Gage kept Lieutenant Spike Pacheco company on a wooden bench outside San Francisco Superior Court Department 23 while he waited to be called in to rebut defense claims at the tail end of a homicide trial. Gage surveyed the long marble-floored hallway, normally packed with defendants, attorneys, and the relatives of the in-custodies, but not at four o’clock on a Friday. It satisfied him there was no one close enough to overhear their conversation.
“Somebody who was trying to trace the money wouldn’t have murdered Charlie,” Gage said. “That would guarantee they’d never get it back.”
Spike jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the courtroom.
“You know what that scumbag in there told me after he murdered his wife and tossed her off Devil’s Slide into the Pacific Ocean? ‘I just wanted her back, I just wanted her back.’ What did you beat into my brain when I got promoted into homicide? Don’t look for reasons, look for motives, for what really drives people, because the reasons killers give can be nonsensical.”
“And that’s what’s been nagging at me. Porzolkiewski. He’s got the motive, triggered by bumping into Brandon Meyer on the street. Maybe it pushed him over the edge. First he shot Charlie when he came to retrieve the wallet and later got inside his house to finish him off. Then he figured from what I told him that Karopian was in on it and had been paid off to submit the false OSHA report on the cause of the explosion, so he went after him.”
“Somehow.”
“That’s the problem. We’ve got a truck load of motive, but no suspicious cause of death. Porzolkiewski wasn’t even on Bethel Island when Karopian died, and he sure was in a hurry to tell me he wasn’t.”
“Did you check?”
“He admitted to being about ten miles away from Karopian’s house earlier in the day, but claimed he was at the Ground Up Coffee Shop on Geary at about the time of death. I talked to a couple of employees. He was there all right. He’s known to most of the people who work there.”
“What about the day Charlie died?”
“No idea. I made a deal with him. In exchange for copies of what was in Meyer’s wallet he got to listen to part of my tape of Hawkins’s confession. I didn’t ask him anything about Charlie, not even about the shooting. I’m still not sure I know enough to ask him anything in a way that’ll get an answer that would make a difference.”
The courtroom door swung open next to them. The DA stepped out. “The judge needs a five-minute break,” she said, “then you’re on.”
Spike nodded and she walked back inside.
“How about taking a long shot with a little of the county’s money?” Gage asked.
“For what?”
“Another toxicology analysis. The only way Porzolkiewski could have killed Karopian is by remote control.”
“And you figure he might’ve done the same thing with Charlie?”
“And doing the tests here is a lot cleaner than getting the local cops in a tizzy out on Bethel Island.”
G age’s cell phone rang the next morning as he was sitting at the conference table in his office puzzling over a printout of Charlie Palmer’s Pegasus spreadsheet.
“The medical examiner just sent me the results. He feels like an idiot.”
Spike wasn’t laughing.
“What was it?”
“It’s called sodium monofluoroacetate. Nobody would’ve thought to do a tox screen for poison in a case like Charlie’s. It’s banned in the States, but it’s used in Canada to kill wolves. They put it in a collar around a cow’s neck and when the wolf attacks he gets a mouthful. Let me read what the ME e-mailed me: white powder, no taste, no odor, attacks the cardiovascular and central nervous systems simultaneously. A tenth of a gram is all it takes to kill a human being.”
“So you could put it in someone’s coffee-”
“And the victim would think it was Splenda.”
“What does it look like in action?”
“Seizures, convulsions, and cardiac arrest.”
“Sounds horrendous.”
“And there goes Porzolkiewski’s alibi if it shows up in Karopian’s blood, too,” Spike said. “It can take as long as twenty hours to show itself.”
Gage rested an elbow on the conference table, then ran his hand down the back of his head.
“It’s hard to imagine John Porzolkiewski as a cold-blooded murderer,” Gage said. “A manslaughter, heat of passion, enraged enough to shoot Charlie down in the street-that I can see. Sneaking into Charlie’s house, lacing his juice or sticking a needle in him-I don’t see him doing it. Or to Karopian either.”
“We’ll find out. I just called the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department. Bethel Island is their jurisdiction. Usually they just find the bodies of dead meth dealers out there, and never find the killers. They’re drooling over this one. They’ll have the tox results by this time tomorrow.”
Gage felt himself losing control of the investigation. In another forty-eight hours, the links-proven or not-among Porzolkiewski, Charlie, Karopian, and Meyer’s former law firm would be front-page news. Reporters would be pawing through the search warrant affidavit and the police reports, the “what ifs” becoming “and thens.” Unless…
“I’m worried about publicity,” Gage said.
“You’re not the only one.”
Gage’s mind wound its way through a forest of dangers, then he had a thought about how to skirt around them all:
“I’ve got an idea of how to conceal what we’re doing. Use me as a confidential informant and get an order sealing the search warrant affidavit for my safety.”
Spike laughed. “Won’t that be a little embarrassing when it comes out? People thinking you turned wimp.”
“I’ll take the risk.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
“I’ve got a better plan,” Spike finally said. “I’ll just say there’s an ongoing investigation that would be compromised. A little bullshit about CIs, pending search warrants, and means and methods. Judges like that kind of crap. It makes them feel important. And I’ll get the DA to lean on the judge for a gag order if it looks like the case might break open. Judges like that, too, since it makes them the center of the media coverage. Nobody gets to talk except them.”