“Oh, man. If you could see your face. I gotta ask again. What’s going on, Lindsay?”
Frickin’ mind reader.
“This case,” I said, “is a bear. We’ve got seven victims, their heads buried on the property of a big movie star, and we can’t find the bodies. Were they murdered? Or is this a very creepy art installation? We don’t know.
“And here’s what else is strange, Frank. With all the publicity this case has generated, no one is banging at our door asking, Is my daughter one of those victims?”
“That is remarkable,” Frank said.
“We’re going to close this case. We’re determined to do it. But the real pressure inside the SFPD is about the shooter cop.”
Frank sighed, ran his hands through his hair, said again, “Oh, man.”
I wasn’t deterred. I brought him up to date on the shooter cop’s activities.
“The shooter killed three drug dealers on a back road — ”
“And torched their car.”
“Right. Two days after that, he killed a dealer in a shopping-center parking lot.”
“I read that. You’re sure it was the same shooter?”
“The ballistics matched to another of our stolen guns.
What you didn’t read is that Jackson Brady thinks Jacobi is the shooter.”
“Come on. Brady believes that? ”
“Conklin and I were assigned to tail Jacobi, and he caught us sitting outside his house. Now Jacobi hates me. And we’re no closer to finding a killer who has probably worked himself up and is ready to kill again.”
Frank told me not to put too much pressure on myself, said that stress wasn’t good for the baby.
“Maybe you should take yourself off the case.”
“I can’t, Frank. I just can’t.”
He nodded, told me that I could call him day or night if I needed him. I thanked him, and then he asked if we could go to my desk so he could use my computer.
“I’m expecting a big document by e-mail,” he told me. “It’s waiting for me in the cloud. Do you know what that is?”
I smiled, said, “It’s a public server. Do you have an access code?”
“I wrote it on the inside of my eyeglass case.”
“Come with me,” I said.
I gave my chair to Frank and made fresh coffee as he did his work. When he’d put his reading glasses back in his jacket pocket, I walked him out and thanked him for his help with Constance Kerr.
“Any time. Take care, Lindsay. I mean it.”
I returned to my computer and went to open what I expected to be an avalanche of mail that had come in over the last few hours.
When I touched the mouse, the screen lit up, and instead of my usual desktop screen, a document I’d never seen before appeared. It took me a moment to figure out that it was the personnel file of a cop, William Randall. I knew his name, but I didn’t know much about him.
Frank Cisco, either accidentally or on purpose, had left this document for me to read. Or maybe Dr. Freud had made him do it.
I saved Sergeant William Randall’s file to my computer and went looking for Conklin.
Chapter 83
“Okay, let’s have the whole story,” Brady said to me and my partner. We were in Brady’s office with the door closed and the blinds down. Brady was both aggravated with us and hopeful we’d gotten a new angle on the case. He didn’t sit down.
“How’d you hear this about Randall?”
“I can’t tell you my source,” I said. “I just can’t.”
“Fine. Actually, I don’t give a rat’s ass about your source, Boxer. What do you have on him?”
I took a printout of Randall’s file and put it on Brady’s desk, turning it around so he could read along as I pointed out the highlights.
“William Randall has been with the SFPD for twelve years. He got bumped up to Narcotics in ’04 and did a stint as part of a task force for the DEA. He moved to Vice in ’09. His oldest son, Lincoln Randall, almost OD’d on heroin the next year. It’s possible that this was the boy’s first time trying hard drugs.”
“His son almost OD’d. Go on,” Brady said. He sat down and began tapping the underside of his desk with his foot.
“Randall found him lying in the street, got him to a hospital. His life was saved, but the kid’s brain took a bad hit. He was a bright boy, but now he has the mind of a baby.”
“So are you saying the kid’s overdose is Randall’s motive?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Randall has a good, clean record in the department and a sad personal story. Our working theory is that he’s on a one-man crusade to take out dealers who sell drugs to kids.”
“But here’s the thing, boss,” Conklin said. “Meile and Penny both interviewed Randall. He has an alibi for the Morton Academy shooting. He says he was home with his wife and family when Chaz Smith went down. Mrs. Randall vouched for her husband, said, ‘Will was at home. He’s always home after work.’ The top cops bought it.”
“And so why exactly do you like him for the shootings? Put me out of my misery, will you, Boxer?”
“He’s obsessed with drug dealers. Obsessed with them.”
“How do you know that?”
“My source says that Randall has compiled dossiers on every dealer in the Bay Area. He knows things about them that Narcotics doesn’t know. He has sources on the street, both dealers and hookers. Add it up. He had access to our property room and could’ve stolen the guns. He’s an excellent marksman. Maybe he’s got a whole lot of anger because of his brain-damaged son.”
Brady said, “Yeah, okay. It’s plausible. What’s your plan?”
“Same as before. The three of us and two teams from Narcotics. We take shifts and we watch Randall’s movements. And we stay off the radio.”
“I like it,” said Brady. “Set it up.”
Chapter 84
Conklin and I followed William Randall, at a discreet distance, from the Hall to his home, cutting the headlights when we crossed the intersection of Elm and Scott in the Western Addition. I found a spot toward the end of the block where we could get a good three-quarter view of Randall’s yellow Edwardian-era house.
It was now 11:30 p.m. and we’d been watching Randall’s street for five hours. There wasn’t a house or alleyway or garbage can I hadn’t committed to memory, and I knew every line and plane of Randall’s house by heart.
His three-level home was typical of its time and this neighborhood. There was a small garage on the lower level. The second floor was the main floor: living room, kitchen, and bedrooms. The third level, the attic, had probably been converted into two small rooms.
Lights were on in the house and Randall’s midsize black SUV was parked in his driveway. It had been there since before we began our shift.
It’s been said that stakeouts are as interesting as watching grass grow, paint dry, water boil. But working Homicide means you don’t get neat nine-to-five shifts, and Conklin and I don’t mind sitting together for long hours at a stretch. We’re compatible and maybe a little more than that.
