Hocus (23 page)

I glanced at my watch. “That’s only a couple of hours from now. I’ve got to call John. What information will the department be releasing?”

“Not much. We’ll announce that Frank was taken hostage. We’ll release descriptions of Bret Neukirk and Samuel Ryan and announce that they are wanted by police. We’ll say we believe they are in Southern California, probably the Las Piernas area, but they could be anywhere. That’s about it.”

I looked at the envelopes on the front seat between us, then stared out the car windows for a few minutes. It was dusk now, the last of the setting sun reflected in the west-facing windows of some of the buildings that lined the street ahead of us. I watched the cars moving alongside ours, in the other lanes of the Stockdale Highway. Families. Couples. Singles. I wished them all a perfectly ordinary, boring evening. Somebody ought to have one.

“I need to find a phone,” I said.

“I don’t suppose you want to use mine?”

“No, thanks.” I told him what I was planning to tell John.

He sighed. “I guess almost all of that will be coming out in the paper here or in Riverside. But — hell, I hope the captain has a good breakfast before he reads the
Express
tomorrow.”

After a moment he asked, “You covered Bakersfield PD when you were a reporter here?”

“The crime beat. It’s not exactly the same as reporting on the department itself. I was just covering the blotter for the most part.”

“Ever hear any rumors of somebody in the department doing better than they should on a cop’s salary?”

I shook my head. “No. Nothing that reached me. I was here when things were starting to look better after a long history of problems.”

“What kinds of problems?”

“Oh, that goes back even to the city’s early years — one of my favorite stories about Bakersfield is that the early citizens once voted for disincorporation in order to get rid of a local marshal.”

“Disincorporation — you mean they stopped being a city?”

“Officially, yes. Apparently, this marshal considered himself king — had a habit of harassing anybody and everybody. That was back in the 1870s. They reincorporated later on, but there were constant problems between the police and city hall. Frank once told me that not long after his dad joined the department — in the late 1940s — the chief of police was suspended and charged with taking vice payoffs. He was found not guilty. A lot of people will tell you that although there was real corruption back then, the chief was just the victim of politicians.”

“Anything more recent?” Cassidy asked.

“By the time I started working here, the department had a new chief. He once said he had the ‘dubious privilege of arresting more police officers than any other chief.’ ”

“There was some housecleaning going on?”

“Exactly. Complaints had been made against the department, just as there are against almost all police departments — some deserved, some not. But this new chief made a real effort to clean up the Bakersfield PD, and during his years, there weren’t charges of corruption at higher levels, as there had been before.”

He pulled into a gas station and waited while I used the phone. I tried John’s office number, on a hunch that he would still be in. It paid off.

“I wondered if I’d be hearing from you,” he said angrily. “You talk to Mark yet?”

“You know damned well I haven’t. I’ve got an offer to make.”

“Talk to Mark.”

“The paper undoubtedly sent Mark to cover the press conference. Now, we can sit here and play ‘come to the principal’s office’ on the phone, or you can listen to my offer.”

“I do have other options.”

“Yes, you can fire me. Want to fire me right now, John? To be honest, it would probably be a relief. I could stop thinking about Will Rogers.”

“Will Rogers?”

“Never mind. Am I fired?”

I suppose the silence was supposed to make me nervous. It just made me furious.

“No, you aren’t fired. Not yet.”

“Then I’ve got some information for you now, and an exclusive for you later, in exchange for as much breathing room as you can bear to give me.”

“Do I have a choice?” he groused.

“Not really,” I said, “unless we’re back to square one.”

“What’s the information?”

“We have a deal?”

“Yes.”

“This all started in Riverside. That’s where things went bad. No one else has that.”

“Is that where you are now?”

“No.”

Silence, then, “Any possibility of an exchange for Lang and Colson?”

“I can’t answer that, John, but you probably don’t need me to tell you what the policy on hostage exchanges is.”

“I’m sorry, Irene,” he said, his voice low, as if all the anger he had been burning up with a moment before had gone out of him. My own anger abated, replaced by a sense of guilt. I didn’t feel good about withholding information from John; I knew that Lang and Colson seemed to be of no consequence to Hocus, that their interests seemed to lie elsewhere. When I didn’t say anything, he added, “You know… well, you know I like Frank.”

