Los Angeles Noir

by Denise Hamilton

  “Looks sort of real at first,” the patrol officer said. “Why’s he in fatigues?”

  Clewiston had to think about that to remember.

  “Last time I used Arty, it was a crosswalk hit-and-run case. The vic was a marine up from El Toro. He was in his fatigues and there was a question about whether the hitter saw him.” Clewiston slung the strap of his laptop bag over his shoulder. “He did. Thanks to Arty we made a case.”

  He took his clipboard out of the trunk and then a digital camera, his trusty measuring wheel, and an eight-battery Maglite. He closed the trunk and made sure it was locked.

  “I’m going to head down and get this over with,” he said. “I got called in from home.”

  “Yeah, I guess the faster you’re done, the faster I can get back out on the road myself. Pretty boring just standing here.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Clewiston headed down the westbound lane, which had been closed to traffic. There was a mist clinging in the dark to the tall brush that crowded the sides of the street. But he could still see the lights and glow of the city down to the south. The accident had occurred in one of the few spots along Mulholland where there were no homes. He knew that on the south side of the road the embankment dropped down to a public dog park. On the north side was Fryman Canyon and the embankment rose up to a point where one of the city’s communication stations was located. There was a tower up there on the point that helped bounce communication signals over the mountains that cut the city in half.

  Mulholland was literally the backbone of Los Angeles. It rode like a snake along the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains from one end of the city to the other. Clewiston knew of places where you could stand on the white stripe and look north across the vast San Fernando Valley and then turn around and look south and see across the west side and as far as the Pacific and Catalina Island. It all depended on whether the smog was cooperating or not. And if you knew the right spots to stop and look.

  Mulholland had that top-of-the-world feel to it. It could make you feel like the prince of a city where the laws of nature and physics didn’t apply. The foot came down heavy on the accelerator. That was the contradiction. Mulholland was built for speed but it couldn’t handle it. Speed was a killer.

  As he came around the bend, Clewiston saw another firetruck and a tow truck from the Van Nuys police garage. The tow truck was positioned sideways across the road. Its cable was down the embankment and stretched taut as it pulled the car up. For the moment, Mulholland was completely closed. Clewiston could hear the tow motor straining and the cracking and scraping as the unseen car was being pulled up through the brush. The tow truck shuddered as it labored.

  Clewiston saw the man with sergeant’s stripes on his uniform and moved next to him as he watched.

  “Is he still in it?” he asked Fairbanks.

  “No, he was transported to St. Joe’s. But he was DOA. You’re Clewiston, right? The reconstructionist.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve got to handle this thing right. Once the ID gets out, we’ll have the media all over this.”

  “The captain told me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m telling you too. In this department, the captains don’t get blamed when things go sideways and off the road. It’s always the sergeants and it ain’t going to be me this time.”

  “I get it.”

  “You have any idea what this guy was worth? We’re talking tens of millions, and on top of that he’s supposedly in the middle of a divorce. So we go five by five by five on this thing. Comprende, reconstructionist?”

  “It’s Clewiston and I said I get it.”

  “Good. This is what we’ve got. Single car fatality. No witnesses. It appears the victim was heading eastbound when his vehicle, a two-month-old Porsche Carrera, came around that last curve there and for whatever reason didn’t straighten out. We’ve got treads on the road you can take a look at. Anyway, he went straight off the side and then down, baby. Major head and torso injuries. Chest crushed. He pretty much drowned in his own blood before the FD could get down to him. They stretchered him out with a chopper and transported him anyway. Guess they didn’t want any blowback either.”

  “They take blood at St. Joe’s?”

  Fairbanks, about forty and a lifer on patrol, nodded. “I am told it was clean.”

  There was a pause in the conversation at that point, suggesting that Clewiston could take whatever he wanted from the blood test. He could believe what Fairbanks was telling him or he could believe that the celebrity fix was already in.

  The moonlight reflected off the dented silver skin of the Porsche as it was pulled up over the edge like a giant beautiful fish hauled into a boat. Clewiston walked over and Fairbanks followed. The first thing Clewiston saw was that it was a Carrera 4S. “Hmmmm,” he mumbled.

  “What?” Fairbanks said.

  “It’s one of the Porsches with four-wheel drive. Built for these sort of curves. Built for control.”

  “Well, not built good enough, obviously.”

  Clewiston put his equipment down on the hood of one of the patrol cars and took his Maglite over to the Porsche. He swept the beam over the front of the high-performance sports car. The car was heavily damaged in the crash and the front had taken the brunt of it. The molded body was badly distorted by repeated impacts as it had sledded down the steep embankment. He moved in close and squatted by the front cowling and the shattered passenger-side headlight assembly.

  He could feel Fairbanks behind him, watching over his shoulder as he worked.

  “If there were no witnesses, how did anybody know he’d gone over the side?” Clewiston asked.

  “Somebody down below,” Fairbanks answered. “There are houses down there. Lucky this guy didn’t end up in somebody’s living room. I’ve seen that before.”

