LA Requiem ec-8

by Robert Crais

  "/turned the evidence?"

  "If you'll play it that way."

  "Yeah. Well, sure. You bet." His palms were damp with excitement. He felt his heart speed.

  "Get the make of the tires and the list of cars. I'm going to call you. There won't be a problem with that, will there, John?"

  "No, sir." Automatic.

  The man stared at him for a time, and then said something that John Chen would recall from time to time for the rest of his life, and wonder what the man had meant, and why he had said it. "Never turn your back on love, John."

  The man slipped downhill through the brush, gone almost before Chen knew he was leaving.

  John Chen slowly broke into a huge white smile, and then he was running, crashing down through the brush, tripping, stumbling, rolling once, then coming to his feet as he ran past the radio car to his SID van as fast as he could, yelling for those horny fuckers to knock off the lip lock.

  Suddenly, advancement seemed a lot closer.

  Suddenly, the 'tang-mobile was already parked in his garage.

  Coming out a second day had paid off after all.

  8

  Parker Center is an eight-story white building in downtown L.A., just a few blocks from the Los Angeles Times and two dozen bars. The bars are small, and see most of the cop business after the shift changes; their reporter business is steady throughout the day. Letters on the side of Parker Center say POLICE DEPARTMENT—CITY OF LOS ANGELES, but the letters are small, and the sign is obscured by three skinny palm trees like maybe they're embarrassed.

  The lobby guard gave me a visitor pass to clip to my lapel, phoned up to Robbery-Homicide, and four minutes later the elevator doors opened. Stan Watts peered out at me like I was eye boogers.

  "Hey, Stan. How's it going?"

  Watts ignored me.

  "Look, no reason for us to get off on the wrong foot."

  He pushed the button for the fifth floor.

  When we got up there, he led me to a large, brightly lit room, centered on a long rectangle of cubicles occupied by men with at least fifteen years behind a gold shield. Most were on phones, some were typing, and damned near everyone looked at home in the job. Krantz was talking with an overweight guy by the Mr. Coffee. Williams was leaning against a desk, laughing about something. You'd never think that twelve hours ago they were swatting blowflies off a dead girl.

  Krantz frowned when he saw me, and yelled, "Dolan! Your boy is here."

  The only woman at the table was sitting by herself at the corner desk, scribbling on a yellow legal pad. She slid the pad

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  into her desk when Krantz called, locked the drawer, and stood. She was tall, and looked strong, the way a woman who rowed crew or worked with horses might be strong. Other women worked the room, but you could tell from how they carried themselves that they weren't detectives. She was it. Guess if I were her, I'd lock my desk, too.

  Dolan glared at Krantz as if he were a walking Pap smear, and glared at me even harder.

  When she came over, Krantz said, "Dolan, this is Cole. Cole, this is Samantha Dolan. You're with her."

  Samantha Dolan was wearing a stylish gray pants suit with a cameo brooch and dark blond hair that was cut short without being mannish. I made her for her early forties, but she might've been younger. When Krantz said the name, I recognized her at once from the stories and interviews and dozens of times that I'd seen her on TV

  I said, "Pleased to meet you, Dolan. I enjoyed your series."

  Six years ago, CBS had made a television series about her based on a case in which she'd almost been killed apprehending a serial rapist. The series had lasted half a season and wasn't very good, but for a short period of time it had made her the most famous Los Angeles police officer since Joe Wambaugh. An article about her in the Times had focused on her case clearance rate, which was the highest ever by a woman, and the third highest in department history. I remembered being impressed. But then it dawned on me that I hadn't heard of her since.

  Samantha Dolan's frown turned into a scowl. "You liked that TV series they made about me?"

  I gave her the friendly smile. "Yeah."

  "It sucked."

  I can always tell when they like me.

  Krantz checked his watch. "We'll brief you in the conference room so this doesn't waste anybody else's time. Think about that, Cole. Right now the murderer could be getting away because one of our detectives is thinking about you instead of following up a lead."

  "You're a pip, Krantz."

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  "Yeah. Get him down there, Dolan. I'll be along in a minute."

  Dolan led me to a small conference room where Watts and Williams were waiting, along with a tall thin detective named Bruly and a Hispanic detective named Salerno. Bruly whispered something to Salerno when we walked in, and Salerno smiled. Dolan took a seat without introducing me, or saying anything to the others. Maybe she didn't like them, either.

  Williams said, "This is Elvis Cole. He represents the family. He gets to keep an eye on us in case we fuck up."

  "I've already told'm about you, Williams." I thought I might win them over with clever repartee.

  Salerno grinned. "You catch a lot of grief with that name?"

