Outraged

by Brian Copeland

Genres: Literary Fiction; Thrillers

Synopsis

A TV investigative reporter and his sister, a San Francisco PD homicide detective, look into the slayings of Bay Area cops who have shot unarmed African Americans yet faced no repercussions in this debut crime thriller.

“Brian Copeland’s thrilling debut novel is a revelation from an excitingly fresh voice ‘of color’ in the arena of crime fiction . . . He manages to take a ‘ripped from the headlines’ topic, the shooting of unarmed African Americans by police, and turn it into an exciting and entertaining blend of action, mystery, and social commentary.” —New York Times bestselling author JONATHAN KELLERMAN

When San Francisco Police Officer Mickey Driscoll is gunned down in the driveway of his suburban Bay Area home in broad daylight, the suspects are numerous. Was the murder committed by someone close to him? An arrestee seeking revenge? Or was it one of the many rioters, activists, and militant groups harassing his family since he accidentally shot and killed an unarmed African American honor student?
 
TV investigative reporter Topher Davis, the only Black journalist on that beat, has exactly three weeks to do one final story before his position is eliminated due to corporate budget cuts. Enlisting the aid of his sister, SFPD Homicide Detective Lynn Sloan, he decides to investigate what the families of Blacks killed by police--and the families of the cops themselves--go through when tragic events like this occur. Instead, they find themselves involved in an ever-expanding mystery as more officers who’ve committed the same offense turn up dead. Weaving their way through a world of grieving mothers and widows, African American militias, dirty cops, and drug dealers, they search for the truth that threatens to leave one . . . or both . . . siblings dead.

Release date: April 23, 2024

Publisher: Black Odyssey Media

Print pages: 320

Sample

ONE

What was it Forrest Gump had said?

“It felt like something jumped up and bit me in the buttocks.” Was that it?

Mickey Driscoll couldn’t remember exactly, but that went through his mind as the first bullet tore into his hip. Funny the things you think about when you’re being shot. All he’d wanted to do was cover the car. He’d taken his black ’57 T-bird out for a spin before tomorrow’s big car show at the fairgrounds in Pleasanton. He loved the month of May when it wasn’t the cool of spring nor the unbearable heat of the inland summer.

He’d taken the hardtop off the Black Beauty, as he called the car, and cruised her up I-680, the wind whistling through his graying hair as he gunned the engine in the northbound direction toward Concord. He hadn’t taken her out for a few months, so he listened carefully for any clicking in the valves. That would mean that the few drops of oil he’d wiped from the garage floor when he pulled her out indicated a larger leak. He’d hoped not. It had been over a year since he’d had the 312 engine rebuilt, and the warranty had just run out.

Wasn’t that always the way?

He got off at Treat Boulevard, turned around, and headed back home toward San Ramon, waving at an exuberant older man frantically honking his horn and giving a thumbs-up to the Beauty.

Ah, old guys and their cars . . .

He took the Crow Canyon Road exit, followed the side streets to his sleepy little cul-de-sac, pulled into his driveway, and was getting out of the car to open the garage when a sledgehammer hit him in his right hip, folding him across the top of the open car door.

Forrest Gump was full of shit. This was no bite. The pain was excruciating.

Mickey Driscoll didn’t have time to contemplate how badly it hurt because a second shot caught him in his right shoulder. He tried to reach the glove compartment of the Beauty before remembering that his Sig was in the Range Rover, which was his daily driver.

He could feel the wet stickiness of his blood drip down his right leg and ooze into his sock. Then came another shot. This one to the left shoulder. He was a sitting duck, and he knew it.

He thought about Janet and the girls. Thank God they weren’t home. Shannon had basketball practice, and Janet was picking Schuyler up from ballet.

He felt a fourth bullet enter his left leg, obliterating his hamstring. So much for the 10K he’d been training so hard for. The thought almost made him smile. He hated running. He was only doing it for Janet. She was the runner in the family.

He felt the fifth and sixth shots enter his back between the shoulder blades as he slid off the car door onto the cool pavement.

Does your life really flash before your eyes? he thought.

And then . . . blackness.

