14th Deadly Sin: (Women’s Murder Club 14) (16 page)

“You will hear from witnesses who will tell you that Aaron-Rey didn’t use drugs. He just liked to be around the big boys at that house, who teased him and made him laugh and sent him out for cigarettes and treated him like a mascot.

“On this particular day, Aaron-Rey was on the top floor of the drug house at 463 Dodge Place when unknown persons robbed and killed three drug dealers on the floor below, then fled the scene, along with all the other people who were in the house at that time.

“Aaron-Rey had an IQ of seventy, which is thirty points below average. He was functional, and he was also exceptionally inquisitive, trusting, and childlike.

“After this shooting occurred and the scores of people ran down the stairs, Aaron-Rey also ran. As he told the police and others, he was on his way out of the house when he found a gun on the stairs, which he stuck into the waistband of his pants, like the big boys do. He had this gun in his possession as he ran east on Turk, a very scared and freaked-out boy of fifteen.

“Two patrolmen in a cruiser witnessed Aaron-Rey running along Turk Street. They turned on their lights and sirens and ran their car up on the sidewalk, after which they tackled Aaron-Rey to the ground.

“And what did Aaron-Rey say, ladies and gentlemen?

“He said, ‘I didn’t do it.’ You will hear these patrolmen tell you that when they asked him what he didn’t do, Aaron-Rey said he didn’t shoot the three men in the drug house.

“Aaron-Rey was brought into the police station for questioning, where two senior narcotics detectives seized on an opportunity to close three homicides in the easiest possible way. Aaron-Rey was slow. And he was gullible. And he was under arrest.

“Over half the day and most of the night, Aaron-Rey Kordell repeatedly denied shooting anyone. But as you will see on the video, Inspectors Whitney and Brand convinced Aaron-Rey to waive his right to counsel and to having his parents present. They bullied, cajoled, and flat-out lied until this boy, by now helplessly confused, finally said, ‘I did it.’

“Once Aaron-Rey made this false admission, he was jailed pending trial and was subsequently murdered in the showers. We can only hope that he died quickly and that he wasn’t in pain.

“This is Aaron-Rey,” Yuki said, holding up a photo of her dead client cuddling with his baby sister. He had been a handsome young man, and the expression on his face showed his affection for his sister.

Yuki said, “Aaron-Rey was sweet. He was innocent. And he could not, did not, kill three hardened crack dealers. He didn’t know how to load and shoot a gun, and the defense will not say otherwise. Furthermore, during all those hours of interrogation, the police never tested Aaron-Rey’s hands or clothes for gunpowder residue. The police did not bring in any of the habitués of that drug house for questioning and did not consider any other suspects. Aaron-Rey was the only one they needed.

“At the end of this trial, you’re going to be asked to decide if Aaron-Rey Kordell’s confession was coerced. If it was coerced,
it wasn’t a confession
, and you must hold the SFPD and the City of San Francisco accountable for this innocent boy’s cruel, unwarranted, and untimely death.”

PARISI GOT HEAVILY to his feet and, ignoring the lectern, walked directly to the jury box. He smiled, greeted the jurors, and said a few words about how important jury duty was, adding that as the district attorney for the City of San Francisco, he could not do his job without good people deciding verdicts in trials like this one. He noted how important it was to make sure that justice was always done.

Yuki watched him perform, her mind splitting between her good feelings toward Len Parisi—based on five years of working with him, learning from him, and supporting him in her capacity as an assistant DA—and the other side of her brain, which was not yet accustomed to thinking of Len as her enemy, which he surely was.

Furthermore, Len’s calm and personable demeanor made her feel that her own presentation had been borderline hysterical.

Even Natalie seemed transfixed by Red Dog.

Len put his hand on the railing and walked along it, making eye contact with the jurors as he said, “I have to commend opposing counsel for presenting such a pretty picture of Aaron-Rey Kordell, but I’m very sorry to say, that’s not who he was.

“Aaron-Rey was hanging around at a crack house for the same reason anyone goes to a crack house. He used drugs. He didn’t just go there after school. He went there
instead
of going to school. At least, he did most days.

