The truck was a late-model Chevy Sidewinder registered to Carla and Julio Sanchez at 1414 Lorena Street, a few miles away, also in Boyle Heights. I ran both Sanchezes and found out Carla and her husband were part of White Fence, a rival gang to Evergreen. Carla had a pile of priors-everything from drug dealing and running a prostitution ring in ’03 to assault with intent to commit and illegal possession of a firearm. She’d done two short nickels in the California women’s prison in Tehachapi, where she was far from a model prisoner, with a long list of write-ups for assault and other yard crimes. Her husband, Julio, had a decent yellow sheet full of assaults and drug beefs. So far he’d only done county time. Neither was currently wanted.
I walked from my car back into Lita’s house, filled Hitch in on what had transpired, and then played back Chava’s statement on the digital recorder. Despite the fact that this was a very good lead, like me, Hitch wasn’t too impressed, because it had come from Nash. We entered the kitchen, where the ME was now working over the body with two evidence techs.
I looked up for the ceiling fan, but there was only a jagged hole overhead with stripped red and green electrical wires hanging down. It looked as if whatever fixture had once been up there had been hastily ripped out. The fan, if there ever was one, was missing.
Put with Chava’s story, this offered an interesting thematic option.
It was certainly conceivable that Carla Sanchez had snuck back here later to make good on her threat to “get the bitch.” Carla could have found her way inside, killed Lita Mendez, then ripped off the fan and split.
If Nix Nash hadn’t supplied this lead, Hitch and I would have been high-fiving each other about now. Put another blue dot up on the homicide board. Case solved.
Carla Sanchez had motive, method, and opportunity. She had a violent prison record and a string of violent priors, along with an eyewitness to the inciting event.
A perfect slam-dunk murder case. Yet neither of us could quite get behind it.
It all just felt like a setup.
CHAPTER 6
The owner of the house across the street charged us four hundred dollars to rent his place for a week to use as a command post. Detective Becker was working on getting two landlines in so we could stay off our cell phones, which are too easy for the press to scavenge.
Becker also made a run for coffee and doughnuts and set them up in the new CP kitchen. The Winchells and Krispy Kremes were drawing cops and CSIs on breaks off the crime scene, keeping it less congested.
CSI was doing a grid search, marking everything with numbered tape cards. After that, they would vacuum the house, bag and tag all trace evidence, and photograph footprints in suspicious locations like outside of windows and by the side of the house.
Five minutes after I got back from my meeting with Nash, the ME rolled the body and, as I’d suspected, there were two bullet holes in the floor under her head.
The crime techs decided not to attempt fishing for the lead with forceps and possibly adding scratches to the soft lead bullets, which could confuse Ballistics. Instead, they decided to cut out the flooring with a saw and take it back to the crime lab to do the recovery there.
We had a brief discussion about both operational as well as procedural moves. We had to go interview the Sanchezes. Good investigating technique dictated we follow that lead immediately, before the suspects might decide to take off. However, the crime scene, always the temple of any homicide investigation, needed accurate supervision.
We discussed splitting up, with one of us staying here. But Carla and Julio were White Fence gangsters with records, a fact that demanded, in the interest of safety, we go after them as a team.
“How good a cop is Laguna?” I asked Hitch. “So far he set this crime scene up perfectly. Can we trust him to fill in for us?”
“When he’s sober, he rocks,” Hitch said. “He looks dry to me.”
So my partner and I asked Rick Laguna and Pam Becker if they would supervise the evidence gathering and the canvass of the neighborhood so we could follow our one lead. They agreed.
At about ten thirty, we got in the Acura and pulled out.
“So what’s he like?” Hitch asked, finally getting around to pumping me for info on Nix Nash.
“He says ‘gee’ and ‘for the love of Mike.’ He smiles a lot and talks about himself in the third person. The words ‘I’ and ‘me’ appear frequently.”
