Faint Trace Read online

  I generally didn’t discuss case details with Kevin, mostly because it was an ongoing investigation, but also because I felt like I was reminding him what he lost. His work in cyber security might not have been on the front lines, but he still missed it. This time I did, skipping over the drive-­by in Piedmont, instead telling him about the loot we found in the container, as we brought the chicken inside and negotiated with Lucy to bring her masterpieces into the living room. She agreed, but only if she could pick the dinner music.

  “OK,” Kevin said. “But remember the rule.”

  “No Ramones at the dinner table,” Lucy said.

  Lucy loved the dinner, mostly because she got to eat off a stick, but Kevin ate half the meat and left the veggies on the plate, the fiber and bulk too much for him. I scraped the remains into the trash and started to stack dishes in the dishwasher, taking direction from Kevin, who was offended by my lack of symmetry.

  “No backseat dishwasher loading,” I said, waving the two of them into the living room. “Go.”

  I had just finished putting the last plate in diagonally—­I knew it would make Kevin laugh—­when my phone rang.

  “Oh, my friend, you are so lucky I have no life,” Ernie said. “I looked through the billing records on the storage unit, and discovered that in May 2008, instead of an automatic payment from that dummy account we tracked down, a manual check was sent, a check from a different account. And that manual check is issued to an address in Oakland. It’s a long shot . . .”

  “But it’s a shot,” I said. I looked at the clock. It was seven-­fifteen, and generally Lucy was down by eight. “I could be there by eight-­thirty.”

  “Take the night off, Lyons. I’m sitting outside the house right now and there’s been no sign of the guy, just a teenage boy.”

  “I’m your partner. You need . . .”

  “Oakland PD already agreed to keep an eye on things overnight, and I’m going to head home soon, and then you and I can come over bright and early, scope out the house, maybe talk to the neighbors.”

  When Ernie was lying, he didn’t use periods. He probably planned to sit outside the house all night, but if I confronted him, he’d bug out. I graciously accepted Ernie’s plan, knowing that I’d find him red-­eyed and quiet the next day.

  In the living room I joined Lucy and Kevin, watching The Little Mermaid, Lucy mouthing snatches of “Under the Sea” as her head gently fell onto Kevin’s forearm. Her bedtime passed, the room dropped into shadow, and from outside I could hear the streetlights buzz on. When the movie ended Kevin picked Lucy up. I almost protested—­he would still go weak at random moments. I stopped myself.

  Rousing Lucy just enough to stand her in front of the sink, Kevin cradled Lucy’s cheek as he brushed her teeth, and I pulled out her favorite pajamas, a purple nightgown she loved. We moved her to the bed, me holding her upright while Kevin dropped the nightgown over her head. I flipped on her nightlight.

  “How about we have an early night too?” Kevin asked. If this were a year ago, I would have viewed it as in invitation to something more, but his hand shook with exhaustion, and I knew all that was on offer was sleep. I walked around the house, locking windows and doors, and starting the air conditioner in our room. I climbed into bed with him, rolling into his embrace. My hands could feel the angle of his ribs and the curve of his kidney, and his shoulder was sharp where I nested my head under his chin.

  THIS WAS THE first time I’d done a stakeout in a book-­lined study. Criminals didn’t generally hole up in neighborhoods nicknamed “Professorville,” but we’d lucked into finding a home that was free because the owner, Professor Ginthner, was teaching psycholinguistics at the University of Salamanca in Spain this semester.

  “Para retirar es no salir corriendo, y permanecer no es ninguna acción sabia, cuando hay más razones para temer que to la esperanza,” Ernie read.

  I felt my breathing slow, matching Ernie’s unhurried cadence as he read Don Quixote aloud. It was like a bedtime story, easing me into sleep after an all-­night stakeout in which absolutely nothing happened. I roused myself, sitting straighter in the wooden chair, and watched as a light went on in the kitchen in the house across the street. The teenager was eating breakfast.

  “What you read, what does it mean?” I asked, bringing my binoculars to my face.

