Hector met him outside the headquarters employee entrance at seven-thirty the next morning. His face was dark and humorless and he looked like he'd barely slept.
"We gotta talk but we can't do it here," he said.
They walked over to Spider's, next to the boxing club on Fourteenth Street. The Internet-and-coffee room was empty as Hector grimly led the way through a blue door in the back. The bar was empty too- billiards tables brushed and balls racked for play, the big televisions all turned to a Super Bowl preview featuring four ex-pro quarterbacks.
McMichael and Hector took a corner booth and the bartender brought them coffee, then turned up the TV volume to give them a little privacy.
Hector leaned up close. "First of all, Rainwater isn't her real name. It's Gaglosta. Second, she killed a guy with a meat cleaver when she was seventeen. She was his caretaker."
McMichael said nothing to the hostile pity in his partner's eyes.
"Dade County Juvenile Court judge ruled self-defense, sealed the record because she was so young," said Hector. "She legally changed her name when she was eighteen. Didn't get a Social Security number until then. That's why Rainwater didn't pop when we ran the records and warrants check that night."
"Let's take a walk, Heck."
Hector dropped some bills on the table and they walked back out. The fierce morning sun and turquoise blue sky did nothing to brighten McMichael's oddly tunneled and unfocused eyesight.
"A meat cleaver?"
"Uh-huh."
"What happened?"
"She was in the guy's house. Working, late morning. She said the guy started groping her, wouldn't stop. She said he was going to rape her if she didn't do something. They were in the kitchen and the meat cleaver was handy. Dade County prosecutors wanted to charge her, but the juvenile court petitioned and the state kicked it down to them."
"How many times she hit him?"
"Once."
"How old was the guy, what condition?"
"Thirty-five and brain damaged from a motorcycle wreck. No priors, no incidents, clean. He worked in a bank, taught Sunday school to fourth-graders before the accident. His friends and neighbors weren't happy with Sally Gaglosta and the state court."
McMichael tried to process the information but his mind had gone dim, like a dying lightbulb. "Brain damage doesn't preclude violence. It can cause it. Can't it?"
Hector looked at him hard. "In Gaglosta's possible defense, she was from Hagville, Kentucky, foot of the Appalachians and the Alleghenies. She had one brother in prison for bank robbery, another in prison for growing dope in the hollows. One sister that just vanished. Her mom lived with a boyfriend to keep the welfare checks coming. Six kids, three fathers. Sally split when she was fifteen, moved in with an older sister in Miami."
They headed up Fourteenth and dropped back down onto Broadway, circled headquarters once, then started a second lap.
"She didn't sit right with me," Hector said quietly. "Not from the first second I saw her that night. It took me a couple of days to track all that down. I thought it was my obligation, Tom, as a partner and a friend."
"You're good at both, Hector."
Silence then, as they walked toward the headquarters doors. "Maybe it was self-defense," said Hector, unconvinced.
"Damn right," said McMichael.
More silence.
"Hey, I met a couple of flight attendants at Libertad last night. They're up for a foursome sometime but I get the blonde. I made you sound like a cross between Ricky Martin and the guy in Gladiator."
"That's me."
"Yesterday evening," said Hector, "Bland asked me about you and the nurse. Asked if you two were an item. I said beats me but the nurse isn't a suspect anyway, so who cares? I didn't say jack about anything else, and I won't unless he pulls me onto his IAD carpet. Who knows, maybe I'd still tell him to shove it."
"Don't sink for me, Hector."
"I can take care of myself. I hope you can."
"Close the door," said Bland. "Have a seat."
McMichael had barely made it into the Team Three pen when the assistant chief called him into his office.
"The spooks caught you," said Bland. He handed McMichael a large white envelope with the City of San Diego seal and address in one corner.
McMichael's heart ducked and dove, the spooks being Professional Standards Unit- the foot soldiers for IAD, cops who spy on other cops, nameless and faceless, guys you'd never make for the law, didn't even work out of the Fourteenth St. headquarters. They had more power over their fellow SDPD officers than the Constitution of the United States.
McMichael slid out the black-and-white photographs: he and Sally Rainwater standing outside Mario's with glowering Johnny, he and Sally Rainwater walking the pier hand in hand, going into the steakhouse, making out under the streetlamp and on her porch. The killers were the close-ups, apparently taken through the louvered windows of her bedroom, a truly humiliating series that ended in a picture of McMichael with his head thrown back in a grimace of pleasure. He looked like a baboon with a haircut.
