Hard-Boiled- Box Set

by Danny R. Smith

  Such a scene would be chaotic until someone took command. That someone would generally be dressed in a suit and wearing a name tag that identified their assignment as Homicide. It is the one assignment that commanded respect from the troops as they instinctively knew you were there to see justice prevail. All of the other suits that converge on the scenes of fallen officers are often regarded as being there to scrutinize the actions of the cops—those who were involved and even those who have fallen. This was true, to a degree. The men and women from Internal Affairs and Force Review, the district attorney’s office, even our department executives, all of them were there to provide the oversight that had become necessary to preserve order in modern-day law enforcement. It was part of a larger picture that would often be overlooked or disregarded by the troops, but an important one nonetheless. Homicide detectives, however, were unmistakably the working cop’s investigators. Real cops who most often hailed from the same haunts and had suffered the same grievances that the street cops now endured.

  Floyd cleared the area, taking command of the scene and getting any unnecessary personnel away from evidence. The victim had been transported, as was almost always the case. Every effort to save a cop was always made. In the case of a murdered cop, the body would never be left at the crime scene while the investigation proceeded, the way another hopeless victim might. In this case, the deputy’s body had been transported, but evidence of his death remained, marking the exact site of where he had fallen. Soon, the bloodstains would be washed away. Flowers and candles would adorn the site and soon thereafter disappear. No permanent memorial would ever be resurrected here, but this exact location would be remembered with great reverence by his brothers and sisters, even those not yet born. For the passage of these tragedies from one generation to another is imperative to those who patrol these streets, so that the sacrifice of their colleagues is never forgotten.

  With the radio cars and rescue personnel cleared from the immediate area, the scene was cordoned off by yellow tape and road flares were strewn across the street to reinforce a boundary. An eerie silence fell upon the night as floods of investigators, supervisors, administrators, and support personnel gathered at one end of the crime scene. From this point forward, nobody would cross into the restricted area without absolute necessity, and each person who entered would be documented on crime scene logs. Those who had come and gone before the scene had been established would be accounted for as well, and every minute detail would be memorialized in excruciating detail.

  Floyd and I had done our jobs. We had arrived quickly and had taken control of the chaotic setting while other detectives from our bureau were still being notified of the tragic event. Now we were gathered with the administrators and support personnel at the edge of the scene. Bloodstained clothing of a deputy sheriff and paramedic debris marked the now-sacred ground behind us. An abandoned radio car, its doors standing open, sat alone in the darkness like a ghost ship anchored in a deadly cove. We waited in heavy silence as members of Team 4 gathered and assumed the lead role of this investigation.

  Captain Stover stood with the lieutenant and his investigators when Balding and Quintana, the two who were assigned as the primary handling detectives on the case, began designating tasks for all who were there to assist. Four investigators would work the scene along with crime lab personnel. Two investigators would go to the hospital and detail all of the activity and action from the rescue personnel to hospital staff. There would be a total of six investigators dispatched to the station where approximately ten deputies were waiting to be interviewed. Most of them were witnesses only to the aftermath, but their statements were equally important. The surviving partner of the murdered deputy sheriff, who had discharged his firearm during the incident, would be the most important witness in the case. The handling team would interview him at length.

  Once the assignments were made, there was a pause in the action. An unplanned moment of reverence maybe. Then two investigators turned and broke away from the group, and others began dispersing as well.

  When only Captain Stover and the lieutenant remained, Floyd asked, “Is there anything else we can do?”

  Stover studied us each for a moment and it seemed he was puzzled by our presence. He was likely so accustomed to Floyd and me being partnered at scenes, that he hadn’t thought anything of it until just this moment. “What are you two doing here, anyway?”

  I elected to stay silent, for a change.

  “We were both at the office when it came in, boss,” Floyd said. “Farris asked us to roll and get a handle on it until the team could arrive. It was chaotic out here when we first rolled up.”

