Thrill Kill (23 page)

Sinclair took over an empty cubicle and called William Whitt’s office number from a desk phone. Having
FBI
displayed on the caller ID probably got him connected immediately with Whitt’s assistant, who said he was working from home this morning. Sinclair called his home and cell phones, but both rang through to voicemail. Sinclair called homicide, and Jankowski answered the phone.

“I need a favor, Dan,” Sinclair said.

“You always need a favor,” Jankowski said.

“Can you run someone out for me? This guy’s avoiding me and if I can find a warrant—I don’t care if it’s for a ten-year-old expired meter—I’m gonna kick in his door and drag his ass downtown.”

“Gimme his name and horsepower,” Jankowski said. “And you owe me.”

Sinclair read off Whitt’s full name, date of birth, and address. A moment later, Jankowski said, “No wants or warrants. DMV shows a Jaguar XJ registered to him at the address on Skyline you gave me. Six years ago, he got a stop-sign ticket in a Mercedes. Nothing in CRIMS. LRMS shows he made a four-fifty-nine locked auto report four years ago. His car, the Mercedes, was broken into at Jack London Square. That’s it. He looks like a model citizen.”

“How about any firearms registered to him,” Sinclair said.

“Lemme see.” Sinclair pictured Jankowski punching Whitt’s information onto his keyboard with two fingers. “Here we go. Looks like he bought a Walther PPK/S back in 2002.”

“A thirty-two or three-eighty?” Sinclair asked.

“Three-eighty,” Jankowski said. “And there’s no record of sale or transfer, so he should still have it.”

“Lunch at a place of your choice,” Sinclair said to Jankowski before hanging up.

Braddock’s ears had perked up when Sinclair said .380.

“Whitt owns a Walther PPK,” he said to Braddock as he headed for the door. “Same rifling characteristics as our murder weapon.”

“Shouldn’t we get a search warrant?” Braddock asked.

“We still don’t have enough, but it doesn’t matter because the asshole’s gonna voluntarily open the door and either show us his gun or explain what the hell happened to it.”

Sinclair took the 24 Freeway to 13, got off at Broadway Terrace, and followed it as it wound through the hills to Skyline Boulevard. Braddock requested a marked unit meet them there. Neither of them thought Whitt was the killer, and he didn’t seem the type to put up a fight. But having a uniformed officer present would make their actions appear less reckless if he decided to go the hard way. The marked car was parked a few houses away and pulled in behind Sinclair and Braddock as they passed by.

“What’cha got, Sarge?” The first officer asked as he climbed out of the marked unit. Officer Buckner had graduated a few academies before Sinclair and worked in special operations with him more than ten years ago. He’d been a field training officer, or FTO, for the past six years, while his rookie partner looked as if he’d gotten out of the academy yesterday. After taking the last five exams, Buckner finally got on the sergeant promotional list, so he was keeping his nose as clean as possible and hoping to get his stripes before the list expired.

Sinclair filled him in and rang the doorbell. Buckner pulled out his baton and rapped on the door with it, the sound reverberating through the house. Still no response. Sinclair called Whitt’s cell and home phone, but no answer. The only visible window, which a curtain covered, was by the front door. The other windows were down the steep slopes on the sides of the house or faced the Oakland flatlands below and would require a helicopter to look into.

An SUV drove into the driveway next door and slid into the garage. Sinclair told Buckner to stay at the door in case Whitt came out. He and Braddock walked next door and into the open garage just as a woman with two armloads of groceries slammed the passenger door of a white Audi Q7 with her hip.

Sinclair stayed back to avoid startling the woman, and Braddock took the lead. “Ma’am, we’re with Oakland PD, can we ask you a few questions?”

The woman looked up. Midfifties, white, brunette, wearing a tan raincoat over jeans and boots. “Sure,” she said. “Come on in so I can put this stuff down.”

Braddock grabbed an eco-friendly reusable bag filled with produce and followed her through a laundry room into a kitchen.

The woman set the bags on the counter. “I was waiting for the rain to let up before going to Safeway, but we’re out of everything.”

“Do you know the Whitts next door?” Braddock asked.

“Sure, we’ve lived here going on twenty years. He’s been here longer.”

“Do you know if he’s home now?” Braddock asked.

“I don’t have a clue. I mostly see him if we’re both going in or out at the same time. It’s not like we have a front yard to hang out in.” She looked at her watch. “He’s probably at work.”