“I don’t trust this,” Hitch said after a moment of silence. “We’re not at the crime scene ten minutes and up pops Nash with this Chava character and the supposed beef over that ceiling fan. This is exactly the same kinda shit that happened to those cops in Atlanta last year. We’re being played.”
“Are you saying we should just drop this lead? You can’t be serious.”
“Have you been watching that TV show? Did you see what he did in Atlanta? It was a train wreck. Those poor doofuses were chasing leads mostly supplied by Nash, coming up with zilch while V-TV’s out solving the case. Nash and his team of retired Atlanta cops turn up that schizoid bum sleeping in Piedmont Park and hand him over to those poor, confused homicide dicks on live TV. I fuckin’ gagged when I saw that. The killer’s actually wearing an old coat that has four of the six dead girls’ DNA stains on it. The Atlanta cops looked like vacuum bag dirt.”
We were a few blocks from Carla Sanchez’s address when I pulled the car over to the curb and parked next to a strip mall.
“What’re you doing?” Hitch said.
“You’re right. I agree we’re probably being screwed with. Chava’s statement is probably bogus, and if we go with it and it’s wrong, we look like fools. Plus, we waste important time and momentum at the front end of the investigation.”
“Exactly.”
“Problem is, we can’t ignore this. We’re in a box. If we don’t go talk to Carla Sanchez, we look incompetent. Then that will be the next lead on his damn show.”
“So, whatta you suggest? Should we just give up and put on some clown makeup?”
“We gotta cover each other. That’s number one,” I said. “When it got nasty on the Piedmont Murders the Atlanta cops started pointing fingers.”
He nodded.
“Two. We need to stay proactive. We gotta figure this guy is gaming us. Nix Nash has issues. Ex-cop, ex-lawyer. Our department went after him, got him convicted of a felony, and stripped him of his law license. Now he’s in a position to put some hurt on us. That’s probably his motive here. Except-”
“Except what?”
“Does it bother you that Nix Nash and Lita Mendez were both sort of in the same business?”
Hitch nodded. “I’ve been wondering about that myself.”
“What if they knew each other?” I said. “They almost had to, right? Both hung out in L.A. courtrooms around the same time in ’05, both filing complaints against cops. I can’t believe with that shared interest they didn’t hook up.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s just interesting that when we pull up at Lita’s crime scene he’s already down the street interviewing witnesses.”
We sat in silence, thinking about it while ghetto cars and morning delivery trucks rattled past.
“No matter what, you gotta know I’ve got your back, Shane. I’ll never point a finger at you. I’ll go down swinging first.”
“Back atcha.”
We bumped fists, then I picked up my cell and dialed my wife, Alexa, who’s an LAPD captain and runs the Detective Bureau, supervising three hundred detectives from the Police Administration Building downtown. She needed to know about this.
Alexa is amazing. Besides being my wife, who I’m deeply in love with, she’s also the smartest cop I know. She is beautiful, with shiny black hair, high cheekbones, reef-water blue eyes, and a gorgeous figure. How she decided to be a cop instead of a model and how I ended up with her are two of life’s consummate mysteries. She answered on the first ring.
“I’m
in the chief’s weekly COMSTAT conference,” she whispered into the receiver. “Make it quick, Shane.”
“Lita Mendez is dead. Murdered,” I said.
There was a long pause on her end of the line.
“You hear what I just said?”
“Yeah. I’m just walking out of the meeting. Hang on a second.” After a few moments she said, “Okay, I’m in the hall. How’d she die?”
“Beaten in her home in Boyle Heights, then double-tapped. According to maggot infestation, lividity, rigor mortis, and a few other things, I’m guessing it happened in the middle of last night, but the coroner will be giving us a better time-of-death estimate in a few hours.”
“Look out. This is going to be a media red ball with serious anti-police overtones,” she warned.
“You haven’t even heard the worst of it.”
“Go on.”
“Nix Nash was on our crime scene when we got there. He’s already turned up a neighbor who says he saw a screaming fight between Lita and someone named Carla Sanchez over a ceiling fan. I’m not sure I trust it. Hitch and I don’t know what’s going on yet.”
