by Steve Gannon
“A window left open?”
I shrugged. “Maybe the guy came back after a showing and used the house as an observation post.”
“All right,” said Graysha reluctantly. “I don’t see how any of the agents could object to my giving their names.”
“Good. I would like a list of every client who’s been through there as well.”
Graysha shook her head. “That could be a problem. Giving out client names is against policy, at least without a warrant.”
In my experience, most people are willing to assist in a police investigation, especially a murder investigation. Sometimes they just need a little prodding. “I don’t think that’s the way you want to go,” I advised.
“What do you mean?”
Just then my cell phone beeped. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I retreated to the privacy of a small alcove bordering the patio, flipping open my phone on the way. The call was from Phil Nostrant, my friend in Administrative Narcotics.
“Phil. Thanks for returning my call.”
“No sweat,” Nostrant’s voice came back. “What’s up?”
“I’m handling the Palisades multiple homicide that’s been in the news lately. We found coke in the house. It’s a long shot, but there’s an off-chance the murders were drug related. I need information on who was supplying the murdered family. I also want to know if the Larsons were dealing and, if so, whether anyone had a grudge against them.”
“Like somebody who got burned on a deal?”
“Right.”
“That’ll be tough. Coke in the Palisades mostly falls in your so-called ‘recreational use’ category, filtering down a friend-to-friend network. Difficult to trace.”
“Who’s at the top?”
“That’s easy. Antonio Morales. We’ve never been able to make anything stick, but everything on the Westside goes through him.”
“So Morales could find out.”
“Probably, but he’s not gonna-”
“Is he connected?”
“Definitely.”
“I want to talk to him. Tonight. Set it up, will you?”
“It won’t do any good. This guy’s-”
“Do it, okay?”
“I’ll give it a shot,” Nostrant sighed. “Call me later.”
After hanging up, I returned to the table. Graysha was still picking at her salad.
“I believe we were discussing your getting me a list of prospective buyers?” I said.
“ You were talking about it,” Graysha replied.
Look, Ms. Hunt, there are two ways to go about this,” I said patiently. “I’ll be more than happy to do it the easy way. I know you’re nervous about giving out your client list, thinking some heavy-handed cop is going to hassle your buyers and screw up sales. I promise we’ll be discreet, and nobody has to know where we got the names.”
“And the other way?”
“I get a warrant and drag in everybody who ever went near your listing. Unfortunately, the press has a way of finding out about things like a real estate agency refusing to cooperate with authorities in a murder investigation. In fact, I can almost guarantee it.”
Graysha thought a moment. “I’ll speak with my broker, but I’m certain a warrant won’t be necessary. You’ll get your list.”
“Thank you, Graysha.” I passed her my card. “Here’s my number. If I’m not there, they’ll know where to find me.”
Later that night, after returning to the beach house, I sat at the kitchen table gazing out over the deserted beach. To the east, at the foot of the bay, the moon had risen like a skull over the lights of Santa Monica. The tide was out, and clumps of kelp and piles of driftwood and swirls of crab hulls and dead starfish littered the sand to the water’s edge. Far offshore, the outline of a small raft bobbed on the waves.
I took a bite of leftover pizza that Allison and Nate had saved for me. I washed it down with the last of my Coke, setting the empty can on a stack of partially completed VICAP forms. More of the blue sheets lay strewn across the table. Eyeing the FBI profiling questionnaire still to come, I realized I would be up half the night.
Glumly, I picked up my pen and worked uninterrupted on the VICAP forms for the next thirty minutes, pausing when I reached the narcotics section. Idly, I traced a question mark in the blank space, recalling my visit earlier that evening to the home of Antonio Morales, the man purportedly controlling cocaine distribution for the entire Westside. It had gone better than I’d hoped-not that it was likely to help.
That afternoon, after clearing my desk at the West LA station, I had met with Detective Philip Nostrant. As requested, the Ad-Narc detective had somehow managed to arrange a meeting with Antonio Morales. Although doubtful of the outcome, he had also agreed to accompany me to Morales’s Pacific Palisades mansion.
Leaving together from the station house, Phil and I made a twenty-minute drive down Sunset Boulevard to Morales’s estate. Darkness had fallen by the time we turned into Evans Canyon, a dead-end ravine near Will Rogers State Park. “Don’t recall seeing this road before,” I noted as we proceeded up the unlit street.
Nostrant braked as we passed an owners’ register and a “Private Road-No Trespassing” sign. “It’s secluded, all right,” he agreed. Noticing my glance at the register, he added, “Don’t be fooled by the other names on the residents list. Morales bought out all his neighbors a long time back. Owns the whole canyon now.”
A short drive along a narrow streambed brought us to the entrance of Morales’s sprawling estate. Surrounded by live oaks and ornamental fencing, the main house lay past a bridge spanning the creek. Partially hidden in a thicket of hyacinth, a guardhouse sat inside a ten-foot-high gate.
Nostrant pulled up to the barrier and flashed his badge at a TV camera mounted above a speaker. “LAPD to see Mr. Morales.”
