by Alan Russell
I couldn’t let that happen. Since his conviction I had spent a lot of time with the families of his victims. I didn’t want to be responsible for reopening their wounds. They needed the assurance that Haines would forever pay for his crimes. It didn’t matter to me that Haines liked to believe we were irrevocably bonded by our fire walk. The cop in me, the human in me, couldn’t forgive Haines for his lack of remorse. His stalking and killing, even his remembering, seemed like a game to him. Haines being in prison provided at least a little solace to the loved ones of his victims. I couldn’t deny them that.
It had been a dozen years since California had executed an inmate. Nevada was much more inclined to carry out the sentence on its death row inmates. If Detective Charles and I succeeded in linking Haines to one or more Las Vegas killings, he’d likely be transferred to death row at Ely State Prison. There, Haines would either die behind bars or eventually be legally executed. I could much more easily live with either of those possibilities than I could with the possibility of his release.
Detective Charles and I had been playing phone tag. I tried her number once more. This time I succeeded in reaching her.
“I was just calling you,” she said.
“That must mean our investigation is in sync.”
“How was your visit with Haines?”
“I am not sure if I aced it,” I said, “or if I got jack shit.”
“Were you questioning him or playing cards with him?”
“I’m thinking both,” I said. “In the batch of crime scene photos that I brought him, he was able to decipher some messages the killer had left for him in the form of meteorological symbols and poker hands. From that, Haines was able to accurately predict what kind of murder weapon the killer would be using in his next homicide.”
“There already was a next murder?”
“As it turns out, it happened just a few days ago. The crime scene photos that Haines interpreted were from mid-November of last year. By the way, the weapon used in the second murder was an axe.”
“An axe?”
“It’s a king thing. Haines predicted the coup de grâce would be delivered by an axe or a sword.”
“Old school, as in medieval.”
“You said it.”
“As interesting as that development was, you still haven’t told me how you made out.”
“I got what I went for, or I think I did. Haines offered up the names of hotels where he stayed, along with his favorite restaurants and nightspots. I got this feeling, though, that he realized I was up to something, even if he wasn’t sure what that was. That’s when he suddenly got wary, or at least that’s how it felt to me.”
“Hopefully, he gave you what you wanted before he got suspicious.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I said.
I referred to my notes and began repeating the names of Haines’s favorite haunts to Andrea. When I finished, she said, “I don’t think I’ll even call on the hotels. They’re too big and impersonal. And the casino hotels have cameras everywhere. We know from other murders he’s committed that Haines has a sixth sense about cameras and has always been good at avoiding them. That’s why the restaurants and lounges are our best chance to find a killer on vacation. Some of them I’m familiar with. They’re intimate little places, good spots to take a date.”
“Haines became infamous during his trial,” I said. “I’d be surprised if witnesses didn’t notice that he’d dined at some of those restaurants.”
“I’ve never heard of any local restaurant advertising ‘The Weatherman Ate Here.’”
“Let’s not give them any ideas, then. The more low profile you can keep your investigation, the better. Haines might be on death row, but he seems to have lots of eyes and ears working on his behalf.”
“Mum’s the word,” she promised.
The Los Angeles Animal Cruelty Task Force had been formed more than a dozen years ago. According to what I read on the LAPD informational website, the task force combatted animal cruelty in all forms and worked to educate diverse communities.
It was depressing looking at the ACTF Facebook page; I flipped through the pictures of animals that had been tortured and maimed and found myself muttering and growing angrier. The number of mistreated animals far exceeded convictions. Since the inception of the ACTF, there had been fewer than fifty convictions for animal cruelty.
As horrific as any form of animal cruelty is, I thought it even more horrific to profit from it. Tito had seemed incredibly insouciant, confident that he couldn’t be touched. It was only when I’d talked about offering up a reward that he grew uneasy. Someone could have seen something on the day he dumped the dogs. Tito’s Achilles’ heel needed to be exposed.
I tried to figure out the best way to proceed, and looked to see if I knew anyone assigned to ACTF. One name stood out: Detective Porter Bennet. I remembered Bennet as a fellow officer at Metro K-9. Although I didn’t know him very well, from what I remembered of him he was a good guy. During the time we worked together, I’d had trouble keeping up with all his nicknames. If you’re a cop with the first name Porter, you had better expect a lot of different monikers. I remembered hearing him called Suds, Brew, Ale, Pint, Bud, and others.
Naturally, he answered with his surname: “Bennet.”
“Detective Bennet,” I said, “this is Michael Gideon.”
“You mean Michael Gideon who will forever be the pride of Metro K-9? You mean Medal of Valor recipient Michael Gideon?”
“Feel free to call me Sir Michael, Porter.”
“Porter? I haven’t heard my real first name in years. You better call me Bud. Even my wife calls me that now, but then again, she is my third wife.”
“Bud,” I said.
“And I wasn’t shitting you about being glad you got that hardware, Gideon. You’re no phony. I know that because we live in the world capital of phonies. Because you did your job well, a lot of cops were able to bask in your glory. It was a good thing for LAPD.”