“His office said he’s home,” Sinclair said.

She shrugged her shoulders and opened the refrigerator.

“What about his son, Travis?” Sinclair asked.

“If he’s home, you’d probably hear him.” She began unloading plastic bags full of vegetables and fruit into the refrigerator.

“Have you seen him lately?”

“I saw him about an hour ago with a bunch of his weirdo friends. One of them was blocking my driveway, and I had to wait until he moved to go to the store.”

“Can you describe him?” Sinclair asked.

“The one driving?”

Sinclair nodded.

“Shaved head, in his late twenties, about Travis’s age. A few inches taller than you. Muscular.”

“There were other friends of Travis’s with him?” Sinclair asked.

“One that I saw. I didn’t get a good look at him, but he wasn’t as tall and a lot thinner.”

“What were they wearing?”

She closed the refrigerator and opened a cabinet next to the sink. “Black raincoats and black pants. Everything black. Travis, too.”

“And the car?”

“An old Bronco. The big truck-like ones. It looks like it was painted with cans of spray paint. An ugly mud-brown color.”

“Did you see them leave?”

“Travis came up to the muscular one, said something, and he got into the Bronco and pulled it into the Whitts’ driveway. That’s when I left for the store.”

“Was Travis’s car there?” Sinclair asked.

She put a jar of peanut butter and boxes of pasta into the cabinet. “His little green Prius was in the driveway when I left.”

“When did you last see Travis before this morning?”

“It’s not seeing him, it’s hearing him,” she said. “He’s been back home for the last two or three months. It’s better now that it’s raining, but when the weather was warm, he’d leave the slider open on the bottom level and blast his music. I don’t even
know what people his age listen to these days. I though rap was bad, but this stuff . . .”

“Have you talked to William?”

“Several times, but it only goes on during the day when he’s at work.”

Sinclair copied her name and numbers into his notebook, thanked her for her help, and returned to the Whitts’ front porch. Sinclair noticed Braddock adjusting her belt under her coat, unconsciously touching her holster and other gear. He didn’t have to tell her the trail to the killer was getting hot.

While Braddock told Buckner and his rookie what the neighbor reported, Sinclair called Bianca. “I’m at William Whitt’s house. His office says he’s home but he won’t answer the door or his phones. Do you think he’ll answer for you?”

“I can try,” she said. “What’s happening?”

“I can’t get into it, but I need to talk to him and Travis now.”

“Is Travis there?”

Sinclair hated being the one answering questions right now, but he needed her help. “He was here, but I think he’s gone off with some friends who are about to get into major trouble. They may have a gun.”

The phone was silent, and Sinclair looked at it to ensure there was still a connection. “Bianca, are you there?” Sinclair switched the phone to speaker so Braddock could hear.

“Matt, when William and I were seeing each other, I took an interest in Travis. He was a troubled young man who needed a mother figure. He would talk and I would listen. I hadn’t heard from him in a year or more until maybe a month ago. He called me and said he knew his mother didn’t die by accident and that his father was screwing whores again. I talked to William about it, and he, of course, denied it. He said he’d talk to Travis but everything was fine. Let me call him. He’ll pick up for me.”

A few minutes later, the deadbolt retracted and the door opened. William Whitt appeared, dressed in gray slacks with a
white shirt and tie. Sinclair’s hand rested on his Sig Sauer, holstered under his coat.

“Put your hands up and turn around,” he ordered.

“What’s going on?” Whitt asked.

“Do it!” Sinclair barked.

Whitt complied and Sinclair guided him into the living room and patted him down. “You can put your hands down. Where’s Travis?”

“He’s not here.”

“Where is he?” Sinclair asked.

Whitt was sweating profusely. “I don’t know.”

Sinclair’s phone vibrated. He looked at the screen. It was Uppy. “Watch him,” he said to Buckner as he stepped into the kitchen with Braddock to answer the call.

“We identified Anarchist Soldier. His name’s Andrew Pearson, male, white, twenty-eight, six-two, two hundred, shaved head. He’s active in the Occupy protests, busting windows and throwing firebombs. He’s usually masked, but we IDed him by some distinctive tattoos. We linked him to Garvin and Pratt through cell phone records and Internet messages on the gaming websites.”

“Have you got a location on him?” Sinclair asked.

