Canals Read online

  On the way to his car, he noticed the scuff mark on his shoe again and grunted. He sat on the drivers’ seat with his feet on the ground, looked around to make sure he was alone, then pulled a small shoeshine kit out from under the front seat. He worked on the shoe for five minutes. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to get him through the rest of the day, or at least until lunch. He could not work the rest of the day with a scuff mark on his shoe; every time he looked down he would see it, and it would eat at him.

  With the shoeshine kit tucked safely under the seat, he headed into town; he wanted to see the coroner as soon as possible, put a rush on his victim’s autopsy.

  A small boom box sat next to him on the seat. He pressed the play button on the CD player and the sound of Giachamo Puchini’s final opera, Turnadot, drifted out of the small speakers, immediately calming him. It was against regulations for police officers to listen to music while driving police vehicles, for obvious reasons, but Lawless did it anyway. The volume was always turned low, the music always opera. He carried a handgun because it was necessary, but as a detective, he knew his real weapon was his brain.

  He navigated the country roads, thinking about the dead man. He wondered if he had a family, a wife, a girlfriend, anyone who would mourn for him; wondered what his last thoughts were before the canal, or his injuries, took his life; wondered if he’d been aware he was about to die and if he’d been afraid; wondered what he would miss most in life; wondered if his drinking buddies would go on without him come Friday; wondered if he even drank at all.

  Mostly, though, he wondered what could kill a man like that, and, even more troublesome, what it had to do with his dream.

  He knew the two were connected.

  Chapter 2

  Lawless drove straight to the Coroner’s office and entered shortly after ten-thirty, said hello to Janis, the feisty African-American woman who ran the front desk, and grabbed a pair of paper overshoes from a cupboard.

  Janis gave him the eye. “You know you’re supposed to wear a paper gown and hairnet, Danny. I don’t know why you’re always trying to get me in trouble with the boss.”

  “Don’t play with me, Janis,” Lawless said as he sat to put the paper overshoes on. “We know who’s really in charge here.”

  “And it’s about time somebody acknowledged that. Now get yourself a gown and hairnet, before I have your ass fired.” She gave him a serious look, which he ignored.

  “You know I can’t wear a hairnet. Even after you take it off, the damned thing still feels like it’s on. I’d be trying to pull it off the rest of the day.”

  “So what? I don’t want you getting your greasy hair all over the lab, contaminatin’ the evidence.”

  She watched him work the paper overshoes on and said, “I see you have no problem wearing the booties. Don’t want no brains on your nice shoes?”

  He ignored her again and went to the lab, saw his victim lying on a stainless steel table. Standing close by, staring, was the tall employee who’d been gawking at the body by the canal.

  “Hey,” Lawless said. The man nodded but didn’t avert his eyes from the corpse. His name tag read “Phil Louper.”

  He watched Louper stare a while longer, and when it appeared the man was never going to break out of his trance, said, “You think he’s going make a run for it, Phil? Get up off the table and take off?”

  Louper glanced up and said, “I’m waitin’ for Dr. Brouchard. I’m body washer today.”

  Lawless grimaced. “What’s that like, body washer?”

  “There’s worse jobs,” Louper replied, focusing again on the corpse.

  Lawless couldn’t imagine what could be worse than hosing off stinky dead humans, most of whom were covered with blood or brains, or both, not to mention the contents of their bowels, which they released at the moment of death.

  Lawless got fidgety and decided to take another look at the wound; he had no trouble looking at the corpse in the autopsy room, in contrast to his earlier queasiness.

  A few moments later he heard whistling coming from somewhere behind a door. Larry Brouchard, the coroner, burst into the room, whistling a John Phillips Souza march Lawless vaguely remembered from the seventh grade. His lab coat was immaculate, but that’s where the neatness ended. Hair sprouted from his nose and ears like straw from an overstuffed scarecrow, and his thick bushy eyebrows resembled miniature hedges that hadn’t seen the sharp edge of a pruning shears in more than a decade. The hair on top of his head was a tangle of cowlicks, giving the impression he had combed it that morning with an eggbeater.

