The 20th Victim Read online

  “Henry.” Bang. “He’s not just a sneak.” Bang. “He’s a spy.” Bang. “He tipped off a reporter at the Examiner.” Bang. Bang. Bang. “He’s a danger to all of us.” Bang. Bang. Bang. “This is—”

  Richie came up behind her and said, “Hands up, sweetheart. Drop the spoon and step away from the stove. Do it now.”

  She gave him a look like, Funny. But I’m not in the mood. He tapped her on the butt and took over the stove, checked on the chili and the corn, turning to say, “Want to make a salad?”

  “I shouldn’t handle knives,” she said. “Trust me.”

  Cindy paced in the living room, a dark, narrow space banked with bookshelves and Richie’s photographic cityscapes. She brooded over McGowan, couldn’t help it. He was a bad guy. She’d run into bad guys before, criminals. But this guy had stood outside her office, smiling about handing their news off to the competition. This had never happened to her in her life.

  Tyler would believe her. She had 100 percent credibility.

  Rich called, “Cindy, put some music on, okay? Something chill.”

  “I’m eyeball-deep in righteous indignation,” she called back, “and I gotta let it work its way out. Which maybe I can do if you come in and talk to me.”

  “Music,” said Rich. “I’m bringing beers.”

  Cindy riffled through the stack of CDs, found one by Metallica that fit her mood. She cued up “Fade to Black,” pressed Play, jacked up the sound, and threw herself onto Richie’s old blue couch. She put her bare feet up on the coffee table and exhaled.

  Rich came in with a couple of bottles of Anchor Steam, saying over the discordant noise, “We don’t need a salad. Beans. Corn. Hops. We’re good. So tell me from the beginning.”

  He lowered the volume, sat down next to Cindy, handed her a cold one, and put his arm around her shoulders. She tipped her head back and guzzled half the bottle.

  Rich gave her a squeeze. “Speak.”

  “He told me not to hold up the story—”

  “McGowan?”

  “Yes. McGowan. I told him it was just a temporary hold. That I would get inside dope from police sources if I just let the cops do their job without warning off the shooters.”

  “Right thing to say and do,” said Rich.

  “And because Lindsay asked me to, I sat on it. The story leaked. The connection between the hits was the story. Somehow I was scooped.”

  “I hear you, Cindy.”

  “That’s McGowan. A snake. A traitor.”

  “Okay,” said Rich. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”

  She sighed loudly.

  “How do you know it was McGowan who squealed?”

  “Because, Richie, a writer who used to be at the LA Sun Times broke the story. McGowan worked there until a couple months ago.”

  “Speculation. What else?”

  “No one connected Roccio to the Barons. Or Jennings and Peavey, for that matter.”

  “You sure? Because I spoke with the primary on the Roccio case this morning, and Lindsay and I linked up the timing of the shootings for him.”

  “You did?” she said tersely. “Why?”

  “Seriously? We’re working a double homicide. We talk to other cops. Here’s my point. You have a suspicion, but you don’t have proof.”

  “Oh, crap.”

  “We’ll try to make it up to you, Cin. Go sit at the table. Take your beer.”

  Cindy was relieved that she hadn’t told Tyler that McGowan had leaked her story. Richie was right. She didn’t have actual evidence.

  Still, she had a gut feeling that she was right about McGowan. And she was going to harbor that feeling, massage it, and polish it until she could prove it.

  Chapter 28

  Joe walked alongside Dave, who was pushing his wheelchair through rows of grapevines.

  “I work in these fields,” Dave Channing told Joe.

  “Really? I thought you were Mr. Inside.”

  “I’m multitalented,” Dave said, forcing a smile. Joe recognized that smile, same as when he broke his wrist at practice, same as when Carolyn Kinney broke up with him and he said, “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “I do the books, but I also prune, tie up the vines, harvest the grapes. See the clouds? Mare’s tails and mackerel scales. It’s going to rain tomorrow. We need the rain.”