TWO

In broadcasting, it is known as “The Inevitable Friday Afternoon.”

Everyone who works in television and radio will have one. They live in denial about its eventual arrival, but it will come. “The Inevitable Friday Afternoon” is when you finish your Friday broadcast and you’re told to report to the general manager’s office immediately. There, depending upon disposition and comportment, the GM either gently or callously tells you that you’re being let go.

The following Monday, a new person sits behind your mic or in front of your camera.

These events occur on Fridays because management believes viewers and listeners will forget you over the weekend and instantaneously embrace your replacement. Generally, such abrupt changes, especially if the person being fired is a beloved personality, are so jarring that the audience, at least temporarily, scrambles to the competition.

My name is Topher Davis, and for the past sixteen years, I’ve been with Channel 6 in San Francisco, where I started as a feature reporter. I did stories on things like the circus. The jugglers and knife throwers taught me life-altering skills like the key to juggling is to throw the balls in an arc instead of straight up in the air and that a knife needs to make one complete revolution when thrown in order to stick in its target. Feature reporting also taught me that an inexplicable number of old ladies find potatoes they think are the spitting image of Elvis and trees with trunks that sprout the face of Jesus. That was my beat.

After seven years of such earth-shattering reportage, I talked the station into letting me create an investigative bureau. “Topher Davis Reports” has become an institution of sorts.

I’ve uncovered jewelry scams where diamonds are certified and sold as high grade when, in actuality, they’re closer to the mineral composition of a drinking glass. I’ve caught city officials in “pay for play” relationships with firms they’ve awarded government contracts. I even brought down an ice cream company who’s lax vetting resulted in the hiring of numerous registered sex offenders to drive their ice cream trucks to parks and schools.

It has been rewarding work that’s brought me sixteen local Emmy Awards. More importantly, it harkened back to when local news was considered a public service instead of a profit center.

My “Inevitable Friday Afternoon” came in early May. I was at the Six O’Clock News desk presenting my big sweeps exposé on violations of the Ellis Act. San Francisco’s rent is among the nation’s highest, thanks mainly to the tech boom. Techies worldwide have flocked to town, hoping to grasp their share of the gold that is Salesforce, Airbnb, or whatever the hot startup du jour happens to be.

This has created a housing shortage.

Simple supply and demand have made rents skyrocket, turning landlords into instant Powerball winners. They evict current, long-time tenants, throw a coat of paint on the place, and then rent again (at multiples of five or ten times what they had previously been charging) to the first techie who can come up with first, last, and a hefty security deposit.

California’s Ellis Act says that tenants cannot be evicted without cause unless the landlord (or a family member of the landlord) will live in the unit for at least two years. I caught landlords claiming they were evicting current tenants for family housing, only to discover that the “family member” was actually a newly flush tech bro who could regularly make the exorbitant rent.

I sat on the set next to Katie Robards, the current blond “anchor babe” (as the crew derisively called her behind her back), who had recently been hired to be part of the Channel 6 News Team. Local television is a very sexist business. On TV, a guy who graduated high school with Methuselah can anchor the news, but he must have an aspiring supermodel sitting next to him at the desk.

Channel 6 had all the demographic boxes checked: Katie, the pretty, young, blond anchorwoman; Phil Wagner, the distinguished older anchorman; Charlie Wu, the Asian weatherman; Latino sportscaster Chris Hernandez, and yours truly, their African American investigative reporter.

After my package on the evictions ran, the audio feed of the live broadcast in my earpiece was interrupted.

“Captain Queeg wants to see you upstairs,” Phil Silva said in my earpiece, referring to the senile commander in the movie The Caine Mutiny.

“Thanks, Bilko,” I whispered.

Phil had been directing the six o’clock show for five years. His name, “Phil Silva,” sounded a lot like that of the great comedian Phil Silvers, who’d played Sergeant Bilko in the ’50s, so I always addressed him as such.

“Captain Queeg” was Curt Weil, our general manager. Curt was a fifty-something man who often made decisions that seemed to defy logic. Hence, his nickname.



I walked off the set, down the hall to the glass elevator, and pushed the button for the third floor. As the elevator rose, I watched a crowd of tourists mesmerized by a juggling stilt walker at Pier 39 below.

