14th Deadly Sin Read online

  My hand was on my car door when Nancy Swanson called my name. She was walking quickly across the lawn, and when she reached me, she got right into my face.

  She said, “You listen to me, Sergeant. It’s hard to keep the job out of this house, but I try. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have let you through the door.”

  I said, “Nancy, I want to protect your family, but I can’t help if Ted won’t talk to me. If you know something, for God’s sake tell me.”

  “Nice meeting you,” she said.

  My hands shot out and I grabbed her by the shoulders before she could turn away. I said, “Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. You can’t take care of your family by yourself.”

  She threw my hands off her shoulders, saying, “Good-bye. Don’t come back.”

  I watched Mrs. Swanson march up the walk to her doorway. She turned and shot me an angry look before sweeping into the house and slamming the door.

  I was inside my car, reporting back to Brady, when Ted Swanson came boiling out of his house wearing an SFPD Windbreaker. Christ. What now?

  He knocked on my car window and I buzzed it down.

  Swanson said, “Vasquez called me. Strange cars are coming into his neighborhood. Parking near his house. Something’s going down. Call it in.”

  He got into my vehicle and gave me Vasquez’s address, which I relayed to Brady; I asked him to send all available units. We were between shifts. I didn’t know how many people Brady could round up.

  I pulled out onto the street, and Swanson shouted directions over the wail of my siren.

  CHAPTER 95

  MY CAR RADIO was crackling and screeching under the blare of my siren. The dispatcher was calling all cars to Vasquez’s address, and cars were responding that they were on their way.

  Swanson stared ahead through the windshield. He looked mesmerized, seemingly lost in his own world as I pitched my Explorer toward Naglee Avenue in the working-class neighborhood known as Cayuga Park.

  As we approached Naglee from the southwest on Cayuga Avenue, I heard rapid gunfire, and then I saw the cars parked at angles on both sides of the street.

  There were police cruisers, their flashers painting the houses with vivid splashes of red and blue light. The cops in the cruisers were exchanging fire with shooters in the three late-model American-made sedans, probably the strange cars Vasquez had reported rolling up to his house.

  Naglee Avenue runs west from the 280 Freeway, adjacent to an overhead BART track. The homes on this block were a long bank of multifamily attached dwellings, the driveways marked by short hedges.

  The playground across the street from these homes was empty at this time of night.

  The firefight was centered on a house in midblock, a nondescript beige wood house with a rock wall at the garage level.

  “That’s Vasquez’s house,” said Swanson.

  “Does he have a family?”

  “No. He’s divorced, no kids.”

  I parked outside the firestorm but within view of it. I had two Kevlar vests in the trunk of my car. I told Swanson to stay put.

  I got out of my vehicle, ducked down, and crept along the car on the far side of the gunfire. I popped the trunk, retrieved my vest, and put it on over my jacket. The spare vest was in my hand and I was creeping back to my car door when Swanson opened his door and bolted toward Vasquez’s house.

  I yelled, “Swanson! Get down!”

  Swanson was running along the short hedge that separated Vasquez’s driveway from his neighbor’s when I saw his body jerk twice, then, drop.

  I climbed back into my seat, grabbed the microphone, and yelled into it, “Officer down! Officer down!” I gave my location, even though I knew that an ambulance couldn’t enter this block until the firing stopped. That was protocol.

  I didn’t know what Swanson had been trying to do, but if he was alive, I had to get to him. With my lights and siren off, and keeping my head down, I drove over the sidewalk until I saw Swanson lying alongside the hedge.

  I braked the car, slid on my belly across the front seat, and wrenched the door open. I was looking directly down at Swanson.

  He was bleeding, but he was breathing.

  I shouted, “You’re a stupid fuck, Swanson. You know that?”

  Blood was spreading across his Windbreaker. Still, he grinned.

  “Look who’s talking,” he said.

