"Any one of these things alone, I could live with. But all together, they make me think-"
"It's another shooter." Cal finished my sentence. Then after a long pause, he added, "But Zack said the vic had the figure-eight symbol on his chest. The oval thing. So how could it be a copycat? Nobody but a few people in the department and a few in the ME's office know about that."
"Maybe the symbol leaked somehow," I said.
Suddenly the murder book Zack had left unattended seemed a few pounds heavier in my hands. How careless had he really been with it? I wondered.
"Maybes and hunches don't cut it, Shane." Cal interrupted my thoughts. "You need to give me a theory that holds your suppositions together."
"You telling me not to work this case the way I see it?"
One of Cal's strengths was he let his detectives run their own investigations. "Okay, it's your case. If that's your take, separate J. D. Number Four out from the Fingertip case and work it separately so it won't contaminate the other murders. But keep this strictly between us. Tell nobody because you could be wrong."
"Yes sir," I said, wondering if nobody included Zack and Alexa. I turned to go.
"Scully, from now on, you keep the murder book." "Yes sir."
I knew from the look on his face he wasn't finished, so I stood in the door and waited for the rest of it.
"And Shane. . get your partner straight today. Don't force me to come in here tomorrow and make him piss in a bottle. If I think he's drunk on duty again, I'll sink him. One more misstep and I'm sending him to a Board of Rights."
"I'll straighten him out."
I walked out and started asking around on the floor for anybody who'd seen my missing partner. In the lobby, I finally ran into two auto-theft dicks heading into the elevator on their way back from lunch.
"He was over at Morrie's," one of them said.
Morrie's was a favorite hangout two blocks away on Spring Street. A dark, cozy, Irish pub restaurant with warm green walls and red leather booths. There were always a lot of cops there. Morrie's was well liked because they poured generous drinks.
That's where I found him, sitting at the huge mahogany bar, knocking back shooters.
My b oys think I'm an asshole," Zack said without looking over. He had three full shot glasses lined up in front of him as I slid onto the next barstool. "All they see are anger and divorce lawyers. They've tuned me out, turned on me." He picked up a shot glass, studying the amber liquid, holding it so the light shone through. "Zack Junior," he finally said in some kind of sardonic toast to his oldest son then downed it.
"It's only twelve-thirty," I lectured. "We're on duty. This place is full of Glass House brass. You're makin' us look bad." Hating the judgmental, kiss-ass words as they came out of me.
Zack didn't look over, but frowned.
"Okay," I said. "Look. . at least let's move to a corner booth."
I grabbed the remaining two full shot glasses and moved toward an empty booth furthest away from the bar in the dark room.
Wheezing loudly, Zack followed and slid into the booth after me. His eyes were unfocused in sockets that were beginning to turn saffron yellow from this morning's broken nose. He looked old and used up. As soon as he was settled, he pulled one of the shot glasses toward him. He didn't drink, but instead, stuck a big, sausage-sized finger into it, then put the finger into his mouth, tasting the single malt scotch. For a moment I didn't think he would say anything, but then he leaned his head against the wooden back of the booth.
"Everybody's reading me wrong," he sighed. "Even you. I'm in a damn echo chamber. Whatever I say, it comes out sounding louder. People only hear what they already think. It's hard to get anybody to understand when nobody listens."
I decided to stay quiet. I wasn't sure where he was headed.
"It's not enough that Fran and I are getting divorced, or that those pricks at the Galleria fired me and I can't afford her attorney or Zack Junior's college next fall. Now Fran says she wants to know my feelings about it. She says she's worried about me, but she won't take me back either. How do you explain your feelings when you don't have any? Mostly I'm just fucking tired. I think if I could just. ."
Then he stopped, and put the heel of his hand up to his forehead and rubbed so hard that when his big mitt came away, he left an angry red mark.
"Zack?" He wasn't looking at me. "Zack," I said again, louder, and watched as he turned his head and focused on me. "Lemme help you, man."
