by Philip Cox
Time for a brief detour.
He left the freeway and drove south on La Brea, eventually reaching the intersection with Rodeo Road. There, parked in a vacant lot, was what he was looking for. A silver truck with an open counter side, and a line of three people. The sign on the roof of the truck read El Matador.
Leroy had always been a lover of street food: after all, he was from New York, and had almost been raised on Beer and Brats Grilled Cheese from the Morris Truck, or Steak Frites from Steak Freak on 52nd Avenue. Even a lunch of salted pretzels and churros. However, he had long since come to the conclusion that street food here was better. Provided you knew where to look, and provided you liked salsa. After all, in LA, it’s all about the salsa.
He joined the line, and left minutes later with a carne asada taco: broiled flank steak, with white onion, cilantro and lime juice. Added to that, tomatoes, onion, jalapenos and garlic. Demolishing the taco as he walked back to the car, he quickly returned to the truck to get another couple of napkins, as there was so much salsa that it was oozing onto his hands.
Back on the road, he headed back up La Brea to the freeway back to the station. On his return, he decided the first thing to do was to freshen up. The look given by the officer on the front desk confirmed that. He used the shower adjacent to the men’s lockers, checked his own locker for a change of clothes: he always kept at least a set of shorts, socks and a shirt there just for situations like today. He also kept an electric shaver in his locker, and within twenty minutes of his return to the office, he was showered, shaved and had had almost a full change of clothes.
He headed for the Homicide Desk, expecting to find either Quinn or Johnson, or both. Certainly Johnson, as Quinn should have been out getting prints from Burt Tracey. To his surprise, though, neither was there.
‘Where’s Quinn, or the FBI agent?’ he asked one of the other officers, who shrugged in reply.
He wandered out into the corridor and looked up and down for his colleagues. He saw neither; but he did bump in to Lieutenant Perez, who was getting a drink from the vending machine.
‘Jesus Christ, Sam. You still look like shit,’ Perez exclaimed, sipping some steaming hot coffee. ‘Why don’t you go get some sleep? Some more sleep, I should say.’
‘I’ll be okay.’
‘I’m thinking about my overtime budget. How many hours have you been putting in? What’s happening, then?’
Leroy was tired, and just wanted to keep the case moving; the last thing he needed right now was to sit here and give Perez updates. For one thing, there was precious little on which to update him. ‘I’ve just come back from the first autopsy. Jane Doe One.’
‘And?’
‘It looks as if it’s as we thought. Massive trauma to her internal organs. Which is what you’d expect with nineteen stab wounds.’
Perez winced.
‘Hobson’s still to do the toxicology and DNA tests, but that will be a few days till we get the results.’
‘Sexual assault?’
‘No signs of trauma, but we’ll have to wait for the full tests.’
‘What about the second vic? The one at the airport? Jane Doe Two.’
‘He was about to start her when I left. There was no point in standing around waiting again. He’s going to call me when he’s done. But she might not be a Jane Doe.’
Perez raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? You got an ID?’
‘We got a possible. We might have a match to a Missing Persons Report. Age, description seem to fit. I’m going to check the pictures I brought back from the morgue to the MPU records. See what comes up there.’
‘Does this missing person fit the usual profile? Female, under forty, single?’
‘Single and solitary, yes. A neighbour reported her missing and there’s apparently a mother up in Sacramento.’
‘Okay. Where’s Quinn, by the way?’
‘I sent him with uniform back-up down to Burt Tracey in Venice. You know, the owner of the Chevrolet pick-up. I didn’t go as I needed to be at the PM, and I want to give Tracey a wide berth as he doesn’t live too far from me.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Agent Johnson?’
‘Oh, she left already.’
‘Left? You mean, gone to the airport?’
‘Stuck her head round my door, said she had to get her flight and good-bye. That was it. Was she any use?'
Leroy was diplomatic in his reply. ‘She was useful in that she validated what we had already done, or thought.’
