Red Line (3 page)

Sinclair got off the freeway at Camino Tassajara Road and drove west toward Blackhawk. In 1975, a land developer named Ken Behring had bought the former 4,200-acre horse ranch and began building houses and the exclusive Blackhawk Country Club. Eventually, about 2,000 houses were built, including many large estates, one of which was the 28,000-square-foot Behring estate. During the 1990s, the overnight millionaires from the technology boom snapped up the lesser estates, the “McMansions,” as fast as they could be built.

Braddock juggled two phones and a notepad on her lap as she spoke. “Brenda Caldwell has no rap sheet and her CDL is clear, not even a ticket in the last five years. Paul is clean too. His bio on the Children’s Hospital website says he’s board certified in neurological surgery, med school at USC, did his residency at Mass General in Boston. He was on the staff at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia until he came to Oakland in 2007. I found his house online. Four bedrooms, three and a half baths, four thousand square feet. It sold in 1997 for seven hundred thousand, and last sold in May 2007 for two point one million. That must be when the Caldwells bought it.”

When Sinclair had worked with Phil, any information they needed beyond what existed in law enforcement systems or what they could get with a phone call waited until they returned to their desks.

“What kind of phone is that?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Sinclair took a closer look at her phone. “I’m not a total dinosaur. Lots of crooks have iPhones, so I know how they work, but the department issues—”

“That archaic phone that can survive an earthquake but can’t do much more than call and text. Is that really your only phone?”

“It’s worked out so far.”

Sinclair flashed his badge, and the guard at the security shack waved them through. He parked behind a marked Danville car, and a female officer immediately exited and approached. “My sergeant told me to stand by and assist you any way I can.”

“Wait here. If we need you, we’ll call,” said Sinclair.

Braddock said something to the female officer then scurried to catch up. “People said you became less of an asshole when you quit drinking, but I’m not so sure.”

“Huh?”

“Out here, they don’t have murders every day, so this is a big deal. You dismissed her like she was a meter maid.”

“I’m here to investigate a murder, not nurture some Mayberry cop’s self-esteem.”

“Ever think someday we might need the local’s help?”

“I sure hope not.”

The brick walkway traversed a perfectly manicured lawn and ended at an immense oak door. Sinclair pressed the doorbell and heard a musical tone—probably something
by Bach—echo throughout the house. He ran his hand through his hair and straightened his tie. The door opened, and a slim man wearing glasses and a dress shirt with the top two buttons undone stood there.

Sinclair swept back the corner of his suit coat to reveal the badge clipped to his belt. “Dr. Caldwell, we’re with the police department. My name’s Sergeant Sinclair. This is my partner, Sergeant Braddock.”

Sinclair intentionally avoided mentioning Oakland or homicide. He’d let them think they were still investigating a missing juvenile.

“Have you found my son?” His eyes were bloodshot. Sinclair sensed worry and a sleepless night.

“May we come in?”

The doctor led the way across a marble-floored foyer with a soaring staircase, past a formal living room and dining room. Neither seemed to get much use. A great room took up the back of the house, sofas and coordinated chairs surrounding a TV and fireplace on one side and a large kitchen with the requisite granite countertops and stainless steel appliances on the other.

A plump woman wearing black leggings and an oversized T-shirt sat at a round table that matched the maple kitchen cabinets. The report said Brenda was forty-two. She still had a pretty face, but Sinclair suspected she was slimmer when she snagged the doctor and got pregnant with Zachary. In front of her was a coffee mug and a pile of used tissues, many with black streaks from her mascara.

“Would you officers like some coffee?” she asked.

“That would be nice,” said Sinclair. Had she not offered, Sinclair would have requested coffee to give her something to do, something that would shake up her display of
grief—real or rehearsed. She poured two mugs and set out a container of half-and-half and a canister filled with packets of white, pink, blue, and yellow sweeteners. Sinclair sat down with his black coffee while Braddock fiddled with cream and sugar.

For homicide investigators, the next-of-kin notification was secondary to their investigation. Sinclair needed to rule the parents out as suspects and gather as much information as possible before they were overcome with the shock of their loss. He jumped in.

“Have you heard from any of his friends or anyone at all since you made the report at midnight?” Sinclair asked.

“No,” replied the doctor. Brenda shook her head.

Sinclair focused on Dr. Caldwell, watching every microexpression in his face. He glanced at Braddock, pleased she was doing the same with the wife.

“Does he have any friends in Oakland? Any reason he’d go there at night?”

“None that I know of and certainly not after dark,” said Dr. Caldwell. “Why do you ask?”

