by Larry Darter
“Good thinking, Youngblood,” Ortega said. “What about voicemails?”
“There were eleven messages,” Drew said. “I played them on speaker and recorded them with an app on my phone in case we can’t get back into it.”
Ortega nodded. “Patrol says the house was secure except for the front door and no signs of forcible entry. What do you think?”
“It’s a nice neighborhood, and no forcible entry,” Drew said. “Probably someone she knew and let in. Lover’s quarrel that broke bad, or an ex-boyfriend maybe.”
Ortega nodded. “Or some admirer interested in her who got angry when she didn’t reciprocate his feelings,” he said. “The usual suspects. We’ll start with her inner circle and work out from there. Maybe this will be an easy one for a change.”
“Yeah, we’re due for one of those,” Drew said.
A body movers team from the county coroner’s office arrived with a gurney and a body bag. Once Salazar finished, they bagged and transported the deceased female.
The SID evidence collection team supervisor briefed the detectives on the evidence they had collected. They had lifted many prints, vacuumed for trace evidence, and black-lighted the couch for semen stains, which they found. The team found the victim’s clothing, some of it torn, on the living room floor near the couch.
“Looks like a rape-murder,” the SID supervisor said. “The bed was undisturbed and no signs of a struggle anywhere except here in the living room. Looks like it all went down in here.” Ortega and Drew thought the same.
Once SID had packed up and departed, Ortega released the Pacific patrol officers and secured the front door with a key they found inside the house. It was after eight when he and Drew left the scene for West Bureau.
Chapter 33
It was well after nine by the time Drew got to Lucy’s apartment in Rancho Park. It had been his night to cook, so he stopped off at Poquito Mas for tacos on the way. He ordered enough for two, although he expected Lucy had probably already eaten something for dinner. She was sitting on the couch in denim cutoffs and a blue LAPD tee-shirt watching a sitcom on television when he came in.
“I thought you must have gone home to your place,” Lucy said. “And it was your night to cook.”
Drew grimaced and held up the paper bag of tacos and bent down to kiss her.
“Aren’t you rocking the party today. What’s with the long face? Have a tough one?”
“Everything is turning to shit out there,” Drew said. “We caught a murder in Venice at three, and it was after eight by the time we cleared the scene.”
Lucy got up, and they embraced. He ran his hands down her back and the curve of her hips. “But here with you, it’s all better,” Drew said.
“Aw… aren’t you sweet? What’s the new case?”
“Someone beat and strangled a twenty-three-year-old actress inside her Venice bungalow,” Drew said, disentangling himself and heading for the kitchen. He dropped the bag on the dining table and grabbed plates from the cabinet.
Lucy followed him to the kitchen. She grabbed two Coronas from the frig and opened them. They met back at the table.
“Damn, actresses are dropping like flies around here,” Lucy said. “This is your second actress since you started at West Bureau.”
“Yeah, it seems like being an actor in L.A. is more dangerous than clerking at a convenience store,” Drew said, taking off his jacket and dropping onto a chair. “You want corn or flour tortillas?”
“Can’t I have one of each?”
“Sure, I got steak and chicken. Help yourself.”
Lucy smiled at him. “Tell Rudy you can’t work so late when it’s your night to cook.”
Teasing him about that was a ritual of sorts. When it was his turn to cook, Drew usually took her out or brought home takeout. He grinned back at her and took a bite of a taco. They ate tacos and sipped the beer quietly for a while.
“Why do you talk to me about work but keep everything else secret, Howie?” Lucy said. “We share a form of intimacy, but you never tell me about you. You’ve never once talked about your parents or told me what it was like growing up. What do I even know about you, about your past? We have to get to that at some point, don’t we? We have to, or I don’t see how this will last.”
Drew nodded and looked down at the table to avoid making eye contact. He didn’t know what to say. He was too burdened with thoughts of work to get into it now.
“You want another chicken taco?” he said.
“Fine.”
After they finished eating, Lucy went back to the couch and turned the television on again. Drew showered, changed into casual clothes, and grabbed another beer on his way to the living room. He sat on the couch beside her.
They sat together with Lucy watching television while Drew thought about his cases. Rudy had told Drew more than once that he distanced himself from the job on his off time with his many interests and spending quality time with his family. “It wouldn’t be fair to my wife and kids to take all this shit home with me,” Ortega had said. Drew couldn’t understand how that was even possible.
He couldn’t forget a case at night and often spent much of his evenings, even at Lucy’s place, scanning the Internet for research material. Even now, it took every ounce of his willpower not to get up and grab his laptop. Since William Hurst’s trial had started in Florida two weeks ago, following it on the Internet obsessed Drew. Every evening he read the local Key West newspaper online edition and other Florida news sources. He checked the local television news websites there for updates.
Drew drained the beer bottle and stared at the television screen, but he didn’t really see it. Too much work-related stuff filled his head. He was already thinking about everything he had to do the next day and laying out a mental plan for accomplishing the tasks.
Lucy had switched the lamp off, and the flickering light of the television screen was the only illumination. Drew realized she had been looking at him in the darkness for a long moment.
“What?” Drew said.
