The Third Eye Page 7

  Then she left a much longer message for Andi, knowing her old friend would spread the word through Briarwood faster than any police report could. She detailed the odd disappearance of her retired buddy and emailed Andi a photo of Peterson, requesting that she ask one of her charges to make a poster and blanket the city with copies. Then she let it go, knowing Andi would get it done.

  As she trudged back to her car, she noted two of Dan Miller’s guards strolling toward her. To her they always looked oddly out of place on the relatively peaceful streets of Briarwood. With their black tactical shirts, pants and boots, festooned with badges and holsters and cryptic insignia, their shaved heads and stern expressions and bunched fists, they looked like contemporary Gestapo. Even from a block away the guards appeared more menacing than protective. The pair stomping in her direction looked like clumsy clones of their boss.

  Dan Miller went to a military academy after he was expelled from a dozen prep schools. He flunked out of six different colleges until his father bought a new library for a private university somewhere. After several years, Miller finally got a degree.

  He borrowed money from his father and lost it. Then he borrowed more money from his father and started buying small companies, liquidating their assets and firing their employees. Then he tried his hand at a variety of sales jobs: real estate, gold futures, financial instruments of various shady kinds, real estate again. He won and lost too many fortunes to count.

  Then he ran into legal trouble and was very nearly convicted as a slumlord. He lost what was rumored to be nearly five million dollars in payouts and attorney fees to secure a settlement that meant he didn’t have to admit wrongdoing.

  Since then he’d ballooned his private security empire. She knew he was making money, but she wasn’t sure he was earning it. Miller and his employees seemed less like guards and more like arrogant teenage boys playing soldiers.

  The few passersby shot wary glances at the guards, who took up the whole sidewalk and clearly expected pedestrians to scurry out of their way. She stared down the one she guessed was the dominant member of the approaching duo, the one who made sure his foot hit the ground an inch ahead of where his partner’s did. Predictably, when she held his gaze, he bristled and actually puffed out his chest. His arms edged slowly away from his body as he sped up his pace.

  He looked like he would try to barrel right through her, and she thought he resembled a ridiculous rooster. She was annoyed enough not to move out of the idiot’s way. She would force him to go around her. She squared her shoulders and blew out a slow breath. Relaxing her face and slowing her heart rate, she felt like a kid playing red rover. Just like when she was a kid, she guessed, the opponents saw her slim shape and calm expression and underestimated her.

  Big Guard and Little Guard, as she’d come to think of them in the seconds since she’d first noticed them, tensed and exchanged a quick look. The shorter guy placed his hand on his waistband as though planning to reach for his weapon. Wondering what happened when Dan Miller’s guards encountered puffed-up teens and grumpy grandparents, she decided to see how far the pair of meatheads would go. She was awash in the rush of adrenaline she hadn’t felt for almost a year, the ecstasy of anticipation she always experienced when someone wanted to play chicken with her.

  As the macho guards drew closer, nearly running as they closed in on her, she maintained her gaze on the big guy. He was flushed, his blue eyes flashing, his nostrils flared. His black polyester uniform shirt was too thick and obviously didn’t breathe. Sweat ringed his underarms and the center of his chest and the collar of his polo shirt. Dried salt from previous shifts frosted the unforgiving fabric in unflattering places. The guard looked like he was roasting. He was an overheated bull in a too-small ring, his unpolished boots dull hooves that pawed toward her with the fury of insecurity.

  Then the little guy recognized her. She saw it in an instant, the flash of memory. He muttered something unintelligible to his partner, whose eyes flew wide open. The men stopped so quickly they almost toppled. Then they spun around and stomped away from her without a word. Both of them had huge sweat stains spread through the middle third of the backs of their shirts. Whatever Dan Miller was spending to market his company’s services, he should be spending on training and better uniforms.

  She stood on the sidewalk and watched them retreat, her expression troubled. What would they have done if the little guy hadn’t recognized her as a decorated police officer? What did they do when they encountered civilians who challenged their authority? Their badges were decorative, their training quasi military, their bearing far too cocky to be effective in dealing with civilians.

