A Plague of Secrets Read online

  Behind Bracco and Schiff the three-person crime-scene investigation unit under Lennard Faro continued scouring the alley and its environs for evidence, although within the first minutes they’d already called Faro over to identify and bag as evidence a .40-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol that had recently been fired and a brass bullet casing that probably went with it. After watching them poking around and letting the assistant coroner and the photographer finish, at long last Bracco got to the body.

  The first thing he did was take off Vogler’s light blue backpack so he could turn the body over and look at where the shot or shots had entered. He then turned the backpack over to verify the location of the bullet hole. And there it was, high up in the fabric adjacent to where the slug had exited Vogler’s body, surrounded with the bloom of blood that Bracco had expected and failed to see around the hole in the stucco. After he flipped the backpack over and saw the corresponding exit hole on the other side, he sat back and turned to his partner, squatting next to him.

  “I love opening presents.” Bracco undid the clasp, pulled the top up, and held it open.

  “Well, look at that,” Schiff said.

  “I am.” The pack was filled to about the two-thirds mark with sandwich-size baggies of marijuana. Bracco removed one of them, opened it, smelled it again, and passed it over to his partner. “What I don’t get,” he said, “is why they didn’t take this.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know it was in there,” Schiff said.

  “They definitely didn’t know it was in there,” Bracco said. “They couldn’t have known about this much weed and just left it. That’d skew my whole worldview.”

  Someone tapped him on his shoulder, and Bracco half turned. “Sorry, Inspector,” Banks said, “but the wife’s here.”

  Nodding, Bracco sighed, then straightened up. “Hide that backpack,” he said to Schiff. “We don’t know nothing about no stinking backpacks.”

  “Got it,” his partner replied.

  Debra Schiff dropped the backpack onto the asphalt out of sight behind Banks’s squad car. Turning around, she saw that her partner had already gone over to greet the widow, who was standing just inside the crime-scene tape next to one of the uniformed officers.

  From Schiff’s distance the woman appeared young and very pretty. Her shoulder-length black hair, still wet—her morning shower?—framed a face of pale beauty, with wide dark eyes, strong cheekbones, red lips. She wore a long-sleeved 49er T-shirt tucked into her jeans, but the blousy shirt camouflaged neither her breasts nor her tiny waist.

  Coming closer, though, Schiff saw something else around the eyes too—a swelling that might be from the crying but might have another source. And under the swelling did she discern a faint yellowish cast to the skin? An ancient, or not-so-ancient, bruise?

  “I can see that it’s him from here,” she was saying to Bracco. Her left hand—no wedding band—was at her mouth now. “I don’t know if I can . . . if I need to go any closer.”

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Vogler.” Schiff inserted herself into the conversation, identifying herself and laying a hand on Bracco’s shoulder.

  “I’m not Mrs. Vogler.” The woman corrected her right away. “My name is Jansey Ticknor. We’re not married. Weren’t married. But just call me Jansey, okay?” Her shoulders sagged. “God.”

  Schiff wanted to get her away from her immediate reaction. “My partner mentioned a child when he talked to you.”

  Ms. Ticknor nodded. “My son, Ben. He’s with our boarder. He’s fine.” Her eyes went back to the body. “My God, how did this happen?”

  “We don’t know yet, ma’am,” Bracco said. “We did find a gun. Did your husband own a gun?”

  Jansey Ticknor blinked into the sun for a moment. “He couldn’t.”

  “He couldn’t? Why was that?” Schiff asked.

  Jansey’s face went flat. She looked from one inspector to the other. “He served some time in jail when he was younger.”

  “What for?” Bracco asked.

  She shrugged. “He was a driver in a robbery. It was the only time he ever did anything like that. Anyway . . . he went to prison. So, no, he couldn’t have a gun.”

  Schiff threw a quick look at Bracco. There was a real difference, they both knew, between going to jail, which meant the city and county lockup downtown, and spending time in prison. Prison was hard time, and in San Francisco, the probation capital of the Western world, time in the joint argued strongly against Jansey’s description that it had been the only wrongdoing of Dylan Vogler’s life.

