“Exactly, he lost his temper. And you’re right; the last thing he wanted was for his fiancée to know he had killed her brother, which is why he tried to cover it up.”
“What do you mean?”
Cyrus folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Yes, your friend Dana tried to convince us that Mike had been out surfing and hit his head on a rock. Fancy that, surfing on the north side of Rincon beach on a south swell. Even I know that is impossible.”
“What do you know about surfing, Detective? You ever been out in big waves?”
“I’ve never even been swimming-in the ocean, that is. But I hear about surfing often enough around here to know.”
“You need to listen a little more because you are wrong. It is completely plausible for a surfer to get caught outside, that is, too far out when a big set of waves come through and getting back in the way he came out becomes impossible.”
“Come on, the surf is coming from the south. The waves at the north end of Rincon are almost flat now. Besides, there are no rocks.”
“He could have been surfing the point, or the south side beach like you say, where everyone usually surfs. Mike was not a good surfer, but he thought he was. He could have smacked his head and kept surfing. I’ve done it before myself. The adrenalin is rushing so hard you don’t even notice. He gets too far outside and then passes out on his board. The current takes him to the north end and dumps him on the beach. It’s happened before. A couple of months ago a novice surfer got too far out to get back in when a big swell pushed through at Faria Beach. The guy started out one evening and they didn’t find him until morning, several miles from where he started. Only difference was, unlike Mike, he survived.”
“Looks like you are getting ready for a good defense, counselor. Do you plan to take the case?”
“Do you plan to press charges?”
“That depends on our eyewitness and the line up tomorrow. It’s scheduled for 9:30 A.M. Please be prompt.”
“You shouldn’t put much hope in that line up. There are a lot of tall, blonde haired surfers in California.”
“Not with the same scar on his back Dana has.”
Martinez nodded and then he pointed close to Cyrus’s temple.
“How’d you get that scar, detective?”
“It happened a long time ago, counselor, I don’t remember.”
“You sure? Maybe it was a gift from some young, drunken surf bum letting off a little steam.”
“Maybe.”
“I can’t wait to cross examine you in court, Detective,” Roger said as he stepped around him and out the door.
Cyrus straightened up and headed for his desk. As contrary as the conversation was with Martinez, it actually lifted his spirits. God I hope you take the case, Mr. Martinez. At least you aren’t going to try to get him off with an insanity plea and we’ll get the conviction we are looking for.
When Cyrus entered the room, Max was sitting in front of his PC, typing away on the keyboard. With a loud sigh, he sat down and opened the bottom drawer which he kept stocked with several bottles of Dasani water. He got one out, took a couple of big gulps, and leaned back on his chair, simultaneously setting his feet on his desktop.
“You drink a lot of water, Cyrus.” Max said.
“You would too, if you had passed the kidney stone I did last year. Would you like a bottle?”
“No thanks. What happened with Mathers, did you charge him?”
Cyrus shook his head and said, “Rudy wants to wait until the eyewitness identifies him in the line-up tomorrow, so we had to let him go until then. One nice thing about having a famous suspect, it’s hard for them to hide, everybody recognizes them. Besides, if he takes off we’ll know for certain he’s guilty. He will be back tomorrow.”
Cyrus sat up in his chair and ran his fingers through his disheveled hair. The long hike up and down the seaside cliffs at Rincon had worn him out and he was beginning to feel it. He wasn’t in the mood for any more second guessing, he just wanted to wrap this case up quickly and hand it off to the DA’s office. He couldn’t wait until tomorrow was over and Dana was in jail or out on bond awaiting trial.
“I got Martinez’s statement, if you want to read it.”
“I’ll read it tomorrow. No, wait. Let me see it.”
Max took his computer mouse in his hand and clicked it a couple a times.
“I just sent it to you in an email.”
Cyrus glanced over the statement quickly to see if there was any mention of Operation Backfire or the FBI. There was nothing, only his recollection of the events the day before. With a relieved sigh, he flushed the email.
