The Second Goodbye

by Patricia Smiley

  The decorative trim adorning the three-story Victorian house was cracked and faded. Its dowdy towers and turrets needed the level of restoration only a rich preservationist could afford. Judging from the bicycles chained to the railing of the wraparound porch and the thrift-store beanbag chairs, the place was operating as a boarding house, most likely for students.

  Davie walked up the sloping lawn to the front entrance but before she could knock, the door burst open and a young man bolted out, nearly knocking her over.

  “Sorry,” he said, looking stricken.

  “I’m here to see Emma Wainford.”

  “She’s upstairs, studying.”

  “Can you get her down here?”

  “Nope,” he said, unchaining one of the bikes. “Gotta run. I’m late to class.” He rolled the bike down the steps. “She’s on the second floor, first room on the right.” Then he mounted the bike and rode off, leaving the front door wide open.

  Davie heard a door slam as she stepped into the foyer. Cooking odors baked into the wallpaper and the smell of ancient dust slammed her olfactory receptors. There were no curtains on the bay window but at least the grimy glass provided some privacy. The living room was empty except for thrift store furniture that served as a dumpsite for everything from textbooks to empty potato chip bags. A pair of tighty-whities hung from a chandelier above a slouching sofa.

  The wooden stairs creaked as Davie climbed toward the second floor. In the distance she heard the ear-splitting thrum of a percussion instrument. When she reached Emma’s room, she put her ear to the door, listening for sounds of life inside but heard nothing.

  Davie knocked on the door. “Ms. Wainford? I’m with the LAPD. I need to speak to you.”

  Emma Wainford did not answer the second, louder knock. Davie turned the knob. Meeting no resistance, the door swung open, revealing a monk’s cell of a room with a mattress on the floor and clothes hanging from a department store dressing-room rack.

  She found Wainford crouched in a corner of the closet among duffle bags and boxes. She was a willowy young woman with pasty skin and a trembling chin who looked stricken with a bad case of Blue Light Fever, that jittery feeling when a patrol car’s flashing blue lights are bearing down on you. You don’t know what you did, but you’re sure you’re good for something. Davie had no idea why this girl was hiding but hoped her nerves had something to do with Javi Hernandez’s murder.

  “Ms. Wainford?”

  Wainford wiped away a tear. “How did you find me?”

  Davie held out her badge. “I’m a detective. It’s what I do for a living. We need to talk.”

  Wainford shook her head. “My roommates can’t see us together.”

  Davie closed the door to the hallway and waited for Wainford to crawl out of the closet. There were no chairs in the room, so Davie leaned against the peeling paint of the windowsill. Wainford slouched on the mattress, staring at her hands.

  Davie took the pen from her notebook and prepared to write. “How long have you lived here?”

  Wainford dabbed at the moisture in her eyes with her finger. “About three months. I’m in the film school at USC. This place is all I can afford right now.”

  “You moved out of the apartment in Palms the day after Javi Hernandez’s murder. The police never interviewed you. Why?”

  She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. “They came to the door that day, but I was afraid they’d kill me if I talked to the police.”

  “They?”

  “Thugs, gangbangers, whatever you call them. I hid in the bathroom for hours until the police left. The next morning, I packed some clothes, grabbed my cat, and went to stay with a friend. I was a mess. I didn’t want to leave the house. I had to drop out of school and move back in with my parents. They saved my life.”

  “Tell me everything you know about the day of the murder. Start from the beginning.”

  Wainford grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest. “Like I said, I was going to USC. Rent in a decent part of town was crazy expensive and I barely had enough money to pay for tuition. I found the Palms apartment on craigslist. The place looked skuzzy but it was cheap and the manager seemed nice so I moved in.”

  “Where were you when the murder went down?”

  She let out a heavy sigh. “I didn’t go to class that day because I had a paper due and I wasn’t finished. Around two o’clock I heard loud music and people laughing. It was hard to concentrate. I was afraid to say anything because I’d seen scary-looking guys hanging out in the carport. I think they were doing drugs.”

  “How long did the noise go on?”

  “At least an hour. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I put on my earphones and turned the music up as high as I could stand it. At around three o’clock I glanced out the window and saw a man running down the street. I wasn’t getting anything done, so I decided to go study at the library. I grabbed my computer and walked down the steps toward the carport. When I got there I saw that man lying on a mattress covered in blood. It was horrible.”

  “Can you describe the man who ran away?”

  “Twenties. Hispanic.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  She shook her head. “He was nice-looking, though. He had on a sweatshirt with one of the seven dwarfs on the back—Grumpy, I think. That seemed weird. That’s all I remember.”

  “Will you come to the station and look at some photos? See if you can identify the man?”

  Wainford rested her head on the pillow. Her voice was barely audible. “I don’t have a car.”

  “I can drive you there and bring you back. It won’t take long, thirty minutes to put together some mug shots to see if you can ID the guy.”