  CHAPTER 96

  MY CAR WAS a reasonable barricade against the fusillade of gunfire to my left, but I wouldn’t call it safe. I heard the banshee cry of an ambulance siren, then a second one, the sounds cutting out as the EMTs parked under the freeway.

  I sat cross-legged on the ground next to Swanson. He was humming “The Star-Spangled Banner,” breaking into words now and then. “Mmm-mmm. Rockets’ red glare. Mmm-mmm, bursting in air.”

  I folded the vest and put it under his head. He seemed peaceful. Maybe he was going into shock. Maybe he’d taken a hit to his spine. Maybe he was bleeding out.

  He said, “It’s been good knowing you.”

  “Not so fast,” I said. “You’re tougher than this. We’re cops, right?”

  “I want you to do something for Nancy. The kids.”

  “That’s your job, buster.”

  “Say that I died … on the job. That’s the truth.”

  “Talk to me, Swanson. It’s the least you can do.”

  “… that our flag was still there.”

  “Swanson, are you known to some people as One?”

  I heard an engine start up, tires squeal. There was renewed gunfire. From the sound of it, a vehicle was making for the freeway exit at the far end of the street.

  Swanson said, “Numero Uno. That’s me.”

  Did he understand me? Did he know what I was asking him?

  “You were the number one guy in the Windbreaker cop crew?” I asked.

  He laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “The way it sounds. Numero Uno and the Windbreaker Crew.”

  “Why did you fucking do it?”

  He sighed. “If I did it, it was a victimless crime.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that? Over a dozen people are dead.”

  “Stealing drugs from dirtbags. That’s victimless.”

  How did a man become a cop—a superstar—and think like that? But I knew the answer. They were called public-service homicides. In other words, he figured, justifiable.

  “What about Calhoun?” I asked him.

  He lifted a hand and pointed in the general direction of the gunfire that was still raging.

  “Poor Tommy.”

  Swanson’s voice slurred. His hand dropped.

  “Ted. Ted, don’t you dare leave me.”

  He coughed up blood. I gripped his hand.

  I heard a cop shouting from afar.

  “Get out of the car with your hands up! Get out of the car now!”

  A voice shouted back, “You’re a dead man!”

  There were loud bursts of automatic gunfire. Then an echoey silence. I heard Brady’s voice coming over my car radio asking for the buses to come in.

  I stood up and shouted his name over the roof of my car. A moment later, Brady, our homicide lieutenant with the shining blond hair, was standing with me.

  “You OK?” he asked me.

  “Yes. Are you?”

  “I’m good.”

  He bent at the waist and said “Swanson” to the downed man in the SFPD Windbreaker. “Swanson, speak to me.”

  “Yo,” Swanson said. His eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow.

  “He’s losing blood,” I said. “Where the hell’s the bus?”

  Brady left to direct the ambulance, and I stayed with Swanson until the paramedics got to us. I watched as they loaded him onto the board, strapped him down, and lifted the board into the bus.

  Unlike Robertson, Swanson had a family, and the only way they’d get benefits was if he died on the job. And there Swanson was, with holes in
his SFPD Windbreaker. He’d seen his chance and he had taken it.

  I grabbed one of the EMTs, pulled him to the side of the bus, and asked, “Is he going to make it?”

  First the EMT shrugged; then he shook his head; and then he climbed into the bus and closed the doors.

  I had wanted Swanson to tell me who else was in his “crew.” But I had a strong feeling that even if he’d lived, he wouldn’t have given his people away.

  CHAPTER 97

  AMBULANCES WERE COMING in, taking away the injured. The ME’s van had arrived, and Claire was talking to Clapper. CSU had barricaded all but one slim lane of the road. Techs were setting up lights and an evidence tent, and investigators were working the scene as best they could under the circumstances.

  According to Brady, the body count was four, and all of the dead were unidentified shooters. One car had gotten away, and the number and identities of the people inside were unknown.

  I sat in my car, and after I’d checked in with Joe and with Conklin, I called Nancy Swanson.

