Jim Simpson was Greg’s assistant. I called Jim “Igor” to his face. I think he liked it. He was tall and thin, appearing strangely like what I figured Ichabod Crane might have looked like had he not been invented by Washington Irving for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The postmortem physical examinations of victims didn’t bother me that much. I must admit, though, that toward the end of each autopsy, I had to leave the room. One of the final things a pathologist did during an autopsy was examine the victim’s brain. This was accomplished with a small radial saw. It was Igor’s job to open up the skull after cutting and peeling the hair forward over the victim’s face, exposing the cranial cavity and brain for my doctor friend to examine. Yes, they scalped people before they removed their brains. A layperson would say this was a scene right out of a horror movie. When I thought about it, though, I knew the dead victims could not care less. I believed they were in a much better place. Our job was to do right by them, to avenge their deaths.
I was over in the corner speaking with Schilling when I heard the electronic snap of the saw switch and the whir of the rotating blade. I saw Igor approaching Redbone’s white skull with the spinning tool. He wore a large pair of black rubber gloves, and safety goggles. Anyone who had seen the movie Frankenstein would get the picture.
Needless to say, there were certain audible and olfactory manifestations that occurred during this process. The smell of grinding bone as it aerosolized nauseated me, and I just had to leave the room. Long before this case, I had attended many autopsies, and I left the room every time at that point in the process. I usually stayed outside for twenty minutes, and Greg knew I would be gone during this particular area of dissection. Brains weren’t my bag—unless there were bullets in them.
I came back after my hiatus to find my dead guy now lying facedown on the table with his legs spread widely apart. Schilling was seated on a stool behind him, at the bottom of the stainless-steel exam table, his face about four inches away from the good doctor’s rectum. He was looking directly into the butthole of this man with a speculum. Taken off guard, I blurted out, “Wow, that’ll leave a picture!”
Schilling was excited. “Hey, Rhino, come here, come here!”
“Do I really have to, Doc? Come on.”
He proclaimed enthusiastically, “This guy might have been assaulted. I found some anal tearing here. Looks like this Dr. Redbone got the bone.”
I had neglected to tell Schilling that we suspected the covictim was involved in a homosexual relationship with the good doctor, so I quickly clued him in after his crude attempt at pathologist humor.
Greg mused, “Well, suffice it to say that the other man, or maybe even your suspect, was involved in a bit of fudge packing with Dr. Redbone here. This occurred premortem, I may add, and Dr. Redbone was ‘the catcher,’ to coin a phrase. He had no evidence of intercourse on his penis, and I found semen present in my exam.”
Surprise, surprise. Greg took a DNA sample from what he found up Redbone’s Hershey highway. We knew what killed him, and now we knew that he had been playing “weenie, weenie, hide the weenie” with someone right before he died.
Earlier during Dr. Redbone’s examination, I received a text from Louie Ocampo. During the forensic examination of the crime scene, they recovered the wallet of the second victim. Our dead Hispanic had a name: Raul Mendez Diaz.
The postmortem exam of Raul Diaz was most telling. Dr. Schilling was able to almost definitively describe the murder weapon for us from the results of his exam. At its greatest height at the base, the blade was half an inch high, tapering to a fine point, and the blade itself was wafer-thin. The weapon (and corresponding wound) had a slight upward curve to it, and it was right around seven inches in length. I knew exactly what the suspect had killed them with: a fillet knife. I had one just like it for cleaning my catch while diving and fishing. This weapon was about one click below a scalpel in sharpness as well, which accounted for the extreme cuts to both our dead guys.
The pathologist had determined all this information through the dissection and pathology of the wound to Raul Diaz. The killer had sunk the blade fully into the man’s back, just below his shoulder blades, and the tip had penetrated through the center of his heart. A small oval mark, determined to have been caused by the knife’s blade stop (the base of the blade near the handle) manifested as a round bruise around the stab wound on Diaz’s back. Doc Schilling determined that this was a fatal wound, as was the slice through two inches of his liver. If he had suffered the liver wound alone, he would have taken some time to die and bleed out. The stab wound to the heart caused his almost-certain, instantaneous death. Oh, I forgot to mention that Doc Schilling also found fecal matter on Raul’s penis—the aforementioned fudge from Redbone, so to speak.