"What's the idea here?" he asked.
"I don't see any ideas here at all. No rational thought, no professional standards. Explain yourself."
"I like her and we're spending time."
"You sure are. The blood was hardly dry on Pete Braga's floor when you're banging the suspect." Bland's thick bovine face cracked into something like a smile.
"She's not a suspect."
"Oh, no? The only witness, covered in blood, pointing a finger at the door? She's not a suspect?"
"We've got prints on the weapon- not hers. We've got prints on the sliding glass door- not hers. She didn't kill him."
"And she's got no idea who did?"
"That's correct."
"Who is a suspect?"
"We've got some leads but no suspect."
"Leads, fingerprints, but no suspect."
McMichael said nothing. He remembered Sally's refusal to talk about what had happened, and how she might have prevented a man's death. He remembered her sadness. But he wasn't sure what this implied. Shame? Guilt? Pain? He held Bland's stare for a beat, then looked away.
"How old are you, McMichael?"
"I'm thirty-eight."
Bland shook his head. "You're acting more like eighteen. In fact, I've got a nephew eighteen who has more sense than you. Maybe you don't want to button down this case. Maybe you like the idea that Pete Braga got his, just like he gave it to Frank McMichael back in the dark ages."
"It was nineteen fifty-two."
Bland sat back, fingers locked behind his head. "I've got some options here, McMichael. I can throw this to IAD. I can throw it to Captain Rawlings and let him deal with you. I could just punt to the chief and let him get the ulcers."
McMichael nodded. "You could stand behind a fellow officer and trust his judgment."
"That option scares me. Because if this blows up- say the nurse set the old man up, say she was in on it with one of her other boy toys- my ass blows up with it. Why would I take that risk for you?"
"No," McMichael said evenly, "you wouldn't."
Bland lifted one heavy brow. "McMichael, say I was willing. Say you're right about the nurse, and she's God's gift to the human race. This still looks bad. Appearances are part of my job. One of the many things I'm paid for is to make sure we appear proper and competent and professional. This makes you- us- appear to be the opposite. Now, do you agree with that or not?"
McMichael tried to look at it from the outside, as if he were Bland or Hector or Rawlings. It wasn't difficult. "It looks bad. And I realize I could have made a mistake."
"And what if you did?"
"I'll fire me myself."
Bland chuckled without levity. "Now we're getting somewhere. I'm going to talk to Rawlings about this. I don't know. In the meantime, try a little harder not to fuck up."
"Yes, sir."
"We're all on a team, Detective. "When you stink, I stink."
"I won't make you stink, sir. I've got to do what I think is right."
"You looked pretty right in that last picture."
McMichael didn't answer for a while. "Why did you do this?"
"Not me," said Bland. "IAD got wind of it and decided to check it out. You did the rest."
"Got wind of it how?"
Bland shook his head. "The PSU guys were tracking you because of Jimmy. Why's he talking to you but nobody else? How come you two are passing kites back and forth like a couple of gangsters? So they followed you to the pizza place, saw you and the nurse. Now you're hanging out with a near suspect in a high-profile homicide, plus this shit with Jimmy. That's weird, McMichael, no matter what you think. IAD told the spooks to run with it, see what you were doing. Guess what? You were doing her. IAD came to me with the frank photos."
"Great people to work with."
"What else could they do?"
Bland regarded McMichael with his small, unmerciful eyes. "Tell me, is she really that special, really worth all this?"
"I think so."
Special enough to take a meat cleaver to a brain-damaged patient, he thought. Bland's placid face seemed to be staring at him from the end of a long narrow tunnel.
The assistant chief sat back again, sighing. "I don't get you, McMichael. You've had a clean record here for sixteen years. Good years. Some nice citations, no complaints. Climbing the ladder. Homicide at thirty-seven. Captain Rawlings went all out for you because he thought you'd fit into Team Three. All of a sudden you're Jimmy Thigpen's soul mate and you're humping the only witness/suspect in a murder case. Just yesterday I got a complaint from Henry Grothke, saying you were harassing him at his office. Then I get another one from some ambulance driver, says you commandeered his vehicle, made him stand out in the rain. What gives with you? You bored? Tired?"
