14th Deadly Sin: (Women’s Murder Club 14) (25 page)

I’d thought of him before, but his all-American good looks and kind manner had thrown me off my guard. Currently, he wasn’t on our radar at all.

I sat down across from Brady so I didn’t have to speak from the open doorway. “What about Swanson?”

“What are you saying? You think he’s in on this?”

“Swanson’s a distinguished cop. He was sold to us as a superstar. Calhoun and Robertson reported to him. How could he not be involved?”

“Trust your gut,” said Brady.

MY GUT SAID we shouldn’t go Rambo on Swanson.

Conklin agreed. “You talk to him. I’ll work on locating Whitney.”

The Swanson family lived in the Parkmerced apartment development, twenty minutes from the city center in a 150-acre private village with both high-rise flats and town-homes. It was twilight as I drove down the lush, tree-lined streets, passing charming small parks and playgrounds.

It was easy to think that nothing bad could happen here.

Swanson lived in a two-tone burnt-orange-and-dark-brown stucco-faced building that looked to be a three-family unit. I’d just braked at the curb when he came out of his front door and down the walk to meet me at the car.

“Sorry to drop in unannounced,” I told him. “But we have to talk.”

Swanson said, “Come in, Boxer. Glad to see you, actually.”

Ted Swanson was disarmingly likable. His whole clean-cut, easygoing manner made my theory of him as the boss of a dirty-cop crew seem ridiculous.

Once inside his living room, Swanson introduced me to his wife, Nancy, who said, “Come meet the kids.”

She walked me to the door of the den and I saw three little ones, each under ten years old, lying on beanbag chairs, watching a movie in their pajamas.

I was introduced to Maeve, Joey, and Pat as “Daddy’s friend from work,” after which Nancy stayed with the kids and I went to the wood-paneled living room furnished in plaid-covered sofas with dense pile carpet underfoot.

I sat on one of the sofas and turned down Swanson’s offer of “coffee or whatever.” And I was struck by how much he had aged in the last few weeks.

His face was ashen. His shoulders slumped. He looked like a man who was headed for a heart attack. And that it could happen any minute.

“I spent the day at Robertson’s house,” Swanson said. “I saw the chair where he shot himself. Thought about what a decent guy he was. Asked myself why he had done it.”

“What did you make of that?” I asked him.

I don’t think Swanson heard me.

He said, “I went through his checkbook. He wasn’t loaded and he wasn’t hurting. I rummaged through the files in his desk. Found the results of his last physical. No diabetes or cancer or heart disease. His blood pressure was a touch high. So is mine.

“I looked in the medicine chest. Advil. Tums. Something for athlete’s foot.”

Swanson shook his head.

I said, “What else?”

“Vasquez spoke to the neighbor who inherited the dog. Guy’s name is Murray. Murray was Robertson’s drinking buddy. They watched ball games together. Murray didn’t see it coming. He said Kyle had been moody but not overtly depressed. But I gotta tell you, Boxer, none of us saw this coming. CSI has Robertson’s laptop. Maybe that’ll tell us something.”

“Ted. Can we get real, here? Kyle Robertson didn’t kill himself on a whim. Was he involved with the robberies we’ve been working? Had he been threatened? Did he have information he wished he didn’t have? I think you know.”

Swanson’s face sagged. He said, “I could be a target. What happened to Tommy Calhoun’s family could happen to mine. What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

“I would talk to someone who can help you.”

“What are you suggesting, Boxer?”

“You know what I’m getting at. Give me something to work with. Chief Jacobi was my partner. We’ve been tight for more than a dozen years. He’ll listen to me.”

“I’ve got nothing to say.”

Swanson was crouching in his seat, leaning over his knees as he talked. “We were working our jobs. Just like you. Maybe Calhoun got too close to something and maybe Robertson knew what it was.”

“That’s the story you’re going with? You don’t know anything?”

“I’m going to bed now, Boxer,” he said. “It’s been another rotten day.”

He was saying he didn’t want to talk to me, but the look on his face told me otherwise. I swear he wanted to confide in me. But we both stood and he walked away from me. I showed myself to the door, and as I passed the den, I heard the children laughing. I was crazy scared for those little kids and for Nancy and Ted Swanson, too.