  “Jansey,” Schiff asked, “did you see Dylan before he went to work this morning?”

  “No, he got up early with Ben, our boy. He lets me sleep in on weekends sometimes.” The body over on the asphalt drew her gaze again.

  Bracco spoke up. “Did Dylan have any enemies that you know of? Somebody who was mad at him?”

  “Not really, no. I guess it’s possible, but he didn’t have any power. He just ran this coffee shop. There wasn’t any drama in his life.”

  “Maybe he fired somebody recently?” Schiff suggested. “Something like that.”

  “No. The staff, it’s like only ten people or so and they’ve all been here forever.” She shook her head, dismissing the thought. “Whatever it was, it wasn’t about his job, I’m sure.” Her eyes went to the doorway. “Maybe somebody robbed him.”

  “His wallet was on him,” Bracco said. “Cell phone. No sign of robbery.”

  “Maybe they were going to take his stuff and something scared them away.”

  “That’s possible,” Schiff said.

  “What stuff?” Bracco asked.

  She closed her mouth, pursed her lips, and shifted to her other foot. “I don’t know. What you said, his wallet and cell phone. Like that.”

  Bracco kept it low-key. “He didn’t have anything else particularly worth stealing that you know of that maybe wouldn’t be obvious to us? A watch, maybe?”

  “I don’t think so, no.” She turned her head back toward the body. “You can’t just leave him lying there.”

  “We won’t, Jansey,” Schiff said. “The coroner’s ready to take him to the morgue as soon as we release him.” Lowering her voice, she moved in closer. “It might save you a difficult trip downtown if you wanted to give us a positive identification now. I’d be right next to you, if you think you can handle it.”

  Jansey was biting her lower lip and eventually nodded, putting her arm in Schiff’s. “Don’t let go of me,” she said, “in case I fall down or faint or something. Please.”

  “I got you.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  With BBW closed up, Schiff told her partner she’d meet him at a place she loved that had been serving breakfasts on Irving Street just west of Nineteenth Avenue for about eighty years. She and Bracco had been partnered up for only about six months and still had favorite haunts that the other didn’t know.

  As usual, the place was packed; but also as usual, they moved the customers along right smartly. So the wait for Schiff’s table wasn’t more than ten minutes. She’d just had her first sip of coffee when Bracco came in, caught her eye over the other patrons, and threaded his way over to her. When he sat down, she lowered her cup. “What took you?”

  Bracco’s normal sunny disposition sulked under a shadow. He was all but breathing fire but simply shook his head, his eyes dark. “You don’t want to know.”

  She sipped coffee. “They gave you another ticket.”

  Bracco’s head wagged from side to side. “They are twenty-four-karat idiots, Debra. I’m going to find out who wrote this one up and go after him.”

  “Or her,” Schiff said. “Don’t forget saying ‘or her.’ ”

  “I never would, of course, not in my real life. But I don’t care if it’s a him or a her. I’m going to take the sucker down, whoever it is. You didn’t get tagged?”

  She shrugged.

  “But here’s the thing. I parked in the street with my squawker han
ging from my rearview mirror and my goddamned card on the dash. You know, Bracco, homicide, with the badge and all. You think it’s possible they don’t know that homicide is actually part of the PD? Maybe they think homicide is like the name of a pest control company.”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  Bracco blew out heavily. “It’s not right, Debra. It’s just so incredibly demoralizing.”

  “It is, I agree.”

  “I’m not writing up another memo for another bullshit ticket like this.”

  The way it worked was that parking tickets incurred by city vehicles required the employee to fill out a form detailing the reason that the parking infraction had been unavoidable, and hence forgivable. The chief had issued a general order. Any officer who got a ticket had to fill out the form before leaving his shift for the day. Of course, a lot of times people couldn’t be bothered, so about every six months they’d get a memo they had to sign and return, acknowledging in a sub rosa fashion that—officially—parking violations were, in fact, about as important as murders.

