But he didn’t. It all happened very quickly.
Still leaning into the trunk, she turned her head and locked eyes with him as he stopped. He planted his feet on the sidewalk while still straddling his bike only a few feet from her. She narrowed her eyes as if to question his purpose or intent, but as Jimmy reached into his pocket her expression of question turned to that of an angry and resolute woman. Jimmy fumbled with the gun that had hung up halfway out of his pocket.
Finally, his gun came free of his clothing. As he raised it toward the woman, there were brilliant flashes of light against an otherwise subdued morning sky. Jimmy Ortiz felt a burning sensation in his chest, and the pain and pressure took his breath from him. He knew he’d been shot, but he couldn’t believe it. This was it, he thought, as he succumbed to the pain and the weakness and dropped to the ground. The lovely woman stood over him and he held onto her gaze as a wave of darkness rolled over him.
I was horizontal on the couch when I was awakened by my phone vibrating against the coffee table. The TV was on, showing a man in a suit who appeared to be preaching from a podium. The volume was muted, so I had no idea if his message was for me or all of the other sinners waking up on their couches late in the morning.
The display showed it was Katherine calling, not the office. That was a relief. Though Josie and I had picked up a murder yesterday morning, our teams—Teams Five and Six—would be tasked with getting the bureau through the weekend. It wasn’t uncommon for teams to have to recycle partners through the rotation in order to hold their own until Monday morning. This was, after all, the City of Angels.
I tried to sound awake. “Good morning.”
“Did I wake you?”
“No, not at all. I was sitting here watching church.”
“Watching church? On Saturday?”
That puzzled me; I hadn’t thought of it being Saturday. As I frowned at the television a message began scrolling beneath the man in his suit, apparently offering a discount on his course of how to live a purposeful life. “I thought it was church, but I guess it’s a commercial.”
“Ah, you’re sleeping on the couch still.”
“Just last night. I must have fallen asleep watching the news.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I wasn’t even drinking.”
“I didn’t say you were, Richard.”
Maybe I had a guilty conscience.
“What are you doing? How’s your mom?”
She sighed. “Mom’s going to have to go into a home. Dad too. Both of them need constant care, and, well—”
“Are you okay?”
“It’s just, I feel awful about this, but what can I do? My life—my career, is two-thousand miles away from here—and they are unable to care for themselves. I feel terrible about this situation. Putting them each in a home. Then there’s the estate—”
A tone beeped in my ear and I pulled the phone away to see unknown displayed across the screen. That meant it was likely the office, as caller ID is blocked on the office lines. I also figured with our teams being on call, it was nearly a certainty. “Honey?”
“If my brother wasn’t such a loser—”
“Babe—”
“Yes, Richard?”
“I hate to do this—”
“You have to go. Fine, goodbye.”
The line went silent. Dead. There was a chill that accompanied the disconnect. “Shit!”
I switched over and growled, “Jones.”
“Dickie, it’s Ramirez at the desk.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a D.I.S. in North Long Beach, off-duty female deputy dumped a dude during an attempted robbery.”
“Jesus. When did this happen, last night?”
“No, just a half-hour ago. Team Six is handling it, but Joe thought you might want to come out with your trainee to assist.”
Deputy-involved shootings could wipe out a team due to the intensity of the ensuing investigation. It has been said that a tent and three rings should be erected at the command post because the circus is coming to town. There would be a dozen or more homicide detectives accompanied by at least one of our lieutenants, and even the captain would be out there getting in the way. An area or duty commander would be driven there by some lieutenant who was bucking for captain’s bars, and a host of cheese-eaters from Internal Affairs Bureau would descend upon our crime scene. Our department’s Force Review board would be represented, and one or more prosecutors from CAPOS—Crimes Against Peace Officers Section—would make an appearance. Then there would be members of the Sheriff’s Information Bureau there to handle the press coverage. And last, but not least, Civil Litigation would send someone with a checkbook and an authorization to spend the taxpayers’ money. Their job was to pay off the next-of-kin without admitting any wrongdoing on the part of the sheriff’s department, and to do so before the lawyer sharks smelled blood in the water.
“I’ll give my partner a call. Where are we going?”
“She’s in the office,” he said. “I’ll let her know you guys are rolling.”
I frowned across an empty living room. “Okay, thanks. Tell her I’ll call when I get on the road.”
By the time I arrived at the scene, half of the aforementioned circus performers had arrived and were mostly huddling with their own, hesitant to approach the lion tamers. It didn’t matter if the sheriff himself arrived, homicide detectives were in charge of the scene and nobody—not even the sheriff—entered or exited a cordoned area without tacit approval from the assigned investigators, and only with good reason. It had become a tradition to gather the entire crowd and conduct one walkthrough of the crime scene so that all of those involved could be briefed and would feel that they were part of the process. Only the prosecutor, whose job it would be to review the case after the investigation was concluded, mattered. All of the other suits at the scene were irrelevant to me. Most homicide detectives felt the same way. We were there to investigate the killing of a human being, and on the law enforcement food chain, there is nothing more profound. Whether or not a deputy used proper tactics and a departmentally approved off-duty weapon meant nothing to us. We couldn’t care less. The deputy could have used a bazooka and our focus would still be the same: Are the circumstances surrounding her use of deadly force legally justified? We would gather the facts and CAPOS would make the determination. Or, in a worst-case scenario, a judge or jury would. But first, CAPOS would declare it a justifiable homicide, or a murder, or something in between, perhaps manslaughter. Ninety-nine percent of deputy- and officer-involved shootings are justified, and no further legal action is taken against the shooter or shooters.
