Robin Burcell - Face of a Killer

Her parents kept that canister beneath the counter, throwing odd tip money in it. There was usually no more than twenty-five or thirty dollars within, if that, a petty cash fund for whatever might come up. Sometimes that whatever was her wanting quarters to play the video games in the back room of the restaurant. Sometimes it was her father’s pet projects, anything from handing out money to the Girl

Scouts selling cookies, or even a homeless person digging through a Dumpster.

Or, possibly, a drug addict, needing money for a job…? “Why didn’t you mention this canister with the money when you were arrested?”

“They was already saying I stole money. I ain’t never touched the can. He did. But he sent me to the register, just like I told the cops.”

“Why would he send you to the register?”

“ ’Cause he already put the money in the safe. But he tells me he got a double-saw in the cash register. Says it’s always there after he close out. Underneath, you know?” Sydney told herself that this could all be coincidence, that he was simply a con, good at his game-something he’d had two decades to perfect. Knowing why there was a twenty under the till after closing was not something that appeared in the police reports. “You didn’t think that important enough to mention?”

“Have your ass dragged to the joint on a life jolt, see what you remember. Me, I been meditating ’bout it twenty years, you know? All they cared about was finding my print on the register, and the moment that happened, I was guilty. So I quit talking.”

And she wondered if it would’ve made a difference. She doubted her mother would’ve said something, even if she’d had the presence of mind to think clearly at the time, because what cop would think such a trivial detail was important enough to ask about? Leaving a twenty beneath the till was something her father did-at her mother’s request.

She’d said if the place was ever burglarized, it was better to give them something to steal, to keep them from looking for something else. But if Wheeler was pointing a gun at her father, he could’ve told him to take the twenty, that there was always one there after closing. That didn’t mean a thing. She started pacing again. “A twenty under the till?”

“Yeah. Told me to get it and-and I could pay him back.”

“Pay him back, when?” She glanced over.

His gaze narrowed ever so slightly as he seemed to contemplate her question, then as though he were surprised he even remembered, he said, “On Tuesday.”

She stopped in her tracks. Several heartbeats passed before she responded. She heard him, but her brain was doing a double take. “Tuesday?” she finally repeated.

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure that’s what he said?”

“Yeah.”

Her thoughts raced. Tuesday… It couldn’t be true. Her father could have lent him the money and Wheeler killed him anyway. At least, that’s what she told herself.

But the thought came too late.

The damage had been done.

A seed of doubt planted because of a few minute, trivial details that did not appear in any police reports. Details that only someone close to her family would recognize. Anyone might know her father had been in the army. And they certainly knew he helped out people all the time, handed out a few dollars. But Sydney could count on one hand the number of people who knew of the little flowered canister her father kept beneath the counter at the pizza parlor, or that he often chided her for “raiding” it to get video money. Even fewer were those who might have known that he kept a twenty beneath the till after he closed out.

And fewer still were those who knew what it meant if her father requested a loan to be repaid on Tuesday.

Sydney banged on the door to alert the guard, then left without speaking. What could she say?

She needed to know the truth. If this man was going to be executed, then he better damned well be guilty.

And if he wasn’t guilty…

Her father’s killer was out there still.

Sydney went through the steps of signing out of the prison, thanking everyone, returning her visitor’s pass, then finding herself in the parking lot, standing next to her car, grateful to be outside. She stared out over the bay, the wind rushing in her ears, not sure if it was the first few raindrops that hit her face or the sea spray. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so alone as she did in that one moment, and she had nowhere to go, no one to turn to.

It wasn’t like she could take this to her mother, not yet. In fact, everyone Sydney knew, her mother, her stepfather Jake, even Scotty, they all believed that Wheeler was guilty without a doubt. Who was going to believe a few trivial, though in her mind critical, details that came from a convicted killer and could only be verified from the traumatized memory of a girl just thirteen at the time?

Her thoughts consumed her for most of the drive. When she approached the Golden Gate Bridge her cell phone rang, and she was relieved when she saw it wasn’t her mother’s number on the screen.

“Fitz?” It was Lettie, Dixon’s secretary. “You are coming in tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“I have to. Subpoenaed for court in the morning. Why?” “That officer from Hill City called again. She’s sounding pretty desperate and wanted to know what your schedule was.”

Sydney tried to remember what the officer wanted, but her mind refused to cooperate. “Do me a favor, pick a time, have her come in, whatever.”

“… pick a time… You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a lot to deal with right now.”

She disconnected, tossed the phone on the car seat, then tried to figure out what to do next. By the time she crossed the bridge, the rain was coming down in a steady patter, and she drove around aimlessly, finally ending up at the parking lot at the top of Bernal Hill. The five-hundred-foot undeveloped peak, a rarity in the midst of the city, was mostly used as a dog park, and sometimes on the rare occasion that she varied her running schedule, she borrowed her neighbor’s dog just to have a place to walk, enjoy the peace away from the city’s dense population. It was one of the area’s bestkept secrets, offering unsurpassed panoramic views of the city and the Bay Bridge. During the winter the rains turned the slopes of brown annual grass into a vast sea of green, reminding her of something she might see in Ireland. When it wasn’t raining, it was one of the few sunny spots to be found, and after work, she sometimes drove up here just to watch the fog roll in, an amazing sight that often helped calm her thoughts after a particularly stressful day.

But there was no fog rolling in now, and her thoughts were not calming as the wind blasted the rain against the car, and thunder rumbled in the distance. She could just make out the complex of the hospital below, where the sight of Tara Brown’s sketch had shaken her, or rather the scar Sydney had drawn, the scar that reminded her of Johnnie Wheeler.

And yet, if he could be believed, he wasn’t the man who killed her father.

Then who?

Her thoughts drifted to the envelope left on her coffee table. What was it that Scotty had said about McKnight? That the man kept apologizing for something he did to her father? McKnight was in Texas when her father was killed.

At least that was what she’d always thought…

Lights from the city below dotted the landscape as darkness seeped in. For a few moments she took in the view, and a thought hovered just out of her grasp, something she thought she should remember about her father and McKnight. Something important. But a gust of wind shook the car, and when she saw a flash of lightning off to her left, quickly followed by a clap of thunder, she decided that parking on a bare hilltop below a microwave tower in this weather wasn’t the best of ideas. And maybe once she got home, whatever that thought about McKnight had been would come back to her.