  She looked up and wiped at her eyes. “Do I have to go?”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Davie remembered an Edmund Burke quote her high school history teacher had posted on the wall of his classroom. All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

  She considered mentioning that to Emma Wainford but in the end, it wasn’t necessary.

  33

  Twenty minutes later Wainford waited in an interview room in the detective squad room while Davie sat at her computer selecting pictures. Her photo show-up would be arranged in a folder behind six cutout frames. She remembered her first six-pack. Her sergeant laughed when he saw it. “Jeez, Richards. I said pick people who resemble the suspect, not the Gosselin sextuplets. Do it over.”

  Even though he had since died, the gang member who’d been in possession of Hernandez’s car the day after the murder was the original suspect, so she included his photo and used his physical characteristics as a template for the others. If he were the person Emma Wainford had seen running from the crime scene, it would help her close the case.

  There was no shortage of mug shots for the other five photos. There were over 450 active gangs in the City of Los Angeles with 45,000-plus members. In the past three years there had been about 190 gang homicides. The men in the photos just had to share some physical characteristics with the suspect.

  Davie chose three booking photos of known Westside gang members with violent crimes on their rap sheets, including Felix Malo. The last two photos were selected from Department of Motor Vehicle files. They were people she knew weren’t involved in Javi Hernandez’s murder, including a patrol officer she’d worked with in Southeast Division. To finish the process, she stripped all identifying information from the photos, assorted them randomly, and made two copies. Under each photo, she wrote a number from one to six.

  As Davie headed for the interview room, she thought about stories she’d heard from the bad-old days when a detective would hold up a six-pack with his finger tapping the photo he wanted the witness to choose. Those days were history, but it didn’t hurt to remind herself how crucial it was to remain neutral when presentin
g the show-up to Wainford. Not all witnesses were good at picking a suspect from a two-dimensional photo, but if she felt any undue pressure or influence in the selection process, her testimony could fall apart in court.

  Through the window of the interview room, Davie saw Wainford’s head resting on the battered wood table. She looked up when Davie laid the copy in front of her. The wording of the admonition was on the back of the photo display folder, but Davie had done this so many times she had almost committed the script to memory.

  “Just so you know,” Davie said. “The photo of the person you saw leaving the apartment that day may or may not be included here. You are under no obligation to select any of the pictures. When you’re considering the photos, remember that people change their hair. They gain and lose weight. They sometimes alter their appearance. But if you recognize the man you saw, please circle the photo and initial below it.”

  Wainford nodded and then stared at the pictures. Her focus shifted from one man to another. After about thirty seconds, she said. “I don’t know.”

  Davie kept her voice low and calm, hoping her tone didn’t convey disappointment. “It’s okay if you don’t know. Take your time.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I just don’t know if I want to get involved.”

  Wainford’s words were a punch to Davie’s gut. “Are you saying you recognize one of the photos but you don’t want to tell me?”

  Her voice was barely audible. “I wish I could be brave like you, but I’m not.”

  Reluctant or fearful witnesses were always a challenge for law enforcement. Davie decided against guilt-tripping Wainford. Instead, she let the young woman’s words bounce against the walls of the interview room until the echoes faded.

  Wainford focused on her folded hands. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”

  Davie released the breath she’d been holding. “No. I’m not mad.”

  “Yes, you are. I can tell. Look, I’ve been a mess for two years. I’m finally getting my life back together. I can’t go back to that place.”

  “We have witness assistance programs—”

  She interrupted Davie mid-sentence. “No. I’m sorry. Can I go now?”

  Davie slowly stood and picked up the photos. “Sure. I’ll ask somebody to take you home.”

  The reserve officer who worked in Autos agreed to drive Wainford back to North University Park. Davie returned to her desk where Detective Giordano was waiting for her.

  “She ID anybody?” he asked.

  Davie shook her head. “She didn’t want to get involved.”

  “You can’t win ’em all, kid,” he said. “At least you turned up a new witness. Maybe you’ll find someone else with more guts.” He grabbed a stack of reports and headed toward Records.

  Vaughn popped his head over the partition wall. He pointed to his eye, formed a heart with his fingers, and pointed to Davie. She raised her index finger toward her temple and made a circular motion, the universal gesture for you’re crazy. Vaughn was clearly joking, but she wasn’t in the mood for his corny humor. He must have noticed her frown because he sank back down out of sight.

  Davie’s notebook tablet was almost empty. She strolled toward Records, intending to pick up a new one in the supply room. In the hallway, she was startled to see an ashen Emma Wainford coming through the back door followed by the reserve officer. Davie glanced at him and frowned. He shrugged.

  “Did you forget something?” Davie asked.

  Wainford shook her head. “Number four. That’s the man I saw.”

  Davie’s breath caught in her throat. Photo number four was Daniel Hernandez, Javi’s brother.

  34

  Davie had included Daniel Hernandez’s DMV photo in the six-pack for the same reason she’d added her friend from Southeast Division. They both looked somewhat like the man who took Javi Hernandez’s car and neither were suspects in his murder. Her friend was a cop. Daniel had an alibi: he’d been in Afghanistan, fighting in a war. She didn’t understand why Wainford had placed him at the scene of the murder.

