Chapter 36
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The ringing of his mobile phone dragged Jack from an exhausted sleep. He awoke fully clothed, sitting in the big leather chair by the gas fireplace. He staggered to the phone, left foot asleep and tingling. The ringing stopped. It wasn’t until he started to take off his clothes to shower that he discovered the note from Lee pinned to his chest with a safety pin. She had taken a short nap and gone shopping.
His eyes felt like they had been sandpapered. His sciatic nerve felt like someone had stabbed it with a screwdriver, and his left leg was mostly numb. He ignored the message signal on his mobile and took an icy shower, then steaming, and then icy, and hot again.
He checked messages. One was from Dvora. Captain Yan wanted to see them immediately. Dvora was on her way from her studio to the police station. Message time stamped exactly eleven minutes ago. He dressed and made it to the cab in front of the Mark in six minutes. The little-old-lady cabbie earned her twenty-dollar tip.
This time the sergeant behind the bulletproof glass carefully checked his ID and each line of the check-in sheet Sergeant Washington filled out. Voices were pitched higher, tension and fatigue shortening vocal cords. Too many empty plastic cups cluttered desks, too much trash-filled cans. Before, the fabric of the office had been quiet, confident and loose. Now there were eyes past any help from Visine and one-syllable answers to incoming calls. Dvora was already in the Captain’s office, still in her workout clothes. The rich smell of hard-working woman wafted over him.
The change in Captain Yan frightened him. Yan’s hand trembled when he reached into his desk to pull out a folder. When he spoke, his voice sounded brittle, the smooth control and brilliant speaking range dulled. At first Jack thought he was ill. After hearing Yan’s story, he realized Yan hadn’t really slept since they’d seen him four days ago.
“Mr. McDonald, Ms. Schacter, I have news for you, vitally important news. Before I tell you my news I am going to ask you both to promise not to reveal what I say in this room to anyone, I repeat anyone, unless I give my approval. I know this seems quite melodramatic. But, once you hear what I have to say I know you will understand my reasons for asking this of you and agree to my request for silence. May I please have your solemn promise on this?”
Jack didn’t make promises lightly and hated making them on faith.
“You have my word, Captain Yan.”
Dvora, “And mine.”
Captain Yan reached into the folder and shoved two eight-by-ten color photos across the desk. The man in the mug shot looked fortyish. The next photo was from a lineup and showed him a bit over six feet in shoes and with the kind of thickness through the shoulders that can happen only happen after years of serious weight lifting. He was white and his buzzed blond hair grew down to a widow’s peak.
The whites of his eyes showed around the irises, almost like the flash for the picture had startled the man. His neck was as wide as a wrestler’s. A faded Aryan Brotherhood tattoo showed over the edge of the collar of the rough, gray work-shirt. There was a palpable menace to the man.
“This is Albert Weise. We are certain he is the man who attacked Ms. McDonald and Ms. Schacter.”
Dvora “What, who, why..?”
Jack said, “Do you have him in custody? Can I see the son-of-a-bitch? I want to see the son-of-a-bitch.”
Dvora asked, “How can you be sure? I mean…”
Yan said, “Please, please? I know you have questions. Let me tell you what we know and what we think and I believe many of your questions will be answered.”
Dvora said, “Yes. Please?”
Jack nodded.
“The diamond tennis bracelet stolen from your home was sold to a coin-and-loan shop in the Castro yesterday afternoon. The operator of the establishment had a list of merchandise missing from your home. The gentleman who runs the establishment is on parole for felony possession of stolen merchandise. This was his second conviction. He was eager to help us so that he could avoid the consequences of a third such conviction.”
The Captain smiled grimly and flipped another picture on to the table. It was a blurry picture of a young man’s gaunt face marked by Kaposi’s sarcoma.
“This is from the security camera located above and behind the cash drawer in the pawn-shop. We know this young man. He is a prostitute. Or at least he was. You can see how difficult it would be for him to find customers now. He roomed or associated with other men in similar circumstances. Some of the men sell drugs and some of them sell themselves or others to pay for their drug habits. It was rumored that they or their associates perform high-end burglaries. One of the roommates was on parole so we didn’t have to obtain a warrant.”
“Our SWAT team entered the home. One of the men appeared to dead from an overdose. Another was unconscious from an overdose. We don’t know about the third. We had a DNA match to one of the felons in the room from Ms. McDonald’s home. There was a fire upon entry to the flop. A very hot fire.”
