Hard-Boiled- Box Set

by Danny R. Smith

  Young and foolish at the time, she had no idea what lay ahead.

  Days later, the waters had settled and the rescue teams had concluded their intense search efforts. Only four of the seven crew members had been recovered: the survivor who reported seeing Hollingsworth and Ortiz swept away, and three dead soldiers. Three were never found: 27-year-old Sgt. William Randolph Robinson, an eight-year veteran, 31-year-old Sgt. Travis Lee Hollingsworth, a 12-year veteran; and the crew’s sole female soldier, 20-year-old PFC Christina Marie Ortiz, a two-year army veteran. The latter two saw the report on the news from a motel room in Ding Dong, Texas, where they had been holed up for three days.

  The first murder had been unavoidable.

  The motel clerk recognized the pair and made mention of it on the fourth day when Travis went into the office to inquire about bus schedules. He still had nearly two-hundred dollars after paying for their room, and they figured that would be more than enough to get them both to California where Tina had family who would help them. After all, she had told him, all of her family were outlaws. But when the clerk told Travis he’d seen him and his gal on the news, Travis had two choices, and one meant going to the brig.

  He didn’t choose the brig. When they left the motel, they were nearly a thousand dollars richer and traveling by car, not bus, courtesy of a nosy clerk.

  In the months that followed, rumors that the army was investigating the possibility that two of the three MIA had actually gone AWOL had spread beyond the base and made much of the news in Texas and beyond. Tina read about most of it on the internet, and she checked daily for new reports. Sergeant Robinson was presumed dead, but the other two were thought to be alive and well. The persistent presence of Army investigators from the Criminal Investigations Command lent credence to the theory, said a writer for the online Army news website.

  Tina turned the water off with her toes and lay back in a tub of a lukewarm bath without bubbles. She pictured the lieutenant she had fallen for with his boyish smile and pale blue eyes. She pictured him in his dress blues, the colorful ribbons over his left chest pocket, the name Morgan over his right, silver bars adorning each shoulder that by now were probably doubled, easily on his way to making captain. Lt. James P. Morgan, a southern gentleman, born and raised in North Carolina. Too much of a gentleman, she felt, to tell her what he knew about Travis. He had only hinted that the rough and tumble soldier she had hooked up with was not the soldier he portrayed himself to be. She had asked, pried, but all she could get out of the gentleman lieutenant was, “Twelve years in and he’s a sergeant. It’s all I need to say.”

  It didn’t matter to her now. Her fascination for the rough and tumble sergeant had been left far behind, and had been replaced with contempt. She needed him out of her life, and there was only one way that would ever happen. She needed to formulate that plan.

  We met at the back of my Crown Vic in the parking lot of Easy Liquor, commonly referred to as “Ho’s,” and paused there momentarily. I looked around the neighborhood to see if anything popped out at me: someone watching, a viewpoint I hadn’t previously noticed, a service truck, or even a mailman or paperboy—anyone who might visit the area regularly that we could talk to and find out if they had noticed anything the morning of the murders, or any time before. Maybe someone had noticed a vehicle that seemed out of place in the days leading up to the slaughter of a respectable merchant and a pitiful man. In this case, our victims were both truly innocents who did nothing to contribute to their deaths. That wasn’t always the case in this part of town.

  “I meant to ask you the other day and forgot; how did you know that guy who was killed by the deputy?”

  “Who, Jimmy Ortiz? He was a burglar. Everybody knew him. Well, I should say, all the cops knew him. When he’s not in prison, he lives right there with his grandmother who didn’t seem all that upset when we told her about his death. The garage we searched has always been his crash pad. We’d get a burglary in the area, we’d go barge into the garage and find dumbass with the stolen shit. Every time. He was easy to pick up for burglaries, so he started working off his cases as a snitch. He’d give up dope houses and sometimes robberies and murders. All the gang detectives knew him; he was a real piece of shit. I guess he’s rehabilitated now though.”