  A few minutes later, Davie watched as Emma Wainford poised her pen over the six-pack, circled, and then initialed the photo of Daniel Hernandez. Davie gave no hint about the correctness of her selection, nor did she reveal Daniel Hernandez’s name.

  Davie ticked off the remaining items on her show-up checklist, asking Wainford to note any differences between the man in the photo and the person she’d seen leaving the scene of the murder. Afterward, Davie cautioned her not to discuss the photos or her selection with anyone. She didn’t want the results tainted should Wainford talk with other witnesses. When the interview was over, Davie asked the reserve officer to drive the young woman home.

  After she left the squad room, Jason Vaughn walked around the corner to Davie’s workstation and folded his lanky body into the chair next to hers. He’d obviously been following the drama.

  “You trust her memory?” he asked. “It’s been two years since the shooting and you know how unreliable eyewitnesses can be.”

  “She seemed confident Daniel was the guy, but I agree it doesn’t make sense. His mother swore her son was in Afghanistan at the time of the murder. Either she believed he was or she knew he wasn’t and wanted to protect him.”

  “What motive would Daniel have to kill his little brother? He told us the family was close.”

  “People lie, Jason, sometimes even Marines.”

  “Daniel said another brother was killed in a drive-by. Maybe he freaked when he found out Javi was selling drugs for Felix Malo. He wanted to school the kid before he left town but things got tense and—kapow! Bro ends up dead.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Look,” Vaughn said. “My investigation just hit a wall. That anonymous tip I told you about was a hoax. I have time if you need help.”

  Davie was up her to chest in quicksand, juggling both the Hernandez and Ponti cases. She could use a hand. “Daniel’s mother said he was stationed at the Marine Corp Base at Camp Pendleton before deploying to Afghanistan. Oceanside can’t be more than ninety miles from the murder scene. If Daniel Hernandez was on the base and not in Afghanistan, he could have made the trip to his brother’s apartment in a couple of hours, killed him, and returned before anybody knew he was missing. Can you call Pendleton and confirm the date he was shipped out?”

  Vaughn gave her the thumbs-up sign. “I’m on it.”

  35

  Davie had no plans to contact Daniel Hernandez until the base commander confirmed his whereabouts on the day of the murder, but in preparation for the interview she called the community food bank to get his work schedule. It was only 4:45 p.m. but a recorded message informed her the center was already closed for the day.

  Before leaving the station, she slipped the transcribed shorthand doodles and the pro forma cash flow statements into an envelope, planning to study them in depth at home. Before driving to Bel Air, she detoured by the thrift store to buy clothes for the undercover gig with Reggie Banker the following day. She’d just thrown the getup in the trunk of her Camaro when her cell phone buzzed with an incoming call. It was Jon Striker.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “On my way home.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner on your money laundering question,” he said. “Things got complicated at work. I’m available now if you want to talk.”

  “I have some financial documents I want you to look at, so we should meet. But the Lucky Duck is too noisy.”

  There was a short silence and then, “I can stop by your place. It’s on my way home.”

  Davie felt a knot forming in her stomach as she tried to remember the last time she’d cleaned the guesthouse. There were probably crumbs on the kitchen counter and dust bunnies collecting in the corners of the living room, not to mention the mess she’d left in the bathroom that morning be
fore leaving for work—toothpaste she’d accidentally squirted all over the sink. Worse yet, Striker would have to walk through the bedroom to get there. He’d see the unmade bed and the ratty oversized T-shirt she slept in. She favored it because it was stretchy and didn’t bind her in knots when she tossed and turned.

  “Okay.” Davie stretched out the word, hoping her tone didn’t sound too tepid as she gave him the address. “Thirty minutes?”

  The tires of the Camaro screeched as she tore out of the thrift store parking lot, ignoring the speed limit. She arrived at the cottage in twenty minutes—ten minutes to spare. Once inside, she bolted into the bathroom and used her fingernail to scrape the petrified toothpaste from the sink and swept a pile of assorted cosmetics from the countertop into a drawer of the vanity. She didn’t have time to empty the wastebasket, so she placed two tissues on top to camouflage whatever was in there.

  Her hair fell from the bun as she ripped out the band that held it in place. A few precious seconds in front of the mirror was all it took to fluff the red curls into a cloud around her shoulders and down her back. At the last minute, she swiped a layer of gloss on her lips and tossed the comforter over the bed. It wouldn’t pass military inspection but if she kept the lights dimmed, Striker might not notice the chaos.

  She was jogging to the kitchen to tidy up when she heard the doorbell ring. Her breath caught in her throat. No time to clean the sink or dispose of the crumbs.

  Striker stood at her front door with the overhead porch light casting shadows on his angular face. Davie inhaled the faint odor of menthol as she gestured him inside with a grand sweep of her arm, wondering if he’d recently been at a crime scene.

  His gaze moved across the room. “Nice setup.”