  “I wouldn’t write it up, either, Darrel. Call those bastards on it. Why don’t you bring it up to Glitsky on Monday, let him handle it?”

  “He’ll go ballistic. He hates this stuff worse than me.”

  “Yeah, but that’s why they pay him the big bucks.”

  “Good point. What else is he doing anyway, right?” The waiter appeared at his elbow and Bracco looked up. “Anything better here than everything else?”

  Two minutes later, his eggs ordered, Bracco stirred his own coffee and looked across at his partner. “So, how about our victim?”

  “I think he hit Jansey.”

  “How do you get that?”

  “Her cheek didn’t look right. Even under the tears. She didn’t love him, I don’t think. You see how she talked about him? ‘He didn’t have any power. He just ran this coffee shop. There wasn’t any drama in his life.’ That’s not a woman who loves her man.”

  “So she knew about the weed?”

  “Of course. How could she not?”

  “You notice she didn’t say anything about the backpack.”

  “She might not have known he had it with him. She didn’t see him leave home, you remember. But as you said, the killing wasn’t about the weed or whoever shot him would have taken it.”

  “If he’d known. If it was a ‘him.’ ”

  “Well, yes, that.”

  Their waiter arrived with their plates and both inspectors dug in for a moment before Bracco took it up again. “You believe her about the gun?”

  “Not for a second. I ask if he owns a gun and she says he couldn’t. Not he didn’t.”

  “I heard that. So he was shot with his own gun?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough, but that’s my bet.”

  “He know the shooter?”

  “Maybe.” She chewed for a minute. “No sign of struggle, anyway. He gave him his own gun and then the guy shot him with it? How does that play?”

  “I don’t know.” Bracco put his fork down. “Actually, maybe Jansey.”

  “Pretty early for that, but maybe.” She pushed food around on her plate before she looked up. “We have to search the house.”

  “I know.” And Bracco added, “Like yesterday.”

  4

  Joanne Ticknor sat next to her husband, holding her grandson Ben on her lap on the couch in her daughter’s living room.

  Jansey came back into the room behind a man and a woman, both of whom were dressed casually but who looked serious and professional. “Mom, Dad,” she said, “these are inspectors Bracco and Schiff with the police department.” At the introductions Wayne Ticknor stood and shook hands, and Ben wriggled out of his grandmother’s arms and came forward to do the same.

  Bracco went down on a knee to shake Ben’s hand. “How you doing, big guy?”

  “Okay. Are you going to find who shot my daddy?”

  “We’re going to try, Ben. We’re really going to try.” Then he looked up at Jansey’s mother. “But we’re going to have to have a little adult time to talk before we really get going.”

  Getting the message, she stood up. “Come on, Ben, let’s you and Grandma go and find ourselves a snack in the kitchen. How’s that sound?”

  As soon as they’d gone, Wayne asked, “Do you have any leads yet?”

  Bracco gave him a nod. “Well, as a matter of fact, we might, or at least a place to start.” Including Jansey now, he continued, “Dylan was wearing a backpack that was full of marijuana. Did you know anything about that?”

  She opened, then closed her mouth. Finally came out with it. “I didn’t know he had some with him this morning, but it doesn’t surprise me, no. He was selling it sometimes. I wanted him to stop. I asked him to stop. But he said it didn’t hurt anybody and we needed the money.”

  “That asshole,” Wayne said.

  “Dad.”

  “Putting Ben and you at risk like that? What a fool.”

  Schiff turned to the father. “You had other problems with him, Mr. Ticknor?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Dad!” Jansey repeated. “That’s enough, okay? He’s dead. Whatever he did, it’s over now. Let’s just leave it alone, can we?”

  But Bracco wasn’t of a mind to do that. “What else did he do, Mr. Ticknor?”

  Wayne looked to his daughter and shook his head. “Why can’t they know what he really was, Jansey? That he wasn’t much of a father to Ben? Or that he beat you?”