  Miller only paid his armed guards a pittance more than they could earn slinging burgers at a fast-food joint. If they could get jobs as police officers or prison guards, they would earn several times more than the salary Briarwood Watchdogs paid them.

  They’d barreled toward her like the street belonged to them. They’d been willing to engage a woman, who as far as they could tell, was unarmed and alone and simply walking down the street. Was it hubris? Or had they been trained by Miller to treat everyone like a suspect?

  Brenda had known more than a few private security guards over the years, and each of the best worked on finesse and watchfulness and de-escalation rather than macho posturing and bullying. If the pair she’d just seen gave an indication of how Miller’s guards presented themselves, the company was going to be in trouble soon.

  Still heady with the rush of adrenaline her near-encounter had engendered, she pushed away her concerns about Watchdogs and its training methodology. At some point, maybe she’d bring it up with someone. For now she had bigger things to worry about.

  Frustrated and unsure of the best course of further action regarding her missing partner, she decided to focus on Donnelly and Sheraton for a while. The file on Donnelly’s death, which had already been ruled a suicide, was shamefully thin. It was easier to close the whole embarrassing episode than to deal with the mess his actions had created. It was also politically expedient for Yolo County, in whose jurisdiction Donnelly had died, to keep things discreet and friendly with the Briarwood Police Department. Yolo County was, she had no doubt, doing its best to offer professional courtesy to a fellow law enforcement agency.

  Sergeant Mark Donnelly shot Tami Sheraton and left her to die in a trash-strewn alley behind a low-rent liquor store in the most run-down part of Briarwood. Between the video footage from Sheraton’s hidden camera and the forensic evidence, there was no real room for doubt about that.

  She pulled up the video on her laptop. She’d already seen it dozens of times but had to brace herself nonetheless.

  Donnelly had been extorting several low-rent businesses in the southeastern part of the city, most of them within a block or two of Sam’s Discount Liquor Store. Sheraton had apparently become suspicious enough to don a hidden camera.

  Brenda wondered: why hadn’t Sheraton gone to anyone for help? Why hadn’t she come to Brenda for help? There had been rumors Vallejo was out to lunch in some way. She’d heard the rumors but hadn’t reached out to her fellow captain. Now she wasn’t sure why. Maybe Sheraton tried to talk to Vallejo. Maybe she tried to talk to someone else in the department. If so, her confidant was keeping mum about it. How many people had dropped the ball?

  “I did,” she muttered to herself.

  It would have been easy for a manipulative mentor to send Sheraton to the alley behind Sam’s at just the right time and set up Donnelly so he felt he had no choice but to shoot the rookie. The theoretical puppet master wouldn’t have had to do more than put the crooked cop and the eager kid in the same place at the same time. She made a face. She again reminded herself to focus on the facts. She played the video again, peering intently at the screen.

  Donnelly’s face reflected shock. He blinked twice. His left hand held a paper bag of what the liquor store owner later stated was cash. The merchant had been paying him protection money for months.


  His eyes flew wide open. He started toward Sheraton. He was talking, his expression serious but friendly. Sheraton jumped, startled. Before she could do more, he took out his service weapon, the same Glock 22 issued to everyone on the force in Briarwood before the recent switch to its cousin the Glock 23. He shot Sheraton from a distance of about four feet. Muzzle flash translated into momentary nothing—white, undifferentiated blankness.

  Then there was movement as she fell backward against the Dumpster and onto the filthy ground, her head tilted at an awkward angle that showed nothing but velvety night sky. How long had Donnelly stayed to make sure she was dead? Would he have called for help if she had still been alive? Would he have shot her again as needed to avoid leaving her behind to report him?

  Brenda rubbed her eyes and watched the video three more times. She’d have loved to listen to what Donnelly said, but she was glad not to hear the shot and Sheraton’s death. Sheraton’s arterial spray had been phenomenal. She must have died relatively quickly.

