14th Deadly Sin: (Women’s Murder Club 14) (15 page)

I was organizing the case in my mind, getting ready for the squad meeting in the morning, doing all that thinking while lying with my head on my husband’s chest, listening to him sleep. My thoughts circled in and around the Calhoun house, where people had been sleeping in their beds.

I had a bad fantasy of the same guys breaking into our nest on Lake Street. I heard locks being shot off doors. In this bad fantasy, I got my hands on my gun, but it wouldn’t fire. My fantasy didn’t go any further, thank God.

But sleep became an impossible dream.

When Julie woke up at three, I walked her around the living room and looked out at the street below to see if anyone was lurking in an idling car. At six I took Martha for a quick run, and by seven fifteen I was at my desk in the Homicide bullpen.

Conklin arrived a few minutes later. He hung his jacket behind his chair and said, “I had a dream.”

I looked up at him. He wasn’t kidding.

“I woke up thinking there’s a connection between what happened to Calhoun and the Wicker House shootings.”

“What was the connection?” I asked.

“I’m still thinking about it.”

“OK,” I said. “Your subconscious is making a link. Probably from all the dead bodies. All the blood.”

“Probably,” my partner said. “But there is something sticky about those two things together.”

Just then, Richie got a call from Cindy, and then a ragged-looking Brady dropped by our desks. He said to me, “At eight o’clock. You can brief everyone, right?”

“No problem.”

The squad room filled with cops. Some sat behind their desks, others parked themselves in spare chairs, and more cops stood three deep at the back. The room was packed with the day shifts from Homicide, Narco, and Robbery.

Swanson and Vasquez stood at the front of the room with me and I introduced them. Then I told about sixty of my fellow officers what we knew about what had gone down in the green Victorian house on Texas Street.

Brady gave out assignments. And then we went to work.

CONKLIN AND I brought Swanson and Vasquez into Interview 2. When we all had coffee in front of us and were settled in, I started by saying, “I can only guess at how rotten you feel. We need everything and anything that could help us with the Calhoun murders. Anything you may have heard or surmised about enemies, disagreements, contacts with informants, shady business dealings, a fight over a parking spot—it doesn’t matter how unlikely it might seem to you.”

Swanson stopped me from going on. He said, “We get it, Boxer. You ask, we answer. You need a handle on this, and we’re counting on you.”

Conklin checked that the camera was on, then sat down next to me, saying, “We’re recording this, just because.”

Vasquez clenched his fists and said, “Calhoun wasn’t dirty. He was a good person. He was a good cop.”

I nodded. And Conklin said, “Tell us whatever you know about him. We’ll ask questions as they come up.”

Swanson sighed and said, “Calhoun transferred in from LA Vice about two years ago with a good reputation. He was partnered with Kyle Robertson, who joined Robbery, don’t remember when offhand, but before that he was in uniform since the Flood. You should talk to Robertson. They were close.”

I nodded. We were seeing Robertson in a little while.

Vasquez said, “Calhoun was a good kid. He wanted to do good in the job. If I had to fault him, I would say he was a little bit overenthusiastic.”

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“He could be seen as not taking things as seriously as an older guy with more years on the job. Or maybe he wasn’t hardened, yet. Whatchacallit? He wasn’t jaded. Either way, Calhoun had a future on the force.”

Conklin asked, “How’d his mood been lately? Was anything bothering him?”

“I didn’t notice anything,” said Swanson.

“Did anyone have it out for him?” I asked. “Anyone he may have busted?”

Swanson said, “When I had dinner at their house last Wednesday, he was in a good mood. He was talking about Little League and how he and Marie were saving up for the boys’ college in a five-two-nine fund. Regular dinner talk. With photos.”

The interview went on for another half hour. By the time the empty coffee containers were in the trash, I had a few leads to follow up and no connections that would explain why Calhoun had been tortured or what anyone could have wanted from him.

Conklin and I met with the long-timer, Calhoun’s partner Kyle Robertson. Along with Calhoun, we’d met Robertson during the canvass after Maya Perez had been killed.