  Ernie hesitated, stumbling over the translation. “To withdraw is not to run away . . . to stay is unwise when there is more reason to fear than to hope.” He dropped the book on the arm of the leather club chair. “I think Don Quixote’s been talking to Stanzler.”

  Jim Stanzler had let us know that he was giving authorization for the stakeout for only forty-­eight hours more. Normally, I’d agree—­this operation had been a bust. But leaving meant being relegated to paperwork for the foreseeable future. I was reaching the point of accepting that as my fate, but Ernie was fighting it tooth and nail, just as he fought me when I suggested he get a new partner for the good of his career.

  “I’m going to transfer to the Albany office anyway,” I said.

  Ernie rolled his eyes. “You’ve requested a voluntary transfer, Lyons, to a non-­hellish region with a cost of living that even a federal employee could afford. You’re not going anywhere.” He folded his arms. “And I’m not either.”

  That said, Ernie wasn’t enjoying our assignment. “Man, you’d think that a professor of romance languages would have some racier stuff than this,” he said, glancing over the contents of the shelves. “I thought with all of these knights in shining armor that there would be more action, but it’s a big fat nothing. Just wackos spouting nonsense, tilting at windmills.”

  “Maybe pick a different book? Professor Ginthner said that we could help ourselves to anything on his shelf.”

  “The good professor also called our stakeout a ‘lovely caper’ and seemed a little too excited to have the police conducting the stakeout from his home.” Ernie slumped lower in his chair.

  Ernie’s discovery of the address on the check gave us hope that we would quickly find Van Hu and stop the counterfeiting ring, but so far Van hadn’t made an appearance. There was a housekeeper, a Mexican woman who arrived at 9 a.m. and left at 2 p.m. and whose work, based on our surveillance, consisted of vacuuming and making casseroles. Her visits seemed timed so that she never crossed paths with the teenage boy who lived there. Professor Ginthner had been more than happy to give us the lowdown on the young man, who he said went to high school with his daughter.

  “Taylor Simmons,” he said. “He’s just about to graduate, and a bit of a loner from what my daughter Skyler says. He transferred into the school just this year, which is a difficult transition for any young person.” I had to tell Professor Ginthner to speak up since the international connection meant that we lost every third word he said. “I’ve rarely seen David Simmons, the father—­just brief waves during their move in. I sent over a bottle of Cabernet from my cellar, a sort of welcome-­to-­the-­neighborhood gift, and we’ve never spoken, as far as I remember.”

  “Can you describe David?” I asked.

  “I only saw him from afar. Asian, and younger than I would have expected. Although he might have been half Asian—­Simmons is hardly an Asian name. I’ve heard rumors that Mr. Simmons is one of those numbers/engineering types.” Professor Ginthner talked about engineers the same way others might talk about someone who believed in unicorns—­suspicious, and not to be completely trusted. “He does sourcing for a big tech firm and travels to Asia quite a bit, lining up microchips in Korea and going to Vietnam for . . . well, I don’t actually know. The woman who owned the house before them said he was a very tough negotiator, but at the end paid full price for the house in cash.”

  “And no one else lives there?”

  “Well, there’s the housekeeper, but she doesn’t live in. And right after they moved in there was a young man who seemed to be around q
uite a bit, big and heavyset, and I believe Asian as well. A boyfriend, perhaps?”

  The man he described sounded exactly like what we knew about Hu. Was Simmons an accomplice, allowing Hu to use his home?

  “There’s also the older gentlemen I see who comes in the afternoon,” Ginthner said. “Haven’t seen him enter the house, but of course I’m not there every day.”

  We’d seen the man in question. An elderly Asian man, he was definitely not Van Hu. Ginthner identified the man as a gardener, but Ernie and I put him somewhere between a mailman and criminal accomplice. Over the last ten days he had appeared four times, slipping into the garage and emerging with a package, invariably traveling to the post office and then to an apartment downtown. We were able to track him down through the apartment, under his name, Daniel Ouyang. He was not a criminal but a community activist, which made no sense.

