He was right. On the fifth night of the surveillance, McCaleb, Winston and two other detectives hiding in a mausoleum with a view of both grave sites watched a man drive into the cemetery in a van, get out and climb over the locked gate. Carrying something under his arm, he walked to the grave of the first victim, stood motionless in front of it for ten minutes and then headed to the grave of the second victim. His actions showed a prior knowledge of the location of the graves. At the second grave, he unrolled what turned out to be a sleeping bag on top of the grave, sat down on it and leaned back against the headstone. The detectives did not disturb the man. They were recording his visit with a night-vision video camera. Before long he opened his pants and began masturbating.
Before he returned to the van, the man had already been identified through its license plates as Luther Hatch, a thirty-eight-year-old gardener from North Hollywood released four years earlier from a nine-year Folsom Prison term for a rape conviction.
The subject was no longer unknown. Hatch became a working suspect. When his years in prison were subtracted from his age, he fit the VICAP profile perfectly. He was watched around the clock for three weeks-including during two more visits to the Glendale cemetery-until finally one night the detectives moved in as he attempted to force a young woman leaving the Sherman Oaks Galleria into his van. In the van, the arresting officers found duct tape and clothesline cut into four-foot lengths. After receiving a search warrant, the investigators tore apart the interior of the van as well as Hatch’s apartment. They recovered hair, thread and dried fluid evidence that was later linked through DNA and other scientific analysis to the two murder victims. Quickly dubbed “The Cemetery Man” by the local media, Hatch took his place in the pantheon of multiple murderers who fascinate the public.
McCaleb’s expertise and hunches had helped Winston break the case. It was one of the successes they still talked about in Los Angeles and Quantico. On the night they arrested Hatch, the surveillance team went out to celebrate. During a lull in the din, Jaye Winston turned to McCaleb at the bar and said, “I owe you one. We all do.”
Buddy Lockridge had dressed for his job as Terry McCaleb’s driver as if he were going to a nightclub on the Sunset Strip. Head to toe, he was clad in black. He also carried a black leather briefcase. Standing on the dock next to the Double-Down, McCaleb stared at the ensemble without speaking for a long moment.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, let’s go.”
“Is this all right?”
“It’s fine but I didn’t think you’d get so dressed up for just sitting in a car all day. You going to be comfortable?”
“Sure.”
“Then let’s go.”
Lockridge’s car was a seven-year-old silver Ford Taurus that was well maintained. On the way out to Whittier, he tried three different times to find out what it was McCaleb was investigating but each time the questions were unanswered. Finally, McCaleb was able to deflect the line of questioning by bringing up their old debate over the merits of sailboats versus power boats. They got to the Sheriff’s Department Star Center in a little over an hour. Lockridge slid the Taurus into a spot in the visitor’s lot and turned off the ignition.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be,” McCaleb said. “I hope you brought something to read or you’ve got one of your harmonicas on you.”
“You sure you don’t want me to go in with you?”
“Look, Bud, this might have been a mistake. I’m not looking for a partner. All I need is somebody to drive me. I spent more than a hundred bucks yesterday on cabs. I figured maybe you could use the money instead, but if you’re going to be asking me questions and-”
“Okay, okay,” Lockridge said, cutting in. He held his hands up in surrender. “I’ll just sit here and read my book. No more questions.”
“Good. I’ll see you.”
McCaleb entered the homicide squad offices on time for his appointment and Jaye Winston was hovering around the reception area waiting for him. She was an attractive woman a few years older than McCaleb. She had blond hair that was straight and kept midlength. She had a slim build and was dressed in a blue suit with a white blouse. McCaleb had not seen her in almost five years, since the night they had celebrated the arrest of Luther Hatch. They shook hands and Winston led McCaleb to a conference room that had an oval table surrounded by six chairs. There was a smaller table against one wall with a double-pot coffeemaker on it. The room was empty. A thick stack of documents and four videocassettes were sitting on the table.
“You want some coffee?” Winston asked.
“Nah, I’m fine.”
“Then let’s get started. I’ve got twenty minutes.”
They took chairs across the table from each other. Winston pointed at the paper stack and the videos.
“This is all yours. I copied everything after you called this morning.”
“Jeez, you kidding? Thanks.”
With two hands McCaleb pulled the pile toward his chest like a man raking in the pot at the poker table.
“I called Arrango over at L.A.,” Winston said. “He told me not to work with you but I told him you were the best agent I ever dealt with and that I owed you one. He’s pissed but he’ll get over it.”
“Is this L.A. ’s stuff, too?”
“Yeah, we’ve copied each other back and forth. I haven’t gotten anything from Arrango in a couple weeks but that’s probably because there hasn’t been anything. I think it’s all up to date. Problem is, it’s a lot of paper and video and it all adds up to nothing so far.”
