Cold Hit (2005)

by Stephen - Scully 05 Cannell

  “Look who’s come to visit,” he said, slowly. “The career monster.”

  “You sound tranqed. You on something?”

  “Hey, if you’re gonna make a buncha bullshit judgments, then take it on down the road, Bubba.”

  He struggled into a sitting position and hugged his fat knees. “Fran had me committed. Now I can’t get out. Can you believe that? The bitch is divorcing me, but since we’re still technically married, she can do it. My joint custody of the boys will be dust after this bullshit.”

  “I’m sorry I suggested this, Zack. I thought you were about to commit suicide.”

  He waved it off and changed the subject. “So how’s the book club? You humps got a line on our unsub yet?”

  “I’m not down there anymore. Like I told you, I’m working this stand-alone murder now. Davide Andrazack.”

  His face showed nothing.

  “So you ain’t gonna be able to give me any updates?” “Nope. That circus moved on without me.”

  His eyes suddenly seemed feral, his mouth set in a hard, straight line.

  “Too bad,” he said. “I was hoping to catch up with that.”

  “I can tell you this much. We finally made the first vic. John Doe Number One.”

  “Yeah?” He pulled his eyes into sharper focus. “Turns out his name was Vaughn Rolaine. Vietnam vet.”

  I watched closely as he processed it.

  “No kidding.” He looked puzzled.

  “You ever hear that name?” I asked.

  He seemed to be searching his memory, then said, “Should I?”

  “Didn’t you have an open homicide before we teamed up? A woman? Arden Rolaine?”

  “Jesus. You’re right. Vaughn was the brother. Shit. These tranqs they’re giving me really maim my brain. How’d I forget that?”

  “Doesn’t it strike you as a little cozy that Vaughn Rolaine, our first Fingertip kill, turns out to be the brother of one of your uncleared one-eighty-sevens from last summer?”

  He sat for a long moment trying to pull it together. “It is a tad close,” he finally said. “How do you suppose?” “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

  He got up, lumbered over to the sink, and turned on the tap. Then he jammed his head under the faucet. Water blasted off the back of his head and splattered onto the concrete floor. After a minute, he stood up, turned off the spigot, and dried his face and hair with a towel.

  “Hang on a minute. My brain’s oatmeal.”

  Then he began doing jumping jacks. His huge belly flopped up and down as his rubber-soled flip-flops slapped the concrete floor. After doing about thirty, he dropped and did fifteen pushups, rolling into a sitting position out of breath when he finished.

  “Better?” I asked.

  “Not much.”

  “We need to talk about Arden Rolaine. Can you remember the details of that case, or should I go to the Glass House, pick up your murder book, and bring it back here?”

  “I haven’t really worked on it in five months, but I remember.”

  “Let’s hear.”

  He got up off the floor and sat on the bed. Then he rubbed his eyes as if to clear his vision before starting.

  “Okay. My old partner, Van Kelsey, and I caught the case last June. Arden Rolaine was this sixty-one-yearold widow. Husband died in Nam thirty-odd years ago. Never remarried. She lived alone in Van Nuys. Little cracker box nothing of a house. Spring of last year, a pizza delivery kid saw some street freak jimmying her window, trying to get into the place. The kid didn’t call it in and didn’t come forward till he saw the story about her murder on TV. The way me and Van figured it, she musta come home and surprised the peril goin’ through her place. He turns and bludgeons her to death. Used a brass candlestick from her mantle. A real blitz kill. The ME stopped counting at a hundred blows.”

  “Why did Homicide Special get the case?”

  “Arden Rolaine was part of an old singing group in the sixties. The Lamp Street Singers. Folk music and love songs, mostly. They had three or four albums. Had one chart-topping single.”

  “Yeah … ‘Lemon Tree,’ I think.”

  “That was the Limelighters. The Lamp Street Singers had that drippy ballad, ‘Don’t Look Away.’ They were gone in about a nanosecond, but somebody in dispatch was a fan and it got kicked over to Homicide Special because it was a quote, Celebrity Case, unquote. Fact is, hardly nobody even remembered her or the folk group. But Arden had saved her money and had enough squirreled away to make it to the finish line until this asshole climbed through the window and clipped her.”

