Swift Horses Racing Page 8

  Ruiz settled back in his seat. The longer he stayed in the profession, the less he trusted the notion of a “100-percent good human being.”

  “You believe it?”

  “In this case.” Flores nodded firmly. “I do.”

  “I wanted to tell you. I ran into one of Karl’s old buddies,” Ruiz said, taking a small sip of beer and trying to pace himself. “Known him for years. It might be worth talking to Duke. He and a group of Karl’s friends meet at a donut shop, not far from Schuler’s house. Friday mornings.” He took out one of his cards and copied Duke’s name and number from his phone.

  Flores looked at him, startled and slightly suspicious. “How did you meet him?”

  “I went back to the expressway the day after the shooting. I wanted to see where it happened, in daylight. I wanted to see the tree—" Ruiz was surprised to hear emotion in his voice. “That’s where I saw Duke, trying to figure out how it happened.”

  “You really think it would be helpful to talk to these guys?” Flores wasn’t trying very hard to mask his skepticism. Ruiz wondered if Flores saw him as an old guy, too. Jesus, I don’t turn forty till September.

  “He’s known Schuler for decades. He and the donut group could be a good source for background on Karl. They’ve met with him every week for the past twenty-five years.”

  Ruiz doubted if Flores would contact Duke Sorenson. The young detective didn’t need Ruiz’s help. But Ruiz wanted badly to see someone behind bars for the murder of the old man. He wanted the young detective to feel that, too.

  Flores looked down at Ruiz’s card on the table, then picked it up and slid it into his wallet.

  Then he gave Ruiz that look again, his big brown eyes shining and that amused smile. Ruiz was sure it worked for women and men alike. Everybody had their bag of tricks when it came to getting through life. But Ruiz didn’t want to be condescended to. He would have felt better if Flores told him it wasn’t his case and to fuck off and mind his own business. Ruiz would have understood and respected that.

  “If I get a chance. Lot going on with this, and I’ve got quite a caseload. You know how it is, man.” Ruiz nodded, and Flores took a last sip of his beer as he thumbed through messages on his phone. A worried look flashed across his face, and he spoke distractedly.

  “Thanks for the beer, man. We should do this again.”

  Ruiz wondered if whatever was blowing up on Flores’s phone had to do with the case. Maybe his expectations of getting information from Flores tonight had been unrealistic.

  With a nod, Flores got up and headed for the door.

  The waitress looked up from pouring a beer from the tap and watched him wistfully as he left.

  19

  “My office. Now.”

  The sergeant’s voice was abrupt on the phone. He’d be passing the verbal beating he’d received down the food chain to him. Flores had read the news this morning. He had a good idea as to what this meeting would be about. That didn’t make it any easier.

  Flores took a seat in the Sergeant Todd Buckley’s office and waited while Buckley frowned and tapped on his keyboard.

  “It’s been four days since Karl Schuler’s shooting.” Buckley looked up, his face red and his lips under his moustache twitching slightly, further evidence to Flores that the sergeant had just been browbeaten.

  “We’ve got the tech community complaining the case isn’t getting the resources it deserves. They don’t think we can handle it. They’re not the only ones.”

  “Yeah. I read the editorial in the Mercury News today.” Flores leaned forward in his seat, his fingers knotted as he looked idly around the room and waited for the full weight of shit to roll down to him.

  When he’d joined the department, Flores had some idea of what he was getting into. Ten years ago, officers had left en masse, due to cuts in pensions made to reduce the city’s budget. The loss had continued, as officers retired or moved elsewhere, unable to keep up with the high cost of living in the valley. Even now, the department was understaffed. Response times were longer than anyone wanted them to be, and the public confidence in the department had eroded.

  “The mayor has a personal interest in this. He gave Schuler an award last year for his work in the community—the mayor considered him a friend. He wants to see an arrest, Mario. An innocent old man, killed in a gang shooting in a safe neighborhood—and we can’t solve this? We’ve worked hard to rebuild the public’s trust.”