“Did you have a fight with Zachary or did he do anything that required you to discipline him recently?”

The doctor looked bewildered and turned to Brenda. She said, “No, Zack is a perfect son.”

Sinclair continued to focus on the father. “Dr. Caldwell?”

“I’m not home as much as my wife, but the answer’s no. I never have to push him—he’s self-motivated.” His eyes darted to Braddock, then back to Sinclair. “Are you suggesting that our son ran away because of something we did?”

Sinclair sensed anger or maybe just indignation in Dr. Caldwell’s response. He ignored it.

“I’m not judging here, but I need to ask—does Zachary have any friends who are into drugs or the fast life?”

The doctor’s face relaxed. “No, Zack associates with other kids like him. Good kids. If he were into drugs, I’d know.”

Sinclair had heard all parents say that. They’re the last to know.

“Is there any reason for your son to be in Oakland—say around Children’s Hospital?”

Dr. Caldwell’s face twisted—surprised or perplexed. “You know that’s where I work. I’m a physician—a surgeon. What exactly is going on?”

There was no right reaction for parents when learning of their child’s death. Some burst into tears, some threw things, some attacked the person doing the notification, and some sat there stoically and without a trace of emotion. No particular response indicated guilt or innocence. Sinclair had learned to trust his instincts, which he found more reliable than a polygraph machine.

“I’m sorry I had to ask these questions.” He pulled two business cards from his shirt pocket and slid them across the table to Zachary’s parents, carefully studying their faces. “My partner and I are with the Oakland Police Department—Homicide. I’m very sorry to inform you . . .”

The coffee mug slipped from Brenda’s hand onto the table with a clunk. She grabbed at it and knocked it to the tile floor where it exploded in a hundred pieces. She pushed back her chair and jumped up.

Braddock put her hand on Brenda’s shoulder and gently pushed her back into her chair. “Let me take care of it.”

Dr. Caldwell took a deep breath. “Zachary’s dead?”

Sinclair nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Braddock grabbed a roll of paper towels off the kitchen counter, tore off a handful of pieces, and began sopping up the coffee on the table. Then she squatted and swept the pieces of broken cup into a pile.

“How?” Dr. Caldwell asked in a steady voice.

“We don’t know yet, but we’re treating it as a homicide.”

Brenda grasped Dr. Caldwell’s right hand with both of hers. “You mean he was murdered?” She fought back tears.

“We believe so,” said Sinclair.

Dr. Caldwell slid his chair toward his wife and put his arm around her. She buried her head into his chest and sobbed.

Sinclair parked in one of the two slots reserved for the homicide standby team in front of the Police Administration Building, a nine-story rectangular building of glass and steel. When the PAB opened in 1962, on the edge of what was then skid row a half mile from the center of Oakland’s downtown, the modern, sleek, and clean police station was the anchor for the area’s renewal. Although the building suffered major damage during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, and engineers determined it should be demolished and rebuilt, City Hall could never come to a decision to allocate the money. More than two decades later, with a minor retrofit, the building still housed most of the department’s officers and civilians, all of whom prayed they wouldn’t be inside when the next big one hit the Bay Area.

As Sinclair slammed his door, Braddock pulled her car into the space behind him. Sinclair had wanted to leave the Caldwells’ house immediately after he broke the news to them, letting the Danville officer handle the emotional aftermath. However, Braddock quietly took the lead, and after thirty minutes of consoling words and gentle pats
on their arms, she received Zachary’s laptop computer, an index card containing his passwords, a list of his closest friends, and an assurance they would call her if they heard anything useful. Sinclair kept his mouth shut and stayed out of Braddock’s way.

The homicide office was on the second floor. A side door at the top of a flight of stairs led from the street to the back hallway of the Criminal Investigation Division and into homicide. The walls were painted a shade of blue that psychologists in the 1970s thought promoted calm and tranquility, although it never seemed to work for Sinclair. A few years ago, pipes in the ceiling had burst and flooded the room with water and sewage, destroying everything except for their files, which officers were able to salvage. City workers brought the grey metal desks and file cabinets that had graced the PAB’s offices for its first fifty years back out of storage. In between the new ceiling panels and florescent lights above and the new floor below, the office looked little different from what it did in the sixties.

Sinclair swept into the office and halted at Connie Williams’s desk. “Will you hold, please?” she said into her phone, then handed him a stack of pink memos. Connie was a stout woman with straightened black hair, a copper-colored complexion, and full lips. “Eight messages, the first one’s urgent.”