  “I guess he is. His grandmother seemed nice enough.”

  “Just ignorant. There were three boys—wait, actually, I think it was four—and a girl. All the boys were shitheads, and now that Jimmy’s dead, I’d say they are all either dead or in prison. He was the last left in the neighborhood, living there with Grandma.”

  “Jimmy.”

  “Jimmy Ortiz. Jimmy, Johnny, and Jesse were the three oldest boys, all gangsters and dopers. I forget the younger boy’s name, but it didn’t start with a J, I remember that. The only girl in the family was Tina. Cute little girl who seemed to have a few things going for her, smarts and a personality.”

  I nodded. “Good for her. Did she make it out?”

  “She did. She joined the army a few years back. I doubt she ever looked back. She wasn’t an asshole like the rest of them.”

  “You know a lot of people down here.”

  “I grew up in Compton. Spent a lot of time in North Long Beach, and I’ve worked down here for the bulk of my career. I know the shitheads, and I know most of their families.”

  I looked off again and saw people mingling in front of their homes in the cool evening air. “What I’d like to do today is what I had planned for us to do Saturday until your burglar friend tried to rob a deputy sheriff.”

  “God rest his soul.”

  I smiled.

  “Okay, and what would that be?”

  “Re-canvas the neighborhood for witnesses. To me, you can’t talk to the local people enough on any of these cases. Nobody talks easily down here—you know that—but in this job, we have the time to keep trying. If you take the time to build relationships and gain trust when you find the right person, it can be the difference in a solved and an unsolved. When I was new here, my partner used to say we solve murders by wearing out shoe leather, not staring at computer screens. I believe it.”

  A radio car glided toward us. Josie said, “Did you ask for them to meet us?”

  “Nope. I prefer they’re not around. Again, uniforms don’t seem to get people talking openly. It seems they usually have the opposite effect. But if I’m not mistaken, that’s the two who handled this call the other day, Nelson I think his name was.”

  “Nelson and Johnson,” she confirmed.

  They parked and left their car running while they approached us on foot. We greeted them, shook hands, and then I asked if they had just happened by. Johnson said, “We’ve been spending a lot of time over here since the murders, especially in the morning, from when we come on at seven until at least ten. Hoping to see some type of pattern that might help out.”

  I was nodding and probably smiling too. Some deputies seemed to be a cut above others, and it was refreshing when you would encounter the good ones. The training officer, Deputy Johnson, was a seasoned street cop with a lot of experience. But that wasn’t all he had going for him. It was the hunter mentality, and he and his trainee each seemed to have it. They were the type who went out every day and put themselves in harm’s way, and they did so because they loved being cops. It was their calling, and for those of us who loved being cops, there was nothing better than working a fast station with a good partner.

  “We were going to do a little canvas ourselves,” I told them, “see if we missed anything or anybody the other day.”

  Johnson said, “We can stick around until you’ve finished, sir, if you’d like.”

  I smiled. “I have her here if anything goes south. I think we’ll be alright.”

  That got everyone smiling and once again I found myself searching the dark recesses of my brain trying to place where I knew this Deputy Nelson from. He seemed especially familiar to me when he smiled, and the otherwise sober Marine-turned-deputy s
heriff trainee transformed into a lighthearted, jovial young man who showed a hint of boyish mischievousness. But I couldn’t place him and wasn’t comfortable revisiting the conversation.

  “Good enough,” Johnson said, “Call the station if you need anything. We’re Unit 285 today.”

  “Will do. Thanks, guys.”

  With that, they departed, and Josie and I began wearing out shoe leather on the streets, walkways, and doorsteps of Compton.

  16

  Chief Warrant Officer 2 James P. Morgan (CW2) sat in a conference room at the 6th Military Police Group (CID) headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. Though his battalion headquarters remained at Fort Hood, Texas, he had been brought to the Group’s headquarters at Fort Lewis to be briefed on developing information on an active AWOL case under investigation by the United States Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. The case was of particular interest to CW2 Morgan, who had worked with the two suspected absconders while serving as a 1st Lieutenant in the 1st Cavalry Division. Morgan had been one of many who spent countless hours and risked personal safety in efforts to locate the two who, at that time, were believed to have been swept away in a flash flood.

