The Ancient Rain (2 page)

Do nothing.

Ancient advice, words of wisdom. Because how well did he know Owens, really? Dante had worked a case with the man, true. They'd gone a couple times down to Benny's Café, along the Third Street wharfs, and Dante and Marilyn had been out once to his house—but Owens did not talk much about the past. Still, Dante knew the general history. He knew that Owens and his first wife had done a couple of years' time on a conspiracy charge back in the seventies. He knew that the first wife was dead now, and that Owens had remarried and had a daughter and a son. Owens's second wife, Jill, practiced criminal law in partnership with Moe Jensen—high-profile defense work, some of it—but most of Owens's investigative work was for their pro bono clients, people from the projects and the barrios, drug users and stick-up artists, people on the fringes.

In the middle of the square, the man in the dashiki was still chanting. The wind had shifted, so Dante could hear fragments of the man's rant.

I can taste the smoke in the air … the rushing wind … the black ashes … I can taste the flames of the invaders in my mouth …

The cop walked around the square, looking under benches, pausing to survey the passersby. The threat level had been raised to Orange, but it was morning now, and the curfew had passed. A businessman with a briefcase wandered through, and a Chinese hipster and his girlfriend started practicing tai chi in the morning light. Across the way, Father Campanella appeared on the cathedral stairs, bent over his cane, and all of a sudden a gaggle of schoolchildren, Chinese mostly, burst around the corner, racing past the Italian Athletic Club toward the old Salesian School.

Do nothing.

His mother had started hearing voices at one point.
So what?
His father had had a different temperament.
You hear voices, don't listen.
He had patted her head, caressed her. But there were things happening out in the ether, his wife had insisted. Voices whispering. Plans being formed, unformed.

She couldn't stop listening, trying to decipher their meaning.

Dante should take the old man's advice, probably, but he couldn't help himself. He headed down to the jail. He took the roundabout way, avoiding the traffic down on the north end of Market Street, taking the streets over Russian Hill, then dropping through the Tenderloin, past the single-occupancy hotels, old men out for the morning, ex-cons, a tired-looking prostitute with her blouse undone. The traffic thickened around the Civic Center, then he got tied up on Market, where a handful of protestors blocked the road, playing dodge with the police. He tapped on the steering wheel, waiting. It was going to be a long morning.

Mind your own business.

His father was right, he suspected, but Dante had never listened to the old man.

THREE

Earlier that same morning, Bill Owens had readied his kids for school. Since his wife was out of town, Owens himself had shaken the kids out of their beds and made their breakfast. Now he stuffed his son's backpack for school. It was a private school, and all the kids had packs like this, loaded down with books and projects and binders, so in the morning they looked as if they were on an expedition to the other side of the world.

His daughter, Kate, entered the room ready to go: fourteen years old, a thin, long-legged girl with her mother's smile—and some of her haughtiness as well.

“Dad,” she said, “Zeke won't cooperate. He's only half-dressed—and we're going to be late.”

“It's okay,” Owens said. “Don't worry about it.”

Owens heard her following behind him as he stepped outside, scanning the street. He was aware that the government was considering reopening the case against him, and a few weeks ago he had noticed a gray sedan tracking him sporadically. The car sat parked across the way.

“Dad…” she said again.

He saw the vulnerability in her eyes. She was a bright girl, and a year or so back he'd tried to explain to her what had happened long ago.

“I'll go get Zeke,” he said.

Then his son appeared at the top of the stairs, ten years old, bent over a handheld video game. The three of them headed for the car.

*   *   *

Owens was in his early fifties, a soft-spoken man with sand-colored hair that didn't show the gray. He wore oval glasses and khakis. He had round shoulders, ordinary shoes. He had been notorious once upon a time—and still was, in some circles, for better or worse—but in truth he was not the kind of man whose looks drew your attention.

To the contrary, he was anonymous by nature. He had a certain blandness, a way of blending in without being seen. He knew this about himself, and when he was younger he had wanted it to be otherwise. At the moment, however, he felt about as conspicuous as could be. He was being watched, he knew, by the cops in the gray sedan.

