Floyd said, “I hope one of you two assholes thought to bring an extra vest. I don’t have shit with me but Vanessa and two extra mags for her.”
I turned in my seat. “You just keep Vanessa holstered, pal; I think we’ve had more than enough action for the month.”
“We’ll see about that, Dickie.”
We were unable to turn onto Chaney’s street due to the number of emergency vehicles parked at the end of the road: sheriff’s radio cars, some from Santa Clarita station, others that were driven there by responding SWAT team members. There were detective vehicles, firetrucks, and two ambulances which were left parked at the edge of a strip of yellow tape that had been strewn across the street. An armored transport was also present, and a dozen men in olive-drab green uniforms with green and black patches stood about in helmets with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. Lopes stood off to one side of the gathered SWAT cops and was speaking to a captain in uniform. I didn’t recognize him, but I assumed he was the captain of Santa Clarita station. Lopes had his tie loosened and his cuffs turned up; his hands were resting on his hips.
Ray parked his car across the driveway of a nearby house. Up and down the street in both directions people stood outside of the yellow tape, watching. There were no complaints that we left our vehicle across the driveway. The three of us walked directly to Lopes and the captain. After a slight nod to acknowledge the captain, Ray got to it: “What the hell happened out here, partner?”
Lopes was shaking his head. “You got me, buddy. I just thought I’d check again, see if I could catch shit-stain at home early in the morning. Well, I did. I actually saw him inside, but he wouldn’t answer the door, so that pissed me off. I talked some shit to him through the door, told him I was coming for him. The rest is pretty much history. Fucker took a shot at me and I dumped about six at him. I hope he’s up there leaking to death.”
“I guess this confirms what the lady corrections officer told you, that he hired it out. Why else would he behave this way?”
“There’s no doubt, buddy. She’s shooting straight now, wants out of the life. She’s lucky to be alive and knows it. I’ve got her in protective custody now, and I had some cops up north secure her kids. Everyone’s locked down and safe. Now she’s singing a pretty tune.”
“I’m glad she’s okay, Lopes,” I said, “but how are you?”
“I’m okay.”
He watched me for a moment. I said, “She was dirty, uh?”
“Yeah, kind of. I mean, she was raised dirty I guess. She didn’t have a way out. She told me she’s been looking for a way out and was thinking about coming clean to me. I don’t know, she’s probably full of shit, playing more games. You know how they are. I don’t know, man.”
I nodded. “Has she fully debriefed?”
He shielded the sun from his eyes as he glanced up. A helicopter was right above us, and Lopes waited for its chopping rotors to fade away. “No, not as far as the mob stuff, just answering questions we need answered about these murders, and that asshole you assholes killed in Chinatown. She knew about him being sent to kill you, but she has no idea why they tried to take her out too. She’s convinced it was a hit on her by the mob, not some random gangster bullshit. She didn’t know they had taken out Little Spooky, but when I told her, she wasn’t surprised. She said they knew he was a rat.”
“Yeah,” I said, “because she told them he was.”
Lopes glared at me and I realized I shouldn’t have said it. He knew it too, but it was a low shot that didn’t need to be taken. I said, “On this deal with the Chaney broad, did she have any details?”
“No, nothing. She heard about it, said Eme farmed it out. They heard some freak was doing it, some white boy who works for the Irish. I guess the guy’s a pro.”
I looked at Ray and then Floyd, each of them stoic behind shades under a bright morning sun. Floyd said, “Your boy Leonard.”
I nodded. “It had to be him, I’d say.”
Lopes said, “It’s what I was thinking too. Don’t we have him linked to three or four murders now, Ray?”
“He’s linked by DNA to the gay kid who was killed in Hollywood, and by prints to the little girl out in San Fernando. There were partial prints on the lighter that hadn’t been sufficient to run through the index, but we had them compared to Freeman after he was killed. That’s about it, so far, though there’s a strong suspicion he’s good for the double in Hollywood, and of course this one, Chaney.”
