Red Line (5 page)

It was dark by the time Sinclair and Braddock returned to the office. Everyone else was gone for the day. They opened their takeout on their desks. Sinclair bit into his half-pound cheeseburger, and Braddock cut the grilled chicken in her Caesar salad into bite-size pieces with a plastic knife.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Braddock asked.

“Talk about what?” Sinclair stuffed several French fries into his mouth.

“About our little stop at the city physician.”

Sinclair was sick of people asking. For twenty-eight days, the counselors at the Merritt Peralta Institute tried to force him to identify how he felt every minute. He had one emotion down pat. The one that came up when people demanded he pee in a cup whenever they snapped their fingers, when bureaucrats with gold badges made him jump through hoops to get the job done, and when he looked at one body after another at the morgue.

“I’ve known others who drank more after they returned from the Middle East,” said Braddock. “You must’ve seen plenty over there.”

Sinclair had seen plenty. Long periods of dull routine and boredom, interrupted by an IED blowing up a Humvee directly in front of him. More routine, interrupted by a ricocheted bullet from an AK-47 hitting the soldier next to him. More routine, interrupted by an RPG round pinging off the roof of his SUV. It was a dud—he lived another day. He’d lost count of how many times he was under fire and learned to sleep through explosions from mortar rounds going off inside his compound. Until one firefight, after which he never again slept through the night.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said.

“I heard they awarded you a Silver Star. What was that for?”

Although the chain of command for the Army Criminal Investigation Command, to which he was assigned, had recommended him for the Silver Star, the Department of the Army downgraded it. Sinclair’s partner, a fellow CID agent, was also awarded two medals for the same battle, but they were handed to his wife along with a folded flag at Arlington Cemetery. Four MPs, half of the squad that was providing security for Sinclair’s CID team, died that day, too.

“It was actually a Bronze Star,” he said. “The army put some fancy language on the citation, but all I did that day was to try to stay alive and keep some other soldiers from dying until help came.”

Sinclair looked at his half-eaten hamburger. Even though it was his first meal since the phone call woke him fourteen hours earlier, he was no longer hungry.

While Braddock ate her salad, he listened to his voicemails and organized the pages of interview notes into files. He and Braddock had interviewed nine kids at the high
school and five more at their homes. During most investigations, Sinclair had to fight the urge to blame his homicide victims, but the truth was most were involved in something that led to their death. So far, it looked like the Caldwell kid was an exception. He was a straight arrow.

After rattling around through the unit file cabinets, Sinclair called across the room to Braddock. “Whatever happened to my old case packets?”

“Connie filed those you cleared, and the lieutenant reassigned your open ones to Phil and me.”

“What about—”

“Samantha Arquette?” Braddock interrupted. “The girl on the bus bench a year ago?”

“You know the case?”

“Phil assigned it to me last month.”

“I dropped the ball on that one,” said Sinclair. Along with a few others around that time, he thought.

The way he’d been assigned Samantha Arquette’s death eight months ago had pissed him off. Plenty pissed him off back then. Ever since he killed Alonzo Moore, Sinclair had been coming to work with a hangover nearly every day. The fog in his head finally cleared around ten, about the same time the fog burned off over San Francisco, and by three or four, all he could think about was getting off work and having a drink. Lieutenant Maloney had called him into his office at 3:30. Officer Kyle Newman, a sexual investigator, was there and told him about the Arquette case. Fourteen-year-old Samantha and her mother, Jane, were visiting Jane’s old college roommate, Donna Fitzgerald, in San Francisco. Samantha and Donna’s daughter, fifteen-year-old Jenny, went to Berkeley for the day. Early the following morning, an unknown male left the girls
on a bus bench, and Samantha walked onto the street and was hit by a car. She suffered numerous fractures, internal injuries, and a serious head injury.

The hospitals found a cocktail of drugs—Ecstasy, animal tranquilizer, and Rohypnol—in both girls as well as evidence of vaginal rape. Because of the date rape drugs in her system, Jenny had little memory of the events. Samantha never regained consciousness. A month later, still in a coma, she was transferred to a hospital in New York, where she died. Sinclair knew the felony murder rule meant a death that occurred during the commission of certain felonies, such as rape and robbery, even if not directly caused by the suspect, was first-degree murder, and since the transportation of the girls after the rape—known as asportation in legal terms—was part of the crime, the rapist was accountable for consequences that occurred during that transportation. And the victim didn’t need to die right away; the death was a homicide as long as she died from her injuries within a year and one day of the act.

Although technically a homicide, it was a shit case. Newman had worked it for five months and got nowhere. Even if Sinclair busted his ass and was lucky enough to make an arrest, the suspects would probably turn out to be juveniles or college kids with no prior record. They’d claim—in words supplied by their lawyers—that young people have sex when partying. They would say that the girls seemed older and that, when the girls later passed out, they did the right thing and took them for help. Sure, they made mistakes, but the death was accidental. It wasn’t as if they grabbed some girl off the street, raped her, and cut her throat. Although not a defense for the crime, the mitigating circumstances would play with a judge and jury. Even if
Sinclair identified the suspects, the DA would likely plead them out to a few years at most. Sinclair had plenty of other cases to work, ones with promising leads, ones that would land the killer in prison for twenty years or for life.