"Jimmy and I just happened to work Metro/Vice, sir. I don't think he has anyone else to talk to. So far as Sally Rainwater goes, my ass is on the line and I know it. Grothke's father has managed to misplace something material to the Braga case, I just have to figure out where it went. The driver, I made him wait outside while we interviewed Old Grothke. He was under an awning, not in the rain."
"Tell me about these lawyers."
McMichael filled him in, just enough details to justify the alleged harassment.
A note of dour amusement crept into Bland's face. "What did Thigpen have to say when you saw him yesterday?"
"He said he blew it. He regrets what he did."
"Which was what, exactly, to have three-hundred-plus grand lying around at his attempted two-hooker party?"
"He offered no details, sir."
"That's all he said?"
"Not much else."
"Rawlings has got his lip-reading buddies over there at the jail, and that's all they could come up with for him? You and Thigpen talked for what, ten minutes?"
"We mostly just walked around, sir."
"Yeah, right. McMichael, get out of here."
McMichael sat at his desk with Sally Rainwater's references. He read the letters and the names of the writers, realizing how easily you could fake the damn things with a decent printer, a few different kinds of paper and a little practice on the signatures. Rainwater wasn't even her real name. Legal, but not real.
I have nothing but the highest praise for Miss Rainwater, who helped my husband back to health at a time when my own cancer had disabled me as a caretaker… thoughtful, courteous and good humored… endlessly patient and very understanding of our special needs… Sincerely, Alma Beasley. He read all five of them- believing every one of them, not believing any.
When he was finished he dug out Raegan's customer list from Libertad and read down the names. Then he looked away for a moment and read the names again, having failed to register a single one. He could feel Hector's eyes burning into his back, even though Hector was upstairs in Bland's office. He could feel Barbara's eyes on him, too, even though he was pretty sure she hadn't yet been told what a total dumbshit he was. Staring at the list he wished he could make himself small enough to crawl into the "O" of maduro- just slither right through the paper into another dimension where he would be competent and unrecognized.
He called Charley Farrell at the dealership and asked about selling a wine-colored Escape, Explorer, Expedition or Excursion.
"Sergeant McMichael," he said. "I completely forgot. Give me a few more hours, will you?"
Arthur Flagler, the crime lab director, called at ten-twelve.
"You ought to drop by when you get a minute," he said. "Like right now."
McMichael rode the elevator up, wished it would just keep going.
Flagler welcomed him to his office with a wicked smile.
"We came up with something else from Pete Braga's," he said. "The wine samples we took from those glasses by the fireplace? Well, somehow they got put aside- in the refrigerator, of course- and we overlooked them. I was looking for a set of fingers in the freezer, figured maybe someone had put them in the refrigerator instead. They hadn't, but I found the wine. Ran some basic tox tests yesterday. The nurse was drinking with him that night, right?"
McMichael nodded.
"Well, her wine probably tasted just fine. But Pete's- from the glass closest to his chair? Loaded with meperidine, which is a strong tranquilizer."
"Same thing his dog ate on New Year's Eve," said McMichael.
"Correct."
"Pete's prints on one glass and Rainwater's on the other?"
Flagler smiled and nodded. "Hers on the glass without the meperidene, mind you."
"But Pete didn't have meperidine in his system?"
"Oddly enough, he did not."
"Thanks, Arthur."
McMichael left the headquarters building, walked the eight blocks west to Kettner, rode the trolley up past the airport then back down again, wandered around the Gaslamp, snuck past Libertad with his face hidden from Raegan, spent some time in an import store featuring African tribal crafts, among them a gigantic black mask, six feet high and three across, carved from dark brown wood and festooned with brass rings and ivory and animal claws, tufts of savannah grass and crude twine, the eyes furious and bloody, the mouth a gaping snarl, the war paint stacked in scintillating bars of blue and yellow and red.
He walked Fourth and Fifth Avenues, Island and Market, bought a paper on Second and threw it away on Third. He tried to think rationally.
In defense of Sally Rainwater he came up with justifiable homicide, terrible childhood, taking care of herself, trying to help others, friend of the sick, coincidence, bad timing, bad luck. He tried to delete any personal feelings or opinions about her, except for his gut call that she wouldn't. These still counted, didn't they- belief, judgment, faith in someone? Strongest of all was what wasn't there: a reason to kill Pete Braga.