  Joe felt as though his coat were weighed down with stones. Did Dave’s belief that Ray had been murdered make any sense at all? Or was that his grief talking? He didn’t know how or if he could help his friend.

  The two men stopped at the top of the field and looked down at the two stone houses and the winery across a country road from the vineyard.

  “Stick with me,” said Dave, taking the lead, setting a downhill course for a stone patio outside the winery. Joe took a seat on a bench with a view, and when both he and Dave were settled, Joe said, “Tell me all of it.”

  Dave took a deep breath and said, “We lived next door to each other for the last twenty-five years. Started our day together with morning coffee and ended with dinner in the restaurant kitchen when we were done for the day. I never got tired of being with my father. He had a big personality, you know? A lot of love.”

  Joe nodded and said, “Tell me again what happened.”

  “He fell down, just dropped in the restaurant. I called the ambulance and I rode with him to the hospital. His friend Dr. Daniel Perkins said, ‘Don’t worry. He’s stable, but I want to keep him for a few days.’ Joe, you saw him after we had lunch on Friday. He had spunk, remember?”

  “I sure do.”

  “So then on Saturday they put Dad on the list for a scan on Monday, but Perkins said Dad needed to be monitored. His aneurysm could rupture, but worst case it was treatable by open-chest surgery. Then Monday morning my father was dead. His heart stopped. Why?”

  “What did Dr. Perkins say?”

  “He said he was sorry. This happens.”

  Dave dropped his head into his hands and said, “Oh, God.”

  Joe put his hand on his friend’s arm.

  “I’m so sorry, Dave.”

  A long moment passed before Dave could speak again.

  “Thanks, Joe, but I have to tell you, I’m furious. Dad was strong. He lifted cases of wine. He could work all day.

  “And here’s the thing, Joe. Dad wasn’t the first of Perkins’s patients to die suddenly. From what I could find out just from reading obituaries, he was the third of Perkins’s patients to die suddenly this year.”

  “The deaths were all suspicious?”

  “Yes. Mild heart attack in one case, and two were complications from aneurysms, like Dad.”

  Joe nodded, thought about Ray. He’d been seventy-two, a vigorous seventy-two, but still, an age where heart attacks and strokes were not uncommon.

  Dave gently shook Joe’s arm, bringing him back to the moment.

  “Will you help me, Joe? He never got that MRI, and maybe that scan would have given Perkins a clue. But he didn’t get it. I don’t know if my father’s death was due to gross malpractice, or if Perkins gets off on snuffing his patients. But I do know this: my father died inexplicably under Daniel Perkins’s care, and that needs to be investigated.”

  “What about going to the police, Dave?”

  “I don’t want to stir up the hospital’s lawyers. Not until I have something solid to go on. Joe. Will you help me? I can’t let him get away with this.”

  Chapter 29

  Friday morning, Conklin and I were hunched over our computers, fleshing out backgrounds of the people on the Barons’ guest list from their recent movie premiere party, building a database of their friends and contacts.

  As we worked, we texted notes of interest to each other, and there were tidbits aplenty: affairs, snubs, slights, and fistfights, parts in movies, book and record sales numbers. We found nothing criminal.

  We took a break when Tina Hosier, head of Narcotics and Organized Crime, joined us. We showed her our list, and a
fter a long couple of minutes she said, “I know some of these folks, of course. But I don’t see any wholesale drug honchos here.”

  My phone rang. It was Brady.

  “I’ve got something,” he said.

  I turned toward the rear of the squad room and saw that Brady was down from his office on the fifth floor. He waved to us from his glassed-in cubicle.

  I thanked Hosier for the consult. She said, “No problem. Keep the faith.”

  A minute later my partner and I dropped into the chairs across the desk from Lieutenant Jackson Brady, friend and chief.

  He got right into it.

  “A Mr. Alan Newton lives right behind the Baron house. His property faces south. He was walking his dogs with his wife a few days ago and took some neighborhood pics to send to his daughter in Amarillo. Then when he looked at his photos, this shot raised his hackles.”

  Brady opened a manila folder, took out a photo, and passed it over.

