скачать книгу бесплатно
There were no known witnesses, although one elderly motorist stopped to tell us that he’d driven past here around nine the night before and seen a red Ferrari parked down by the side of the freeway. It was pulled over not far from where the black Explorer now stood. He also saw a man moving in the trees, just barely visible. I had one of the officers detain and run a records and warrants check on the motorist, but he came back clean. Retired Navy. He sat in the back of a prowl car with a look of authority while the check went through.
The anonymous caller who had reported the Explorer and possible victim was male and spoke English with an undetermined accent. The conversation was partially recorded by a desk officer at headquarters.
McKenzie and I watched the crime-scene investigators sketch and measure and photograph and video the scene. Glenn Wasserman, one of our best CSIs, brought me a small paper bag with a cartridge casing in it, a nine-millimeter Smith factory load by the look of it.
‘Up on the dashboard,’ he said. ‘Almost fell down into the heater vent.’
‘Nice grab,’ I said.
‘It’s Garrett Asplundh, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I never worked with him.’
I talked briefly with the first-on-scene officers. They’d handled the scene by the book: checked for signs of life, called Dispatch with the possible 187, taped off the scene using the convenient tree trunks, and waited for the Homicide hordes to arrive. They confirmed that the passenger’s door had been like it was now – closed, with the window up.
The Coroner’s team pronounced and removed the body. They just opened the driver’s door and guided Asplundh onto a plastic body bag atop a lowered gurney. Before they zipped it up, I pulled his wallet from his coat pocket. I noted the currency and credit cards, the driver’s license and ‘City of San Diego Employee’ ID. I noted that his birthday was in November and that he would have turned forty years old. I slid the wallet back in. I saw the cell phone clipped to his belt. I saw that his necktie was almost completely drenched in blood. A small portion of it was still light blue. There are few places where blood looks more startling than on a necktie.
They zipped him and covered him with a blanket. I thought of how he had once seemed large and been feared. And how the death of his daughter and the ruin of his marriage had left him smaller. And how, soon, not one recognizable molecule of him would be left.
I reached into the Explorer, slipped the automatic garage door opener off the sun visor and put it in my pocket. Then I walked alongside Asplundh to the Coroner’s van. Hoped his soul would be well taken care of. After all, he was once one of us.
Over on the passenger side of the Explorer I hoped to find good footprints but found none at all. The grass was healthy and wet and too springy to hold an indentation for long. But a second vehicle had been parked here very recently. And it had left dark green tracks coming down the hillock, just as the Explorer had. The tracks of the second vehicle were deeper and darker than those of the Ford, and I wondered if its driver had perhaps gunned it in reverse to back up the side of the swale. With the grass wet from the rain, it might have taken a four-wheel drive to back up that hill.
I bent down a little and looked straight through the passenger-side window to where Garrett’s head would have been when he was alive. Sitting there. Talking, maybe. Looking ahead. Hard to imagine he was unaware of the shooter.
Then I looked beyond him, trying to estimate where the bullet might be if it had continued in an approximately straight line. It would have shot across Highway 163, bored through several yards of tree foliage unless it clipped a branch and veered off, then lodged in the rising slope of earth toward the far end of the bridge. But the chances of an approximately straight line of flight were not good, given the skull and glass the bullet had to pass through. The chances of the bullet’s being in one piece were not good at all. I made an unhopeful note to have the CSIs look for fragments.
I climbed the gentle embankment down which the Explorer had traveled to get to the secluded, shaded swale. It was easy to pick out the tire tracks that had been left by the vehicle. Easy, too, to see the second set that came down the embankment and stopped right next to it.
I waved to Glenn, pointed to the tracks. He worked his way up the hillock toward us, shooting digital and video. For a moment we stood at the top. I looked out at the cars charging by on Highway 163.
‘Asplundh was a kick-ass cop, wasn’t he?’ asked Glenn.
I nodded.
‘What a turnaround,’ said Glenn. ‘From Professional Standards to this.’
We went back down for a closer look at the Explorer. Another CSI was examining and photographing the tires before they towed it off to the impound yard to be dusted for fingerprints and combed for hair and fiber.
‘Look at this,’ she said.
I came around and knelt and looked at the shiny green rock caught in the tread of the left rear tire.
She photographed it. Two angles, three shots from each. Then she shot some video, explaining what she was shooting. Then she pried the rock out and dropped it into a small paper evidence bag. I took the bag and stared down, holding my flashlight beam steady. It wasn’t a rock at all but half a small glass marble. It was bright green. I remembered that size from when I was a kid.
