"They don't spring inmates," Tombo said in a nearly breathless whisper. "They use parolees."
"What are you talking about?"
"Spencer, what have we been talking about? Union muscle. Andrea was onto something, but it wasn't the inmates. It's the parolees. They get their parole violated and sent back to the joint if they don't do what they're told. Then whatever they do, maybe up to murder, they're alibied by their parole officers."
"That's a stretch, Rich. I can't believe you'd get many cops who'd have any part of that."
"No. I don't think many cops would, either. But parole officers aren't cops."
"Sure they are."
"No, they're not."
"What are they, then?"
"Technically. They're prison guards. CCPOA."
Devin Juhle's opinion was that Gary Piersall had too much hair for a guy in his fifties, all of it a perfect shade of gray, and not a one out of place. At least six foot four, he probably didn't weigh two hundred pounds, and his perfectly tailored light gray suit was shot through with almost but not quite invisible threads of neon blue. A strong aquiline nose under a wide forehead gave him a patrician cast that was only accentuated by piercing milky blue eyes.
They were in his office, seventeen floors above San Francisco. The firm had four floors in the building on Montgomery Street, and Piersall's lair was about a third of the way to the top, in the northeast corner, which afforded views of the bay, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate. Piersall had greeted Juhle and Shiu at the door and had offered them the wing chairs that faced his desk while he had gone around to put the ornate piece of cherry furniture between them.
"I'm afraid I still don't understand why you've come to see me," he was saying. "What connection do you have between George Palmer's murder and the CCPOA?"
Juhle, unruffled, sat back comfortably in the oversize chair, one leg crossed over the other. "Well, sir, it wasn't much of a secret that the judge was threatening to freeze the union's funds and put it into receivership."
Piersall assayed a thin smile. "The key word there, inspector, is threatening. You have to understand that this was a game he liked to play, although frankly he had cried this version of wolf enough that the entire exercise had become much more tedious than worrisome."
Shiu, in contrast to Juhle, sat in the front six inches of his chair, his feet planted flat on the carpet. "So you're saying that he didn't have enemies with the union?"
"No. I'm sure he had several. He was biased and unsympathetic to the guards and loved the limelight. He bought all the bullshit the cons were selling and was a loud, sanctimonious son of a bitch on top of that. So, yeah, he had an enemy or two, Jim Pine maybe being the most visible of them."
Pine was the president of the union and, because of the vast sums of money he controlled, one of the state's most powerful political figures. He had personally spearheaded the drive for California's Three Strikes law, which vastly increased the state-prison population and in turn created the need for more guards and, hence, more union dues. Pine was also the driving force behind the Victims' Awareness Coalition, which constantly lobbied for harsher criminal penalties to keep inmates in prison for longer periods of time. Every get-tough-on-crime prosecutor and legislator in the state of California had benefited from the lobbying efforts and political contributions of Pine and the CCPOA.
"But I must tell you, inspectors," Piersall went on, "that Mr. Pine doesn't have to resort to strong-arm tactics, which is, I gather, what you're implying here. George Palmer wasn't going to take him down, and even George Palmer knew it. He just wanted to keep the pressure on with the union's efforts at self-discipline, which-I'll be honest-sometimes historically have come up a little short. But the whole interaction with George and Jim was all very much in the spirit of checks and balances between judicial and executive functions, and that's all it was."
Juhle toyed with his own idea of a smile. "That's good to hear and all to the good, except that we've just come from Judge Palmer's office before we came here. We talked both to his secretary and to his clerk, who had already drafted the preliminary order to put the union into receivership. It's hard to believe you knew nothing about that."
Piersall all but rolled his eyes. "He's gone that far several times before. It's just another stage in the threat." With a sudden show of impatience, he rubbed his hands together, put his palms flat on the expanse of desk. "But let me ask you this, gentlemen: Doesn't the presence of the young woman, the other victim, provide a more compelling theory here for George's death than some obscure and frankly tortured reading of union shenanigans? I'm assuming you've established an intimate relationship between her and the judge? And in that case, I'd expect that you'd be looking a little, shall I say, closer to home."
Juhle instinctively mistrusted anyone who overused the word frankly, his experience having taught him that it was a nearly infallible indicator of mendacity. "Mrs. Palmer has a very solid alibi. And you're right. That leaves us pretty much at square one. So, frankly," he purposely repeated, "we came here to ask for your help and cooperation. We're exploring not only alternatives to Mrs. Palmer as the suspect, but ways that someone in her social position could have identified and maybe even contacted someone from the, shall we say, enforcement side of something like the CCPOA."
This brought what appeared to be an expression of geniune shock, then a sympathetic smile. "If that's where you are," Piersall said, "then you gentlemen really are nowhere. You're saying that you are reduced to thinking that Mrs. Palmer might have contacted someone in the union to help her kill her husband?"
Shiu nodded. "Let's say we'd want to rule that out, yes."
"And leaving out," Piersall said, "that the CCPOA doesn't have an enforcement side."
"No?" Juhle came forward. "So those little problems last year with folks running against your candidates in, what was it? Seven counties? What were they? Acts of God?"
Piersall shrugged. "I don't know. A lot of that is rumor, and I've heard the theory that some of them might have been the candidates themselves, trying to create the illusion that the union was behind the incidents. But if you don't like that, I'd suggest the random spark, maybe even simple carelessness, I don't know. Local vandals, kids' pranks. And might I point out, frankly, that if memory serves, no one from the union was ever arrested in connection with any of that mischief."
"The coincidence factor doesn't speak to you, does it?"
"The coincidence…?"
"Seven different political races, and only your opponents hit?"
"Hit? Somebody gets a flat tire, and it's a conspiracy? As a matter of fact, some pro-union candidates were harassed, too, although these weren't as well publicized. So, no, the coincidence doesn't compel me much. And to extrapolate from that and think that Mrs. Palmer somehow…" He stopped, shook his head. "I'm sorry, but it's just ludicrous."
Juhle said, "To tell you the truth, sir, it would be ludicrous except for one thing."
"And that is?"
"Andrea Parisi."
Piersall's ice-blue eyes squinted down. "What about Andrea?"
"Well, as I understand it, she was your representative with the judge."
"One of many, actually, and less so since she's been involved with her TV work on Donolan. Half of our associates work regularly on union billings. But, yes, she had a comfortable relationship with Judge Palmer. The court respected her, and she him." Cocking his head to one side, he continued, "But I'm afraid I'm still not getting your drift."
"Staci Rosalier, the other victim, she had Parisi's card in her wallet," Shiu said. The junior inspector seemed incapable of talking to anyone without giving up every shred of information that their investigation had uncovered. "That makes her the only person we have who has a demonstrated connection to both victims. And the intersection with Palmer is the CCPOA."