  Stover nodded. He looked at me, and then back to Floyd. “I want you two to get the details on the deputy and make the next of kin notification. Find out what you can and let me know. The commander and I will follow up with whoever it ends up being, tomorrow. Wife, mother, whomever.”

  The next of kin notification might be an important part of the case; you never knew. We didn’t chance that it wouldn’t be in these situations. A pair of homicide detectives would make the first notification, not the brass. And the notification would be documented in the murder book with the same attention to detail as every interview, every examination, and every piece of potential evidence of the crime. These were capital cases of the utmost importance.

  I nodded and stepped away. Floyd said, “Yes sir,” and followed me through the maze of sedans that littered the roadway.

  We drove away in silence and proceeded slowly through the empty streets of Compton until we reached the station. It was as if the community knew, and everyone had gone into hibernation. It wasn’t a good night to find yourself on the wrong side of the law. When I shut the ignition off, I looked over at Floyd whose face appeared chiseled from stone. “You all right, partner?”

  “Just brings back too many memories, I guess.”

  “Yeah, it does. Let’s get this kid’s name and his next of kin, and get it over with. There’s nothing I hate worse than this part.”

  25

  Tina waited in the shadows while Travis checked the doors of parked cars until he found one unlocked. He ducked into the car and closed the door. She looked up and down the street again; all was quiet around them. Moments later she heard the car start, and she ran toward it.

  She climbed inside and adjusted the AR-15 that was on the passenger’s seat as Travis pulled away from the curb. Tina didn’t know Travis knew how to steal a car. She looked at the steering column. It had been stripped, showing bare metal and wires and all of the internal workings that are usually covered by plastic. A large screwdriver protruded from his seat, tucked partially between his thigh and the cushion. After shifting gears and accelerating up an onramp, he reached over and pulled the AR-15 away from her and tucked it between his leg and the seat. She could see the intensity in his eyes and the perspiration seeping from his pores.

  The scene continued to play in her mind as she stared out the window in silence. The city lights stretched across the horizon, glowing against a black sky. It all seemed surreal to her, yet she knew it had happened. Everything had gone wrong with the armored car job, and now her little brother was dead.

  The drive to downtown had taken more than an hour. The trip was short as far as distance went, but every driver in Los Angeles knows that distance means nothing on the city’s congested streets. The armored truck had led them to a commercial bank building. Travis had gotten excited when they spotted the ramp to the parking area beneath the building. The driver of the truck had turned on its flashers and waited. But for what? Tension had built in the van and Travis and Carlos argued about how to do it. Travis had said, “We do it another night, now that we know the pattern. We have to somehow set up a diversion, something that would get one of the guards out of the truck.”

  “But what would that take?” Carlos had asked. “They have to be trained to not fall for anything like an accident, or something else that could be staged.”
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br />   The two vehicles had sat in the middle of the street for what seemed like hours, but was only minutes. Flashers blinked monotonously on the money truck as the three of them sat patiently behind it in their van. Travis seemed deep in thought. Tina didn’t like the idea of anything happening there; it was too congested, too many witnesses, too much traffic to allow an escape.

  Travis had said, “We’ll wait a week,” at just about the time an armed guard emerged from the parking structure carrying a large bag in his left hand. His right hand rested on the butt of a holstered pistol as he walked toward the armored truck that sat waiting.

  Carlos had said, “It’s on!”

  And as the back door of the armored truck began to open, Carlos had bailed from the rear sliding door and was on the street, approaching the truck. The guard they had seen earlier stepped out of the truck to meet the approaching guard with the bag.

  Travis had yelled, “Shit,” and jumped from the driver’s door of the van. Tina had followed Carlos out the slider.

