Until Judgment Day (24 page)

D
OOR LOCKED BEHIND HIM,
Miller perched self-consciously on the edge of Granz' chair and turned the smiling color portrait of Dave, Kathryn, and Emma facedown before pulling open the desk drawers and rummaging through the contents.

“Holy shit.”

From the lower right drawer he pulled out two handfuls of over-the-counter headache remedy and painkiller bottles—aspirin, Advil, Excedrin, Aleve, Tylenol. But he located no prescription meds.

“Looks like a fuckin' pill factory,” he grumbled to himself and dumped them all in the wasteasket.

In the center drawer along with pencils, scratch paper, Post-it pads, paper clips, and an assortment of junk he found a certified copy of yesterday's adoption order and a huge, flowery greeting card inscribed in pink,
TO MY DAUGHTER.

The card was paper-clipped under the flap of a matching envelope. He started to open and read the inside of the card, then reconsidered. Unwilling to invade his friend's most personal privacy, he dropped it into his briefcase to deliver to Kathryn and Emma.

The upper right desk drawer contained a manila envelope whose flap was almost worn out. He lifted the flap and pulled out two bundles of papers, each stapled in the upper left corner.

The first was a printout downloaded from The Brain Tumor Society web site. He flipped through the pages and found several passages highlighted in yellow and underlined in red ink:

The second, Frequently Asked Questions About Epilepsy, was littered with highlighted passages.

Under “Causes and Triggers”:

 

Head Injury & Brain Tumor

 

On the next page:

 

In rare cases, seizures can last many hours.

 

And farther along:

In the same drawer he found a San Jose phone book dog-eared to the neurologists' section in the physicians' listings in the yellow pages with no names marked, a portable, battery-operated voice changer, and a manual LockAid Tool pick gun.

He dropped them in his briefcase, closed the drawer, quickly rifled the remaining drawer, the credenza, and the file cabinets.

Finding nothing more, he sat back down at the desk for a couple of minutes thinking before picking up the desk phone and punching in a four-digit internal number.

“Weapons, records, and evidence, Deputy Rivers.”

“This is Miller.”

“Hey, Lieutenant, is it true—the Sheriff's dead?”

“Yeah, Rivers, I'm afraid so.”

“Jesus! I didn't hear about it till I came to work this morning—thought the guys were yanking my chain. What happened?”

“I'm still investigating.”

“Yeah, I understand you can't talk about an investigation that's ongoing. But I was wondering.”

“Wondering what?”

“Who's sheriff now?”

“Hadn't really thought about it. I'm Chief of Detectives and Senior Lieutenant. Guess I'm it until the Board of Supes appoints somebody.”

“Let me know if I can help.”

“Matter of fact you can. How many scoped Remington .308s we got in the department arsenal?”

“Two for each SWAT unit and two spares—ten total, why?”

“Go check the log, see if Sheriff Granz signed any of them out in the past month.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he went to the range.”

“I'll check and get back to you.”

“Did you hear me! Do it now, I'll hang on.”

“Uh—sure, Lieutenant.”

Rivers dropped his phone on the counter. Miller rocked the chair back, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply and loudly through his mouth.

Two minutes later, Rivers was back. “Lieutenant?”

“Go.”

“If he took one, it ain't logged out.”

“Humph! I suppose it wouldn't be, would it?”

“Say again?”

“Never mind.”

Miller thought for a moment. “Pull all the .308s, grab a box of M-118 ammo, write my name in the log to check 'em out. I'll be down to sign for 'em.”

“You're gonna take all ten of them?”

“You got a hearing problem, Rivers?”

“No, sir.”

“Then have the fuckin' rifles ready.”

He hung up hard, decided he'd apologize to Deputy Rivers when he checked out the weapons, flipped Granz' Rolodex, found the number he wanted, and dialed an outside line.

“DOJ—Menendez speaking.”

“This is Lieutenant Miller at the SO.”

“My God, Lieutenant, I can't believe it.”

“I'm havin' trouble with that myself.”

“How's Chief Fields?”

“He'll be okay.”

“Ms. Mackay?”

“In the hospital. Her doctor's watchin' her and the baby close, that's all I know.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Tell me about it. Reason I called, Menendez, I need a favor.”

“Name it.”

“If I bring in ten rifles, how long'd it take you to run ballistics comparisons to slugs from the Duvoir and Garcia crime scenes?”

“If I round up a few more criminalists to help, a half hour.”

“I'd prefer you do it personally, if you wouldn't mind.”

“How soon do you need them?”

“Yesterday.”

“Lieutenant!”