‘You mean, she wasn’t?’
‘She was kind of reluctant to be on the front line. I guess she just wanted to give us advice.’
Perez turned to go back to his office. ‘I guess she felt she had no more advice to give. Let’s hope they don’t bill us for her time.’
Leroy explained to Perez about the video from the LAX men’s room. ‘I left her looking at that when Ray set off for the prints and I went to the FSC.’
Perez shook his head and took his coffee back to his office. Leroy returned to the Homicide Room. On his desk was the memory stick containing the video footage. It rested on Leroy’s legal pad, the one in which he had been recording the movement in and out of the restroom. He looked down to see she had added nothing to his notes.
He flopped down in his chair and noticed a post-it stuck to his screen. It read: ‘Sorry, Sam, had to get back to Quantico. Another time. G.’
Leroy tore the note off, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the trash bin. ‘Great. Shit. Fuck you very much.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Quinn uploaded Burt Tracey’s prints, while Leroy looked on. The days of pressing somebody’s fingertips onto an ink-filled pad were long gone; now prints were taken by a portable digital reader, then uploaded to a file under the relevant case. Having the prints stored electronically made it easier than before to check for matches with prints already on file.
‘How did Tracey seem?’ Leroy asked. ‘Did he question why we needed them?’
‘No problem at all,’ replied Quinn as he clicked the OK button. ‘We told him they were for elimination purposes, and he accepted that. Said that was cool.’
Leroy studied the image of the prints on his screen. ‘They might very well be elimination prints. But I’m still mighty curious as to how our perp happened on that particular vehicle stored on a drive, in a back street. How would he have known about it?’
‘His prints are obviously going to be all over the pick-up,’ said Quinn, ‘but if we find any on the Beetle…’
‘Then we might have our man. While you’re on there, can you send them over to the Forensic Tech Team. They’ll need them for elimination on the pick-up, but I want them to do a comparison with those on the Beetle.’
Quinn looked up at Leroy. ‘And if there is a match?’
‘Then we’ll have gotten our man. Although I’m not widely optimistic.’
Quinn mailed off the prints, then looked around. ‘Where’s Johnson, by the way?’
‘Fucked off back to Quantico, according to the lieutenant.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that. Without so much as a good-bye, kiss my ass, or anything.’ Leroy relayed to Quinn the events of the previous evening and night – his work on the video, his conversation with Johnson, and his going out for some fresh air, and his brief sleep on the lieutenant’s couch. ‘When I got back in here, she had gone, and there were no additions to the notes I had made on the video. It looks as if she had done nothing. Apart from taking the thumb drive out and putting it on my pad. Oh, and she left me a note stuck onto the screen there - I threw it in the trash – saying, “Sorry, I had to get back. Another time,” something like that.’
‘That’s great. Did you tell the lieutenant?’
‘I did. He didn’t say much. Seemed to be worried the Feds were going to bill him for her time.’
‘Even so.’
‘I know. I don’t get it, either. What I did get, though, were pictures of the two Jane Does. I picked them up f
rom the morgue. When you spoke to them last the MPU only had one person who fitted that criteria: can you get it up, and we’ll compare.’
‘Right.’ As Quinn keyed in his search parameters, he asked, ‘How did you get on at the autopsies?’
‘I only stayed for the first, for Jane Doe One. The results seem pretty much as we figured out. It’ll take a few days, of course, for the toxicology tests, after which we might have an idea on how he managed to restrain them. I’m expecting Jane Doe Two to be more or less the same, so figured there’d be little value staying for that. Russ is going to give me a call when he’s completed the second. Then send both reports over.’ He took out his phone and retrieved the victims’ face pictures, as Quinn got onto the Missing Persons Unit records. ‘Let’s see what we have here.’
‘This is the one which matched the criteria,’ Quinn said. He read aloud from the screen. ‘Danielle Scott. Also known as Dani Scott. Reported missing by a neighbour, Mrs Epinoza. Address is Apartment 2H, 2500 Perlita Avenue.’