  "What, Cole?"

  Salerno laughed. You see about the repartee?

  Krantz steamed in with a mug of coffee and a clipboard. "You people want to keep wasting time, or you want to knock off the bullshit?"

  Salerno stopped smiling.

  Krantz had some of the coffee as he read over the clipboard, then said, "Here's what we have: Karen Garcia was murdered at approximately ten A.M. Saturday morning by an unknown assailant or assailants at the Lake Hollywood Reservoir. We have recovered and impounded her car, which was located in a parking lot on Barham Boulevard. We believe the perpetrator fired one shot from a small-bore pistol at close range. Her body was discovered by two hikers the following day. We have their initial interviews in hand. We are also questioning other people known to have been at the lake on Saturday, or who live nearby, as well as people associated with the victim. Detectives from Rampart, Hollywood, West L.A., and Wilshire divisions are assisting in this effort. We have no suspects at this time." Krantz sounded like Jack Webb.

  "Is that it?"

  Krantz flexed his jaw, pissed. "The investigation's only twenty hours old. How much do you want?"

  "I wasn't criticizing."

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  I took out two sheets that I had typed, and slid them across the table. Krantz didn't touch them.

  "This is everything that Frank Garcia told me about his daughter's activities on that Saturday, as well as everything I learned when I was trying to find her. I thought it might help. Pike and I spoke to some kids at a Jungle Juice stand who knew Karen's pattern. Their names are here, too."

  "We've already talked to them, Cole. We're mobilized. Tell that to the vic's father." Like he couldn't be any more annoyed.

  "We found a homeless man named Edward Deege below the lake. Deege claims he saw a female runner approached by a red or brown SUV He's flaky, but you might want to question him."

  Krantz glanced irritably at his watch, like we were wasting more time than he'd allowed. Three minutes. "Pike told us about this stuff last night, Cole. We're on it. Now, is there anything else?"

  "Yeah. I need to attend the autopsy."

  Krantz and Watts traded raised eyebrows, then Krantz smiled at me. "You're kidding me, right? Does her father want pictures?"

  "It's like me going up to the lake. He just wants someone there."

  "My God."

  Watts had never stopped looking at Krantz. He cleared his throat. "County's got a backlog down there. They got bodies stacked up, waiting two, three weeks. We're trying to get a rush, but I don't know."

  Krantz and Watts stared at each other some more, and then Krantz shrugged. "I don't know when the autopsy's going
to happen. I don't know if you can be there. I have to find out."

  "Okay. I want to see copies of any witness statements and the criminalist's report."

  "The criminalist's report isn't in yet. He's still working the scene. So far there aren't any witness statements except for the two guys who found the body."

  "If you have transcripts, I'd like to have copies."

  Krantz crossed his arms, and tipped back in the chair. "You

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  want to read the stuff, you can read it, but you're not making copies and you're not taking anything out of this building."

  "I'm supposed to be copied. If you've got a problem with that, we're going to have to call the A-chief, and ask him."

  Krantz sighed. "Then we'll have to ask him. I hear you want the reports, Cole, but we don't have any reports to show you yet. As for getting copies, I'm going to have to talk that over with Bishop. If he says fine, then okay."

  I could live with that. "Who's keeping the book, you or Watts?"

  Watts said, "Me. Why?"

  "I'd like to see it."

  "Noway."

  "What's the big deal? It'll save everybody time." The murder book was a chronological record of all the facts of the investigation. It would include notes from participating officers, witness lists, forensic evidence, everything. It would also be the easiest way for me to stay up to date with their casework.

  Watts said, "Forget it. We get to trial, we'll have to explain to a defense attorney why a civilian was screwing around with our notes. We can't find something, he'll argue that you screwed with our evidence and we're so incompetent that we didn't know any better."

  "C'mon, Watts. I'm not going to take it home. You can even turn the pages, if you want. It'll be easier on everybody."

  Krantz checked his watch again and pushed up out of the chair.

  "No book. We got a couple hundred people to interview, so this briefing is officially over. Here are the rules, Cole. As long as you're in this building, you're with Dolan. Anything you want, ask her. Any questions, ask her. If you gotta take a leak, she waits outside the door. You do anything without her, it violates the agreement we have with Montoya and you're history. You got it?"

  "I still want to read the transcripts."

  Krantz waved at Dolan. "Dolan will take care of that."

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  Dolan glanced at Watts. "I'm supposed to talk to the two uniforms who rolled out when her body was found."

  Krantz said, "Salerno can talk to the uniforms. You stay with Cole. You can handle that, can't you?"

  "I'd rather work the case, Harvey." She said his name like it was another word for "turd."