‘We called them minis,’ I said.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Smaller than a shooter.’
It looked like it had lodged in the wide tread of the SUV tire, then been sheared off to a half sphere. There was a fragment of something pale and red-orange embedded in the glass. Part of the cat’s eye, maybe. Or some other kind of inner design. The sheared surface around it, recessed into the tread, was pitted.
‘Fifty bucks he shot himself,’ said McKenzie.
Odd words for her to use, because the lavender ovals that spilled out of her mouth and hovered in the air between us meant she was feeling genuine sympathy for Garrett Asplundh. I nodded as the ovals bobbed like corks on a slow river, then dissolved. McKenzie likes to talk tougher than she feels. After three years I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the colors and shapes of other people’s feelings, unless they don’t match up with their words.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘He used to be Professional Standards. One of the real straight arrows.’
‘Straight arrows can’t bend,’ said McKenzie.
We walked around to the other side of the vehicle. I pulled on some gloves, then swung open the right rear door. In spite of the cool early hour, the flies had already found the blood. I squared the aluminum case on the seat in front of me, pushed the thumb buttons, and watched the latches jump. One yellow legal pad with neat handwriting on the top page. Two pens, two pencils, and a tiny calculator. An address book. A datebook. A small tape recorder, a digital camera, and a .45 automatic Colt pistol in a heavily oiled leather holster. With a pencil I poked and pried around the items, looking for something hidden or loose or out of place. But all of it was splendidly organized into cutouts in the foam that lined both the bottom and the lid.
Cops and their guns, I thought. Pretty much inseparable, right up to the end.
‘Look how organized he was,’ said McKenzie. ‘Must have cut the foam himself to get it all neat like that.’
I put the automatic garage door opener in the briefcase, closed it up, and locked it in the trunk of my car.
A tall, slender man in a long black coat came skidding down the hillside, well away from the crime-scene tape, feet turned sideways and leaning back for balance. It took me a second to recognize him. It was Ethics Authority director Erik Kaven, a man feared in the same way that his investigator Garrett Asplundh had been feared.
‘He got the news pretty fast,’ said McKenzie.
Kaven sized up the scene and came toward us. His handshake was strong.
‘Garrett?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘Robbery?’
‘Suicide looks more like it,’ said McKenzie.
‘It wasn’t suicide,’ said Kaven. He looked at McKenzie, then me. Kaven was tall and big-jawed, and his face was deeply lined. His gray-brown hair was thick, straight, and undisciplined. He wore a gunslinger’s mustache that somehow looked right on him. I guessed him at fifty. He’d been a district federal judge here in San Diego before signing on to lead the new Ethics Authority two years ago. Kaven had made big news when he shot two bank robbers out in El Cajon one Friday afternoon. Two shots, two dead men. He carried a gun on the bench, and he’d just gotten off work. He’d been depositing his paycheck when the robbers’ guns came out. His eyes were deep-set and pointedly suspicious.
‘It wasn’t suicide,’ he said again. ‘I’ll guarantee it.’
2 (#ulink_90be1509-b3eb-5fd6-a5f1-c97ff40c08cf)
Garrett Asplundh’s apartment was up in the North Park part of San Diego. Nice area, decent neighborhoods, and not far from the ocean. From the upstairs deck of Garrett’s place I could see Balboa Park. The late-morning breeze was cool and sharp.
It was a two-bedroom place. Small kitchen with a view of the neighborhood and the power lines. Not much in the fridge but plenty of scotch in the liquor cabinet. The living room had a hardwood floor, a gas-burning fireplace, a black futon sofa with a chrome gooseneck reading lamp, and bookshelves covering three walls. I stood there with my hands in my pockets, like a museum visitor. I like quiet when I’m trying to get the sound of a victim’s life. There was a lot to hear about Garrett Asplundh. He had been executed, for one thing. Either by himself or someone else.
The books ranged widely, from The World Atlas of Nations to Trout from Small Streams by Dave Hughes, and they were arranged in no order I could see. Lots of photography collections. Lots of true crime. No paperbacks. No novels. An entire shelf of books on aquatic insects. Another shelf just for meteorology. Another for Abraham Lincoln.
There was a small collection of CDs and DVDs, some commercially manufactured and some homemade. One of the DVDs was entitled ‘The Life and Death of Samantha Asplundh.’ It wasn’t in a plastic box, but rather a leather sheath with the title tooled onto the front. Some good work had gone into creating that container. I wondered if Samantha was the daughter who died.
