by Steve Garcia
“And you became a user?” Wallace asked. “A regular?”
“Aren’t you listening? I bought some stuff to help with the pain. It worked too well. It helped with all my pain. Physical. Mental. Nothing hurt anymore.”
“What happened in the alley that day?”
“When I showed up, Bunny was arguing with Pearl, but I didn’t know who he was then. I waited a minute and out of the blue, Pearl started knocking Bunny around. I considered getting the hell out of there but my back was killing me and I was out of drugs. I ran down there to put a stop to it, figuring the mugger would take off.”
“Go on,” Wallace said. His tone seemed to have softened a bit.
“As I got to them, Pearl pressed a gun against Bunny’s cheek. I pulled my weapon.” Cresner stopped and rubbed his chin. “The next few seconds still aren’t totally clear. As he started to turn toward me, I heard Bunny yell ‘Don’t!’ and then Pearl fired.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s it. I blacked out. When I woke up, I was being wheeled into a hospital by paramedics.”
“Who called for the ambulance?”
“I don’t know. It might have been Bunny—he wasn’t a bad kid. Or maybe a passing Good Samaritan. Not Pearl, for sure. Whoever did, saved my life.”
No one spoke. Cresner’s mantle clock ticked off the seconds noisily. Everyone’s eyes were on Wallace, who sat stone-faced, occasionally glancing at the door.
“Detective Cresner,” Wallace said. “I think I believe you. I’m going to put you on house arrest until I can check out some things. I won’t cover your drug habit for you, but the department does have a program. I highly recommend it. It can be a career saver.”
Cresner nodded, dumbly. Coombs couldn’t see there was much career left to save.
Wallace climbed somewhat stiffly to his feet and walked slowly toward the door. His case has gone south, thought Coombs. Just as he was about to leave, Wallace turned to them.
“Sergeant. Detective. I think you should meet me back at the station.” With that, he was gone.
Cresner was silent for a few seconds, then slowly pulled a .38 out from beneath the sofa cushions. Coombs heart raced for a moment, until he handed it to her, butt-first.
“I wasn’t going to let that asshole cuff me,” he said.
24
“Is everybody here who’s here?” Siley asked, grumpily. Vandergriff said the Captain had been in his hot tub with Mrs. Siley when the call came in. Siley stood behind his desk. David Wallace stood to his left.
“I think so,” Coombs said.
Brooks and Philippa sat in front of Siley’s desk. Reyes stood by the door with Joanne. He’d been about to go home after they cut Davey loose, when she’d called him from Cresner’s.
“In that case,” said the captain, “I’ll turn this meeting over to the FID with hopes that it won’t go on too damn long. It’s getting late.” He moved to the side and leaned against the file cabinet.
The door opened behind Reyes, and everyone in the room stood a little straighter, as ADA Barclay-Jones stepped into the room. “People,” she said and nodded. The assistant district attorney took a position next to David Wallace, her arms folded. Even at this late hour, she looked like she could run a marathon.
David Wallace, on the other hand, looked tired. “We’ll try to keep it short, Captain.” He flipped open a file in front of him. “You may know that six months ago we retrieved a cache of black market weapons being sold to gangs in LA. Well, some of those weapons—Makarov pistols to be exact—never made it to the destruct. One hundred and forty were logged. One-twenty were destroyed.” Wallace turned a page, but Reyes could tell he wasn’t reading from any script. He was just keeping his hands busy. “Gangs will always find guns, but when they start shooting each other with guns that should be in our evidence vaults, it gets embarrassing. We followed up the leads as best we could from behind the scenes, until a cop got shot with a Makarov.”
“Jerry?” asked Brooks.
“That’s right, Sergeant. A long-standing member of the LAPD is shot late at night, in a
gang-dominated area, and he’s meeting a building contractor with a bad rep. We found out it was a Makarov only when the ballistics report came through. So we formed the conclusion—”
“Cut the crap,” said Brooks. “You messed up.”