Honest to God, I found him believable, even though I didn’t believe him at all.

I CAME AWAY from my visit with Ted Swanson thinking he’d been lying, and that was not only disturbing, but it added to my doubts about him.

He said he was worried about being attacked, but he wouldn’t tell me what he knew. I was frustrated and angry and I couldn’t help thinking about the murder scene at Tom Calhoun’s house, knowing that Swanson was thinking about it, too.

My hand was on my car door when Nancy Swanson called my name. She was walking quickly across the lawn, and when she reached me, she got right into my face.

She said, “You listen to me, Sergeant. It’s hard to keep the job out of this house, but I try. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have let you through the door.”

I said, “Nancy, I want to protect your family, but I can’t help if Ted won’t talk to me. If you know something, for God’s sake tell me.”

“Nice meeting you,” she said.

My hands shot out and I grabbed her by the shoulders before she could turn away. I said, “Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. You can’t take care of your family by yourself.”

She threw my hands off her shoulders, saying, “Good-bye. Don’t come back.”

I watched Mrs. Swanson march up the walk to her doorway. She turned and shot me an angry look before sweeping into the house and slamming the door.

I was inside my car, reporting back to Brady, when Ted Swanson came boiling out of his house wearing an SFPD Windbreaker.
Christ. What now?

He knocked on my car window and I buzzed it down.

Swanson said, “Vasquez called me. Strange cars are coming into his neighborhood. Parking near his house. Something’s going down. Call it in.”

He got into my vehicle and gave me Vasquez’s address, which I relayed to Brady; I asked him to send all available units. We were between shifts. I didn’t know how many people Brady could round up.

I pulled out onto the street, and Swanson shouted directions over the wail of my siren.

MY CAR RADIO was crackling and screeching under the blare of my siren. The dispatcher was calling all cars to Vasquez’s address, and cars were responding that they were on their way.

Swanson stared ahead through the windshield. He looked mesmerized, seemingly lost in his own world as I pitched my Explorer toward Naglee Avenue in the working-class neighborhood known as Cayuga Park.

As we approached Naglee from the southwest on Cayuga Avenue, I heard rapid gunfire, and then I saw the cars parked at angles on both sides of the street.

There were police cruisers, their flashers painting the houses with vivid splashes of red and blue light. The cops in the cruisers were exchanging fire with shooters in the three late-model American-made sedans, probably the strange cars Vasquez had reported rolling up to his house.

Naglee Avenue runs west from the 280 Freeway, adjacent to an overhead BART track. The homes on this block were a long bank of multifamily attached dwellings, the driveways marked by short hedges.

The playground across the street from these homes was empty at this time of night.

The firefight was centered on a house in midblock, a nondescript beige wood house with a rock wall at the garage level.

“That’s Vasquez’s house,” said Swanson.

“Does he have a family?”

“No. He’s divorced, no kids.”

I parked outside the firestorm but within view of it. I had two Kevlar vests in the trunk of my car. I told Swanson to stay put.

I got out of my vehicle, ducked down, and crept along the car on the far side of the gunfire. I popped the trunk, retrieved my vest, and put it on over my jacket. The spare vest was in my hand and I was creeping back to my car door when Swanson opened his door and bolted toward Vasquez’s house.

I yelled,
“Swanson! Get down!”

Swanson was running along the short hedge that separated Vasquez’s driveway from his neighbor’s when I saw his body jerk twice, then, drop.

I climbed back into my seat, grabbed the microphone, and yelled into it,
“Officer down! Officer down!”
I gave my location, even though I knew that an ambulance couldn’t enter this block until the firing stopped. That was protocol.

I didn’t know what Swanson had been trying to do, but if he was alive, I had to get to him. With my lights and siren off, and keeping my head down, I drove over the sidewalk until I saw Swanson lying alongside the hedge.

I braked the car, slid on my belly across the front seat, and wrenched the door open. I was looking directly down at Swanson.

He was bleeding, but he was breathing.

