‘We need your help. I can’t say that enough. I can understand you being angry, but four people were murdered and we need your help. The questions might feel accusatory but they actually clear you of suspicion.’
‘Why would there be suspicion of me?’
‘It’s what I said before, you were the last person to see them and you have to understand that we work from the last known thing. We know you were there. We’re trying to get from when you left there to the killer.’
‘You’re just looking for someone to arrest, but it’s not going to be me.’ His face reddened as he said, ‘Have I ever fired a nine millimeter? Go ask old man Bailey who’s a killer shot.’
‘I’ll ask him,’ Raveneau said.
‘Oh, I know you will.’ He focused on Branson again. ‘I’m giving you notice. I quit as of right now. I’m done with this crap.’
He reached in his jacket and pulled out a key ring, then dropped it on the table, his focus on his boss now.
‘You set me up and I quit and I want my last check right now. Get your fat ass up and get your checkbook.’
Branson got to his feet but he didn’t look like he was going for his checkbook. He dropped his arms to his sides and balled his fists.
‘You’ll get your check when I’m ready and not before.’
‘I’ll go to the Labor Board.’
‘Then get going. Get off my property before I teach you a lesson.’
SIXTEEN
It escalated rapidly and Raveneau knocked his chair over as he stepped away from the table. Branson and Drury were yelling and already out in the front office, Drury trying to get to Branson’s desk.
‘Ben, wait.’
La Rosa reached for his arm and was too late, and if Raveneau heard her, he didn’t give any sign. He followed them out and now Branson was in Drury’s face yelling, spittle flying on to Drury. Drury was the longer bigger man, but he didn’t have Branson’s low thick leverage and she watched as Branson took a boxing stance like someone out of an old black and white movie. His face was solid, fists up, shoulders thick as a bear. He threw a hard punch catching Drury under the right side of his chin with a loud smacking that staggered Drury. He stuttered, stepped back, and almost went down.
‘Get the fuck off my property you sonofabitch!’
Drury wobbled to the wall behind him and then stared at Branson with a look that was eerie. Raveneau picked up on that and stepped between them as Drury moved sideways. La Rosa watched him grab a trophy displayed on a shelf on the wall, some sort of industry thing, an insurance company sponsored award for the firm with the most miles without an accident. She read the inscription when she and Raveneau first arrived. Drury grabbed it off the shelf with his right and punched out the window nearest him with the trophy’s heavy base. Glass shattered and fell on the concrete outside.
He swung the trophy first at Raveneau, then at Branson, and Raveneau moved. He moved like nothing she’d ever seen in him before. Raveneau was maybe six foot one, and you didn’t know it looking at him, but he was very quick when he needed to be. She learned that playing one-on-one basketball against him, and she’d played point guard at Santa Clara College. But Raveneau wasn’t young. He was in his fifties. Drury caught Branson on the left bicep with a corner of the trophy, and then he was on the ground, the trophy across the room and Raveneau leaning over him, repeating, ‘You don’t want to take this any farther.’
‘I’m going to call the local police,’ la Rosa pulled her cell as Branson begged her not to.
‘Please don’t, I just want him out of here.’
‘He was swinging at your head. I’m going to call it in.’
‘I just want him out of the yard.’
She glanced at Raveneau. She read his eyes. She called it in.
‘I’m not pressing charges,’ Branson said. ‘I don’t work that way. We settle things like men. Get out of here,’ he told Drury, and Raveneau answered.
‘He waits.’
A police report got written and Drury didn’t say anything, not a single word. He was handcuffed and led to the back of a Martinez police cruiser. She watched him try to stare down Raveneau before the cop holding him pushed him into the back seat.
‘You OK?’ Raveneau asked Branson.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Is he going to come back here?’
‘I’ll get his check cut, that’ll end it. He got into it with another driver at a fuel stop a few years ago and I believed his version, but I don’t think I should have. He’s got a thing about him. On some mornings he’s angry at the whole world. He doesn’t think he should be driving. He said something to me once and I thought he was joking and laughed and it made him angry for three weeks.’
‘Yeah, what was that?’
‘Oh, he said Elvis Presley was a truck driver before he was a successful singer and he was better than Elvis and that he was going to become an actor. There’s some movie star he thinks he looks like. He had photos taken of himself. He showed them to me and other drivers here and sent them to a talent agency. When they didn’t contact him and weren’t taking his calls he got angry. I had to sit down and talk with him about it.’
‘When was this?’ la Rosa asked.
‘Last spring, April, right around tax time, and he had a two thousand dollar charge on a credit card for the photos. He was very angry about that.’
She wanted to know more about them.
‘What were they? What kind of photos? Were they head shots, poses, what were they?’
‘Some were head shots but one was in swim trunks that tied together in the front and it was kind of loosened like they were ready to come off. That’s the photo they laughed at around here. But he got himself in great shape. What’s the word used now? Ripped, he’s ripped. He’s strong.’
Branson turned to Raveneau. ‘How did you take him down like that?’ La Rosa didn’t think Raveneau heard him. Raveneau was somewhere else. He was staring at the truck Drury delivered the plywood in. She pushed Branson to keep talking.
‘He was looking at modeling also. He talked about getting his foot in the door.’
‘Not happy as a driver.’
‘That’s not really true either. On and off, he was happy or seemed to be and then he’d get blue and then angry. I’ve seen this in other drivers. There’s a point where life isn’t quite working out the way they expected and they get angry. I lost everything and I picked myself back up off the floor. That’s what you have to do.’
‘Has he ever threatened anybody here?’
Branson shook his head and la Rosa glanced at Raveneau who was outside now at the truck.
‘I think he really believed that talent agency was going to call him. In the first week when he was waiting for their call he was very upbeat, unnaturally so. Then he was just as down.’
Raveneau came back in and they left a few minutes later. That afternoon he and la Rosa sat down with Ortega and Hagen. Ortega asked if they heard his press conference this morning. Raveneau nodded.
‘We heard you on the radio on the way out.’
‘How did I sound?’
‘Like you’re doing your best and you’re handling the media but that we have no idea who killed four cabinet makers or why they did it.’
That quieted the room. It sent a signal from Raveneau to Ortega and she wondered why he was as hard as he was sometimes. Or maybe it wasn’t being hard. Maybe it was the truth. Either way, Ortega’s feelings were hurt and Ortega wasn’t a bad guy. He was a good inspector and it was just a style thing with him and Raveneau.