“And I have to say, Ms. Castellano has no idea whether Aaron-Rey picked up the murder weapon on the stairs as he was leaving the crack house, or whether he picked up the gun inside the crack house, or whether someone gave him a few bucks and told him, ‘Here’s a gun, Aaron-Rey. Shoot those dudes,’ so that’s what he did. I think the crack house closed-circuit TV cameras were down that day.”

The jurors laughed. Yes, he was winning them over.

Len continued, “No one has come forward to say that they saw what went down inside that crack house, and no one ever will. I will agree with Ms. Castellano that a gunshot residue test was not performed on Aaron-Rey. That was a mistake. But what Ms. Castellano didn’t tell you is that the bullets that killed those three men came from the gun in Aaron-Rey’s pants.

“We will put the gun into Mr. Kordell’s hand, and there will be no question at all, no dispute, that he had the gun in his possession. He had the murder weapon on his person. He ran. And he told the officers who pulled him in that he had
not
killed three people in the drug house, and then he named them.

“The police officers asked him where he got the gun, and he said he found it. And they found three dead men and they arrested Aaron-Rey Kordell—of course they did. That was their job.

“So, you might ask, how did Aaron-Rey get that gun? Well, he’s not around to tell us now, and it doesn’t matter how he got it. It was the murder weapon, and when he had the chance to tell us what happened in that crack house, he told the narcotics investigators that he killed A. Biggy and Duane and Dubble D.

“But this trial is not about where the gun came from or who shot those drug dealers. It is also not about who killed Aaron-Rey Kordell.

“As Ms. Castellano said, this trial is only about one thing: Did Inspectors Stanley Whitney and William Brand from Narcotics coerce Aaron-Rey into making a false confession?

“We say they did not.

“Did they use legitimate interview techniques? Yes, they did. Did they lie? Very likely. An interview in a police station is like a lying competition where both parties lie and bluff and do whatever they can to get the other party to believe them.

“It’s legal for police to lie.

“And when we show you clips from the interview, you are going to see that this young man was cool, calm, and collected and that he confessed to murdering three men.

“So when he confessed, Inspectors Brand and Whitney put him in jail, where he belonged, because killers shouldn’t be loose on the street.

“Aaron-Rey was in jail awaiting his speedy trial, as was his right as an American, when an incredibly unfortunate incident happened.

“And we’re sorry for the pain of Aaron-Rey’s family.

“But Aaron-Rey’s death was not the fault of the San Francisco Police Department.”

THE FUNERAL OF the Calhoun family was held at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma. It was one of the most emotionally devastating events I’d ever attended.

Marie Calhoun’s father, Tom Calhoun’s father, the boys’ Little League coach, and their homeroom teacher all gave eulogies. The SFPD was also represented at the service by Chief Jacobi, Sergeant Phil Pikelny from Robbery, and Inspector Ted Swanson, who choked out a few words about “what a good kid” Calhoun had been.

Hundreds of cops in dress blues packed the chapel and spilled outside, many of them crying, and they formed a thick blue wall behind the broken family at the graveside, where four caskets, two of them child-size, were slowly lowered into the ground.

The pervasive grief was cut with anger that these hideous, nauseating deaths had happened—and had happened to a cop and his family.

I’d hardly known Calhoun, but I vividly remembered his optimism that morning at the check-cashing store where three copycat Windbreaker cops had been gunned down by passing patrolmen.

And
that
thought nagged me and wouldn’t quite let me go.

Finally, the funeral was over.

Conklin and I climbed up into his Bronco and crept along with the traffic moving out of the cemetery. We slowly passed the block where my mother was buried and then the place where Yuki’s hilarious mother, Keiko, had been laid to rest. Washed over by images of so many other funerals, we left Colma and took 101 back to San Francisco.

When we were within the city limits, I wanted to hit a saloon, a quiet one where old barflies would be watching a ball game and where no one knew my name. I wanted time and space to get my feelings under control before I went home to my family.

But Conklin said, “I want to look at the Calhoun house again.”

“Why, Rich?”

“I just do.”

I sighed. “OK. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.”

CONKLIN PARKED IN front of the green house on Texas Street. We sat quietly for a moment under a telephone line loaded with blackbirds, then got out, ducked under the tape, broke the seal on the front door, and shouldered it open.