Our studios are located on the Embarcadero, one of the city’s busiest tourist areas, with attractions including restaurants, magnet stores, T-shirt shops, street vendors, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and The Wax Museum.

It was a busy Friday evening on the wharf as herds of families walked along, munching popcorn and giant pretzels. A jogger ran by, weaving his way between groups of teens out for a night on the town and a mom pushing a very unhappy toddler in a stroller.

A jam-packed ferry shuttled sardined passengers across the bay to Alcatraz for tales of Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly. Thirty bucks to visit a prison. For fun. Only in America.

I got to the third floor and entered the spacious lobby leading to the general manager’s office. One of the secrets to longevity in television is keeping your head down. To that end, I hadn’t been up to the third floor in months. I had heard that the outer office had been redone, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.

Apparently, Queeg and company were going for some kind of faux, avant-garde look. Everything was white—the walls, the carpeting, and the furniture were all the color of bleached vanilla ice cream. It was a sterile atmosphere. I felt like I should scrub in for surgery.

A white, high-back couch sat against a back wall behind a pale, oval-shaped coffee table. White oil paintings hung on the walls in white frames above the couch. Each painting consisted of white paint meticulously slathered on canvas with a single black speck of a dot strategically placed in the center. The dots and the magazines on the coffee table, including Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Vanity Fair, bore the burden of providing the only color to the snowy ambiance.

Ethyl, a slight woman nearing retirement (come on . . . Who else would have a name like Ethyl?) furiously pecked away at the keyboard on the Dell desktop computer that sat in front of her on a flat white console reminiscent of the deck of the Starship Enterprise.

Does anybody still use Dell? For that matter, does anybody still use a desktop?

A bank of television monitors carrying live air from all the other San Francisco television market stations was adjacent to her desk.

“Hi, Ethyl,” I said with my best TV grin. I was proud of that grin. It had taken me years to perfect.

“Hey!” she smiled. “Great piece on the Ellis Act stuff.”

“Thanks. Like most of these kinds of stories, it was hard to prove . . . but once I did . . .”

“I’m glad you did. What those greedy bastards are doing to the long-term residents of this city is disgraceful.”

Ethyl was a third-generation San Franciscan. She was right. The whole demographic of the city was changing.

“Pretty soon, nobody but twenty-five-year-old tech millionaires will be able to afford to live here.”

“It’s looking that way,” I said. “I got word that The Man wants to see me.”

“He’s waiting for you in his office.”

“Thanks,” I said, heading for the inner office door. “And chin up. We won’t let the bastards win.”

Her lips curled into a reassuring smile as she returned to her Dell.



I strolled jauntily into Weil’s office, where he stood gazing out the window, his back to me.

“You wanted to see me boss?” I asked. I assumed that it was to congratulate me on the Ellis Act piece. It had the makings of Emmy number seventeen written all over it.

He turned to face me, and I could see that he was in mid conversation, a wireless headset connected to his ear, the mic protruding inches from his mouth.

“I don’t give a flying fuck what they say we agreed to on price. There is a contract that they signed with all the figures in black and white,” he bellowed into the headset.

Weil was a slender, middle-aged man who stood five foot eight on his best day. He looked much younger than his fifty-plus years by eating well and keeping a strict gym regimen. Taking care of himself had paid off. So had the dark brown plugs covering his thinning pate.

In stark contrast to the virginal sterility of the outer office, Weil’s place was classic masculine overcompensation. It was all done in dark brown wood tones. A large mahogany desk sat in front of the window with its picturesque view of the Bay Bridge. Though two brown leather chairs sat in front of the desk, Weil motioned for me to sit on the leather couch against the opposite wall under his portrait of Napoleon. That’s right . . . Napoleon.

Little man conquers the world. A metaphor or an aspiration?

How many strawberries were missing from the mess hall again, Captain Queeg?

“Yeah?” he screamed. “Well, I’ve got lawyers too. A whole bunch of them just sitting on their asses waiting for me to give them something to do.”

He looked at me, pointed to the earpiece, and did the “they’re crazy” revolution with his index finger circling his temple.