  Conklin and I looked at the photo of a woman posing with two dachshunds.

  “What are we looking at?”

  Conklin stabbed the photo. Behind the dogs was a car pulled over to the curb and a man leaning on the frame of his open car door. He was wearing a camo jacket and a knit cap, and he was holding a short tube up to his eye.

  I could hardly contain myself. “That’s a gun scope.”

  “A little fuzzy,” said Conklin. “And his face is obscured by his hand, but I’m not throwing it back. When was this taken?”

  “Two days before the shooting. Time-stamped, too. Eight thirty a.m.”

  “Oh, my God. He was casing the target,” I said.

  “Here’s another shot,” said Brady.

  A second photo crossed his desk, this one of the same vehicle, a Ford, heading downhill. In this shot the vehicle’s plate number was clearly visible.

  I wanted to kiss someone. I know I was beaming.

  “Don’t get excited yet,” said Brady.

  “Too late,” I said.

  “I know, I know. But right now this is proof of nothing. It’s just a guy admiring Saint Francis Wood while looking suspicious. Check him out with our computer techs. See if facial recognition likes him. Report back.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter 30

  Our computer tech, Mike Stempien, was on loan from the FBI.

  He had a free moment and an upbeat attitude.

  “I’m looking forward to this,” he said.

  “Good,” I said, “because I’m not wearing my lucky socks.”

  Mike ran the subject’s snapshot through facial recognition, and I’ll be damned, we got a hit. Our subject had a name, Leonard Malcolm Barkley, and Conklin and I ran with it.

  Back at our desks, after some intense pecking on my keyboard with my partner sitting beside me, Barkley’s background emerged.

  He was forty, a former Navy SEAL with a distinguished military record. So it was no surprise that Barkley was highly skilled in a dozen weapons as well as hand-to-hand combat. He’d been captured in Kabul, and even though injured, he’d fought his way out of his cage and found his way back to his unit at night.

  He was awarded a Purple Heart, honorably discharged, and sent home, where he married Miranda White, also a former Navy SEAL. They bought a house in Silver Terrace, a down-market neighborhood near Bayview.

  That was four years ago.

  Since then, according to his sheet, Barkley had been on a kind of mad tear and had racked up several arrests: two for brandishing a weapon, several for drunk and disorderly, and the cherries on top, two DUIs. Each time he’d gone to court, he’d told the judges that he was sorry as all hell. Abject repentance, promises it would never happen again, plus good looks and a bad limp from the broken hip and thigh he’d sustained while fighting for our country worked in his favor.

  He was fined, given warnings, and released.

  “But wait,” Richie said, “there’s more.”

  I scrolled down and brought up the next page of Barkley’s sheet, dated only three months ago. He’d been arrested and charged for firing a handgun through a window of a bar.

  That mention of shooting through a window stopped me cold.

  Richie reached across me and keyed the down arrow, pulling up Barkley’s statement to the arresting officer.

  He’d told the officer that he had been drinking at the bar, called Willy’s Saloon, on Third Street. He happened to look out the front window and saw a known junkie trying to jimmy open the door to his vehicle. Barkley threw a shot through the plate glass but didn’t hit the guy.

  Still, firing at another person, not in self-defense, was illegal. Leonard M. Barkley was arrested, pleaded guilty at his arraignment—not to firing on a person, but to shooting out the blinking beer sign in the window.

  He brought a witness to court, the same person who’d called the police. But now this witness altered his story, telling Judge Crosby that he’d been mistaken, that in fact Barkley had only been shooting out the beer sign. Barkley told the judge how sorry he was. That the sign’s blinking lights made him think that Willy’s was taking on enemy fire.

  “I have a touch of PTSD, Your Honor. It comes and goes.” Barkley was found guilty of the destruction of private property, and his gun was confiscated. He was given a stern lecture, fined a thousand bucks, and given forty hours of community service at a local food bank. He also had to replace the window and beer sign, all of which he did.