  “Danny! What a pleasant surprise,” Brouchard said, as if he meant it, grinning. He bounded over to Lawless and gave him a vigorous handshake.

  “Hey Doc,” Lawless replied, prying his hand away.

  “Doc smock!” Brouchard said. “No one calls me Doc but attorneys.”

  Lawless forced a chuckle, having heard the line a hundred times.

  Brouchard said, “I take it this is your case,” nodding at the corpse.

  “It is indeed. I know you haven’t had a chance to start on him yet, but I wanted to ask a favor. Could you call me as soon as you get an idea of cod? It doesn’t have to be official and I promise not to put it in the file.”

  “Sure, Danny,” Brouchard said. He looked at the corpse. “The cause of death appears to be blunt-force trauma.”

  “I can see that, Larry. I meant what weapon might have used or what might have caused the fatal injury.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “ID in the truck we think is his says Jose Sanchez. He worked for MID.”

  “Mr. Sanchez is priority-one this morning,” Brouchard said. “We don’t have anything ahead of him, do we Phil?”

  Louper shook his head. “No sir, this here is first.”

  “And you’ll call me?” Lawless asked again, handing Brouchard a card with his cell number.

  “Why the rush, Danny? The report should be ready in a day or two.”

  “I can’t really say why. Just something about how he died bothers me. It doesn’t look like an accident.”

  Brouchard frowned. “Off the record, though, right?”

  “Right.”

  Brouchard picked up a big Nikon digital camera and began photographing the body. Lawless took his cue to leave.

  Heading for the exit, he remembered the sample in his pocket. He removed the baggie from his pocket and gave it to Brouchard. “I took this off the canal wall. The guy’s fingers are scraped up pretty bad so it’s probably his blood, but I wanted to be sure.”

  Brouchard took the baggie and set it down. “I’ll cross-check it with the victim’s blood.”

  Lawless hesitated, rubbing his chin. “Hey, Larry, you’ll check for evidence on the wound, won’t you?”

  “Of course. Standard procedure to swab the wound.”

  “Right. Sorry. And you’ll have Janis get a hold of me as soon as you learn something?”

  “I’ll call you myself. I got it, Danny.”

  “Thanks again, Larry.”

  A clunky gray and white three-story building on

  11th Street had been the Modesto Irrigation District’s home since 1958. It once looked modern, but now, forty-five years later, was old and frumpy. Frayed and woody ivy plants crawled halfway up a south wall as if they had tried to escape but were too old and tired to make it. Scruffy shrubs surrounded the building, but had been trimmed back so many times they were little more than thick knobby branches.

  Lawless parked his Ford Crown Victoria on the street; he knew better than to try to find parking on their lot. Modesto’s population had increased by more than 150,000 since the 60s; parking was tight downtown.

  The automatic sliding door leading into the lobby groaned and screeched as he passed through. Inside, a handful of people stood in line waiting for an invitation to approach one of five teller windows. Several pairs of sleepy, dopey eyes turned toward him and made him think of cattle. One smiling woman had a paper
back novel. He found the information desk at the west end of the lobby.

  An obese woman whose name tag read “Linda” smiled and asked, “Can I help you?”

  Lawless showed her his badge. “I need to speak to the head of personnel, please.”

  “We don’t really have a head of personnel for the entire company. Which department do you need?”

  “The department that oversees the people who work on the canals.”

  “Maintenance or operations?”

  Lawless was losing his patience. “One of your workers was found dead in a canal early this morning. As he was already dead when I got there, I didn’t get a chance to ask him if he was in maintenance or operations.”

  Linda stopped smiling and a pudgy hand went to her mouth. “I hadn’t heard. That’s awful. Do you know what happened?”

  “He died. Now can I talk to someone please?”

  “Of course. I’m sorry. If he was out and about that early in the morning he was probably in maintenance. Ralph McFrazier is the guy you want to talk to. I’ll see if he’s in.”