During the subsequent months, Sinclair had done little more than go through the motions on the Arquette case. His heart wasn’t in it. Each night after work, he’d down a dozen drinks at the Warehouse or polish off a fifth of bourbon at home. Mrs. Arquette called him several times a week, always first thing in the morning. He was in no mood to listen to her reminisce about her daughter and beg him to do more. Hers wasn’t his only open case. It wasn’t the only one he wished he could solve. It wasn’t the only one he felt guilty about for not doing more.

After he crashed his car and went through several days of detox at the treatment center, his head began to clear. But the guilt remained.

Braddock dropped her salad container in the trashcan and pulled the Samantha Arquette case packet out of her desk. “The case was cold by the time it was handed off to you. There wasn’t much to go on.”

“Bullshit,” said Sinclair. “I should’ve solved it.”

“I was working sexual assault when this case came in on a Monday morning. Samantha was still at Children’s and hadn’t regained consciousness. Newman and I talked to Jenny at ACH, but the last thing she remembered was meeting some boys on College Avenue—the hippie area she called it—and going to a frat party. She had the classic symptoms of Rohypnol amnesia. Her description of the boys was all over the place. One minute a blond, the next an Arab. She thought they went to a bedroom in a frat house, but then thought they were raped in People’s Park inside
some hippie tent. Both mothers said the girls were virgins, and the sexual assault exams were consistent with that.”

One of the things Sinclair liked about homicide was his victims were dead. He hated going to Alameda County Hospital and interviewing victims as Braddock did. He pulled Newman’s investigative report from the case packet and paged through it. Newman had hit every fraternity at the University of California with photos of the girls, but nothing panned out. It was rush week, the weekend before classes began, and every fraternity had some kind of party going on. Newman continued trying to talk to Jenny Fitzgerald until, finally, her mother told him to stop calling. Jenny was in therapy and her mother wasn’t about to allow the police or courts to interfere with that.

Sinclair scanned the report he had written back then. He’d asked the lab to resubmit the DNA profiles from the rape kits—both girls had semen and hair evidence—but both turned up negative, which meant the suspects’ profiles weren’t in the system. That supported his assumption they were college kids. He had sent flyers to the UC Police, and they distributed them around campus, but no tips came in.

“Homicide’s supposed to solve the tough ones,” said Sinclair. “I did no more than Newman.”

“We have a second chance.”

“A year ago, Arquette and Fitzgerald got left on the bus bench. Last night, Caldwell. What’s the connection?”

“Why must you call these kids by their last names?” asked Braddock.

“Didn’t they teach you in your report writing classes that we list victims, suspects, and witnesses by their last names?”

“I’m not talking about in a formal report. I’m talking about between me and you. Their names are Samantha, Jenny, and Zachary. You don’t need to dehumanize them.”

“If I humanized every homicide victim, I’d go crazy. Thinking of them as numbers on the board, last names on a report, is what allows me to do this job.”

“Thinking of them as someone’s children is what makes me
want
to do this job,” she said.

“Feeling isn’t healthy in this job,” said Sinclair.

“I had met Jenny. I sat by Samantha’s bedside. I talked to the mothers. Those assholes not only raped those girls, they stole their innocence. Now there’s Zachary. There must be a connection beyond the bus bench.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Sinclair “Tomorrow we’ll do a full background on all three of them and see if any commonalities pop up.”

“Sounds great.”

Sinclair looked at his watch. Nine o’clock. “Go home. The next case is yours, and you need to be fresh when the phone rings at oh-dark-thirty with a dead crack dealer in East Oakland.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be a few minutes behind you,” said Sinclair. “I’m just gonna clear this paper off my desk.”

Sinclair brought his case log up to date and filed the reports, statements, and other papers in the Caldwell case packet. He grabbed the Arquette packet from Braddock’s desk and opened it. On top was a legal pad with Braddock’s log, beginning with an entry last month:
Case reassigned to Braddock.
Her notes followed.

Sinclair started at the original crime reports and statements the patrol officers took from people at the scene and
hospital. He found the call records from Jenny’s phone, but not for Samantha’s. It was a pain in the ass to get a search warrant for phone records, so he understood if Newman had tried to go through the family instead. Often, Sinclair just checked the call log on the phone, if he could get his hands on it. He scanned the property record. A tech had recovered items of bloody clothes and a rape kit from the hospital, but there was no mention of a phone. One more thing he had missed when he worked the case.

His cell phone vibrated. The text read,
On my way home.
He replied
OK
, stuffed everything back into the case packet, and returned it to Braddock’s desk.

Just before he flicked off the lights, he stopped. He returned to Braddock’s desk, pulled the legal pad out of the Arquette packet, and flipped to the end of Braddock’s notes. He wrote today’s date, followed by:
Case reassigned to Sinclair
, and put the packet in his desk drawer.

The steam fogged the shower door, but Sinclair could still make out Liz’s lean, shapely body under the spray of water. Elizabeth Schueller, a natural blonde, had the same perfect body that won her runner-up in the Miss California pageant when she was a journalism student at UC, Davis, eight years ago. He watched as she arched backward to rinse the shampoo out of her hair, pushing out her chest and stretching her flat stomach.