  “I have to see you,” I said when she answered.

  “What happened? Did something happen to Ted?”

  “He’s hurt, but he’s alive.”

  “What happened? Tell me—now.”

  “I’ll be at your house in fifteen minutes. I’m driving you to the hospital. Get someone to watch your kids.”

  Her phone clunked to the floor. I called her name, but she was screaming and calling to her children.

  I took the quickest, fastest route to the Swanson house, thinking that now, maybe, Nancy would tell me what she knew.

  She was standing at the curb in a man’s white shirt, jeans, and bedroom slippers when I pulled up.

  “Which hospital?” she asked me, getting into the passenger seat. “What’s his condition? Is it serious?”

  “Buckle up,” I said.

  The car shot off the curb and I set my course for Metropolitan Hospital. Nancy clenched her fists and beat her thighs as I told her about the standoff at Oswaldo Vasquez’s house.

  I told her Vasquez had called her husband in a panic, saying that a number of cars had driven up to his house and that he perceived them to be a threat. I said that by the time Ted and I arrived, a full-scale shootout between the police and the men in those cars was in progress.

  “He was safe in the car with me,” I told Nancy. “Then—he jumped out of the car and ran toward Vasquez’s house.”

  “Oh, my God. That’s when he got shot?”

  I nodded. “He was down but not out when the EMTs arrived.”

  “This is all your fault,” she hissed at me. “Damn you, Sergeant.”

  “I understand what you’re going through, Nancy, and I feel terrible for you.”

  “I don’t care how you spin it. You’ve been crowding Ted for weeks now and he’s never done anything wrong. Anything he did, he did it for us. His family.”

  “Do you understand the truth? Your husband is a criminal.”

  She scoffed and said, “The real criminal is Kingfisher.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “He’s the one who had the Calhoun family killed, or didn’t you know?”

  “Do you know this for a fact?” I asked her.

  Nancy Swanson covered her face with her hands. Her neck and arms were red with welts. She sobbed, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I have three kids. We can’t lose Ted. He has to live, do you understand?”

  I said, “Nancy, can you tell me anything that might help us get the shooters?”

  She turned her burning eyes to me and said, “Are you out of your mind? I’m a cop’s wife. Don’t you think I know what you’re trying to do?”

  I stopped the car outside the emergency room and Nancy unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door, and took off at a run.

  My phone began buzzing before I could close the door.

  It was Brady.

  “Vasquez is missing,” Brady said. “He doesn’t answer his phone. His house is empty, Boxer. He’s just gone.”

  CHAPTER 98

  THE NEXT MORNING at ten, Conklin and I took the drive to Parkmerced with two uniformed officers following behind.

  Nancy Swanson opened the door. She was wearing the same big shirt and jeans she’d been wearing yesterday, and from the look of her eyes, she’d been crying since then, too.

  I introduced Conklin, but she didn’t look at him. I handed her the search warrant and she stepped aside, snapping, “What do you have against Ted? Do you even know how he’s doing?”

  “Have you heard from Vasquez?” I asked her.

  “If I had, you’d be the last person I’d tell.”

  Conklin and I went through the house, which looked cheerful now with daylight coming through the many windows facing the greenery of Villa Merced Park. We gloved up, and with Nancy watching, Conklin and I searched the den. We found a trick panel in a bookcase. There were innumerable banded stacks of twenty-dollar bills inside.

  One of the uniformed officers uncovered more cash under the frozen food in the basement freezer, and Conklin uncovered a cache of guns in the bedroom closet, under the carpet, below a trapdoor. I turned up more stacks of money in the dishwasher.

  Nancy had stashed it there in a hurry.

  Swanson’s car was included in the warrant, and I turned up five passports and some cash in a trap inside the dash. We bagged and tagged everything. While we packed up, I called Jacobi. He sighed loudly and said, “I love you, Lindsay.”

  I had to laugh. And so did he.