I shouted, “You’re a stupid
fuck
, Swanson. You know that?”

Blood was spreading across his Windbreaker. Still, he grinned.

“Look who’s talking,” he said.

MY CAR WAS a reasonable barricade against the fusillade of gunfire to my left, but I wouldn’t call it safe. I heard the banshee cry of an ambulance siren, then a second one, the sounds cutting out as the EMTs parked under the freeway.

I sat cross-legged on the ground next to Swanson. He was humming “The Star-Spangled Banner,” breaking into words now and then. “Mmm-mmm. Rockets’ red glare. Mmm-mmm, bursting in air.”

I folded the vest and put it under his head. He seemed peaceful. Maybe he was going into shock. Maybe he’d taken a hit to his spine. Maybe he was bleeding out.

He said, “It’s been good knowing you.”

“Not so fast,” I said. “You’re tougher than this. We’re cops, right?”

“I want you to do something for Nancy. The kids.”

“That’s
your
job, buster.”

“Say that I died … on the job. That’s the truth.”

“Talk to me, Swanson. It’s the least you can do.”

“… that our flag was still there.”

“Swanson, are you known to some people as One?”

I heard an engine start up, tires squeal. There was renewed gunfire. From the sound of it, a vehicle was making for the freeway exit at the far end of the street.

Swanson said, “Numero Uno. That’s me.”

Did he understand me? Did he know what I was asking him?

“You were the number one guy in the Windbreaker cop crew?” I asked.

He laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“The way it sounds. Numero Uno and the Windbreaker Crew.”

“Why did you fucking
do
it?”

He sighed. “
If
I did it, it was a victimless crime.”

“What the hell do you mean by that? Over a dozen people are dead.”

“Stealing drugs from dirtbags. That’s victimless.”

How did a man become a cop—a superstar—and think like that? But I knew the answer. They were called public-service homicides. In other words, he figured, justifiable.

“What about Calhoun?” I asked him.

He lifted a hand and pointed in the general direction of the gunfire that was still raging.

“Poor Tommy.”

Swanson’s voice slurred. His hand dropped.

“Ted. Ted, don’t you dare leave me.”

He coughed up blood. I gripped his hand.

I heard a cop shouting from afar.

“
Get out of the car with your hands up!
Get out of the car
now!
”

A voice shouted back, “
You’re a dead man!
”

There were loud bursts of automatic gunfire. Then an echoey silence. I heard Brady’s voice coming over my car radio asking for the buses to come in.

I stood up and shouted his name over the roof of my car. A moment later, Brady, our homicide lieutenant with the shining blond hair, was standing with me.

“You OK?” he asked me.

“Yes. Are you?”

“I’m good.”

He bent at the waist and said “Swanson” to the downed man in the SFPD Windbreaker. “Swanson, speak to me.”

“Yo,” Swanson said. His eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow.

“He’s losing blood,” I said. “Where the hell’s the bus?”

Brady left to direct the ambulance, and I stayed with Swanson until the paramedics got to us. I watched as they loaded him onto the board, strapped him down, and lifted the board into the bus.

Unlike Robertson, Swanson had a family, and the only way they’d get benefits was if he died on the job. And there Swanson was, with holes in his SFPD Windbreaker. He’d seen his chance and he had taken it.

I grabbed one of the EMTs, pulled him to the side of the bus, and asked, “Is he going to make it?”

First the EMT shrugged; then he shook his head; and then he climbed into the bus and closed the doors.

I had wanted Swanson to tell me who else was in his “crew.” But I had a strong feeling that even if he’d lived, he wouldn’t have given his people away.

AMBULANCES WERE COMING in, taking away the injured. The ME’s van had arrived, and Claire was talking to Clapper. CSU had barricaded all but one slim lane of the road. Techs were setting up lights and an evidence tent, and investigators were working the scene as best they could under the circumstances.

According to Brady, the body count was four, and all of the dead were unidentified shooters. One car had gotten away, and the number and identities of the people inside were unknown.

I sat in my car, and after I’d checked in with Joe and with Conklin, I called Nancy Swanson.