McCaleb broke the stack of reports in half and started sorting through them. It became clear that about two-thirds of the work had been generated by sheriff’s investigators and the rest by the LAPD. He gestured to the videotapes.
“What are these?”
“You’ve got both crime scenes there and both shoots. Arrango told me he showed you the market robbery already.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, on ours you get even less. The shooter enters the frame for only a few seconds. Just enough for us to see he was wearing a mask. But anyway, it’s there for you to look at if you want.”
“On yours, did the guy take the money from the machine or the victim?”
“The machine, why?”
“I might be able to use that to get some help from the bureau, if I need it. Technically, it means the money was taken from the bank, not the victim. That’s a federal offense.”
Winston nodded that she understood.
“So how did you connect these, ballistics?” McCaleb asked, mindful that her time was limited and he wanted as much from her as he could get.
She nodded.
“I was working my case already and then a few weeks later I’m reading the paper and see a story about the other one. Sounded the same. I called L.A. and we got together. When you watch the videos, Terry, you’ll see. There’s no doubt. Same MO, same gun, same guy. The ballistics only underlined what we already knew.”
McCaleb nodded.
“I wonder why the guy picked up the brass if he knew the lead would be there. What was he using?”
“Nine-millimeter hardballs. Federals. Full metal jacket. Picking up the shells is just good practice. On my case, the shot was through and through and we dug the slug out of a concrete wall. He probably was guessing-maybe hoping-it was too mashed up for a ballistics comparison. So like a good little shooter, he picked up the brass.”
McCaleb nodded, noting the disdain in her voice for her quarry.
“Anyway, it doesn’t really matter,” she said. “Like I said, watch the tapes. We’re dealing with one guy here. You don’t need ballistics to know it.”
“Did you or the LAPD take it any further than that?”
“What do you mean, Firearms and Ballistics?”
“Yeah. Who has the evidence?”
“We do. The L.A. caseload’s a little heavier than over here. We agreed, since our case was first, to hold all of the evi
dence. I had F and B do the regular routine, you know, look for similars, et cetera, but they drew a blank. Looks like just these two cases. For now.”
McCaleb thought about telling her about the bureau’s DRUG-FIRE computer but decided the time wasn’t right yet. He’d wait until he had reviewed the tapes and the murder books before he started suggesting what she should do.
He noticed Winston check her watch.
“You working this by yourself?” he asked.
“I am now. I caught the lead and Dan Sistrunk partnered it with me. You know him?”
“Uh, was he one of the guys in the mausoleum that night?”
“Right, the Hatch surveillance. He was there. Anyway, we worked this one together and then other things happened. Other cases. It’s all mine now. Lucky me.”
McCaleb nodded and smiled. He understood how it went. If a case wasn’t solved by the team quickly, one player got stuck with it.
“You going to get any flak for giving me this stuff?”
“No. The captain knows what you did for us on Lisa Mondrian.”
Lisa Mondrian was the woman found in Vasquez Rocks. McCaleb thought it was unusual that Winston had referred to her by name. It was unusual because most cops he knew tried to depersonalize the victims. It made it easier to live with.
“The captain was the lieutenant back then,” Winston was saying. “He knows we owe you one. We talked and he said give you the stuff. I just wish we could pay you with something better than this. I don’t know what you’ll be able to do with this, Terry. We’ve just been waiting.”
Meaning they were waiting for the shooter to strike again and hopefully make a mistake. Unfortunately it often took fresh blood to solve old killings.
“Well, I’ll see what I can do with it. At least it’s something to keep me busy. What was that you said on the phone about it being three-strikes stuff?”
Winston frowned.
“We’re getting more and more like these. Ever since they put in the three-strikes law in Sacramento. I don’t know since you’ve been out of the life if you’ve followed it. But the law says three felony convictions and you’re out. Automatic life without parole.”
“Right. I know about it.”
“Well, with some of these assholes, all that did was make ’em more careful. Now they wipe out witnesses where before they’d just rob. Three strikes was supposed to be some kind of deterrent. You ask me, it just got a lot of people killed like James Cordell and the two in that market.”
“So you think that’s what this guy’s doing?”
“Looks it to me. You saw one of the tapes. There’s no hesitation. This scumbag knew what he was going to do before he even went up to that ATM or into that store. He wanted no witnesses. So that’s the hunch I’ve been following. In my spare time I’ve been going through the files, looking for stick-up men with two or more falls already under their belts. I think the man in the ski mask is one of them. He used to be a robber. Now he’s a robbing murderer. Natural evolution.”
“And no luck yet?”
“With the files, nope. But either I’ll find him or he’ll find me. He’s not the type who’s going to suddenly go square. And judging by the fact he’s shooting people for a few hundred dollars, he’s decided that under no circumstances is he going back to the cage. That’s for sure. He’s going to do this again. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet-it’s been two months since the last one. But when he does, maybe he’ll fuck up just a little and we’ll get him. Sooner or later, we will. I guarantee it. My victim had a wife and two little daughters. I’m going to get the piece of shit who did this.”