  “Gangs Investigations is working with us on this.” A fine mist of sweat seeped out onto Flores’s neck and arms. With the false address and the phone booth call to Schuler, this was looking bigger than a gang hit, and GI had said as much today. “We’re using their contacts to get information on activity that might fit with Schuler’s murder.”

  Buckley looked up him and frowned. He shook his head and sat back in his chair, which creaked ominously in the long silence.

  “Mario, you’ve moved up quickly here. But I’m not sure you have the experience or maturity for this kind of case.”

  Anger flared up in him. His case clearance rate was as high, if not higher than anyone’s in the department. Flores sat up straight and tried to modulate his voice so it didn’t sound disrespectful.

  “What specifically in my performance makes you think that?”

  Flores was starting to see where this was going. He’d be taken off the case for political reasons. He’d be sacrificed to reassure the public that the problem was being handled.

  “You’ve got till the 8th. If you haven’t put this to bed by then, I’m handing the case over to Jesperson.”

  Fuck. Jesperson?

  Lloyd Jesperson was a fifteen-year veteran who had hung on through the lean years on the force. He’d built up a crust of bitterness and disdain for anyone who hadn’t endured that time—especially newcomers like Flores. He’d gone to Buckley twice complaining about Flores’s methods.

  If Buckley had wanted to piss Flores off, threatening to hand the case over to Jesperson was the best possible way to do it. Flores had worked hard to build his team over the past two years. They worked together well, had a string of successes and genuinely liked each other.

  Flores had four days. Four days to find the killers. Four days to salvage his job.

  As Flores reached his desk, he saw Jesperson head into Buckley’s office, with the speed of someone who’d received the summons he’d been waiting for.

  Flores slid quietly into his seat, ready to make phone calls.

  And contemplate the fact that he was screwed.

  20

  The pale man with the aviator glasses—who Flores figured must be Duke Sorenson—nodded at him.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Detective Flores.”

  Flores sat down in the bright pink chair at the yellow table and looked up to face four men in their seventies. At least.

  After the meeting with Buckley, he was open to new angles. Desperation was very motivating that way.

  He’d called Duke Sorenson last night, from the number Ruiz had given him. Flores debated calling, wondering if he’d get anything helpful from this group. He decided to find out more about Schuler, to eliminate the possibility that the shooting was related to something happening in the old man’s life or family.

  Last night at his kitchen table, Flores ate takeout pad thai by himself, instead of the dinner he’d hoped to eat with Oksana. She’d texted that she had a paper due and needed the time to write. Something about the short text bothered him. After today, he badly wanted to see her. The give and take of their times together worked best, Flores thought, when he was able to do as much of the taking as he wanted.

  Flores had enjoyed his meetup with Ruiz. The Ruiz he’d seen the night of Schuler’s murder was very different than the Ruiz at the bar. While he’d been agitated and angry on New Year’s from what he’d just seen, last night he was cordial and relaxed—with a wicked sense of humor.

  It both bothered and amused Flores that Ruiz had taken Karl Schule
r’s murder so personally. Ruiz knew how these things worked; he was a witness. Flores would handle the case his own way. But after Buckley’s threat to take away the case, he’d pulled out the card Ruiz gave him and left a message at Duke’s number.

  From the serious look on his face and his stance at the end of the table, Flores judged that Duke Sorenson had become the de facto leader of the “gang” after Karl Schuler’s death.

  The man sat with his hands folded, leaning in, a styrofoam coffee cup in front of him. He waited for the other men to stop talking. This was not a social visit. Duke looked like he wanted to conduct a meeting and was prepared to do it.

  It took a while for Flores’s senses to settle into the place. The smell in the shop was overpowering—a cloying, over-the-top sugary smell that made him queasy. Add to that the bright, circus-color décor. In San Jose, so many businesses were recycled. This might have been an ice cream parlor in its former life.

