If Angels Fall (4 page)

Despite the inevitable friction, everyone worked overtime. It was
always that way with child murders. They hauled in suspects, Quantico kicked
out a profile. They flashed information on the big screen of Candlestick Park
and offered a reward. As weeks, then months, passed, two network TV crime shows
featured the case. The commission turned up the heat for an arrest. Posters
sprouted in the Bay Area. But they had squat, until months into the file when
something broke.

A beat cop, searching for tossed drugs in the playground in Dolores
Park, found Tanita’s diaper and the weather-worn Polaroids of two men holding
her. The items were hidden in a bag among some shrubs. True to the profile: Two
people were involved in the child’s abduction and murder. One of the pictured
men was Franklin Wallace, a Sunday school teacher who lived near Tanita’s
housing project. Latents on the diaper matched his. They ran them and
discovered Wallace had been convicted ten years ago of molesting a little girl
in Virginia. Nothing was known about the second suspect, a tattooed man who was
masked in the snapshots.

They kept the break secret, returned the items to the shrubs and
were about to surveil the site with the FBI when Sydowski got a call from Tom
Reed at the
Star
, a reporter he knew and respected. Reed was on to the
break in the case and wanted information for a story. Sydowski cursed to
himself over what he suspected was a dangerous leak, jeopardizing the
investigation.

“What do you know, Reed?”

“Franklin Wallace is your boy. His prints are on her diaper and
you’ve got a picture of him with her. He’s a Sunday school teacher in the
projects with priors. A diddler from Virginia. Is that right?”

Reed was on the money. Sydowski had to be careful.

“Where did you get this?”

“A call out of the blue this morning.”

“Who?”

“Get serious, Walt, you know I’d never reveal a source.”

Sydowski said nothing.

Reed thought it over quickly, and lowering his voice, said, “If I
helped you with information on the tip, do I get a jump on the story, Walt?”

“No deals.”

Reed sighed. Sydowski heard a pen tapping, heard Reed thinking.

“I don’t know who called. It was a man. Lasted a few seconds. Has to
be somebody sick of the commission’s shrieking, a cop likely.”

“You tape it?”

“No, it was too quick. So, am I on the right track, Walt?”

“No comment. And I wouldn’t write a word just yet.”

“Come on.”

“We never had this conversation.”

There was something triumphant in Reed’s silence.

“I’ll take that as confirmation.”

“Take it any way you like, I never spoke to you.”

The leak detonated a shitstorm at the D.A.’s office and at Golden
Gate Avenue. Reed had called the D.A.’s office, seeking official confirmation
for his tip. He got nothing.

Wallace had not yet been formally questioned. Reed was forcing their
hand. Rust, Ditmire, and Rich Long, an assistant district attorney, descended
on the Hall of Justice and debated the merits of picking up Wallace without yet
having built a case against him or his mystery partner. Sydowski wanted Wallace
grabbed right away. The agents wanted Wallace under surveillance so he could
lead them to his partner. And could they stop Reed’s story? More importantly,
Ditmire interjected directly to Sydowski, how many other reporters knew?

Offended at the implication that he was the leak, Sydowski stood to
confront his accuser, his chair scraping across the floor.

“Take it easy, Walt,” Rust said.

At that moment, they received word that Wallace was dead. Shot
himself in the head after Reed showed up on his doorstep, asking about Tanita
Marie Donner and his record in Virginia. Wallace left a note proclaiming his
innocence. Nothing in his house linked him to Tanita’s murder.

Long snapped his pencil in two, closed his briefcase, and left with
Rust and Ditmire in tow, cursing Sydowski.

The next day, Reed’s story identifying Wallace as the chief suspect
in Tanita Marie Donner’s murder, ran on the front page of the
Star
.
Thankfully, Reed didn’t know about the second suspect. The John Doe with the
tattoos. The D.A. and the feds decided the case might be salvaged if they
downplayed Reed’s article by saying Wallace was never a suspect, that he was
checked because he knew the victim and because of his old record. It was
routine and he was cleared long ago, they said.
The San Francisco Star
was writing fiction, again. Sydowski loathed this tenuous approach, but it was
all they had.

But it didn’t matter. The investigation crumbled. Then it got worse.
Wallace’s widow sued the paper, then slapped Reed’s face in front of all the
camera during a news conference. Reed was demoted, or some shit like that.
Sydowski grilled him half a dozen times about details of the call, then they
lost touch.

Eventually, the number of bodies on the case dwindled. Sydowski saw
less of Rust and Ditmire. Everyone knew it was Sydowski’s file. They left him
alone. After Wallace’s suicide, he had painstakingly rebuilt pieces of the
case. No one envied him. But they understood.

After his darkest days, he would go home and sit in his aviary,
listen to his birds and think. What was he doing wrong? He came to the hall at
all hours, worked at the computer, reread files, and went out on interviews.
Nothing clicked.

That had been his year since Tanita Marie Donner’s murder, a year in
which he rarely took a day off. But he had today. And sitting with his old man
at the Coliseum watching the A’s and Yankees felt good. For a few hours he
tried to give his mind a rest. As he chewed on the last of his hotdog, he
considered going back for another.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

He switched off his pager, went to a phone and called the duty crew
at the hall.

“Homicide, Jackson.”

“It’s Sydowski.”

“Walt, we got a boy abducted just now by a male stranger.”

“Got a body?”

“Nope.”