Leroy checked on the street. ‘It’s near Forest Lawn.’
‘That’s not far - five, maybe ten, minutes from Chinatown.’
‘No, it isn’t. What else do we have?’
‘Mrs Epinoza says she reckoned Ms Scott was in her mid-thirties. She says she recalls a conversation where Ms Scott says she was divorced. No children as far as we are aware. None ever at the apartment. The only relative she knows about is her mother, who we think lives in Sacramento. No sign of a father.’
‘We can get more information from her apartment. The MPU won’t have been over it yet: for them it’s just a missing person. They’ll just notify everybody. Let’s see if it’s a match: where’s her face?’
‘Here you go.’
The image of the missing person, of Danielle Scott, had been taken from a group picture, with the rest of the image cropped out, leaving only her head and shoulders. From the background, they could see the photograph had been taken in front of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
Happier times.
‘Let’s try Jane Doe One.’
Leroy held up his phone, the face pale, wan, countenance of the figure lying on the gurney up at the Forensic Science Center, compared with the smiling face in the sun.
He didn’t need to look twice. He put his hand on Quinn’s shoulder.
‘Ray, we have a name.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The killer was in Hollywood.
He had been at this particular location several times. The other times he had been parked across the street from the building in question, parked by the six-foot-tall hedge bordering the hotel.
The building in question was named The Nirvana: a four-storey apartment building built in pagoda style. Red brick and a green slate roof. A smaller version of the overall roof covered the part of the building which jutted out to form the lobby. Centre of the building, a fire escape ran down the façade to a second-floor balcony, on which the killer could see a large, lime-green parasol. A winding stone path led to the main door from the sidewalk, meandering through the well-manicured front lawn.
When the killer first learned that his next victim lived here, he relished at the irony of the name of the building. The word Nirvana means an ideal condition of rest, harmony, stability and joy.
Sweet irony.
For several days, he had watched. He knew now, with more than a degree of certainty, at what time her orange Ford Fiesta FT would leave the discrete parking lot on Franklin Avenue, at the side of the building. He knew, with the same certainty, at what time she would return.
Alone.
Always alone.
It had been easy to learn in which apartment she lived. There was an intercom system at the front door, the type where you buzzed the apartment number, and the occupant pressed a switch inside to unlock the door. But people were so lax: all you had to do was press any button, and when it was answered, say something like, “delivery”, and you would be let in.
Another way to gain access was to make sure you got to the door a moment before somebody else. You then made the pretence of talking to somebody inside. The resident arrives, opens the door on their own cognisance, and you follow them in. This is how he established her apartment. Dressed as a delivery man, he followed her in; by coincidence, the package he had was for the same floor as hers. She entered her own door without batting an eyelid, and he had located where she lived.
Today, it was three o’clock. A warm fall afternoon. He was standing on the corner of Franklin and Orange. The Nirvana itself stood on Orange Avenue. He had been here fifteen minutes, and had just checked The Nirvana’s parking lot in case she had returned early. She had not. He was neatly dressed in a matching light grey shirt and pants, and matching baseball cap and Ray Bans. With the package under his arm, he looked every bit the delivery man. The raincoat he had worn on the Red Line over here he had left in a trash bin on the Boulevard.
He took the winding path to the entrance doors. He pressed her button - 315 - just to double check she was not in. She was not. He pressed for door 220, picked at random, and waited. No answer. Then another number. Again, no answer. He paused, then pressed another random number.
‘Yes?’ came a woman’s voice. Third time lucky.
‘Package for three eighteen,’ he called into the intercom.
There was a pause, then he heard the doors click unlocked.