Like the old saying “It takes a village to raise a child,” it took a shitload of detectives to work a murder case. Forensic investigators combed the scene, with a criminal investigator tagging along to communicate any important evidence to the field investigators. The lead detective was like the quarterback, because he was responsible to know everything that happened and to write any important papers, such as warrants, and so on. Patrol and the other criminal investigators fanned out and developed leads, and then the sergeant reviewed everything and made sure all the details were correct for prosecution down the road. The supervisors were like the general managers. When it worked, it was like a well-oiled machine. If we didn’t identify and arrest a suspect within the first forty-eight hours, the engine sputtered, spit, stalled, and many times ground to a halt. By day five of this murder investigation, I could hear the engine sputtering and stalling.
When we worked as a team, we usually divvied up the interview assignments to obtain the most information as quickly as possible. We affectionately used an acronym to describe this process: GOYAKOD, or Get Off Your Ass and Knock On Doors. Most of the time, homicides are not solved by computer searches or by making phone calls. Cases are solved through shoe leather, by beating down bushes and talking with people face-to-face. During the second team meeting, Ron O’Hara said, “I got a queer kind of feeling on this one.”
We chuckled but didn’t disagree. We had all been involved in two violent homosexual-related murders within the past year, both arising from rage toward the killer’s same-sex lover. Both involved lots of overkill in the murders. One guy, aided by two other boyfriends, murdered his scorned lover by choking him to death with a two-by-four across his throat as he lay trapped on the ground. Ouch! Then, as if placing a cherry on top of their murderous sundae, the trio of killers doused him with gas and set the victim’s dead body on fire. The other involved an argument between male lovers in which the killer got so pissed off that he pulled out a .38 caliber revolver and shot his boy toy eighteen times in the chest and head. He had to reload, reload, and reload his five-shot snub-nose revolver while blasting away at his now ex-lover. When we moved the body of that dude, several spent bullets fell out of his skull. Again, overkill and a lot of rage was the MO. Almost cutting off a man’s head qualified as rage and overkill. Was this a psychosexual murder? We still needed to find someone with a motive to slaughter these two.
After Ron O’Hara and his crew found Raul Diaz’s identification in the pocket of his pants in the bedroom, we discovered that even though Diaz did live in the Village Commons development, he did not live with Marvin Redbone in bungalow number six. He actually resided across the complex in bungalow number three with another man, John Lemmon. Very interesting. Mr. Lemmon worked in Santa Barbara as an X-ray technician at Cottage Memorial Hospital. Biff and Louie found and interviewed him at work there. They questioned him hard, considering his live-in lover was cut down in another man’s bed. I had a good feeling that maybe our engine was running again. Lemmon would have a strong motive to kill both of them.
Soon, though, the boys called me up and burst my bubble. John Lemmon was devastated at the news about Raul’s death. When Raul hadn’t answered his calls that morning, he was preparing t
o file a missing-persons report on him when my guys arrived. John had been visiting his aged, ill mother in Ventura the prior evening. He did this routinely once or twice a week. He came directly to work at the hospital that morning from her home. Biff found not one but three witnesses who had been with Lemmon well into the early morning hours the night of the murders. One gay friend and two other neighbors living near his mom verified that neither Lemmon nor his vehicle ever left her home that morning. Shit, the obvious suspect was falling off our radar.
Biff Corbet, in his usual style, managed to do multiple interviews with all of Marvin Redbone’s friends, along with acquaintances of Raul Diaz at Feel the Burn, the local gym where Diaz worked. Like Ted Banner, Biff was the consummate professional investigator. Although most of his coworkers described Raul Diaz as somewhat of a cad (he liked to come on to the male customers), they couldn’t provide any leads to point Biff at any one individual who might want him dead.