  So had Clewiston. He stood up and walked to the edge and looked down. His light cut into the darkness of the brush. He saw the exposed pulp of the acacia trees and other foliage the car had torn through.

  He returned to the car. The driver’s door was sprung and Clewiston could see the pry marks left by the jaws used to extricate the driver. He pulled it open and leaned in with his light. There was a lot of blood on the wheel, dashboard, and center console. The driver’s seat was wet with blood and urine.

  The key was still in the ignition and turned to the on position. The dashboard lights were still on as well. Clewiston leaned further in and checked the mileage. The car had only 1,142 miles on the odometer.

  Satisfied with his initial survey of the wreck, he went back to his equipment. He put the clipboard under his arm and picked up the measuring wheel. Fairbanks came over once again. “Anything?” he asked.

  “Not yet, sergeant. I’m just starting.”

  He started sweeping the light over the roadway. He picked up the skid marks and used the wheel to measure the distance of each one. There were four distinct marks, left as all four tires of the Porsche tried unsuccessfully to grip the asphalt. When he worked his way back to the starting point, he found scuff marks in a classic slalom pattern. They had been left on the asphalt when the car had turned sharply one way and then the other before going into the braking skid.

  He wrote the measurements down on the clipboard. He then pointed the light into the brush on either side of the roadway where the scuff marks began. He knew the event had begun here and he was looking for indications of cause.

  He noticed a small opening in the brush, a narrow pathway that continued on the other side of the road. It was a crossing. He stepped over and put the beam down on the brush and soil. After a few moments, he moved across the street and studied the path on the other side.

  Satisfied with his site survey, he went back to the patrol car and opened his laptop. While it was booting up, Fairbanks came over once again.

  “So, how’z it look?”

  “I have to run the numbers.”

  “Those skids look pretty long to me. The guy must’
ve been flying.”

  “You’d be surprised. Other things factor in. Brake efficiency, surface, and surface conditions—you see the mist moving in right now? Was it like this two hours ago when the guy went over the side?”

  “Been like this since I got here. But the fire guys were here first. I’ll get one up here.”

  Clewiston nodded. Fairbanks pulled his rover and told someone to send the first responders up to the crash site. He then looked back at Clewiston.

  “On the way.”

  “Thanks. Does anybody know what this guy was doing up here?”

  “Driving home, we assume. His house was in Coldwater and he was going home.”

  “From where?”

  “That we don’t know.”

  “Anybody make notification yet?”

  “Not yet. We figure next of kin is the wife he’s divorcing. But we’re not sure where to find her. I sent a car to his house but there’s no answer. We’ve got somebody at Parker Center trying to run her down—probably through her lawyer. There’s also grown children from his first marriage. They’re working on that too.”

  Two firefighters walked up and introduced themselves as Robards and Lopez. Clewiston questioned them on the weather and road conditions at the time they responded to the accident call. Both firefighters described the mist as heavy at the time. They were sure about this because the mist had hindered their ability to find the place where the vehicle had crashed through the brush and down the embankment.

  “If we hadn’t seen the skid marks, we would have driven right by,” Lopez said.

  Clewiston thanked them and turned back to his computer. He had everything he needed now. He opened the Accident Reconstruction Technologies program and went directly to the speed and distance calculator. He referred to his clipboard for the numbers he would need. He felt Fairbanks come up next to him.

  “Computer, huh? That gives you all the answers?”

  “Some of them.”

  “Whatever happened to experience and trusting hunches and gut instincts?”

  It wasn’t a question that was waiting for an answer. Clewiston added the lengths of the four skid marks he had measured and then divided by four, coming up with an average length of sixty-four feet. He entered the number into the calculator template.

  “You said the vehicle is only two months old?” he asked Fairbanks.

  “According to the registration. It’s a lease he picked up in January. I guess he filed for divorce and went out and got the sports car to help him get back in the game.”

  Clewiston ignored the comment and typed 1.0 into a box marked B.E. on the template.

  “What’s that?” Fairbanks asked.

  “Braking efficiency. One-oh is the highest efficiency. Things could change if somebody wants to take the brakes off the car and test them. But for now I am going with high efficiency because the vehicle is new and there’s only twelve hundred miles on it.”

  “Sounds right to me.”

  Lastly, Clewiston typed 9.0 into the box marked C.F. This was the subjective part. He explained what he was doing to Fairbanks before the sergeant had to ask.

  “This is coefficient of friction,” he said. “It basically means surface conditions. Mulholland Drive is asphalt base, which is generally a high coefficient. And this stretch here was repaved about nine months ago—again, that leads to a high coefficient. But I’m knocking it down a point because of the moisture. That mist comes in and puts down a layer of moisture that mixes with the road oil and makes the asphalt slippery. The oil is heavier in new asphalt.”

  “I get it.”

  “Good. It’s called trusting your gut instinct, sergeant.”

  Fairbanks nodded. He had been properly rebuked.

  Clewiston clicked the enter button and the calculator came up with a projected speed based on the relationship between skid length, brake efficiency, and the surface conditions. It said the Porsche had been traveling at 41.569 miles per hour when it went into the skid.