  Gunfire erupted, momentarily drowning out the clattering of trucks laboring through traffic as motorists honked their horns and jockeyed for positions during the end-of-the-day mass exodus. But all of the sounds had disappeared when Tina saw her brother falling backward in slow-motion. She tried to get to him but couldn’t move quickly. It had been as if she were stuck in time, as if she were captured in a dream. She saw the guard falling at the same time, the guns of both men continuing to erupt in flames as gravity pulled the two combatants further apart and to the ground. Then everything froze. Tina had stood over her brother and saw his eyes searching hers for answers, or for help. As she reached down to grab him, another man in uniform appeared from the rear door of the truck. His eyes were on her, and his gun pointed toward her, but only for an instant. The guard swung the barrel of his gun in another direction just as a barrage of gunfire rang out. The guard fell, and as Tina stooped over her brother’s lifeless body, Travis had grabbed her and pulled her into the van.

  “Carlos!” she had screamed, over and over. But he was left lying on the street as she and Travis made their escape.

  Now they were headed south on the Long Beach Freeway in a gold colored Toyota Corolla with a stripped steering column, but otherwise blending in with the hundreds of other cars crawling through traffic.

  “It was his own goddamn fault,” Travis said. His tone was quiet and soft, melancholy.

  She wouldn’t look over. She couldn’t. Not yet. If she looked at Travis now she might pick up the rifle and shoot him in the face.

  No, it hadn’t been his fault; it was hers. She was the reason Carlos was dead. She had allowed him into the dark world that she and Travis had created, and all along she had known something like this could happen. She had even predicted that it would, that if anyone among them were to be killed, it would be Carlos. But still. She now hated Travis more than ever before. It was time to end their relationship, but she knew he wouldn’t allow it. She needed to get south of the border and have him taken care of by a cartel, by people who would make sure his body would never surface. She could change her appearance and live a normal life, but only if Travis were dead and this madness came to a stop. She was done with it. Tired of the killing. It had gone too far and now her brother was dead.

  “I have to see my nana,” she said, still looking out across the darkness.

  “The hell?”

  “I have to tell her about Carlos, and then we can go. South. We’ll cross the border and start a new life. It’s the only way now, Travis. It’s our only hope. But first, I have to say I’m sorry, and tell my nana goodbye.”

  26

  Dead cops were bad enough. Partners, friends, and colleagues—even those you had just briefly encountered in the course of your duties—were nearly unbearable. And it never got any easier.

  Floyd finished the business in the captain’s office at Compton Station, getting the address for the fallen deputy’s next of kin. He stepped out and stood next to me where I leaned against a row of file cabinets, staring off across the administrative offices. Normally, at this time of the night on a weekday, this area would be dark and quiet. Now, the lights were on and desks were filled with visitors from other stations and units who were using any available space as a temporary base from which to make phone calls or to log into department computers. The entire county would know by now that a deputy sheriff had been killed in Compton, and it would affect every single person affiliated with our department, from top to bottom, the top brass to the newest deputy, the professional staff to the hundreds of volunteers. Regardless of race, religion, or politics, every man and woman associated with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department would, on this night and in the days to follow, harbor a hollow, sick feeling in their guts. Every eye would fill with tears from sorrow, sooner or later. It would be later for those who were involved in the investigation or in the pursuit of the suspect, and who had not yet allowed the emotion to rise to the surface. For some, it would come when seclusion allowed the honesty of weeping. Others would cry with their partners, friends, and significant others. But for all, the time to mourn would come.

  “I guess you knew him.”

  I nodded. “Not well, but I liked him. He was the type of deputy who made me proud to be part of this department. Hard-charging, energetic, a real command presence about him. Smart and polite, respectful of old farts like us.”

  Floyd didn’t say anything. I didn’t blame him; there was nothing you could ever say at times like this.

  “He and his partner had the handle on the double murder at Ho’s Liquor. He had said he knew me from other cases, but you know how that goes, I didn’t remember him. He was a training officer. He’s the one,” I said, still gazing across the room buzzing with activity, “that I told you about his trainee, Nelson. The black kid with a big smile on his face all the time.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t imagine it’s still there.”

