Blood Flag Read online

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to the members of the US Army’s 45th Infantry Division, the men who fought their way through Europe, liberated the concentration camp at Dachau, and occupied the City of Munich at the end of World War II

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Steve Martini

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  For most human beings, what to do with our hands is an issue. Until we need an opposable thumb to pick something up, our hands have the social utility of an inflamed appendix. Once upon a time we busied them by smoking. Bogart and Bacall taught us how to do this with style. Now that that has been declared unhealthy and a universal stigma, we employ our idle fingers fondling our cell phones.

  It is what Sofia, my new legal assistant, is doing as I watch her sitting on the couch in my office. She is off to the side and behind my client, an older woman who is pouring out her soul, the painful details of her legal problems, from the client chair across from me. Sofia’s attention is riveted on the small screen in her hand. A tiny charm dangles from the cell phone on a chain plugged into the iPhone’s headphone jack. The charm, a minuscule chrome copy of the Eiffel Tower, signifies dreams of future travel. If she can stay on track between work and school, Sofia has already given me notice. She plans a trip to Paris with friends next summer. Ah, to be young and free—and utterly cavalier concerning assurances for continued employment.

  Sofia came to us bearing three impressive letters of recommendation from social heavyweights in the community. I had to wonder how she knew these people. When I asked, she didn’t bat an eye. Instead she admitted that she had never met any of them and that, in fact, a mutual friend whom she did know and who ran in their circles, a person she had been acquainted with for some time, had requested the endorsements on her behalf. She offered nothing regarding the identity of this individual and I didn’t ask. The letters were very carefully crafted. None of them actually stated that they knew her. Instead they relied on her academic record and her reputation for hard work. I was impressed by Sofia’s honesty, that she didn’t lie about it. That and the fact that there was just something about her.

  Her thumbs work on overdrive—enough speed to type out a Ph.D. thesis. I can be pretty sure she is not tapping out a transcript of my client’s words. It’s probably a text message confirming a date for tonight.

  Sofia is our latest hire, a paralegal sidetracked on her way to law school, a hiatus to earn money and get some experience. She is twenty-six years old, and her real name is Sadie Leon. Someone, I think it was her father, tagged her with the nickname Sofia and it stuck. She is the spitting image of a young Sophia Loren. Tall, stately, beautiful, a little ungainly, like an adolescent doe. She is learning how to fend off the insecurities of youth, but still needs to hide on occasion behind the refuge of her phone. For me she is becoming an emotional standin for my daughter, Sarah, who, for the moment at least, is living in Los Angeles. Joselyn, my better half, has already taken Sofia under her wing. They spend a good amount of time laughing together. I suspect some of it is at my expense.

  Sofia’s hire, along with several others, was made possible by a huge financial windfall from our last case—like winning the lottery. Harry Hinds, who is my law partner, and I have netted millions. We have yet to stop counting it all. The money pours into our business account and from there into a burgeoning investment portfolio. It is the result of a federal whistle-blower statute. With the help of our client we were able to identify a small brigade of offshore tax cheats, some of whom were hiding millions in secret numbered bank accounts overseas—to be specific, Switzerland. The IRS and the Treasury Department rewarded our client and he, in turn, showered us with enough money in the form of fees for Harry and me to retire. But we didn’t. Instead we doubled down, hired more help, and went back to the gristmill trying to rebuild our practice. As I listen to our prospective client from the chair behind my desk, I begin to wonder why I am not fishing off the deck of a gleaming motor yacht somewhere in the Lesser Antilles.

  “I don’t know how they could possibly think I killed him,” she says. Emma Brauer is sixty-three, has never married, and has no children. She has disheveled brown graying hair and a face like a pedigreed bulldog, which is etched with lines of worry that allow even the casual observer to suspect that this is not the first time she’s fallen victim to anxiety. “They can’t really think I did it,” she says. “I loved him. He was all I had.”

  “That’s why they think you did it,” says Harry. “The motive for a mercy killing is usually love, though not always.” Harry is seated in the other client chair in front of my desk playing devil’s advocate, the devil in this case being the cops and the county’s district attorney. “Let me ask you,” he says. “Did you by chance come into any kind of an inheritance as a result of your father’s death?”

  “Only the house,” she says. “And some money.”

  “How much money?”

  “About two hundred and seventy thousand dollars.”

  Harry winces.

  “They can’t possibly think I killed him for that. He was already dying. Why would I kill him when all I had to do was wait? And besides, I loved him.”

  “Prosecutors have twisted psyches and hyperactive imaginations,” says Harry. “Maybe they think he was about to change his will.”

  “He didn’t have one. I was his only child.”

  “Maybe he was about to write one?” Harry’s plumbing all the possibilities.

