Chapter 22: Crime Drop - Lucidity

THE FIRST CALL MADDEN GOT ON THE BENDER ARTICLE WAS FROM his old colleague at the MPPD. Jeff Billings had been the junior detective on their team of three detectives. Now that Madden and Burns had retired, he’d become the veteran of the team at the tender age of thirty-four.

Madden was on the 101 near Belmont, heading back from Petaluma, when Billings called. He put him on speakerphone.

“How long were you going to wait to tell me?” Billings said straight off the bat. No hellos or how-are-yous.

“I figured you knew already,” Madden replied.

“We did.”

“The Palo Alto boys tell you?”

“Why would they tell me?”

“They saw me digging up a yard.”

“You were digging up a yard?”

“Yeah,” Madden said. “Bronsky’s old place.”

“You find anything?”

“Yeah, I found something. Just not Stacey Walker.”

“I didn’t know anything about you digging up a yard,” Billings said. “But I did know you were working on the case. You know how I knew?”

“No, how? Shelby?”

Billings made the sound of game-show buzzer. “Wrong. Pastorini told us.”

“He did? He wasn’t supposed to.”

“Real smart, Hank. Tell a guy who had a serious stroke to keep a secret. Did you ever think that might not be the smartest move?”

“Maybe not, but I hope you’re OK with me telling him you said that.”

The line went silent for a moment.

“Don’t do that,” Billings said.

Madden smiled. He and Billings had always had a slightly adversarial relationship. Sometimes things got a little tense, but Madden appreciated that Billings treated him democratically, that he was an equal-opportunity taunter. Most of the ribbing was good-natured, only rarely mean-spirited. Madden and the other guys took shots at Billings’ vanity—he was something of a pretty boy, short, with sandy blond hair, the lean, chiseled body of a surfer, and a too-cool-for-school attitude. Billings would let it roll off him, or he’d accuse them of jealousy, which was partially true. Now that a lot of the old guard had left he’d become insufferable, or so Madden had heard from his old friend Brian Carlyle, recently promoted to commander, one step below chief.

“So if you knew, why didn’t you say anything?” Madden asked.

“I don’t need to go down that rabbit hole. Look what it did to Pastorini. For what? Seven, eight years he didn’t spend Christmas with his family? I’ve got smaller fish to fry.”

“What are you working on?”

“Getting awards.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously. You know we’ve got crime down forty-two percent in Belle Haven. We haven’t had a gang-related shooting in nearly four months.”

“I heard,” Madden said.

The Belle Haven neighborhood in East Menlo Park bordered East Palo Alto. Back in 1992 East Palo Alto had the highest per capita murder rate in the country. Belle Haven had long been Menlo Park’s little pocket of suburban blight and its main supplier of violent crime. That was changing, though. Fast. Insane real-estate prices pushed people to consider sketchier properties. When Facebook moved in across the freeway nearby, Belle Haven and East Palo Alto had seen their fortunes rise. Facebook funded one full-time patrol officer on the MPPD and had paid for the construction of a new service center at the cross section of Hamilton Avenue and Willow Road.

More controversially, the department also had three cars equipped with automated license plate readers that went around capturing license plate data and uploading it to a server managed by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

But Billings was taking full responsibility for the drop in the crime rate.

“We Moneyballed that shit,” he said. “Came down to three houses creating eighty percent of the problems. I’ve been embedded, man. Vested and embedded, working with the neighbors to curtail anything that looks suspicious before it metastasizes into something nefarious.”

“I miss you, Bills. So, now that you’ve eliminated crime, what’s next?”

“Well, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

Madden didn’t like the tone. It sounded like he was about to deliver some bad news.

“What’d you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know if I told you but I’m writing a book.”

“About what?”

“About the murder cases we worked on together.”

“You know I’m working on a book,” Madden said, a bit shocked by Billing’s revelation.

“Yeah, I know. But I heard it wasn’t going so well. And I was approached by someone to write it.”

“Someone who?”

“Your agent, I guess.”

“To write my book?”

“No, to write a book about the cases,” Billings said. “I was there, too. I was as much a part of it.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Look, I’ve made a lot of progress. But it’s missing your point of view. I think it’s important for you to be a part of it, particularly since you’re the main character. I’d like to sit down with you—”

“Sit down with me?”

“Yeah, get you on tape. Interview you. I’ll make you a deal. We’ll help you out on the Walker case, get you whatever you need. You know, support your efforts. That’s going to be our official stance with the media. We’re taking the high road. The chief wanted me to tell you that. We’re all about collaboration these days. Working together with businesses, the community—”

“I don’t need your help,” Madden said.

“Yes, you do. There might be something you missed. We can be helpful, Hank. You know that.”

He was right. Angry as he was, he didn’t take the offer for granted. He thought about it a moment, took a break, then said: “Look, I actually do need some help with something. It’s related. The guy, Bender, who wrote that article last night. I need you to investigate him.”

“For what?”

“I’ll tell you later. I’ve got another call coming in. It’s my wife. I gotta get it.”

He ended the call and waited for his wife to click in.

“Hey, hon,” he said, “How do you feel about selling the house and moving to Petaluma?”

She wasn’t in the mood for jokes, even if he was half serious. “Hank, someone from the Chronicle newspaper is calling. She’s on the home line. What am I saying to her?”

Though her English was good, she sometimes didn’t get her verbs—or their tenses—quite right.

“Tell her I’ll call her back.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Just some unwanted publicity. Nothing bad.”

Just then a text came in from Carolyn. “Chronicle calling me,” it said. “What should I say?”

He didn’t usually text while he drove but this time he made an exception. “Wait,” he wrote, “on my way.”

“Hank?” his wife said.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“The money Shelby will pay you …”

“Yes?”

“How much is it? It says a lot.”

Oh, no. She’d read the article. That’s the last thing he needed, his wife on his case.

“Yeah, but I actually have to find her, which I don’t think is going to happen at this point.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got nothing. I’m no closer to finding her than the day I started looking for her two months ago. Don’t believe what you read. It’s all a farce.”

“What’s farce?”

“A lie. It’s not real. People like Shelby don’t live in a real world.”