“Let the man finish,” said Siley.
The muscles in Wallace’s jaw tightened. “We may have made an error of judgment, Sergeant, yes. May I remind you that Sergeant Cresner is still under house arrest pending our inquiries. We pressed Pearl inside to tell us where the Makarov came from, but he clammed up. He gave us the name of the witness, a pusher named Arsenio Ignatiez, aka Bunny. We tried to track him down, but when we did it was at a murder scene, so he wasn’t much help. Pearl was facing ten to thirteen, so he offered us something else instead.”
Barclay-Jones finally looked up.
“Pearl’s attorney said he could expose something rotten in the building industry in
exchange for a lighter sentence. He fingered Simons. Said he’d been skimming off the top in exchange for throwing work Pearl’s way. It wasn’t the scalp we wanted, but it would shine a positive light on the man-hours we’d ascribed to the investigation.”
“So you let Pearl go,” Brooks scoffed. “You let him go to keep your stats good.”
“We had no witness to confirm Cresner’s story. Pearl cited self-defense. We were monitoring him,” said Barclay-Jones. “Controlled parole. He had to sign in every morning at the nearest precinct. We suspected that someone was helping Pearl and Simons put pressure on the other building contractors, lending a little muscle.”
“This cop you were looking for?” said Siley.
“We knew that we couldn’t make the case against Cresner unless we flushed him out,” said David Wallace.
“There was no damn case to make,” said Philippa.
“Those guns got out somehow,” said her husband, coldly. “Do you know who was on that destruct team, Sergeant?”
It was Brooks turn to color. “I filed a report at the time, saying the guns were missing. We all assumed it was a clerical error. I did the right thing. Passed it up the chain of command.”
David Wallace continued. “If Jerry had told us the truth from the start about why he was in that alley, we could have ended this a lot sooner.”
“Sure,” said Wallace. “And as soon as you guys got a sniff of drugs, he’d have been on his ass without a pension.”
David Wallace looked up at his wife. Reyes saw a mixture of emotions in his face. Pleading, anger, a little hatred perhaps. For a second, he felt some sympathy for the FID man.
“We have drug programs…” he began
“So are you any closer to finding out who this dirty cop is?” asked Brooks.
David Wallace looked to Barclay-Jones, who took over.
“In the face of the evidence, the district attorney’s office has decided to terminate the FID’s investigation.”
Brooks spluttered. “So what about the guns? You’re happy to write them off?”
“Captain, I don’t need to remind you that the LAPD needs no bad publicity. The investigation will remain open. Our official line is that Simons killed Pearl and then himself on learning of Pearl’s release. The city’s a better place with both of these men out of the way.”
“Neither of those men were killers,” said Reyes, almost to himself.
“What’s that, detective?” snapped the ADA.
Reyes tried to form his words without anger. “Pearl and Simons were bad men, but neither deserved to be murdered. How come no one heard the shot in Simons’s office? What about the Davey blackmail photos? Why would Simons go to that length looking for them if he was going to shoot himself in the head?”
“Simons was suffering from post-traumatic stress,” said Barclay-Jones. “He was emotional, unpredictable. We won’t have a problem
selling that to the press.”
Reyes was about to erupt, but Siley’s stare silenced him.
“FID is turning the Simons files over to Homicide,” said Barclay-Jones. “Get it written up quickly, and then move on.”
“FID is pulling out?” Brooks asked.
“We will still be a coordination point on the missing guns,” replied Wallace, “but this case is to be considered unconnected.”
“Good night, people,” said Barclay-Jones. She walked briskly out of the room. David Wallace followed more slowly and stopped for a moment beside Phil. He seemed about to say something, but she didn’t even meet his eyes. Then he, too, was gone, closing the door behind him.
“You heard the boss,” Siley said. “I want to see reports by tomorrow morning.”
Reyes and the others trooped out without a word.
“You okay, Sal?” Joanne asked him in the hall.
“This is bullshit,” he said. “I didn’t join homicide for crap like this to be swept under the carpet.”