We learned that Marvin Redbone was a selective lover. He was not openly gay, but all his inner circle of friends knew his sexual preference. I had four of my associates do a complete background on Redbone and Diaz. Diaz was a player, but most of his past lovers had been out of the picture for some time. Redbone had been his boy on the side for about a year, during which time Diaz was semimonogamous with Lemmon, limiting his trysts with Redbone to the times when he knew John would not be around. When Lemmon’s mother became gravely ill, this allowed Raul lots of sack time with his doctor friend.
Redbone seemingly had been monogamous during the past year with Diaz: no one-night stands or other barroom lovers. Marvin Redbone had no close relatives and no siblings, and both his parents had died several years ago. Everyone who knew him described him as a loner. Lemmon’s recent history and background was also placed under the microscope, with him coming back looking like a Boy Scout—that is, if the Boy Scouts had welcomed gays.
It was stacking up more and more like Raul Diaz had just picked the wrong night to hide his weenie with Marvin Redbone. Because he wasn’t supposed to be there, we made a tactical decision to center our efforts on finding who wanted to kill our esteemed doctor. Over and over again, the arrow pointed directly at Marvin Redbone as being the primary target. Murders are rarely committed by total strangers, except on television where serial killers are lurking in every town in America. We find that the killer is most often a spouse, lover, close relative, friend, or acquaintance of the victim. We use a circle strategy for investigation: working the circle of acquaintances from the inside out. Starting with those closest to the victim first, we move outward to friends, acquaintances, and finally anyone who had recently come in contact with the victim. This methodology works, time after time—well, almost every time.
I always considered working a case to be like solving a jigsaw puzzle. It was best to start by filling in the pieces at the edges. We were getting a clear picture of when and where, but most of the inside pieces were missing—who, what, and why. I used patrol deputies and some dicks from our South Coast major-crimes unit to work on locating any witnesses in the Village Commons and surrounding businesses. We sent out my good friend, Deputy Will Phillips. I knew Will to be a great cop. We asked him to contact any neighbors near the Redbone bungalow, along with the staff working at the Commons. He also canvassed the businesses adjacent to the town-house complex to see if anyone saw anything suspicious in the time frame of the murders. Will was eager to help. Like me in the old days, he was hungry.
Will expressed his willingness to jump in. “You guys, don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it. Go forth and conquer.”
Young Deputy Phillips had a reputation for being a bulldog, with somewhat of a warped sense of humor. He also had the worst-smelling farts of anyone I ever met. It would not be unusual for us detectives to be working at our desks, and from down the hall Phillips would yell, “Incoming!” Like a scene from a World War I battle, we (the Allied troops) would scamper for cover when the Germans (disguised as Will) lobbed poison gas into our trenches. My God, it could peel the paint off the walls. Talk about a hostile work environment! It was Phillips’s calling card. His fresh, youthful appearance hid a real gasbag! He was a great cop, though, despite that killer flatulence. He was one of the few patrol deputies I trusted to dig deep to get the facts.
About midday on day five of the hunt, I got a phone call from Phillips. He was out of breath, and his voice was about three octaves higher than normal when he proclaimed, “Rhino, get over to the parking lot at TriCorp on Hillside Drive. I think I found what you’re looking for.”
Chapter Four
The Phantom
I was beat. I had managed to get only about ten hours’ worth of decent sleep in the last two days—nothing new. Twice in the past week it had happened again. The dream kept coming back. I woke up that morning dripping in sweat, queasy, and with a choking feeling in my throat—a sense of dread. My sleep patterns as of late had been ruining Julie’s rest, too, so she wasn’t a happy camper. Around 2:00 a.m., I suddenly jerked upright, screaming in my lackluster slumber. As familiar as this recurring nightmare was to me, it always shook me up. It was wearing on me more than ever now. I knew the scenario well because I had relived it many times, over and over, periodically for several years now. Increased stress seemed to be its trigger, and boy, was I under the gun now.
Julie gave it to me as I got ready for work. “Kevin, go talk to someone. You need to take care of this. See someone about it. You just can’t keep losing sleep and replaying this over and over. I love you, baby, but every time you shake and scream out on your pillow, it scares the hell out of me.”
I hugged her close. “We just need a break on this case, baby. I feel like I’m failing here. I can’t explain it. If this keeps happening, I swear I’ll do something about it. I promise.”