“Before five o'clock this afternoon.”

“I'll test-fire and put them under a scope while you wait, if you can spare two or three hours.”

“That's great.”

 

Menendez pulled back from the twin lens, comparison microscope and digital camera and rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. The scope was bolted to a stainless steel workbench and connected by USB cable to a computer equipped with flat-screen color monitor, keyboard, and printer.

“That's the murder weapon, Lieutenant.” She laid her hand on a Remington rifle whose stock sat on the floor with its barrel propped against the workbench, and stepped aside.

“See for yourself,” she told him.

Miller leaned over the scope and twisted the focus knobs to compensate for his astigmatism. “Lands, grooves, barrel markings all line up. Which slug's this?”

“Duvoir.”

She replaced the slide with a second one that also held two bullets side by side. He checked them under the scope. “Another match—Garcia crime scene, right?”

“Right.” Menendez switched off the microscope's light and pulled out the slide. “No question about it, this weapon fired the bullets that killed Duvoir and Garcia.”

Miller sighed. “Considering the results, I don't know if thanks is the right thing to say, but I really appreciate your help, Menendez.”

“You're welcome.”

“I owe you one.”

“Forget it.”

“Can you print—”

Miller's cell phone stopped him midsentence. He answered it, listened for several seconds, and said, “Good work—I'll ask her.”

Miller covered the mouthpiece. “Am I good for one more real urgent favor?” he asked Menendez.

“Whatever you need.”

“Escalante seized a pair of size-ten Nike Airliners.”

“Tell her bring them in, I'll compare them to shoe prints from the Benedetti crime scene.”

Miller contemplated. “Can you run comparisons on
two
pairs of Nike Airliners rather than one by five o'clock?”

“Sure.”

Miller raised the phone to his mouth slowly. “She'll do it on account of my good looks. Meet me at my house before you come to DOJ.”

Miller listened. “I'll tell you when I get there.”

He glanced at Menendez, flipped the phone's cover shut, and clipped it onto his belt.

“Two pairs?” she asked.

“Just a hunch.” He pointed at the coffee stain on his slacks. “Gotta change pants anyway. Where were we?”

“You were asking if I could print something.”

“Oh yeah—five sets of ballistics glossies—for me, Fields, Escalante, and Nelson?”

“No problem. I snapped the slides and saved the files on my computer's hard drive.”

“And five sets of both pairs of shoe print comparisons?”

“Good thing I don't charge by the page.” She loaded a stack of photo-quality printer paper into a HP DeskJet 970cse and punched the Print button on her computer keyboard.

“Who's the fifth set of photos for?” she asked.

“Mackay.” Miller cleared his throat. “If she wants to see 'em.”

T
UESDAY
, J
ANUARY
14, 5:35
P.M.
S
HERIFF'S
C
ONFERENCE
R
OOM

“
E
ITHER OF YOU HEAR
from Fields?” Miller asked.

Escalante and Nelson shook their heads.

“Should I buzz his cell phone and reschedule the briefing for tomorrow morning?” Escalante asked.

“It can't wait that long.”

“Maybe it should,” Nelson observed. “You could use some sleep.”

“I'll sleep after we've sorted this mess out. We'll wait for Fields.”

After leaving DOJ, Miller met Escalante at home and changed into Sperry Top-Siders with Levi's and a T-shirt that had a silk-screened trombone under the words
MUSIC SOOTHES THE SOUL,
slipped on his old leather aviator jacket, and drove to the County Building.

He walked to the window, rubbed a peephole through the fog and dirt with the back of his hand, and gazed outside. Rain clouds had choked out the sun and a persistent drizzle had reduced the park to a mud-pocked quagmire. Wind gusts rippled the puddle surfaces before they slammed into the building, rattling the window.

“It looked so pristine under the snow this morning.” Anger rose like bile in Miller's throat, lowering his voice to a hoarse growl. “Now the park's ugly and dirty like everything else.”

Nelson looked at Escalante, who lifted her shoulders and arched her eyebrows.

Miller banged the window with a fist, turned and sat down. “If I was sheriff, I'd cement the windows over. They're no good anyway, haven't been cleaned in years.”

He was wrapped up in thought when the door slammed open and Fields charged in, panting from running up three flights of stairs.

“Sorry, traffic was heavy coming over the hill.”

His suit was wrinkled and he'd slid the knot of his tie down and unbuttoned the top shirt button. He dropped into a chair and shifted his gaze around the table.

“How'd it go with Granz' parents?” Nelson asked.

“Not good. I caught his mother at home as she was returning from the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

Fields pushed his lower lip over the upper, and composed his thoughts.

