Lethal Measures

by Leonard Goldberg

  “He put up a fight,” she said.

  Jake hurried over.

  “Do you see skin under his nails?” Joanna nodded.

  “And blood.

  It’s under the index and third finger on the right.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Jake said hoarsely.

  “I knew it.” Murdock moved closer to the bed, trying to overhear.

  “What? What?”

  “We got murder,” Jake said.

  “That’s what.” Murdock swallowed audibly.

  “How can you be sure?” Joanna told the clean about the bits of skin and blood beneath the corpse’s fingernails. They were reliable signs of a man fighting for his life, clawing at the face and arms of his assailant. The manicured nail on his index finger was also chipped, adding more weight to the evidence.

  “We’ll type the blood under his nails against the blood on the pillow and against his own, and that will clearly establish that the man was attacked. And we’ll use the bits of skin to do a DNA type. If we ever catch the killer, the DNA type will give us a positive ID.”

  “So you have absolutely no doubt?” Murdock asked nervously.

  “None.” Joanna sniffed the air near the head of the bed.

  “Why is the smell of vomit so strong here?” “I noticed it too, and it’s coming from the back of his head or neck.” Jake leaned down and looked under the bed.

  “Or from the floor.”

  Joanna lifted the corpse’s head and examined the occiput and neck. They were clean, but the smell was even stronger. She stared down at the pillow briefly, then turned it over and saw the dried vomitus.

  “Was anything on the bed moved after they found him dead this morning?”

  “The cop on guard didn’t let them move anything,” Jake answered.

  “Why?”

  Joanna pointed to the dried vomitus on the back of the pillowcase.

  “The bastards suffocated him,” Jake said, his jaws tightly clenched.

  “And the poor guy had his eyes bandaged. He didn’t even see them coming.”

  Joanna looked to the door.

  “Did you say you had a guard posted outside?”

  “Around the clock.”

  “Then how did the killers get in here?”

  Jake thought for a moment, wondering if it could have been a doctor or nurse who did the killing. No, he quickly decided. The cop on duty had told him that no one had entered the room after 8:00 p.m. No one. But maybe he was talking about visitors and not hospital staff, like doctors and nurses and technicians.

  “German! Come in here for a minute.”

  The tall, broad-shouldered cop hurried in.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Did anyone enter this room after you last saw the patient at eight o’clock?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I’m talking about anybody. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, technicians.”

  “Not a soul.”

  Jake rubbed at his chin, knowing that somehow the killer had gotten by the policeman. He wondered if the cop had dozed off briefly.

  “Did you leave your post for any reason?”

  “No, sir.”

  “To take a pee?”

  The cop nodded slowly.

  “Twice. But I used the head in the room, and I left the door open.”

  “Did you walk around any? You know, to stretch your legs?”

  The cop thought for a moment.

  “I went to the nurses’ station for a cup of coffee at eight-thirty or

  so. But I stayed in the corridor and kept my eye on the door.” “How far do you figure you were from the door?”

  “Thirty-five feet, maybe forty.”

  “And you saw nobody in the corridor?”

  “Nobody,” the cop said, then squinted as he remembered back.

  “Except for a cleaning crew.”

  Jake’s eyes narrowed.

  “Are you sure they were cleaners?”

  “Yeah. I guess,” the cop said.

  “They were dressed in white and had on ID badges.

  And I can tell you for damn sure they didn’t come into this room.”

  No, you can’t, Jake wanted to say. You were forty feet away, and one of the cleaners could have slipped into the room while you were reaching for a cup of coffee.

  “That was between eight-thirty and nine o’clock, right?”

  “Correct.”

  Jake took out his notepad and jotted down a reminder to check with the hospital officials and see if a cleaning crew was scheduled to be on the sixth floor at that time. Even if they were, he’d want to talk with them. They might have seen something.

  “Can you describe the cleaners?”

  The cop hesitated, thinking back again.

  “Two white guys. Young, in their late twenties. One of them had a goatee.”

  “Good,” Jake said.

  “Thanks for your help.”

  Joanna watched the policeman leave, then turned to Jake.

  “You think the cleaning crew were murderers?”

  “Could be,” he said.

  “White uniforms and fake ID badges are easy to come by.”

  Murdock shook his head disgustedly.

  “And they just walked right in and killed a patient, then walked out.”

  “They didn’t just walk in,” Jake said, wondering what thoughts had been going through the old man’s mind while he was being suffocated. He probably thought he was having a nightmare.

  “If it was the cleaners, they had inside help.”

  “You have no way of knowing that,” Murdock said defensively.

  “Sure I do,” Jake told him.

  “They knew all about the correct uniform and ID badge to wear. They knew where the cleaning closet was. And, most important, they knew the room the witness was in. Keep in mind that the witness’s name wasn’t even listed with hospital information. Somebody would have to supply those details to the killers. And that somebody had to know Memorial Hospital.”

  “You’re still guessing,” Murdock said. “There is no evidence whatsoever that someone on staff here was involved. It’s all circumstantial.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jake said, disliking Murdock even more than before. He put his notepad away.