“Not yet. The bureau’s surveillance team’s set up on the addresses we have for him, but he’s a no-show so far. His phone’s off. But get this, Matt, he was in the Marines and got kicked out with a bad conduct discharge after six months. Until a month ago, he worked for JB Construction doing road work in the Sierras.”

“Let me guess,” Sinclair said. “He had access to explosives.”

“The company said it was highly likely.”

“A guy fitting his description was seen with Travis Whitt at the Whitt’s house less than an hour ago. Can you do your magic with Travis’s cell phone?”

“Sarge,” shouted Officer Buckner from the living room.

“Let me call you back,” Sinclair said to Uppy as he returned to the living room.

“I heard you mention it on the phone,” said Buckner, “so I asked Mr. Whitt if he had any guns in the house, and he said he has a Walther PPK in his study.”

“Show me,” Sinclair said, and he followed Whitt down a set of stairs and through a door into a large wood-paneled office. Beyond the window stretched a balcony with the same view of the city as the living room ten feet above. Whitt moved around to the back of a black lacquered desk and opened a drawer.

“Hang on,” Sinclair said, grabbing Whitt and pulling him aside. “I’ll get it.”

“The key’s in the drawer. It opens a cabinet where the gun is.”

Sinclair slid the desk drawer out and removed a brass key from the pen tray. He followed Whitt across the room to a solid wood cabinet situated between two matching bookshelves. Sinclair unlocked the sliding panels in the middle of the cabinet and slid them open. On the shelf were several binders, boxes of checks, and three bound journals, two black and one pink and yellow. “Where’s the gun?” Sinclair asked.

Whitt looked inside. “It’s gone.” The surprise in his voice was genuine.

“When did you last see it?” Sinclair asked.

“It was here the first of the month. I went in here to get a new book of checks for Dawn.”

“That was two days before she was killed,” Sinclair said.

“Yeah, she came over to drop off some spreadsheets and pick up the checkbook and some bills that came to the house.”

“And you’re just mentioning this now?”

Whitt lowered his head. “Sorry,” he whispered.

“Was Travis here at the time?” Sinclair asked.

“He was downstairs in his room.”

“Does he know you keep the key—oh hell, never mind. He’d have to be a moron not to know there’s a key in your desk drawer. Is anything else missing?”

“Oh my god!” Whitt said.

“What is it?” Sinclair asked.

“It’s nothing.”

“Whitt, what is it?” Sinclair asked again.

“Nothing.”

Travis had obviously seen Dawn that night in his father’s study. Sinclair pictured Travis listening outside the door when William and Dawn talked about their past. Or maybe he was conveniently in the living room when William walked her to the front door, forcing an introduction. Or maybe Travis waited by her car, where he could talk to her alone. It might have been a casual, polite conversation, one where he did nothing more than gather information about her to use later. Or maybe Travis didn’t meet her at all that night, but followed her to her apartment so he could visit her later with the gun.

“Show me his room,” Sinclair ordered.

Whitt led them down the stairs to the lower level. Three doors faced them at the bottom of the stairs. Whitt pointed at one door. “He keeps it locked. To show I trust him, I don’t go in.”

Sinclair didn’t waste his breath telling Whitt what a fool he was for ignoring all the warning signs. Sinclair turned his back to the door, looked over his shoulder, and using a mule kick, smashed his right heel into the doorknob. The door splintered. He felt a stabbing pain where the hospital had stitched him up, but nothing wet rolled down his leg, so he probably hadn’t ripped out the stitches. Sinclair shoved the door open and entered. Braddock, Whitt, Buckner, and his rookie followed.

The room’s blueprint was a copy of Whitt’s study a level above, twenty by thirty, with a balcony that overlooked the city. A bed and dresser were in one corner. A door on that wall led to a bathroom. Buckner and his partner swept through it to ensure no one was there. In the opposite corner were two leather couches facing a seventy-inch flat screen, a gaming console, and several handheld controllers lying on the floor.

Photos printed with a home printer on letter-size paper were taped to the wall. Sinclair stepped over two empty pizza boxes to get a closer look. One photo was of Dawn in a lace negligee,
the same image Sinclair saw a few days earlier on the Special Ladies Escorts website. Another was of Lisa Harper in a ballet pose similar to what he saw in her classroom. Whitt stood beside Sinclair with his mouth gaping open.