“Yep, we do. Just like interviewing a child molester. You hate the puke, but you gain his trust so you can hang ’im. You’re the only one who can. He doesn’t want a lawyer; he wants Detective Carly Edwards.”
* * *
About an hour later, the drab coroner’s wagon loaded up its cargo and headed for Los Angeles, where the county coroner would conduct the autopsy. By then, Carly had finished gathering all the information she could from the officers involved in stopping the Lexus. Drake and Harris were right; there wasn’t much physical evidence, not even of a robbery. The coroner found Teresa’s purse, cash untouched, beneath her body.
The detectives speculated that Londy and his buddy carjacked Teresa for the Lexus, but why kill her and leave her money? The autopsy might yield some evidence, but Carly knew the case could be sealed tight with a confession.
She watched the crime scene break down around her. The officers who’d arrested Londy left immediately after the coroner. Those with Darryl were just now pulling out. With the main players gone, the media filtered away, as did the onlookers. The last patrol officers on scene rolled up all the yellow tape while a tow driver hooked up Teresa’s Lexus.
Captain Garrison stood, arms folded, deep in conversation with Drake, Harris, and Tucker. Briefly Carly wondered if she really could change Garrison’s mind and be sent back to patrol.
Despite the media’s attempt to paint Carly as corrupt after the shooting, she’d been exonerated and cleared for full duty. Yet the captain wouldn’t release her from juvenile. What was he afraid of?
Carly sighed. Every question brought with it another question. She made her way to her car, happy with one small victory: Trejo was nowhere to be seen. She’d successfully avoided being savaged by him again.
“Hey, Edwards!” Sergeant Tucker caught her attention, calling to her as she opened her car door.
“Yes?”
“I forgot—Altman says happy birthday.”
4
Time to interview a murderer.
As Carly left the scene, she recalled being in a similar situation years earlier. Then she was a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, and a man who’d shot his wife to death walked into the station, handed her his gun, and confessed. The interview was short but damning, and afterward the killer stopped talking on advice of counsel. The jury convicted him and sent him to San Quentin, where he still resided. She felt proud of her part in seeing justice served for the victim. But that was a long time ago.
She took a deep breath and expelled it forcefully, tuning out a small voice that said she was rusty, out of practice, not up to the task of this interview. Big cases were few and far between, and her most recent huge event had been the shooting.
The shooting. Potter. Rivas. Trejo. Her thoughts tumbled, unstoppable, back to the incident that sent her to juvenile, and suddenly it was that night and she was trying to stop Potter from reloading his gun. In an instant she’d seen that the man she fired at was no longer a threat. She could see the shiny object he’d dropped was not a gun, and that fact hit her like a hammer. She froze. What have I done?
Potter jammed a fresh clip into his gun.
“Derek, stop! He’s down!” Carly leaped to Potter and grabbed his arm.
He looked at her as if she were an alien and shoved her away. Panic threatened, but sirens and headlights of approaching patrol cars gave Carly something to focus on. Training took over, and she stepped in front of Potter, yanking the radio from her belt to inform dispatch there’d just been an officer-involved shooting.
“1-Adam 7, 998, suspect down. We need an ambulance to the rear of our dispatch location.”
Assisting officers approached. Potter glared at Carly, but he holstered his weapon. The entire area quickly flooded with blue suits and strong flashlights, stopping one nightmare, but the aftermath of the shooting started another for Carly.
As she remembered that night, Carly would always reflect on the fact that she knew she and Potter were destined for trouble. The night had been shredded by Santa Ana winds, hot gusts that fanned tempers and blew irritation under people’s skin like sand. They began their shift assisting another beat with a bloody domestic disturbance call. Potter almost made a bad situation worse by treating the victim as if she were the suspect. Thankfully the beat unit defused the situation and Carly and Potter went back into service.
But it seemed to Carly as though Punch-Drunk was spoiling for a fight. More annoying than the wind, he bugged her. The way he talked to people, the way he tried to hotdog calls, and the way he kissed off minor stuff—all of it grated on her nerves.
