Pacific Beat, page 6
“Because she wasn’t going home after work,” he said.
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Into the air around Weir settled the fact that Becky had done just this thing to him once, years ago, the first official pivot point upon which their relationship began its long and anguished descent. “Did she ever say anything about another man?”
“No, that’s not something I think Ann would talk about. She had her private side—the Weir trademark. It’s possible. She was attractive, alive … oh, you know, all that kind of thing.” Becky wiped away a tear, glaring with a certain fierceness out the window toward the buildings of Newport Center on the mainland.
Weir leaned against the doorjamb. Things kept welling up inside him. There didn’t seem to be any end to them. For a blessed, frightening moment, he felt stripped of pretense. “I don’t know what to do, Becky.”
She held him for a long while, then straightened him by the shoulders and wiped some hair off his forehead. “Fight, Jim. Stay and fight it out. Be kind to your heart.”
Jim stepped onto the porch and let the screen door bounce shut behind him. It was strange to him how quickly the old antagonisms could reappear, along with the feeling that he’d love to take Becky in his arms again and press his face against the soft, fragrant plane of her neck and lose himself in her.
Walking down her steps, he had the feeling again of being isolated on the bow of some great ship, wind on his face, gliding from one dark shore to another in search of something he was yet to identify. He was tiring, even in his own visions, of being alone.
Raymond’s room at Hoag Hospital had a view of north Newport and a glimpse of the Pacific. Weir found him deeply asleep, with his hands crossed over his stomach and his mouth slightly open. He had on a light blue smock that tied in the back and a plastic wristband with his name and some numbers on it. There were flowers on the counter and bed stand, and taped to the walls a collection of get-well cards made of construction paper and crayons by his young cousins.
Weir pulled up a chair and poured Ray some water from a blue pitcher. For a while, he looked out to the dull gray horizon and the glimmering sea. As Jim watched his friend sleep, the idea hit him that Raymond might not make it through this. Ray was strong, but he wasn’t flexible. He was married to routine, laws, procedures, clear delineations of right and wrong. They kept him ordered, and Jim understood why. Weir had noticed in his training at the Sheriff Academy that, among others, a certain type was drawn to law enforcement—people who needed to belong to something, to be told who they were. Rather than slog their ways through life, trying to figure things on their own, these few needed to have the questions answered for them, needed the clear definitions set out by the uniform they would wear, the gun they would carry, the code—California Penal—by which they would live. And although Jim never considered Raymond to be one of those people, he had often wondered whether Ray didn’t adhere too closely to the job he had taken, didn’t see things in the simple black and white picture suggested by the words guilt and innocence. That was fine. The trouble is, what happens when life betrays you and the law can’t help? What happens when the foundations fall away? In the absence of belief, what rushes in to replace it? Jim said a brief prayer for Raymond, that he would have enough strength to build a new belief, and enough love to build a new strength.
He went to the nurse’s station and managed to find someone not too busy to talk. She told him what they’d already told him—that Raymond had apparently neither eaten nor slept in three days, and that he had finally just passed out. He was taking food now, and sleeping the rest of the time. None of this was uncommon to the grieving, she said. He’d be out soon. “I’m so sorry about your sister.”
CHAPTER 7
JIM WEIR, HUNCHED DOWN IN HIS JACKET AGAINST THE FOG, walked south along the bayfront toward Ann’s house. It was just before nine o’clock. His joints felt old again and his fingers were clenched tight on the handle of Brian Dennison’s briefcase. He had not been in Ann’s house since that night, and he felt some duty to enter it, to show her it held more for him than horror, that in his memory Ann was more than her end. Besides, he wanted to be alone. He entered with an extra key that Ray had given him, and quietly closed the door.
Walking slowly through the house, Jim noted that Innelman and Deak had been here. There were traces of black dusting powder on the inside doorknob, on both white bathroom drinking cups. The impound list on the counter said that three wineglasses sitting here were now in Evidence at the County Crime Lab. Three glasses, he thought: three drinkers? He saw that Ann’s address book, which always hung by a ribbon beside the kitchen phone, had been carted off to Evidence, too. Likewise, the message tape from the answering machine. There was a sprinkle of safecracker gray on the floor in front of the refrigerator, where they’d dusted the black plastic handle and door. He followed their thinking: Ann had come home, changed, been confronted here and forced to drive. Not likely, he thought. It didn’t feel right.