  PFC Christina Ortiz was of particular interest to him; he had been romantically involved with her, though briefly and discreetly.

  Following her disappearance, Morgan spent many a sleepless night seeing her smiling face as he struggled to accept her presumed death. But within months of the tragic accident that had claimed the lives of at least four soldiers—deaths that had been confirmed by their recovered remains—rumors began circulating that two of the three MIA may have gone AWOL.

  Morgan had since turned down a promotion to Captain in order to commission as a 31D, a C.I.D. Special Agent in the Warrant Officer Corps.

  The Criminal Investigations Command, formerly known as Criminal Investigations Division, and still commonly referred to as C.I.D. due to the historic title, allowed Morgan to fulfill his desire to be a law enforcement officer and an investigator.

  Wearing khaki-colored cargo pants and a long-sleeved buttoned shirt, Morgan sat comfortably near an open window that offered a refreshingly cool reprieve from the Texas heat and an unobstructed view of snow-capped Mount Rainier. But as he gazed off at the splendor of his surroundings, his thoughts remained with the beauty of one particular missing soldier. Chief Warrant Officer 2 James P. Morgan still had strong feelings for Private Ortiz, though if she was in fact alive, she was an outlaw now. Maybe even a killer.

  Dark green portfolios marked C.I.D. and Confidential accompanied each of the five positions on the conference room table. The unit’s commander, Colonel Sandra J. Parkinson, would not be a party to the briefing, but her name was prominently inscribed on each of the portfolios in gold letters. Also embossed on the portfolios were the C.I.D.’s emblem, the scales of justice teetering from the end of a sword. The words SEEK THE TRUTH were boldly displayed on a rocker below it.

  Chief Warrant Officer 3 Charles Farley took his seat at the end of the table and looked around at his four investigators. CW2 James Morgan and CW2 Paulina Lazarevic sat to one side. Warrant Officers Roy Ridley and Mark Montoya sat on the other. It was a tight-knit, diverse group of soldiers with a proven track record of success, and whose ability to blend into various communities throughout the world rivaled that of many CIA teams. The camaraderie of the unit was unmatched, as far as Morgan had seen in his nine years in the army.

  “We’re all familiar with the case involving Sergeant Hollingsworth and Private First Class Ortiz,” CW3 Farley started, “both believed to be AWOL since the flood incident at Fort Hood. Morgan and I have been actively monitoring mail and phone calls of a dude named Johnny Ortiz. He’s a brother of Private First Class Ortiz, and he happens to be a long-term resident of the California Department of Corrections in Vacaville, in for armed robbery. He works as a metal fabricator and is apparently a model prisoner with no discipline problems. He receives mail from an attorney—which we are not privy to—and from a woman in San Pedro named Luciana Marten. She appears to be his significant other. She writes often and visits every other month or so. We have previously conducted surveillance of her home. It appears she lives with another woman—who is certainly not Private First Class Ortiz—and her four children.

  “We additionally have a mail cover in operation for the residence of Private First Class Ortiz before she enlisted in the army. It is still the home of her grandmother, and another brother, Jimmy Ortiz. The postal inspector who is facilitating the mail cover called early this morning to report something he learned by watching the news. We have since confirmed through law enforcement sources that Jimmy Ortiz was shot and killed Saturday morning by an off-duty sheriff’s deputy during the commission of an attempted robbery.

  “We’ve had no indication that Private First Class Ortiz has made any contact with family members over the years, if she is in fact alive and well. Quite frankly, this case has grown cold. Though Morgan and I have kept it open, the case has not been actively worked for all intents and purposes beyond monitoring the mail of Ortiz’s grandmother and, as I mentioned, the mail and phone calls of an incarcerated brother. Up until now, we’ve had nothing of value come from anything we’ve done. But now, it seems, we might have something to work with.