They’d only made it halfway through the shift when they got the call that ended in the shooting.
Like stinging burns placed under cold running water, the images faded, without disappearing, from Carly’s thoughts. She slowed her car and swerved to pull into the drive-through of a fast-food restaurant, her grip on the wheel so tight she broke a nail. She waved a sheepish apology to the motorist behind her, who acknowledged her abrupt turn with a honk. The past was shelved in favor of the present. The rumble in her stomach reminded her she’d missed breakfast and lunch.
Carly fiddled with the broken nail while she waited for her order. It was easier now to shut out the images, but the feelings associated with the shooting would never fade. Powerlessness, anger, and guilt sometimes drenched her psyche like sweat. I should have stopped Potter that night. He didn’t need to empty his gun. Potter’s nickname went from “Punch-Drunk” to “Psycho,” his rep shoddy, and like being hit by the spreading ooze of a hazmat spill, Carly couldn’t help but be stained by his actions.
A picture of George Rivas on the ground in a puddle of blood sizzled in her mind’s eye. The shiny object in his hand was part of a crutch sharpened to a point for collecting aluminum cans. Eventually, the autopsy showed Rivas was hit twelve times; two of Potter’s rounds killed him. The rest merely did damage and inflamed the community. Both of Carly’s bullets struck Rivas in the right thigh. As to the original call, if there had been a man with a gun at the address, he disappeared with a hot Santa Ana gust.
The public saw an unarmed man shot multiple times. Accusations and ugly insinuations flew. Carly and Potter were, as a matter of routine, given different duty assignments pending the outcome of the internal investigation. Reporter Alex Trejo led the media attack, suggesting Carly had panicked. “Unarmed Man Dies in Hail of Police Bullets!” He blasted the department and both officers every time he had a chance. Because of the media circus, Potter claimed to be too stressed to work. He hired a lawyer and was off on paid stress leave while his attorney and the city fought. Carly had seen fights like that go on for years, with the city eventually agreeing to a stress-related retirement. But gossip about Potter said he was spinning his wheels and would eventually be fired. As for Carly, she wasn’t stressed; she was angry. She wanted to tell the press her story, distance herself from Potter, but an order from Captain Garrison to remain silent stilled her protests.
The transfer to juvenile, a low-profile, quiet detail, was set up for her own good, Garrison insisted, but to Carly it was punishment, a tacit admission she was a broken cop. On top of everything, Rivas’s family sued for wrongful death.
But Carly knew from her last conversation with the lawyers that the family was ready to settle and be done with it. In fact, time moved most people on to other things. Even Trejo backed off. His short attention span bounced him to the next juicy story. Only Garrison wouldn’t relent. Could getting Londy Akins to cop to murder really be the ticket?
Carly collected her hamburger and fries and continued to the station. She wolfed down her meal in the parking lot. When she finished, she looked up at the police station in front of her. The six-story blue-gray public safety building stood like a bland and imposing sentinel. She studied it for a minute, as if somewhere in the structure an answer was hidden. When nothing was forthcoming, she got out of her car and headed for the back steps.
“Hey, Edwards!”
&nbs
p; Carly turned at the sound of her name and saw the public information officer jogging her way. “Soto, what’s up?”
“I guess your career is what’s up. I hear you’re talking to one of the mayor’s murderers.” He reached the back door as Carly keyed it open. Together they walked to the elevator.
“Yeah, it seems the kid knows me and wants to talk.” Even Soto sees this interview as my chance.
“It will make a great press release, you know—‘Juvenile Detective Seals Fate of Mayor Burke’s Killers.’ I’ll write it pretty. Everyone will be impressed by the quick closure; I bet the chief will let you write your own ticket then.”
They reached the elevator. Carly punched the fourth-floor button; the PIO’s office was on the second.
Carly’s spirits rose faster than the elevator. “You can bet I’ll do my best. The kid won’t know what hit him.” A smile stole across her features, and she felt the frustration of earlier evaporate at the thought of making a true criminal pay. Good cops put bad people in jail.