“Sirius and I got lucky,” I said. “The expression ‘blind pig finds acorn’ pretty much sums up what happened.”
“Is your four-legged partner still alive?”
“Sirius is doing great. Both of us were supposed to get Medicals, but then the chief offered me a position where I could still work with Sirius.”
“I heard something about that,” he said. “It must be two, three years since you left Metro.”
“Almost five years,” I said.
“Shit,” he said. “We’re getting old.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So I got a report on my desk today,” he said, “that says you’re poaching our business.”
“It’s more like I was minding my own business,” I said, “when I got acquainted with this poor dog who was dumped and left for dead. That’s when I started investigating what happened.”
“I can’t believe LAPD let animal control take the lead,” he said, “and that animal control thought leaving us a message about those dumped dogs was adequate notice. That’s not acceptable.”
“I’m not excusing what happened,” I said, “but I do know the animal control officer who was called out to the scene was shocked when he found one of the dogs was still alive. That’s when trying to get her help became his priority.”
Bud’s growled “yeah” sounded begrudging.
“As for Officer Brockington,” I said, “he was able to identify a potential suspect for me. In addition to that, he determined that on the day the dogs were dumped, the Gang Task Force had set up checkpoints and was stopping cars looking for a suspected MS-13 shooter. He did me a solid, and I’d hate thinking his jacket would get tagged over this.”
“Snafu,” said Bud. The sanitized translation is “situation normal all fouled up.”
“Snafu,” I agreed.
“I’ll try to keep any shade from being thrown at that cop,” Bud promised.
“That’s good to hear. Officer Brockington put me onto a suspect named
Humberto ‘Tito’ Rivera. Tito’s street name is El Gallo Negro, or the Black Rooster. Rivera is believed to have dumped the four dogs that were in his truck.”
“I am well acquainted with Rivera,” said Bud. “In fact, he’s been on the ACTF radar ever since he was into cockfighting, and that goes back a number of years.”
“Why haven’t you nailed him?”
“He’s slippery. And the dogfighting circuit, as you have probably heard, is notoriously closemouthed. Most fights aren’t announced until the day of, and they’re usually held at some remote ranch, which makes surveillance all but impossible. That, combined with Rivera’s veneer of respectability, makes him a tough target. He paints himself as the poor kid who’s made good with his businesses. Of course, it’s those businesses that allow him to hide in plain sight.”
“I visited Tito at his junkyard,” I said. “Or as he calls it, his recycling center.”
“Yeah, he and Kermit like to sing about how tough it is to be green.”
“He’s got lots of heavy equipment at the junkyard. I would bet that’s where he intended to dispose of those four dogs, just as he has other dogs in the past.”
“I’m sure of it,” Bud said.
“You ever try and get a search warrant to look there?”
“Rivera isn’t dumb. That’s why his guard dog business operates out of his junkyard. You know how tough it would be to try and isolate evidence in that environment?”
“When I questioned our rooster,” I said, “he lived up to his street name. He acted like the confident cock of the walk. The only time his self-assuredness seemed to slip was when I mentioned that I was going to try and get an ACTF reward commercial aired. He has to be worried that someone might blow the whistle on him and his dogfighting for the right price.”
“I like that idea,” said Bud. “In fact, we might be able to make it a coproduction of ACTF, Crime Stoppers, and an organization like the Humane Society.”
“Perfect,” I said. “If we bring Crime Stoppers in, they can film a reenactment in the exact spot where the dogs were dumped. Someone had to have seen something.”
“And there’s nothing like the offer of money to sharpen memories.”
“I’ve even got the perfect star for the commercial,” I said, and told him about Emily.
“I’m not sure about using a pit bull,” Bud said. “The breed doesn’t come across as very sympathetic.”
“With all of Emily’s stitches, right now she sort of looks like a Frankenstein dog. If ever there’s been a sympathetic pit bull, she’s it. Emily definitely looks vulnerable.”
“That would make her story all the more compelling,” he said. “But I’ll have to run it by the team. Usually we avoid showing the ugly face of animal abuse because that makes it too easy for people to just look away.”
“Emily can personalize the story,” I said. “And her image might help us get something on our sick prick.”
“That’s what I used to call Michael Vick,” said Bud, referring to the former NFL quarterback who pleaded guilty to a federal dogfighting charge. “Sick Prick Michael Vick.”
“Our rooster is as bad as Sick Prick Vick,” I said. “That’s why I want to nail him on felony charges, and I want him to do jail time. I expect his lawyers will use the same tactics as did Vick’s. They’ll say Tito grew up with cockfighting, and that dogfighting was just a natural extension of that. We’ll hear how he didn’t know right from wrong, and that it was part of his South American heritage. Then they’ll bring out his good-businessman card and probably find out that he’s supported local youth sports, the chamber of commerce, B’nai B’rith, and the ACLU.”
“If we get the goods on him,” Bud said, “he won’t skate. He’ll do jail time.”
“That’s what I needed to hear.”