  “You said it was a blitz attack?”

  “Classic overkill. Lotta anger. The doer pounded her until her face was mush. Van and I figured with that much rage, it had to be somebody close to her. Somebody who maybe once even loved her.”

  Hate needs love to burn.

  “Because of the blitz attack we started looking at old boyfriends and relatives,” he continued. “Finally turned up her brother, Vaughn. I never could find him though, ‘cause he moved around. Homeless bum. According to her neighbors and the guy who did her hair, Vaughn was this wine-soaked mistake in a tattered raincoat. He was always trying to hit Arden up for cash. She finally got tired of fending him off and told him to never come over again. My theory was after she said that, he got pissed, came back, climbed through the window to steal her money and little sis caught him. They argued and Arden got put down with extreme prejudice.”

  “So you never brought him in for questioning?”

  “Like I said, I couldn’t find the son-of-a-bitch. Homeless. No address. I had his picture up all over the place—liquor stores, bus stations. Nothing. It’s a big city. Thousands of homeless. I figured eventually, I’d run him down.”

  “So Vaughn Rolaine was your lead suspect in Arden Rolaine’s murder and he ends up being our first Fingertip victim,” I said. “Pretty big coincidence.”

  Zack frowned. “What’s the first thing they tell you in the Academy?”

  “Never trust a coincidence in police work.” “Exactly,” Zack said. “So it can’t be a coincidence.

  Gotta be some logic to it. We just gotta find it.” “So how does it fit?”

  He sat for a long moment, thinking. “Okay. Remember when you said you thought that the Fingertip unsub was maybe another homeless guy with rage against his environment? Hating the other bums he had to live with, seeing himself in their misery and killing himself over and over again?”

  “It was just a theory. I’m not even sure it’s psychologically valid.”

  “Yeah, but I always kind of liked that.”

  Zack had snapped back to his old self. His mind seemed focused. For the first time in months he was sorting facts like the old days.

  “What if Vaughn lets it slip to some other homeless bum that his sister has all this money?” Zack reasoned. “After Arden is murdered, this other bum thinks Vaughn’s inherited his sister’s scrilla and goes after it. Ends up killing Vaughn.”

  “With a single shot to the back of the head, execution style like the fucking mafia? That doesn’t track. And what about the Medic’s symbol on the chest, the mutilations, all of that other postoffense behavior?”

  “We don’t really have that much listed under victimology,” Zack continued. “Just Vietnam vets. Rage. Father substitutes. So let’s build on this a little. This rage-filled, homeless guy hates his father. Maybe he was sexually abused as a kid and he’s a ticking bomb but hasn’t gone postal yet. Vaughn told him about his sister’s money and the unsub is hassling Vaughn, trying to get the dough. But Vaughn doesn’t have it, because he was my number-one suspect in his sister’s murder and couldn’t exactly go to the probate hearing. But let’s say the unsub doesn’t believe him, starts working Vaughn over, maybe cutting fingers off, trying to get him to talk. It gets out of control and he eventually kills Vaughn.”

  “I guess it could have happened that way,” I said.

  “Damn right. And then comes all the other post
mortem behavioral stuff we profiled—the latent rage against his father—everything is unleashed. Vaughn is dead, but this other bum, the unsub, carves the symbol on his chest anyway. A postmortem mutilation. Maybe the unsub’s dad was a medic in Nam, or he hates all vets, sees his father in them. He cuts off the rest of Vaughn’s fingers to frustrate identification, then dumps him in the river. After this first kill, our serial killer is born. He realizes he’s got a taste for it. A blood lust. He keeps on killing. One bum after another.”

  I sat in the room thinking about it. A few things worked, but too much didn’t.

  “How’s some homeless guy transport the body?” “Okay. Maybe the unsub’s not all the way homeless yet. Maybe he’s living in his car.”

  “Maybe.” At least Zack was trying.

  “I’m just coming up with some options here,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know, I know.” I didn’t want to discourage the first spark or interest he’d shown in months. “Listen, maybe you should pick up my murder book after all,” he said. “Maybe there’s old case stuff in there that would jog my memory. Van Kelsey retired four months ago to grow grapes in Napa. I’ll call him and see if he remembers anything.”