“What’s going on is, you’re about to get your own reality show,” she whispered darkly. She was silent for a second before she added, “I wonder if Nash and Lita knew each other.”
That’s what I meant about her being the smartest cop I knew. It took her ten seconds to make that connection.
“Listen, Alexa. Will you have somebody get me everything you can on Nixon Nash-his whole backstory? Most of what Hitch and I know is just off the stupid main title on his show, and that’s probably BS. I want the real facts on this guy. If we’re going head-to-head with a monster, we better know what cave he’s been sleeping in.”
After she hung up, Hitch and I headed on to Carla Sanchez’s house. We were on either a cop’s mission or a fool’s errand.
Guess which.
CHAPTER 7
Carla Sanchez lived in a large white stucco apartment building in Boyle Heights. The structure was known on the street and at the Hollenbeck Police Station as the White House. Not because of its color but because the White Fence Inca leader lived in an apartment on the top floor and his entire cabinet of veteranos resided in apartments on the lower levels.
It was 11:00 A.M. when we pulled up in front. I hadn’t recognized the address when I wrote it down, but once we arrived I realized that I’d been here before, back when I was on loan to an anti-narcotics task force for a few weeks during a citywide drug sweep.
The building was what was known as a gang module. Far from being palatial, it was an ordinary six-story stucco building. What it lacked in ornamentation it more than made up for in security. The White Fence Inca had mandated that shooters be on the roof 24-7 to protect the families of his shot callers, who lived under the constant threat of payback from rival sets.
After we pulled to the curb but before I could turn off the engine, people up and down the street were already standing up and walking away from porch gliders and sagging wicker chairs, heading to the safety of their homes. My car was a standard Acura, but thirty seconds after we parked we’d been made.
“We gotta start wearing better cologne,” Hitch quipped.
“Okay, so this address confirms that Carla and Julio are connected to people in the top tier of White Fence.”
“How do you wanta play it?” Hitch asked.
“We got two possible courses of action. One: we can back off, get a warrant, and come back with SWAT, or two: we can say the Disney prayer and go in wearing our Mickey Mouse ears.”
“Never hurts to be safe,” Hitch said, opting for the backup.
“Except if we come back with SWAT, we add a big testosterone factor. It’s all about ganas with these G’sters. Besides, neither of us trust Chavaria. Since this is probably bullshit, I think we’ll find out more if we low-key it.”
“How you gonna low-key a police sit-down inside a gang module?” Hitch correctly wondered.
“Your call then.”
“Meet ya halfway. Let’s have at least one unit stand by,” he suggested. “They can park up the street with their safeties off.”
“Make the call.”
He reached under the dash, pulled out the mike, and triggered it. “This is Delta-Fifteen requesting area backup to 1414 Lorena Street in Boyle Heights,” he said. “Have the responding unit meet us on Tac Two.”
“Roger that,” the RTO said. “One-Adam-Fifty-Six, D-Fifteen requests backup at 1414 Lorena. Meet the detectives on Tac Two.”
We heard Adam-56 affirm the call, and Hitch switched the radio to Tac Two, which was a tactical frequency for undercover ops and allows for longer, less formal communication.
“This is A-Fifty-Six. I’m George; my partner’s Gately,” a woman’s voice said. “How can we help you guys?”
“We’re two plainclothes detectives headed inside the apartment house located at 1414 Lorena Street on a one-eighty-seven investigation,” Hitch said. “You know the building.”
“Yeah, the White House. Gang shit hole,” the lady cop’s voice replied.
“We might have something and then again maybe not,” Hitch continued. “If we need to make an arrest, we’re gonna want you guys to show the flag. We’ll keep our rover on. If we need help we’ll give you two squawks.”
“Roger that,” the woman’s voice came back. “Our ETA your location is three minutes. What’s the apartment number?”