Against her he came up with means, opportunity and prior action. She'd killed someone with a blow to the head before. Self-defense or not, she had the physical and mental ability to attack with violence and take a life. This was a fact. It seemed clear to him that she could not have killed Pete Braga alone- the fingerprints on the club told him that, almost certainly- but she could have organized the entry and the attack. All she needed was to leave the door open behind her when she left. Simple to poison Zeke on New Year's Eve. Simple to spike Pete's wine that night. She was there. Maybe she'd switched out the club when she was finished, thrown the used one in the bay and set the new one- with the sales clerk's prints on it- in the blood. It's a gift for my brother. What's the best way to hold it? Oh, wow, just like that?
But again, why? He was giving her gifts. He might have been trying to cut her into his will but hadn't yet. Why kill the old man?
He could get a search warrant for her home- controlled substances and stolen property. The meperidine could be small enough to hide anywhere, which would neatly justify a detailed and thorough search. Maybe they'd find her motive, too, something he hadn't thought of, something precious and attainable only with Pete dead. A search could reveal nothing, too.
Logical.
He could talk to her first, hear her explanations. And risk letting her destroy evidence?
Idiotic.
He could step aside, let Hector and the rest of Team Three serve the warrant and search the house, not have to look at Sally Rainwater.
Gutless.
He could wait until she'd gone to work and look around inside her house himself, test the waters. And let the PSU get a few more good shots of him conducting an illegal search?
Beyond dumb.
They could surveil her, see if she's really attending her classes. Maybe she's meeting a fence, her partner, the guy who used the fish billy. Let her lead them to the real pay dirt.
Expensive and iffy.
He found himself at the Santa Fe station, looking across the tracks toward the bay. Then he was outside headquarters, considering the odd blue-and-white paint.
When in doubt, he thought, you go with the evidence. You go with what you know. With what you've been taught.
McMichael went up to Homicide and told Rawlings he wanted a warrant to search for controlled substances and stolen property in Sally Rainwater's home in Imperial Beach.
"Who's going to search the place?" asked Rawlings.
"All of us."
"Make sure Barbara's there."
Two hours later he had it.
She opened the door and her face went white and blank. Her dark eyes went from McMichael to Hector and Barbara, then back to McMichael. He couldn't tell what filled them- fury or disappointment or just surprise.
"Sorry," he said. "We need to have a look around."
"For what?"
"Meperidine, strychnine and stolen property from Pete Braga's home," he said, holding up the document. "It's all right here, under scope of search. We ask you to stay and help us."
"Help you?" She looked past him to the two uniforms standing out in the sand. She was wearing sweats and athletic shoes and her old denim jacket over a sweater.
She threw the door closed but McMichael had his toe in and the door bounced off and slowly shuddered open. She had stepped back into the kitchen, and the stare with which she met him as he came into her house was like nothing McMichael had ever seen before. He had seen anger, but never so focused, never so personal. The uniforms barged in behind him.
"Stay with her," said McMichael.
"Yes, sir."
Sally Rainwater turned her back to them, stood in front of her kitchen sink, put her hands on the counter for support and stared out her drafty louvered window toward Tijuana.
Down inside the radiator vent in the second bedroom, Barbara found a Libertad pyramids box containing a pair of almost comically large diamond earrings hidden in a pair of men's socks.
In the attic, among a collection of old paint cans and solvents and stains, Hector found an aspirin bottle containing eight capsules of what appeared to be Demerol.
In the top of the crowded hallway closet McMichael found two Dunhill cigar boxes containing what looked like about twenty thousand cash. And a small wadded paper bag containing Anna's hummingbird, once described by Sally as the most beautiful man-made thing she'd ever seen.
Sally Rainwater stared down at the collection, arranged by McMichael on the coffee table in her living room.
"I've never seen those things before," she said.
"What, they crawled in here and hid themselves?" asked Hector.
"I need a lawyer," she said.
"Lawyers are for people charged with crimes," said Barbara, the standard cop line for getting someone to talk without one. "You're not charged. Can you explain these things?"
Sally continued to stare at the evidence against her. The angle of her head suggested puzzlement, her tears suggested grief. But, as McMichael saw when she looked at him, her eyes were fury.
"I trusted you."
"Everyone's got a sad story," said Hector, while the uniform cuffed her hands. Hector Mirandized her, reading off the card to get it right.