  Through my binoculars I watched as Taylor appeared in the driveway on a skate-­board—­his first class started in ten minutes and the high school was right down the street. He skimmed down the driveway at a speed that made me want to go outside and put a helmet on him.

  “We’re up,” I said.

  Ernie and I raced downstairs past the Moorish benches and beveled mirrors that lined Professor Ginthner’s hallway. Despite the professor’s offer that we should feel free to use the whole house, we stayed in the attic, afraid of breaking some of the antiques or attracting the attention of the neighbors. We had a very short window between when Taylor left and the cleaning woman arrived, and we planned to get a good look at what was inside that garage so that if Ouyang made another appearance, we’d know what he was transporting.

  We jogged across a street lined with beautiful bungalows expensively landscaped with native plants, with several porches sporting peace sign flags. Ernie and I were wearing running clothes, but didn’t completely blend in, as most ­people in this neighborhood would be wearing space age fabrics that allowed peak exercise experiences instead of cotton shorts and hoodies with big pockets that hid our holstered SIG Sauers and let us carry keys, phones, and badges.

  Far down the street I saw Taylor carelessly propelling himself toward the high school entrance. While Oakland had more than its fair share of bad schools, Taylor’s was not one of them, with some of the best test scores in the state. We had approached school officials to see if they might let us take a look at Taylor’s records. They laughed in our faces, but I was surprised when the vice principal we spoke to agreed not to mention our inquiry to Taylor or his father, and even gave us a little background.

  “Taylor is a good kid,” he said. “Not popular, keeps to himself, and a bit socially isolated because his parents are quite strict about his time.” I managed to hold back a laugh, since the kid seemed to be raised by an elderly man and a housekeeper.

  “C’mon, Lyons,” Ernie said, looking down the street before sprinting up the driveway. We hugged the bushes that lined the property, bypassing the garage door and looking for a side entrance. There was one, but it was locked.

  “Do you smell smoke, Lyons,” Ernie asked, nose in the air and rattling the door.

  “Don’t give up on due process so soon, Aguilar.” I ran to the back of the garage, where we found a window propped up several inches.

  Once we dropped inside, I could understand why the window was left open. The room smelled of aftershave and nail polish remover, so strong I gagged before breathing through my mouth, a low burn in the back of my throat.

  “Where’s the loot?” Ernie whispered. “I was expecting to find Dorothy’s red shoes and ten copies of the Shroud of Turin in here.”

  I was surprised to see that the room was outfitted like a normal garage. “I have to say, I was expecting something less . . . utilitarian.”

  A lawnmower was propped in the corner, hedge trimmers hanging next to the window. The whole far wall was taken up by a wooden workbench with a series of cabinets built in above. Inside we found rows upon rows of benzene and acetone, and in the next set of cabinets, bleach and ten bottles of Wite-­Out.

  “Meth?” Ernie asked.

  “Wrong ingredients,” I said, and pulled open the last door. Inside were neatly stacked rows of passports, arranged alphabetically by country.

  I gently picked up one from the top shelf. It was issued by the Republic of Georgia and had stamps from around the globe, the picture showing a young woman with bleached blond hair. I looked at others, documents from Latvia, Thailand, and Qatar. All were issued to women.

  “He selling these?” Ernie asked.

  “Not much market for expired passports,” I said. I reached below to a stack on the bottom shelf. When I flipped through the pages they were pristine, crisp and clean, with expiration dates three years in the future, empty spots where the photos should be.

  I pointed to the chemicals. “Well, that explains the benzene and the bleach. He’s using those to create clean passports, ones he can sell.”

  “There’s a lucrative business for you,” Ernie said. “And a pretty clear signal that Van lives here, at least some of the time.”

  Out front we could hear a car approach and then stop.

  “Housekeeper?” I asked.

  “Too early,” Ernie said, waving toward the window. The two of us hopped gently outside and lowered the window until it was open just a crack. We barely escaped: Huddled alongside the garage, we heard the door inside open, then slow footsteps across the cement floor. I wasn’t sure it was Ouyang, but the pace matched the shuffling gait of the old man. The hinges on the cabinet squealed as it opened, and then there was the sound of rustling paper. The steps retreated and the door closed, and a moment later the car started up.

