Cop Out by Susan Dunlap

can you tell us about Bryant Hemming’s murder?”
    “Ask the press officer.”
    “Execution style?”
    It wasn’t, but I didn’t stop to illuminate him on that.
    “Hemming was all set to go to Washington and mediate between powerful forces who could have a lot to lose, right?”
    I kept moving, the camera operator polkaing alongside. Figueroa popped in front of me. “Officer, this is an important story. Bay Area viewers are very distressed about Bryant Hemming’s murder. They’re anxious to know what’s being done to find the man…or men …who slew him. What leads are you pursuing?”
    “Gosh, isn’t that what the Channel Five guys asked an hour ago?” I said straight-faced. The camera light left my face mid-sentence, and as I loped into the dark sidewalk beyond, I could hear Figueroa talking in news cadence about breaking in with the latest developments.
    Had Bryant Hemming still been alive, he would have delighted in reminding Figueroa that the average viewer hates having his program commandeered by a teaser for the next newscast. But alas, Hemming wasn’t alive, and Figueroa had too much invested in Hemming to let go.
    I couldn’t park outside Daisy Culligan’s house, with my lights flashing or not. Daisy Culligan’s address was not on a street but on one of Berkeley’s paths that bisect the long blocks of north Berkeley.
    There are paths all over town and staircases cutting from street to street in the hills, but north Berkeley is the only section in which the paths actually were part of the street plan when the development was built after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Then the selling point was that the new homeowner could leave his car for the little woman and stroll down the paths to the Alameda, catch the streetcar to the ferry, and on to the office in San Francisco.
    The streetcars are long gone, the ferry resurrected only briefly after the Bay Bridge collapsed in the Loma Prieta earthquake, and the paths are used not by harried commuters but by hill dwellers on their way to Peet’s, or on their way home caffè latte cup in hand.
    When I realized which path was Daisy Culligan’s, I considered calling Inspector Doyle and removing myself from Ott Patrol. I thought I knew the man, his principles, the circles in which he traveled. If Daisy Culligan, the lovebird of his lustful hopes, the woman who raised a blush to his sallow cheeks, could afford to live here , then the real Herman Ott had eluded me all these years.
    The houses on either side of the path were as close as Berkeley comes to mansions—old, rambling places with big windows, huge trees, and sloping, landscaped lawns dotted with boulders. Howard and I had walked over here a week ago on our day off, lattes in one hand, sesame bagels in the other. We had made our way up the large stones that served as steps, discussing what we’d save if we tripped—coffee, bagel, or butt. Even in daylight the speculation hadn’t been entirely frivolous, and now, illumined only by the lawn lanterns and my flashlight, the weaving path was treacherous.
    I was halfway up when I spotted a plump gray-haired woman in sweatshirt and jeans. “Over here. Watch your step. Right in here,” she said, leading me to an open door with her flashlight.
    I smiled with relief. Ott’s friend Daisy Culligan was no matron of the moneyed establishment. The house could have had six bedrooms, a study, an au pair suite, but the space that Daisy Culligan occupied must have been the maid’s quarters. A nine-by-twelve rug would nearly have covered the floor here if she had had one, but she didn’t. No rug, nor much else. It was a room consciously intended to be bare. But as is the case with small living spaces, intentions had been shoved out by the clutter of necessity. Daisy Culligan had papers stacked on each step of the circular staircase as if it were an ascending file drawer. The white futon chairs in front of the fireplace held mail, days of it. Next to one old