“Williams,” I said.
“Well, it now seems certain they are one and the same,” Ray argued.
I only shrugged. I wasn’t yet ready to buy it. Something bothered me about the premise of it, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Why would Marilynn Chaney live a double life, a housewife in Santa Clarita and a hooker in the Marina? She didn’t need the money; her husband was loaded. So without needing the money, why would an attractive woman choose to sell her goods? I had met a lot of hookers in my life—all professionally, of course—and I didn’t know a single one who would continue to work if they married money. But it was a bigger leap yet to think they were two separate people, and that the hooker, Lisa Williams, was driving Chaney’s car when she was murdered. Besides, where was Marilynn Chaney? If that were the case, if Lisa Williams, the high-class hooker of Marina del Rey was murdered in Marilynn Chaney’s car, then why? And where the hell was Marilynn Chaney?
The sheriff arrived with his driver. As he walked toward us, a gunshot rang out. It seemed to have come from the Chaney residence. All of us stood silent for a moment, everyone looking around as if one of us might have an explanation. As it turned out, one among us did. A SWAT member stepped out of a mobile command vehicle and announced they had lost contact with the suspect, and there had been a gunshot inside the residence.
Lopes asked him, “Are you guys going in?”
The man in green was next to us now, and for the first time, I noticed the discreet black lieutenant bars on his uniform. He answered. “We’ll run the robot in first with a camera to see what we have. Stand by, it won’t be long now.”
A second gunshot stopped us cold, and silence followed. Even the helicopters seemed to have disappeared or frozen for that long moment. After the first shot, I envisioned the suspect dead on the floor with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. It was likely every cop on scene had had the same thought. But then there was the second shot, and that changed everything.
I considered the possibilities: hesitation? There were suicides where a victim would lose his courage and pull the gun away on the first attempt. So, it was possible. A miss? It is less likely that he either completely missed with the first shot or wounded himself and needed to take a second. Or, he hadn’t shot himself. Had he shot at someone else? There was no gunfire directed toward us at the command post. There were no reports of shots fired from the deputies on the containment who were closer to the home. If it had been a deputy who shot, that would have been quickly reported by radio.
Did Chaney kill someone else inside the house?
I looked at Lopes and broke the silence. “Any chance someone else was in that house?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t see or hear anyone else, but who knows? I was busy being shot at and returning fire.”
“I know the feeling.”
It took nearly an hour before the robot could enter the premises. As is the case with every operation involving SWAT, there’s always some house-fairy that has to question each and every step of the tactical operation, always with liabilities in mind. How will it be sent in? Can’t go through the garage because the passage was too narrow from where Chaney had abandoned his vehicle when Lopes chased him into his own home.
“What about the front door?” one SWAT member had asked.
“We’re going to assume it’s locked,” the lieutenant had said, “so we have to count on damage. We can pull it off or blow it off or ram it with the armored truck. Whichever way we go, the home is badly damaged.”
Nobody gave a shit about the robot.
Once the door was breeched and the robot was sent in to clear the location, the rest of us huddled outside the command vehicle peering through the opened back doors, trying to see the activity on the computer display inside. The footage was grainy, and the camera seemed to jerk and bounce regularly as the robot began climbing stairs. It made it to the top and leveled out, and then turned sharply to the left after bumping a table and knocking a vase off of its top. The robot continued along a hallway and then turned into what appeared to be a master bedroom.
“What the—”
“Jesus, is that—”
The lieutenant keyed the mic of his radio and announced, “240 Lincoln, there’s two down in the location, repeat, two down. Appears to be one male, one female, both Caucasian, both apparently deceased. Prepare the team for entry.” He then turned to us and said, “I’ll be goddamned.”
42
IT WAS MARILYNN Chaney.