“You want to grab a coffee somewhere?”
She was looking at him with genuine concern, and in that second he knew where the evening would end if he took her up on the offer.
“You heard Siley. Phil and I have some writing up to do.”
Joanne’s smile was unconvinced. “Maybe some other time then.”
It was coming up to eleven when Reyes joined Wallace in the Pit. He brought her a steaming cup of coffee.
“Just me and you now, partner,” she said.
“Siley said Kahn and Wagner caught one off Sepulveda—they’re running back now.”
“I’m not sure I can handle Harlen tonight,” said Wallace.
She pulled the desk calendar out of the Simons’s box file. Wallace couldn’t identify the feeling that twisted in her gut. Sure, she was angry. Her husband had wasted their time and withheld crucial information from her. But that wasn’t the worst. Another bruise throbbed inside—embarrassment. How had FID got it so wrong? They looked like a bunch of incompetents.
Wallace checked the names on the calendar against the FID list. All but Duke had been identified and cleared. She sipped her coffee and looked through the other names, flipping back a few days, then ahead several pages. The life of a city council member seemed to include a lot of appointments, nearly a dozen some days. Ms. Linda Thornton. Major Lee Snare, USAF Ret., Michael and Samantha Levine, Temple Beth El.
The computer had reported no hits on Dwayne Duke. Wallace thought for a moment and re-entered the name D. Wayne Duke. Nothing.
Wallace looked for Muriel Parks’s home number and dialed. Sure, it was late, but the ADA wanted all the loose ends cleared up by morning, so she’d have to get over it. Mr. Parks answered the phone and reluctantly agreed to let Wallace talk to his wife.
Thirty seconds passed. A soft female voice said, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Parks, this is Detective Wallace. I’m sorry to bother you but I am one of the detectives investigating Mr. Simons’…suicide…and I need your help.”
“I think I’ve given the police everything I know.”
“I’m trying to find out who a couple of people are. I found the name Dwayne on a sticky note. Do you know who that is?”
“Dwayne was Mr. Simons’s hair stylist. He works at Pierre’s. I have his phone number at work if you need it.”
“Do you know his last name? Is it Duke perhaps?”
“No, sorry. That’s not it, but I don’t remember what it was. Pierre’s has a Web site with their staff listed. You could check there.”
“And this hairdresser was due to see Mr. Simons at seven in the morning?”
“Oh no,” said Muriel Parks. “He phoned to say he could fit Mr. Simons in first thing—probably nine o’clock.”
“Okay. Good. Do you know who Duke is?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. I arranged all of Theo’s appointments, so I can’t think where the name has come from.”
“Thank you so much,” Wallace said. “I believe that’s all I need for tonight.”
“Our office is closed tomorrow, of course. I’ll be at home most of the day should you think of something else.”
“Thank you very much. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Wallace replaced the phone in its cradle. Maybe Siley was right. Sometimes digging didn’t get you any deeper.
“Hey, Phil,” Kahn said. “Hey, Sal, still burning the midnight oil?”
She looked up. Wagner looked even worse than normal, and this time he had a bandage wrapped around his head.
“What the fuck happened to you?” said Reyes.
“The action got a little tasty,” said Wagner. “Some college kids decided it was gay-bashing night.”
“Little did they know that this gay bashes back,” said Kahn.
“Siley told us about FID running off with their tails between their legs,” said Wagner, slouching in his seat beside Reyes and putting his feet up on the desk. “Was Barclay-Jones really here? I don’t know what it is about that girl, but she gets me hard.”
“Well,” said Reyes, throwing an envelope into Wagner’s lap, “these’ll soften you up again.”
Wallace turned back to her desk and began typing up their response to the Simons’s scene.
“If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have a long night ahead of—”
“No fucking way!” Wagner exclaimed. “Hey, Don, check these out.”
Reyes was laughing. “You’re a sick puppy, Harl,” said Kahn. “I don’t need to see that shit.”
“No, look who it is.”
