If Angels Fall (8 page)

The phone in the study rang.

“Okay, Mr. Becker, let’s go.”

They rushed to the living room. Additional phone lines had been
installed. Two were new numbers, two were extensions. Pacific Bell would have
the caller’s address in seconds. The phone rang again.

“Nob Hill!” Someone shouted the address of the call.

Tape recorders were rolling, a SFPD hostage negotiator put on a
headset to listen in. He had a clipboard and pen, ready to jot instructions to
Nathan. The room was silent. Nathan looked at the negotiator. He nodded, and
Nathan answered on the third ring.

“Hello...” He swallowed. “Oh. Hello Mr. Brooker.” Nathan shook his
head.

Sydowski went to the bank of telephones, slipped on a headset and
listened to the call. An officer, already listening in, had scribbled the
caller’s name on a pad: Elroy Brooker, Nor-Tec’s CEO.

“I just heard what happened, Nathan. Two FBI agents just left my
home. I’m so sorry. How are you and Maggie holding up?”

“We’re praying,” Nathan sniffed.

“Be strong, Nathan. Never give up hope.”

“Did the agents tell you anything?”

“They asked a lot of questions about you and the project. If you
were a gambler, or ran up debts you couldn’t repay, if you were capable of
selling information about the project.”

“Yeah?” His voice wavered between anger and disbelief.

“I told them to go to hell and find your boy. You’re one of our top
people. Outstanding in every way.”

Nathan had regarded Brooker as a bumbling, spineless relic.

“Listen, Nathan, I won’t tie up your line. I’m going to call the
board now. I think we can pull thirty, maybe fifty thousand from our corporate
donations account. It’ll be at your disposal, a reward, ransom, whatever it
takes to see your son is returned safely. As you know, Ruth and I have nine
grandchildren. Our prayers are for Danny, Maggie, and you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brooker.” Nathan hung up. The recorders stopped. He
put his face in his hands.

“Mr. Becker, we should work on the composite.” Mikelson said.

Nathan moved his jaw to speak, looking into his empty hand.

“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I should have been watching him.
He’s our little boy. He’s the same age as that murdered little girl. What
if...what if... Oh please, I have to go and find my son.”

Nathan bolted for the door. Ditmire grabbed him. Sydowski helped,
and they held Nathan until he finally broke down and wept.

During the night, an oppressive silence fell on the Becker home.
Sydowski picked up a Giants’ ball cap he spotted peeking from under the sofa. Child-size.
Danny’s cap? He noticed the fine strands of blond hair caught in the weave. In
Victorian Europe, parents would cut and cherish locks of hair from their dead
children before burying them.

One of the police phones rang. Ditmire grabbed it and said, “One
second,” then passed it to Sydowski.

“Give me the score, Walt.” It was Lieutenant Leo Gonzales. Sydowski
told him everything, while peering through the living room curtains at the half
dozen police cars, the unmarked surveillance van, and the news cruisers out
front.

“What about Donner, Walt? We got a serial here?”

“It’s too soon, Leo.”

“Probably. Can the father ID the bad guy?”

`Don’t know. We’re working on a composite.”

“We got people canvassing all night in Balboa and Jordan Park. We’ll
get vice and robbery to help,” Gonzales said. “We’ll shake down the registry
and see what falls out. We’re also checking prisons and mental hospitals for
escapees, walk-aways, recent discharges, and complaints. Halfway houses.”
Gonzales promised a grid of the park and neighborhood at dawn and bodies to hit
the bars, porn, and peep clubs. “The mayor called the chief. We need this one,
Walt.”

“You’re talking in obvious terms, Leo.”

“Sorry about your new partner. That was supposed to be official at
the hall on Monday.”

“Well, shit happens, Leo.”

“I love you too, dear. Keep in touch.”

Later, Ditmire was in the study with Nathan and the sketch artist.
Turgeon was with Maggie upstairs. Rust was reviewing reports. Sydowski borrowed
his cellular phone. The press outside could not monitor its scrambled
frequencies. He wanted a moment alone and went to the kitchen. He noticed its
black-and-white-tile floor, skylights, lace curtained windows, French doors led
to the patio and backyard. The table looked like maple. On the refrigerator
door, at eye level, was a newspaper clipping with tips on quake readiness. What
about kidnappings? Below it, tiny Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse magnets held up
a colorful finger painting with a “D” scrawled at the bottom. There was a
Smurf’s calendar next to it. Danny’s doctor’s appointment was next Friday at
two.

Sydowski called his old man’s unit at Sea Breeze in Pacifica.

“Hahllow.”

“Hey, Dad. You got home okay?” Sydowski said in Polish.

“Oh sure, no problems. Sixty dollars for the cab. Do you believe
that? I remember when you could buy a house for that.”

“So, who won the game?”

“A’s, ten to eight.”

“It got interesting after I left?”

“You going to be working all night on this. I saw it on the TV. It’s
pretty bad. It breaks my heart.”

“The ones with kids always break my heart, Dad.”

“Why do people do this? What does it prove? It’s crazy. Crazy.
Better to shoot the sonofabitch.”

“Listen, I’m going to be working hard time on this one, but I’ll
come down and see you when I can.”

“Sure, sure.”

“What are you going to do tomorrow?”

“I got to cut hair for John. Remember Big John?”

“The retired bus driver.”

“Yeah, I’m to give him a haircut.”

“Good. Well, I got to get back to work, Dad.”

“Sure. You better catch the sonofabitch. Shoot him.”

“I’m doing my best, Dad. Good night.”