“I’m sorry if I’m intruding.”
“You never intrude on me, Lucy. I’m sorry, I just can’t seem to turn it off about work. There is so much I have going on right now. I was trying to organize a plan for tomorrow to get ahead of it. I can leave if you want and go to my place.”
“No, Howie, I want you here. I only want you to be present with me when you are.”
“I’m sorry, Lucy.”
They both went quiet again.
An hour later, Lucy switched off the television, and he followed her to the bedroom. In bed, she rolled over on her side, facing away from him. Drew snuggled against her. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close. But Lucy didn’t respond and said nothing. In only a little while, her even, rhythmic breathing told him she was asleep. And they hadn’t made love—again. That seemed to happen way too often lately.
Chapter 34
William Hurst’s Florida trial ended in mid-November, a little more than a month before the first anniversary of Fiona Silverman’s murder. Drew and Ortega were astonished by the verdict.
The five women and seven men on the Florida jury deliberated for 10 hours and 40 minutes before returning a not guilty verdict on the first-degree murder charge. They found Hurst guilty of one count of tampering with physical evidence regarding the dismemberment and disposal of Herbert Turner’s body.
“How could they find Hurst not guilty after he killed and dismembered the guy?” Drew asked the Key West detective when he called to tell Drew about the verdict. The detective said he believed the prosecution was simply unprepared. It seemed the prosecutors believed they had a slam dunk conviction given the heinous nature of the crime and hadn’t worked hard enough to prove their case. The detective said Turner’s missing head was also a factor. While the jury had no doubt Turner had been killed, there was no physical evidence showing how he died since there were no wounds on the torso or other body parts the authorities had recovered.
The trial judge sentenced Hurst to three years in prison on the evidence tampering charge, a third-degree felony. The Florida detective told Drew Hurst could qualify for parole after serving eighteen months.
While immersed in the investigation of the Sienna Mills murder, Drew and Ortega took a day off from the case to consult Deputy District Attorney Scott Brooks about the possibility of getting an arrest warrant issued for Hurst for the Silverman murder. The detectives feared that once Hurst completed his short sentence or got paroled, the man would again disappear. Given his wealth, they believed there was a good chance Hurst might even leave the country.
A few days after Hurst’s not guilty verdict in Florida, Drew and Ortega drove to the Criminal Court Building and took the elevator to the eighteenth floor to meet with Brooks and several other attorneys from the district attorney’s office in their conference room.
Although Brooks was already aware of most of what the detectives had on the case, Ortega detailed the investigation, from the Christmas Eve he and Drew arrived at Silverman’s house, to the interviews they had conducted, to their elimination of Nelson Welch as a suspect, to their focus on William Hurst as the killer, to the handwriting analyst’s opinion regarding the cadaver note.
“We feel we can articulate a strong motive for why Hurst killed Fiona Silverman,” Ortega said. “We can prove Hurst was in Garberville, nine hours away from L.A., three days before the murder, and that he took a late evening flight to New York from San Francisco the same date as the murder. And that’s after he repeatedly denied being in California since the summer before the murder.”
“The Florida case establishes Hurst has the capacity to kill and dismember a body,” Drew added.
The deputy DAs and their supervisor Brooks peppered the detectives with questions.
“We don’t have enough to meet the probable cause burden yet,” Brooks said finally. “The telephone records prove Hurst was in Garberville, but you can’t put him in Los Angeles. About all that proves is Hurst lied about the last time he was in California.
“What about the cadaver note?” Drew said. “The analyst said it’s only theoretically possible someone other than Hurst wrote and mailed it. Doesn’t that put him in Los Angeles?”
A prosecutor shook his head. “It’s only circumstantial,” he said. “And it wasn’t a positive identification opinion. That leaves reasonable doubt open.”
“I’m positive no judge will sign off on an arrest warrant with what we have right now,” Brooks said. “I want Hurst arrested and on trial as much as you guys do. I also agree he is a flight risk. But we need more.”
“Any suggestions?” Ortega said to the group.
A prosecutor chuckled. “A confession would help,” he said.
“Fat chance,” Ortega said. “Unless we arrest him, Hurst’s attorneys aren’t going to let us anywhere near him.”
“I agree we have a strong motive,” Brooks said. “But you have more work to do, Detectives. Maybe go back through the names of Hurst’s associates in New York. See if you can find someone to whom he might have made admissions of guilt. Otherwise, we’re left hoping something turns up.”
Ortega nodded. “We’ll do what we can, but Silverman is a hobby case for us now. We’ve got other cases we must give priority.”
The meeting left the detectives feeling dejected, although they weren’t surprised by the outcome.
* * *
Ortega and Drew completed their interviews concerning the investigation of the Sienna Mills murder. They were focused on Mills’ actor ex-boyfriend, Alan Slater, as the prime person of interest. Slater’s alibi was thin, and he had refused a polygraph when the detectives asked him to take one.
The months slipped by into a new year with Ortega and Drew caught in the familiar yet frustrating circumstances of waiting for DNA analysis results. Ortega had twice postponed his planned retirement in hopes of clearing the Mills case before he left the LAPD and because he wasn’t yet ready to let go of the Silverman case. That meant he was still on the job when the break in the Silverman case finally came, and it came from a most unexpected quarter.