“Yes, I know.” I took a deep breath. “The press conference will tell you a lot, but the radio and TV folks will be able to make use of most of it before the paper comes out tomorrow morning. But you’ve got the information on the car, which is strictly yours at this point. If you get someone out to Riverside, you’ll have an angle that’s all your own. And one other thing—”

He waited.

“One other thing, but when I tell it to you, promise me — I’m begging here, John — promise me you won’t crowd me. If I see a reporter from the
Express
in my rearview mirror just once, I swear to Jesus I will give this story to someone else.”

“There are times, Kelly, when you sorely try my—”

“A deal, remember?”

“All right, all right.”

“People in Bakersfield are going to recognize the names of the hostage takers.”

“Bakersfield?”

“I’m fairly sure the
Californian
is going to have someone digging all of this up soon. I was in their library this afternoon, and here’s what I learned.” I told him about the Father’s Day murders — as they were reported in the
Californian.
I didn’t mention Hocus’s claims about Powell’s accomplice, or the fax, or the vial of blood. I gave him only what I was sure would be revived in the Bakersfield media.

“Whew,” he said. “So what’s the connection? If Frank rescued them….”

I didn’t answer.

“You know more than you’re telling me, Kelly.”

“Breathing room, John.”

“Shit. When do I hear from you again?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not until this is over.”

“Kelly—”

“Gotta go, John. Bye.”

Cassidy didn’t try to talk to me when I got back to the car. I appreciated it. As we made our way to Bea’s house, I wondered if she’d like to slam the door in my face, too.

I tried to remember what orange blossoms smelled like.

I was wrong about Bea. She was fussing over me from the moment I walked in the door. “I hope that reporter parked out front didn’t bother you,” she said, putting an arm around my shoulders as if I were not of the same genus and species as the fellow from the
Californian.

“No,” I said, “he didn’t make it out of his car in time to question us.”

“Mike and Cassie went home,” she said. “They’ve got two little ones,” she explained to Cassidy. “I invited Greg to stay for supper.”

I watched Cassidy, who had warned me, just before we got out of the car, to follow his lead where Greg Bradshaw was concerned. Cassidy had his hands full of cases from the trunk of the car, but he nodded toward the Bear.

“Glad we’ll have a chance to get to know one another better,” he said.

Bradshaw smiled. “Yes, me too. Need help with those cases?”

“Oh, I’ll manage, thanks. Mind if I set up camp in that back room, Mrs. Harriman?”

“Not at all — Oh, that reminds me. Irene, Rachel called. She’s bringing some overnight things up here for you. I told her to plan on staying over, but I think she wants to get back home to Pete.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “Need any help in the kitchen?”

“Oh, it’s just roasted chicken. Won’t be ready for about another forty minutes.”

She sat down next to Greg again, and he took her hand. I wondered briefly about the gesture, then decided not to read too much into it. She was worried, I knew, and I regretted making her wait so long to hear more about what had happened to her son. I asked her to catch me up on news of her grandchildren. It made better than average small talk.

Cassidy came back into the room and wandered over to the mantel, picked up a photograph. Bea had family photographs everywhere, but the one he held was my favorite. Frank’s favorite, too, I remembered. In it Frank stood next to his father, whom he strongly resembled. They were both in uniform. Brian Harriman’s arm was around his son’s shoulders, his pride evident.

My thoughts wandered for a moment to the missing photographs, the ones that might have included his sister Diana.

“The people who have Frank didn’t choose him at random,” Cassidy said, gently replacing the father-son photograph, bringing my attention back to Bea and Greg. “He was deliberately targeted.”

Cassidy did his best to prepare them for the upcoming press conference, although he provided them with only a little more information than I had given John.

When he first mentioned the Ryan-Neukirk murders, only Greg seemed to recognize the case by name. But the moment he said “two young boys in a warehouse basement,” Bea drew a sharp breath.

Although he talked about the Ryan-Neukirk case, Cassidy never mentioned the possibility of a cop’s involvement. Apparently sure of my cooperation, he didn’t try to cue me to keep my mouth shut about that. No quelling glances, no phrases with double meaning, no hand signals.