Yan coughed a dry cough. “After the fire we found CDs that matched CDs taken from Ms. Schacter and Ms. McDonald. We found the antique flatware set and a few other items that somehow, by their placement, survived the fire. Open and shut, very straightforward, don’t you think?”
Something in Yan’s tone, something barely there, made Jack sure things were not open and shut, and were far from certain.
“My detectives were not surprised that these gentlemen committed the crime. They had the knowledge and the skill and, with the physical evidence, we had a very strong case. There were a few inconsistencies. With your reward and the understanding of the importance of this case by my staff we were very surprised that we had no information on these men.”
He looked up at Yan quickly. He thought he heard a hint of sarcasm-so much for the inscrutable Captain Yan. He made direct eye contact with each of them in turn.
“Do either of you believe in, for want of a better word, hunches?”
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Jack believed in hunches. “I do.”
Dvora said, “I also believe in hunches. Why the question?”
Yan stretched, “I too believe in hunches. I could tell that my detectives didn’t like the feel of this case. Then the young man, the former prostitute, confirmed everything the evidence pointed to. Still my detectives didn’t like the feel of this case. It was cracked too quickly. It was too clean, too open and shut.”
Yan paused again. “We have a superb crime scene team. The best in the country, I believe. They are seldom tested. This case puzzled them. Obvious hair and fiber matches in an apartment after a burglary was very, very sophisticated. So they searched your home again and again. And then they went back to look at evidence taken from the crime scene, that they hadn’t looked at because the other evidence was so clean. They found a small piece of skin from a knuckle. We did not run this piece of skin through our normal database.”
Yan coughed again. “Albert Weise was shot to death in the early hours of this morning during what would have appeared, if it were successful, to have been a burglary of a home in Woodside. The chief of police there is a friend of mine, a protégé. He called me and said that he had a very weird burglary. The homeowner shot the man in self-defense. I asked him if the man had a healing small wound on one of his knuckles. I asked my protégé if this man had a club foot. He did. This is important because when I looked at the evidence with an un-jaundiced eye, I determined that one man, a man who favored a foot, had kicked Ms. McDonald, not two as we previously thought. We were provided with a piece of skin from Mr. Weise. There is a local university genetics lab that is very appreciative of our efforts. When they compared the piece of knuckle skin to that of Mr. Weise, there was an absolute match.”
Captain Yan coughed the dry cough again, and as if on cue, there was a knock on the office door. Yan said, “Come in Sergeant.”
Sergeant Washington came in and placed cough drops on the edge of Yan’s desk. Yan looked at Washington’s back as he was leaving with amused indulgence.
“Dr. David Brecht is chief scientist for Double Helix, a genetic engineering firm. He shot Albert Weise in the chest with a nine-millimeter automatic using Glaser antipersonnel rounds. When we tracked Albert Weise back to his rooming house we found a list of seven chief scientists, all living in the Bay Area, and all working for genetic engineering firms.”
As the story unfolded Jack knew any acquisitions editor would have rejected Yan’s tale as too fantastic to make believable fiction. “Albert Weise was born in Seattle, thirty-four years ago. It was a difficult birth. He started life with a congenital defect in his right foot. His mother was a sometime waitress and most-time prostitute. Neither he nor his mother has any idea who his father might be. Albert had been in trouble from the beginning, placed in juvenile custody for the first time in the state of Washington at age nine.”
“When he was nine years old he was picked up after hitting one of his mother’s many ‘boyfriends’ on the head with a cast-iron skillet. The man had passed out on the couch. The man did not recover full use of his faculties. It was later discovered that this man had tired of waiting for Albert’s mother one night and used the boy to satisfy his needs.”
Yan coughed the painful sounding dry cough again and drank water from a Nalgene bottle.
“Albert moved from one foster home to another, becoming more and more unmanageable. He lived for a time with a cousin in Oakland. The cousin had been convicted of selling amphetamines to a Federal narcotics agent. Albert was, by then, a mature, tough teenager and a ranking member of a skinhead gang. The leader of a rival Asian gang had Albert ambushed by a gang of youths and beaten severely. Albert eventually caught the young man alone and beat him into semi-consciousness. He then bound him and sodomized him.”