The murder house had no trace of life in it, but it smelled bad, and in the seconds before we threw on the lights, I could almost hear Marie Calhoun screaming.

Finally, I suggested we each take a room and try to look at it with fresh eyes. Conklin wanted to see the boys’ room.

I took the kitchen.

The first thing I saw was the spoon and bowl in the sink with the remains of a helping of chocolate chip ice cream. I imagined that this had been someone’s last meal. There were blood-spattered drawings of Easter rabbits and Little League baseball schedules stuck up on the fridge with magnets, five feet above the chalk marks on the linoleum floor where Marie Calhoun’s body had come to rest.

The refrigerator door was open, and the food had gone bad. The smell of rotting meat permeated the room. I looked into the trash can, just in case it had been forgotten, but the garbage had gone to the lab and the bin was empty.

The knife block on the counter had one knife missing, presumably the paring knife, which had likely been used to slice the lids off Tom Calhoun’s eyes.

I tried to take my own advice to look at this scene as if for the first time, but it was impossible to keep any distance from a multiple homicide, especially one like this.

The word that kept echoing in my mind was
why?

Brady had wondered out loud if Calhoun was one of the Windbreaker cops, wondered if he had had knowledge about the large stash of drugs we assumed had been the reason Wicker House had been robbed and the lab rats killed.

I trusted Brady’s instincts. So if Calhoun was one of those renegade cops, he wasn’t alone. Could he be working with other cops? Could Swanson, Vasquez, even Robertson be part of the crew?

Conklin, too, had thoughts that Wicker House and this quadruple murder were related. I heard his footsteps and turned as he came into the kitchen.

He said, “Linds, there’s nothing new upstairs. It was a straight-up execution. I don’t see signs of a robbery. As Clapper said, nothing was tossed.”

“Who killed them?” I asked my partner, but I was really asking myself.

“What do you think, Linds?”

“Let’s say Brady is right, that Calhoun may be one of the Windbreaker cops. Calhoun was pretty excited by those dead Windbreaker-wearing copycats, remember?”

Conklin nodded.

“It was like he was saying, ‘Yahoo. The case is closed.’ And maybe it was because if he could convince us that the Windbreaker case was solved, there’d be no heat on him.”

“Go on,” said my partner.

“OK,” I said, “let’s take it a step further. If Calhoun was involved in the Wicker House robbery, those drugs were worth a lot to someone. And that someone, let’s say it was Kingfisher. What if Kingfisher knew who robbed him?”

“Oh. OK, so you’re saying maybe this wasn’t torture for information,” Conklin said. “Maybe the Calhoun family was the message. ‘Screw with us, this happens.’”

“It’s a leap,” I said, staring at the blood on the kitchen floor.

Conklin said, “It’s a leap. But it makes more sense than anything I’ve heard so far.”

I WAS HOME before dinner, and after showering and changing into sweats, I took Julie onto my lap and fed her strained lamb and peas while listening to Valerie June singing “Pushin’ Against a Stone.” After that, I put Julie in Joe’s arms. I filled Martha’s bowl with a premium kibble I’d been saving for a special occasion, and I told Joe I was cooking dinner.

“I have to do something that I can control and that will make me feel like I’m doing something good.”

“You had me at ‘I’m cooking,’” Joe said.

I laughed, first time that day, and even laughed a little too long and hard. My husband joined in, then gave me a glass of cold orange juice, which is our code for “chill.”

As I chopped vegetables, I told Joe about my shitty day.

“I said I’d go with you to Colma,” he told me.

“Nah, it was better I went with the troops.”

I gave Joe a brief verbal tour of the after-funeral return to the Calhouns’ house of horrors. And while I pounded the veal cutlets with a mallet, I told him my thoughts that Kingfisher had been involved. When the cutlets were so thin they were almost transparent, I felt Joe gently taking the mallet out of my hand.

I laughed again, which was very cathartic, I’ve got to say.

While I sipped my juice, Joe talked about drug kingpins he has known and about Kingfisher in particular, a brutal psychopath who earned his name by annihilating anyone who got in his way.