  “Our thought on this is that if Ortiz is indeed alive, and if she has remained in country, she will likely hear of her brother’s passing. What she will do is anyone’s guess, but we’re hoping she makes an appearance. As such, we are going to establish surveillance of Grandma’s house around the clock, and I’d like to start ASAP with teams of two taking twelve-hour shifts. I know that will stretch us thin, but—much to my chagrin—we will get no additional bodies assigned to us for the operation.

  “Morgan and I plan to be there at twenty-two hundred hours this date and we will establish the nightshift detail and initiate the surveillance operation. We expect to be relieved by you two” —he made eye contact with Warrant Officers Roy Ridley and Mark Montoya— “at ten-hundred tomorrow.”

  Farley allowed a moment for his team members to finish with their notes. “We go five days. If nothing develops, we call it. And at that point, this file gets laid to rest, as far as I’m concerned.”

  It was the only thing said that CW2 Morgan didn’t agree with. He believed she was alive, and he felt the case should always remain active.

  CW3 Farley made eye contact with the only woman in the room. “Lazarevic, you’re going to be a floater. You’ll make reliefs as necessary, and you’ll be responsible for establishing contact with the local law enforcement and act as liaison for us.

  “Any questions?”

  Morgan looked around the room, making eye contact with each of the other agents, all of whom shook their heads indicating there was no need for any further direction. It was straightforward: surveillance of a single location to see if an AWOL soldier shows up to light a candle for her brother. Simple enough. It wasn’t Fallujah. They routinely performed surveillance and they were confident in their skills as a team. Morgan said to nobody in particular, “Don’t get comfortable out there. I have a feeling about this.”

  After stopping for dinner and margaritas at my favorite Mexican restaurant in Huntington Park, Josie and I returned to the office to find Floyd and Mongo still at their desks. Most of the detectives had gone home by now—or they had gone somewhere—but a few always remained into the wee hours. Tonight, Floyd and Mongo were two among the late crowd.

  “Where the hell have you two been?”

  “Getting drunk and lying about overtime,” Josie blurted out as we neared their desks.

  I chuckled. Mongo grinned. Floyd leaned back in his chair and put the end of a pen in his mouth. His eyes always seemed to glimmer when he set them upon attractive women.

  Josie smiled confidently as she continued past the two of them and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen and restrooms.

  After watching her past the last corner, I turned to see t
hat Floyd had watched her leave as well. Mongo had refocused on his computer.

  “She catches on quickly, uh?”

  “I guess she does,” Floyd said. “Though, being partnered with you, I doubt she’s lying about either one.”

  I chuckled. “You’re one to talk. But actually, if you must know, we’ve been out trying to solve a murder, which is something you should try sometime. It works up a powerful thirst when you do, I’ll tell you that. What the hell are you idiots doing here so late?”

  “Mongo’s writing a Return to Affidavit for our Cedric the Entertainer fiasco. Which, by the way, is almost certainly not a murder, and something that should be handled by the station dicks. But no, we have to at least get that evidence out of the walls—”

  “And the trunk of Chang’s Mercedes.”

  “—so that we can prove that A) Cedric was telling the truth, and B) these are the same assholes who killed my buddy, Ho. Because Lord knows if I leave it to you and cha-cha, nothing’s going to get done around here.”

  “So you served the warrant?”

  “Yeah, tonight. Me and Mongo found a judge in South Gate to sign it, and we just finished up with it about an hour ago. I tried to call you, see if you wanted to come lend a hand. But you no-acked me.”

  “I was busy.”

  “Well, we let Cedric tag along so that he could point some things out to us, and the truth is, he was probably more help than you would have been anyway.”

  I pulled up an empty chair near his and took a seat. “I believe it. Hey, what would you say if I told you that one of our killers is a woman? Would that get you a little more excited about this case?”