  “No,” I said, “I guess you’re right about that. This will be the beginning of its erosion. We see the kid a decade from now, we won’t recognize him. Permanent frown, bad back, shitty attitude, limping in for briefing with a broken liver. I wonder what happened out there. I wonder if the kid—Nelson—was there.”

  There were men I had looked up to, legends in the department when I was a youngster. Now, I would sometimes no longer recognize them because they were broken down. There were investigators at Homicide who’d been hauled out on stretchers due to heart attacks, strokes, mental breakdowns. Some had drunk themselves to death, others had chosen a quick exit by sending a department-issued projectile through the roofs of their mouths. That was what we referred to as eating your gun, and it had happened enough that it took time to recall each one.

  I shook my head at the thoughts. “We have no idea what this job is doing to us.”

  “Yes, we do,” Floyd whispered.

  We arrived at the home of Thomas and Melissa Johnson, a modern American Craftsman tucked in the center of an expansive tract of similarly designed homes. There were few cars parked on the streets and fewer yet left in driveways. I assumed there were homeowner’s association rules that required residents to park their expensive cars inside their three- and four-car garages. Lawns were perfectly manicured, and block and brick were accented by roses and shrubbery. It amazed me what deputies were able to afford nowadays, though I knew too many of them counted on dual incomes to do so. Or, they accepted insurmountable debt as a lifestyle, all to keep up with the Joneses.

  “Is the wife a deputy?”

  Floyd scrunched his brows. “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

  “Lot of money here.”

  He grunted and popped his door open. I followed suit, in no hurry. This was the worst part of the job, hands down. All notifications were difficult, but were a necessary process in homicide investigation. Nothing came close to knocking on the door of a cop’s newly-widowed wife. Floyd turned and waited.

  “I’m coming.”

>   “You want me to handle this?”

  I was beside him now. “Sure, why not. I’ll keep the notes.”

  We stood at the threshold of a residence that would never feel like a home again, the glow of a streetlight casting our shadows against the doors. The occupants inside had no idea that the reaper had come to visit, that we were there to inform them. My feet felt cemented to the walkway. Floyd appeared absent, just a shell of his larger-than-life persona, there to carry on through the darkness that encircled us both. We were silent, still, paused to delay the task if only for a moment.

  “Come on,” he finally said, “it isn’t going to get any easier.”

  Floyd knocked lightly. I stared at the illuminated button for the doorbell but elected not to push it. Not yet. Maybe nobody was home. That thought brought hope for an instant until I heard shuffling and faint voices inside. A woman. Children. My throat tightened, and I blinked at the moisture collecting behind my eyes. I tried to swallow, but there was nothing to send down. My mouth was dry as cotton as the door opened slowly and the knowing eyes of a young woman met mine. She was a cop’s wife. She knew. They always knew.

  “Mrs. Johnson?” Floyd inquired.

  She nodded slightly, her eyes shifting from Floyd to me and back.

  He pulled back his suit coat to reveal the gold star clipped to his belt. “We’re detectives with the sheriff’s department. May we come in?”

  She clung to the door, appearing suddenly weakened, the life in her drained in the brief moments that seemed as hours. I smelled the fresh fragrance of soap or shampoo, and for the first time noticed that her short, dark hair was wet. She wore denim shorts and a pink t-shirt with its sleeves turned up. Her skin was tanned, her legs and arms toned. She wore no makeup but was beautiful. A young, beautiful mother whose life had been shattered by a gunshot few had heard, and only a handful would remember as the years passed by. Her eyes would dull and her skin would wrinkle and sag, while fatherless children grew to accept but never understand why daddy didn’t come home. A child of no more than six appeared at her side, and then another just a year or two older. The younger was a boy with her dark hair and complexion, the other a girl with sun-bleached blonde hair and bright blue eyes. They were silent, question and apprehension showing in their eyes. Slowly, the mother stepped backward while directing her children to do the same. She gestured for us to enter and instructed the children to go to their rooms. The two bounded up the stairs while we drifted toward a sitting area adjacent to the entryway.