Because Josie and I had not been assigned to assist on this particular case, the handling detectives asked that we make the next-of-kin notifications and start a background on the decedent. We were given the short version of the events as provided by the shooter deputy in a preliminary statement to the first units on the scene. The deputy said she was placing her bag in the trunk of her car, preparing to leave for work, when the suspect approached and attempted to rob her. Her backup gun was easily accessible to her—easier than her everyday off-duty pistol that was located in the purse slung on her shoulder—so she pulled her weapon from the bag as the suspect struggled to retrieve a revolver from his pants pocket. She could see the grip of his gun, and though she didn’t recall him saying anything, she knew he was trying to rob her. Before she could give any commands for him to stop, he had freed his gun and was bringing it up with the muzzle coming toward her. She fired two shots at center mass and he had dropped.
We were all relieved it turned out the way it did, and not another way. In the recent past our department had lost a deputy in a similar situation, and years before that, a female LAPD officer had been shot multiple times in an eerily similar situation. This one had a happy ending, as far as any of us were concerned.
Before we departed the scene to carry out our assigned tasks, Josie gazed for a moment at the dead m
an lying on the sidewalk with his legs twisted awkwardly around the frame of a bicycle. When she saw me watching, she said, “I know that asshole.”
12
At seven o’clock Monday morning my cell phone vibrated on the kitchen table as I sat eating a bowl of cereal, some type of granola with dried fruits and nuts topped with yogurt and low-fat milk. I found my desire to cook had dwindled quickly after Valerie had left me a bachelor again, so it was back to fast and simple for me. The caller ID said private number, so I assumed it was the office, though I hoped it was Katherine.
“This is Richard.”
“Good morning, Dickie.” It was the office, an investigator named Jason Campbell whom everyone called Jay. His high-pitched voice was easily recognizable, and the nature of the call predictable. Having just picked up a murder, the odds were that one of my two victims—or maybe both—were scheduled for a postmortem examination. Also known as an autopsy.
“Morning, Jay. I take it there’s a post this morning.”
“You guessed it. Eight o’clock with Doctor Strickland on your victim, Nguyen.”
I asked if my partner had been notified, and was told no, they called me first. I told them I would take care of notifying Sanchez, and then I disconnected and called my new partner.
“Have you ever seen an autopsy?”
“Only on TV,” she said, “NCIS, Criminal Minds.”
“Well, you don’t get the sights and sounds on TV; this is one of those things you just have to experience firsthand to fully appreciate. Did they issue you a respirator yet?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Bring it with you and meet me at the coroner’s office.”
“Where do I go?”
I glanced at my watch. “Can you be at the office by seven-forty-five?”
“I think so.”
“Okay, let’s meet there and we’ll go together. We’ll need to go to the crime lab afterwards anyway.”
We arrived at the coroner’s office and entered through the back, where white vans with blue stripes would be backed to the docks in order to have their cargo unloaded. This morning seemed fairly routine with two vans at the dock and swarms of flies buzzing under the covered shelter that is the loading—or rather, unloading—dock. The putrid smell of decaying flesh mixed with a strong chemical odor welcomed you each and every time. Josie had her nose turned up long before we breached the doorway.
The entrance marked Employees Only is where cops enter, and on most mornings, you will find a receptionist who sits behind a counter answering phones and working with a computer while visitors come and go. There is a sign-in sheet for guests but nobody to verify ID or your purpose for entering. Homicide detectives are regular visitors and probably easily recognizable. Besides, it wasn’t as if people were dying to get in here. Well, actually . . .
Before turning into the hallways of the service floor, I paused briefly to make sure Josie had time to admire the gigantic fish tank. Big, ugly fish swam about lazily in the murky water, bumping the glass at the sight of new onlookers. Josie frowned and turned away from it.
“Trust me, you don’t even want to know what they feed the fish.”
“Gross.”
I slid my respirator over my mouth and nose. Josie did the same, then followed me into the supply room where visitors and staff alike don protective clothing prior to entering the examination rooms. As I pulled various items from shelves and bins, I indicated with a motion of my head for her to dig in. “Cover everything you can,” I said, speaking slowly as the words labored to break through the apparatus covering half of my face. “You’ll be glad you did, once we’re standing table-side and shit is splattering everywhere while the techs wash the body down.”
She began opening items of clothing and holding them against her petite frame to see what would fit.
“Also, you’ll want to keep a pen and your notebook handy because once you put all this shit on, you’ll never find either one if you leave them in a pocket. Make sure you have a business card handy too. It’s easier to hand a card to the doctor than to try talking to each other through masks.”