  “Okay. I gotta tell the task force about this, so I’ll swing by Parker Center on my way home. After I bring Underwood up to date, I’ll pick up the murder book. Is it in your desk?”

  “Yep.”

  I stood to go and Zack rose with me.

  “I made a decision today,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t want to be a drunk. I don’t want my life to be fucked up like this anymore. I want to get better.”

  “That’s great news, Zack,” I said. For the first time in two months I was feeling hope.

  Chapter 35

  It was almost four-thirty in the afternoon and the sun was just going down when I got back to Parker Center. This day had flown by. I stopped at our cubicle in Homicide Special and pulled the Arden Rolaine murder book out of Zack’s bottom desk drawer. It was pushed to the back. As soon as I opened it I saw that Zack hadn’t even mounted the crime scene photographs. They were still in an envelope, just thrown in along with the coroner’s report, autopsy photos, and the rest of his case notes. The book was little more than a catch-all. Nothing was in order. No time line or wit lists. His interview notes were a mess.

  I shook my head as I sorted through the grisly crime scene pictures showing the living room of a small cluttered house. It looked old and musty. The dark red velvet furniture had lace doilies on the arms. Sprawled on an Oriental carpet, on her back, wearing a blue terry bathrobe and rolled down stockings, was Arden Rolaine. Whoever killed her had done a damn thorough job. There was nothing left of her face. Her gray hair was matted and thick with dried blood.

  I replaced the pictures in the folder. Then I noticed a Federal Express package on my desk. It was the book I’d ordered from Amazon. Com. My reading assignment from Agent Underwood. I picked it up and headed down the hall to CTB. I wanted to check in with Broadway and Perry. Their cubicle was empty, but Lieutenant Cubio found me and handed me one of the secure satellite phones. They were only a little smaller than an old Army field telephone.

  “These came in from ESD an hour ago. Pretty easy to operate. You’ve gotta access the satellite. To do that, you use these six numbers first.” He handed me a slip of paper. “Then dial the regular ten-digit phone number you want. There’s an extra two-second delay because of the satellite scramblers.”

  He handed me another piece of paper with the SAT numbers for Tony, Emdee, Roger, Alexa, and himself. “You’re good to go,” he said.

  “Where are Rowdy and Snitch?”

  “Off minding the wool.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Women,” he explained. “Broadway’s wife Barbara is a Ph. D., teaches African studies at Mount Sac college. Emdee dates strippers. I think the current lamb is a lap dancer named Cinnamon or Ginger … one of those spices. She works at the Runway Strip club out by LAX.”

  “If they call in, tell Roger and Emdee after I check in downstairs, I’m going home. I have a coach’s meeting at five-thirty.”

  “A what?”

  “My son is being recruited for football at UCLA. Karl Dorrell is coming over. I gotta bust ass or I’m gonna miss it.”

  “No shit? Karl Dorrell? Really?” I’d finally said something that impressed this hard-eyed, boot-tough Cuban.

  I rode the Otis to three and found that the task force had slowed down since this morning. Half the troops were gone; the rest were talking softly into their phones.

  Agent Underwood was in his office getting ready to go home. His ostrich briefcase was open, and I couldn’t help but notice the oversized Glock with a big Freeze Motherfucker barrel.

  “Well, look who’s here. I thought you were too good for us. On a special assignment for the chief. Didn’t have time for our cheesy little serial murder case.”

  “When you urinated on my criminal profile, I figured we weren’t gonna make much of a team.”

  “What do you want?” he snapped, as he turned his back and continued to load things into the briefcase.

  “There’s an old murder case that’s touching this Vaughn Rolaine Fingertip kill,” I said. “Happened early last June. Vaughn’s sister, Arden, was beaten to death. Completely different MO from the Fingertip murders so it’s probably not the same doer. The victim was pounded into oblivion with a brass candlestick.”

  “Is that MO? I thought a rage-based act made it a signature. Of course, I keep getting this stuff all confused.” Really getting pissy now.

