Hard-Boiled- Box Set

by Danny R. Smith

  “Okay, sir, let us know if you need anything.”

  I ducked under the yellow tape and paused to hold it up for my partner. She barely lowered her head and walked under the tape. I had it lifted for her convenience, but not high. I looked down at her shoes and saw they were low-heeled women’s dress shoes. Practical. Something you could run in if you had to and they wouldn’t give you too much trouble in a fight. Unlike the high-heeled shoes you saw TV cops wearing while they kicked ass and solved crimes in their skintight slacks and low-cut tops, all in an hour. I put my partner at about 5-05 but wasn’t going to ask for confirmation. I also wasn’t going to ask her weight, but I’d have to guess a buck-thirty.

  “Okay, I’ll describe the scene and you can write it down. No sense in both of us filling our notebooks with it. Normally, a new guy—”

  “Gal.”

  “—will have several trash runs before they get a murder. Suicides, accidental deaths, industrial deaths, cases like that. One-man responses—”

  “Or woman.”

  “—usually, but when I have a new guy—or gal—I like to buy as many of those I can get, for practice.”

  She smiled, and for the first time, she appeared friendly.

  “Sometimes, I will dictate a scene into a recorder and let the secretaries type it. I’ve done that when it’s raining, when writing notes doesn’t work well. It’s a bit of a gamble in that if something goes wrong with the recording device, you’re screwed. It also takes a lot of scenes to be able to do it that way and not miss anything. You don’t have your notes to look back at. Anyway, you get to start with a big one right off the bat, robbery-murder, maybe a double. This is a death penalty case, but you should already know that.”

  “Right, sir. I’m ready when you are.”

  I looked at her and considered for a moment whether or not I was ready to be on friendly terms with the new guy—gal. Ultimately, it came down to not wanting to be called sir. “You can call me ‘Richard.’”

  She smiled again and said, “Okay, Dickie.”

  6

  The scene investigation consumed the bulk of the day, and it was late in the afternoon when we began our canvas for witnesses. The patrol deputies had knocked on doors shortly after the initial wave of commotion had calmed. But murders are like earthquakes and airstrikes, from a law enforcement perspective; the initial shock and awe settles and only tremors remain throughout the following hours and days. Once a scene has been secured and the victims are either pronounced dead or transported to hospitals, for patrol deputies, everything slows to a halt; they make their notifications and wait for Homicide. The primary function of the handling patrol unit, from that point forward, is to maintain the integrity of the crime scene. Make sure nobody enters who doesn’t have a legitimate reason to be there, and log in and out anyone who does cross the yellow tape. When the paramedics, firemen, and our department executives clear out, the handling unit will often ask assisting deputies to look for witnesses by talking to gawkers and knocking on doors. It was my practice to conduct an additional canvas of my own—sometimes more than one—because people tell detectives things they won’t tell patrol deputies. There are two reasons for this: trust and approach. As for trust, the uniform often represents the focus of collective grievances in high crime neighborhoods. Many of the citizens don’t see the police presence for what it is, a fine line between civility and chaos. Riots should help them to better understand that concept, but they don’t. As to approach, all too often a deputy is task-oriented, which can cause him to be abrupt and narrow-focused in these situations. It is the nature of working in a violent community. Triage. Do what you can and move on to the next victim, the next call, the next violent encounter.

  While the deputies maintained control of the scene and Phil Gentry from the crime lab finished up his final documentation, Josie and I walked toward the neighboring homes as I explained my theory on this. I gave an example of a case that had occurred not far from where we stood, on another street where cops were not warmly welcomed. After the scene investigation, my partner and I had canvassed for witnesses and a newly assigned homicide lieutenant trailed along. His background consisted mostly of patrol functions, though he had had a very brief assignment working internal affairs—which doesn’t count as investigative experience to anyone other than house-fairies. It was late in the evening and dark when one of the neighbors we contacted at his door looked past me, scanning the surrounding with concern before inviting us in. I knew he had something to say but wasn’t comfortable talking to the cops. We went inside, and he asked us to have a seat. My partner and I did. The lieutenant stood impatiently at the door, fidgeting. The resident was a black male in his fifties who had two German shorthaired pointers. Before asking the man what he might know about the killing that had happened a hundred yards from his front door, I spent ten minutes talking to him about his dogs and about bird hunting. The man was passionate about both, it turned out, and we had a nice chat before getting to the business at hand. The lieutenant had rolled his eyes and sighed repeatedly, to the point I nearly asked him to leave. After obtaining pertinent information about that murder case, we departed. Once outside and away from the witness’s home, I explained to the lieutenant—as politely as possible, given my opposition to diplomacy—that if he paid attention, he might learn something, and if he was in a hurry, he was at the wrong assignment.

  Most of the people Josie and I spoke with at their front doors had the standard line that they hadn’t seen or heard anything. But once I told them that Ho had been killed, their demeanors would change and soften, and many showed genuine concern and regret. They would ask questions, and I would answer to some degree. That was how you established a rapport. Though few reported having seen anything, we learned of Ho’s generosity. He had provided diapers or milk to mothers in the neighborhood when they didn’t have the money to pay. He paid an old wino to clean up around outside. He had caught kids stealing, and rather than calling the cops, he had walked them home and told their mamas.