We donned blue paper gowns, booties, and hats, and I told her the eye protection was a good idea too, but I had never gotten into the habit of wearing it. Finally, we put on thick nitrile gloves and continued our journey into the house of horrors through hallways lined with stainless steel tables on wheels, some with bodies, some without. Some of the bodies were wrapped in plastic, others were not. Some were bathed and awaiting photographs, x-rays, and their final medical examination, others had just arrived, and still others had completed the process and were prepared for departure. Josie took it all in silently, though the plastic face shield she wore did little to conceal the disgust in her eyes.
I leaned toward her and raised my voice to speak through my respirator. “You don’t want to go horizontal here, ever. You get tired, sleep standing up.”
My smile faded as I noticed the solemn look on her face. “You okay?”
She nodded, unconvincingly.
The examination rooms are on opposite sides at the end of the hallway. Both rooms have swinging doors with small 12x12 glass windows at eye level, and there is room for about half a dozen examinations in each. I looked into one room and then the other before I recognized Ho Nguyen on one of several occupied tables in the second room.
The doctor and an assistant had started before our arrival a little past eight, and I could see that their charting was just about completed. I stepped close to Josie and lifted my respirator slightly. “When we’re finished here, I’ll walk you through the process that precedes the actual autopsy. You should be familiar with all of the stages, and hopefully we’ll see them prepping other bodies. If not, maybe we’ll come early for the next one so that you can see the whole process. But basically, before they get to this part of it, there’s a lot that takes place. Notice how the body is relatively clean?”
She nodded.
“The body is first taken for photographs in a room down the hall, in just the condition it arrived. Head to toe, front and back. Then they collect the clothing and carefully preserve it in the event there is trace evidence. After that, they wash the body, and the photoshoot is repeated with him—or her—naked. They get height and weight and run him through x-rays. The techs will also fingerprint him unless that was done in the field. That happens on occasion; it just depends. Same with nail scrapings and the collection of the victim’s hair: sometimes it has been done in the field by a coroner’s investigator, and other times they do it here. There’s a few variables, but the point I’m trying to make is that it’s ultimately your call out there. You're the one who sees this case through to the end, all the way up to an execution if you’re lucky. It’s not the coroner or the crime lab or your idiot captain or any other host of people who become involved through the process. Not even the D.A. That’s one of the things that pisses me off, these cases get to trial and all of a sudden this deputy District Attorney who only leaves his office to play tennis during lunch acts like the case is his baby. But the truth is, they’re an uncle at best. They weren’t there when it was born and they didn’t walk it through every stage of life. They don’t know the case the way you do, and they haven’t stood over the body at the scene or sat in the living room with the grieving mother. At the very best they’ve seen the photos and showed up for the birthday parties along the way. I guess this might not be the best metaphor for dead people, huh?”
I could see she smiled finally; it showed in her eyes.
“But you get my point.”
Josie nodded.
“Out there in the field, you own the scene. There is a reason we call the coroner when we’re ready, not the other way around. Yes, the body is theirs, and we don’t physically touch it at the scene until a coroner’s investigator is there with us. But, the scene is ours, and the victim’s body is part of that scene. If you want nail scrapings out there, ask the coroner’s investigator for it when he examines the body. I
f you want him printed out there, ask for it. There’s very few coroner’s investigators who are hard to work with, and it won’t take you long to know who they are.”
It appeared Doctor Strickland had finished his charting and notes and was close to cutting. He acknowledged our presence during the break that naturally occurs between all of the preparation and the physical act of dissection. He greeted me with a simple nod and a three-syllable utterance: “Detective.” Then he leaned close to Josie and spoke to her, though I couldn’t understand anything he said as it was garbled through his mask. She handed him a business card, and he examined it before placing it on a table with his notes. He jotted her name onto his notes and glanced at me once more before making note of mine. He wouldn’t require a card or introduction from the only blue-clothed man with a fedora.
He set his pen down and looked each of us in the eyes, alternating from one to the other as he held his respirator an inch or so from his face to speak. “This poor bastard looks like he was killed in war.” He stepped around to the side of the table, still holding his respirator away from his mouth as he pointed out the various gunshot wounds that stretched from head to toe. “I’ve charted sixteen gunshot wounds, though some of those are exits.”
I nodded. “How do the x-rays look? Anything stay in him?”
He motioned for me to follow and I nodded at Josie to extend the invitation. The three of us stepped a few feet away from the table and Doctor Strickland flipped a switch to light up an x-ray film illuminator that hung on the back wall. He flipped through the images, snapping one sheet of film after the other into the clips that hold them against the illuminated screen. Moving through them quickly, he pointed out white blemishes in the shapes of projectiles and fragments throughout the thorax, both legs, and the victim’s head. Doctor Strickland lifted his respirator again and shouted over the noise of an electric saw two tables down, where the skull of a woman was being removed. “There were quite a few through-and-throughs, but I’d bet we get a couple of clean projectiles out of him, and probably another dozen or so fragments.”
Hard-Boiled- Box Set Page 74