Never Fear (3 page)

“How did he get there?”

“Apparently he walked. He wasn't wearing shoes and his feet have a number of cuts in them.”

I stepped to the other end of the gurney and lifted the sheet off his feet. Pieces of grit and sand were embedded in his skin. More than a dozen deep cuts, now filled with dried blood, marked his feet like lines on a map.

Harrison stepped next to me and quickly examined them.

“He must have run over broken glass,” I said.

Harrison nodded. “Why would a person do that?”

I tried to imagine a reason for a person to continue to run in such condition.

“If he was suicidal, maybe he didn't feel it.”

I let the other explanation go unsaid, but I could see in Harrison's eyes that he was thinking the same thing I was. There were two motivations that consistently rendered pain meaningless—love and fear.

“Do you know him?” Harrison asked.

I took a breath. “I've never seen him before, but it's not impossible that he could be my brother, or half brother.”

“Would you like a moment alone?” Chow asked.

I shook my head. “Like I said, I've never met him before.”

“What makes you think it's possible that he may be your brother?”

I stared at his face—the face of my father.

“Home movies,” I said.

“But you know nothing about him?” Chow asked.

“I know for the first time in his life he tried to make contact with me last night.”

Chow looked at me for a moment.

“How?” she asked.

“He sent a cover sheet of a fax to me, but the rest didn't follow.”

“That doesn't sound inconsistent with someone contemplating suicide,” she said. “Maybe it was a suicide note and he changed his mind.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Can you release his personal effects?”

“Everything but his clothes; we'll need them if this is determined not to be a suicide.”

She started to say something, hesitated, then finished the thought.

“Will you be making arrangements for his remains?”

I nodded. “If he's my brother.”

I looked at his face one more time, turned away as Chow slipped the sheet back over him.

Outside the coroner's office I called Lacy and left her a message saying everything was okay, that Gabriel wasn't back in our life. But that was all I told her. The contents of the manila envelope I held in my hands, and the secrets that stretched all the way back to my father, if indeed that's what it was, could wait. I looked beyond the concrete banks of the river at the towers of downtown.

“Where do you want to start?” Harrison asked.

“What was the name of that lawyer she said he worked for?”

“Gavin.”

“Chow said he broke in there and stole the gun. We'll start there, work it forward. Chow didn't know about the fax, so I assume the detective in Northeast is unaware of it also.”

“You okay?” Harrison asked.

The Santa Anas were gaining strength, blowing all the pollution toward the coast, where a brown layer of sky stretched across the horizon.

“Okay?” I shook my head. “If he is my brother, I would like to know who his mother was. How he knew about me. Did our father stick around for him, or run from it all like he did to me?”

I looked at Harrison. “I'd like to know if my father ever told him about me.”

I looked at the envelope in my hands. “How are you at chasing windmills?”

“I've done my share,” Harrison said.

I thought about his young wife, whose death was never solved, and regretted asking the question.

“Do you have a brother?” I asked.

“An older one.”

“What's he like?”

Harrison smiled, or nearly smiled. “He's my brother . . . which I guess means he's a bit of a mystery to me.”

I looked back toward the river. “How many miles would you say it is from downtown upriver to Griffith Park?”

“Eight, maybe ten miles.”

I looked north, where the river traveled past railroad yards and industrial complexes before running past the hills of Griffith Park.

“I want to know why John Manning walked or ran all that way without any shoes on, and then put a bullet in his head.”

3

The lawyer Gavin had an office in the Ensor building at Seventh and Grand in downtown L.A. It was a stone building from the turn of the century that appeared to have resisted the gentrification that was making over the rest of the block.

We stepped off the elevator and found the office halfway down the hallway. A notice from LAPD forbidding entry was taped over the door. The dark wood of the door frame had been splintered around the lock.

“Why would he break into an office where he worked?” Harrison said. “Wouldn't he have a key?”

I opened the envelope containing Manning's effects and removed a key chain with half a dozen keys. A key with the number of the office stamped on it slipped into the lock and easily turned the dead bolt.

“He did,” I said.

I looked around the corridor; at least half the nearby offices were empty. The likelihood of anyone being around to hear the crack of the door was remote.

“Why do you break into an office you have a key for?” I said.

“To make it appear that someone else broke in,” Harrison answered.

I pushed the door open and looked inside. It was a secretary's office, though from the dust on the desk it didn't appear to have seen much work lately. A pair of black hard-soled shoes sat on the desk. The door to Gavin's inner office had been broken just as the outer door had. I tested the same key and it opened the lock with a smooth, worn motion.

Gavin's office held the scent of decades of cigar smoke. I flipped on the light and we stepped inside. Papers were scattered across the floor, the desk drawers had been rifled. A computer hard drive lay smashed in a corner where it appeared to have been thrown. A heavy wooden chair lay on its side just beyond the swing plane of the door.

“What if John didn't break in?” I said.

Harrison studied the room for a moment. “Then I'd like to know if whoever did this was here before or after Manning, and I'd like to know what they were looking for.”

I stepped over to the window and looked out. A fire escape dropped down to street level.

“What if they were here at the same time?” I said.

Harrison stepped over to the window and looked down at the escape, then back out to the secretary's office.

“He removed his shoes so he wouldn't be heard on the marble floors.”

“And it didn't work.”

I played it out for a moment, imagining his movements as he frantically searched the room for whatever he was looking for.