Chapter 7
Early the next morning, after finishing his danish, Cyrus hustled out of Anderson’s, into his squad car, and headed for work. Once he reached Figueroa Street, he turned left. Two car lengths further, he stopped behind the motionless car in front of him. To better see the cause of the delay, he opened the window, and stuck his head out. Two solid lines of stationary cars ran all the way to the station, at least six blocks away. Cyrus decided that waiting for the traffic to clear would mean being late and he didn’t want the eyewitness to have too much time to think about the consequences of testifying against a popular, local hero like Mathers. She might change her mind or even worse, she might change her story. He pulled into the Seven Eleven on the corner and parked in the handicap spot. He didn’t care if his unmarked squad car got towed; he would let them keep the old cruiser and get another one. If the County doesn’t want to pay for towing, Cyrus mused, they should provide parking for all the reporters and protestors they allow on station property.
As he got out, an elderly lady stared at him and stuck her nose in the air as she passed by, “You should be ashamed! I hope the police tow your car!”
“Police business,” Cyrus said flipping his badge at her, but she didn’t seem impressed. She lifted her nose in the air again, turned her head sharply, and walked away indignantly. God, how I hate Santa Barbara, he muttered to himself as he headed toward the station.
Getting transferred from Long Beach to Santa Barbara was supposed to be a sort of semi-retirement. He took the job so he could be close to his ailing mother and get some relief from the constant grind working Long Beach. Twenty years of putting away gang members and a couple of corrupt high ranking city officials had resulted in a long list of enemies. Santa Barbara was supposed to be easy duty. His case load dropped from an average of twenty per year to two per year.
But he never dreamed how difficult and sensational those two cases would be. He wished with all his heart that a fog bank would roll in permanently or even better, that another El Niño would blow through. Maybe the whole town will roll away in one giant mudslide.
It was the same chaotic, circus-scene outside the station as the Nichols case. Several TV reporters with camera crewmen from the three local stations, at least ten reporters from the local Santa Barbara and Ventura papers, all pressed together outside the front door of the police station and yelled out questions to the Detective Captain Rudy. Around the perimeter of the press corps, protestors sympathetic to Mathers, held up signs which read Free Mathers. Cyrus pushed his way through the crowd while Rudy stood at the microphone in front of the department’s doors reading a prepared statement. Cyrus tried to slip by Rudy in an unobtrusive manner and head to his desk, but before he reached the door, Rudy stepped back from the podium and grabbed Cyrus by the arm as he passed him.
“Cyrus Fleming is the lead detective on this case.” He said to the now silent crowd. Everyone turned their attention toward Cyrus. “He can answer any further questions you may have, thank-you.”
After the brutal question and answer period with the local press ended, Cyrus backed away from the podium and through the front door of the station. A group of uniformed police blocked the reporters who tried to follow him.
Once inside, Cyrus heard a voice coming from his area, “Where is Detective Fleming?” He looked at his watch; twenty
minutes late, not good. Seated at a chair beside Cyrus’s desk, the eyewitness fidgeted with her keys and jiggled her right leg as she spoke to Max. She’s as nervous as a filly on race day, Cyrus said to himself while he shook his head, I must try to calm her down.
“He’ll be here shortly, Miss Carswell; can I get you some more coffee?” Max stared intently at his computer screen as he spoke.
Cyrus appeared at his desk a moment later. Standing in front of his chair, he tried to smooth over his mussed up, hair, using his hand as a comb. Trying to calm himself, he held his red-cheeked face in his hands, and took several deep breaths.
“What happened, Cyrus?” Max said.
“Damned reporters!” He bellowed as he sat down. He winced and rolled his eyes. You idiot, he said to himself, you are supposed to appear reassuring to the witness, not terrifying. He placed his hands flat on his desktop in front of him and smiled at Briana. “Pardon me for my profane outburst, Miss Carswell.”