Sydowski was tired. He poured coffee and took a bite of a pastrami
on rye, delivered by a deli. Turgeon entered.

“So, you killed a man., did you? Who handled the file, Ditmire?” She
sat down next to him. “Going to tell me about it?”

“Maybe.”

She smiled, took some coffee, brushing back the hair that had
curtained over one eye. She was pretty. Reminded him of his daughters. His
heart swirled with warm, then sad thoughts.

“I’m sorry, I never knew your dad.”

“It was a long time ago, too. Look”—Turgeon shifted topics—“I’d like
to go to the hall tonight and read the Donner file.”

“Forget Lonnie. I’ll bring you up to speed. It’ll be a long night.”

“Fine, but while we’re speaking of Ditmire. I appreciate your help,
Inspector, but you don’t have to protect me.”

A scolding. He bit into his sandwich.

Dad, please. You’re suffocating me with your loving concern. His
oldest daughter would chide him whenever he offered misgivings on her dates.
Sydowski understood.

“And,” Turgeon said, “for the record, I asked to be teamed with you.
Insisted, actually.”

“Let’s hope you won’t regret it. Getting what you want can sometimes
be terrible.” Sydowski finished his sandwich and coffee. “I need some air. Tell
the Hoover boys I’ll be outside with this.” He left with the cellular phone.

Strolling through the backyard to the park helped Sydowski think.
The cool night air invigorated him. At the edge of the pond, he watched the
swans sleeping with their heads tucked under their wings.

It could be the same guy who murdered Tanita Marie Donner. Catch
this guy and you could clear both. That was the department thinking. Results were
expected fast before it got out of hand.

Sydowski picked up two round pebbles, and shook them like dice. It
was just a little too pat. Could’ve been planned to appear like the first one.
Could be coincidence. He looked up at the darkened windows of Maggie Becker’s
studio.

Sydowski threw the pebbles into the pond, startling the swans.

“I visited
my baby’s
grave this morning.” Angela Donner felt the eyes of her weekly bereavement
group upon her. It was always hard when her turn came.

Don’t be ashamed, embarrassed or afraid. We’re here together. That
was the group’s philosophy. Still, it was difficult to face them. Angela was
painfully self-conscious. She was an overweight, twenty-one-year-old, living on
welfare with her father, who had lost both his legs below the knee to cancer.
She couldn’t help being uneasy when it was her time to talk. She apologized
with a smile.

“Poppa went with me. We brought fresh flowers. We always do.”

Angela fingered the pink ribbon, bowed around the folded,
grease-stained, take-out bag she held on her lap, like a prayer book.

“Today, when we got to Tanita Marie’s spot—it’s pretty there in the
shade of a big weeping willow—I started pushing Poppa’s chair, he points and
says, ‘Look, Angie. There’s something on her stone.’ And I could see it. The
wind blew this bag up against it. Poppa wanted to complain to the groundsman.
But I said no.” Angela caressed the bag, then squeezed it.

“I took the bag and folded it. I took the ribbon from the flowers
from our last visit and tied it nice round the bag and saved it. Because of all
the hundreds of stones in the children’s cemetery, this bag came to my baby’s
grave. It came for a reason. Just like all of the babies in this city, mine was
murdered.”

The room’s fluorescent lights hummed. Angela stared at the bag in
her plump hands. The group listened.

“But, what’s the reason? Why was my baby murdered? I was a good
mother. I loved her. Why did someone take her? How could somebody be so bad?
Poppa says somebody who would kill a baby must be dead inside already. But why
can’t the police find my baby’s killer? He’s still out there. He could kill
another baby.” Her voice grew small. “I know it’s been a year, but sometimes,
at night, I can still hear her crying for me.” Angela held the bag to her face
and wept softly.

Lois Jensen left her chair, knelt before Angela, ad put her arms
around her. “Go ahead and let it out, sweetheart. It’s all right.”

Lois knew the hurt. Two years ago, her thirteen-year-old son Allan
was shot in the head while riding his bike through the park near their home.
Lois was the one who found him. She knew the hurt.

Dr. Kate Martin made a note on her clipboard. Her group was
progression. Manifestations of empathy, comfort, and compassion were now
common. Not long ago, Lois, who was married to a lawyer in Marin County, would
refuse to open up as each of the others articulated their grief. Now, through
Angela, Lois was healing. Death, the great equalizer, had taken a child from each
woman. Now, like shipwrecked survivors, they were holding fast to each other,
enduring.

Dr. Kate Martin had endured. Barely.

While writing, she tugged at her blazer’s cuffs, hiding the scars
across her wrists. She watched Angela cherishing her take-out bag. For Kate, it
was leaves, saved from each visit to her parents’ grave.

Kate was eight when her mother and father were late returning home
from a movie. Waiting and playing cards with their neighbor, Mrs. Cook. A
police car arrived at the house. The old woman put an age-spotted hand to her
mouth, Kate stood in her robe, barefoot, alone in the hall. Mrs. Cook talked in
hushed tones with the young officer at the door, holding his hat in his hand. Something
was wrong. Mrs. Cook hurried to her, crushing her against her bosom, with a
smell of moth balls, telling her there had been a horrible, awful car accident.

“You are all alone now, child.”

Kate was sent to live with her mother’s sister Ellen, her husband,
Miles, and their three sons on their pig farm in Oregon.

She hated it.

They were strangers who treated her as the dark child who had brought
the pall of human death into their home. She was given her own room and
everyone avoided her. Her only happiness came once a year, when, only for her
sake they reminded her, they’d stop work and pile into the family wagon to
drive to California to visit the cemetery where her parents were.