Steven Gore - Act of Deceit

“Does he have family left?”

She shrugged. “No idea. His mother took off when he was six. I think she had some kind of breakdown, too. I never found out what happened to her. He was raised by his grandmother in San Jose, but she’s long dead. I heard his father died of AIDS about ten years ago.”

Donnally stared out at the afternoon rush hour traffic creeping along the bridge crossing Salmon Bay, each driver heading toward a known destination. Finding Charles Brown would be just the opposite. He’d only know he’d arrived after he’d gotten there.

He looked back at Katrisha. “How did you hear about the murder in Berkeley?”

“The DA. He left a message at my mother’s asking me to come testify that Charles was competent to stand trial.” She took a sip of coffee. “How was I supposed to know? I hadn’t seen him for years. And there was no way I was gonna let Charles find out where I moved. I knew the DA would have to give my address to Charles’s public defender if I even let him interview me.”

“Has Charles contacted you since then?”

“I didn’t think they let the patients make long-distance calls.”

“He’s not a patient.”

Katrisha’s body spun toward Donnally. Coffee exploded from the top of her cup, splashing her Levi’s and Nikes.

“What?” She tossed her cigarette into the bay, then shook the hot liquid from her hand. “How the fuck did he get out?”

“Some judge in Fresno decided he wasn’t dangerous anymore.”

“He beat the system. That nut beat the system.” Katrisha shook her head in disgust, her mouth tight. “He did better than that. Putting him in with mentally ill and retarded women. Talk about the briar patch. Then, when everybody forgot why he was locked up in the first place, they showed him the door.”

“I want to find him and bring him back.”

Katrisha turned away and scanned the horizon, as if hoping an image of where he was hiding would appear. “He could be anywhere.”

“But he isn’t. He’s somewhere.”

Donnally glanced down at Katrisha’s coffee-splattered jeans, then pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward the terminal.

“Let’s go inside and wash that off.”

She shrugged. “Wet is wet.”

She pulled another cigarette from the pack in her jacket pocket, then lit it with a worn stainless steel Zippo.

Donnally pointed at the lighter. “Your father in the service?”

“No. Me. I joined the navy after college. I wanted the Pacific Ocean between me and Charles. I did twenty-plus years and got out last May.”

“What are you doing now?”

“You mean besides looking over my shoulder?”

Donnally nodded.

“I teach industrial diving, training technicians to do underwater repairs on ships and oil rigs. Mostly welding.”

“You get married again?”

“No point. I spent a lot of time at sea. After a while I realized I didn’t need the baggage.” She winked at Donnally. “I could get laid anytime I wanted.”

“And now that you’re on land?”

Katrisha’s eyebrows went up, exposing twinkling eyes. “You interested?”

“I’ve kinda got a girlfriend.”

“Kinda? How kinda?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out.”

She leaned over the railing and stared down toward the water lapping against the pilings.

“I’ve been a kinda girlfriend a few times myself. Spent a lot of time sitting by a phone that rarely rang.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

She looked over. “That’s what they all said, meanwhile they were screwing everything that moved.” She caught herself. “Sorry. That’s was out of line. I don’t know you.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been prying into your life. It’s only fair.”

She smiled. “Keep my number, just in case kinda turns into used to be.”

Donnally patted his jacket pocket where he stored his cell phone. “Got it.”

Katrisha took a drag on her cigarette. “And make sure I’m the first one you call if he turns up.”

“Any idea where he’d go?”

“You sure he’s not in jail?”

“Not that we know of.”

“Maybe he’s six feet under.”

“No evidence of that either.”

She tapped her cigarette on the edge of the railing and stared down at the water.

“I’m thinking he’d be in some kind of homeless encampment. His lisp made other people want to adopt him.” She thought for a moment. “Does People’s Park still exist in Berkeley?”

“From what I hear nobody sleeps there anymore.”

“Anybody camp out in Golden Gate Park?”

Donnally nodded.

“Lots of bushes. That’s where I’d start.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him?”

She stared at him for a moment, then said, “There’s no way I’m going to help you find him.”

Donnally offered a half smile. “I had to try.”

“But I’ll tell you something that may help. He liked to be called Rover, like a dog. You might have better luck asking for him by that name instead of Charles. At first I thought it was kind of cute, but then one evening he started humping my leg at the dinner table, and the charm wore off.”

D onnally sat in his truck parked along the Embarcadero and watched the last of his digital photos download onto his laptop computer. In the previous two weeks he’d photographed nearly every homeless black male in San Francisco. He’d started at Golden Gate Park, then the skid-row, hotel-lined Tenderloin, and finally now along the waterfront. He’d attached them to e-mails and sent them on to Katrisha. She always responded within a couple of hours, and always in two words: “Not him.”

He was starting to think it would’ve been simpler just to put out some dog food and start calling out, “Rover. Here, Rover.”

And it pissed him off that Blaine hadn’t put much effort into finding Brown, and had stopped returning his calls even sooner than Donnally had expected. The final one, spoken with the bureaucratic authority that Donnally had learned to despise when he was at SFPD, was abrupt:

“We’ve devoted all of the resources we can to this matter. It’s time to move on.”

Donnally had always wondered why careerists like Blaine were always ready to move on when it came to others’ suffering, but displayed the mechanical compulsiveness of psychotic hamsters when it came to their tennis forehand or their putting game. Perfecting those was worth a thousand frustrating weekends, while the Anna Keenans of the world weren’t worth even one.

Donnally watched a gray-suited man walk from the Ferry Building, stop at a sidewalk news rack, drop in a couple of quarters, and pull out a newspaper. His mouth formed into a predatory grin as he skimmed the business headlines, as though he’d discovered that he’d just profited from someone else’s loss. He then turned and headed up Market Street toward the financial district. A homeless woman stared up at him from the curb, her expression saying that she had lots of better uses for his change.

The escape of Charles Brown still hadn’t hit the papers, and Donnally was sure it wouldn’t because everyone had an interest in making sure it didn’t. The Alameda County district attorney’s halfhearted, failed effort was the perfect solution to the public relations problem that was Charles Brown. Why call attention to the crack in the criminal justice system that Brown and perhaps countless other murderers had slithered through?

And Donnally couldn’t go to the press, because he knew that even a rabid dog fears the cage, and Brown would go even further underground once his name hit the Chronicle or his face appeared on the local news.

Blaine’s “It’s time to move on” had told Donnally that he was now on his own.