOUR

  Tom Reed drove south from downtown in a staff car, a Ford Tempo, bearing The San Francisco Star’s red, white, and blue banner and the logo: WE’VE GOT SAN FRANCISCO’S STORY.

  Talk about cruel irony. He wanted to do an anniversary piece on Tanita Marie Donner’s abduction and murder. To set the record straight. To redeem himself. Now this happens. In Balboa.

  His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Passing a lumbering motor home from Utah on 101, he couldn’t shake the Donner story and a million other questions. If today’s case was real, would the paper leave him on it? Could he handle it again? Sure. He had nothing left to lose. He had already sacrificed his family to the Donner story.

  “We’ve lost each other, Tom,” Ann had said the last time they were out, weeks after Wallace’s suicide. It was a place in Sausalito, with a view of San Francisco’s skyline and a harpist plucking a requiem to their marriage. Ann was right. Something between them had died, a fact he refused to admit. He fingered a spoon and met her eyes, shining in the candlelight like they did on their wedding day.

  “Tell me, Ann. Tell me how you’ve lost me.”

  “Your drinking’s out of hand. I’ve asked you to stop. You don’t see what it’s doing to us, to Zach, to you.”

  He rapped the spoon sharply on the table.

  “Ann, I’ve been professionally humiliated, I’ve been suspended, dumped into a toilet of political crap, and this is the understanding you show me.”

  “Lower your voice!” she whispered.

  He downed his wine and refilled his glass.

  “Tom, why can’t you realize that you are not infallible?”

  “I was not wrong.”

  “Something went wrong! I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You brought it up, dear.” He gulped more wine.

  “You have no idea what Zach and I went through after seeing you on network TV slapped by the widow of that poor teacher.”

  “That poor teacher killed Tanita Marie Donner, Ann!”

  “You don’t know that. The police said he was not--”

  “Fuck the police! Wallace was a twisted child-killer.”

  “Stop it! Just stop it!” Ann’s hushed voice was breaking.

  A few tense moments passed. She touched the corners of her eyes with her napkin. “We need some time apart,” she said. “I’m taking Zach and we’re going to stay with my mother in Berkeley.”

  It was like a sledgehammer blow to his stomach.

  “I don’t know if I can live with you anymore,” she whispered. “If I love you anymore.” She covered her mouth with her hand.

  They skipped dessert and went home. A few days later, he helped Ann lift suitcases to their van, watching in silence as his wife and son drove away. He went into the house and drank himself unconscious.

  Reed found the scene near Ocean at San Jose. Nearby, a tangle of police cars blocked the entrance to the Balboa BART station, lights flashing, radios crackling.

  A working-class neighborhood, Balboa was favored with a degree of gentrification at its fringes: a smattering of eclectic boutiques, yuppified houses and apartment blocks. A cop directed traffic around the area. People craned their necks at the yellow crime-scene tape; others watched from windows and balconies.

  “Tom!”

  Paul Wong, a Star photographer, trotted after him, two Nikons dangling from his neck, a camera bag over his shoulder.

  “Just pulled in behind you,” Wong said. “Isn’t this the same place where they found the little girl, Marie something?”

  “Tanita Marie Donner.”

  “Yeah.” Wong suddenly remembered everything.

  As they headed toward the police tape, they clipped on their press cards. Reed called the paper on his cell phone. Wong banged off a few frames.

  “Star, Molly Wilson.” Police radios were clamoring.

  “It’s Reed. Got anything for us?”

  “Speak up, I’m in the radio room.”

  “What have you got?”

  “A genuine stranger abduction. The kid somehow wanders off the train. Dad gets a one-second glimpse of his boy with a strange man on the platform just as the train is pulling out. He hits the emergency brake bar, kicks out an emergency window and runs after them. But they vanished. Happened that fast. They’re pulling out all the stops, bringing in K-9, going door-to-door in a grid for a twenty-block radius. Simon’s on his way with another photographer.

  “Get a name on the kid and his dad?”

  “Father is Nathan Becker, son is Danny. Unlisted. Library’s going through driving and property records. Becker is still around, being questioned somewhere. They haven’t taken him to Ingleside Station yet. Mom is home alone. They’ve sent people to tell her and set up for a possible ransom call. No address over the air, but I gather it’s near the University of San Francisco, Jordan Park maybe.”

  “FBI?”

  “On their way. Tom, do you think it’s connected to Donner?”

  “Wallace is dead, Molly.”

  “Copycat, maybe?”

  “Who knows? Call you later.”

  Reed and Wong shouldered their way to the tape, where a cop lifted it, directing them to a police van in the distance where reporters were clustered around an officer. On the way there, Reed nudged Wong. Across the street, a pony-tailed woman in her thirties, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, stepped out of Roman’s Tub & Shower Boutique. An ID card was clipped to her waist, and she was instructing an officer, pointing somewhere, as they hurried away together.