"How you gonna help me, Shane?" He stopped studying the shot glass, and downed it. "Just don't throw me overboard. I need the job. . this case. We'll find some proof."
"Not in here, buddy. The only proof in here is eighty proof."
I watched him scowl.
"I've been where you are, Zack. I've been on the bottom, looking up. I know what it feels like to be out of options."
He was suddenly furious, his face a tight mask of silent rage. I don't know what I said to piss him off, but this is the way he was now. Sudden heart-stopping anger that would appear out of nowhere, turning his eyes into deadly lasers. Maybe he had come to despise himself so much he couldn't take friendship or sympathy. I realized as I sat there and watched a vein in his forehead pulse, that he was much closer to the edge than I had imagined. Then he saw the blue binder on my lap.
"Whatta ya doin' with the murder book? It's supposed to be in my desk," he snapped.
"You left it in the Xerox room."
He sat, dumbfounded. His expression softened. "Naw. Come on. ."
"They found it in there. Cal gave it to me half an hour ago."
The anger left as quickly as it came, disappearing like smoke out a window. I wished I hadn't told him. "How could I have left it in Xerox?" he said in wonder. "Shit. Really?"
I didn't answer.
He leaned his head back against the wall. "I am so fucked," he said softly.
"Listen, Zack. It's okay. I squared it with Cal, but I'm taking over the book for a while. I'm taking it home to upgrade it, okay?"
He didn't respond.
"And something else, Zack. Cal thinks Tony is about to form a task force to keep the press off his back. I've been on two task forces and both times it was a disaster. The more blue they throw at a big case, the more selfish and political everybody gets. We need to put this down fast. I need your help, buddy. Will you straighten up and help me?"
"What you really want is to get me outta your way," he said sadly. "It's in your eyes. You wish you'd never partnered up with me again."
"That's not true," I lied. But it was so true it was laughable.
"Okay, I'm on the case," he said. "Finish this shot and I'm on the wagon."
"Good. Now you're talkin'."
"This new vic is crawling with clues," he grumbled. "The contact lens, the bullet, the eyelid tats. We'll have the unsub hooked and booked in no time. We gotta concentrate on this last kill. Forget the others. Solve this one and we solve them all." Then he picked up the last shot glass and drained it.
The Trojan tradition is a lot more than a bunch of brass in the trophy case at Heritage Hall," Pete Carroll said.
He was sitting in the living room; our cat Franco was at his feet, looking up, not wanting to miss a word. Alexa, Delfina, and I were sitting across from him on the sofa. Chooch was in the club chair leaning forward attentively.
"USC is going to expose you to one of the best academic educations you can get anywhere in the country. It's important to me and to our program to graduate our players. Sixty-one percent of our incoming freshman end up with degrees."
Chapter 7
Pete Carroll was in his early fifties; youthful, with sandy blond-gray hair and a friendly, engaging smile. His nose had been broken and not set properly, which I thought added character to an already handsome face. The coach had been in our house for forty minutes and hadn't once talked about football or the two national championships he'd already won. Mostly, he was stressing teamwork and the academic and cultural advantages of
the university.
Chooch was beginning to work his way up to a question, and finally asked, "Would there be any chance for me to play as a freshman, Coach?"
"I wouldn't be here if you weren't an outstanding quarterback, Chooch. Lane Killen went to several of your games and says you have what it takes. I've seen your tapes and talked to your coach at Harvard Westlake. He tells me you're a team leader and an honors student. I like everything I'm hearing. But my job is about more than who gets on the field or just winning football games. What we're really about is building our young men.
"I play freshmen when they're the best at their position, both physically and emotionally. You won't have to stand in line to get playing time at USC, but I also don't make promises I can't keep." Then he leaned back and smiled at Chooch. "Strange as it seems, your character is more important to me than your time in the forty, because I know a man with good work ethics, a sense of team, and a big heart is going to go out and take care of business not only on the field, but in life. The most gifted athlete isn't always the best man for the job. Heart, teamwork, and integrity count. A lot of what we do at USC is work on building what's inside."