She lay dead next to her husband, William Chaney. We would have to wait for the autopsies to confirm it, but the collective years of experience that stood in the threshold this morning agreed it was a murder-suicide. Marilynn Chaney was the shooter. It appeared William Chaney had suffered a single gunshot to the chest, nearly dead center. The ten-ring. Likely close-range. The autopsy would determine that based on the presence or absence of soot or stippling. The woman lay dead a short distance from him. She was on her back, face up, with a .38 caliber revolver near her right hand. Her eyes were open and clouded, holding that stare I had seen a million times. Not that I had seen a million corpses—far from it—but of the several hundred I had, their images had been permanently warehoused in that dreadful dark room in my head, and they were often involuntarily recalled, complete with sight, sound, and smell. Marilynn Chaney had suffered a gunshot to the right temple. The wound was round, its edges seared. There was the slightest amount of blood at the entrance, though a volume of blood had gathered on the opposite side of her head, turning her blonde hair into a dark red and black sticky mass. There would likely be an impression of the muzzle tattooed on her skin that would present itself once she was cleaned up at the coroner’s office; it would confirm it as a contact wound.
Lt. Joe Black accompanied Captain Stover up the stairs behind us. Ray, Floyd, Lopes, and I stood quietly, contemplating. There were many secrets snuffed out by two gunshots on an otherwise promising, sunny day in Los Angeles County. Santa Clarita, one of America’s safest cities. Lt. Black said, “We have two teams from Team Four coming out to handle this. You guys figure out what else you need to know from here, and then head back to the office.”
Floyd holstered his pistol. Vanessa. “Well, Dickie, I for one am glad to have you back. You’ve been a constant source of entertainment the last couple of weeks.”
“Yeah,” Stover sarcastically said, “it’s been great.”
Lopes silently turned and descended the staircase, disappearing through the front door at the bottom. Ray and I turned to follow. Floyd was saying to the captain, “I think you need to put Dickie back on Team Two where I can keep an eye on him. It’s pretty clear he needs constant supervision.”
The autopsies of William and Marilynn Chaney were given priority at the coroner’s office because of the media circus the event had brought about. Early the next morning the two who had been bound by marriage up until death did they part were ushered into a room and situated side by side on matching stainless-steel tables. Each had been bathed, photographed, x-rayed, and prepared for final examination. Looking at the pair it occurred to me they were the epitome of everything wrong with our society: greed, lust, hatred. The pursuit of self-gratification at all costs. What had happened here was yet a mystery, but the motives would no doubt be in this realm. Their exit, side by side, naked and unabashed, was no story of Adam and Eve.
As predicted, the medical examiner determined the manner of death of Marilynn Chaney a suicide; the mode of death a single gunshot to the head. As for William Chaney, his death was ruled a homicide. The mode of death: multiple gunshot wounds.
“Wait, multiple gunshot wounds?” Lopes questioned at the news.
I pulled a chair out next to his desk at the office, removed my hat, and set my notebook down. “Yep. Dr. Wang recovered a .38 caliber projectile from the thorax which had entered his chest and penetrated his heart. This was determined to be the fatal wound. However, doc said he would not be able to say with certainty that the gunshot to his buttock wouldn’t have killed him.”
He leaned back in his chair, looking up at me as I provided the details. His permanently squinting eyes seemed to twinkle slightly, and a grin crept onto his face. “You’re serious?”
I nodded. “Doc recovered a 9mm projectile from his lower back. The trajectory was sharply upward, entering the left ass cheek and traveling through a kidney before taking out a few vertebrae and lodging in his spine. Good expansion on the hollow point round, apparently. He said that injury could have been fatal had the wife not intervened. The internal bleeding alone might have finished him off had he remained barricaded a few more hours.”
“Good,” he said, “I’m glad to hear it. The sonofabitch busted a cap at me when all I wanted to do was talk to him. He deserved to suffer for a while.”
Floyd had walked in behind me. “Yeah, good job, Lopes. You shot the poor bastard in his ass.”