“What part of ‘I don’t give a fuck’ is unclear?” he said, pausing to take a swig from a bottle of sparking water on his desk. “As I see it, he has two choices. He can pay us to advertise . . . or he can just pay us.”

He violently tapped the side of his head, turning off the wireless earpiece.

“Sorry,” he said. “Pete’s Carpets is trying to weasel out of their ad buy.”

Pete’s was one of the station’s biggest local advertisers. They often sponsored my investigative reports.

Weil pressed a button under his desk, and the heavy wooden door that led to Ethyl’s office slowly shut. Didn’t Matt Lauer get in trouble for having one of these?

He walked over and sat on the leather sofa beside me. His body angled so that he was personally engaged with me, yet he could be out the door in ten seconds if someone yelled, “Fire.”

“I watched the Ellis piece,” he said. “Nice work.”

“Thanks,” I said with all the false modesty I could muster. “We worked really hard on that story.”

“It shows,” he said. “You work your ass off on everything you put on our air . . . which is what makes this so difficult.”

Uh-oh.

“What exactly,” I asked, “is so difficult?”

“Corporate has ordered a 15 percent cut across the board,” he said. “We’re closing the investigative bureau.”

I felt the wind kicked out of me.

“You’re what??” I managed to spit out. “It’s sweeps.”

In February, May, July, and November, sweeps are the months that ratings determine ad rates. The higher the ratings, the more that can be charged for commercials. Sweeps months are “all hands-on deck” periods with no vacation or sick time allowed. It’s when the most nonsensical scare stories are on the air. It’s when you hear things like, “Can your dishwashing liquid lead to a stroke? We’ll tell you at eleven.”

Firing me during May sweeps would be sheer insanity. Then again, there’s a reason we called him Captain Queeg.

“We’re letting you go in three weeks when your contract is up, Topher.”

He glanced away, no longer looking me in the eye. I could tell that he felt badly about the situation. Fuck him. He should.

“We’re the last investigative team on TV in the market. We do important work,” I said, unable to process what he was telling me.

“I know,” he said. “And I also know you built that organization from the ground up. You should be proud of it. I sure am.”

He got up, walked over to his desk, twisted the cap from his bottle of sparkling water, and took a long drink. Destroying careers is a thirsty business.

“What happens to Mandy?” I said, speaking of my producer. “And Stu?”

Stu Simons was my cameraman.

“Mandy will be reassigned,” Weil said between gulps of water. “Stu . . . is sixty-eight. He should have retired a year or two ago.”

I put my face in my hands. That damn place had been my life. Weil came over and sat back down next to me.

“Normally, you’d have no notice. You know that,” he said. “I couldn’t do that to you. You deserve better. You’ve always been a class act, and I know you’ll continue to be a class act in your final weeks with us.”

“Will there be a memo or an announcement?”

“Not from me,” he said. “You handle this however you want. Tell people. Don’t tell people. It’s 100 percent up to you. I trust you.”

I nodded.

“Think you’ve got one more sweeps story in you in the next three weeks?” he said, standing up, signaling that the meeting was over.

“I’m sure I’ll come up with something,” I said, rising from the couch.

“I’m sure you will,” he said with a half smile.

He walked back over to his desk, pressed the button, and the door opened. I walked out to find Ethyl still furiously stabbing away at her keyboard.

If I was going out, it was going to be in style. I needed an idea. I glanced over Ethyl’s head at the bank of monitors, and there it was, clear as day on Channel 7. A bold lower third graphic that read “COP KILLING.”

THREE

I pulled my Lexus into a space against the curb about fifteen yards from the last police barricade. I checked my hair and teeth in the rearview mirror and then got out. Without turning around, I heard the chirp as I pressed the button on my key fob, setting the car’s alarm.

It was a nice cul-de-sac. Upper-middle-class people, usually going about their upper-middle-class lives, stood in their yards and doorways awash in the red, yellow, and blue disco lights of the law enforcement and emergency vehicles, necks uncomfortably craned to get a glimpse of the police activity. Open garages were adorned with an array of late-model Mercedes, BMWs, and Teslas for the well-heeled and environmentally conscious.