  “I want to check the nurses’ station. Let’s see how good the officer’s view was. Maybe there was a blind spot.”

  He led the way out past the policeman, who was standing guard at the door. Jake stopped and looked down the corridor as the door to the fire escape opened. A tall black man wearing a white uniform and ID badge came out and walked toward them, cursing under his breath. He was pushing a bucket on wheels and carrying two mops over his shoulder.

  “What’s the problem?” Jake asked him.

  “I’ll tell you what the problem is,” the custodian said, his voice raspy.

  “The help you hire today ain’t worth a damn. They want good pay, but they’re lazy.

  Just plain lazy. Left their mops and bucket in the fire escape instead of putting them away in the closet.”

  Jake’s eyes suddenly narrowed.

  “Where’s the cleaning closet?”

  The black man pointed down the corridor.

  “Halfway between here and the nurses’ station. Hell, they had to pass it on their way back to the elevator.”

  Jake and Joanna followed the man’s line of vision. In their minds’ eyes they both saw the cleaning crew mopping their way away from the room and away from the cop at the nurses’ station. They nodded to each other and said almost simultaneously, “Inside job.”

  “What?” Murdock asked. He watched Jake take the mop and bucket from the janitor and tag them as evidence. He still didn’t understand their significance.

  Jake waited for the man to walk out of hearing distance, then said, “Somebody at Memorial is involved in murder.”

  Murdock gulped.

  “Are you saying someone on staff actually did the killing?”

  “I’m saying someone on staf
f helped plan it,” Jake said.

  “And in the state of California that’s murder one.” Friday, March 19, 11=28 a.m.

  Are you okay?” Jake asked.

  “I’m fine,” Sergeant Lou Farelli said.

  “You look a little peaked.”

  “That’s what sitting on a couch watching TV for a month will do to you.”

  Jake studied his partner’s face, wondering if Farelli had come back on duty too soon. His color wasn’t good, and there was no bounce to his step. But the doctor had cleared him, said he had recovered from his bullet wounds. In his mind’s eye Jake could still see the blood gushing out of Farelli’s leg onto the sidewalk.

  “If you get tired, you let me know.”

  Farelli shaded his eyes from the bright sun and glanced around at the mounds of rubble that had once been homes.

  “Un-fucking-believable.”

  “It hits you a lot harder when you see it up close, doesn’t it?”

  “One moment it was a neighborhood, the next a pile of nothing.”

  “With twenty-two people dead,” Jake added.

  Farelli watched the miniature flags scattered about the bomb site fluttering in the breeze.

  “Do you think the doc will ever be able to put the body parts back together again?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “Only God could do that.”

  “Yeah,” Farelli said.

  “But he ain’t working this case.”

  A loud engine roared to life. A tractor like earthmover began pushing aside the rubble from a collapsed chimney and fireplace. An aTF. agent gave hand signals to the driver, motioning him to come forward a little more, then a little more. A stone slab split into two pieces, sending up a cloud of dust and debris.

  Abruptly the agent held up his palms, waving them, and the earthmover

  came to a stop. An assistant coroner appeared and climbed over the pile of bricks, then reached in with a pair of tongs. Jake and Farelli stood on their tiptoes and tried to see into the rubble but couldn’t.

  Moments later an aTF. agent hurried by them, carrying a small plastic crate with a biohazard label attached to it. Dan Hurley was a step behind the agent. He saw the two homicide detectives and came over.

  “Glad to see you back,” Hurley said to Farelli, noting his color. The whole department knew how close Farelli had come to bleeding to death. A friend of Hurley’s had told him that Farelli lost a quart of blood on that damn sidewalk.

  “Kellerman says you’ll be a better cop now that you’ve got some of his blood in you.”

  Farelli grinned, nodding. Go Kellerman was a member of the vice squad and had donated a unit of hard-to-find AB negative blood for Farelli.

  “You thank him again for me.”

  The engine of the earthmover came to life once more, louder now. It backed away from the collapsed chimney. More dust went up into the air and gradually settled. The earthmover backed up farther, and the noise from its engine faded.

  “Still finding bits and pieces, huh?” Jake asked.

  “This time I think we found a real body part,” Hurley said.

  “It looks like an elbow with a nice section of upper arm still attached.”

  Farelli shrugged.

  “Hard to make an ID with that.”

  Hurley smiled thinly.

  “And it looks like there’s a tattoo on that arm.”

  “What kind of tattoo?” Jake asked, his ears pricked.

  “It’s hard to say,” Hurley said and rubbed at his chin with the hand that was missing two fingers.

  “But it appears to be some type of flower.”

  “Is it a good tattoo or a cheap one?” Jake asked.

  “It looked pretty good to me,” Hurley said thoughtfully.

  “You know, the color and details were really nice and clear.”

  Jake nodded. Excellent tattoos could be traced, particularly if they had unusual features. Some tattoos were so distinctive and intricate that they could be attributed to only a few artists. Jake jotted down a note, reminding himself to study it carefully later.

  “Have the feds heard anything?”