“After the incident Albert was remanded into the custody of the California Youth Authority. He was fifteen. He spent time at Preston and then Chad where he became a professional career criminal. Albert left CYA at eighteen. Of his next sixteen years, twelve were spent in prison. He moved up the ranks of Aryan biker gangs in California to become one of their most feared enforcers. When he was in his last stretch at Folsom Prison his protection broke down and he was attacked and beaten by an unaffiliated group of white supremacists.”
Yan coughed again, reddening in the face. There was a knock on the door and Sergeant Washington brought in a pot of tea. Yan thanked him, lifted the pot and arched his right brow. They both said “No, thanks.” Yan poured and sipped. When he started again his voice had regained some of its old vigor.
“Albert spent four months in the prison hospital recovering from the effects of the beating. On a follow-up visit he tested positive for AIDS and Hepatitis C. After a suicide attempt and treatment for depression, he became a model prisoner, dividing his time evenly between the prison library, working out in his cell, and the prison chapel. Albert was paroled in January of this year. A search of his library records indicated he concentrated on medical texts, mostly books about religion and about current treatments for AIDS and Hepatitis C, . He also checked out many other books, seemingly unrelated. My staff reported to me forty-five minutes before this meeting. Most of the seeming unrelated books have something in them dealing with conspiracies.”
Captain Yan continued. “Albert became convinced of a worldwide conspiracy to suppress antiviral research. His apartment was a monument to this theory. He had detailed biographies of over forty people involved with antiviral research. Six of the individuals were public health officials, four were politicians, and the rest were involved directly in research, most here in the Bay Area, Boston, Austin, and the Raleigh/Durham area.”
Again Yan paused for a few moments before he continued. “He had precise work schedules, layouts of homes and offices, pictures taken in various locals, and other detailed information on seven local individuals on this list. Ms. McDonald was the first person on the list. Dr. Albert Brecht was the second.”
Yan stopped and leaned back in his chair, took off his half-glasses and rubbed his eyes. When he made eye contact again his face was grim.
“You can now see why I had to demand your vow of silence. I love my city. I will not have my cherished city torn apart by stories of some madman, some vigilante against an imagined conspiracy. This city has been ravaged by the AIDS virus and has now learned to deal with it. We are finding that Hepatitis C is even more widespread. The more yellow press of our city, and especially those ‘news’ sites on the web, would have a field day with this story.”
Yan stood and stretched, his back audibly cracking and then sat back down. “Albert was right. There is a conspiracy. He is part of it. The ability to assemble the information for the burglaries and attacks is well beyond the scope of one individual, especially an individual such as Mr. Weise. Now I am going to ask you to lie. We do not know who is at the center of this conspiracy. Unless my department and closest circle of friends has been suborned, whoever is masterminding this is not aware we know of their conspiracy. Not until we do know, and maybe not even then, do I want the press trying to drum up ratings, recover circulation, or increase page views and clicks through their speculation. I am going to quietly keep the investigation open. And, our official internal and published position will be that we are fairly certain we know who the culprits were. Because of a fire in the apartment where the lead suspects died, it will take longer than usual for us to confirm the physical evidence of the crime.”
Yan talked about evidence showing this dead man to be the man who had attacked his sister. The Captain spoke giving layer upon layer of reasons why this had to be the man. Captain Yan’s phone rang. He listened briefly and then put the phone down.
“Now, I want to make sure we are in agreement. Are you comfortable in not talking to the press or anyone else, especially now that you understand why it is so important to keep our knowledge of the real culprit quiet?”
Dvora looked off into the distance for a few seconds and then said, “Yes.”
Jack, more quickly, “Yes.”
Yan, nearly dropping with exhaustion, pulled himself erect in his chair again and made very direct and intense eye contact with both of them.
“And now, another difficult thing. I want both of you to think for a few moments. Do either of you have knowledge that might help us decipher who these conspirators are? You are both extremely well connected in a number of spheres of influence. Ms. Schacter, you know many, many powerful and influential people from many walks of life. And you, Mr. McDonald, with your connections in venture capital and investments and very close personal friendship with Mr. Robert E. Lee White, whose intelligence network is superb, also know many people who know many things. Do either of you have any ideas, theories, or knowledge that could conceivably help us?”