  His car was relegated to a detail of the shootout, and the junkie was forgotten. But I was interested in that Ford, same model, same color, same tag number, as the one we’d seen in the photo of Barkley with a rifle scope to his eye, staring down San Anselmo Avenue toward the Barons’ back windows.

  Barkley was acting like a man with PTSD, all right. He was drinking, fighting, carrying a gun, and firing it, all of which confirmed my opinion that he was armed and dangerous. If he was our guy, he had enough brainpower and a steady enough hand to fire a rifle from three hundred yards through a window and hit his targets. Two shots. Two fatalities.

  Barkley’s last known address was Thornton Avenue near the intersection at Apollo Street in Silver Terrace. I pulled up a map of that area with a street view. Rich and I homed in on the brown stucco house on this residential block.

  “Let’s pay a call,” I said to my partner.

  We high-fived, and I called Reg Covington, our SWAT commander. I filled him in and gave him Barkley’s address.

  “We’ll be there in forty minutes,” he said.

  Conklin and I jogged down the fire stairs, and when we reached the curb at the front of the Hall of Justice, we signed out a car.

  Chapter 31

  Conklin and I watched from our unmarked car at the crest of a hill where two roads met in a Y-shaped intersection; Apollo to the left, Thornton straight ahead.

  The house where Leonard Barkley lived with his wife was one of dozens of small, plain stucco-and-wood-slat houses on both sides of Thornton Avenue.

  We saw movement in the Barkley house as the occupants walked past their ground-floor windows. Mercifully, there were no pedestrians. No one was out mowing the lawn, washing the car, or engaging in other activities that would put bystanders in the way of gunfire.

  Covington and his team were in an armored vehicle on Thornton. Others of the SWAT team had set up a perimeter ringing the house, extending the line down the hill.

  We didn’t want to enter the house—yet.

  A man like Barkley would have access to firearms as well as improvised explosives, booby traps, God only knew what else. We’d put a spike strip in front of his vehicle. If he tried to make a run for it, he’d blow his tires and we’d have him.

  I had Barkley’s home and cell numbers. I checked in with Joe, who told me he was still with Dave Channing. He told me that he’d spoken with Julie’s nanny, Gloria Rose, who was now in charge of our darling and our home.

  I asked myself, as I always did when my gun was in my hand, why I thought I had the right to ta
ke chances like this when I had a child. But I didn’t take time to search for an answer. A very dangerous man, likely a killer with an agenda, was inside his house only thirty yards away.

  I looked at Richie. He said, “I prayed. We’re covered.” I grinned at the man I loved like a brother and trusted with my life, just as he trusted me with his.

  We gripped hands for a second or two, then I spoke to Covington over our channel. I waited until his BearCat pulled up next to our car and in front of Barkley’s house. Then I called the subject on his landline.

  I let the phone ring until a man’s voice spoke on the outgoing recording. Same thing happened when I called Barkley’s cell.

  I did as requested and left a message.

  “Mr. Barkley, this is Sergeant Lindsay Boxer, SFPD. I need to speak with you. Please come out your front door with your hands up. Do it now or we’re coming in.”

  No one picked up the phone, but there was a response, the sound of breaking glass coming from a dormer on the second floor. A gun barrel poked through the opening and shots cracked the air. Covington’s team let loose with a fusillade of gunfire followed by a flashbang grenade.

  The explosion rang out up and down the street, and finally there was a tense silence.

  Time to go in.

  Chapter 32

  There’d been no sign of life from that small stucco home in the middle of the block since the gunshots had been fired from the second floor.

  No doubt the flashbang grenade had laid out the occupants, and they were still in shock and misery. I squeezed the bullhorn’s pistol grip and blasted my voice toward the Barkleys’ house and whoever might be conscious inside.

  “This is the police. Come out through the front door with your hands in the air.”

  I announced again, and then Covington’s voice was in my earpiece.

  “We’re going in.”

  A half dozen men in tactical gear boiled out of the BearCat and swarmed the narrow front yard. Other armored cars screamed down the hill, and the tac team took positions around the house. Two men and our SWAT commander charged up to the front door.