The first bedroom had a computer workstation set up at a window. There was a padded workout bench, weights in a rack, and a stationary cycle. Facing another window was a small desk for tying flies. The walls were covered with black-and-white photographs of a woman and a little girl. I mean completely covered, every inch, the edges of the pictures – mostly eight-and-a-half-by-elevens – perfectly, spacelessly aligned. The pictures seemed artful to me, but I know nothing about art. The woman had lightness and depth and beauty. The girl was innocent and joyful. I could sense the emotion of the photographer. If he had been able to talk honestly to me about those two subjects, I’d have seen yellow rhomboids pouring out of him, because yellow rhomboids are the color and shape of love.
‘Must be the ex and kid,’ said McKenzie.
The other bedroom was similarly sparse. Just a tightly made full-size bed, a lamp to read by, a chest of drawers, and more black-and-white photographs of the woman and the girl. A few of them had Garrett Asplundh in them. He looked drowsy and dangerous. He was a lean but muscled man, and I remembered that he was reputed to be a superb boxer and martial artist.
‘He was obsessed with his wife,’ said McKenzie.
‘I don’t remember her name.’
‘Stella. The girl drowned in the pool while the mom was supposed to be watching. Or maybe Garrett was, I don’t remember. But Mom couldn’t handle it and left him. That’s what I heard.’
‘Yeah. That’s about what I heard, too.’
‘I wonder why all black-and-white. No color.’
‘Maybe it’s the way he saw things,’ I guessed.
‘Colorblind?’
‘No. All one way or the other.’
‘You mean no gray,’ said McKenzie.
‘None.’
She shrugged. ‘Chick had a pretty face.’
I wondered why there were no cameras here. No tripods, lights, lenses, cases, battery packs, motor drives, canisters of film. No evidence – except for the digital camera in his aluminum case – that Garrett Asplundh had taken a single picture since his daughter died.
I sat at the desk in front of the window and pulled out one of the leftside drawers. It was full of hanging files, all red, each labeled with vinyl tab and handwritten label. I flipped through the ‘Medical’ but didn’t find anything of interest. I checked the ‘Phone’ file because I always do. Nothing unusual. In ‘Utils’ I noted the gas and electric, as well as monthly checks made out to Kohler Property Managers for rent on the North Park apartment. Oddly, there were monthly checks made out to another management company – Uptown Property Management – for eight hundred dollars. Nothing written on the memo lines to indicate what the payment was for. Eight hundred dollars is a lot of money, month in and out. I’d seen Uptown Property Management signs around, mostly down in Barrio Logan and Shelltown and National City. Not really your uptown properties at all. I made a note to call them.
The ‘Sam’ file contained only two documents – birth and death certificates. She had died of drowning at the age of three years and two months. Her official history was a folder with two pieces of paper in it. I wondered at the tremendous loss of this little girl if you projected in all the years she had to live and everything she might have become.
Next I got out the ‘Explorer’ file and compared the Explorer’s plate numbers with the ones I’d written down. The same. The SUV had been purchased new from a local Ford dealer. Three years of financing provided by Ford Credit. I wondered how much money Garrett Asplundh was making as an investigator for the city Ethics Authority.
The drawer above had my answer: stubs from City of San Diego payroll checks issued weekly for $1,750 – give or take a few dollars and cents. That was before deductions for income tax, Social Security, and a Keogh account. Ninety-one grand a year wasn’t making Asplundh rich. I was making eighty-one, counting overtime, as a firs-year dead dick.
Behind the pay-stub folder were two folders marked ‘Entertain 1’ and ‘Entertain 2.’ I opened ‘Entertain 1’ and scanned through the receipts – high-line restaurants, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, exotic car rentals. Lots of nights out. Some of it was charged to a credit card in Asplundh’s name. Some of it was paid in cash.
A right-side drawer was full of light blue hanging files, all related to fly-fishing: ‘Dream Trips.’ ‘Casting.’ ‘Strategy.’ ‘Misc.’ I fanned through the ‘Misc’ file and saw clips from some of the same goofily intense magazines I read. Technical stuff – graphite modulus and flex ranges. Esoteric stuff – ‘Delicate Presentations’ and ‘Mono Versus Fluoro.’ Favorite articles – ‘Harrop’s Top Baetis Patterns’ and ‘Nymphs for Pickerel.’