Two drawers in Ann’s bedroom chest were partially open, as was the closet door. He stood there in her room for a moment, a room redolent with the smell of her perfumes and lotions, feeling confronted by her presence, half-expecting her to speak. Such a trampling of you, he thought. I’m sorry. He shivered inside the jacket.
More fingerprint powder beside the table lamp in Raymond’s study, cabinets ajar, a Polaroid film envelope lying on top in the wastebasket. Straws, he thought: Ann never came back here. She got in her car and drove to wherever it was she was planning to go. Dennison is desperate for a break. How many times had Raymond stood amidst such a scene, he wondered. Did he dream that someday such props of tragedy would be his own?
He went back to the kitchen, took Malachi Ruff’s interview from the briefcase, and smoothed it out before him on the wobbly kitchen dinette. The questioning had been done by Innelman at eight the morning of Tuesday, May 16. It was written in the usual police English, and contained nothing of importance that Dennison hadn’t already told him. Basically, a drunk named Mackie Ruff had heard a scream, seen someone run along the bay, seen a cop car speed away, then fallen back asleep. Dense fog, dark, much booze inside him. Innelman noted on the report that “Ruff has an outspoken dislike of law enforcement” and that “Witness Ruff was intoxicated at time of alleged incident. Because of dense fog and considerable alcohol, Ruff could not determine age, race, dress, or attitude of possible suspect. Suspect disappeared northbound. Approximately thirty seconds later, Ruff heard a car door open and shut, then an engine start. He reportedly walked back up to Galaxy Drive to observe a white four-door car in motion southbound. Ruff states ‘it was a cop car.’ Upon further inquiry, Ruff elaborated that the ‘emblem’ on the car’s side indicated it was a police patrol unit. Ruff was not close enough to determine any details concerning this alleged ‘emblem.’ ”
Innelman noted, too, that Ruff had no permanent address but could sometimes be found at Frankie’s Place, the Porthole, or the Eight Peso Cantina, all located near the ferry landing on the Balboa Peninsula.
Weir remembered finding Mackie Ruff knee-deep in the chilly water of the Back Bay one winter, dragging a shopping cart behind him. The cart contained an old car tire and a massive tangle of fishing line. Mackie said he was after lobster. Jim had aimed him back toward dry land after Ray gave him five bucks for some food. How trustworthy was Ruff as a witness? Jim noted, too, that Ruff had been placed in custody but not charged. Of course, he thought: If the DA needed him, why bust him, and why admit he was drunk?
Weir smiled humorlessly, set aside the interview, and brought out the chief’s personnel information, the Dispatch tape and transcript, and a small cassette player that Dennison had been thoughtful enough to include.
First task, he thought, is to consider the interim police chief, and Sergeant Cruz.
Dennison was fifty pounds heavier than the 175 pounds estimated by both Robbins and Innelman. He had an O positive blood type; Ann’s killer was B. Dennison had short reddish-brown curly hair; the hair found on Ann’s blouse was straight, medium brown, almost two inches long—male Caucasian between thirty-five and forty-five. Dennison was fifty-one. Brian had told him this morning that he was asleep beside his wife between midnight and 1:00 A.M., and Marlene Dennison had vouched for him. Above it he wrote, HOUR IN QUESTION, and underlined it twice.
Raymond’s stats were even more contradictory to evidence: type A blood; wavy black Latino hair. Raymond was left-handed. He weighed ten pounds less than the Crime Lab estimates, and Weir knew from buying him a pair of swim fins one Christmas that Ray wore shoes a full size smaller than their man did. He could remember with perfect clarity telling the Dive Shop owner that he wanted a pair of black rubber Scuba-Pros for a man’s eight and a half. Funny, he thought, how some things stick in your mind. Becky had stood beside him and quipped something about the Fellini film. Eight and a fucking half, he thought, pushing the Dispatch tape into the player. Pretend for a minute that Ray’s physicals matched up. Let’s see if he has an alibi. He ran the tape forward toward midnight, then slowed it down, found his place on the transcript to read along, and listened to the entire hour in question.