Jack put on his pondering face, stared at a spot on the wall just above a small Japanese watercolor to the right of Captain Yan. He put on his pondering face by pondering. Rather than trying not to think about what he did know, he thought about other things to keep any possible thoughts from his face and body language. He thought about things like: was it Aliens? Did the leprechauns do it? What about mutant octopus? As he rejected each hypothesis, he was able to keep his poker face and say, “I’m bewildered by all of this. It sounds like something from a bad thriller. When I have my arms around what you have told me, perhaps then I might be able to think of something useful.”
Yan nodded, acting as if he believed him.
Dvora’s face held a combination of bewilderment and shock and sorrow. She looked up Yan and said, “This is all so strange and frustrating. A robbery gone bad, and junkies hurting my wife in the process, this I can comprehend. This poor man’s delusions, those of a dying man, these I might be able to forgive one day, but this…conspiracy. I am simply bewildered. If I can think of anything I will call. Now, before we leave to try and process this, is there any other way we can help?”
Jack had been told that one of her strengths as a dancer was her ability to completely transform her character. This was an Oscar-worthy performance.
Yan said, “Not at the moment. Now if you will excuse me, I must tie up some loose ends and then I must sleep. It has been almost three days. At my age I do not have the stamina I once did.” With that he stood and left them.
The picture of Albert Weise was still on top of the desk. He didn’t look evil any more. He looked sad. What a pitiful life he’d had, doomed from the start. Jack wasn’t a big believer in people not being able to take control their lives. But, Albert had about as much chance of living a normal life as a career politician had of telling the truth.
Jack could understand Albert’s belief in conspiracy. How many billions had the government spent, how much more private industry on AIDS, and now on Hepatitis C? There were treatments for Hepatitis C, but until recently they’d only been fifty percent effective and the effective ones were expensive as hell. AIDS, after countless billions, was still a death sentence for many. If you wanted to discover a cure for any disease all you had to do was have the politicians announce the cure’s inventor would get $10 billion. Make that $10 billion tax-free. Then guarantee the cure wouldn’t be ‘nationalized.’ Let the inventors be assured of their right to market their cure any way they saw fit.
“That poor sad son-of-a-bitch,” Dvora said.
Jack would have said it if she hadn’t. When he looked at Dvora, tears tracked her face.
“And, I still hated him, will continue to hate him, and if I feel bad about it. He didn’t have a fucking chance, did he?”
FROM THE LARGE video display in an interview room, Captain Yan watched as Sergeant Washington led Jack and Dvora out of the bay. Yan had not met two such accomplished liars in a long time. Both of them were charming and intelligent. He knew they knew things he could use. He knew they suspected that he knew this. It was a silly game, one that wasted time. The passing of time, in any investigation, was the enemy of truth. The more quickly he tied the threads together, the more quickly he could braid them into the rope to hang those who thought they could get away with this nonsense on his watch.
He would not normally afford people who had knowledge he needed the leeway he afforded these two. This had nothing to do with their political power, at least not directly. He did not fear upsetting them and having them use their political wherewithal to pressure him, even if they were the vindictive kind. He knew these two were not, because his intelligence reports spoke very highly of their character. He afforded them the leeway because once they learned to trust him they would became enormously valuable allies.
These two, three if you counted Hong Lee, would be the last piece of his circle. He was given to flights of fancy on occasion and thought of the group he had assembled as his super heroes alliance-Alvin Yan’s Super Hero Alliance-AYSHA. This acronym did not have the ring to it that Captain Alvin Yan wanted. When he was not so very tired, he and his beautiful, brilliant bride would have a glass of brandy or two, sit in front of the fire and giggle like schoolchildren while they invented an acronym that had more of a rolling thunder.
Yan sighed as he thought of his brothers in blue. Most cops weren’t all that smart and many were corrupt. This was a good thing, as most criminals were stupid and lazy or his brothers would never catch them. The problem with this came when someone of his talents and with his superb team tried to deal with people such as Dvora and Jack. He chose to think of them as Dvora and Jack. He knew that one day they would be friends. These two and their friends would make such superb allies!
He knew that one way or another, by truth, guile or coercion, they were going to share what they knew and share it soon. He just hoped that it would not be too late to stop this insanity before it claimed other lives. The last thing he thought before he fell asleep on the couch in his napping room was that it was going to be very difficult to coerce or outsmart these two. He smiled briefly at the challenge they presented. Then his face turned grim. He stopped himself thinking about the perpetrators. He forced himself into serenity, evened his breathing, and cleared his mind. In less than a minute he was asleep.