McCaleb nodded. He liked her outrage-fueled dedication. It was a full turn away from Arrango’s view of things. He started gathering up the documents and tapes and told Winston he would be calling her after he looked over all of the material. He told her it might be a few days.
“No sweat,” she said. “Whatever you can do we can use.”
When McCaleb got back to the Taurus, he found Buddy Lockridge sitting with his back to the driver’s-side door and his legs stretched across the front seat. He was idly practicing a blues riff on a harmonica while reading a book opened on his lap. McCaleb opened the passenger door and waited for him to move his legs. As he finally got in, he noticed Buddy had been reading a book titled Inspector Imanishi Investigates.
“That was pretty quick,” Buddy said.
“Yeah, there wasn’t a lot to say.”
He put the stack of reports and videocassettes on the floor between his feet.
“What’s all of that?”
“Just some stuff I have to go through.”
Lockridge leaned over and looked at the top sheet. It was an incident report.
“James Cordell,” he read out loud. “Who’s that?”
“Buddy, I’m beginning to think-”
“I know, I know.”
He took the hint, straightened up and started the car. He asked nothing more about the documents.
“So, where to now?”
“Now we just go back. San Pedro.”
“I thought you said you needed me for a few days. I’ll stop asking questions, I promise.”
There was a slight protest in his voice.
“It’s not that. I still need you. But right now I need to go back and go through some of this stuff.”
Buddy dejectedly tossed his book onto the dashboard, dropped the harp into the door pocket and put the car into gear.
10
THERE WAS MORE natural light in the salon than down below in the office stateroom. McCaleb decided to work there. He also had a television and video player built into a cabinet topside. He cleared the galley table, wiped it with a sponge and paper towel and then put the stack of reports Winston had given him down on top. He got a legal pad and a sharpened pencil out of the chart table drawer and brought them over as well.
He decided that the best way to do it would be to go through the material chronologically. That meant the Cordell case came first. He went through the stack, separating out the reports regarding the Gloria Torres killing and putting them aside. He then took what was left and separated the reports into small stacks relating to the initial investigation and evidence inventory, follow-up interviews, dead-end leads, miscellaneous reports, fact sheets and weekly summaries.
When he had worked for the bureau, it was his routine to completely clear his desk and spread all the paperwork from a submitted case file across it. The cases came in from police departments all over the West. Some sent thick packages and some just thin files. He always asked for videotape of the crime scene. Big or small, the packages were all about the same thing. McCaleb was fascinated and repulsed at the same time. He became angry and vengeful as he read, all while alone in his little office, his coat on the door hook, his gun in the drawer. He could tune everything out but what was in front of him. He did his best work at the desk. As a field agent, he was average at best. But at his desk, he was better than most. And he felt a secret thrill in the back of his mind each time he opened one of those packages and the hunt for a new evil began again. He felt that thrill now as he began to read.
James Cordell had a lot going for him. A family, nice home and cars, good health and a job that paid well enough to allow his wife to be a full-time mother to their two daughters. He was an engineer with a private firm contracted by the state to maintain the structural integrity of the aqueduct system that delivered water from the snow melt in the mountains in the central state to the reservoirs that nursed the sprawl of Southern California. He lived in Lancaster in northeast Los Angeles County, which put him within an hour and a half by car of any point on the water line. On the night of January twenty-second he had been heading home from a long day inspecting the Lone Pine segment of the concrete aqueduct. It was payday and he stopped at the Regional State Bank branch just a mile from his home. His paycheck had been automatically deposited and he needed cash. But he was shot in the head and left for dead at the ATM befo
re the machine finished spitting out his money. His killer was the one who took the crisp twenties when they rolled out of the machine.
The first thing McCaleb realized as he read the initial crime reports was that a sanitized version of events had been given to the media. The circumstances described in the Times story Keisha Russell had read to him the day before did not mesh cleanly with the facts in the reports. The story she had read said that Cordell’s body was found fifteen minutes after the shooting. According to the crime report, Cordell was found almost immediately by an ATM customer who had pulled into the bank lot just as another vehicle-most likely the shooter’s-was speeding out. The witness, identified as James Noone, quickly called for help on a cellular car phone.
Because the call was relayed through a cell transponder, the 911 operator did not have an automatic address readout of the exact location from which the call had been made. She had to take that information the old-fashioned way-manually-and managed to transpose two numbers of the address Noone had given when she dispatched an emergency medical unit. In his statement, Noone said he had watched helplessly as a paramedic ambulance went screaming by to a location seven blocks away. He had to call and explain himself all over again to a new operator. The paramedics were redirected but Cordell was dead by the time they arrived.
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