“Just go. Talk to someone soon. I can’t keep this up, Kev. I haven’t slept well for months myself. Now your drinking is getting out of hand, too. I swear, if you don’t do something about it, I’ll…Well, I don’t know what I’ll do. I hate this!”
Then, as usual, she softened and pumped me up. “Honey, listen. If anyone can solve this case, you can. You’re my big dick, honey.” Chuckling, I pulled her close and gave her a wet kiss. I might have gotten four hours of shuteye that night—not good but better than some others.
After the call came in from Will Phillips to come to TriCorp, I called Ted, who was working at our Santa Barbara station. All of CID was based in Santa Barbara, which was the largest and most modern of all our seven stations in the county. We each had modern workstations there, including new PCs. The conference and interview rooms were also state of the art—you know, all the bells and whistles. However, in the small Solvang station, I had a real office—with a door. I liked working a couple days a week there. I liked the solitude. It cleared my head.
I was much closer than Ted was, so I busted over to Hillside Drive, arriving in about ten minutes. Hillside Drive was a commercial area located just north of the Village Commons townhouses, and it sat high on a hill at the north boundary of the Commons development. There was no established pathway or easement from the Commons to this street, and Hillside was zoned commercial, not residential. Mostly manufacturing businesses were located there. I arrived to find Will Phillips standing in the parking lot of TriCorp Industries, which mass-produced things like plastic binders and other paper supplies.
Phillips was wide-eyed as I approached him. “Rhino, I found some bloody clothes in the dumpster over there,” he said, pointing to a corner of the parking lot. I came out here and was asking around if anyone was working that morning, but they had all left hours before. As I was standing out front, I looked over at that trash can and thought, ‘How would I sneak out of the Commons after slitting a couple of throats?’ I wondered if anyone could make it up the hill from the Commons to here, and I went over by that trash can next to the bushes to check.”
Will gave me a quick motion to follow him, and I tagged along
toward the trees and bushes adjacent to the large trash receptacle. Here, covered by some shorter bushes, was a small opening in the chain-link fence. Looking past this space, I could see a foot trail, almost imperceptible, leading down to a sidewalk in the Village Commons. The same sidewalk eventually ran behind bungalow number six.
Quietly but audibly, I muttered, “How the fuck did we miss this?”
My friend Will got even more excited then, and he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me over to the trash bin. The left side of the heavy plastic lid was pushed open, and there on top of a heap of trash I saw a black plastic trash bag, with its mouth gaping open. Phillips said, “Get some gloves. I already messed up by opening it, but I had no idea what I would find. Sorry.”
I pulled out a pair of latex gloves I was in the habit of carrying. (It was like Forrest Gump: “You never know what you’re gonna get.”) After putting on the gloves, I carefully spread wide the opening of the bag with my fingertips. In it, I saw the side of a bloody yellow rubber glove and what looked like some type of white cloth garment with crimson spots on it.
I proclaimed, “Holy shit, Will! You bagged a big one here.”
I mustered out the forensics team, and the group arrived in force about an hour later. We realized that from the Commons’s side of this lightly traveled footpath, it was difficult to see this trail up to Hillside Drive. The Commons’s side was almost completely covered by thick bushes. However, once some branches were parted, the killer could have easily traveled up the hill and merely pulled the cut in the chain-link fence aside to escape. The cut ends on the fence metal were rusted, indicating this hole had been there for a while. Kids probably used it in the past. Perhaps a burglar had cut the fence open to make his escape after a caper in the rich homes beneath sometime in the past. Who knew? The pathway was primarily gravel, not dirt, but Ron O’Hara managed to find two nondistinct tennis-shoe impressions. We didn’t see any other footprints, because the gravel turned to asphalt up in the parking lot. Although only a partial sole pattern was available, the overall length of the shoe was approximately nine and a half inches. I was puzzled that it was not a large man’s shoe. I figured the impression was from some kid and not actually from our killer.
Slice of Greed: A Kevin Rhinehardt Mystery (BOL Mysteries Book 1) Page 3