  “Not that I know of,” she says. “The police didn’t say anything about any of this when they talked to me.”

  “They wouldn’t,” Harry tells her. He looks at me. “Dad was in a nursing home.” Harry looks down at the open file in front of him on the desk. “Robert Brauer, eighty-nine years old, smoked like a chimney almost till the end, according to the notes. They haven’t released the toxicology report or precise cause of death from the postmortem, but rumor is he was helped along.”

  “Why would I do that?” she asks.

  “Your father was suffering, I take it?” I look at her.

&nbsp
; “He was in some pain. He was old. Of course he was suffering.”

  “Diabetes, emphysema, COPD—chronic obstructive pulmonary disease . . .” says Harry.

  “He smoked all his life,” she says. “It was the only pleasure he had left. I couldn’t bear to take them away from him. His cigarettes, I mean. Is that what this is all about? Because I didn’t take away his cigarettes?”

  “We can hope so,” says Harry, “but I doubt it. According to the doctor’s reports, Robert—”

  “Bob. Nobody called him Robert,” she corrects him.

  “Bob’s breathing was chronically labored,” says Harry.

  “Like sucking air through a straw,” says Emma, “if you know what I mean. He had been using oxygen for a couple of years at the house before he went into the hospital.”

  “So you saw all of this?” I ask.

  “Of course. I had to take care of him.”

  “Was that a burden?” asks Harry.

  “It wasn’t easy,” she says.

  All the possible motives. Harry glances at me.

  “So I guess it looks bad for me, doesn’t it?” This seems to dawn on her for the first time.

  “We won’t know until we see the evidence,” I tell her. “Relax.”

  “It’s hard enough to lose your father, but to have the police say I killed him . . .” Brauer looks down at the surface of my desk and begins to tear up.

  Before I can search for the box of Kleenex, Sofia is off the couch and finds it on the credenza behind my desk. She dangles two from her fingers in front of Brauer’s watering, downcast eyes. Emma takes them and mops up her tears.

  Sofia’s cell phone is still in her other hand, her gaze continuously on its screen as she navigates flawlessly in the blind, back to the couch. The girl must have learned multitasking in the womb. Quiz her after the client meeting, she’ll be able to repeat almost verbatim everything Brauer told us. I know this because I’ve tested her before. A mind like a police scanner.

  “I didn’t do it,” says Brauer. “Why do the police think I did something wrong?”

  “Don’t know,” says Harry.

  But it’s clear that they do. Several of Emma’s friends, one of them a neighbor, were interviewed by the cops. They were asked questions about hypodermic needles and medications and who administered them, with particular emphasis on Emma. One of her friends told Emma she would be wise to get a lawyer. It’s the reason she is here this morning.

  “Did you ever administer medications to your father?” I ask her.

  “Sure, when he was home. But not after he went to the VA. After that, the nurses did it. After they finally took him in. Had to fight like hell to get him there. They said they would contract out for a private nursing home. They put him on a list and nothing happened. Weeks went by. You know, I’m thinking that if Dad died of some kind of problem with his medications, maybe they screwed up. The VA, I mean. They’re known for it. I should have never let him go there.”

  I look at Harry. I can tell by the way his eyebrows arch, the familiar wrinkle across his forehead, that this is the kind of pregnant thought that might breed a theory of defense. “We’ll look into it,” he says.

  “All the problems started after Dad received that damned package,” she says.

  “What package?” I ask.

  “You mean medications?” says Harry.

  “No, it wasn’t medicine,” she says. “It was a small cardboard box. Came in the mail, in brown paper wrapping. Dad said it was something left to him by a friend, a buddy from his army days. I thought it might be jewelry, you know, the size and shape of the box and all. It had Dad’s name and address on the wrapper. Inside was a key. It looked like it belonged to a safe-deposit box. You know the kind, flat metal with no grooves on the sides.”

  I nod. “Go on.”

  “That box was no end of troubles. Inside, in addition to the key, there was a piece of paper folded up with a name on it, and a picture. It looked like it might have been a copy of an ID. It was military but not US. I don’t think, anyway. The words printed on it weren’t in English. I asked Dad what it was. He said he didn’t know. But I think he did. Just the way he looked. He knew something. All the trouble started after that.”

  “What trouble?” says Harry.

  “Phone calls late at night. A man’s voice asking for Dad. Whenever I asked for his name on the phone he told me, ‘I’m a friend of your father’s. He’ll know who I am.’ Wouldn’t give me his name. Dad would take the phone and send me out of the room while they talked. When the phone calls ended, Dad looked worried, you know what I mean? He was sick, getting sicker each day. Now whoever was on the phone was making it worse. Adding a ton of stress. Over what, I don’t know. But it had to do with the key and that piece of paper. Of that I’m sure. Dad didn’t need the aggravation and I certainly didn’t. After the third call I stopped putting them through. I told the guy on the phone that my father was out and I hung up. Dad got scared. Told me I shouldn’t have done it. He told me to put the box with the key and the paper in my safe-deposit box at the bank. He wanted it out of the house.”