  “You’re kidding me,” Fairbanks said while looking at the screen. “The guy was barely speeding. How can that be?”

  “Follow me, sergeant,” Clewiston said.

  Clewiston left the computer and the rest of his equipment, except for the flashlight. He led Fairbanks back to the point in the road where he had found the slalom scuffs and the originating point of the skid marks.

  “Okay,” he said. “The event started here. We have a single car accident. No alcohol known to be involved. No real speed involved. A car built for this sort of road is involved. What went wrong?”

  “Exactly.”

  Clewiston put the light down on the scuff marks.

  “Okay, you’ve got alternating scuff marks here before he goes into the skid.”

  “Okay.”

  “You have the tire cords indicating he jerked the wheel right initially and then jerked it left trying to straighten it out. We call it a SAM—a slalom avoidance maneuver.”

  “A SAM. Okay.”

  “He turned to avoid an impact of some kind, then overcorrected. He then panicked and did what most people do. He hit the brakes.”

  “Got it.”

  “The wheels locked up and he went into a skid. There was nothing he could do at that point. He had no control because the instinct is to press harder on the brakes, to push that pedal through the floor.”

  “And the brakes were what were taking away control.”

  “Exactly. He went over the side. The question is why. Why did he jerk the wheel in the first place? What preceded the event?”

  “Another car?”

  Clewiston nodded. “Could be. But no one stopped. No one called it in.”

  “Maybe …” Fairbanks spread his hands. He was drawing a blank.

  “Take a look here,” Clewiston said.

  He walked Fairbanks over to the side of the road. He put the light on the pathway into the brush, drawing the sergeant’s eyes back across Mulholland to the pathway on the opposite side. Fairbanks looked at him and then back at the path.

  “What are you thinking?” Fairbanks asked.

  “This is a coyote path,” Clewiston said. “They come up through Fryman Canyon and cross Mulholland here. It takes them to the dog park. They probably wait in heavy brush for the dogs that stray out of the park.”

  “So your thinking is that our guy came around the curve and there was a coyote crossing the road.”

  Clewiston nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. He jerks the wheel to avoid the animal, then overcompensates, loses control. You have a slalom followed by a braking skid. He goes over the side.”

  “An accident, plain and simple.” Fairbanks shook his head disappointedly. “Why couldn’t it have been a DUI, something clear cut like that?” he asked. “Nobody’s going to believe us on this one.”

  “That’s not our problem. All the facts point to it being a driving mishap. An accident.”

  Fairbanks looked at the skid marks and nodded. “Then that’s it, I guess.”

  “You’ll get a second opinion from the insurance company anyway,” Clewiston said. “They’ll probably pull the brakes off the car and test them. An accident means double indemnity. But if they can shift the calculations and prove he was speeding or being reckless, it softens the impact. The payout becomes negotiable. But my guess is they’ll see it the same way we do.”

  “I’ll make sure forensics photographs everything. We’ll document everything six ways from Sunday and the insurance people can take their best shot. When will I get a report from you?”

  “I’ll go down to Valley Traffic right now and write something up.”

  “Good. Get it to me. What else?”

  Clewiston looked around to see if he was forgetting anything. He shook his head. “That’s it. I need to take a few more measurements and some photos, then I’ll head down to write it up. Then I’ll get out of your way.”

  Clewiston left him and headed back up the road to get his camera. He had a small smile on his f
ace that nobody noticed.

  Clewiston headed west on Mulholland from the crash site. He planned to take Coldwater Canyon down into the Valley and over to the Traffic Division office. He waited until the flashing blue and red lights were small in his rearview mirror before flipping open his phone. He hoped he could get a signal on the cheap throwaway. Mulholland Drive wasn’t always cooperative with cellular service.

  He had a signal. He pulled to the side while he attached the digital recorder, then turned it on and made the call. She answered after one ring, as he was pulling back onto the road and up to speed.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “The apartment.”

  “They’re looking for you. You’re sure his attorney knows where you are?”

  “He knows. Why? What’s going on?”

  “They want to tell you he’s dead.”

  He heard her voice catch. He took the phone away from his ear so he could hold the wheel with two hands on one of the deep curves. He then brought it back.

  “You there?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m here. I just can’t believe it, that’s all. I’m speechless. I didn’t think it would really happen.”

  You may be speechless, but you’re talking, Clewiston thought. Keep it up.

  “You wanted it to happen, so it happened,” he said. “I told you I would take care of it.”

  “What happened?”

  “He went off the road on Mulholland. It’s an accident and you’re a rich lady now.”

  She said nothing.

  “What else do you want to know?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe I shouldn’t know anything. It will be better when they come here.”

  “You’re an actress. You can handle it.”

  “Okay.”

  He waited for her to say more, glancing down at the recorder on the center console to see the red light still glowing. He was good.

  “Was he in pain?” she asked.

  “Hard to say. He was probably dead when they pried him out. From what I hear, it will be a closed casket. Why do you care?”

  “I guess I don’t. It’s just sort of surreal that this is happening. Sometimes I wish you never came to me with the whole idea.”