“I should have done this a long time ago,” he says.
The euphemisms flow, and I sit there receiving them passively, not daring to question the script Bascombe says “they” have prepared. I owe this man. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. Out of respect, I don’t question anything he says. I nod in agreement, like I’m happy for him, like this is the best news he could have shared. Any other reaction would risk humiliation.
“Sir,” I say, reaching across the desk to shake his hand. “It’s been a real pleasure working for you. It won’t be the same here without you.”
He holds my hand a beat longer than is required, fixing his piercing eyes on me.
“Thank you, March. You know you’ve always had my respect.”
I pull my hand back. “You’ve always had mine, too.”
It’s not fair.
Closing the door behind me, I walk out of Homicide and take the elevator down to the ground floor. A man like that, with the years he’s put in. . I go through the lobby past the front desk, pushing through the revolving doors out onto the sidewalk, into the searing brightness of midday. To go out like this, a whimper not a bang, and for what? For being ambitious. For getting on the wrong side of people who play the game better than him. But they don’t run homicide squads better than him, because no one does. I take a deep breath, let it out. Take another. I close my eyes and try not to think. He doesn’t deserve what they’ve dealt him. I’d pay them back if I could, if I even knew who they were.
Cars rush by, leaving the smell of exhaust in their wake.
I will know soon enough. When someone else takes his place.
My phone rings before I get back inside, Lorenz calling from Brandon Ford’s office.
“There’s a safe here,” he says, “with a couple of rifles inside. There’s something else down here, too. I think you should come take a look.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure. . a shrine? Newspaper clippings, photos, kind of a psycho wall.”
“Snap some photos of it in situ, then bring it all down here.”
He hesitates. “I’d rather you meet me. You’ll see what I mean.”
Instead of heading upstairs again, I go straight to the garage. It takes twenty minutes to get there, and another five to circle around, retracing my path along Westheimer until I figure out which of the half-empty low-rise office parks is the right one. The building’s storefronts house a couple of pawnshops, a check casher, and a seedy-looking lingerie boutique. A sign in the parking lot lists the businesses inside. Brandon Ford’s name doesn’t appear.
I park next to Lorenz’s car and go through the glass doors into a small air-conditioned entry with a row of mailboxes on one wall. Down a tiled corridor I hear the splash of a water fountain. As I follow the sound, the air grows humid. The corridor opens into a cathedral-like atrium, open in the center, its terra-cotta expanse filled with blinding sun from the overhead skylights. Around the shadowy perimeter, two floors of office space face the lobby like the split levels of an old-fashioned motor court.
The smell inside reminds me of when I was a kid and my aunt would lock me in the car on a hot day with the windows cranked down just an inch. As my eyes adjust, I see the water fountain, hedged in by thirty-year-old plastic bushes.
After ascending a flight of stairs, I find the right door. Lorenz answers on the first knock, like he’s been waiting at the threshold all this time.
“It’s like a time warp out there,” he says.
The space Brandon Ford rented consists of three rooms. The reception space up front houses an empty desk. On the right, there’s a hallway that leads to two offices. The front one contains the gun safe, its thick door hanging open to reveal a couple of black rifles. I peer inside. Tucked in back I find a short-barreled AK with a folding stock. This particular variant is called the Krinkov. To possess a short-barreled rifle of this sort legally, Ford would have had to jump through some NFA hoops, and it would only be transferrable to others willing to qualify the same way. I detach the banana mag-which is empty-and pull the breach open to make sure it’s unloaded.
“Is there any paperwork on these?”
Lorenz pulls open a file cabinet in the corner. “There’s a bunch in here, depending on what you’re looking for.”
On the shelf inside the safe, twenty-round boxes of Wolf 5.45 x.39mm hollow points are stacked on top of each other.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say, putting the rifle back. “But we should probably make a call to ATF. I’m not sure what the procedure is when a gun dealer is deceased, but I don’t think leaving these here is a good idea. How’d you open the safe?”
“Same combo as the one at the house. I found it in his bedroom nightstand.”
“So where’s this psycho wall?”
He points the way to the back office. I go inside, flipping on the lights. This is where Ford must have conducted business. The desk wraps around one corner with custom cabinets overhead, the doors ajar from Lorenz’s search. The computer hums inside the footwell, but the twenty-inch monitor on the desk is dark, an add-on camera clipped to one side. On the opposite wall there’s a corkboard covered in news clippings.
“Take a closer look,” he says.
Some of the clippings are from the Chronicle, some are from the Houston Press. Some are printouts from the Internet, the URLs stamped on the outer margins. All of them concern the same story, and they are covered in ink underlining and bright yellow highlighting.
“You remember that incident?” Lorenz asks.
I nod silently.
Earlier this year, an HPD patrol car pulled over a man speeding on Allen Parkway after midnight. The uniforms-a rookie and his training officer-handled everything by the numbers. The rookie went to the driver’s window while the trainer approached the other side. After shining his light into the car, the rookie exchanged words with the driver and then returned to the patrol car to run the license. All of this was captured on the dashboard cam.
While the rookie was out of the way, his trainer approached the driver’s window. On the video, which was played over and over on the local news, the trainer suddenly backpedals and starts to reach for his side arm. There’s a flash from the window, an orange tongue of flame, and the trainer rolls backward onto the pavement. He draws and fires while the rookie runs forward with his own weapon drawn, also firing.
He approaches the driver’s window first, making sure the threat is neutralized, then goes to the trainer and helps him up. Thanks to his vest, the trainer is bruised but otherwise fine.
Watching the footage, things happen so fast. It’s all straightforward and undramatic, the way fights mostly are. If you weren’t paying attention, you might mistake the trainer’s motion for a clumsy fall. The stakes were life and death, but they don’t look it on camera.
When the uniforms made their report, the story got strange. According to them, the driver had refused to give his identification, claiming he had immunity. He told the rookie he worked for the CIA. Then he’d changed course and handed his license over. His name was Andrew Nesbitt, aged sixty-one, a well-off retiree with a house in River Oaks. When the trainer approached, sensing something wasn’t right, Nesbitt grew combative and paranoid. He accused the officers of pulling him over without justification-and then, without warning, he produced a gun. It was a.32 Walther PPK, weapon of choice for James Bond.
“The guy wasn’t just delusional,” Lorenz says, lifting the corner of one of the clippings. “He was some kind of con man. He was, like, the president of the retired intelligence officers’ club. Even the real spooks believed he was one of them.”
“That’s a theory. It’s always possible he was telling the truth. There’s no law that says retired case officers can’t go nuts like everybody else. I bet they’re more prone to it than most.”