He stepped through the glass doors into the lobby. It was decorated in a style matching the exterior: bright red walls, lined in black and intricate Oriental-style edgings made out in gold. Two long red sofas filled part of the lobby: fortunately for the killer, they were unoccupied. Stairs led up to a mezzanine level: black marble with a dark green carpet running up the centre, and gold handrails. The design on the elevator doors was in keeping with the décor.
On a previous reconnaissance trip, he had noticed security cameras in the corner, and so as he walked to the elevator, he kept his baseball cap low, so the peak covered the top of his face.
He took the elevator to the third floor. There were no cameras here on the third, and he was swiftly and easily able to trip the lock and get into her apartment. He took a deep breath as he waited for confirmation that there was no alarm. On his previous visit to this floor, as he observed her enter, he heard no tell-tale low buzz as she keyed a combination. After a few seconds, he breathed out.
Now he was safely in her apartment, it was just a matter of waiting. He walked over to a window: by sheer good fortune, the apartment looked out over the parking lot: now he had the perfect vantage point to observe her return.
He wandered around. Now he put on the rubber gloves, touching anything was no problem. He had ensured he had not touched the apartment door when he broke in.
The place was nothing out of the ordinary: just a run of the mill, one-bedroom apartment.
One bedroom: he stepped into it. It was plainer than he had expected: no real feminine touches; just functional. The bed sheets were black, the pillows and quilt cover were dark green. Not the normal female bedroom he thought; but then, how would he know?
As he looked down at the bed, he visualised her lying there. He began to get aroused and put his hand on his zipper. He needed self-control now. He slid open her closet door, and ran his hand over the clothes – tops, skirts, dresses, hanging up. He sniffed a couple of dresses. Strong perfume; he liked that. There was a free-standing closet inside this walk-in one. He tried the door, but it was locked. No matter.
As he slid the door shut, he thought he heard a familiar sound. He hurried over to the window, and sure enough it was her. It was five twenty and dark, but under the parking lot lights, he could make out the Fiesta.
He found a position behind the bedroom door and waited. He opened the package he had brought.
After five or six minutes, he heard the key in the lock. The door opened, then closed again. Footsteps. He could tell by the sound she made walking across the floor tiles that she was wearing high heels
. Nice.
She headed straight to the bathroom. He heard her peeing, then flush the toilet. Then he could hear her turn on the shower.
Excellent. Naked and vulnerable. However, he would wait until she had finished showering; getting her while she was under the shower would mean getting wet himself, and that would add to the risk.
He crept so he was outside the bathroom. Through the crack in the door, he could make out her form in the shower. He began to breathe heavily.
After five minutes, the shower stopped. He readied himself.
He heard the shower door slide open. He took one more look through the crack; she was towelling herself.
The killer made his move.
Hearing something, she turned around.
Didn’t see that coming.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
As they headed over to the first victim’s apartment, on Leroy’s request, Quinn read out her details once more.
‘Danielle Scott. Known as Dani. Thirty-seven years old. Divorced. No children. Lived alone. Mother lives in Sacramento. Father and any siblings unknown.’
‘So she ticks off every box on the list.’
‘Yup.’
They had hit the spot where Glendale Boulevard on which they were travelling passes under the 5 Freeway. ‘Not far to go,’ said Leroy. ‘What was her name again?’
Quinn referred once more to his notes. ‘A Mrs Epinoza. She lives across the hall from the vic.’
‘Epinoza. I hope we’re not going to need a translator.’
‘The guys at the MPU didn’t say so.’
‘Okay. Here we are.’ Leroy made a right off Glendale into Perlita Avenue. ‘What number?’
‘Thirty-two hundred,’ replied Quinn. ‘There it is.’
They parked and walked up to the door. The building was called Sunset Apartments, something of a misnomer as it was nowhere near Sunset Boulevard. It was a two-storey building with stucco rendering, and a flat roof. The left-hand side had recently been painted a shade of pink, which ended above the front door. The other side was a dull, dirty grey. It looked as if somebody had made an attempt at repainting the exterior, but the money and the paint had run out half way through.