Moe Jensen, his wife's partner, had told him not to worry.

“It's a cold case,” Jensen had said just a few days before. “They don't have any evidence they didn't have thirty years ago.”

Owens had known the attorney for a long time—longer than he'd known his wife. Though he trusted Jensen's assessment, Owens knew there were other forces in motion this time. The government's new antiterror laws gave the prosecutors leeway. Most of the agents from the old days were gone, true, but not Leonard Blackwell, who worked as a federal prosecutor now. He carried a special disdain for Owens.

Then there was Elise Younger, the dead woman's daughter. She'd been pushing to reopen the case for years. Pushing to the point of obsession. Once, maybe the year before last, he'd seen her lingering near his house.

The government sedan pulled out, following him. Owens watched the car in the rearview mirror.

“I swear,” said Owen.

“No swearing, Dad,” said Kate.

She smiled. It was a joke between them.

No swearing allowed.

In the backseat, Zeke sat engaged with his video game. The boy had anxiety issues and could be quick on the trigger. He was a smart kid, with deep brown eyes and a little bit of a stutter, and on account of his differences they had him in private school. The private-school kids, though, were mean as hell.

Money, privilege—all a ruse.

Owens drove up University heading toward the bridge. The gray sedan still lingered. Then a police cruiser pulled up from out of nowhere, it seemed, and rode Owens's bumper. Perhaps it was just coincidence, a cop working the morning traffic, pushy the way cops can be, but Owens didn't think so.

He had the impulse to pull over, to call their bluff. Or, instead, to yank the wheel and punch it down a backstreet.

Years ago, maybe he would have played such a game, but he had his kids with him now.

“When's Mom going to be back?”

“She'll call tonight.”

“Can I call her now? On your cell?”

“Your mom's in court this morning. You know she is. I don't think she'll be picking up. She doesn't bring a phone into the courtroom.”

“Can I call and leave her a message?”

He could feel his daughter, Kate, reading him, watching the way he moved. She saw his nervousness, and she glanced, too, at the cruiser behind. She was a precocious girl, more practical than her brother, and less temperamental—and a demon for the facts. She had been online these last few days, reading about the case, and he had not yet had the chance to reassure her.

People lied, he wanted to say. They distorted things to serve their purposes.

“Not now, honey,” he said. “Now wouldn't be a good time to make a call.”

All this time, Owens had one eye on the rearview. The light at Sixth turned yellow as he hit the intersection. He went on through and the cruiser followed. Two more squad cars waited at the foot of University, and they maneuvered behind him as he hit the ramp. The trailing car dropped off, swinging sidelong across the intersection. He was certain now of what was coming. That last maneuver had been designed to keep the civilian traffic from following.

At the top of the ramp, he spotted a couple of cruisers ahead, swung sideways, blocking his way.

He pulled to a stop.

The troopers waited on the other side of their cars, rifles propped over the hoods of their government issue Crown Victorias. Overdoing it, as usual, treating him like he was public enemy number one. Closer by, an officer with a semiautomatic stood on the other side of the guardrail, about ten feet away.

“Dad!”

His daughter's eyes opened wider, frightened. His son seemed absorbed in his Game Boy, still clicking, though with more rapidity. Owens kept his hands on the wheel. “Don't worry,” he said. “These are people I work with. This is a work thing, that's all.”

An absurd thing to say, maybe—but there was a certain sense to it. He worked all day with criminals and police and attorneys and judges. So maybe it was true: This was just a work thing. Outside, behind them, a voice boomed over a patrol-car megaphone, telling Owens to get out of the car.

“He has a gun,” said Zeke. The boy still hadn't looked up, and it wasn't clear if he referred to the video game or the man behind the guardrail.

Outside the car, behind them, the voice repeated its instructions.

Zeke twitched then, bending deeper over the game. Owens saw something flicker in the face of the man with the semiautomatic.