“What would you do if you heard the crack of the outer door being forced?”

Harrison walked over to the wooden chair on its side by the door and righted it. “The top rail of the chair back is dented. It's possible he tried to brace the door.”

I looked around the office. Pictures, most of them looking to be at least twenty years old, adorned the walls. Whatever brief fling Gavin had had with success appeared to have been long since past. There were half a dozen calendars from funeral homes and chiropractors tacked on the walls. From the papers spread across the floor it was clear Gavin was little more than an ambulance chaser. I looked at the door and tried to imagine John Manning hearing the sound of the door splintering, but it eluded me. What could possibly be in this room that could cost someone his life?

“The simplest solutions are always the best,” I said. “John Manning, in a state of emotional distress, broke through two doors that he had a key to, then searched the office looking for the gun that he used to take his own life.”

“So what was in the fax?” Harrison said.

The Western Union office where the fax originated was three blocks south of City Hall on Broadway between Second and Third. The corporate towers of downtown were a mile to the west. This was old downtown, the part of town that was as alien to most suburban residents of L.A. as the Lower East Side of New York was to residents of Scarsdale. A line of mostly middle-aged men who transited in and out of a residential hotel down the block snaked out the door onto the sidewalk. Harrison pulled the squad car to a stop across the street.

“Disability checks must have come in,” Harrison said.

I looked at the men, most of whom had taken notice of the two cops parked across the street. A few who probably had outstanding warrants slipped out of line and quickly walked away.

“How far have we come from Gavin's office?”

Harrison checked the odometer.

“Almost two miles.”

“So why would he pick this place? Why didn't he send the fax from the office or go home?”

“If he was suicidal, reason probably didn't have much to do with it.”

“And if he wasn't suicidal?”

“Something couldn't wait.”

“Or he ran out of time.”

We walked across the street and into the office. The smell of malt liquor and body odor from the line of men followed us inside. I stepped up to the bulletproof glass partition and showed my badge. The teller was Middle Eastern, probably Iranian. He had the imperious air of someone who held power over everyone who stepped up to his window.

“I'd like to see the manager.”

He leaned in and looked at my badge, then at my face, and motioned with a nod of his head to a door to his right.

“Camera,” Harrison said, motioning toward the ceiling behind the teller.

The heavy reinforced door buzzed and we stepped inside. The supervisor was in his early thirties, white, and looked like he never ate or slept. I introduced Harrison and myself.

“I'd like to see your surveillance tape from last night.”

He looked at me for a moment as if the question surprised him.

“You guys have it already.”

“What guys?”

“Cops. They took it last night.”

“What cops—LAPD?”

“I don't know, that's what my night supervisor said when I got here this morning.”

“What time did they take the tape?”

“All he said was the middle of the night.”

“Did he tell you the name of the officer?”

“Nope.”

“Uniform or plainclothes?”

He pulled a cigarette out of his desk drawer and flicked it into his mouth but didn't light it. “You know everything I know.”

“Was he the only one working here last night?”

“You don't pay two people to stay up all night and do one person's work.”

“Call him,” I said.

“Now?”

“Now.”

He reached behind him, pulled a clipboard off the wall, ran through the list of numbers until he found what he was looking for, and dialed the number.

“He's probably sleeping, or out eating breakfast.”

It rang a dozen times, then he hung up.

“You want me to write down his number for you?”

I handed him one of my business cards. “And address.”

He wrote the information down and handed it back.

“A fax was sent from here last night. Would you have a record of it?”

He shook his head and motioned to the fax machine on the counter.

“Just a cash register receipt, fifty cents a page for local calls, a dollar for long distance.”

Harrison and I walked outside and stood on the sidewalk. I glanced at my watch. It was already nearly noon. Waves of heat were shimmering off the pavement. Neither of us made a move toward the squad, as if we both knew that by taking that next step a line would be crossed that there was no turning back from.

“A ranger found him around three-thirty,” Harrison said. “It would have been at least another half hour before Homicide reached the scene; that's four o'clock.”

The knot in my stomach began to tighten.

“Why would a cop confiscate a security tape before an investigation had even begun?” he added.

Neither of us needed to answer that one.

“So who took it? Another agency—ATF? FBI?”

“How would they have known about it?” I said.

“He was under surveillance.”

“There's another possibility.”

Harrison nodded. “It wasn't a cop at all.”

We stepped onto the street and walked over to the squad. I started to open the door, but stopped and looked back at the yellow sign on the building across the street. PUBLIC FAX.

“He would have seen that sign last night; that's why he stopped here. He walked or ran nearly two miles in his socks, his feet were cut from glass, and he saw the sign and thought of me. Why? What could I do for him that no one else could? And it's not because I was the sister he never had, not at that time of night.”

Harrison looked over at the sign for a moment, then turned to me. “You're a cop.”

I nodded.

“Why would someone take a tape?” I said.

“They don't want their picture taken.”

“And who doesn't want their picture taken?”

I felt myself crossing that line that there was no turning back from.

“Someone about to commit a crime,” Harrison said.

4

A piece of crime-scene tape blowing in the Santa Anas hung from the chain-link gate that John Manning walked through before he died. The fence was off a side road that passed behind a small manufacturing plant. There were no streetlights, no houses. Across the river was a DWP power substation. The nearest traffic was a block to the south, where a bridge crossed the river. The sound of the 5 freeway on the other side of the manufacturing plant would have muffled the sound of a gunshot.