Raymond communicated twelve times with Dispatch. He was patrolling the Corona del Mar beat, which left him almost three fog-clogged miles from the peninsula where Ann was likely picked up. One shortcut—the ferry that shuttles between Balboa Island and the old neighborhood— closed down at midnight. Raymond took three interviews between midnight and one; wrote two traffic citations— both for speeding in Corona del Mar—and made no arrests. The Activity Log and Citation Book carbons enclosed by Dennison showed that Ray had written the tickets at 12:10 and 12:50. He had done field interviews at midnight, 12:20 and 12:35. Jim checked the photocopy of Raymond’s time card. He’d clocked back in at the station at 1:00 A.M., exactly on time. Just like Raymond, he thought: on the dot, and by the book. And no more than six consecutive minutes unaccounted for at a time, either by voice or on paper.
Hard to believe, he thought, leafing through the file, that Ray is a fifteen-year veteran already. Raymond’s career flew before him: eight commendations from two different chiefs; six citations from the city for outstanding performance; others from Lions, Kiwanis, the Chamber of Commerce, the Latino Studies Department at Cal State, Fullerton. He had been named Officer of the Year three times. He had gotten a special Certificate of Meritorious Conduct for collaring a burglar in the home of a ninety-two-year-old former city councilwoman, and a special Community Service Award for helping deliver a baby in his patrol car. He had resuscitated a waterlogged boy on the Twelfth Street beach one summer evening, performing CPR until paramedics arrived through the peninsula traffic. The kid pulled through. Weir could still remember the headlines. As he read on in the file, he realized how well Raymond had done, for an unentitled kid from the neighborhood—taking a bachelor’s degree in sociology before choosing law enforcement, finishing high in his classes at the Sheriff Academy, making sergeant at thirty, and lieutenant at thirty-five. He had enrolled in law school just after getting the promotion—the same year Weir quit the Sheriff’s to seek his fortune—and now had just two more semesters to go. We all have our treasures, he could hear Becky say.
Now Raymond was adrift, he thought, untethered and on his own. If he meant what he said about executing Ann’s killer, then he was risking more than his career—he was risking his life. Maybe mine, too, thought Jim, if the man we’re after is a cop.
The last page of Raymond’s file offered an interesting fact, of which Jim knew nothing. The ACLU had moved to bring a class-action suit against the Newport Beach PD in the summer of 1988, alledging that minorities were either not hired often enough or not promoted high enough. But Ray had refused to cooperate, and actually had spoken out against it in an interdepartmental letter to the then-chief, Lawrence Hiller. A letter back from Hiller, included here in Ray’s file, stated, “We commend Lt. Cruz’s discreet handling of these potentially disruptive matters, and consider it a substantial recommendation toward the lieutenant’s eventual promotion to captain.” The suit was dropped. Ray, thought Weir, was a stand-up guy. He had bigger fish to fry: law school, graduation, the bar exam, practice. Raymond, true to form, wanted to prosecute someday.
And who, really, would be better at it? Raymond Cruz had lived in Newport Beach longer than anyone else on the force, and his great-great-great-grandfather had been a cop before the word cop was invented. Ray’s family, generations ago, had owned Rancho Boca de la Mar, seven thousand acres that included what would become Newport Beach, long before land became real estate. The patriarch, Francisco Cruz, had ruled over the rancho in its glory days of the vaqueros. And Francisco Cruz, as Raymond had told Jim so many times in his childhood, had been a Justice of the Plains, as appointed by the Mexican governor. Justice of the Plains: The phrase had rolled with pride off of Raymond’s youthful tongue.
Weir remembered the tragic story now as he sat in Ann’s small kitchen and felt layers of irony forming. He had first heard it from Raymond himself, in the fourth grade. Francisco Cruz was married to Lisbeth, a beautiful woman of German-Irish blood, who was kidnapped for ransom by the bandit Joaquin La Perla in a daring daylight raid on the rancho. Joaquin was nicknamed La Perla for the pearl-handled revolvers he wore, which, if Weir remembered correctly, were displayed at local fairs for years to come when Joaquin was finally caught and hanged. In Raymond’s fourth-grade version of the story, Francisco had tracked La Perla and shot him down like a dog in the dirt, rescued his wife, and rode home to Rancho Boca de la Mar to celebrate with the largest fiesta in the history of the territory. Weir remembered the toy revolvers that Raymond had brought in as props for his story, complete with the white plastic handles. What actually had happened, however, was that Francisco’s men had abandoned him in the eleventh hour and Cruz had continued after La Perla alone. He finally found the outlaw in what is now Silverado Canyon, where La Perla shot him full of holes and hung his body from an oak tree that is still standing today. Lisbeth was never found. Weir could remember that some heartless fourth-grader had pointed out the discrepancy between Ray’s story and the version in a book of Orange County history, which he brought to class the next day as evidence. Raymond had stated flatly that the book’s author was a liar and probably wasn’t even there when it happened, then had withdrawn into brooding quiet that had lasted for days.