  “Fine.”

  Without any outward sign she’d dialed a number, Linda was suddenly talking to someone on a tiny, almost invisible headset. “Hi Betty, there’s a policeman here to see Mr. McFrazier. Can I send him up?”

  She got her answer and said to Lawless, “He’s on the third floor to the left. I’ll buzz you in.” She pointed at a three-foot-high door, more like a low gate, at the end of a twenty-foot counter.

  When he reached the gate, he heard a soft buzzing, followed by a click. He pulled the gate open and frowned as he passed through, wondering why the phony buzzer setup; anyone could easily step over the gate, so where was the security?

  He rode the elevator to the third floor and found McFrazier’s secretary, who smiled and nodded toward an open door behind her. “Go right on in, officer.”

  Inside, a man sat behind a laminated wood desk tapping away on a computer keyboard with thick, stubby fingers, his eyes glued to the flat panel screen. The walls of the office were covered with framed photographs of canals and dams from different eras. A descriptive title under the frame of one read “Fresno Scrapers.” It showed mustached-men posing by a horse-drawn contraption with a long metal blade while standing in a wide, shallow dirt trench he assumed was an early canal. There were pictures of big dams, little dams, dirt canals, and cement-lined canals. Lawless couldn’t see anything personal on the walls or desk.

  McFrazier glanced up and jumped when he saw Lawless.

  “Sorry. Didn’t see you come in.”

  He stood and reached over the desk to shake hands. Ralph McFrazier was a stout, hairy man with thick arms and wide shoulders, dressed for summer in an open-collar short-sleeved white cotton shirt and lightweight cotton pants. Lawless imagined something ugly but comfortable on his feet, like Clark’s; he didn’t look like a loafer man. He had a full beard, heavy eyebrows, and bristly hair on top of his head. Thick, dark curly hair covered his forearms and the back of his fingers, tickling Lawless. More dark hair burst out of his shirt at this throat, reminding Lawless of the way a plant will curl and twist to get more of itself into the sunlight.

  “Ralph McFrazier,” he said as they shook hands. His voice was gruff, and Lawless thought he might be smiling but it was difficult to tell through the hair.

  “Detective Daniel Lawless. Nice to meet you, Mr. McFrazier.” Lawless expected to have his hand crushed, but McFrazier’s grip was soft, almost effeminate.

  “Call me Ralph. Mr. McFrazier was my father. Sit down.” He waved a furry arm at a worn chair behind Lawless and sat back down. He talked in short bursts, like a machine gun.

  “I’d like to talk to you about Jose Sanchez,” Lawless said, pulling out his notepad.

  “Yes. Terrible thing. What happened?”

  “We’re not sure yet. The coroner’s doing the autopsy today. We hope to know more.”

  “No clue yet?”

  “Afraid not.” Lawless found himself talking like McFrazier, and didn’t like it. “I understand he worked for you.”

  “Somewhere down the line. His direct supervisor is Jake Franklin. He can tell you more.”

  Something beeped: McFrazier glanced at his computer screen and hit a key. The beeping stopped.

  “Can you tell me what he was doing out there so early?”

  “Can’t tell for sure. Probably checking a gate.”

  “Gate? What kind of gate?”

  “Irrigation gate. Lets the water out. They get stuck. The farmers complain.” McFrazier turned his palms up, shrugged, and rolled his eyes.

  “What tools does he use?”

  “Wrench. Drill. Small stuff.”

  “Does he use a chainsaw, anything like that?”

  McFrazier frowned. “No. He doesn’t work on trees.” He looked at his watch, barely visible through his arm hair, and said, “Lunch time. Got an appointment. See Franklin. He can tell you more.”

  He stood and stuck out his hand again, indicating their talk was over.

