Sudden Exposure (4 page)

Suddenly I realized how tired I was, less from the chase than the strain of dealing with Bryn Wiley. She was an exasperating woman. But there was something seductive, too, about her utter commitment. Knowing who you are and where you’re going had always intrigued me. I had grown up never believing I would be an adult, much less one with a focus. My marriage had been based on that focus, as if Nat Smith’s absorption with Irish literature would be purpose enough for both of us. I had even stumbled into the police test—one of six civil service exams. I’d taken the job because I thought it would be different, fun, and because Nat and I needed the money. That I would care about the work as much as I did hadn’t occurred to me.

What I was sure of now was that, if I didn’t come up with the suspect in this case, it would be a snowy day in Berkeley before I ever got out of patrol, much less back to Homicide Detail.

The wind had calmed down. The air was still but for a tickle now and then, hauling in the light, clean scent of redwood. Houses stood dark, cars tucked in garages or cozied up to or over the curb. Below the white glow of Oakland, the festive string of lights scooping and peaking across the bay bridge, the fog-muted glow from San Francisco was dazzling. But here the silence was thick as the fog. I could have been in the forest. That was a big part of the lure of this neighborhood—one minute you were “in the Sierras,” the next downing a latte at Peet’s. It was what made people sink half a million dollars into a house on a hillside that could become a valley in half a shaking minute. It was what made Ellen Waller feel safe strolling at midnight, if indeed that was what she was doing, cloaked in the silence of the redwoods, the fog held up by the tall spikes of the houses.

Or more accurately the tall spikes of the
house,
the one between Bryn Wiley’s and the path where I’d lost the nudist. Black snag-toothed walls cut the night. The lighter fogged sky shone through the supports where the roof used to be. The place could have been a villa for Dracula, but chances were it was merely under construction. Probably an earthquake casualty.

Beyond it, in the shadows across the street, a dog howled. I jumped. A duet of barks pulled the scene back into the familiar.

“Nora! Ocean! Quiet!” The man calling his dogs could have walked out of Dracula’s castle. He was tall, gaunt, hunched over, dressed haphazardly in black pants that napped as he hurried across the lawn to the dogs, and a navy blue zippered jacket. But there was something familiar about him. “Nora!” he warned—just loud enough to be heard, just intent enough to be taken seriously. No color, no emotion.

By the Dracula house, a dog panted.

“Pablo! Come here! Dogs! Here!”

The three canines—one medium-sized mongrel and two very large dark ones—arrived as I did beside their owner. I put out a hand to be sniffed—not exactly regulation behavior, but I always assume the best with dogs. One of the big dogs leapt at me, panting for attention. I scratched his chest and behind his ears. The other two inched backward warily. I looked questioningly at their gaunt, gray owner, but he made no excuses for his unsocial pets. He stepped back warily in line with the two dogs, letting his hand pass above them before he dropped it to his side. The dogs seemed to relax under the awning of his protection.

In Berkeley there is a subculture of solitary walkers—not amiable strollers or determined striders, but loners who walk because they must. Some get out with the dawn after another fitful night; some make their way midday warning off the world with their too old, too drab, or too clashing garb; some choose the safety of night. In a city known for its nonconformity they are the community of the noncommuning. But I hadn’t been on patrol in Beat Two long enough to know if this man was one of them. Why did he seem familiar?

“Is this Nora, Ocean, or Paul?” I asked, rubbing the big, thick-coated black dog behind the ears.

“Nora, Ocean, and
Pablo.
This is Ocean.”

“Radio dogs?”

He didn’t reply.

“You’ve given them radio code names,” I explained, wishing I hadn’t veered into this conversational detour.

“Yes.” His tone wasn’t so much impatient as wary. I hoped his unease was not for fear of me finding dogs Adam through Mary in the house. Four’s the limit of the law. But if the neighbors weren’t complaining, I wasn’t asking. “Do you live here?”

“You’re standing on my walkway.” There was no change in his pale, narrow face, no hint either of accusation or of playfulness in his voice, but something about him made me flunk that later, in the safety of solitude when he recalled that comment, it would be with a wry smile.

I glanced up at his windows, ones that overlooked the street and the path between his house and the construction site. “I’m Detec—
Officer
Smith.” When he didn’t respond, I said, “And you are?”