Now this, thought Jim. History might not repeat itself, but its echoes come sounding off the walls. He pondered the fate of the Cruz family. In the last 120 years, they had gone from being major landholders to renters of little houses and apartments, employees, proprietors of small businesses. Francisco’s debt-riddled rancho was eventually sold off by his sons. Now, every inch of it belonged to someone else— even the Eight Peso Cantina was on leased land now held by the PacifiCo Development Group. Irena and Nesto had named it the Eight Peso because that was about how much money Nesto had waiting for him when he came back from Guadalcanal in 1946. His father had invested Nesto’s service checks on a new idea—an automated car wash—which had gone belly-up earlier the same year.
It struck Jim that Raymond had never bemoaned the downward legacy left to him, never developed the sour pride of the fallen aristocrat, never considered himself entitled because of blood or race. Quietly, in his own way, Ray had been trying to turn it around. If he executes this guy, Weir thought, he’d be killing a part of himself, too. If he doesn’t, Ray might join Francisco at the gates of heaven with similar stories to tell.
Next, he divided the time cards for the thirty-two officers on night and graveyard shifts—some of which overlapped one hour for obvious reasons—into partners and solos. The partners he set aside. That left eight solo officers out on each shift. Next, he checked their personnel files for blood type, and came up with five type B’s. Four were right-handed, but two of these clocked out on the early stagger, at 12:02 and 12:18, respectively.
He wrote down the two remaining names on his legal sheet: Philip Kearns and Dale Blodgett.
According to Kearns’s application and performance reviews, he was thirty-four years old, a bachelor. He’d made sergeant at thirty-two. Good, if not outstanding record. Helped deliver a baby in his squad car while partnered with Raymond Cruz, summer of ’87. Yellow-slipped in September of the same year for parking his patrol car in a woman’s driveway and leaving it unattended for twenty minutes—an irate neighbor had complained about the radio noise. An evaluation by Captain Chris Saunders lauded Kearns’s “easy disposition with the public” and “low-key approach to law enforcement.” Kearns had been on the Police Pistol Team, Distinguished Marksman, ever since he was first hired.
Jim wondered whether Ann knew Kearns well enough to get into his car.
The transcript from Dispatch showed that Kearns stopped for coffee at a doughnut shop on Balboa between 11:15 P.M. and 11:35. So, thought Weir, he was patrolling the peninsula, where Ann lived and worked, where Ann was last seen. There was no communication between Kearns and Dispatch from 12:30 and 12:50. His Activity Log and Citation Book showed nothing, either. Twenty minutes, thought Weir, smack dab in the middle of the hour in question. On his legal pad, he wrote, KEARNS UNACCOUNTED FOR 20 MINUTES BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND ONE. He studied the personnel file of Sgt. Philip Kearns: a slender, small-featured face, wispy mustache, lively eyes, handsome in the way that cops are handsome. Medium brown hair, thinning and worn long, combed back from his forehead. Would it match the hair on Ann’s blouse? Jim could feel his hands warming, a ripple of adrenaline easing through his body.
He sat back in the uncomfortable dinette chair and looked around the Cruz kitchen. Neat but not too neat: lived in. A cat clock hung from the wall behind the fridge, with eyes and a tail that moved with each tick and tock. Ann was a cat person. Ann was also a sweats-and-socks person, around the house. Why had she driven to work, then changed into something minimal and flattering? BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T COMING HOME, Weir wrote. Why no coat? BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T PLANNING ON BEING OUTSIDE. WHERE WERE YOU GOING, SWEET SISTER, WHERE DID YOU CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES?