  “Let’s go in th
ere,” Reed said.

  “What for?”

  “A hunch.”

  Bells jingled as they entered. Roman’s smelled of jasmine and had an exquisite Florentine storefront displaying overpriced towels. A slim, tanned man with bleached hair was sitting at a small table in one corner of the store with a distraught-looking man. The thin man rose instantly, approaching Reed and Wong.

  “I’m sorry, we are closed,” he said, arms shooing them away.

  “Door’s open and there’s no sign,” Reed said. He noticed a woman at the rear of the store on a telephone. She was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, with a laminated ID clipped to her waist. Reed moved quickly. Approaching the distraught man at the table. His widened eyes were horror-stricken, his short brown hair messed. He had a long, bloody scrape on one cheek. His clothes were streaked with black greasy smudges. He was staring at nothing.

  “Please, you’ll have to leave,” the thin man said.

  “We’re here to speak to Mr. Nathan Becker.”

  Bewildered, the distraught man said, “I am Nathan Becker.”

  The woman on the phone materialized, and pegging Reed and Wong for press, inserted herself between them and Becker.

  According to her tag, Kim Potter was a volunteer with a victims’ crisis group. “Leave now. This man isn’t giving any press interviews.”

  Wong looked at Reed. They didn’t move. Reed looked around Potter.

  “Is this true, Mr. Becker? Does this woman speak for you?”

  Becker was silent.

  “Please leave now!” Potter raised her voice.

  “Mr. Becker, we’re with The San Francisco Star. Do you wish to tell us what happened? I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but I will respect your answer.”

  Nathan Becker rubbed his hand over his face, tears streaming down his cheeks. “We have to find him. We have to find Danny. Maggie will be destroyed. He’s all we have.”

  “Yes. What happened?” Reed stepped closer.

  “Go get Inspector Turgeon,” Potter ordered the clerk. She glared at Reed, angrily punching numbers into the store phone, shouting into it about “a press problem.”

  Reed would have to hurry.

  Trapped alone in his nightmare, Becker began.

  “They won’t let me search. It was a man, I saw him for less than a second. Bearded, white, about six feet, medium build, sandy hair, wearing a cap. I stopped the train, I ran, it was too late, it happened so fast. I had only looked away for a few seconds. He wandered to one end of the car and...and... damn it! Why wasn’t I watching him?”

  Reed took notes, softly asking questions. Becker was clutching a wallet-size snapshot of himself with Danny on his shoulders, laughing as Danny’s mom looked up adoringly. The radiant, white, upper-middle-class, professional family. Police were going to duplicate the photo. Wong took shots of it, and of Becker holding it.

  “Why would somebody want to take Danny, Mr. Becker?” Reed asked.

  Becker didn’t know. His face disappeared into his hands. Wong’s camera clicked and the store’s entrance bells pealed.

  “That’s enough!”

  It was the pony-tailed woman who’d left earlier. Flanked by two uniformed officers, she faced Reed.

  “This interview is over,” she said. The uniforms pulled Reed and Wong aside and she copied their names into her leather-bound notebook. She had hard brown eyes. “Tom Reed,” she said. “Why am I not surprised? Pull this stunt again and you’ll be charged.”

  “Ever hear of the constitution?” Reed shot back, glimpsing her waist and ID. He couldn’t get her name without being rude.

  Ignoring Reed, she stepped back to the front.

  “Sorry about this, Mr. Becker,” she said.

  The bells rang and Sydowski filled the doorway, then walked to the store’s rear. “Well, well, well, if this isn’t a curse.” He looked at Reed. “Everything in order...Inspector Turgeon, is it?”

  “Turgeon, correct. Yes, all in order.”

  “You should have taken Mr. Becker here to Ingleside Station.”

  “Mikelson in General wanted him near the scene for now.”

  “Yeah. I’ve just spoken with Gord. We’ll be moving Mr. Becker shortly. Now, if no one objects, I’ll take care of Mr. Reed.” Sydowski clamped Reed’s arm firmly, escorting him out the rear of the shop. The two patrolmen followed with Wong.

  Alone in the back alley, Sydowski backed Reed against a wall and winced. His heartburn, the price he paid for eating that dog, was irritating him. He jabbed his finger into Reed’s chest.

  “Just what the hell are you doing?”

  “My job.”

  “How’d you find Becker?”

  “Instinct. How are you anyway?”

  “Delirious. See you’re still getting paid to kill trees?”

  “Sure, I’ve been promoted. I am now the patron saint of reporters who trusted their police sources.”