Wallace turned around. Wagner was leafing through the Davey photos, and Kahn was looking over his back. “Where’d you get these?” asked Kahn.
“They were part of a blackmail plot on the Pearl case,” said Reyes. “The guy having a good time was one of our suspects.”
“Well, the guy having a bad time is even worse now,” said Harlen. “He was shot dead this evening.”
25
Wallace stood up and knocked her cup. Coffee sloshed on to her desk. “Are you sure? Robbie McCall?”
“He was a John Doe, but there’s no doubt it’s him. No doubt,” said Kahn. “Barrett will have him on ice at the morgue by now.”
“Someone didn’t like his technique,” said Wagner. “One in the head and dead.”
“Right temple? Up close?” Wallace asked.
“That’s right,” said Kahn. “Probable robbery—homicide. Where’s Davey now?”
Wallace’s stomach coiled with anxiety. “We let him go. Oh shit. If he—”
“Why the fuck d’you let him go?” said Wagner.
“Wait, what time was McCall killed?” asked Reyes.
“It happened when we were there,” said Kahn. “The blood was still dripping off the walls. About half past seven, a quarter to eight.”
“We cut Davey loose around nine thirty,” Reyes said. “He’s clear.”
Wallace checked her notes, picked up the phone, and started dialing Davey’s house.
“What’s up, Phil?” said Harlen.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “Someone’s picking off witnesses. McCall must have been in one those pictures from the start. Someone set Davey up. They decided it was too risky to let McCall live. Pearl, Simons, McCall, even Ignatiez, they’re all connected.” The phone rang twice, three times, four times. “The killer’s still out there, and he’s not stopping until he has eliminated all the risk.”
Come on, pick up!
“Hello,” a woman said.
“Mrs. Davey?”
“Yes.”
“This is Detective Wallace. Is your husband available?”
“We don’t want to talk to you. If you need anything, call our lawyer.”
“Mrs. Davey, this is important. I’ve got to speak to your husband.”
“No. You’ve bothered him enough. If you don’t stop calling—”
“His life may be in danger, ma’am.”
There was no response, only silence.
“Mrs. Davey?”
“What do you mean, he might be in danger? Is this some kind of con, detective?”
“There’s a serious situation developing, Mrs. Davey. Please, we need to speak with your husband.”
“He’s not here. He got a call from the water company. They said there was a problem at one of the construction sites so he went over to meet with them.”
“Do you know which site?”
“I don’t…no, he didn’t say.”
“Does he have a cell phone?”
“Yes.”
“Can you give me the number, Mrs. Davey?”
She wrote down the digits Janet gave her.
“If Sam calls, Mrs. Davey, ask him to call me immediately.”
“Oh my God! He’s in terrible trouble, isn’t he?”
“He could be. Please, make sure he gets in touch.”
“I will,” she said and hung up.
Wallace immediately dialed the number for Davey’s cell. She got his voice mail.
Shit.
“Mr. Davey, this is Detective Wallace. Can you call me urgently please as soon as you pick up this message?” She gave her number and hung up.
“Hey, Sal, get on to the water company. Find out if there’s a leak at any of the Davey sites…Sal?”
“Phil, you gotta see this.” She looked up. Reyes was pale as a sheet and he was holding a picture. “I’ve found Duke,” he said, and handed over the frame. It was a photograph on a dark green border with a pine surround. “It was tagged as being found in one of Simon’s locked drawers, but there was a fade mark on the wall that suggested it had hung there for a long time.”
Wallace looked closely at the black-and-white picture. A Troop, 1st Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry, DOU6, Desert Storm was emblazoned across the top of the photo. Five men in combat attire, standing in front of a tank. Listed below were their nicknames: Knight, Earl, Prince, Duke, Count.
A younger-looking Simons stood in the center. Wallace brought the picture right up to her face to inspect the figure on Simons’s left. His face was cast in shade due to the brim of his hat. “That must be Duke, but there’s no way to ID him.”