  We also learned Ho’s brother had been killed in a carjacking somewhere in Long Beach several years prior. Josie made a note of it. We spoke to the woman who had seen the van, and we were able to obtain a few more details about its description. There were no windows on the cargo section of the van, and the windows in the front and on the rear doors were tinted dark. Also, the muffler was loud.

  The last door we knocked on provided valuable information, once we broke through to the young mother. She had spoken with deputies earlier, and she had told them she didn’t hear or see anything. I took a chance that she might have, at some time in her life, been the beneficiary of Ho’s kindness, so I told her how he was gunned down in cold blood as he prepared to open his store for the day. I lied and said he was restocking diapers when the gunmen barged in and filled him full of lead for no damned good reason. I saw her choke back tears and glance behind her where a playpen held one baby and a highchair held another. She asked us in and begged us to forgive the mess of empty beer containers and fast-food wrappers strewn about a couch and coffee table, both stained and dirty with cigarette burns and the stench of stale beer.

  We talked for a minute about her two young children. Their fathers didn’t help with money or love. That led into a conversation about Ho, and then came tears from a woman named Latisha whose heart lay beneath a hard shell, born from a hard, impoverished life. She felt bad that Ho had died before she could repay him his charity and kindness. I doubted she would have ever been able, but that she recognized a debt owed is what mattered, and provided a glimpse of her true character. She wiped at her tears, lit a cigarette and said, “I saw the two men who did it.”

  Latisha Carver had been up since seven feeding her babies and watching cartoons. She was often one of Ho’s first customers as she seemed to always need something when he opened at nine. The market was conveniently located two doors down, which allowed her to leave the babies in the playpen if she hurried. She needed formula for th
e babies and truthfully, she said, she could use a beer. She didn’t normally drink this early in the day, she said, glancing at Josie. Latisha straightened in her chair and quickly teased her hair with her fingertips. She said she was aware of the time as she waited for nine and that’s when she heard the rumbling of the loud van pass by her home. She noticed because it sounded like a car owned by the father of one of her babies, who gets pulled over all the time because of the noise it makes. She walked outside and looked down the street to see a white van with tinted windows pulling into Ho’s. She didn’t give it a second thought, and walked back in. But then it was almost nine and Ho would be there opening up and another customer—whoever was in the van—was probably going in, so she decided she would as well. She secured both babies in their playpen and began walking toward the market when she saw the two men in black walking out, carrying “rifles.” She hadn’t heard gunshots up to that point. But then she saw old man Frazier—a local wino who lives on the streets and alleys and can always be found hanging around Ho’s—walking toward the store. The two gunmen turned and fired, gunning Frazier down in cold blood before casually walking away.

  Latisha had seen other people shot and some killed in her lifetime; death was a part of life on the streets of Compton. She said, “But to blast a harmless old man like that, and walk away? I ain’t never seen anything like that before. I ran back inside, back to my babies, hoping those men hadn’t seen me and weren’t gonna come kill me and my babies next.”

  “Could you tell their race?” I asked, thinking of the story Cedric told Floyd and Mongo.

  “Theys was all covered up. Head to toe, like terrorists. Theys prolly Muslim.”

  “Did you see which direction they went when they left?”

  “I didn’t. I stayed in my house with my babies. I’m sorry.” She swiped at wet eyes again. “Did they kill Frazier too?”

  “He’s still holding on, the last we heard,” I told her. I looked at Josie to signal I didn’t have any other questions, so if she had thought of something to ask, now would be the time. But she wasn’t Floyd who could read my mind and once I realized that, I asked if she had anything for Latisha. She shook her head. We stood and thanked Latisha for her time as we stepped around clutter on our way out. Babies cried behind us.

  At the door, I handed Latisha my business card with a fifty-dollar bill folded behind it. I said, “You’ll have to go to another market today. Here’s a little help for the kids.”

  She took it and didn’t bother wiping at her wet eyes. “Thank you.”

  Down the walkway, Josie whispered, “That was nice of you.”

  “I’ll blue it out. It was nice of the county.”

  “Blue it out?”

  I stopped at the sidewalk. “We spend a lot of money at Homicide, paying informants, moving people, traveling, buying meals. There’s a safe in the bureau and there’s always a few thousand in cash. Lieutenants have access. You need money, fill out a blue slip with your case number and reason. I’ll write ‘Witness fees’ on this one.”

  She nodded, and we started walking. The truth of it was, we were reimbursed for less than half of the cash we spent. I didn’t push it. I’d fill out a slip for some of the expenses, but there were many that I hadn’t bothered with. My tax man allowed a grand a year for miscellaneous informant fees and other cash transactions where receipts were not generated. I figured it worked out in the end. More than anything, those babies needed something to eat and dry diapers, and mama needed a beer. If there were better causes, I couldn’t think of one at the moment.

  After a moment, I added: “Floyd and I always keep a couple of fifties in our wallets for these types of situations. The hard part is remembering to replace what is spent in bars.”