“Karl Pironnen.”

Aha! One of the local papers had done an article on Sam Johnson a couple years ago. Of course, it had included the Golden State Bank demonstrations. The robbery itself had failed; the robbers, not exactly the elite of their trade, were caught before they made it to the getaway car. The cash involved had been less than the two could have earned for a week of real work. And the only casualty was Pironnen’s brother, a bystander who had died not of gunshots, but from hitting his head as he stumbled off the curb. The event had been a Mouse That Roared affair, from its inept conception and sloppy handling to the elephantine official reaction. It was that latter issue that rang a bell for Sam Johnson and catapulted him to prominence as he organized protest after protest, decrying the government’s misappropriation of time and money—an issue with which 99 percent of the populace couldn’t disagree. Classic Sam Johnson.

When asked about the robbery, Karl Pironnen had said he’d never met Johnson. He was surprised the reporter knew his brother’s name.

Dan. I was surprised I remembered it. I found my voice a little softer as I asked Pironnen, “Have you seen anyone near Bryn Wiley’s house tonight?”

“Besides the naked runner and you?”

I almost laughed before I realized that he hadn’t meant to be funny. I wouldn’t even have been surprised if he didn’t know who Bryn was. What I had here was the antithesis of Bryn Wiley, a man with no innate or acquired charm and a wish only to be left alone. “Was there anyone near Bryn’s house besides us?” I asked.

“No.”

“Did you hear a shot or backfire a couple of hours ago?”

“I was out. With the dogs.”

“What about the naked runner? Where did he go?”

“Down the path.”

“Into Codornices Park?”

He shook his head. “Under the construction house.”

“
Under
it?”

“Yes.”

My patrol car was down the street where Howard or one of the other patrol officers had deposited it. I got in, shut the door, and called in for a CORPUS check on Pironnen, Johnson, and Ellen Waller, and for two backups. No priors on Pironnen, nothing on Waller, and—big surprise—the only thing on Sam Johnson was a complaint about him shooting tin cans in the waterfront park. It was a surprisingly rightist, fifties kind of hobby for a committed anarchist. I would have been amused had it not reminded me that Johnson was a practiced shot, certainly good enough to take out Bryn Wiley’s windows. I upped the request for backups to four.

It was Howard who arrived as the top-side backup, blue eyes intent, but a grin trying doggedly to make it onto his mouth. Howard was pondering the nudist and his cold, uncomfortable hour under the house.

Failing to suppress my own grin, I put a finger to his lips. All searches are serious. Any call could go any way. Cops die not only in shootouts with drug dealers but in innocuous car stops. You have to be ready all the time. It’s exhausting, but easy to get psyched by the intensity. And Howard—Once we got going, he’d be all business. But now the grin had taken full control and softly, softly he was humming the old Limeliters’ song that ended: “… when the cold, cold tailwinds blow.”

We’d both been on patrol years ago, way before we’d become an item; we’d hashed over each other’s cases; but we’d never worked together like this. I loved hitting the lights and sirens, giving chase (or at least I
had
until the nudist—I’d have to rethink that tomorrow), and cruising around town after midnight when the streets belonged to me.

Howard hadn’t been far away when I called. Beat 2—here—was his.

“Not much chance the bare sprinter is still under the house. Still …” I said.

“If he’s there, he’s ours.” Howard grinned. He’d hated to give up Narcotics Detail, where there were dealers still loose, and stings of his still unstung. But at six feet six with curly red hair, blue eyes, and a lantern chin, he was hardly a candidate for undercover work any longer. Unlike me, he had opted for the sergeant’s exam, rotated back onto patrol, and was prepared to work his way back to Narcotics Detail when a spot opened for a detective sergeant.

“So, Jill, you think you can ID this guy?” He was grinning.

“Sure, if it’s from the back and he’s moving. Course here, he’d be under the house for an hour cooling his … heels.” I kept my voice down to a whisper. But back in the station I knew no one was toning down their comments on my inaugural patrol chase. “Adam one and Adam eighteen are coming up the path from Codornices Park; Adam seven will be up here. As soon as they check in, we’ll move.”

Again Howard nodded. One officer always has to be in charge. I was the one who’d called for backup; this operation was mine. Murakawa—Adam one—would call when he and eighteen arrived at the bottom of the steps in the park. I’d give them another three minutes to make their way up the flights of cement steps.