“When’re you gonna leave that old goat you’re married to?”

“Honey, it’s taken me forty years to train him. Besides, you like them skinny girls. I’d surely be too much woman for you.”

Connie had been hired by the city at a time when they were still called clerk typists and had been the homicide
admin for thirty years. Sinclair grinned. “I’d be willing to try.”

“I transferred your phone line to me, so let me know if you want it back,” she said to Sinclair. Then she punched the flashing button on her phone. “Sorry for the wait, so how may I help you?”

Sinclair continued past the seven empty desks belonging to the homicide suppression team and caught the lieutenant’s eye as he passed his office door. “I’ll be right in, Lieutenant,” he said. Four of the other eight homicide investigators assigned to the unit sat at their desks. Their eyes followed Sinclair as he dropped his briefcase on his desk.

“Seventeen-year-old boy from Danville, dead on a bus bench at Fifty-Second and MLK, hands and feet bound, no gunshot or stab wounds,” Sinclair announced to satisfy them.

Sinclair filled his dark blue coffee mug, an outline of a dead body printed on one side and “Homicide: Our Day Begins When Someone Else’s Ends” on the other, and headed to the lieutenant’s office. Seated in the glass-walled office behind a gray metal desk twice the size of Sinclair’s was a flabby man in his late forties with thinning hair. Carl Maloney’s sole investigative experience had been working Internal Affairs, so when he was given the coveted homicide commander position, everyone knew it was a reward for his loyalty to the chief. Nevertheless, Sinclair liked him because Maloney didn’t pretend to know anything about homicide investigations and seldom told his people how to do their jobs.

Sinclair eased into a vinyl-covered chair in front of Maloney’s desk. “We talked to the parents,” he said. Braddock slipped into the chair next to him. “According to
them, the kid’s an angel. We stopped at the Starbucks where the kid left his car last night and talked with the Danville cops. So far, they got nothing. We figure the vic either left there with someone willingly and things later went bad, or someone snatched him.”

“What makes it a homicide?”

Sinclair knew that people at City Hall and the chief’s office wanted someone to blame every time another homicide number was added to the yearly tally, and as the messenger, the homicide lieutenant was often that person. Sinclair explained the bruising, needle marks, and attire. “The boy had no prior drug use. Hands and legs zip-tied.”

Maloney looked past them for a moment. “Let’s wait until we see the autopsy. The chief’s office is getting questions already from the head of the hospital’s department of medicine, so keep me apprised.”

Sinclair got up and took a step to the door as Maloney added, “Have you finished your press release?”

“I haven’t even sat . . .”

“I’m not about to tell you who you can date, but it created problems during your previous tour in homicide when Channel Six reported on murders before we even put out a press release.” Maloney’s chair creaked when he leaned forward. “Let’s just say I’d appreciate it if we avoided that problem this time around.”

“I’ll get it done first thing, Lieutenant.”

*

Sinclair e-mailed the release to the twenty people on the distribution list and printed three copies. He slid one into his file, dropped one on the lieutenant’s desk, and then handed one to Connie and stood next to her as she read it.

“We’ve already notified the parents, but Danville PD wants time to notify the school so the grief counselors can do their thing,” he said.

“The only thing in here that will pique the media’s interest is the Danville reference. Other than that, teenage boy found dead in Oakland isn’t news. You’ll let me know when you release his name or call this a homicide?”

“Sure will.”

“And you’ll let me know if you want to start talking to the vultures yourself?” Connie said. “And you know I’m not including Ms. Schueller with my reference to reporters being vultures.”

“Of course.”

“Coroner called a second time. They’re starting.” Connie returned to a foot-high stack of reports on her desk.

Sinclair walked the two blocks to the county building, buzzed himself in through the main office, and walked down the stairs to a small room that led to the morgue. He pulled a cloth gown over his clothes and donned a paper cap, facemask, glasses, and booties. Then he pushed through the double doors. Despite the powerful ventilation fans that noisily sucked out the air, the smells of formaldehyde, antiseptic, and decaying flesh immediately filled Sinclair’s nostrils. New police trainees would sometimes rush back out and vomit the first time they entered the room during the academy, but it took a body that had ripened for several days to bother Sinclair.

Dr. Gorman stood over a naked body laid out on one of the six stainless steel tables. “Good morning, Sergeant Sinclair,” said the gray-haired man as he peered over his broad nose through a large magnifying glass. “I see three separate injection sites that apparently entered a vein on the right arm and at least five additional ones that missed the vein. I’ll remove and examine this tissue further under the microscope. If you allow me to play detective for a moment, I’ll say it would be odd for a right-handed person to inject himself in the right arm.”