Soto stepped off on the second floor and flashed her a thumbs-up. “Good luck. I’m off to punch out the press release.”
The elevator doors closed and Carly hummed to herself. James Brown’s “I Feel Good” crossed her mind, but she decided a high-pitched squeal wouldn’t be appropriate. She floated from the elevator to the juvenile investigations lobby. It didn’t even bother her that no one manned the desk and she had to ring the buzzer.
“Be out in a second” came a voice from behind the barrier.
Carly leaned against the reception counter and continued humming while she waited.
The heavy barrier door separating the elevator foyer from the offices and information desk was a remnant of an earlier time. Thirty years before, the floor had served as a jail facility, but the cost of running a jail rose too high and the city cut back. The fourth floor was decommissioned, most of the iron cell bars removed, and those that could not be removed camouflaged; but the repressive atmosphere of confinement could not be covered up. Juvenile investigators nicknamed the floor “San Quentin South.” Today, however, the place seemed a little brighter.
“Oh, it’s you, Crash. Having a good birthday?” Sergeant Altman smiled as he stepped out of his office to the counter. Howard Altman was an old-timer, like most of the personnel in juvenile investigations. A big man with a bald head and a face whose features belied his amateur boxing career, first in the Army and then in the police games, he could look scary, but more often than not there was a smile on his face. He’d been born and raised in Mississippi but came to California with the Army. Altman said he stayed because of the weather, and though he’d been on the coast for thirty-plus years, his baritone still sang of the South. The sergeant was a good guy to work for and about the only bright spot in juvenile. He hit the lock release to let Carly in.
“I think my birthday is going a lot better now than it was a few hours ago,” she said as she pushed the heavy door open and entered juvenile investigations.
“You lucked out with this interview,” Arnie, a day-watch detective, said as he stepped out of the hallway that led to juvenile detention. Arnie had the rep of being the best interviewer on the floor. He looked more like a CPA than a cop, but he was the go-to guy whenever anyone had a hard case. Carly had learned a lot from him during her tenure. “I was just back there checking out the rocket scientist you get to talk to.” He rolled his watery blue eyes, gaze going to the ceiling and then back to Carly.
“Do you think he’ll talk? Or invoke?” she asked. The death blow to an interview was the bad guy invoking his right to a lawyer. It wouldn’t hurt to have insight from Arnie on how to proceed to keep that from happening.
Arnie shrugged. “Move quick. My advice is to go straight for the jugular. Ask him why he killed her.”
“Relax, Crash.” Altman stepped to where she stood and squeezed her shoulder with a big hand. “You’re good at this; you’ll do fine.”
“Thanks,” she said as she turned toward her office. Altman always said the right thing.
“Maybe throw in the fact that the mayor’s husband is downstairs,” Arnie suggested. “That might put some fear into the kid.”
“What, is the mayor’s husband here?” She stopped her progress and turned back to the counter.
Arnie opened a newspaper and regarded her with reading glasses perched halfway down his nose. “Downstairs in the flesh. He and a couple of attorneys are in the chief’s office waiting to talk to Tucker and Garrison. Papa-doc is in there too.”
Papa-doc was a nickname given to the department’s psychologist, Dr. Floyd Guest. Big cases always rated the attention of the shrink. He tried to be everyone’s benevolent “papa.” No cops trusted him. She’d been ordered to speak to him after the shooting.
“On second thought, the kid probably doesn’t have anything to worry about,” Arnie continued with a shrug. “Burke’s probably glad his wife is gone. Now the limelight is all his.”
“Oh, come on, Galen Burke would be nowhere if it weren’t for his wife,” Altman protested. “She turned this city around, as well as Hubby’s sorry construction firm. Galen Burke is nothing more than a hanger-on, a gigolo.”
Arnie slapped the paper down. “You’ve got that reversed! Hubby was the brains; Teresa was just a pretty face.”
The two men continued the good-natured argument back and forth.
