normally now. The mobile unit was gone, and all but one patrol car had coasted on to other things. The officers from that car would be interviewing people at the edge of the canyon. I hadn’t realized how long I’d spent with Madeleine Riordan. It was almost nine o’clock already. I checked in with Inspector Doyle, then headed back to the station for the Immediate Incident Debriefing. It would be a somber affair; no one wanted to spend his Sunday night reporting on his contribution to a failure. Doyle would announce I was taking paper—all the reports on the hostage operation. Maybe he’d authorize another call to witnesses and potential witnesses—every resident on the canyon rim—and an early-morning sweep through the canyon itself to see what daylight illuminated. Beyond that there wasn’t much he could do; you can’t put out an APB on an unknown perp.
The meeting ended at ten forty-five. Still wired, I headed back to my office. If I was taking paper, it wouldn’t hurt to get my own report done. Grayson would be responsible for rounding up the reports from the Tac Team. I could assign Murakawa to prod patrol for theirs. Knowing him, he’d be first in with his own. The major hassle would be checking through all those reports before they went on to Chief Larkin, the city manager, and the mayor. And, no doubt, the police review commission. With thirty officers involved, chances were some citizen would file a complaint about something. I should just be glad none of those complaints would be handled by Madeleine Riordan.
I shuddered at my thought, then reminded myself that had I said it aloud in her room, Riordan would have laughed. Maybe.
I sat staring at my notes. In a minute, or maybe it was ten minutes, I realized that I wasn’t looking at the pad. I was running my fingers through my hair, absently tugging; at a level way below thought I was reassuring myself it wasn’t I who was dying.
I closed my pad, got up, walked to the clerk’s desk, and left a request for background checks on Michael Wennerhaver and on Madeleine Riordan. Then I drove home. If the rest of the guys involved were having as much trouble getting down their reports as I was, it’d be a long time before the mayor saw anything on this operation.
Down here in the flatlands, the fog had closed in. We don’t get many like this. Most of our fogs are Pacific fogs—thin gray roofs that block out the sun. But tonight’s was a land fog, the type they have back east, that separates each individual, encases him in an icy gray capsule, and creates a treacherous illusion of soft edges.
Howard’s house was an elderly brown shingle on Hillegass Avenue a mile south of Peoples’ Park. In that mile Berkeley changes from the off-campus lair of students, sidewalk vendors, and street people begging for change that hasn’t been spare in over a decade to a neighborhood of comfortable Victorians shaded by tall oaks and magnolias. Many of the homes have been repainted or reshingled, the yards landscaped. Almost all of them are in better condition than Howard’s.
Howard has to keep five tenants, including me, to pay the rent. He tries to fix up the house. But his manual dexterity just isn’t in the hammer-and-nail department. Since I moved in we’ve argued about the house, and what Howard terms his interest and I call his fixation with it. I felt so claustrophobic I almost moved back out. But fears don’t come from outside the skin. And I’m too much of an adrenaline junkie to care much about where I live; home is only a place to eat food from white bags and plastic containers, and wait for my pager to go off. And to snuggle into the familiar ridges and hollows of Howard’s long, sinewy body. A bond connects us, like the vibration of cello strings beneath all the other sounds of the orchestra. It’s not just knowing about unreliable hours, investigations that bulldoze plans, auto chases that rev you up like nothing else; it’s laughing at the same
The meeting ended at ten forty-five. Still wired, I headed back to my office. If I was taking paper, it wouldn’t hurt to get my own report done. Grayson would be responsible for rounding up the reports from the Tac Team. I could assign Murakawa to prod patrol for theirs. Knowing him, he’d be first in with his own. The major hassle would be checking through all those reports before they went on to Chief Larkin, the city manager, and the mayor. And, no doubt, the police review commission. With thirty officers involved, chances were some citizen would file a complaint about something. I should just be glad none of those complaints would be handled by Madeleine Riordan.
I shuddered at my thought, then reminded myself that had I said it aloud in her room, Riordan would have laughed. Maybe.
I sat staring at my notes. In a minute, or maybe it was ten minutes, I realized that I wasn’t looking at the pad. I was running my fingers through my hair, absently tugging; at a level way below thought I was reassuring myself it wasn’t I who was dying.
I closed my pad, got up, walked to the clerk’s desk, and left a request for background checks on Michael Wennerhaver and on Madeleine Riordan. Then I drove home. If the rest of the guys involved were having as much trouble getting down their reports as I was, it’d be a long time before the mayor saw anything on this operation.
Down here in the flatlands, the fog had closed in. We don’t get many like this. Most of our fogs are Pacific fogs—thin gray roofs that block out the sun. But tonight’s was a land fog, the type they have back east, that separates each individual, encases him in an icy gray capsule, and creates a treacherous illusion of soft edges.
Howard’s house was an elderly brown shingle on Hillegass Avenue a mile south of Peoples’ Park. In that mile Berkeley changes from the off-campus lair of students, sidewalk vendors, and street people begging for change that hasn’t been spare in over a decade to a neighborhood of comfortable Victorians shaded by tall oaks and magnolias. Many of the homes have been repainted or reshingled, the yards landscaped. Almost all of them are in better condition than Howard’s.
Howard has to keep five tenants, including me, to pay the rent. He tries to fix up the house. But his manual dexterity just isn’t in the hammer-and-nail department. Since I moved in we’ve argued about the house, and what Howard terms his interest and I call his fixation with it. I felt so claustrophobic I almost moved back out. But fears don’t come from outside the skin. And I’m too much of an adrenaline junkie to care much about where I live; home is only a place to eat food from white bags and plastic containers, and wait for my pager to go off. And to snuggle into the familiar ridges and hollows of Howard’s long, sinewy body. A bond connects us, like the vibration of cello strings beneath all the other sounds of the orchestra. It’s not just knowing about unreliable hours, investigations that bulldoze plans, auto chases that rev you up like nothing else; it’s laughing at the same
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