Robertson was maybe fifty, but he looked older. His face was heavily lined and his hair was gray, thin, combed over. He was eager to help, but could only say he was torn up by the killings. That nothing Calhoun had ever said to him would lead him to think he had anything worth killing him for.

“It’s a complete mystery,” Robertson said. “I can’t make a thing out of it.”

Conklin said, “Narco has been working some street crimes, looking for some cops who might be taking money and drugs off dealers. Could Calhoun have been a part of that?”

Robertson shook his head vigorously.

“He was just a regular guy. If he hadn’t become a cop, he could have been a firefighter or a high school coach. I never heard him talk about money. He smoked cigarettes, but that’s the only addiction he had. Ask me, this bloodbath was entirely senseless. Maybe the killers went to the wrong house and killed the wrong people. Crazier things have happened.”

CONKLIN AND I went to Brady’s office with our fat notepads and thin theories.

We had interviewed the Calhouns’ neighbors, who had been sleeping last night when the Calhouns were being tortured and shot. They’d seen nothing and heard nothing and were completely shocked and very frightened.

We had also interviewed cops who’d worked with Calhoun, and they, too, were in utter disbelief. Calhoun was a good cop. He loved his job, maybe too much. They chalked that up to his youth and romantic nature. We told Brady that the three cops who knew him best, Swanson, Vasquez, and Robertson, had no clue as to why he and his family would have been tortured and slain.

Brady listened to what we told him, then said, “Here’s where I’m at. In the last two weeks, there’ve been more robbery and narcotics-related homicides than in the entire last year.”

He put a piece of paper on the desk and turned it so Conklin and I could see his handwritten list of the crimes that had taken place in our division in the last two weeks. Brady stabbed the list as he read it out loud.

“The first two check-cashing-store holdups, one fatality.

“A mercado robbery with a murdered shop owner.

“Another check-cashing-store holdup, and this time, there are three dead, would-be robbers in SFPD Windbreakers. Turns out, they’re not cops. They’re idiots, copycats who’ve heard about the Windbreaker cops but don’t know how to pull off any kind of robbery.

“Here. A takedown of a drug factory, seven dead. Possible sighting of a Windbreaker cop.

“This is from Narcotics,” Brady said. “Six drug dealers, that they know about, have been shot and robbed in crack houses and on the street. The word is that cops are doing it. It’s a random pattern, but a pattern nonetheless.”

Conklin and I nodded like bobbleheads.

Brady went on.

“Probably a shitload of drugs was stolen from Wicker House. Could have been worth millions. Somebody could be in a rage about that. Makes me think an organized crew has put on SFPD Windbreakers as an inside joke.

“And the joke is working. The crew disguises themselves as cops. And they’re into drug house takedowns and cash-rich robbery opportunities. It’s almost like this is an act of war, cops versus drug thugs. And I wonder if Kingfisher is somehow involved in this. He has his fingers in everything. He can be very violent. Read up on him. Sickening stuff. Torture for fun. Sadism. Keep Kingfisher in mind.”

Kingfisher was a notorious drug lord, said to be based in Southern California, though no one knew for sure. But evidence of his manufacturing and distribution enterprise was widespread. Was this big-time player somehow involved in small-time takedowns in San Francisco?

Brady wasn’t done. He pushed his fingers through his hair. He looked at his computer screen and pressed some keys.

I thought maybe he’d forgotten about us. But then he was saying, “Maybe I’m just trying to make sense of unrelated incidents by making lists, turning the pieces around, hoping they’ll fit. Or maybe there’s something happening here that we can’t quite see.

“We don’t stop until we know.”

COURTROOM 5A WAS small, paneled in cherry-wood with matching cherry benches, tables, and chairs. The judge had turned to speak to his clerk. Behind him was the golden seal of the State of California flanked by two flags: the Stars and Stripes and the California state flag.

The room was full, but court was not yet in session. Yuki and her second chair, Natalie Futterman, sat behind their counsel table. Yuki skimmed the notes in front of her, rehearsing her opening lines in her mind like a mantra.

Beside her, Natalie whispered, “I can’t
wait
.”

Yuki said, “I can. I may be a pit bull, but he’s a lion, Nat. An angry one.”

Natalie said, “New thought for a new day.”