  "Yaw job is to do what I say."

  I cleared my throat. "What about the autopsy?"

  "I said I'd find out about it, and I will. Jesus Christ, we're trying to catch a killer and I've got to babysit you."

  Krantz walked out without another word. Except for Dolan, his detectives went with him. Dolan stayed in her seat, looking angry and sullen.

  I said, "Who'd you piss off to get stuck with me?"

  Dolan walked away, leaving the door open for me to follow or not. Krantz didn't want me wandering around on my own, but I guess she didn't mind.

  No one had touched the two typed pages with the information I'd brought, or even looked at them. I gathered them together, and caught up with her in the hall. "It won't be so bad, Dolan. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship."

  "Don't be an asshole."

  I spread my hands and followed, trying not to be an asshole.

  When Dolan and I got back to the squad room, Krantz and Watts were talking with three men who looked like Cadillac salesmen after a bad month. One of the men was older, with a snow-white crew cut and sun-scorched skin. The other two gave me eye burn, then turned away, but the Buzz Cut stared like a worm was in my nose.

  Dolan said, "Take this chair and put it over there."

  She shoved a little secretarial chair at me and pointed at the wall near her desk. Sitting against the wall, I would look like the class dunce.

  "Can't I use a desk?"

  "People work at their desks. You don't want to sit there, go home."

  She stalked the length of the squad room, taking hard fast

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  strides saying that if you didn't get out of her way, she'd knock you on your ass. She stalked back with two files, and slapped them down onto the little chair. "The guys who found the vie are named Eugene Dersh and Riley Ward. We interviewed them last night. You want to read them, sit here and read them. Don't write on the pages."

  Dolan dropped into the seat behind her desk, unlocked the drawer, and took out her yellow pad. She was putting on quite a show.

  Inside the envelopes were the transcribed interviews with Dersh and Ward, each being about ten pages long. I read the opening statements, then glanced at Dolan. She was still with the pad, her face gray with anger.

  "Dolan?"

  Her eyes came to me, but nothing else moved.

  "As long as we're going to work together, we might as well be pleasant, don't you think?"

  "We're not working together. You're here like one of the roaches that live under the coffee machine. The sooner you're gone, the faster I can go back to being a cop. We clear on that?"

  "Come on, Dolan. I'm a nice guy. Want to hear my Boris Badenov impression?"

  "Save it for someone who cares."

  I leaned toward her and lowered my voice. "We can make faces at Krantz."

  "You don't want to read those things, you're wasting my time."

  She went back to the pad.

  "Dolan?"

  She looked up.

  "You ever smile?"

  Back to the pad.

  "Guess not."

  A female Joe Pike.

  I read both interviews twice. Eugene Dersh was a self-employed graphic designer who sometimes worked for Riley Ward. Ward owned a small advertising agency in West Los

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  Angeles, and the two had met three years ago when Ward hired Dersh as a designer. They were also good friends, hiking or jogging together three times a week, usually in Griffith Park. Dersh was a regular at Lake Hollywood, had been up there the Saturday that Karen Garcia was killed, and had convinced Ward to join him Sunday, the day they discovered her body. As Dersh told it, they were following the trail just above the lake when they decided to venture down to the shoreline. Ward didn't like it much, and found the going hard. They were just about to climb back to the trail when they found the body. Neither man had seen anyone suspicious. Both men realized that they had disturbed the crime scene when they had searched Karen Garcia for identification, and both men agreed that Ward had told Dersh not to, but that Dersh had searched her anyway. After Dersh found her driver's license, they located a jogger with a cell phone, and called the police.

  I said, "You guys ask Dersh about Saturday?"

  "He went for his walk on the opposite side of the lake at a different time of the day. He didn't see anything."

  I didn't remember that in his interview, and flipped back through the pages. "None of that's in here. Just the part about him being up on Saturday."

  I held out the transcript for her to see, but she didn't take it.

  "Watts covered it after we took over from Hollywood. You finished with those yet?" She held out her hand.

  "No."

  I read the Dersh interview again, thinking that if Watts questioned Dersh about Saturday, he had probably written up notes. If Watts was keeping the murder book, he had probably put his notes there.

  I looked around for Watts, but Watts had left. Krantz wasn't back yet, either.

  "How long can it take to find out about the autopsy?"

  "Krantz is lucky to find his ass. Relax."

  "Tell me something, Dolan. Can Krantz hack it?"

  She didn't look up.

  "I made a few calls, D
olan. I know you're a top cop. I know Watts is good. Krantz looks more like a politician, and he's

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  nervous. Can he hack running the investigation, or is he in over his head?"

  "He's the lead, Cole. Not me."