  Dazed, Lawless shook his hand and left. He got Franklin’s number from McFrazier’s secretary and left the building, resisting the temptation to step over the silly gate leading into the lobby. Outside, he sat in his hot car with the engine running, the air on full, and dialed Franklin’s number. In five minutes he learned Sanchez was indeed checking irrigation gates, and, as a rule, was always out early in the spring and summer. It could get hot in Modesto in May so management let field workers set their own hours as long as they got the work done.

  Lawless clicked off and thought about the dead man again. He’d asked McFrazier if Sanchez had a chainsaw, but knew the answer would be no; a chainsaw could not have caused Sanchez’s wound. There were too many unanswered questions. There was no blood or sign of a struggle on the canal bank or inside the truck, so where had the man been attacked? How had he lost his arm, and where was that damn arm, anyway? It should have been in the canal with the body, stuck on the grille. He hoped Brouchard’s autopsy would provide some answers.

  Lawless’s stomach growled and he left the curb thinking about lunch. He decided to go home, sure he had something in the fridge he could warm up. And he could fix his shoe.

  Daniel Lawless was born in San Francisco in the early 60s. His parents, Donald Lawless and the former Carly Polanski, met while working at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco.

  It being the decade of free love, Donald and Carly lived together for several months before she got pregnant. They were married in Reno in March; Daniel was born two days after Thanksgiving; and Donald was gone by the following September, disappearing into San Francisco’s bath houses and the drug culture of the 60s. Daniel was fatherless before his first birthday.

  Carly moved to San Jose to live with her parents and lick her wounds. She divorced Donald but collected no child support or alimony; he didn’t pay and she was too timid to go after him. She got a job selling shoes at a shopping center in Palo Alto when Daniel was two.

  She studied shoe catalogs at home and drove into San Francisco regularly to attend fashion shows and conventions, taking little Daniel with her when possible. She taught him to read from the catalogs and by the time he was four he could identify shoe brands as well as she could.

  Shoe watching became a game for them.

  “Look Mom. Converse All Stars in red.”

  “Daniel, look at that woman’s shoes! She wearing DiGeorio leather pumps in camel. They go for a hundred and fifty bucks. What a sale that would have been!”

  It never occurred to Carly that maybe it wasn’t a good thing for a four-year-old boy to know so much about shoes, but nothing about baseball, riding bikes, or digging holes in vacant lots.

  Daniel could read and write when he started kindergarten; unusual for that time, years before yuppies began sending their three year olds to preschool. Because he’d rarely socialized with kids his age, he didn’t know what they talked about or how they played. If a kid asked him if he liked Superm
an more than Spiderman, he’d respond by telling them how many colors the shoes they had on came in; he didn’t know who Superman or Spiderman were.

  While his fascination with shoes turned into a lifelong obsession, he discovered early on he had to keep it a secret. School was traumatic for a boy who liked shoes but didn’t know how to play baseball or throw a football, or fight. Recess and lunch were treacherous times. If he dared venture out into the fields where the other boys were playing, they would go after him. If they caught him, they would take his shoes and urinate on them or throw them over the fence into the weeds, sometimes both.

  The verbal abuse was often worse than the physical. He was called lots of things — freak, queer, weirdo, sissy, momma’s boy, pussy — but only Shoe Boy stuck.

  Then, in the fifth grade, things changed: he began to sense trouble before it happened.

  The first premonition occurred when he was playing tetherball with Jilly Franklin, getting trounced. While watching the ball sail over his head, he suddenly felt a nauseous, tingling, swirling sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  John Wanker, a sixth grader, twice flunked and who outweighed Daniel by fifty pounds, yanked him away from the tetherball pole. John had suffered a beating at the hands of his mother’s drunk boyfriend the night before and was looking to pass the love on to someone else. Who better than Shoe Boy?

  The next time he got the feeling, he paid more attention. He still got caught, and he still had to retrieve his stinking, wet tennis shoes from the toilet, but that was the last time the bullies got him without having to run him down. After that, he’d get the feeling, look around to see where they were, and take off. It frustrated the bullies so much that they moved on to easier targets before the school year ended, giving Daniel some degree of peace.