“How do you know he’s right handed?” Sinclair asked.

“Excellent question.”

Most pathologists who took up this specialty had difficulty dealing with people and realized a doctor didn’t need a bedside manner when his patients were dead. But not Gorman. He was social, had a dry sense of humor, and regularly spoke like a professor. “Our subject’s family doctor contacted the office first thing this morning and forwarded his medical file. The subject had a school sports physical a month ago. Neither the subject, in his
personal history questionnaire, nor the examining doctor noted any health or medical issues. I personally spoke to the physician, and he doubts the subject had ever used an illegal substance.”

“So someone else injected him.”

“You will have to figure that out, but permit me to present several observations. If you look here,” Gorman said as he cut into a purplish bruise just below the injection marks. “Young, healthy men don’t bruise easily. The bruises are shallow, and since they are not well developed, I suspect they were caused close to the time of death. I further suspect the hand that grasped him was quite powerful, probably an adult male.”

“Someone held his arm when they shot him up?”

“That would be a reasonable deduction. Look here.” Gorman pointed to a spot on the body’s right chest where a ruler lay between two marks. “These two abnormalities appear to be abrasions combined with burn marks. In a sense, they are burns. The tissue between the two marks is also disturbed. Are you familiar with electroshock incapacitant devices?”

“You talking about a Taser?”

“Precisely, but these injuries were likely caused by a contact device, commonly referred to as a stun gun. The abrasions are consistent with skin contact by the probes during a brief struggle that probably ensued between your assailant and our deceased. I read a number of medical journal reports around the time of the JonBenét Ramsey incident. Some experts suspected the marks on that little girl’s body resulted from a stun gun, which initiated quite a volume of forensic research about them. To incapacitate a person with a stun gun requires maintaining contact between
the victim and the charged probes for at least three seconds, maybe longer for a healthy male such as our subject here.”

Sinclair had seen dozens of stun guns. Along with tear gas, they were legal for anyone except convicted felons and could be bought at thousands of places around the state. Although Dr. Gorman was probably right about the assailant being a strong male, Sinclair could think of several scenarios where a smaller, weaker person could hold a stun gun to Caldwell for three seconds, so this theory only told him that his suspect was
probably
a relatively strong man—not a hell of a lot to go on.

Sinclair stepped back as Gorman grabbed a scalpel and made a Y-shaped incision across the corpse’s chest, another across the top of the chest, and a vertical cut from the neck to the pubic bone. A coroner’s assistant stepped in with long-handled pruning shears. Although Sinclair thought of the lifeless forms lying on the autopsy tables as no more human than he thought of a hamburger as a big, brown-eyed cow, the sound of the ribs and breastbone crunching grated on him like the sound of a drill in a dentist office.

Gorman lifted off the breastplate—the sternum with attached ribs—exposing the thoracic cavity, and scooped out a beaker of blood and divided it between three plastic jars with printed labels. He pulled out the organs one at a time and placed them on a wood cutting board that was resting on the corpse’s thighs. He poked, prodded, and sliced each one and finally cut a piece, placed it into another labeled jar, and discarded the organ in a stainless steel pan. He spent more time with the heart, carefully turning it over in his hands and cutting sections away while examining it closely.

“There’s no evidence of heart disease or trauma to indicate an immediate cause of death,” Gorman said. “My determination will have to wait for the toxicology results.”

“Can you rush that? It would be nice to know what killed him.”

Gorman plopped the heart into the pan and looked at Sinclair. “I’ve given you all I can at this time. Toxicology results take up to six weeks for a reason. Very strict protocols must be followed.”

Sinclair sighed. “I know, Doc. It’s just that if some doper ended up unconscious in the ER, the hospital would draw blood and within an hour know whether he ODed on cocaine or barbiturates. My vic’s a doctor’s kid. He was found next to a hospital. It would be nice to know if he died from street drugs or something that came from the hospital.”

Sinclair pulled off his mask as he headed for the door.

“Sergeant,” Gorman called out.

Sinclair turned.

“My son is a pathologist at Children’s Hospital. He and Dr. Caldwell are friends. Their wives socialize and their sons attended school together. If someone were to advise you of preliminary toxicology results, with the understanding they were unofficial, is it possible to guarantee that such information would never appear in a report and never be attributed to the source?”

“I deal with confidential informants all the time. I would never betray one.” Sinclair untied the gown and reached in his shirt pocket. “I’ll leave my card just in case someone needs it.”