Chapter Twelve
Once More Unto the Breach
Ever since interpreting Sirius’s Frisbee dream at Seth’s home, I had felt guilty about not spending more time with him. Sirius is a working dog, and it’s up to me to keep him at the top of his game. I also need to work on my handler skills. Communication goes both ways.
Repetition and consistency are necessary components for any good K-9 team. Just as people block out time to go to the gym, I needed to see to our team’s workout.
There are several Metro K-9 training fields around Los Angeles, but the primary site is in Glendale. People are always surprised at its location. The facility is on the east side of the LA River, an on-again, off-again body of water that flows along a mostly concrete channel through the heart of Los Angeles. The eleven-mile section called the Glendale Narrows actually has an earthen bottom. It’s a popular spot for fisherman and birdwatchers, an oasis in the middle of an urban jungle.
As Sirius and I drove through a mostly industrial area, he began to get increasingly excited.
“Yeah, we’re going home,” I said.
Home might overstate it, but not by much. My partner and I had bonded on these fields along with the rest of our K-9 platoon. Sirius had been the A student. Because I have never liked showing up others, I have always been more of the Gentleman C type, or at least that’s been my explanation over the years.
We turned into a small parking lot, which was deserted save for one car. As I had hoped, the large field would be all ours. The mostly grass park was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence; hedges shielded the expanse from prying eyes.
Sirius was making all kinds of happy noises as I sprang him from the car. He ran up the path, back to me, and then up the path again, while I gathered our bag of tricks. We walked by the cinderblock building that serves as a conference room for Metro K-9; in the outlying kennels a few of the housed dogs barked at our appearance, but without much conviction.
There was an obstacle course on the field, but before taking it on, Sirius and I did our stretches. Our encounter with fire, and our burns, had compromised our ranges of motion. Each of us had gone through intense physical therapy; the post-therapy was supposed to be a lifetime of specific stretches for the two of us. I stretched Sirius’s hip flexors and shoulder flexors. Then I had him do an abduction stretch and a back stretch. Between all his stretching, he got a massage and a rubdown. He always likes those best. I’m the same.
Then I did my own stretching. My coach impatiently barked a few times. It didn’t take a dog whisperer to know he was shouting, “Hurry it up, slowpoke.”
Since the obstacle course was already set up, I decided to send Sirius through his paces. We started with the weave poles. I motioned to them and said, “Let’s see what you got.”
In and out he snaked, his wagging tail hitting every pole.
“That was simple,” I said, “and you’re already breathing hard. Time for some low hurdles for conditioning.”
I directed him to the obstacles, and he easily cleared the lot of them.
“Okay, walk the dog,” I said.
In some drawer at my house is a dusty yo-yo. About the only trick I can do with that yo-yo is a maneuver called “walk the dog.” The yo-yo seems to propel itself along the floor. Sirius doesn’t have a yo-yo; his “walk the dog” is traversing a fourteen-foot aluminum dog walk. When he made it over, I yelled, “Back,” and motioned for him to return from where he’d come. He did as directed.
“Time for the A-frames,” I told him, and both of us jogged over to the structure, even though only one of us went up it, and then down it.
I noticed Sirius was breathing hard, so I announced, “Water break!” Then I broke out his bowl and the water. One of us began to slurp.
It was a perfect spring day, warm and sunny. The skies were almost a deep Dodgers blue, with no sign of smog. Sirius finished drinking and came over to my side. Instead of continuing with the obstacle course, I told him to sit and stay. For several minutes I mostly kept my back to Sirius, walking the field and making sure it was clear of glass or anything sharp. What I was really doing, though, was forcing Sirius to wait for my next command.
“Sirius, come,” I called.
He ran to my side. “Heel,” I said, although the command was unnecessary. My partner stayed by my side until I motioned him to go through the agility tunnel. In the field, handler and K-9 have to be able to work independently of one another. There are situations that sometimes require me to be absent from Sirius’s line of sight. The fabric-covered tunnel didn’t allow him to see me, but he easily navigated his way through it.
After that, I reacquainted Sirius with the teeter-totter. It had been quite some time since he’d done the old up and down on his own, so I had only myself to blame for his early missteps. It didn’t take him long, though, until he found his legs and was climbing up and scrambling down.
One of the favorite obstacles for handlers and dogs is the tire jump. Handlers like to toss around a football and try to throw it through the opening in the tire. Dogs are expected to vault through the tire.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friend,” I yelled. Luckily, my hand signal was more instructive as to what I wanted. Sirius ran to the tire, vaulted, and made it through.
“One of us has still got it,” I said.
We had a second water break. I would have been content to call it a day, but not Sirius. He knew the special toys I had in my bag and couldn’t wait for me to bring them out.
It was Frisbee time.
Sirius thinks that sticks and balls are a waste of his talents. I started him off easy, tossing the discs so that he didn’t have to move far for the catch. In my bag are a variety of discs, all different sizes and weights. I went through my repertoire of throws, trying to remember all the names, along with the proper hand and arm positioning. I don’t know who came up with the names, but Frisbee throws includes such tosses as “the hammer,” “the scoober,” “the thumber,” “the duck,” and “the chicken wing.”