A moment later the gate swung open. A guard in a black uniform waved us down the cobbled driveway. Morales, a short, dark man in his early thirties, stood waiting for us on the steps of his three-story mansion. Two powerful-looking men in matching sport coats accompanied him. Another was posted on the landing, a hand inside his jacket.
“What’s this about?” Morales asked bluntly when we arrived, watching with hooded eyes as we climbed from our car.
“Just a friendly visit,” Nostrant answered. “We’re investigating a homicide in the area. Detective Kane here thinks you could help him run down the source of some cocaine found at the scene.”
Morales stared. “I’m a businessman,” he said. “I have nothing to do with illicit drugs. And even if I did,” he added with a wintry smile, “I certainly wouldn’t discuss it with the police.”
I stepped forward. “Maybe it’s time you did.”
The men with Morales stiffened.
“I don’t think so,” said Morales. “Now, if you’ll excuse me-”
“How’s about you and me having a private little conference, Mr. Morales?” I suggested. “Off the record. It’ll take only a couple minutes, and you might learn something interesting. In fact, I guarantee it. What do you say?”
Morales glanced at his bodyguards.
“Come on,” I coaxed, starting down the cobbled driveway. “Leave your boys here. Unless you think you need them.”
Morales hesitated. Then, with a shrug, he turned and followed.
For the next several minutes Morales and I had a heated conversation. When we returned to the front steps, Morales’s dark complexion appeared to have lightened by several shades. I smiled at Nostrant. “Good news, Phil. Mr. Morales says he’ll be glad to do some checking for us. Let’s not take up any more of his valuable time.”
On the way out, Nostrant stopped at Sunset, waiting for a break in traffic. “What did you say to Morales?” he asked. “Make him an offer he couldn’t refuse?”
“Something like that.”
“C’mon, Kane. Give.”
“Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime, Phil. Till then, le
t’s just say I called in a marker and let it go at that.”
Now, as I considered the drug portion of the VICAP form, I reflected on the likelihood of the killings being drug related. Unfortunately, the facts just didn’t fit.
“Goodnight, Dad.”
I turned, finding Nate standing in the doorway. “’Night, kid,” I said, quickly closing the crime files and flipping over several eight-by-ten photos. “Don’t hog all the bedbugs. Save a few for your sister.”
“Sure, Dad. Did you call Mom yet?”
“I tried, squirt. Her cell phone’s off, and her hotel in pastaville said she hasn’t arrived yet. I left a message for her to phone soon as she gets in.”
Allison appeared in the doorway. “When you talk to her, tell her we already miss her,” she said somberly. “A lot.”
“Knock off the long face, Allison. Things aren’t going to be that bad with your mom gone. I’ll be pretty busy the next couple weeks, but rest assured I’ll find time to make certain things run smoothly on the home front. A lot of people are single parents. It can’t be that tough.”
Allison smiled. “Right. You can do it, Pop. We’re all pulling for you,” she added, rolling her eyes.
“Thanks, Ali. Kate will be glad to see you’ve recovered your sense of humor when she gets back. See you in the morning.”
“Goodnight, Dad.”
For the next hour, as I labored over Snead’s VICAP forms, my mind kept returning to the question of why the victims’ front doors had been left unlocked. Unable to crack the problem with a frontal assault, I proceeded to work the edges, an investigative technique akin to not looking directly at something in the dark.
All at once I had it.
I picked up the telephone and dialed the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, asking the switchboard to contact Lou Barrello and have him call me back. After hanging up, I drummed my fingers impatiently on the table. Finally the phone rang.
“Barrello?”
“Damn, Kane,” a sleepy voice replied. “What’s so important you’ve gotta talk to me in the middle of the night?”
“It’s only eleven. Besides, some of us will be up till God knows when filling out useless questionnaires.”
“Your problem, not mine. Maybe you ought to consider puckering up for some judicious butt-smoochin’ down at headquarters. Things might go a little smoother.”
“I’ll be sure to put that right on top of my list.”
“Do that,” said Barrello, beginning to wake up. “As you have me on the line, you’ll be interested to know we got back the lab results on the Pratts’ garage-door opener.”
“And?”
“The only prints on it were the husband’s. But get this: The bulbs were glued partway into their sockets. Somebody used super glue to cement them in.”
“ Partway in, huh? No electrical contact, and they couldn’t be removed. Permanently disabled, just like at the Larsons’ house.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Listen, had either of the Pratts’ cars been in for repair lately? Body work, tune-up, something like that?”
“I can check. I think I remember seeing an invoice from a body shop in their papers somewhere. Why?”
“A hunch. The Larsons’ missing car just turned up in a Santa Monica repair shop.”
“So?”
“So the Pratts and the Larsons both had garage-door openers.”
“I still don’t see… Damn! The door-opener remote controls. If they were left in the vehicles, anyone at the repair shops could have used them to break in-either by taking the control units or by cloning the codes onto a replacement unit, or whatever. And on the first reconnoitering visit, our guy could’ve messed with the lights so they wouldn’t come on when he returned late at night, sometime in the future.”
“Lessening his chance of attracting attention, maybe being seen by a neighbor,” I finished. “Our killer may be leaving through the front door, but I don’t think he’s getting in that way. I think he’s getting in through the garage.”