  Still, Brenda wondered whether for some period of seconds or possibly minutes Sheraton had time to process what happened. Was she scared? In pain? Did she imagine someone might come to her rescue? Did she hope to survive? Did she think the tape would get Donnelly convicted? Did she lie there drowning in regret because she hadn’t brought someone in to help or had asked the wrong person for help?

  Brenda remembered the first time she met the freckled rookie, how Sheraton approached her like a kid on a dare, introducing herself with the bravado of the very young. She eyed the uniformed youngster, taking a moment to notice she was not, as Brenda had thought at first, barely old enough to buy a beer, but rather she was closer to thirty than twenty. No matter, she’d still seemed more like a kid than an adult to Brenda.

  Sheraton was smart, conscientious, insightful, and engaging. With her baby face and open smile, she was disarming, and the intelligence in her eyes would be missed by the less astute.

  Since Brenda’s station served as the department’s violent crime clearinghouse, junior officers from other stations could often find excuses to liaise with the only station housed at headquarters. Sheraton found her way into Brenda’s lair on a regular basis in her short stint in the department, and she always came armed with questions.

  “Why aren’t there more women, especially in leadership positions?” Sheraton had asked this only three months before Donnelly shot her, and Brenda recalled launching into some vague nonsense about change being incremental at first and then gathering speed later. She thought she was saying something meaningful, but Sheraton shook her head in the middle of the speech.

  “No, I mean here in Briarwood.” Sheraton frowned, leaning over Brenda’s desk and poking it with her long finger to emphasize her words. “This department is ninety-six percent male. Ninety-six! That’s ridiculous! Wilton has twice as many women on the force as we do, and a lot of places are doing better than that. We make up fifty-three percent of Briarwood’s adult population. Why are we so underrepresented here in the police department? And why are you and Commander Young the only women who’ve made it above lieutenant?”

  Brenda admired Sheraton’s fire but admonished the rookie to keep her cool. She was distracted, as she recalled. She thought herself too busy to seriously address Sheraton’s concerns. She thought Sheraton didn’t appreciate how much easier it was for female police officers in her generation than it had been for their predecessors.

  Now she wished she could go back and listen more closely. Sheraton’s isolation must have been painful and frightening. She must have felt no one had her back. Brenda rubbed her eyes. She should have been the mentor Sheraton sought instead of just another busy bureaucrat who hadn’t bothered to listen.

  If she’d paid more attention maybe Sheraton would have approached her with her concerns about Donnelly. Then Brenda could have helped her. She could have set up a meeting with Vallejo so they could go through the narrative. They could have gotten approval to set up an actionable plan. Sheraton wouldn’t have been alone in an alley with Donnelly.

  She rolled her head and listened to the popcorn in her neck and shoulders. Had the kid shared anything, however vague, with anyone, maybe someone in her personal life? Sheraton was survived by her mother and a sister, both of whom lived nearby. There was a brother too, but he lived in Southern California and was nearly twenty years older than his baby sister.

  Maybe Sheraton confided in her mom or her big sister. She must have divulged her plans to someone, if only out of caution. Brenda made a note to follow up on Sheraton’s family and friends. Then she put that aside and moved her focus back on Donnelly.

  When Chief Walton relayed the family’s emphatic desire for distance from those on the force, Brenda wondered whether this was because the family blamed the department for the death, or because the rapacious media had descended on the scandal like Briarwood’s tragedy was theirs for the feasting. Either way, the department was left with a pair of scars: the loss of a potentially valuable junior officer and a shameful breach of public trust by one of its sergeants. She wished they’d been allowed to organize a ceremony to honor their fallen officer. The powerful, moneyed family objected strenuously to such public fanfare. The funeral was private, closed to both the public and members of the police department, and they had no chance to unite in grief over their shared loss.

  The most they could do was line the street when the funeral procession passed. Hundreds of uniformed women and men pressed shoulder to shoulder, expressions closed and spines rigid, watching a series of cars roll past. Overhead, helicopters swarmed, and behind the blue line on either side was a teeming crowd of photographers. It was too remote. It was too impersonal.