This was my kind of coach. One of the other things I liked about Coach Carroll: he was talking to Chooch, not to Alexa or me. On visits from other coaches, Chooch was just furniture in the room, while the coach was selling the two of us on what their program would do.
"It's important to me that you get what you want if you become a Trojan, Chooch. But the way to get the things you want in life is to grow as an individual. Inner strength always creates opportunity."
Just then, my cell phone rang. It was the third call I'd gotten since Coach Carroll arrived and I could see the frustration in Chooch's eyes as I fished the phone out of my pocket. He wanted my complete attention on this visit and unfortunately, he wasn't quite getting it. But a fresh homicide had hit our table at two-thirty this morning and I couldn't let the first twenty-four hours of Forrest's investigation go stagnant.
The other calls had been from the coroner's office and forensics. No additional material was found at the crime scene. The blood work showed nothing special. . a low alcohol count and no drugs. They were still trying to trace the contact lens.
I opened my cell phone as I left the living room, and went into the den. "Scully," I said.
It was a cryptologist who identified herself as Cindy Clark from Symbols and Hieroglyphics. We'd met once previously and I recognized her heavy Southern accent.
"I've translated the tattoo on the vic's eyelids," she said.
"Great! Let's hear."
"The figures are Cyrillic symbols from the old Russian alphabet. They date all the way back to Peter the Great."
"Russian?"
"Yes, sir. It's a warning."
"Go on."
"Roughly translated, it means, 'Don't wake up.
I started writing that on a slip of paper. "A warning or a statement of fact?"
"In the book where I found it, it just says that life is bad and it's better to sleep. But since this John Doe had it on his eyelids, maybe it just refers to him being asleep when his eyes are closed. I don't know."
"Listen Cindy, I really appreciate this, but what I need most right now is to decode that figure eight inside the oval. The case is starting to fall in on me. Can you keep working on that? If you're at a dead end, maybe you could send it out to experts in other departments?"
"We already did that. Everything we got back so far doesn't help much. I have a few possibilities, but we've eliminated most of them because they aren't exact matches and they don't seem relevant. I think you know Mike Menninger, our head cryptologist. He's gone over everything. He thinks what we have so far is pretty low-yield stuff and might just produce confusion for y'all."
"Let's hear, anyway."
I heard paper rustling, then: "One is a sailing club in Vancouver, Washington, called Pieces of Eight. Their flag is kind of like your symbol, but it's more just an eight in a circle with no crosshatching. So we don't think it's anything."
I agreed, but wrote it down anyway. "Go on."
"There's a symbol from the ancient Greek that looks a little like it, only the eight is sideways, not perpendicular, and it's closed, not open at the top."
"What's it mean?"
"It was an academic symbol for a college of philosophers in Athens."
"Not very damn likely," I agreed, but wrote that down, too.
"Then, just some logos of businesses. A bike shop in the Valley, Eight Mile Bikes, a chicken franchise called Eight Pieces, stuff like that. None of it is close enough to take seriously. Since the peril carved the exact same symbol each time, we think it's probably a close representation of what he wants. It may be lacking detail, but none of this stuff seems right to us."
"Okay, Cindy, I agree. But turn up the heat, will you? I need a break."
"Yes, sir."
She hung up and I opened the murder book so I could stick the slip of paper inside to enter later. When I looked at the index page for John Doe Number Two, who I'd named "Van" because we found him in the L. A. River at Van Alden Avenue, I saw at a glance that some pictures were missing and the material was not organized correctly. I felt a flash of anger at Zack. What had he been doing instead of taking care of this? I closed the binder and walked back into the living room.
"A good pre-law major is political science," Pete Carroll was saying. "We have academic advisors who help our players with their majors. They also help our athletes register for the right courses. We have mandatory study halls, and tutors on standby if you need help on a subject."