  Phil Gentry had bags of evidence sitting on the trunk lid of his county-issued Ford Taurus. He had parked outside the crime scene tape behind my charcoal gray Crown Victoria and Josie’s Toyota. We headed toward Phil as it appeared he was finished with the crime scene.

  As we passed Josie’s car, I asked, “They didn’t give you a county car yet?”

  “No, Lieutenant Black said to see Darlene when I had a chance and she’d get something assigned to me.”

  I glanced at my watch. “She might still be there when we get back to the office. I don’t see what else we can do out here today. We can see about getting you a county car, and then check on Frazier’s condition before we decide what else needs to be done. We’ll need to figure out a next of kin for Ho and make a notification.”

  Phil put the evidence bags in his trunk and closed the lid.

  “Done, Phil?”

  “I think so. Do you need anything else?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Not now. Maybe if you can get some aerial shots in the next few days, that might be a good idea. I’m thinking wide shots that show the freeway accesses also. I don’t think these killers are local.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “We’ll see you up at the lab tomorrow, when we bring in the firearms evidence.”

  “Do you want me to take that with me?”

  “We’ll bring it in. I want to find out if they can identify the weapon from those expended two-two-threes. My guess would be an AR, but who knows?”

  Gentry nodded and smiled. “See you guys tomorrow then.”

  “Guy and gal,” I said.

  Josie shot me a look.

  I let the deputies know we were finished, and that they could break down the scene. As a patrol deputy, a murder scene is hectic at first and then it settles and becomes boring for hours while detectives and coroner’s investigators and crime scene technicians methodically document and collect evidence. It wasn’t unusual for a patrol crew handling a murder to have no other entries on their daily activity log and still be able to put in for overtime. A single notation on their journal, one call that stretched beyond their eight-hour shift.

  Before parting company, Josie stopped me with a hand on my arm. She said, “I don’t expect special treatment or consideration. I don’t need coddling or handholding. I expect my partner to treat me with respect and to have my back, on the streets and in the office. I will always have a partner’s back. Is that fair?”

  I smiled and nodded. “Fair enough, Josie.”

  “Thanks, Dickie.”

  As I opened my car door she said at my back, “I’m honored to work with you. I know a lot about you.”

  “I’ve heard a few things about you as well.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t believe everything you hear.”

  I smiled. “Likewise.”

  The smile remained as I pulled away from our Compton crime scene and worked my way through the Hub City via Atlantic to Rosecrans to the Long Beach Freeway north. Josie stayed glued to my tail. The phone rang and the display showed Katherine’s cell. It was a little after four, much earlier than she usually finished her day of counseling crazy cops. “Hi, honey.”

  “Are you busy?”

  “I’m just headed back to the office; your timing is good. We picked up a new case.”

  Her voice crackled. “I’m on my way to Burbank Airport. My mother has gone into the hospital and it doesn’t look good.”

  “Oh no, what happened?”

  “I don’t know. Dad is a mess, and he seems overwhelmed, confused. He needs me there for sure. It sounds like maybe she’s had a stroke. I need to be with her.”

  “Absolutely. What can I do?”

  “Nothing, Richard.”

  “If I hadn’t just picked up a new case—”

  “It’s okay. There’s nothing you can do. I’ll keep you posted.”

  Silence lingered for an uncomfortable moment before she said, “I’ll call when I can, okay?”

  “Okay,” was all I could say before the line was dead. I frowned at my phone and snapped it into its cradle mounted on the dash. In the mirror I saw my new partner tracking behind me, on my tail, peering through her windshield in her designer eyewear, all business.

  Women.<
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  7

  While Josie was being assigned a car, I wandered over to Floyd and Mongo who sat at their desks typing on computers.

  “What are you two assholes doing?”

  Mongo glanced up but went back to work without replying. Floyd spun his chair to face me and grinned. “Dickhead, how about we go out back for a few minutes?”

  “I’m not going to lie; I could use a good ass-whoopin’.”

  I pulled an unoccupied chair over next to him. “You get anywhere on that deal with the kid, Cedric?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “I just picked up a liquor store murder in Compton. Two shooters, both dressed in black, head to toe. Some type of two-twenty-three and a twenty gauge shotgun.”

  Mongo spun around to show his large face puckered into a frown. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his tie was loosened. His jowls hung over an unbuttoned collar, and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

  Floyd said, “You’ve got to be shittin’ me.”

  I shook my head.

  “Why didn’t you call us out there to have a look? You too busy sniffing your new partner’s ass?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Floyd laughed and said, “You’re not scared of her, are you?”

  “No, dipshit, I’m not afraid of her. But I sure don’t need you starting stupid rumors either. That’s the last thing I need. The reason I didn’t call you down is I didn’t know anything about the suspects until an hour ago. After we finished with the scene, we found a witness who saw the shooters gun down one of our victims, an old grape in the parking lot.”

  “What was that about?”

  “I don’t know. Eliminating a witness maybe? Although he wouldn’t have been much of a witness, to be honest about it. Poor old cluck was barely getting by. I wondered if it wasn’t more of a thrill kill.”