  “You’re right. It’s a signature.”

  I dropped the packet of crime scene pictures on his desk. He picked them up and thumbed through them.

  “My partner had the case. He put it together when he heard Vaughn Rolaine’s name.”

  “Your partner, the invisible Zack Farrell.” Underwood smiled. “How is that guy? Since he works for me, I keep meaning to meet him.”

  “He’s sick, Judd. He’s in the Queen of Angels’s psychiatric ward. He had a complete emotional breakdown yesterday.”

  Underwood stared at me for a long time. Then he nodded. “Sorry to hear it.”

  “Thanks.” We stood in awkward silence. “Anyway, by the middle of June, Detective Farrell had Vaughn Rolaine down as the key suspect, but wasn’t able to find him because he was homeless and moving around. I don’t know how this all fits, but it needs to be looked at.

  “That the murder book?” He pointed to the blue binder in my hand.

  “Yeah, but it needs work. I’m taking it home to organize it. I’ll drop it off here in the morning.”

  “Okay.”

  I held up the FedEx from Amazon and he frowned. “Motor City Monster,” I told him.

  “Since you’re not on the task force anymore, you can forget reading it.”

  “I know we didn’t hit it off, Judd, but you caught this Detroit killer. I never even got close to our Fingertip unsub. I’ll have it read by Monday, because it’s never too late to learn something. Good luck catching this guy.” I turned and walked out of his office.

  Driving home, I thought about Zack. He’d really perked up while sorting facts on Arden Rolaine’s murder. Even though most of his ideas seemed farfetched, there were one or two that tracked. I liked the idea that the unsub might also be a homeless guy who got started by killing Vaughn Rolaine because he wanted the sister’s money. That one murder could have kicked him off.

  I got to our house in Venice at five-twenty-five. When I opened the door and walked in I saw Alexa, Chooch, and Delfina all sitting in chairs out in the backyard. I joined them on the patio and they turned to face me. Chooch looked angry.

  “I made it before five-thirty,” I defended. “Dowell isn’t even here yet.”

  “The coach isn’t coming,” Chooch said.

  “Whatta you mean? Why not?”

  “The Athletic Department called,” Alexa said. “App
arently, he’s in a tug of war with Penn State over some blue-chip quarterback from Ohio. He’s fighting Joe Paterno for him so he moved that meeting up and cancelled us.”

  I could see the devastation on Chooch’s face. Delfina was holding his hand, trying to console him.

  “Okay,” I said. “Stuff happens. Don’t let it sink your boat, bud.”

  “But Dad, he said he wanted me. If Joe Paterno also wants this guy from Ohio, that probably means Penn State’s not going to want me. What if neither USC or UCLA offers a scholarship? Then I’ve got nothing.” His voice was shaking.

  “We should talk about this,” I said. “Just you and me, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Come on. Let’s take a walk.”

  We went out the back gate onto the sidewalk that fronted the Grand Canal. Millions of spider-cracks crisscrossed the pavement under our feet; fissures in another man’s dream. My son followed me in silence.

  We made our way up onto the main arched bridge, climbing its subtle slope until we were at the top, looking down the long canal. Chooch stood next to me, his face awash in anger and frustration.

  “When I was sixteen, I didn’t believe in myself.” My voice was thin, blowing away from us in the weakening Santa. Ana winds. “I wasn’t a true believer. Didn’t think I counted. I was an orphan who nobody wanted, and that fact was proven to me over and over because five different sets of foster parents all gave me back. So instead of working to improve myself, or understand why it was happening, I tried to tear down everybody around me. I had a code back then. ‘Do what I say or pay the price.’ But even when people did what I wanted, I didn’t enjoy it, because I knew they did it out of fear and not respect.”

  “Dad—”

  “No. Listen to me, son, because I don’t talk about this stuff often. Showing weakness to people I love is hard for me.”

  He fell quiet, so I continued. “Growing up, I knew if people thought I was weak, they’d take advantage of me. Underneath my bully’s bluster was a frightened kid who didn’t believe. I kept trying to impress people with threats. But I could see in their eyes that they weren’t impressed. They were simply tolerating me, and that just made me angrier.”