“Whoever called them last night screwed up,” he said. “Dave's father had a stroke when he heard.”

Nelson made a face. “Shit, I called.”

Fields grunted in self-rebuke. “Sorry, Doc.”

Nelson propped his elbows on the table and lowered his chin into his hands. His breathing was ragged, as if someone had reached into his lungs and was ripping them out in bits and pieces.

“Don't blame yourself,” Escalante told him.

“Should've asked the San Diego Coroner to notify them in person, but I thought it'd be easier if someone who knew their son broke the news. Shows how sensitive I can be when I really try.”

He dragged in a shaky breath. “How bad a stroke?”

“He didn't make it,” Fields answered. “Mrs. Granz was distraught as hell.”

“No shit, I wonder why,” Miller said. “Her husband and son die the same day.”

Fields stared at Nelson before going on. “She gave me these before I left,” he finally said. “Told me they might help to explain a few things. They do.”

Fields snapped open his briefcase and laid a small packet of old envelopes on the table. They were dusty and yellowed with age and held together with heavy rubber bands that were cracked and brittle.

“What are they?”

“Letters from Granz' parents to John Thompson and James Benedetti, Saint Sebastian school administrators, and various San Diego Diocese officials, dated late nineteen-sixty-nine and early nineteen-seventy.”

He had everyone's attention.

“His mother wrote the first one soon after Dave started high school, asking to meet with Father Thompson about an important matter. The second, a few weeks later—after she didn't hear from Thompson—went to the high school principal.”

“What'd the letters say?”

“That Dave said he was being molested by Reverend John Thompson.”

Miller wiped his hands on his Levi's as if to scrape off the window grime. “There's motive.”

No one answered.

“The others are more of the same,” Fields went on. “Back and forth between Granz' parents and the Diocese. Eventually they got a letter from Benedetti—he'd been assigned to investigate, exactly as Bishop Davidson testified.”

“Saying what?”

“He claimed he'd interviewed all the boys at length, including Dave, and their stories were the result of vivid imaginations and runaway teenage libido—a total whitewash.”

“Did the Granzes follow up?” Escalante asked.

“Yeah, the next letter after Benedetti's snow job went to the Bishop, demanding an investigation or they'd go to the cops.”

Fields ran his hand through his thinning hair. “Diocese lawyers wrote them a nasty response, denying culpability and threatening to sue, but also offering
generous reparation.”

“How much?”

“The letter said an amount
to be negotiated
.”

“Did the shysters say what the Church wanted in exchange for the payoff?”

“Yeah, it was real specific. It said Dave was a troublemaker and—”

“Sounds about right,” Miller interjected with a sad smile.

Fields smiled, too. “The lawyers demanded Dave's permanent transfer to another school plus a statement signed by him
and
his parents recanting the charges. They also demanded that Mr. and Mrs. Granz surrender all written correspondence on the subject.”

“Did they take the money?”

“Hell no, the last letter Dave's mom wrote tells them to shove it.”

“Did she go to the police?”

“No. To avoid traumatizing their son, her last letter promised not to pursue a complaint if the Church banished Thompson from the teaching and coaching professions forever. She refused money but said she planned to keep the letters, as she put it,
in case they were ever needed again.”

“They agreed?”

“They didn't answer that letter. But as Davidson told the Grand Jury, Thompson was shipped out to Monterey immediately after. He never taught or coached again.”

“Gutsy woman,” Escalante said. “No telling how many boys she saved.”

“For sure. They enrolled Dave at Mira Mesa High School the following fall, to start his sophomore year. She said after that, Dave refused to go to church and as far as she knows, he never did.”

“He wasn't lying when he said he graduated from Mira Mesa,” Miller observed. “Just left a little bit out.”

“Can you blame him under the circumstances?” Escalante asked.

“I can if he murdered Thompson and Benedetti, no matter what the cause.”

“So far, we can't prove he murdered anybody.”

“If it's got feathers and an orange bill, waddles, quacks, swims, and eats crackers, it's prob'ly a duck.”

Miller handed a set of Menendez' ballistics photos to each of them. “DOJ IDed the Duvoir and Garcia murder weapon. A Remington sniper rifle from the Sheriff's Department arsenal.”

“Pretty convincing,” Escalante said. “But any cop can walk into that arsenal, wave at the deputy on duty, and walk out. I've done it myself.”

“You didn't have a motive to murder those priests, neither do other cops.”

“You're certain about that?” Escalante challenged.

“Meaning?”