  Brenda was one of several captains who organized family picnics to allow their squads a chance to grieve, to distract themselves with the laughter of children and the chatter of the spouses and the ribbing of their fellows. Donnelly left Sheraton dead or dying in the alley and went on the run, turning up two hours later at a no-tell motel in Fairfield, about eighty miles east of Briarwood. She watched video footage of his checking in and paying cash, using the name Mike Guzman.

  He stayed in the Denton Motel until nine the following morning. He ate pancakes and drank a large coffee at a fast-food restaurant with poor-quality cameras in the dining room, and by then he was wearing a plain black sweatshirt and jeans he likely kept in the trunk of his car.

  Many officers kept a coat and a change of clothes for emergencies, but as far as she knew, no one had followed up on the possibility this wasn’t the case here. What if Donnelly bought those clothes or retrieved them from a gym locker or a girlfriend or relative after killing Sheraton? Brenda made another note to herself.

  Their second sighting of Donnelly was the next morning at another no-name motel, this time only twelve miles farther east, in Vacaville. She wondered what he’d done with himself between the two sightings. Twelve miles, even in heavy traffic, was nowhere near a day’s worth of travel. In Vacaville he used cash and the name Donald Mills.

  They had no record of his withdrawing money from his bank accounts to that point. Of course, he’d been extorting small businesses for months, maybe years, so cash probably wasn’t an issue—though it was bulky.

  She made a note to look for storage units under his name, the name of one of his girlfriends and any possible aliases. Donnelly ate at the diner attached to the Vacaville motel, waffles and bacon and coffee. He tipped well, smiled, joked with the waitress.

  He looked completely relaxed, not at all like a man on the run after murdering a fellow police officer. He wore the same shirt and jeans. Though his face was all over the news by then, no one recognized him.

  Continuing east on Interstate 80, he checked into a motel in West Sacramento at five minutes past four that afternoon. She noted the long gap between his breakfast in Vacaville and his check-in at four in West Sacramento, only thirty-odd miles away. What had he done for all those hours?

  She’d need to chec
k for rented storage units and possible co-conspirators in the areas around and between the relevant cities. At a small motel in West Sacramento he paid for two nights and used the name Don Gonzalez.

  Ten minutes later he was on camera buying hair dye, tanning spray and new clothes at a discount superstore, where he also picked up junk food and sundries. In the video from the store, there were a few California Highway Patrol officers in line behind him. None of the three uniformed officers seemed to give him a second look.

  He paid cash at the superstore and again a few hours later when he went to one of the many fast-food restaurants near his motel, ordering five burgers and a large soda to go. By then he looked marginally disguised, wearing a gray baseball cap and a bulky hooded jacket in navy blue. His dyed black hair and an orange-tinted tan changed his appearance as much as the new clothing did.

  She examined his behavior in the burger-joint footage. He’d changed more than his appearance as he’d moved away from Briarwood. In West Sacramento he’d finally started looking like the fugitive he was. However belatedly, he began lying low. She made a note to figure out who might have contacted him and scared him. Or had dyeing his hair made him realize the gravity of his situation and thus present himself differently?

  Video from an exterior security camera showed a motel housekeeper approach the open door to Donnelly’s rented room the next morning. She looked in before backing away and then turning tail and running. The housekeeper’s frantic departure caught the eye of the manager, who found the body only seconds later and called for help. Yolo County deputies and crime scene personnel showed up within minutes. He was identified and pronounced dead within the hour.

  She perused the list of items found in his motel room. His duty weapon, the Glock he used to kill Sheraton. A spent shell. His wallet, containing seven hundred dollars. A trio of large manila envelopes under the motel’s mattress bulged with a combined total of nearly nine thousand dollars, most of it in carefully bundled twenties. His laptop and cell phone were at the bottom of the bathtub, which was half-filled with water.