“Oh do not worry, Detective Fleming. I have seen Governor Dunbar respond to reporters in a similar manner many times. They do have a tendency to provoke, do they not?”
Cyrus nodded and his face brightened.
“Did they talk about the Nichols case, Cyrus?”
“Oh yeah, Max, they wouldn’t shut up about it. They asked me if the DA had decided to let this case go to trial like he did in the Nichols case. And if I thought Mathers would be smart to plead insanity and go free like Nichols did. They went on and on about the department’s biggest failure in twenty-five years. They really enjoy it you know. The press are a sadistic bunch.”
Miss Carswell reached across the desk and held Fleming’s hand, “They are always trying to get a headline. Just forget about them.”
Cyrus kept his surprise at Miss Carswell’s familiarity from showing so as not to offend her. Normally, the affectations people in the Central Coast showed new acquaintances annoyed him, always hugging and kissing each other in an obviously ingenuous manner. He much preferred a good handshake or even better, a friendly wave from a distance. Sometimes a simple hello would do. But now that he sat opposite the beautiful Miss Carswell, he gained a new appreciation for the custom.
She had large, doe eyes and her politeness, especially in a woman so pretty, surprised him. He caught himself staring at her and stopped. He reached into his desk drawer and retrieved a small stack of paperwork. He decided he’d better get back to business. He had a lot of work to do today and he didn’t want a public display of admiration on his part to influence the impartiality of his witness.
“O.K. Miss Carswell,” Cyrus pulled a manila folder from his desk and then continued, “Let’s go over your statement. First, for the record, your full name, please.”
“My name is Briana Carswell.”
Cyrus made a check mark with his pen beside the name on her statement, and then he said, “You said you arrived at Rincon Beach around 6:30 am, is that right?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Kind of early for a day at the beach isn’t it?”
“I always go to the beach early. I like to get there before it gets crowded. Usually I go windsurfing. But that day the wind was too strong offshore. I do not like having to tack against the wind to get back. So I just went for a morning swim and then took a nap on the beach.”
“Did you drive?”
“No, my next door neighbor works at a bakery in Ventura. She dropped me off in exchange for taking care of her little dog. I gave your partner her name and address. She picked me up later, after I called her.”
“And when did you first see the blonde-haired man and Mr. Tanner fighting?”
“It must have been around 7 am. I didn’t bring my wetsuit and the water is chilly, so I didn’t swim for long. I heard them shouting about fifteen minutes after I lay down on my towel.”
“Could you hear what they were shouting?”
“It was very windy; you know how the Santa Anas are. I think I heard someone mention the name Dee, or something…”
“Just a minute, Miss Carswell” Cyrus said as he took out his notebook. He scrolled down a list of names and then he said, “Deidra, maybe?”
“I am not sure, it was very windy.”
“Were they fighting?”
“Struggling- they didn’t swing their fists. The short man with black hair grabbed the tall, blonde around the waist and tried to wrestle him down. The blonde pushed Mr. Tanner to the ground. He stood there for a while and yelled something at him- I couldn’t hear what. Then Mr. Tanner got up, and ran up the wooden set of stairs at the north end of the beach. The blonde walked back the opposite way, toward the stairs at the south entrance.”
When she stopped, Cyrus paused his note taking and said, “I don’t understand. It says here on the dispatcher’s log you said you saw the blonde haired man stand over Mr. Tanner, who was lying still, face down, on the beach, and then hide the blue bat under a large piece of driftwood.”
“That was later. I didn’t call you after the first fight.”
“There were two fights? Why didn’t you call the police the first time?”
“I didn’t see the need then; no one appeared to be injured. I thought they had gone.”
“They came back then?”
“About twenty minutes or so later. The sun was shining earlier than usual that morning. The Santa Anas were making me very warm, so I went for another swim. I came back and lay down on my towel and fell asleep. When I woke up I saw the blonde haired man standing over Mr. Tanner’s body. Well at least I think it was him.”
“Why do you say you think it was Mr. Tanner?”