  “Not a peep,” Hurley said.

  “The group that did it isn’t talking.”

  “Not even the usual nut calls?” Jake asked. “LAPD got one late last night,” Hurley said disdainfully.

  “A real fruitcake. He claimed the explosive he used was a special type of TNT that was made by Pontius Pilate.”

  “So it’s looking more and more like a work accident, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so,” Hurley said, not really convinced.

  “But I’ll tell you this. These guys weren’t amateurs, and their bomb wasn’t homemade. It was a special type of C-four.” He reached into his coat and handed Jake a lab report.

  Jake held the paper so Farelli could read it as well. It was from the aTF. Explosives Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland. The C-4 used in the bomb was a mixture of RDX and PETN, both very high-grade explosives. The ratio of RDX to PETN was not usually seen in C-4 preparations.

  “The RDX and PETN were pure, virtually no contaminants,” Hurley explained.

  “That tells us the C-four wasn’t homemade. It was manufactured under strict quality control.”

  “Where did they get it?” Jake asked.

  “They probably stole it from some military facility or maybe bought it on the black market,” Hurley said.

  “There’s plenty of it around. But it’s the proportions of RDX and PETN that tell us the most. These ingredients were mixed in a precise ratio that assured them they’d get the biggest bang for their buck.

  It was done by somebody with expertise in explosives. It was done by a pro.”

  “If they were such pros, how come they blew themselves up?” Farelli asked.

  “It happens.” Hurley’s mind flashed back to the pipe bomb that had blown away two of his fingers. He had been careful, so very careful, but the bomb had exploded anyway. He could still remember the puff of smoke just before he heard the boom. And he still had nightmares about it, but not as frequently as before.

  Hurley brought his mind back to the present. ” I heard we lost our witness.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said sourly.

  “Did he die from his injuries?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “They got to him. It looks like they suffocated the poor bastard.”

  “Shit,” Hurley grumbled.

  “Now we got no eyewitness.”

  “And now we know they’re going to blow up whatever the hell they were planning to blow up in the first place.”

  “How do you figure that?” “Because most bombers would have run like hell and disappeared in the woods,” Hurley said.

  “You don’t hang around when there are twenty-two counts of murder staring you in the face. But these guys did. They’re sticking around to clean up all the loose ends so they can get on with their business. I’ll bet they’ve got a specific target set for a specific date. And they’re not going to let anything or anybody get in their way.”

  Jake ran a hand through his hair, trying to follow Hurley’s line of reasoning.

  “But their chances of getting caught are now so much greater.”

  “They don’t give a damn about that. Fanatics only care about their mission.”

  The cellular phone inside Hurley’s coat pocket sounded. He reached for it and spoke briefly, then put the phone away.

  “Got to go. I’ll check with you later.”

  Farelli watched the bomb squad detective hurry away.

  “Probably another bomb threat.”

  “Hurley told me that the bomb squads in Los Angeles get over a thousand calls a year,” Jake said.

  “We make Belfast look like a safe playground.”

  “This city is turning into a real shithole,” Farelli growled.

  “And now we’ve got some terrorists to add a little flavor to it.”

  “And not a clue as to who they are.”
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  Farelli pulled his loose-fitting trousers up over his waist. Despite his inactivity during the past month, he had lost ten pounds since the shooting.

  “Did the witness tell you anything before he was iced?”

  “Not much,” Jake said.

  “He was still having a hell of a headache from his concussion.”

  “He saw nothing at all?”

  “He saw a couple of guys go into the house, but he couldn’t remember what they looked like. And he had no recollection of the blast itself. He was walking his German shepherd, and the dog stopped to take a leak. That’s the last thing the old guy recalled.”

  Farelli thought for a moment.

  “How many times a day did the guy walk his dog?”

  “Twice,” Jake said.

  “Morning and night.”

  “And where did he live?”

  Jake pointed with his thumb.

  “A block and a half up that way.”

  “Did he live by himself?” “With his wife, but she’s got bad eyesight and doesn’t walk with him. According to neighbors, she usually sits in the swing on the front porch and waits for him to return from walking the dog.”

  “She can’t see, huh?”

  “Cataracts.”

  Farelli smiled, his eyes lighting up.

  “Do you think that maybe when he came back from his walks he described to her what he had seen while he was away?”

  Jake slapped an open palm against his forehead.

  “I’ve got my head up my ass.”

  “Let’s go see her.”

  They walked up the winding street past houses leveled by the blast, then past houses that were badly damaged, with windows blown out and siding split by the force of the explosion. Even the trees had been hard hit. Branches and limbs were strewn about the sidewalk and on front lawns.

  Jake glanced over at Farelli, glad to have his partner back. Farelli’s strong points were tracking down and questioning witnesses. He knew how to find them, and he knew how to extract information from them. People seemed almost happy to give him the information he wanted. Jake thought that was because of Farelli’s appearance. He was a short, stocky man, heavily bearded, with a quick smile. A lot of people believed he looked like a waiter in an Italian restaurant. But he was really tough as nails and, in a fight, he was the man you wanted by your side.