“Some reason, Smith? It could be whim. Maybe that was when she finished dinner, or her favorite TV show was over. We can’t organize this entire operation around whim.”
“Maybe what happened at eight thirty was something she spotted through her binoculars, looking at Champion.”
Doyle leaned on the chair back, clearly unimpressed.
“Inspector, we’re talking about Madeleine Riordan. Madeleine Riordan didn’t have whims. But if she had, it wouldn’t have been to chat with a police officer. She knew what we thought of her. Inspector, she’d heard about her picture on the locker room bulletin board.”
Doyle flushed brick-red. It made me wonder if he’d tossed one of those darts that pierced her cheek or eye. Or perhaps he just didn’t object. Whatever, I could tell the balance had shifted toward Madeleine, and me, and my plan. “Okay, Smith,” he said slowly, “take the forward unit. Put a man on each exit. Keep Champion inside. Don’t bring him out until we turn on the lights.”
It said something about how long we’d worked together that he didn’t bother to remind me how bad things would be if I blew it.
It was already after seven. But I hadn’t gotten a report back from Kensington P.D. on Champion’s guns. From my office I called the Kensington station. Downey, the officer who’d questioned Champion, was still there.
“So, Downey, does he have weaponry?”
“Believe it, Smith. We’re just lucky he didn’t turn them in when we had the amnesty program. At fifty bucks a gun he could have bankrupted the city. But Champion’s not a guy who thinks ahead.”
“How so?”
“The guy’s got an M-1, a Thompson machine gun that’s virtually a collector’s item, so many German weapons his father must have done nothing in the second world war but strip the dead. Champion told me about watching the colonel clean them, like it was a religious ceremony. Champion could have sold them for a bundle. But you know what he did with them?”
“No.”
“Real Berkeley move. I’ll tell you, Smith, this guy’s on the wrong side of the county line.”
“What did he do with the weapons, Downey?” I said, failing to mask my impatience. I’m not as amused by Berkeley bashing when it comes from the other side of the line.
“He stuck them out in the yard, in the wood bin! They’re rusted all the hell up.”
I shook my head. Destroying weapons of death would have been a Berkeley move, but this was the reaction of a Brat—a brat who could have used the money from selling the collection, but chose to spite his father instead. His
dead
father. Victor Champion was sounding more unhinged than I’d thought. A bitter loner with guns. “Was all the weaponry unusable?”
“That’s the bad part, Smith. He doesn’t know. He can’t remember what was supposed to be there.”
“So anything could be missing.”
“You got it.”
“Did you search his house?”
“Nope. All of a sudden he got uptight and started carrying on about a warrant. You know how that is.”
“Indeed. Thanks, Downey.”
Things were clear to me, but I didn’t have enough for a warrant, either. As Downey could have told me, too frequently a judge can’t see as clearly as a police officer. A judge would need a confession in order to see the truth here.
I called the Evening Watch commander. The officers he gave me for backup would come off patrol in one or two sectors of the city—places where suspicious vehicles or people might now go unnoticed, where victims of robberies or muggings would get slower police response, where the perpetrators of those crimes would stand a better chance of walking free. Those were also districts where the remaining officers would be working harder while my backups were assisting me and, later, writing up reports on the assist. And if anything came down in those districts because they were short, I would hear about it.
The backup units would be waiting at the Kensington Circle. The dispatcher would notify the CoCo County sheriff that I’d be conducting an operation in Kensington. I headed out to the lot for a patrol car.
Sometimes you drive up into the hills and emerge out of the fog. Not tonight. At Kensington Circle above Cerrito Canyon the fog was thicker than at ground level. I slowed the car; I was outdriving the headlights. The lamps on the street poles gave off fake-looking vanilla glows that disappeared long before they fell to the street. It was the worst possible night to confront a suspect like Victor Champion. If I spooked him, he could hop on his bicycle and disappear in two seconds.
Backup—two cars, one bike, total of four patrol officers—was waiting at the Circle. I assigned Nguyen, Stovall, and Patterson to surround Champion’s house. The fourth, Megan Williams, the hotshot of bike patrol, would stay near the cars, handy to the radio and the top of the stairs, and to her bike. If we needed her, it meant we’d blown it and we were in trouble.