“No body. That’s General Works. Why call me?”

“It’s an order. Comes from the brass. Leo wants you in on this with
General and the feebees, right from the get-go. The kid was grabbed from his
father on BART at Balboa.”

Balboa.

“It’s looking bad, Walt.”

Sydowski felt his heartburn flare. “Balboa?”

“They’re setting up at Ingleside Station on John Young.”

“Okay, I’m coming from the Coliseum.”

Sydowski hung up and found a uniformed Oakland police officer. He
showed him his badge, asked him warmly to make sure his old man got a cab to
Pacifica, then gave him several crumpled bills for the fare.

“Consider it done,” the cop said.

Sydowski returned to his old man.

“I got to go to work, Pop.” He pointed to the officer. “This guy
will get a cab home for you.”

His father turned to him, nodded, and adjusted his ballcap.

“Sure, you go to work. You do a good job.”

Driving across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, grateful to beat the
ballgame traffic, Sydowski was struck by one thought. He wondered if Reed ever
to around to figuring out that short, anonymous call he got nearly a year ago
had come from Tanita Marie Donner’s killer.

Tom Reed
drove south
from downtown in a staff car, a Ford Tempo, bearing
The San Francisco Star’s
red, white, and blue banner and the logo:WE’VE GOT SAN FRANCISCO’S STORY.

Talk about cruel irony. He wanted to do an anniversary piece on
Tanita Marie Donner’s abduction and murder. To set the record straight. To
redeem himself. Now this happens. In Balboa.

His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Passing a lumbering
motor home from Utah on 101, he couldn’t shake the Donner story and a million
other questions. If today’s case was real, would the paper leave him on it? Could
he handle it again? Sure. He had nothing left to lose. He had already
sacrificed his family to the Donner story.

“We’ve lost each other, Tom,” Ann had said the last time they were
out, weeks after Wallace’s suicide. It was a place in Sausalito, with a view of
San Francisco’s skyline and a harpist plucking a requiem to their marriage. Ann
was right. Something between them had died, a fact he refused to admit. He
fingered a spoon and met her eyes, shining in the candlelight like they did on
their wedding day.

“Tell me, Ann. Tell me how you’ve lost me.”

“Your drinking’s out of hand. I’ve asked you to stop. You don’t see
what it’s doing to us, to Zach, to you.”

He rapped the spoon sharply on the table.

“Ann, I’ve been professionally humiliated, I’ve been suspended,
dumped into a toilet of political crap, and this is the understanding you show
me.”

“Lower your voice!” she whispered.

He downed his wine and refilled his glass.

“Tom, why can’t you realize that you are not infallible?”

“I was not wrong.”

“Something went wrong! I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You brought it up, dear.” He gulped more wine.

“You have no idea what Zach and I went through after seeing you on network
TV slapped by the widow of that poor teacher.”

“That
poor teacher
killed Tanita Marie Donner, Ann!”

“You don’t know that. The police said he was not—“

“Fuck the police! Wallace was a twisted child-killer.”

“Stop it! Just stop it!” Ann’s hushed voice was breaking.

A few tense moments passed. She touched the corners of her eyes with
her napkin. “We need some time apart,” she said. “I’m taking Zach and we’re
going to stay with my mother in Berkley.”

It was like a sledgehammer blow to his stomach.

“I don’t know if I can live with you anymore,” she whispered. “If I
love you anymore.” She covered her mouth with her hand.

They skipped dessert and went home. A few days later, he helped Ann
lift suitcases to their van, watching in silence as his wife and son drove
away. He went into the house and drank himself unconscious.

Reed found the scene near Ocean at San Jose. Nearby, a tangle of
police cars blocked the entrance to the Balboa BART station, lights flashing,
radios crackling.

A working-class neighborhood, Balboa was favored with a degree of
gentrification at its fringes: a smattering of eclectic boutiques, yuppified
houses and apartment blocks. A cop directed traffic around the area. People
craned their necks at the yellow crime-scene tape; others watched from windows
and balconies.

“Tom!”

Paul Wong, a
Star
photographer, trotted after him, two Nikons
dangling from his neck, a camera bag over his shoulder.

“Just pulled in behind you,” Wong said. “Isn’t this the same place
where they found the little girl, Marie something?”

“Tanita Marie Donner.”

“Yeah.” Wong suddenly remembered everything.

As they headed toward the police tape, they clipped on their press
cards. Reed called the paper on his cell phone. Wong banged off a few frames.

“
Star
, Molly Wilson.” Police radios were clamoring.

“It’s Reed. Got anything for us?”

“Speak up, I’m in the radio room.”

“What have you got?”

“A genuine stranger abduction. The kid somehow wanders off the
train. Dad gets a one-second glimpse of his boy with a strange man on the
platform just as the train is pulling out. He hits the emergency brake bar,
kicks out an emergency window and runs after them. But they vanished. Happened
that fast. They’re pulling out all the stops, bringing in K-9, going
door-to-door in a grid for a twenty-block radius. Simon’s on his way with
another photographer.

“Get a name on the kid and his dad?”

“Father is Nathan Becker, son is Danny. Unlisted. Library’s going
through driving and property records. Beck is still around, being questioned
somewhere. They haven’t taken him to Ingleside Station yet. Mom is home alone.
They’ve sent people to tell her and set up for a possible ransom call. No
address over the air, but I gather it’s near the University of San Francisco,
Jordan Park maybe.”