He set his cell phone and gun on the nightstand and hung his clothes in the closet space she had set aside for him. Then he cracked open the shower door and stepped inside. She wiped the water from her eyes, smiled broadly, and without saying a word, pulled him in and kissed him long and hard. She wiggled into his arms, pressing her slippery body against his. Sinclair drew in the minty smell of her breath.

“I know where I want you tonight,” she whispered.

“Now?”

She pulled her head back and looked into his eyes. The playful look. “I’m in charge tonight. Dry yourself off and get in bed. I’ll be there in a minute.”

When she climbed into bed, Sinclair sat up to meet her, but she pushed him back down. “Just lie there,” she ordered.

She took her time with him, touching, kissing, and licking. Finally, she straddled his hips and slid onto him. She rocked slowly back and forth. She bit her lower lip, her eyes locked onto his as if she were trying to communicate something without words. Finally, her eyes went to the ceiling, her back arched, and a guttural moan came from deep inside her. She smiled and said, “Your turn.”

A few minutes later they lay on their sides, Liz’s back against his chest. He pulled her tight, nuzzling the nape of her neck.

“How’s it feel to be back working the murder police?” she said.

“I’ll let you know once I figure it out. At times, I felt like my first day in homicide. My new partner and I had a rough start, but I think she’ll work out.”

She wiggled her butt against him.

“You have a great ass,” said Sinclair.

“Hundreds of squats and lunges a week.”

He kissed the back of her neck and breathed in the scent of her hair. Something floral, maybe jasmine, he thought. He cupped one of her breasts. “And perfect boobs.”

“They should be. I had the best plastic surgeon in San Francisco.”

He was no longer shocked at how openly Liz talked about her breast implants—much the same way he might talk with another cop about a new pistol purchase.

“Having to get surgery . . . didn’t that make you feel . . .” Sinclair paused, searching for the right word. “. . . exploited?”

“Modeling is all about marketing a commodity. A five-foot-ten swimsuit model needs C cups. I made myself into
the commodity they wanted. Businesses do that all the time.” Sinclair felt her body tensing in his arms. “I could have spent ten years working my way up the ladder to even get an interview in broadcast. Had I come from a rich, connected family, my daddy might have gotten me a job. Instead, I used what I had to get the interview. Whatever it takes.”

Liz twisted in his arms to face him. “It’s not like you didn’t do whatever you had to do to get into homicide. You still do whatever it takes to solve your cases.”

“I wasn’t judging you,” he said, massaging her shoulders until she relaxed.

She stroked his face and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Sorry I got defensive. I know how hard it must be for you going back to homicide after everything you’ve been through.”

“I guess we’re both a bit defensive.”

“And overly sensitive,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he said, “a sensitive man.”

She laughed.

Liz was right about one thing. He
had
done whatever it took to get to homicide. The crazy hours. Working the worst parts of the city. Pushing to make the big arrests and taking risks that could have gotten him fired or killed too many times. When the emotional pain got too great, he calmed them with bourbon. When the nightmares kept him awake, he drank them away. He wondered if it was all worth it.

“Do you ever worry about what you might have to do to become the next Amy Robach or Natalie Morales?” he asked.

She shifted her body back into his. “Whatever it takes,” she whispered.

“Good for you.” He kissed the back of her neck, and her breathing slowed as she drifted into sleep.

When he and Liz had started dating, he accepted that he was part of her whatever-it-takes. He knew the inside scoops he fed her helped her get noticed as more than merely a pretty talking head. Although he never compromised a case, he still sold himself. Sure, maybe they used each other, but he rationalized it by acknowledging that nearly every man would do the same.

He knew Liz was initially attracted to him because he was safe. He was recently divorced and his tough-cop, bad-boy persona conveyed he wasn’t looking for a long-term commitment. But Sinclair had come to realize Liz wanted more than just his homicide tips. Deep down, she was insecure and craved love as much as anyone. Sure, she stuck with him after the car crash, but still he knew what they had was temporary. She had mentioned Barbara Walters, who had married three times and had a series of relationships with married senators and other prominent officials, as someone who never allowed love or relationships to interfere with her career.

Liz never considered she could have both; however, Sinclair had. It seemed a lifetime ago when he got married and discussed children and growing old with someone. But he couldn’t put Iraq behind him and instead immersed himself in his work. He assumed his wife would let him deal with the war in his own way and on his own timetable and would stick around until he grew tired of homicide and took a normal assignment. A good marriage required a lot of time and energy. His relationship with Liz required neither.

He wondered now if he had lost his own whatever-it-takes motivation. That drive that took him to the top of the
homicide ranks, that singleness of purpose to go through any barriers, to stop at nothing to take a killer off the street. He used to have it. That was why he hadn’t given up on bringing Alonzo Moore to justice, even after his cases fell apart in court. His drive and tenacity was what had made him a great detective. But it also came with a price, and after he killed Moore, he began to question whether he went too far.

He was drifting off when his cell phone buzzed.