  “Thomas. Thomas, ask me if I care,” Sydowski said. “Listen, boychik, you ruined yourself so beautifully you would’ve made a million as a freak act. I told you to sit on the stuff you had. Didn’t I? I was doing you a favor, remember that.”

  “Still raising little birdies, Walt?”

  “They hit the high notes when I line their cages with your work.”

  An unmarked car inched its way up the alley. Sydowski raised his hand, stopping it at the rear of the store.

  “We’re taking Becker home now. The wife collapsed at the news.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Beats me.”

  “C’mon.”

  “A kidnapping.”

  “Why did they call you to this? You’re Homicide.”

  He blinked several times. “What do you think, Tom?”

  “Do you think it’s a copycat?”

  Sydowski looked away, and swallowed. His Adam’s apple bounced and his face saddened. “Who knows?” he said, his eyes burning from the hotdog, the onions. The unknowns. “I have to go.”

  FIVE

  Dropping his last fare of the day at City College, Willie Hampton sighed at the wheel of his cab and began humming a tune from South Pacific. Old Willie couldn’t restrain his bliss. In three hours, he would strap his vacation-starved butt into the seat of an Oahu-bound 747 and leave the driving to the hacks who don’t look back. Take me to Pearl and step on it, Willie chuckled. Gonna get me a lei.

  Seaman Hampton of the U.S.S. California would pay his respects in person to the boys of the Arizona. He would pin on his Distinguished Service Medal and let them know he never forgot. No, sir. Then, for three weeks, he would ride at anchor. Willie switched off his radio and was headed for the shop when he spotted a fare near Balboa Park at San Jose and Paulding. A curbside.

  No dice, pal.

  Willie looked again. The guy had a kid, a little girl draped over his shoulder. Maybe she was sick or something. What the hell? But only if it was on his way. Maybe keep it off the books.

  Willie pulled over.

  “I’m outta service, but where you going?”

  “Logan and Good.”

  That’s Wintergreen. The man didn’t look like a rez of that war zone. He had dark glasses, was stone faced. The kid was sleeping, long blond hair. Balloon still tied to her hand. Must’ve come from the park. Okay, it was on his way.

  “Hop in.” Willie reached back, popped a rear door. The man placed the kid down to sleep, her head in his lap. “Too much fun for your princess today?” Willie said to his rearview mirror.

  “Yes.”

  Half a dozen blocks later, two SFPD black-and-whites, with lights wig-wagging, screamers yelping, roared by Willie in the opposite direction. He stifled his usual comment on San Francisco’s criminal vermin. His fare had dropped his head onto the rear dash.

  Aww, let ’em sleep.

  Edward Keller was not sleeping. He was praying. Thanking God for His radiant protection in helping him secure the Angel. All of his devotion, watching, planning -- the chloroform, the wig, ballo
on -- it had worked. Gloriously.

  Keller floated with his thoughts back, months back, even though time was meaningless to him. His mind was floating...to...a watery death.

  He repeated it to himself as if it were an incantation.

  It was April. April, death’s chosen month.

  Standing at the edge of the pier, gazing upon the Pacific. All that he was, all that he had been, looked back from the still water.

  Eyes that haunt my dreams.

  Prolonged severe grief reaction, the doctor had called it.

  Keller remembered the doctor staring at him, twisting a rubber band. “Accept that you cannot change reality, Edward. And understand that at this institute, those self-admitted take a lower priority. Move on with your life. Find solace where you can.

  Keller had found it.

  In his visions.

  And out there among the fog-shrouded Farrallon Islands, where his life ended, and where he would resurrect it. His heart now knew his destiny. It had been revealed to him.

  Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus. Dominus Deus sabaoth.

  Filling the tanks of the boat, Reimer studied him standing there at the dock’s edge, clutching the big paper-wrapped package.

  Edward.

  That was the guy’s name. Reimer couldn’t recall his last name. The guy looked--what? Late forties, early fifties? Slim? No. Gaunt, really. About six foot. Could use a haircut and lose that shaggy beard. If Reimer had to be honest, old Ed there looked bad. Seemed to get worse every year. A shame. One of the smartest people Reimer had met. Talked about religion, philosophy, business--when he talked. Sounded like some sort of professor.

  But he wasn’t.

  Reimer knew what he was. Yes, sir. It was a damn shame about him, something the old-timers at Half Moon Bay, those that knew, rarely talked about. Not to Ed’s face anyway. What good does talk do? What’s done is done. Reimer only wished to hell the guy wouldn’t come to him every time he wanted to go out there.

  “How you making out with that twenty-eight-footer I put you on to?” Reimer tried not to sound obvious. “She was in pretty good shape when you bought her. Lapstrake with twin Mercs, wasn’t it?”