“The body had a wetsuit on. The first time I saw him, if it was him, he was wearing black swim trunks and a white tee shirt.”
“You’re not sure you saw Tanner lying on the beach?”
“It looked like him. He was very small and had the same black hair. And it didn’t matter who it was, I had to call the police then.”
Cyrus wrote a note about Tanner not having a wetsuit the first time Briana saw him. Once he finished, he looked up at Briana and said, “Go on.”
“The blonde was holding the blue handled bat in his hand. That is when I saw him run to that big piece of dried up tree and hide the bat. Then he ran very quickly up the stairs.”
Cyrus nodded his head. Max got up from his desk and walked over to Cyrus and Briana. “The bailiff just sent me an email. The lineup room is ready.”
The line-up went quick. Max had made sure the bailiff set up everything to comply with the Department of Justice’s best practices policy: all the men had the same general features, they all had the same blonde hair and tall stature, and most importantly, they all had a scar on their back. Dana and the four other tall blonde haired men stood in a single file. They faced to the right and to left. Next, they took off their shirts and turned around with their backs facing the one-way.
As soon as Dana turned around and his scar came into view, Briana pointed him out. Exactly as I thought, Cyrus said to himself, there aren’t many scars like that one. Cyrus arrested Dana for the murder of Mike Tanner. The result of the fingerprint analysis showed that Dana’s were a fourteen point match with those found on the murder weapon.
Cyrus’s job was now complete; the rest was up to the DA. The preliminary hearing was over in fifteen minutes. Mathers was indicted and charged with first degree murder, then bound over for trial. Bail was set at a quarter million, the minimum for a capital offense charge in the State of California. Cyrus expected the bail to be light. He had no priors and he wasn’t a flight risk given his notoriety. He pled not guilty.
The Bailiff, Jim Thurston gave Cyrus a menacing glare when he handed Dana over for transfer to the city jail, and then turned to Dana and said, “Dana, why are you hanging around this man?”
“Well, Mr. Thurston, he arrested me. He thinks I have killed Kelsey’s brother Mike.”
“That’s ridiculous!” He gave Cyrus another contemptuous glare as he pushed the baske
t on the counter closer to its edge.
Cyrus glared back and said nothing. He realized Thurston hated him, but there was little he could do about it. Although Cyrus held the rank of Senior Detective Sergeant, Jim Thurston was born in Santa Barbara. His job as a bailiff was more of a political appointment than anything else. He played golf or went fishing every weekend with the District Attorney, and sometimes even the mayor, who had been on his high school football team. Cyrus never understood why Thurston just kept his lowly position as Bailiff. Thurston was stick thin and muscular and he was always mocking him about being out of shape. He had thick, wavy brown hair with streaks of grey as well as a neatly trimmed handle bar moustache. He was at least 10 years older than Cyrus and looked ten years younger. It made Cyrus queasy to think of this.
“Please empty your pockets of all your possessions and put them in this basket. It’s for safekeeping until your father gets here and bails you back out,” Thurston said, “I’m sure this nitwit transplant here has goofed.”
“Hey, Cyrus!” Max yelled to him from the back door of the station.
“Bailey just got a call; the prisoner transport van broke down. Rudy says we have to deliver the prisoner ourselves.”
Cyrus led Dana through the main door to his squad car, Max followed.
Chapter 8
Normally having to do the job of a bailiff would have annoyed Cyrus, but the short trek to the Santa Barbara County Jail in the relatively light, early-evening, traffic took less than ten minutes, so he didn’t mind. As he sped up to merge on to the 101 north, he noticed a black, late model, Ford 350 pickup truck in the right lane slow down and parallel him. A thin man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and a mask leaned out of the passenger side window. Cyrus didn’t recognize the face on the disguise at first. The visage had narrowly spaced, bulging, red, eyes and razor thin lips formed in a circle, like a preacher preaching a fire and brimstone sermon. A second later he remembered who it reminded him of –Al Gore.
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