If you surveyed everyone who’s ever known me, friends and enemies alike, and asked them to write down ten words that describe me, “obedient” wouldn’t make anybody’s list. So why, I wondered, was I quietly listening to Cassidy deceive people I cared about?

The easy answer was that Frank’s life was at stake. The harder one was that Cassidy’s seed of doubt about Greg Bradshaw was taking root. Greg was silver haired by the time I first met him; he was easily over six feet tall. For the moment I was going to trust Cassidy’s judgment. If he was wrong, though, and we were wasting an opportunity to get the Bear’s help, would I be able to forgive myself?

I watched Cassidy, grudgingly admiring his ability to win their confidence. He sat there, speaking in that soft and slow drawl, his voice and demeanor lulling them into matching his own calmness at a time when panic and dismay beckoned. Nothing in those slate blue eyes gave away worry or anxiety or even the weariness he must have been feeling after a long, demanding day.

I saw their tension easing as he spoke. Here was someone in command of the situation, their faces said, someone who knew what was best.

“I retired not too long after those murders,” Greg said, breaking into my reverie. He was speaking to Cassidy, his voice gruff with emotion. “Within the next year or so, Gus and Brian left, too.”

“Cookie retired then, didn’t he?” Bea asked.

“No, he was already retired.” Greg frowned. “At least, I think he was. But you know Cookie — he kept up on things. Brian was the same way after he left.”

“Forgive me,” Cassidy said. “Brian is—?”

“Frank’s dad,” Greg said. “He’s in the picture you were holding. Passed away about four years ago. Cookie’s real name is Nat. Nat Cook.”

“Our extended family, Detective Cassidy,” Bea said. “Along with Greg, Gus Matthews and Nat Cook were my husband’s closest friends. They all worked with him on the Bakersfield Police Department.”

“We all hated the Ryan-Neukirk case,” Greg said. “Those kids — it was one of those things that just made you feel too old and tired for the job. I was thinking of retiring anyway, but I still wasn’t sure I wanted out. Afraid retirement would be too dull for me. There would be action somewhere, and I wouldn’t be around to see it, you understand?”

Cassidy nodded. “Sure.”

“Then the Ryan-Neukirk case came along, and I just said, ‘Okay, that’s it, I’ve had enough.’ It was like that.”

“I can see how it would be,” Cassidy said. “It was hard to just read about it in the old newspaper articles. Must have been pretty rough to be there.”

“It was,” Greg said. “I knew that was going to be a bad one from the beginning. I don’t remember where I was exactly, but I was out in a patrol car somewhere. What I remember so clearly is — I heard Frank making the call from this warehouse — and my God, his voice — I don’t think I’ll forget Frank’s voice on that call as long as I live. Frank’s quiet, you know?”

He looked at Cassidy, who nodded.

“The boy’s a cool one,” he went on, “like you. He wasn’t panicked. He reported it perfectly. But… I don’t know… it was in his voice. He just sounded like he was… like he was…
wounded.
You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Cassidy said simply, but there was something different in the way he was looking at Greg now.

“I went right over. Frank had gone back down in that basement, to stay with those kids. Even after we got the detectives and a doctor there, those boys wouldn’t let any of the rest of us near them. They were terrified of everyone except Frank. They held on to him for dear life. Frank was down there with them until they could get the chains off them. Down there in that damned basement.

“He had tried to get the chains off with a bolt cutter, but that didn’t work. He told me later that he had only gone to his car once, just long enough to make the call, get the bolt cutter and a first-aid kit. Before he went to the car, he told the boys that he’d be right back, but they started crying. They hadn’t been crying before then. So after he got back, he told them he wouldn’t leave them again until their mothers came for them. And he didn’t. But Lord Almighty….”

“Their mothers? Did Frank know the dead men were their fathers?” I asked.

Greg shook his head. “Not right away. The bodies were cut up so bad, I don’t blame Frank for not seeing a resemblance between the boys and the fathers. And the boys didn’t speak — they would nod or point — that’s all. Frank asked them if they knew the men, they nodded yes — went on like that. So before too long, he realizes they’ve been in there with their own fathers’ bodies — blood everywhere — and I don’t know, I guess it just — it just hit him hard. It would have done the same to anybody.”