  He looked around to see a motley group of four men. Duke was paler than the rest, with his white hair and papery skin. The other three, an elderly Asian man, a stocky man with salt and pepper hair in an Oakland As cap, and an athletic-looking man with white hair that contrasted nicely with his tan. It looked like the man was younger than the rest—or maybe just well preserved. If there was a way to age well, the man was nailing it.

  “Detective Flores, I’d like you to meet everybody,” Duke began. “We’ve been meeting here, with Karl and a few others, for the past twenty-five or so years, give or take a few Fridays. We knew each other’s families.” He looked down at his hands. “I think I’m saying what we’re all thinking. This is something we’d never imagined would happen to our friend.” Heads nodded around the table. He gestured to the man to his right.

  “This is Arnie Tan. He worked with Karl years ago. He’s a research chemist.” The man waved sheepishly, caught off guard with his mouth full of donut.

  The man in the ball cap nodded, his brown eyes crinkling up. “I’m Aldo Moretti. I worked in aerospace—satellites— before retirement, but Karl also got me involved in the meals for seniors program. And we had an ongoing chess rivalry.”

  The tanned man looked up and nodded. “Marty Weber here. Karl was my next-door neighbor. We’ve been friends as long as Linda and I have lived there. Going on twenty years.”

  Flores took his first sip of coffee from the cup in front of him. It tasted like it had been sitting on a heating element all day. He pushed it out in front of him. He hoped his grimace wasn’t too obvious.

  “You’ve all heard the details of Karl’s murder by now,” Flores started in. “I want you to tell me about Karl Schuler as you knew him. When was the last time you saw him? How did he spend his time leading up to New Year’s?”

  Flores would interview them separately later, if he needed to. He’d put feelers out in this meeting to see if these men might have information he could follow up on.

  Silence around the table. Marty Weber spoke up.

  “Karl was busy during the holidays. I went over to help him put up his lights about three weeks before Christmas. The strings of lights were so ancient, he must have brought them over from the old country. Surprised they worked at all. I helped him hang them along the front of the house. Karl was a healthy guy, but you get a little nervous when you see a ninety-two-year-old on a ladder. Then—he headed out to deliver meals. Before Christmas he’d invited the kids from the mentoring center over for a Christmas party. Some party. It ended at 8 p.m., judging by all the kids I saw leaving.” Weber smiled, then his face seemed to crumple. He raised his cup of coffee to his lips as if to hide it.

  East Point Youth Center was still closed for the break. Flores had an appointment to meet with Susan Moreland, director of East Point later today.

  “He was close to those kids.” Arnie Tan smiled faintly, leaning an arm on the table. “He’d do anything for them. Some of them were pretty tough, too. But he’d been doing it so long, he seemed comfortable with them all. They came back to see him later, too. He introduced me to a student he’d mentored years ago – he came over to visit Karl with his wife and kids.”

  Flores tried to shake the cynicism. Quite possible that Karl Schuler had decided, post retirement, to keep himself busy by volunteering, and he’d found it rewarding. From his interview with Rose, it seemed like a personal mission for Karl Schuler, a decision he’d made much earlier in his life, to do good. Still, there was a hipster devil sitting on Flores’s shoulder, in a designer hoodie, fringe of hair dropping down over one eye. But why did he work so hard at it?

  “Some of the kids have jobs in the valley now. Technicians, engineers.” Duke spoke up, his round blue eyes looming behind his glasses. “One of them’s at some big tech college back East, Karl told me. Full scholarship.”

  “Did Karl ever get threats? Either from students at the mentoring center—or anyone else?”

  The men exchanged looks in some silent group communication, which Flores tried to read.

  “Not from his students,” Aldo Moretti started slowly, looking around the group. “They loved Karl. Seemed protective of him. There was a kid who caused some trouble at school. A couple years ago, I think. Brought a knife to school and attacked another kid in the group. It wasn’t directed at Karl.”

  “Remember there was that kid involved in the shootout down on Monterey Road.” Marty Weber looked up from his coffee. “From what Karl said, the kid had called him beforehand, pretty scared. The guy had a job, then he screwed up a drug test. He was fired and went home and got his gun. He showed up at his workplace with it. It ended in suicide by cop.”