“Granz had no reason to kill Duvoir or Garcia, and the rifle didn't kill Thompson or Benedetti.”

“You heard Doc—the psychosis induced by the brain tumor might have generated a hatred for all priests. Not only that, but a .25 automatic killed Thompson, and Granz claims he lost his. Convenient, right?”

“Half the three hundred cops in the Sheriff's Department are Catholic,” Nelson speculated. “Newspapers reported that the Boston Archdiocese admitted to eighty-four cases of pedophile priests and paid thirty million bucks to settle the cases. Similar stories came out of Santa Fe, Dallas, New Orleans, Tucson, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Palm Beach, Santa Rosa—every place in the country. Hundreds—thousands—of boys have been molested by priests, and Granz isn't the only cop among them.”

“Granz is the only one who disguised himself, sneaked into Holy Ascension, and tried to waste Fields.”

“Dave had two overwhelming reasons to commit suicide-by-cop,” Nelson surmised, “shame and guilt that all survivors of sexual abuse experience and a terminal medical condition—and he was the
only
one who knew about that setup at the church. He didn't try to kill Fields—he had the chance but didn't do it.”

Miller shook his head sadly. “Can't argue with that,” he conceded, then told them about the stock-pile of pills he'd found when he searched Granz' office. “And that ain't all,” he added.

He reached into his briefcase, pulled out the voice changer and pick gun, and laid them on the table in front of him without speaking.

Escalante picked up the voice changer and inspected it. “Why would he have one of these unless he placed those calls himself?”

“Every active and ex-field narc has 'em. When he was Chief of Detectives, he was head of the County Narcotics Investigation team, active in a lot of investigations.”

“Okay, I can see the reason for having a voice changer, but why a lock pick—that's how the shooter got into the gym to kill Benedetti.”

“I know. They cost thirty bucks on the Internet. Every locksmith has one and for that matter so does every burglary dick I ever knew. We keep 'em in the equipment room—ostensibly to help homeowners who get locked out by mistake, along with SlimJims to pop car doors for folks who lock their keys inside. They might not look good for Granz under the circumstances but they don't mean diddly. What'd Menendez turn up on the shoe comparisons?”

“I'll show you the photographs,” Escalante volunteered, bending over to open her briefcase.

“Summarize it, please,” Miller suggested.

“After this morning's briefing I drove to the hospital. Kathryn gave me permission to search their house. I seized a set of size-ten Nike Airliners from the Sheriff's closet. On my way to DOJ I stopped by Miller's house and picked up his—they're identical, even the same size. Menendez photographed both pairs, printed transparencies, and overlaid them on the composite prints from the Benedetti crime scene.”

“And?”

“Inconclusive.”

“That's why I submitted my own shoes,” Miller explained. “To prove that this long afterward, with the changes to tread patterns caused by wear, any set of size-ten Airliners might have left the prints at the gym.”

Fields' question was direct and blunt. “Are you Catholic?”

Miller stared. “You serious?”

“Damn right.”

“Baptist—heathen if you ask my ex-wife. And I've never been sexually molested by a Catholic priest or anyone else. Haven't killed anybody, either.”

Nelson removed his bifocals and rubbed the red spots on the bridge of his nose. “Where does this leave your investigation? Half the evidence points to Granz but the other half could point to hundreds of other men, some of them cops.”

“If the murders stop, we'll have our answer,” Escalante said.

“Not necessarily,” Miller told her. “If you were a murderer and someone else went down for your crimes, and if you didn't want to get caught, what would you do?”

“I'd stop killing.”

“Exactly.”

“So, unless the shooter hits again, or we locate Granz' .25 and match it to the slug that killed Thompson, we can't prove Granz murdered Thompson,” Escalante summed up.

“Even if we find his weapon,” Miller added, “we won't be able to prove anything because he reported it missing. Filed a police report on Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend.”

“How about the throw-down the shooter left by Benedetti's body?” Escalante asked.

Miller looked at her. “What about it?”

“We could go back, look into all the cases Granz handled over the years. If any involved a seized Python, check to be sure it's still in the evidence locker.”

“What good would that do?” Nelson demanded.

“We'd know whether or not Granz was the shooter,” Escalante answered.

“I know that!” Nelson's face turned red. “You could trace the damn cell phone calls, too. What I meant was—so what if he
was
the shooter and a search of old cases, or a cellphone-call trace proved it? He's dead, for Chrissake—what good would it do to pin the killings on him except to improve the Sheriff's crime-solving statistics? Can't we leave Kathryn and her daughter Emma the doubt, the dignity of not knowing for certain—leave them with a tiny, loving piece of his memory?”