A raspy female voice yelled from his left, “Get the hell out of my yard.”
Gage kept his eyes fixed on the dog, now poised for the attack, snarling, seeming to be begging for her command.
“A burglar just ran through here,” Gage said. He then glanced toward the open kitchen window and caught a glimpse of a tree stump of a woman with a bleached-blond flattop. “How about you control your dog so I can get after him?”
“Stallone! Sit.”
Stallone sat, still blocking the gate.
Gage’s cell phone rang.
“I’m out… on Union.” Viz’s breathing was explosive. “I missed him… Jumped into a new Lexus SUV… and took off.”
“You get the plate?”
“Too far away… didn’t even get a good look… at the guy
… Where are you?”
“In the backyard of the house just northeast of your sister’s. A dog got in my way.”
“Need help?”
“The owner is coming out. I’ll meet you on the front steps of Socorro’s. Let’s search the place before anyone else goes in and then check with the neighbors.”
G age and Viz found Socorro setting a steamer of tamales on the cooktop when they walked into the kitchen after their fruitless neighborhood canvass. She was tall and slim; the pale brown skin of her mother combined with the gentle Irish features of her father.
“Anything missing?” Viz asked her.
“Not that I could see.” Socorro covered the pot and set her hot pads on the counter. “I’m not sure the burglar even made it past the living room.” She turned toward Gage. “Charlie once told me about criminals who read the obituaries and do break-ins during funerals.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s what it was. I’m glad we got back in time so he didn’t get anything.”
Gage pointed upward. “Did you check Charlie’s office?”
“It’s always a mess. I’m not sure you’ll be able to tell anything. Faith and I glanced in. His computers are still there.”
“Mind if we look?”
“Of course not. But why his office? We keep the valuables in a safe in the bedroom. I already looked. It’s untouched.”
Gage didn’t want to worry her with his suspicion it was Charlie’s work, not their personal possessions, that had been the target, so he said, “Just to be thorough.”
Gage and Viz walked down the hallway to the front staircase, passing Faith sitting with the Palmer children in the living room. They climbed three flights to reach Charlie’s attic office. A month-and-a-half-old newspaper lying open on his desk told them the room had remained as Charlie had left it hours before he was shot. The shredder bin was overflowing. The bookcases were stacked with files and books both lined up and piled sideways.
“What was the guy searching for?” Viz asked as they surveyed the room.
Gage didn’t have an answer.
“You think it has something to do with what Charlie wanted from you?”
“Has Socorro told you what it was?”
“She hasn’t wanted to talk about it yet.”
Gage sat down at Charlie’s desk, then jiggled the computer mouse, waking up the monitor. In a few clicks Gage found the list of recently accessed documents.
“Looks like the guy wasn’t your everyday burglar,” Gage said. “He was opening files starting about an hour ago.”
“And your everyday burglar doesn’t drive a new Lexus SUV.”
Gage’s gaze shifted back and forth between the laptop and desktop computers, and asked, “Why didn’t he just grab them and run?” But then he answered his own question. “He’d have to turn them off and he was afraid he couldn’t get back in because he wouldn’t know the passwords.”
Viz pointed downward. “And a lot of the files are stored on a server Charlie has hidden behind a wall in the basement. It would’ve taken the burglar hours to find it.”
Gage felt a moment of unease, almost of dread, for Socorro and her children. The ghosts of Charlie’s past had not died with him, but had instead mutated into flesh and blood and had invaded their lives, and would again, unless-
He pointed at the computers.
“Let’s copy everything onto one of our laptops so we can access the files later, then pack them up, along with the server, and take them to the office. And we better make a show of it so if the crook didn’t get what he was searching for, he won’t be coming back thinking there’s something left to find.”
Viz locked his hands on his hips. Mouth tight. “It pisses me off. How could he do this to his family? They’ve got to live in fear for who knows how long because of the shit he pulled.”
Gage glanced at a twenty-five-year-old photo on the bookshelf of Charlie in his SFPD uniform. Even as a rookie, he had the dead eyes of a snake and a predator’s grin.
“Your sister should’ve divorced him years ago,” Gage said. “At some point the illusion of first impressions must’ve worn thin enough to see through.”
“Even if it did-which I doubt-she’d never divorce him,” Viz said. “She’s too damn Catholic for her own good.”
Gage rose from the chair. “How come you’re not?”
“By the time I was twelve, I was bigger than any two priests in the parish put together. They couldn’t scare me anymore.”
Gage expected Viz to smile, but he didn’t.
“I even coined my own two-word catechism. It came in real handy in Afghanistan.”
“What’s that?”
“Fuck eternity.”
Chapter 6
After Gage and Viz returned downstairs, Socorro asked Gage to walk with her into the screened-in back porch. They sat in wicker lounge chairs facing a lawn enclosed by mature oaks, pistache, and weeping willows, their trunks wrapped with ivy and surrounded by flowering shrubs. Years ago it had seemed like a refuge from the chaos of San Francisco, but Gage now realized that to Socorro it must have felt like a prison exercise yard.
“Charlie called me the other day,” Gage said.
“I know. I dialed the phone for him. I was surprised. He always seemed afraid of you.”
“Afraid of me?”
As Gage turned toward her, he noticed in the corner the small table on which she had written a series of children’s books before her twins were born. It was covered with flowerpots and planting soil.
“I hadn’t even talked to him since the last time I was in this house, and that was over twenty years ago.”
“I think it started as jealousy,” Socorro said. “He applied for homicide, but got turned down, but they handed you the gold badge without you asking. Even now, everyone in the department still sees you as a legend and Charlie as just a guy who once dressed in blue.”
Gage shook his head. “His father was the legend, not me, and that wasn’t easy in a town that hates cops.”
“As far as Charlie was concerned his father was a failure. Officer Friendly who spent his whole career walking a beat and never even put in for a promotion.”
An image came to Gage of the last time he’d seen Charlie. It was also the last time he’d seen Charlie’s