  Arnie pressed his lips together and looked down at the table. Aldo shook his head.

  Duke looked at Flores, his eyes blinking slowly, as if preparing to speak up. Flores examined his face and tried to imagine what he’d looked like as a young man, his face smooth, his eyes bright and energetic.

  “There’s something else I think I should let you know about, Detective Flores.” Duke paused. There was something in Duke’s eyes that looked like fear—or hatred. He couldn’t tell which. “Karl has a grandson. Rose’s son. Name’s Randall. I’ve been helping Rose. She’s trying to get Karl’s house ready to sell soon. Yesterday I was doing yardwork in the front, and Randall came by. He yelled at Rose and demanded money from her. Said he’d been helping Karl and deserved to be paid for it. He sounded—threatening.”

  Flores wrote this down. He needed any lead he could get.

  “Karl knew Randall had been in trouble with the law before. In high school. He wanted to spend time with the kid.” Arnie Tan smiled sadly. “He said it was kids who didn’t know where they belonged who got in trouble. He wanted to let Randall know he was part of the family. He took Randall with him to deliver meals to the elderly. They even built a house together with Habitat for Humanity.”

  “How did that work out?” Not great, Flores suspected.

  Arnie shook his head. “It lasted a couple of months. Karl told Randall he didn’t have to do it anymore. Karl said it was more trouble than it was worth.”

  Flores was curious about Randall’s crime. If he’d been a juvenile, he couldn’t access the records, but there were ways. He’d ask Rose. Or Randall himself.

  “What’s the guy’s last name?”

  “Mulvaney. Randall Mulvaney.” There was a look of relief on Duke’s face that he’d spoken up about his concerns. “Last I heard, he lived down by San Jose State. He was going to school there, but he dropped out.”

  Flores’s phone buzzed and he checked it quickly. Mandy Dirkson. A lab report had come in.

  “Was it a surprise to you that Karl was out driving on New Year’s? Was that the kind of thing he’d do?”

  More looks around the table. Then Duke spoke slowly and with a conviction in his voice that didn’t match his frail appearance.

  “Detective, there’s only one reason I can think of that Karl would be out at that time of night.” Arnie glanced at Duke and nodded.

 
Duke’s lower lip wobbled, but he looked like he was trying hard to control it as he spoke.

  “He’d be out if somebody called and said they needed his help.”

  Flores headed to the parking lot, relieved to be free from the shop’s overpowering smell.

  His job brought him in constant contact with death, but he didn’t fear it. Not as much as he feared the slow dismantling of life that happened before it. The loss of control. The slowing down. The loss of hair and the loss of looks.

  His father was approaching retirement age, ten years behind the donut gang. The last time he’d visited his parents, Anthony Flores looked off kilter, a record spinning too fast on a turntable. There was a new Mercedes in the garage, plans for a beach house—and he suspected, another woman in his life. Which his mother would ignore, never confronting him about it.

  Four hundred miles was a good buffer zone between him and his father. Flores wanted to keep it that way.

  21

  Karl Schuler’s Journal

  After the students left my house this evening, I walked out the back door and stood on the deck. I breathed in the crisp air that reminded me of my hometown in the Harz mountains.

  My town was scarred by the first world war, so many men lost. My father had served in the great war, his left leg amputated after an explosion in his trench. This was the obvious injury, but beyond that there was a dullness in his eyes, a hollow look as if part of him had been opened up and emptied out. My mother told me how he used to be before the war. How he’d played music on the accordion and drawn cartoons that made her laugh. He’d wanted to be a botanist. She loved the man he used to be and cared for the man he became.

  When Hitler became chancellor, we had hopes that he would bring new life to our country. At last, someone who could make Germany great, build us up again as a people. We didn’t know the horrors to come. If there had been warnings about this man, we closed our ears to them. We only knew we needed life, energy, something to live for. He promised it.