Carly entered her office and tried to tune them out as she formulated her questions. Arnie, like Altman, had twenty-plus years on, the average for detectives assigned to juvenile, except for Carly. Like most cops, they loved to argue and gossip.
Carly laid out the Miranda form that Londy would have to read and sign before she began her interview. She checked the batteries in her digital recorder and got out a notebook for handwritten comments. Though the interview would be taped, she liked to take notes on body language and other signs a voice recorder wouldn’t necessarily pick up. After placing a chair in position across from her desk, she walked back to detention to collect Londy. She paused at the detention door and dried sweaty palms on her pants. Londy would see only steel law enforcement resolve, not a woman feeling as though her entire life hinged on the next few minutes.
Time to prove to Garrison she wasn’t a broken cop.
5
“Detective Edwards. How’s it going?” The arresting officer, a guy Carly had met briefly at the crash scene, smiled and extended his hand. She shook it warily. Even though the brass had hidden her away in juvenile, new guys always seemed ready to pounce with questions about the shooting.
Everyone knew Carly Edwards. She was the first female officer in the department to be involved in a fatal OIS, or officer-involved shooting. Carly’s rep was made because of the incident, and many new guys were in awe of her. She understood that an unspoken question in a lot of officers’ minds was whether they or their partners would be able to use deadly force if the situation called for it. Anyone who had pulled the trigger had crossed that bridge, removed all doubt, and was looked at in a different light. Fairly or unfairly, female officers often had higher walls to climb when it came to earning trust, so Carly’s shooting brought her a lot of attention. She didn’t relish it. If any of them asked, she told them how happy she was that her bullets hadn’t been the fatal ones. Trouble was, they kept asking, all anxious for the details.
“It’s going okay. Thanks for bringing him down.” She nodded toward Londy and willed the focus to stay there. “Has he made any statements I should know about?”
“Not a peep. He’s just a model killer. I’m taking all of his property and clothing to homicide.”
“What did he have on him? Anything that looks like it might belong to the mayor?”
“Nope.” He held up a plastic baggie. “One cross necklace, one condom, and half a roach.”
Carly chuckled and shook her head. Her shoulders relaxed when the patrol cop gathered up all the paperwork and left the detention area without engaging her in extraneous conversati
on.
The officer gone, Carly leaned against the counter and studied the accused, Londy Akins. He sat on a soft beige bench, a rainbow mural behind him. Minors couldn’t be locked in cells in the Las Playas City Jail; as a result, juvenile detention bore no resemblance to a jail. Open and bright, the room was overseen by an unarmed security officer. Juveniles waited on the bench and watched television until parents came for them or they were sent to the county intake facility for Las Playas, Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall.
Londy wore a bright-blue jail-issue paper jumpsuit because his clothes had been confiscated as evidence. The boy’s eyes were puffy and bloodshot. Carly was pleased that Londy looked tired and scared in contrast to the brightness of his surroundings; it seemed right.
She walked around to the other side of the counter, to the spot vacated by the transporting officer, wanting separation. Then, with her elbows resting on the counter, she addressed the kid. “Hello, Londy.”
“Hello, Miss Edwards.” He looked up slowly and held Carly’s eyes without defiance.
“You’re kind of in a mess now, aren’t you? Is that why you asked for me?”
“I asked ’cause you know me. And ’cause of your mom. I guess I hope you’ll believe me. I didn’t know that woman was in the trunk, I swear.”
Carly held up a hand to stop him from saying any more, stifling the urge to laugh and call him a liar. The mention of her mother strengthened Carly’s resolve to squeeze the truth out of him.
“Let’s go to my office. We can talk more there.” She directed him out of the detention area. Once they were seated, Carly began the standard procedure. “I’m going to read you your rights, Londy. Stop me if you don’t understand.”
He nodded. Carly read the Miranda rights straight from the card, though she knew them by heart. When she finished, she held Londy’s gaze. “Do you understand these rights as I read them to you?”
“Yeah.”
Accused Page 3