  Once we were back at the Hall, we went straight to Jacobi’s office with our cartons of Swanson’s stuff. Jacobi picked up the phone, punched in a number, and said, “We’re ready for you, Sergeant.”

  A few minutes later, we were comfortably seated on Jacobi’s leather furniture, telling Phil Pikelny what we had found at Ted Swanson’s house.

  Pikelny was lean, maybe thirty-five, an East Coast cop from New York or Boston. He had no discernible accent, and he had a good haircut, handsome clothes, and nice shoes. Swanson, Vasquez, Calhoun, and Robertson had reported to him.

  “This is unbelievable,” he said. “How much money was there?”

  “Looks to be like a million or so,” I told him. “Between that, the guns, and the passports, I’m guessing that Swanson was leaving soon.”

  Phil said, “I completely trusted Ted.”

  Jacobi asked Phil what he knew about Vasquez and he said, “I liked him. A lot. And I would say that my opinion of Vasquez now means absolutely nothing. I have no idea where he might be, and he certainly hasn’t called me.”

  Conklin and I stopped off at the property room and signed in a million two in US currency and a half dozen assorted guns.

  After that, we briefed Brady on the Swanson house haul.

  Brady had just gotten off the phone with the hospital. He said, “From what I could determine, Swanson is hanging on by a frayed thread.”

  He also told us that Brand and Whitney were in the wind. Not answering phone calls. Not going home.

  “Vasquez is still missing,” Brady said. “The car that got away from Naglee was found in a ditch off Highway Ninety-Two with about a hundred bullet holes in the chassis. There was blood in the backseat. The lab is working it up.”

  Had Vasquez been murdered or abducted, or had he just gotten a ride out of town?

  “Why don’t you two take the rest of the day off,” said Brady. It was five in the afternoon. I don’t remember the last time I’d gone home at five, but this was good.

  I had plans for the evening.

  CHAPTER 99

  I HAD A terrific red dress hanging in my closet. I’d bought it before I got pregnant, without an event in mind. It still had tags on it.

  Joe was still out with Martha and Julie when I got home, so I showered and put on my makeup, including eyeliner and mascara.

  The red crepe dress had an asymmetrical neckline and hem and a fitted waist. I slipped it on, stepped into a pair of low hee
ls, and looked at myself in the mirror.

  I didn’t look like the same woman who wore chinos and a blue blazer every day.

  Wow. This was me, too.

  The Women’s Murder Club was meeting at a bar and restaurant called Local Edition. It was officially a Women’s Murder Club “Welcome Home Cindy” event, and we were also celebrating Fish’s Girl getting a mention in the LA Times. These were fine reasons for the four of us to spend some quality time together.

  I left Joe a note and headed out toward the restaurant. One block later, while I was negotiating traffic, my phone rang. I glanced down and saw UNKNOWN CALLER on the faceplate. I was stuck between a Porsche and a panel van, so I took the call.

  The voice was muffled, but the message was clear.

  “You break the blue line, you get what you deserve. You and your family aren’t safe, Boxer. They’ll never be safe.”

  My blood stopped flowing through my veins and dropped to my feet. “Who is this?” I said.

  The line was open. I could hear static, but there was no answer.

  I stared at the rear end of the Porsche, but I wasn’t seeing it. I was picturing the face of a cop. One cop in particular.

  “And you’re not safe from me, Vasquez.”

  There was a click as the call was disconnected, and at just about the same instant, the driver of the panel van behind me blew his horn.

  I put my foot on the gas, wondering if I’d been right when I said “Vasquez.”

  But whether my caller was Vasquez or some other vicious hater, I wasn’t going to let this call ruin my evening. That was what I told myself, but I felt a tremor, an internal earthquake, a shifting of my sense of security in my own home. It was almost intolerable.

  So what was I going to do about it?

  CHAPTER 100

  YUKI HAD PICKED the perfect venue to toast our crime reporter friend on her return from her triumphal book tour.