"It's just a piece of paper from the registered owner saying he doesn't
own the car anymore. It's a CYA thing in case the buyer doesn't
re-register the car. Anyway, Sommers's sheet is clean, and it looks
like this Huber guy never did register the car."
"What do we know about Huber?"
"Hold your horses, now. I'm getting there. I ran Huber in PPDS. He
looks like a shit. Couple of drug pops and a bunch of shoplifting
arrests and domestic beefs. He just checked into Inverness in December
to do a six-month stint for kicking his girlfriend in the head in front
of their baby."
"Nice guy. What's his car doing on Milwaukee?" The Portland Police
Data System is a fountain of data derived from police reports.
"That's the good part. Looks like he knows Derringer's brother,
Derrick. PPDS shows Derrick and Huber together as custody associates
on a disc on last summer at the Rose Festival."
Your average drunken delinquent has at least a few downtown arrests for
disorderly conduct. For a certain type of man, the party hasn't begun
until you're screaming and puking your guts out in an overnight holding
cell.
As I looked over the PPDS printouts for Huber and Derrick Derringer,
something was bothering me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I
started thinking out loud. "So, Huber knows Derringer through his
brother and sold him the car. But Derringer was still in prison when
Huber got hauled off to Inverness."
"Right, but he could've given the car to the brother, who then gives it
to Frank when he gets out. The exact mechanics don't really matter.
The point is we can tie the car to Derringer through his brother."
He was right. In my exhaustion, I was losing sight of the big picture
and, as usual, convincing myself that I was missing something. "No,
you're right. It's good. You put that in your affidavit?"
"Yeah. I think I'm done with it. You want to read it and get out of
here? You look tired."
"I am. I don't know how you guys pull these crazy shifts. I'm about
to fall over."
"It's all about the adrenaline, baby." Chuck does a mean Austin
Powers. "You want me to rub your shoulders while you read?"
Grace's masseuse says I have a bad habit of storing stress in my
shoulders. Funny, I think I store it in my ass along with all the food
I pack down when I'm freaking out. But I do get big knots in my
deltoids after a long day, and Chuck's back rubs were heavenly. Turning
one down was painful. "Um, I don't think that's a good idea. We're at
work and everything."
"Your call. If it makes you feel any better, the bureau has a woman
come in once a month to do chair massages. It's just a relaxation
thing, not foreplay."
"I know. Thanks anyway."
I finished reviewing the warrant. It was a quick read, since we were
reusing the affidavits MCT wrote to get the warrant to search
Derringer's house. The only new material was the information Chuck had
added about the car.
"Looks good," I said, as I signed off on the DA review line of the
warrant. "Who's on the call-out list tonight?" The judges rotate
being on call to sign late-night warrants and put out any fires that
might arise.
"Lesh and Hitchcock."
Lawrence Hitchcock was a lazy old judge who smoked cigars in his
chambers and pressured defendants to plead out so he could listen to
Rush Limbaugh at eleven and then close up shop early to play golf. I'd
rather swallow a bag full of tacks and wash them down with rubbing
alcohol than risk waking up Hitchcock at eleven at night.
David Lesh was the clear preference. He'd been a prosecutor for a few
years after law school, then jumped ship to the City Attorney's office
to work as legal advisor for the police department. He was a couple of
years older than I was and had been an easy pick for the governor to
put on the bench a few years back. He had a good mix of civil and
criminal experience and was known throughout the county bar for being
as straight-up and honorable as they come. Best of all, he hadn't
changed a bit since he took the bench. He still worked like a fiend
and went out for beers with the courthouse crowd every Friday. Lawyers
missed talking to him about their cases, but we were better off having
him as a judge.
"Call Lesh," I advised Chuck.
"No kidding. I had that lazy fuck Hitchcock on the Taylor case,
remember?"
I always forget that cops know as much about the lives of judges as the
trial lawyers do. I suspected they gossiped about the DAs as well. In
this specific instance, Chuck had good reason to know about Hitchcock.
He'd presided over the very complicated trial of Jesse Taylor, a case
that had landed Forbes on the MCT. Taylor's sixty-five-year-old
girlfriend, Margaret Landry, confessed to Forbes that she and Taylor
had killed a girl.
When I started at the DA's office, Landry was the big talk around the
courthouse. The local news covered the case's every development. Most
stories started with the phrase, "A Portland grandmother and her
lover...." Headlines spoke of murderous Margaret. If you asked them,
most people who followed the case would tell you they were fascinated
that a sixty-five-year-old grandmother and hospital volunteer
eventually confessed to helping her thirty-five-year-old alcoholic
boyfriend rape and then strangle a seventeen-year-old
borderline-intelligence girl named Jamie Zimmerman.
Forbes had stumbled into the case fortuitously. Landry initially told
Jesse Taylor's probation officer that she read about Jamie Zimmerman's
disappearance in the Oregonian and suspected her boyfriend's
involvement. At the time, Chuck was working a specialty rotation,
helping the Department of Community Corrections track people on parole
and probation. If not for the cooperation agreement between the bureau
and DOCC, Taylor's PO might never have told the police about Landry's
suspicions, because Landry used to call him at least weekly to try to
get Taylor revoked. Her claims were always either fabricated or
exaggerated.
Despite his hunch that Landry was at it again, the PO mentioned the tip
to Chuck because this was the first time Landry had accused Taylor of
something so serious as a murder. Chuck and the PO had followed up
with several visits, and each time Landry changed her version of the
events leading up to her accusation. The two men kept returning in an
attempt to get her to admit that she was lying. But then she threw
them for a loop: The reason she was sure Taylor had killed Zimmerman,
she said, was that she helped him do it.
The continuing amendments to Landry's story after she was arrested only
served to whet the public's appetite. She subsequently retracted her