  I was in motion, running down the driveway, Ernie one step behind me. I spotted Ouyang’s Honda driving up the street, then turning left at College Avenue in the direction of Highway 24. We hopped in the car, and Ernie called in the information to Stanzler as I drove, rolling through stop signs rather than coming to a full halt. Ouyang obeyed all traffic signs, and before long we caught up to the Honda. He certainly wasn’t acting like an outlaw. Relaying our position to Stanzler, with no other agents in the vicinity and no idea where we were going, we agreed to follow closely, calling in updates, not that Stanzler expected much excitement.

  Ouyang’s Honda merged onto the highway. I tapped the brake—­rush hour was past its peak but traffic crawled, slowing the closer we got to the Bay Bridge. I was happy when Ouyang exited towards downtown, and we followed, watching him pull into a handicapped space in a lot next to a bank, and hobble inside.

  “Think we’ll stand out in our workout wear?” Ernie asked.

  “It’s California. We’ll blend in.”

  We entered separately, Ernie pulling a brochure on electronic banking while I filled out a deposit slip, writing in totals for checks I didn’t have. I watched as Ouyang approached a bank manager, who graciously led him to the back.

  Ernie appeared next to me.

  “Safe deposit boxes?” I wrote on the deposit slip’s signature line. Ernie nodded.

  I felt my phone vibrate against my hip. Glancing at it briefly I saw that it was Holly, Lucy’s sitter, a sweet psychology major from St. Mary’s College who threaded brightly colored silk through her dreadlocks and called Lucy “dude.” Lucy had always adored Holly, but this week and last she had been ignoring her, which Holly took with good grace.

  “She associates me coming every day with illness and pain,” Holly said evenly. “The last time I babysat this often was when Kevin was getting the intensive chemo.” Holly had started calling when she arrived in the morning to let me know the fun plans she and Lucy had for the day and to give me an unofficial report on Kevin. I let this morning’s call go to voice mail.

  Less than thirty seconds later my phone vibrated again, followed by another call ten seconds after that.

  “Answer it,” Ernie said,
staring at the ground. “Ouyang should be gone for a few minutes.”

  “Aguilar, I—­”

  “Lyons, your head won’t be in the game until you take that call. C’mon, do it now.”

  Ernie was of the “catch more flies with honey” school, only making demands of ­people he was handcuffing, and I tried to figure out if he was angry at me. Instead he smiled, making a hurry up gesture with his hand and I took the call.

  “June?” Holly said, breathing hard.

  “Holly? You OK?”

  “No,” she said, the rest of her sentence getting lost.

  “Holly? Holly!”

  She didn’t answer, but several bank patrons stared and a security guard approached. I did sign language with Ernie indicating that I would watch the front exit if he would watch the side and stumbled through the rotating glass door. The sidewalk was crowded, and I put my finger in one ear, blocking some street noise. Holly was silent but in the background I could hear a man—­not Kevin—­say, “Alta Bates Medical Center.”

  “June, sorry,” Holly said. “First, you need to know Lucy is safe and healthy. Kevin is also safe, but he had a scare this morning and needed medical attention.”

  Despite Holly’s hippie accessories, during a crisis she was as focused and direct as a Navy SEAL. She explained how she had arrived to find Kevin passed out in the bathroom.

  “It’s hard to tell what happened,” she said. “But it looks like he either coughed or vomited up a considerable amount of blood. The doctors should know better.”

  I paced back and forth, earning dirty looks from pedestrians who almost lost an eye to my jutting elbow, as Holly described what happened: Kevin was breathing and had a pulse. He remained nonresponsive. Holly called an ambulance, which had arrived in seven minutes, during which time he never regained consciousness, and the ambulance was transporting him to Alta Bates.

  “Lucy,” I said. “Holly, did Lucy . . .”

  “Lucy is fine,” Holly said. “She was asleep when the ambulance arrived and I had her sit in the kitchen during the crush. Do you want me to bring her to the hospital?”