  “He didn’t beat me!” She turned to Schiff, met her eyes. “He didn’t beat me,” she repeated more softly. “He hit me a couple of times, that’s all.”

  “Recently?” Bracco asked.

  “A couple of weeks ago, we talked about this marijuana thing and he got mad at me. But it wasn’t really a fight. He just got physical for a minute. It wasn’t really a big deal.”

  “No, no big deal at all,” Wayne put in, with heavy sarcasm, “except for six months ago when she and Ben moved in with us for a couple of weeks.”

  “He was under a lot of stress then,” Jansey said. “He wasn’t perfect, okay, but nobody is, you know?”

  “True,” Debra said, “we all have imperfections, but maybe one of his made somebody want to kill him. You knew him better than anyone else. Maybe you could help us.”

  Bracco jumped in. “Was anybody mad at him? Jealous about his job? Anything like that?”

  Nothing.

  Schiff asked, “Jansey, do you know where he got the marijuana? If it’s any help,” she continued, “we brought a search warrant along with us.”

  This brought a bit of reaction. “What for?”

  Bracco stepped up. “Dylan was on his way to work from here at home. Which means the weed was probably in this house last night. There might be more of it. He might also have left some records of where he got it or who he was going to sell it to.”

  Jansey looked to her father, indecision playing over her features. Finally, she came back to the inspectors. “It’s in the attic,” she said. “He grew it up there.”

  Debra Schiff climbed the stepladder and ducked through the small opening in the upper half of the closet wall and straightened up into a warm and humid room baking in a grow-light glow. She found a light switch next to the opening and flicked it, then spoke back over her shoulder to Darrel, on the steps of the ladder right behind her. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  Bracco poked his head into the opening. “Lordy Lordy,” he said.

  The attic space the size of the house’s footprint was filled with plants in various stages of growth, from just-germinated little shoots in cardboard egg cartons to full-blown, six-foot-high plants in raised planter boxes. The air was rich with the resinous scent of marijuana.

  Bracco got through the opening and straightened up next to his partner, taking it all in. They shared a wondering glance and, at last, Bracco let out a breath. “Wow.”

  “You said it,” Schiff replied. “
How much is this worth?”

  “Ten grand a pound, right? Or close.” He turned around and peered across the space and into the recesses in the far corners. “And he’s got a jungle of it up here.”

  Walking over to one of the closer tall plants, he reached out and picked one of the heavy and sticky buds, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger, then smelling his hand. “Not that I ever inhaled any of this stuff, Debra, of course, and not to get too technical, but my limited experience tells me that this is some righteously good shit.”

  5

  First thing Monday morning Bracco knocked on Lieutenant Glitsky’s door on the fifth floor of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice.

  “It’s open.”

  Bracco turned the knob, gave the door a push. “Actually, it wasn’t.”

  Glitsky, a large-boned man with a prominent hatchet of a nose, an ancient scar between his lips, and a graying Afro, sat in semidarkness—room lights off, blinds closed up. Glitsky’s elbows rested on his bare desk, his hands covering his mouth. Even with half of his intimidating facial arsenal covered up, Glitsky’s eyes alone could do the trick—they gleamed like glowing coals, the window to his mind, announcing to anyone paying attention that it was scary in there.

  Today those eyes stopped Bracco in his tracks. “You all right, Abe?”

  Glitsky didn’t move a muscle, still speaking from behind his hands. “I’m fine. How can I help you, Darrel?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “You already are in.”

  Bracco stood holding the doorknob. “If this isn’t a good time . . .”

  “I said it’s fine. Get the lights if you want.”

  “Yes, sir.” He reached over and the room lit up.

  Glitsky didn’t stir. Finally, his eyes moved and met Bracco’s. “Anytime,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  The office featured a couple of folding chairs set up in front of Glitsky’s desk, a few more leaning against the wall under the Active Homicide board. Bracco took the nearest open one and sat on it, pulling a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket. “Well, sir,” he began, “I don’t know how much you’ve heard about it yet, but we had a shooting out in the Haight Saturday morning.”