‘Look,’ said McKenzie. ‘Garrett liked to dress.’
She stood in the doorway with hangers in each hand. ‘Dude was wearing Armani and Hugo Boss. Dude’s got shoes in the closet that cost three hundred a pair. He had a suit on last night, when he got it.’
‘Investigating ethics,’ I said.
‘Yeah, you gotta look sharp to know right from wrong. Black from white. No grays. I wonder how much they were paying him?’
‘About what we pay a lieutenant.’
‘Must have had a kick-ass expense account.’ McKenzie eyed the suits, then whirled back into the short hallway.
The closets in the weight room/office contained golf clubs, fly-fishing gear, and more file cabinets.
Back in the kitchen we listened to the messages on the answering machine.
Someone named Josh Mead had called about Garrett’s rounding out a foursome at Pala Mesa in Fallbrook on Saturday, left his number.
A recorded voice tried to sell him lower-cost medical insurance.
A woman who identified herself as Stella said she had waited until eleven. She said she hoped he was okay, would try him later. Her voice sounded disappointed and worried.
‘Not very friendly, is she?’ asked McKenzie.
‘She sounds anxious.’
The secretary for John Van Flyke of the Ethics Authority called with some expense-account questions about last week’s pay period. Van Flyke was Garrett’s direct boss, the supervisor of the Ethics Authority Enforcement Unit. We cops thought Van Flyke was quirky and overly serious. When he was hired, the Union-Tribune had showered him with praise because he could help Erik Kaven get tough on San Diego corruption. Van Flyke had not allowed himself or any employee of the Enforcement Unit to be photographed for the articles. He reported directly to Kaven and was allowed to recruit his own staff. I had no idea where the Ethics Authority Enforcement Unit offices even were.
‘I was introduced to Van Flyke once,’ said McKenzie. ‘He stared at me like he was guessing my weight. Drummed his fingers on the table like he couldn’t wait for me to leave. So I left.’
‘Where?’
‘Chive Restaurant down in the Gaslamp. Another macho fed, just like Kaven.’
Stella called again, said she could meet him at ten o’clock tonight in the bar at Delicias in Rancho Santa Fe.
Garrett, said Stella, if you’ve been drinking, don’t even bother. I thought we might really have something to celebrate last night. I’d appreciate a call if you can’t make it this time. I’m trusting you’re okay.
‘She doesn’t seem real concerned about him,’ said McKenzie.
‘I think she sounds worried.’
While McKenzie played the messages again I found Stella’s phone number and address in Garrett’s book. She lived downtown. Legally, Stella wasn’t next of kin, but she was the one we needed to talk to. Death notifications are my least favorite part of Homicide detail but I couldn’t ask McKenzie to do it alone because of her bluntness.
Asplundh’s garage was like the apartment – neat and clean. It was big enough for one vehicle, two tall shelves of boxes, and a small workbench. Two pairs of eight-foot fluorescent bulbs cast a stiff light on everything. I sat on the metal stool at the workbench. It felt like a place where a guy would spend some time. On the bench was a shiny abalone shell with a pack of smokes in it, and a book of matches on top of that. In the cabinet over the bench were stacks of fishing magazines, boxes of flies and reels and tackle, a mostly full bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. In the drawers were the usual hand tools you’d expect to find and a five-shot .38 revolver, loaded and good to go.
I had the thought that if Garrett Asplundh were going to kill himself he’d have done it right here. But my opinion was that Garrett hadn’t done himself in. He must have parked down there near the bridge because he was meeting someone. Someone he knew. Someone he trusted. That someone had killed him. And if someone else had driven him away, that meant at least two people were involved. Which could mean conspiracy, premeditation, and a possible death penalty.
Ballsy guys, I thought.
Head-shoot a city investigator in his own car. Leave him in a public place and don’t bother to make it look like anything but murder.
Don’t bother to take the wallet, briefcase, or car.
Didn’t bother – I was willing to bet – putting the gun into Garrett’s trembling hand and firing it into the night so we’d find GSR and work the case as a suicide.
No, none of that. They were too confident for that. Too matter-of-fact. Too cool. They had put a cap in Garrett, then cleaned up and had a cocktail at Rainwater’s or the Waterfront.
I wondered when was the last time that Garrett Asplundh had sat where I was sitting. I looked across the workbench to the wall to see exactly what Garrett saw when he sat here – late at night, I guessed – as sleep escaped him and the endless loop of memories played through his mind over and over and over again.