13
At 7:25 AM the next morning, with five minutes to spare before the start of the task force meeting, I stepped from the elevator onto the seventh floor of the Police Administration Building and made my way down the hall to task force headquarters. From the appearance of the crowded room, everyone else was already present.
I nodded to Barrello and Deluca as I entered, noting that several new faces had been added since yesterday’s meeting. Joining the detectives from the day before, a whip-thin Hispanic woman and two patrol officers were occupying desks near the windows, manning the hotline. Another tall individual with a gray-streaked ponytail leaned against the back wall, holding himself apart from the rest of the group. I stared at him momentarily, then shifted my gaze, noticing that since Tuesday’s briefing additional desks, phones, and computer monitors had been crammed into the room. Someone had also tacked an overlapping poster-board chart to the wall. Columns listing known attributes of the killer, victims, and crime scenes were entered on the chart, with correlating details below each connected by a matrix of colored lines.
Good idea, I thought. Makes it easier to grasp relationships, and referring to a graph’s a lot faster than plowing through a stack of supplementals. Whose idea-Snead’s or Huff’s? I decided it must have been Huff’s.
“You have something for me, Kane?”
Turning, I found Lieutenant Snead standing behind me. “Are you referring to these VICAP forms I’ve been up most of the night filling out, Lieutenant?” I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral.
“That, and the profiling material I requested.”
I handed him a thick packet of documents I’d carried in. “Everything’s there.”
“Good. Take a seat. Let’s get started.”
At Snead’s signal, men in the rear moved to the front. I chose a slot on the left, dropping into an empty chair beside Deluca. “Who’s the new guy?” I asked, inclining my head toward the tall stranger in the back.
Deluca shrugged. “Came in with Huff. Some kind of crime expert.”
“Just what we need,” I said.
Lieutenant Huff raised his hand for silence. “Okay, everybody quiet down. First off, we have several additional people here today. Peggy Silvano there in the back is our new secretary, and Officers Cook and Rutkowski have been detailed over from Metro to assist with hotline calls. We’ll be manning the phones on a twenty-four-hour basis, so everybody will have to assist, especially if calls keep coming in as they have so far. Lieutenant Snead will make up a duty roster.”
Ignoring groans of protest, Huff continued. “By now you’ve all read the crime reports, so I’d like the primary investigators on each case to bring us up to speed on recent developments. Lou, you want to start things off?”
Barrello opened his file and gave a quick rundown of the Orange County efforts to date, noting that all evidence discovered at the Pratt house was being compared with that found at the Palisades scene. “We also have some new developments,” he added, glancing at me.
“Are you going to make us guess?” asked Snead.
“No, sir. After talking with Kane on Monday, I recanvassed the area around the Pratt house, concentrating on areas where the killer might have hidden to observe the family.”
“And?”
“Construction workers at a site overlooking the residence say a white van marked ‘Imperial Valley Plumbing’ was parked there a few days prior to the murders. There’s no such company. The security gate has an entry record on the van, but no license number. An authorization call was made to let the guy in. Guess who made it.”
“The Pratts,” I said.
“What’s that?” asked Huff.
“I’m betting the Pratts made that call, at least according to the gate record,” I answered.
Barrello looked at me curiously. “How’d you know?”
I shrugged. “I’m getting a feeling about this guy. Assuming he did his homework, he could’ve told the gate h
e was anybody living in the complex. He impersonated the Pratts because he knew we would eventually turn up the call.”
“You’re saying the guy’s screwin’ with us?” asked Deluca.
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“That’s based on the assumption our killer was driving the plumbing truck,” Snead interjected. “A fairly large assumption.”
“Maybe, but it’s the best lead we have,” Barrello pointed out. “Unfortunately, neither the gate guards nor the construction workers could give a description of the driver, except that he was white. We’ve started checking paint shops and magnetic sign companies.”
“Good idea,” said Snead. “That’s the sort of thinking we need around here.”
“Kane suggested it.”
Snead’s sunny look clouded over. “Anything else?”
“Two things,” said Barrello. “When Kane was in the Pratt house, he found fibers on a bathroom doorknob, close to where we think the husband was strangled. We found fibers on the kid’s door, too. They all matched the clothesline used in the killings. We also discovered that somebody had disabled the lights on the Pratts’ garage-door opener. Glued in the bulbs.”
“I called SID back to the Larsons’ house,” I added. “They found fibers on the doorknobs there, too. In our case, a feed wire to the opener light had been cut.”
Snead glared. “Hold on, Kane. Why wasn’t this in yesterday’s supplemental?”
“The lab findings came in late. I didn’t have time to-”
“In the future, make time,” warned Snead. “I thought I made myself absolutely clear concerning the importance of keeping paperwork current. As long as I’m running this investigation, sloppy work will not be tolerated. Is that understood?”
I smiled at Snead’s revealing slip. “Yes, sir. Perfectly.”
“This might be a good time to reiterate that this task force is a joint effort,” said Huff. “LAPD isn’t running the show.”
Snead scowled. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to imply we were.”
“Fine,” said Huff. “Lou, you have anything else?”