* * *
Drew and Ortega returned to the bureau from another follow-up interview with a witness in the Mills case. As they passed Lieutenant Walsh’s office, she called out to them and waved them in. Inside the office, Walsh introduced the detectives to Gregory Parham, a documentary filmmaker.
“Mr. Parham has just told me an interesting story you’ll want to hear,” Walsh said after making the introductions. “These are the detectives handling the case, Mr. Parham. Can you please start over at the beginning for their benefit?”
“Sure,” Parham said, clearing his throat. “After his parole, William Hurst approached us with a pitch for a documentary film on his life. Of course, we were interested. He’s the black sheep heir of a billion-dollar real estate empire that the police in three states have pursued for three different murders. It seems Hurst has gone through a lot of money, and his siblings have forced him out of the family business. He was looking to cash in on his story for a big payday.”
Ortega and Drew nodded in unison, their interest piqued.
“We spent three days interviewing William Hurst, and we will use those interviews to produce a six-part series that will air on one of the cable movie channels,” Parham said. “The thing is, the more I’ve talked with Hurst, the more sure I’ve become that the man killed those people.”
“Has he made admissions?” Ortega asked excitedly.
“Hurst maintains he never murdered anyone,” Parham said. “He admits to killing Herbert Turner in Florida and to dismembering the corpse but claims the gun accidentally discharged while he was defending himself in a struggle over control of it. It’s more Hurst’s demeanor and little things he has said and admitted to that makes me suspicious.”
“What has he admitted?” Drew said.
“As an example, Hurst admitted that he physically abused his wife while they were married, before she went missing,” Parham said. “And he admitted lying to the New York police during the investigation.”
“None of that has any bearing on our case,” Drew said.
“No,” said Parham. “But Hurst’s candor is rather shocking considering both the things he has done and what police suspect he has done. We will be interviewing him further during the production of the series. I fully suspect there might be revelations which could be pertinent to your investigation.”
“So, what do you need from us?” Ortega said.
“It’s more a matter of what I might be able to do for you, Detectives,” Parham said. “I’m willing to provide you unedited footage from the documentary as we shoot it along with relevant transcripts. We intend to confront Hurst with the so-called “cadaver note” from your case during the final episode. We will hire an independent handwriting expert to give an opinion based on a comparison of that note with a sample of Hurst’s handwriting. There seems a reasonable chance you may get something you can use.”
“The thing I’m having trouble with, Mr. Parham, is why you’re willing to do all this?” Ortega said. “Is it for publicity?”
“That’s a rather jaded but understandable perspective, Detective,” Parham said amicably. “The truth is, if William Hurst is guilty of these murders, he’s a psychopathic serial killer. I believe he is. His description of how he dismembered Herbert Turner was absolutely terrifying. If he did the things the police suspect he did, I don’t believe he should be free to walk the streets.”
“Fair enough,” Ortega said. “You’re a concerned citizen.”
“When have you set the documentary to air?” Drew said.
“The first episode airs Wednesday of next week,” Parham said, identifying the movie channel carrying the series. “After that, an episode airs each Wednesday for the next five weeks.”
“Let us watch an episode or two, Mr. Parham,” Ortega said. “If it appears we can use anything you’ve got on Hurst, we’ll circle back to
you after we consult with a prosecutor and ask for the unedited stuff.”
Parham nodded. “That sounds fine, Detective,” he said.
Parham stood up, and after shaking hands all around, he left the office. A uniformed officer escorted him out of the bureau.
“What do you think, Rudy?” Walsh said.
“I’m not convinced about the concerned citizen motivation,” Ortega said. “But it might be worth a shot.”
“Well, he did ask for something in return,” Walsh said. “He wants access to the cadaver note for filming and an independent handwriting analyst’s examination. I think the chief would authorize that as long as LAPD maintains control of the document, so there aren’t any chain of custody issues.”
“Who knows?” Drew said. “If Hurst is giving them interviews without his attorneys present, he might slip and give up something we can use to nail his ass.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Ortega said. “But Hurst isn’t an idiot. We’re pretty sure he has killed at least three people, and he’s gotten away with it so far. I’m not ready to get my hopes up until I’ve seen some episodes of that documentary.”
Chapter 35
Days later, Drew sat in his recliner with a beer at his apartment on a Wednesday evening, watching the first episode of Parham’s documentary, Bedeviled: The Life and Deaths of William Hurst. He found it ironic that the documentary’s title included the word “evil.”
Drew watched the show alone. His relationship with Lucy Tomlinson had worsened. He was no longer staying at her apartment or she at his.
The first episode focused on Hurst’s marriage to Valerie, his wife, who disappeared in 2001 and was presumed dead. According to the documentary, the relationship was a fairy tale at the start. Hurst was heir to one of Manhattan’s real estate empires. She was a dental hygienist from a middle-class family living in one of his father’s buildings. Within weeks, they had moved to Vermont and opened a business together. Eventually, they sold the business and returned to New York so that Hurst could rejoin the family business. It was in New York after they married that the trouble between them started.