  “Why?” says Harry.

  “I don’t know. But that was before the burglary,” she says.

  “When was this?” I ask.

  “About five months ago. One afternoon I took Dad to the VA. We came home and the house had been turned upside down. Everything dropped out of drawers all over the floor. Dishes broken. The place was a mess. Upholstery and mattresses were all cut up, slashed and ripped. You know what I mean?”

  “Like somebody was looking for something,” says Harry.

  “Exactly.”

  “Where’s the box now?” I ask.

  “Still in the safe-deposit vault at my bank.”

  “You have the key?” says Harry.

  “At home hidden away, in a safe place. They didn’t find it.”

  “Did you report the burglary to the police?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Dad didn’t want to.”

  “Did he say why?” I ask.

  “No. Instead we called in some friends. They helped us clean up. Dad told them it was probably kids. But he and I both knew that it wasn’t. Two weeks later Dad was admitted to the VA and he never came out.”

  “And he never told you who was on the phone?” says Harry.

  “No.”

  “Do you know who sent the box to your father?” I ask her.

  “No. But I think there was a return address on the wrapper.”

  “You saved it?”

  “Dad folded it up and put it in the box under the key and the ID. I saw it in the box when I took it to the bank, but I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “And you think whoever burglarized your house and called your father might have killed him?” I look at her.

  “I don’t know. All I know is he was scared.”

  Before Harry or I can say anything more, there’s a rap on the door. It opens and Brenda, my secretary, sticks her head in. “Sorry to interrupt but there’re two detectives here to see you. They say they have an arrest warrant for Ms. Brauer.”

  TWO

  He was parked at the curb looking through the open window on the driver’s side. The tiny rented Kia Rio was about a hundred and fifty yards down Winona Avenue from the small single-story house, the center of all the commotion across the street. It was a ranch-style bungalow like most of the others, gray stucco siding with a composition roof. There was a small single-car garage tacked on to the front of the house. Two fair-sized palm trees poked out of the planter bed that bordered the six-foot strip of front lawn that ran to the concrete sidewalk out in front.

  A cop was busy tying off yellow plastic tape to one of the palm trees. He snaked the tape three times back and forth between a fence near the adjoining property and the tree, forming a barrier to keep the growing band of nosy neighbors at bay.

  “Damn it!” He looked at the computer printout lyi
ng on the passenger seat next to him hoping that maybe it was the wrong house. It showed the street view from Google Earth. There was no question it was the same house, correct address, palm trees and all. Two police cars were parked on the street in front. There was a white official van of some kind backed into the driveway. The question was, what to do now?

  He reached into the backseat, grabbed a backpack, and pulled out what looked like a short telescope. He popped the lens cover off the spotting scope, eased the rubber cover from the eyepiece, and steadied the tube of the scope on top of the exterior side-view mirror on the car. Then he adjusted the zoom and focused in.

  The scope was capable of showing .30-caliber bullet holes, about a third of an inch across, on a target a thousand yards away. From where he was parked he could read the names of the officers from the nameplates on the front of their uniform shirts. The lettering looked like a highway billboard. He adjusted the magnification down to reduce the shake on the scope and focused in on the white van parked in the driveway. Blue letters on the side read: SAN DIEGO POLICE CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION.

  “What the hell is going on?” He talked to himself. This wasn’t unusual. Lately he’d been scratching his head about a number of things. He wondered if the police were looking for the same thing he was. Unless the old man left something in writing or talked to someone before he died, which was not likely, there was no way for the police to know.

  He settled in as he watched the front of the house. He sat there for nearly two hours as they carried cardboard boxes and a number of plastic bags out of the house. He could only guess at the contents. The bags were sealed and the transfer boxes were covered. He assumed that maybe there were papers in most of the boxes, but there was no way to know, not a clue as to what the cops were looking for. At one point they came out with a desktop computer tower and some other electronics too big for a box. One of them carried a house phone with one of those base stations that probably recorded messages.

  He was relieved that he had never attempted to contact the old man by e-mail. Nor had he left any voicemail messages on his phone. The only connection between them were two brief telephone conversations for which there were a dozen plausible explanations. That is, if anyone ever came asking questions. Unless the old man had recorded their conversations or taken notes, which was highly unlikely, no one could possibly know what they talked about. He knew the man would never tell his daughter. He would have had well-founded and serious concerns for her safety.