“Six-Fifty-Seven,” Hitch said. “We’re drawing a lot of interest out front, so we’re going in now.”
The cops in A-56 squelched twice in acknowledgment.
Hitch clipped a Rover hand unit to his belt; then we got out of the car and headed into the building. There were two teenaged gangbangers on lookout duty lounging on the front steps. I could tell from their alert, feral postures that they, like everyone else, had made us the minute we pulled up. Because they knew we were cops they didn’t want to start anything, but that didn’t stop them from insolently mad-dogging us.
“How ya doin’, guys?” Hitch said pleasantly as he walked past. Neither of them replied.
The ground floor was empty. I noticed movement on the front steps behind us and saw the two lookouts walking away. Both had cell phones to their ears, spreading the word.
The elevator arrived and we got in and rode silently up to the sixth floor. So far, so good. We exited and walked down a corridor still rich with the smells of morning cooking. At Apartment 657 we stopped.
I knocked and a minute later saw the dim pinhole of light disappear from the peephole as someone on the other side of the door put their eye to the lens. I held up my badge.
“What you want?” a man’s voice called out.
“We’re here to see Carla Sanchez,” I said through the solid wood door.
“’Bout what?” the man challenged.
“Is she in there? Open up! Police business.”
“You got a warrant?”
“We just want to talk,” I said. “There’s no need to turn this into an incident.”
A moment later the door opened a crack. A huge bald veterano, about thirty years old, with a large black WF tattooed on the side of his shaved head, glared out at us. Both arms were fully sleeved with elaborate gang ink. He took a menacing stance, placing his bulk in the threshold, and blocked our way.
“You can talk to me,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“Carla’s old man. Julio. What’s the trato?”
“We’re here to talk to Carla,” I said. “We can get a warrant and come back with a SWAT team and have the talk in custody, or we can all sit down and have a friendly chat right here. Your call, Mr. Sanchez. But if we come back with SWAT, the ABGs on the roof will go nuts and this building will become the Dead House, and that’s the trato.”
He swore softly in Spanish.
“Is that a ‘yes’?” Hitch asked.
“Let them in, Julio,” a woman’s voice said from behind him. Then she pulled
the door wider and we got our first look at Carla Sanchez. She was large as Chava had said, maybe three hundred pounds, but only a little over five feet tall. She wore a lightweight long-sleeved white sweater over a tank dress that only came to her knees. She had large, corpulent arms and thick legs with ankles that looked like brown tube socks stuffed with sand. Her black hair was cut short. Because of her girth she looked uncomfortable just standing there.
“How about doing what the lady says,” I suggested to Julio, who was still blocking our way.
He picked up his cell phone from the charging dock by the door and hit a number, then spoke a short sentence to somebody in Spanish. I understood enough to know Julio was getting some muscle to come over and stand in the hall. Hitch caught my eye and we traded a look as Julio finished the call.
“Suit yourself,” Julio said, putting the phone back in the dock and finally stepping aside.
We walked into an overfurnished apartment. It was neatly kept, but none of the pieces coordinated. Late-morning sun was streaming through the windows.
Hitch moved to my right to check out the back hallway, looking into each bedroom. A moment later, he returned to the living room, caught my eye, and nodded. The apartment was clear. I turned my attention back to the Sanchezes.
Then I saw it.
Sitting on the coffee table in front of the sofa was the missing ceiling fan.
CHAPTER 8
The fan wires had frayed and were hanging out of the fixture. They matched the ripped-out wires I’d seen hanging from Lita Mendez’s ceiling. I looked at Hitch, who nodded. It was physical evidence corroborating Edwin Chavaria’s story. “Can I sit down?” I asked, trying to ease the tension.
Carla nodded, anxious to get off her feet. She moved painfully on swollen ankles over to a large chair, which, I noticed, had six stout legs to support her prodigious weight. When she eased herself down, she and the chair both groaned. Julio remained vigilant, standing by the door as I settled onto the sofa across from Carla. Hitch took a spot behind me where he covered my back.
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