I could already hear the refrain we’d get once we began collecting sound bites from the neighbors.

A chorus of, “I can’t believe this happened here.”

Translation: These things only happen where “those people” live.

I hate to break it to them that murder happens everywhere. Oh sure, the motives and means may differ, and some may be more adept than others in their attempts to evade justice, but a big bank account and an ethnically homogenous neighborhood don’t guarantee safety or security. They only guarantee that the media will show up. And that the murder will actually be investigated.

This was the kind of neighborhood the press loved.

The court was ringed by an array of homes built in the eighties, not quite on the McMansion spectrum but close enough to run in the multimillion-dollar range. The houses were all different yet strangely the same. The same postage stamp-sized front yards backed by the same stucco-encrusted homes. Most had two stories. One even sported a third. There was the feel of a black-and-white sitcom about the neighborhood. The set of My Three Sons preserved in amber.

I walked up the cul-de-sac to a cop standing in front of the yellow crime scene tape keeping the lookie-loos at bay. He was a young rookie I didn’t recognize. Then again, I didn’t know most of the cops in San Ramon. He was a handsome six-footer with jet-black hair shaved into a buzz cut. I’d guess recent military experience. He had that “Uncle Sam Wants You” demeanor.

“Officer Whitmeyer,” I said, reading his silver nameplate, “I’m—”

“I know who you are, Mr. Davis,” he said, cutting me off. “I’m sorry, but my orders are to let no unauthorized personnel into the restricted area. Unfortunately, that includes you.”

Looking past Private Pyle, I saw a human-shaped figure lying under a sheet in the driveway. Pools of blood stained the pavement. A gorgeous black ’57 Thunderbird sat parked adjacent to the body. The driver’s-side door was open, and the red interior was marred by what appeared to be bullet holes, one piercing the side of the driver’s seat. The other was in the dash.

“Look,” I said to Whitmeyer, “I understand you’re just doing your job. Only following orders. I get that. But you see, I have a job to do too—”

“Let him through,” came a woman’s voice. “Otherwise, you’ll get a twenty-minute lecture on the First Amendment.”

Detective Lynn Sloan appeared behind the young officer.

“It’s okay,” she said, gently touching his shoulder. “I’ll take responsibility.”

Whitmeyer stepped aside. I lifted the crime scene tape and slipped under.

“What are you doing here?” I said. “You’re SFPD. San Ramon is a little out of your jurisdiction, isn’t it, Detective?”

The detective was a tall, lean, African American woman. She was thin and attractive in a “runway” sort of way, but something about her demeanor conveyed a “don’t even think about it if you want your limbs to remain intact” vibe.

“Driscoll was SFPD,” she said. “One of ours. This will be a joint investigation.”

“What do you know so far?”

“Just because I let you in here doesn’t mean I’m spilling my guts on an open investigation into a cop killing,” she said. “Brother or no brother.”

Even though we’re siblings, Lynn has always been clear about setting boundaries.

“Then why let me back here?” I asked.

“Like I told the kid, to spare him from one of your long, boring-ass civics lessons.”

I chuckled. Lynn didn’t. She was always deadly serious at a crime scene.

“You’ve got to give me something. A cop who is generally despised by every person of color in the nine Bay Area counties gets gunned down in his own driveway. People are gonna want to know what happened,” I said. “Or shall I instruct you in the nuances of the First Amendment?”

“Oh God, no,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Look . . . off the record?”

“For now,” I promised.

“He took six bullets,” she said, releasing an exasperated breath.

“Wow,” I said. “Six slugs.”

“This was a revenge killing,” she said. “Pure and simple.”

“Doesn’t surprise me a bit,” I said.

Lynn shook her head.

A thick, middle-aged Latino San Ramon cop with snow-white hair and a beard approached Lynn.

“Detective . . .” he said, clamming up as soon as he saw me.

“Detective Morales, this is my brother, Chris. Chris, Detective Jose Morales. He caught the case for San Ramon PD.”

Morales extended a meaty hand.

“You’re the TV guy,” he said with recognition.

I nodded.

“I thought. . .