“Do
not
tweet that,” Yuki said.

Yuki wished she felt as excited as Natalie. Her eager second chair was a forty-six-year-old recent graduate of law school. Her kids were out of the house. Her husband had left her. And Natalie finally had the degree in law she’d put off twenty-five years ago. She was sharp, bookish, organized, had passed the bar on the first try, and was ready for prime time. Or as Natalie had put it, “You can only learn so much in a classroom.”

Natalie had nothing to lose but her novice status.

Yuki, on the other hand, had a pretty substantial reputation at stake, and if she lost this case, she would be known for it: Kordell v. City of San Francisco.
Yuki Castellano. She sued the SFPD and they destroyed her.

Across the aisle, the defense looked as calm as still waters. Len Parisi, Red Dog himself, filled the chair on the aisle. Sitting next to him were two partners from Moorehouse and Rogers, one of whom was the legendary Collins Rappaport as second chair. Parisi, as co-counsel to the law firm, would be first chair, and he would be doing hand-to-hand combat with
her
.

Yuki had dressed in red today. It was a big color that required big action. You couldn’t equivocate in red. You had to go for the jugular, and that was her plan.

Strike first. Strike hard.

Natalie wore almost-matching black separates, a jacket and pants that had probably come from a consignment shop twenty years before. But that was OK. The two of them were representing the victims here. They were the lawyers for the poor and the unfairly persecuted, and Natalie looked the part.

Parisi’s suit was moss green and made him look like a heart attack ready to happen.

Yuki smiled to herself.

Whatever helped her through the fight.

She and Natalie had worked hard prepping for this trial and had spent two days just going over her opening statement. She knew what she had to do and what she had to say; if she rehearsed anymore, her impassioned true feelings for the Kordell family would sound overly rehearsed.

She didn’t want that.

Yuki was deep in her thoughts when she felt a touch on her shoulder. She turned to see Mrs. Kordell giving her a teary smile. Yuki squeezed her hand and smiled at the rest of the Kordell family seated behind her, about eleven people all told.

Yuki was here today for them: for Bea and Mickey Kordell and for Aaron-Rey’s grandfather, cousins, and friends, who were counting on her to bring justice to Aaron-Rey’s name.

She turned to the front of the room as Judge John G. Quirk finished speaking to the clerk.

She liked Judge Quirk. Despite the miserable people he’d dealt with in his twenty years on the bench, she’d found him to be kind. In chambers, he showed that he had an understanding of impulses and frailties of character.

Would that generosity of spirit work for or against her?

And now the bailiff announced that court was in session. She watched as the jury came in through a side door and took seats in the box. She wished she could have gotten more than one person of color on the jury, but it was what it was. Judge Quirk welcomed the jury and spent a little time giving them instructions and answering questions. Then he turned his bespectacled eyes on her.

“Ms. Castellano. Are you ready to begin?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Go get ’em,” Natalie said, her voice carrying in the lull.

There was a smattering of laughter. Yuki pushed back her chair and, propelled by an adrenaline rush, walked to the lectern in the center of the well.

AS YUKI STOOD behind the lectern, she felt warm all over, her heart and adrenal glands giving her a little more rush than she actually needed. But she composed herself and lifted her eyes and said to the jurors, “Good morning, everyone.

“I represent the family of Aaron-Rey Kordell, a fifteen-year-old boy with a below-average IQ who was arrested, then bullied by two very experienced police officers who deprived this young man of sleep for sixteen hours, lied to him about his right to counsel, and induced him to confess to a crime he did not commit. After being coerced into giving a false confession, Aaron-Rey was incarcerated and was murdered while awaiting trial.

“Why was Aaron-Rey coerced? Why did he have to die?

“Because the police had no witnesses, but they had a suspect, and they were going to make sure they nailed him. Which they did.”

Yuki paused to make sure she had the jurors’ attention. Then she continued.

“Here’s what happened in February of this year.

“Aaron-Rey was hanging out at the neighborhood crack house after school. If he had lived in a different neighborhood, maybe he would have spent after-school hours in the gym or at a friend’s house. But this crack house was a block from where he lived with his parents, and to him, it was where he waited until his folks came home from work.