Chooch was leaning forward. "Coach, can we talk just a little more about the program, because I have some questions."
"Sure," the coach said. "Fire away."
"Is Coach Sarkisian gonna stay at USC?" Chooch was asking about SC's brilliant quarterback coach who had recently been promoted to assistant head coach.
"So far that's the plan, but one of my jobs, Chooch, is to support my players and my coaches. If people in our system know that there's opportunity, they flourish. If that means one day Steve Sarkisian takes off to be a head coach somewhere, I'm never gonna stand in his way. In fact, I'll make some calls and try to help."
It went on for another thirty minutes, until Coach Carroll said it was time for him to leave. Franco was still sitting at his feet and before he could stand, our marmalade cat jumped up and landed in the coach's lap. Obviously, Franco's mind was made up. He wanted Chooch to wear cardinal and gold.
We still hadn't had our visit from Joe Paterno at Penn State, or Karl Dowell from UCLA. Both visits were scheduled for the following week. But I liked Coach Carroll. After he left, we sat in the living room and talked it through.
"What a cool guy," Chooch said.
"He's good-looking, too," Delfina teased, her long black hair and dark eyes shining. She had brought more than I could have imagined into our family since she came to live with us.
"He sounds like a player's coach," Alexa added.
I nodded, but didn't want to put in too strong an opinion or use my influence to help Chooch decide. "What do you think, Dad?"
"He's obviously a quality person. But in the long run, it's got to be your decision."
"I wish he'd talked more about football."
"I liked that he didn't," Alexa said. "Anybody can come in here and make promises. What he was saying is he wants to build in you a sense of teamwork and inner strength. Let's face it, if you want success in life, it's inner strength that counts."
Chapter 8
After dinner that evening, Alexa and I got into a rare, but somewhat heated, argument. It ended up being about Zack.
We were sitting in our backyard looking out at the shimmering canals of Venice, California. The development was a Disneyesque version of Venice, Italy, designed by a romantic dreamer named Abbot Kinney, back in the thirties. The five-block area was spanned by narrow bridges that arched over three-foot-deep canals. Several of ou
r neighbors had added rowboat-sized gondolas that bobbed like plastic ornaments on the shiny, moonlit water.
Alexa and I had just popped open two Heinekens, and agreed that Pete Carroll and USC would be a good fit for Chooch, when I decided to get something off my chest. I'm not good at keeping secrets from Alexa, so I launched into my theory on why I thought John Doe Number Four might be a copycat murder, running all the evidence past her.
She greeted the information in typical Alexa fashion. Her analytical mind dissected and examined what I was saying. When I finished, she nodded in agreement, realizing that there was good reason for my suspicion. But like Jeb Calloway, she wondered how a copycat would know about the symbol carved on Forrest's chest.
"It's something I can't explain. Maybe it leaked."
"Damn," she said softly. "I was counting on this one to give us something. We already told the press about finding the bullet. If you're right, and this is a copycat, I'll have to figure out how to downplay their expectations."
"Why tell those assholes anything?" I said, my anger flaring.
"Grow up, Shane. It's a media case in a media town. Once this stuff gets into the news, we can't stonewall. If we try, all they do is start putting pressure on politicians, who in turn, threaten us. The trick is to find the right balance. Give the press just enough to keep them cool."
"And when you can't hold 'em off anymore, you form a bullshit task force."
It sounded accusatory, and she turned to study me more carefully, those big, beautiful eyes suddenly hard and speculative. "You have something more to tell me, don't you?"
"Yeah. If you form a task force it's a vote of no confidence in me and Zack. You put me on this and I want some damn protection."
She remained silent, so I argued my case. "You know task forces are bullshit. They obstruct the sharing of information. The feds always show up and you know what happens when we invite the big feet from the Eye into our tent. They end up running the show."
"Shane, in the long run, it's not going to be my call. It's Tony's."
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