Owens got out of the car.

He stood with his hands extended in front of him. He stood there for what seemed like a very long time. He stood there with the guns pointed at him, and his kids fidgeting in the car. After a while, the two plainclothes emerged from the gray sedan: first, a square-shaped man in his midthirties; then the other, a Chinese woman, older, dressed all in blue.

Behind them he noticed a third man, watching with his hands on his hips. This one he recognized: Leonard Blackwell.

The man's hair had gone silver, a thick mien that gave him a dignified look, but Blackwell was an aggressive son of a bitch, Owens knew, a prosecuting attorney with a background in investigation who'd worked his way up out of the field. The man swaggered toward him like a cop in a movie who'd finally gotten his man.

“What's this about?”

“Took your time getting out of the car, didn't you?” said Blackwell.

“My kids, you're scaring the hell out of them.”

“I want you to come over here with me. I want your ass over the hood of the car.”

They marched him over to one of the cruisers. What happened next happened quickly. Owens heard the troopers behind him, moving in around his car—he caught a glimpse of his kids, of his daughter's face—before one of the troopers grabbed him from behind and pushed him spread-eagle over the cruiser. The cop pushed his face into the trunk and held him that way.

“Nose down.”

He hoped his children could not see him. He imagined the pair of them, noses pressed up against the glass, watching while the big cop cranked back their father's arms and snapped on the cuffs.

“You thought this would never happen, didn't you?” said Blackwell.

“No,” Owens said.

It didn't come out the way he meant.

“Never in a million years, you thought,” said one of the others.

“No.”

What Owens meant to say was, No, he had not imagined himself immune. He had in fact thought the opposite. Because he knew how the government could be. He had seen the feds go after people years after the fact. Just as they were coming after him now. He had feared this eventuality—while standing in line at the movie theater, in bed with his wife, in so many random moments. He feared not just for himself, but for his kids, his family. There'd been calls sometimes, cranks. Threats.

“Never in ten million, you thought, but here you are.”

It wasn't Blackwell talking, but the other one, the younger plainclothes. The voice had the same self-righteousness to it. A fury underneath. Owens didn't quite understand. From Blackwell, maybe. From someone who had been in the force at the time, associated with the case, this anger might make sense, but from the square-headed cop, too young to remember …

He supposed he should understand. He had been young once, full of fury. He had thought there existed a particular enemy you could identify. That you could pin down and destroy. And there were times, he had to admit, that he still felt that way.

This young cop … Blackwell … all these troopers … if the tables had been turned …

“Déjà vu, huh?” Blackwell said. “Do you ever think of her, that woman bleeding to death? Do you ever see her goddamn face?”

He heard a noise behind him. He heard his son yelp, maybe. And his daughter cry out. It was hard to tell. There was a traffic chopper overhead, gulls swarming. He strained to look at the kids but the cop pushed his face down into the hood.

Oh, Kate. Oh, Zeke.

He lay over the hood with his ass in the air while the cop patted him down, knife-handing between his legs, emptying his pockets. They took everything—his wallet, his cell.

When they let him up, he saw his kids had been taken from the car. They were being led down the ramp toward a cruiser below, patrolmen walking on either side and another following behind. Maybe his daughter had let out a cry, maybe his son had tried to pull away—but they seemed subdued enough now. His daughter glanced backward, but his son held the hand of one of the troopers.

Blackwell meanwhile rummaged the family sedan, pulling papers from the glove, a game disk from the door pocket, a tube of lipstick. The Chinese officer, the woman, stood next to Owens. Owens asked her name and she told him.

“I'd like to call someone,” Owens said. “My wife is out of town, I'd like to make arrangements for the kids.”

Leanora Chin was plainclothes, but the way she dressed, she might just as well have been in uniform. She wore blue, dark navy—a skirt the color of midnight and a blouse just as dark. Her hair was black, with streaks of white, and her eyes were gray. Though she dressed like a fed, she did not carry herself like one. She had the bearing of someone who'd been on the force a while.