“You want to be next?”
“Whatever, man.”
Lopes grinned. He said, “I have some news for you, from Maria.”
I frowned. “Maria?”
“Maria Lopez, the corrections officer from Pelican.”
“Oh, yeah . . .”
“She was in better shape this morning, and we had quite the conversation. She has a lot to say and wants immunity to testify against the mafia. I’m meeting with Brennan and Thompson from Hardcore this evening, and some federal prosecutor who is assigned with them at the D.A.’s office. It will probably be the kickoff of another RICO against the mob.”
“Sounds fun,” I said. “What’d she’d have to say? Hopefully something about that asshole Leonard Freeman.”
He nodded. “Eme was using the Irish mob for some of their work; she has no idea why. She didn’t know anything about Freeman, but she had heard the Irish sent some crazy white boy out here from the east coast. He apparently did a few hits and he had been given yours also. She did know the why part of it, why there was a hit against you.”
My heart rate quickened and I suddenly felt hot in the cool room. Lopes watched me in the moment of silence, waiting. I could feel Floyd’s eyes on me too. Both were probably waiting for me to ask for the details. The why. But did I even want to know? Of course I wanted to know. But for some reason I was frozen and unable to ask what he had learned. Maybe it was because I knew. It had been all I could think of for the last couple of weeks, since the first time I had felt I was being watched. I’d been thinking about nothing other than the why ever since the confrontation on the street in front of my apartment, the incident that resulted in Floyd unloading his gun on a fleeing car. Every path I took in my head ended at the same place. A dreary living room in East Los Angeles on a cold and rainy night not much more than a year ago. Familia Regalado. One dead, the other in prison, likely for life. Each associated with a gang known to be affiliated with the Mexican mafia. I had concluded some time ago that the serial killer Leonard Freeman had been contracted to kill me because of that night. What else could it have been?
I picked up my hat and notebook, stood, and walked out of the office without a word.
Floyd watched Dickie walk out, his eyes trailing him to the back door of the office. He looked back to see that Lopes had also watched the departure. Their eyes met, and Floyd shrugged, as if he couldn’t explain Dickie’s response. Lopes said, “He knows.”
“It’s the shooting, right? East L.A.?”
Lopes nodded. “That’s what Maria told me. She said what we already knew, that White Fence puts
in a lot of work for the Eme, and this was done as a favor.”
“Jesus, that’s some heavyweight shit, man. No wonder he walked out like he’d seen a ghost.”
“I know how he feels. I had a green light on me once—”
“I remember,” Floyd said.
“—and there’s no worse feeling. You think we’re normally paranoid as cops, try being on the mob’s list. You check behind the shower curtain before taking a leak. I could see it on Dickie’s face, that uncertainty. He knows that if one was sent another could replace him. He just realized this might not end here. That’s why he responded the way he did. He knows.”
“What can we do?”
“Like I said, I’m meeting with the shot-callers over at Hardcore tonight. They already have something cooking at the D.A.’s office, a joint task force deal with the feds. I’m sure this will become a big part of that. We’ll go after them. Don’t worry, they won’t be sending someone else once we start taking people down. Chances are, they couldn’t anyway. Not after a failed attempt. They’re probably wishing they’d never got involved in that bullshit now. They know the heat’s coming.”
“I’m in, Lopes. You get that RICO going, I’ll be with you going through doors. We’ll make these sonsofbitches think twice about putting a cop on their list.”
Floyd walked up and stood next to me where I leaned against someone’s Crown Vic parked near the rear door. It was shaded by the building, but I was sweating nonetheless. I held my hat in my hand and continued wiping my forehead and brows every few moments. He said, “Ray’s looking for you.”
I nodded as if to ask what that was about. He understood the gesture. “Debriefing in a half hour up at Headquarters.”
“The sheriff’s office?”
Hard-Boiled- Box Set Page 64