On the canyon rim road, we parked facing opposite directions—the better to chase if we had to. Though it was only seven fifteen, it was dark as midnight. If there were lights in living room windows, they were hidden behind drapes and the fog. No cars pulled up; no dogs barked; no cats scurried across the deserted road. We started carefully down the hundred stairs to Champion’s. The dirt steps, covered with dead leaves and pine needles, were almost invisible in the fog, and their irregular wooden braces threatened to catch my heel and send me headfirst into the canyon. As I made my way down between the houses, the air became clearer, but when I descended beyond them, the fog closed around me like a thick knitted scarf pulled over my face. The light from my flash barely made it to the step below. I stopped and whispered to Patterson, “Champion’s back door is at the east side. When we get to the bottom of the stairs, you go west, all the way around the building till you see it. Keep an eye on the windows, too. Living room window doesn’t open, but there’s a kitchen and bathroom.”
“No bedroom?”
“That’s on the far side of the companionway. If he gets that far, Stovall and Nguyen will see him.” I waited a moment and said, “Any other questions? Okay, no talk beyond here.”
As I moved down, the fog thickened as if its very weight was condensing the layers below. I turned off the flash—not a great loss—and felt with my feet for the edge of the stairs. Fog coated my face, iced my skin. Every few yards the smell changed, odors stronger in the night: dirt, wet fur, bay tree, skunk. I could barely hear Nguyen, Stovall, and Patterson behind me. Champion’s house couldn’t have been more than ten feet below, but it was entirely hidden. No light pierced the fog. Champion was lucky we were police officers. Anyone could have come down here, slit his throat, and tiptoed back up. And Claire Wellington across the canyon, how easily could she be raped, killed? Sitting in the main building, Delia and Michael would never notice. Like Madeleine’s, Claire’s room didn’t even have a window on that side. It was a dangerous, stupid arrangement, crimes just inviting perpetrators:
Come, pillage, slaughter! It’s easy! It’s safe! It’s confidential!
Suddenly Champion’s house was three feet away. I stopped and held my arms out to warn Nguyen and Stovall. Walking across the companionway would announce our numbers. Patterson I motioned around the house. Stovall and Nguyen backed up a step. I counted to three hundred—enough time for Patterson to get all the way around the building to the kitchen door—then walked normally down the last steps, onto the companionway, and knocked on the living room door. It was 7:20
P.M.
Under my jacket I was sweating. I listened for music, or a radio. Champion didn’t seem the television type. The only sounds were of faint rustling—Nguyen, or possum, or deer. Maybe Champion wasn’t the home type. He could be down at the meter cart garage sabotaging every Cushman in the city. I pounded on the door, four times, the police knock. “Pion! Open up!”
It took a third pounding before I heard footsteps, then the familiar voice and familiar words. “Keep your shirt on, I was in the darkroom.”
When he opened the door his hair was still wet, his clothes fresh, like he’d just showered. Dumping Elgin Tiress in Aquatic Lake was just the thing to work up a sweat. Looking at me, he shifted expression: annoyance to surprise to wariness. Was he worried I would expose him as the caper artist or as a murderer?
Y
OU DON’T MIND IF
I come in out of the cold?” I said, before Champion could consider whether to let me into his living room.
“Yeah, fine.”
I still wasn’t sure how I’d play him; I had to get a confession about the meter pranks, but I couldn’t lose him before he told me about Madeleine. I hurried into the living room. A burst of warm air hit me and I caught the vague smell of photographic chemicals. Only two small lamps lit the room, but the place seemed glowing bright. Piles of clothes were still splattered around the floor and over the canvas chairs. On the wall by the door, the coatrack was bare. There, painted the same white as the wall, it seemed only to underline Champion’s poor housekeeping.
Looking at that arrangement of the meter wands I said, “You deserve applause for hiding your trophies on display.”
Champion hesitated. I could almost see the gears of his mind clicking one after another. Should he accept my praise? Could he deny his guilt? Should he? Now that Madeleine was dead, who would applaud his cleverness? He’d cut Eckey’s brake line, made his escape on a bicycle—and there was no one to tell.