We think of this area as in the hills, but it’s really part of the canyon system, with sudden, sharp, steep walls. We assume it’s tamer than bare canyons because those walls are padded with trees and brush, and houses that thumb their chimneys at earthquakes, cracked and hobbled houses like the one we were headed for.

The radio crackled. “Adam one, with eighteen, ten ninety-seven.” Murakawa, and whoever was eighteen tonight, had arrived at the bottom. Levine—seven—pulled up behind us. He’d watch the street.

“Let’s go.” We’d keep the channel clear, to be used only if essential, so the radios on our shoulders wouldn’t broadcast our arrival. When we were next to the open basement I yelled, “Po-lice! Get your hands where we can see them and walk out! Do you hear me?”

No response.

“Answer me!”

Still nothing. I wasn’t surprised.

With the smallest of movements, I motioned Howard to take the staircase. Before my hand was still, he was on the steps. I would go through the mud on the far side of the yard, outside the hurricane fence, looking for a way in. The house stood like an upended shoe box—precarious for a hillside dwelling. When I turned the corner and started down, the light of my flash revealed interior walls that ended abruptly, doors open into nothingness, rooms bare to the night. In the basement, corners were held up by beams, and between them two-by-fours crisscrossed in ways more quixotic than supportive. Had the earthquake led to all this? I didn’t want to think that; we Californians never do. I preferred to imagine that the earthquake was a minor excuse for a major rehabilitation the owner had had in mind anyway.

Howard’s flashlight beam was slicing in from the far side. “Po-lice! Walk out slowly. Keep your hands where we can see them.”

I waited, then repeated his call. Both of us worked the territory with our lights, psychologically pinning the suspect in his hidey-hole. The place was a jumble of buckets and cans, piles of wood, troughs and barrows, wooden horses, saws, tools, machines the size of ride-on lawn mowers.

I moved along the fence, looking for an entry hole.

Howard would go no farther down now, keeping watch on the basement till I signaled him. The ground was mushy, and the covering of dead leaves, ivy, and redwood burrs had me hanging on to the fence and bracing my knees as if I were skiing.

I was almost at the bottom when I found the hole. Murakawa and Sapolu—eighteen—were at the other corner. Lanky, easygoing Murakawa had assisted me more than once when I’d been in Homicide Detail. Sapolu, I’d only worked with once. I signaled them over and pointed to the hole.

They nodded.

I’d expected to see the thick, diamond-crossed wires of the hurricane fence raggedly rolled back from the support pole. I’d pictured a trespasser doggedly pulling them loose, folding them back, leaving the smallest possible opening he could get through. But this hole was invitingly big. And it had been cut with clippers. Obviously the work of someone with time and plans of permanency. Had my nudist perched here other nights? Or was this someone else’s nest? The hole was far enough down that the workmen up top would have no reason to notice it. But for a transient on the lookout for a spot to sleep, it was like a flashing Vacancy sign.

“Kids?” Murakawa whispered, hand shielding his mike.

I shrugged. Some kids might not care if their deed was discovered, but those kids wouldn’t be likely to do such a tidy job. And this wouldn’t be the work of the homeless; they’d be the last ones to draw attention to their find. The hole just didn’t make sense.

I climbed through into the yard, unsnapped my holster, and shifted my flashlight to my left hand. I motioned Murakawa to the walkway side and Sapolu to cover the bottom. Into the mike, I said, “Coming up,” and started through the weeds and clutter.

“Po-lice! Come out; keep your hands where we can see them.”

Not a leaf fluttered in the dead air. Murakawa and I moved quickly, mowing the ground with our beams. Clutter was everywhere, but no pile was large enough to conceal a person. Halfway up, Murakawa motioned me to a bunch of rain-wrinkled newspapers wadded together with a sheet of clear orange plastic—a poncho the police department gives to the homeless. It’s the shower cap of the rain gear world, but it keeps them drier than they’d be otherwise, and as was clear here, for them it was not an added responsibility of possession.

I stopped a few feet from the house and fanned the light. From this angle the building looked like it was hanging from the edge of the hill by its fingernails, its rump sagging down wearily over the empty space beneath. Boards were propped below like legs of a flimsy folding stool.