“You are responsible for the parking enforcement capers,” I said matter-of-factly. “Tell me about them.” Deliberately I stayed out of his path to the door. If he tried to bolt, I’d stop him. But if he succeeded, I wanted him to head out this door, not through the kitchen into the dark canyon, past just Patterson. Champion knew the canyon; we didn’t. If he got out there, we might as well give him bus fare.
“So, Pion,” I said, smiling. “You finally got Tiress. Did you know that?”
He tried to control his mouth but a little smile crept on.
“There’s no point denying it. Sit down. Tell me about the purple paint, the glue.”
His small smile stayed in place. So did mine.
“You should have seen the crowd around the Cushman when the meter maid smacked that bag and the paint exploded in her face. Everyone in Peet’s raced out for a look.”
He pressed his lips together hard, but he wasn’t good at controlling his face. He knew I was jerking him around, but I was giving him a payoff he’d get nowhere else. He was tempted, really tempted, I could tell that. But he still wasn’t talking. I had to get a confession. Without a confession I had nothing. That imaginary choke collar around his neck was dangling too damned loose; I couldn’t get a grip on the chain.
“Pion,” I said, trying to keep the tension from my voice, “when it’s all over, we’ll show you the reports.”
He hesitated.
I let go of the smile. And pulled the chain. “Look, we know you pulled those capers. We’ve got the proof right here on your wall. Either you tell me about them now and we get this cleared up by tomorrow morning in time for you to greet the press—the Hero of the Parking Meter—or, Pion, we take you in and we keep up the investigation. We tell the press we have a suspect, but we don’t think the case is closed. We just let the public interest dribble away. Either way we get you; it’s just a question of whether you want to be a hero or an afterthought. Which will it be?”
His face stayed absolutely still for so long that I wondered if he’d stopped breathing. Then he shrugged, padded across the room and sprawled in one of those miserable canvas chairs. He was grinning ear to ear.
I remembered when I first interviewed him, thinking there was a reason flattery existed. Victor Champion wasn’t about to do without it.
I opened the door, called Nguyen in, and pointed to a chair out of Champion’s line of sight where I hoped he’d soon be out of Champion’s mind.
I read Champion his rights. He seemed to think that was a joke. He could think whatever he liked, even that this warning referred mainly to the parking enforcement assaults rather than Madeleine Riordan’s murder. I could have come on strong here, or taken Champion to the station and leaned on him there, but with him the light flattering approach worked so well. A lot of guys on the force had a hard time with that one, but women, trained to it from childhood, can run it without blinking. I used to choke at the thought of it, but now it pleases me in a perverse way to make use of the tool of the underclass. “Pion,” I said, “the escalation was so slow, so subtle we don’t even know when you started picking off the Cushmans.”
He allowed a small smile of acknowledgment to settle on his angular face as he leaned back in his canvas chair, rested ankle on knee, and lifted a hand to illustrate his story. Moving him as quickly as possible, I led him through the mechanics of the assaults: swooping down on his ten-speed to snatch marking wands left in Cushmans as meter maids wrote out tickets, the release of a brake uphill of a newly delivered pile of manure, the theft of a Cushman and the drive up a ramp into a Dumpster. (According to Champion the hard part of that maneuver had been “borrowing” the portable ramp from a construction project down the street and returning it unseen.) He took full credit for every one of the assaults down to the Aquatic Park incident, glorying in the tidbits of meter maid frustration and humiliation I passed on to him. To hear Champion tell it, he was a sort of pop-psych Robin Hood of oppressed motorists, stealing esteem from the ticket-giving oppressors and bestowing it on the downtrodden drivers. Not once did he mention Madeleine’s contribution.
It was already eight twelve. Madeleine had wanted me to come at eight-thirty. Tonight I
would
be over there at eight-thirty. I had to move Champion faster. “What set you off to begin with? Lots of people see parking wands, but no one else snatched them up.”
“Assholes ruined my career.”
I let my eyes open wide. “How so?”
He propped his forearms on his legs and gave a great, disgusted sigh. “You can’t cart your photographs around to galleries on a bicycle, not if they’re printed poster-size and mounted. One good wind and you’re sailing into the next block. Or you’ve been blown off the bike, onto your ass and them, and your still life looks like ‘After the Earthquake.’ ”