Bully

by Gonzalez, J. F.

  “Getz called a special meeting this morning,” Franklin whispered as he looked at Douglas Archer’s body. “Last minute thing for all the task-force members. Didn’t you get the message?”

  Tom shook his head, remembering the chirp of his cell phone when he was at Peanuts. “I was sitting in a West Hollywood bar with a she-male at the time.”

  Franklin raised his eyebrows. “Heavy date, huh? Sounds like fun.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it later,” Tom said as he focused his attention on the corpse.

  Douglas Archer sat on a chair, his upper body sprawled over a blood-splattered table. The back of his head was blown out. Aside from the blood stains on the floor and the walls, the kitchen looked like it was kept in immaculate shape. Tom stepped around to the side of the table and peered closer, noting the .45 caliber handgun clutched in Doug’s hands. The barrel was still in his mouth, his face resting partly on his right hand and the table. Tom looked behind him and noted the spray, which reached back into the living room, staining the carpet.

  “Clean,” Franklin said, pointing to the table. “He was facing the kitchen when it happened and his brains were blown right out the back of his skull. Check this out.”

  Tom saw what Franklin was pointing at and leaned over the table for a closer look. It was a note, penned on white-lined notebook paper in black ink. There was a black pen resting on the edge of the table. The note was simple and to the point:

  I’m sorry. I cannot take this anymore, and I cannot continue on. I’ve lied to everybody, but it hurts the most to lie to my sister. I did it: I killed Raul Valesquez. My confession in 1977 was the truth. My retraction of guilt and everything I’ve told my lawyer and the media and my family have all been lies. I was able to explain most of the evidence away by the simple fact that I know the truth and it was easy to make something up to explain things away, thus fooling a lot of people. Again, I’m sorry, but I just can’t take it anymore. I killed Raul Valesquez.

  It was signed Douglas Archer in an erratic scrawl. Tom scowled at it; he’d never seen Doug’s signature before so he didn’t know what to make of this. Franklin glanced at his watch. “You read it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Think you can remember everything it says?”

  “No, but I got this.” Tom took out his cell phone and flipped it open. It was one of those camera phones. He took a quick glance around the apartment to see if anybody was paying attention and nobody was—a team of technicians were examining the blood stains in the living room, and the rest of the arriving officers and crime scene detectives were outside the apartment, interviewing potential witnesses. Tom took four quick snapshots of the letter, closed the phone and placed it in his breast pocket. “Anything else?”

  We’ll have to find out what Doug’s whereabouts were over the past few days, but I think that’s it,” Franklin said, looking at the body.

  Tom moved around the table, taking in a different view. He noticed the way Doug’s hands were clutching the gun, with the right index finger on the trigger. “When we talk to Jessie, we’ll have to ask her if he was right handed,” he said, pointing out the position of the corpse’s hands on the gun.

  Franklin nodded, surveying the kitchen. Behind them, the activity continued on. He turned to Tom. “Here’s another thing to ponder. Look at his body. It’s slumped in a forward position over the table, with the head pretty much resting on his hands and the table.”

  Tom nodded, understanding all too well. “If he’d been sitting in an upright position when he shot himself, the force of the gunshot would have propelled his body back. It probably would have fallen out of the chair.”

  “Of course, that’s assuming he was sitting in that position when he did it,” Franklin said. Their voices were lowered as they talked. “He could have been leaning forward.”

  “You think that’s what happened?”

  Franklin shrugged. “I’d sure like to see what the ballistics and forensic tests on the body and the gun show.”

  “So would I, but I’m already guessing we aren’t going to be able to.”

  “We’re going to need a handwriting sample, too. I’m sure we can get that from William Grecko.”

  “We’re going to have to talk about that before we go knocking on his lawyer’s door,” Franklin said, glancing at Tom. “Time’s up. Let’s make like a leaf and blow.”

  They left the scene and headed out of the apartment complex quickly. Franklin nodded at the young officer pulling guard duty at the entrance. “Thanks, Murray,” he said, clapping the cop on the shoulder. “I owe you one.”

  “No sweat, Franklin,” Officer Murray said.

  They headed up the street where they’d parked, Tom keeping his eyes peeled for Getz’s white Suburban. He saw that Franklin was parked three cars down from his vehicle and when they reached the car, Tom said, “Meet me in the parking lot of the Von’s Supermarket on Redondo Beach in Gardena. I’ve got to bring you up to speed.”

  “Oh boy, a car meeting!” Franklin said in that indifferent tone which usually sounded like sarcasm to anybody who didn’t know his personality. They had car meetings all the time in which they sat in one or the other’s car somewhere and compared notes on the cases they were working on. “Your place or mine?”

  “Whoever gets there last,” Tom said, opening the driver’s side door of his Toyota and getting in.

  As usual, Tom won the race to get there.

  IT TOOK TOM Jensen only thirty minutes to bring his partner up to speed on his end of the investigation. Franklin listened silently, nodding at relevant points and chiming in every now and then with some observations and news from his own end, which consisted of interviewing six or seven people who were children at the time and lived within the four block vicinity of the Valesquez residence. “Only one I couldn’t locate was a Jerry Valdez,” Franklin said.

  “That name was on my list, too,” Tom said. “I did speak to somebody named...” He flipped through his notebook. “...Angelina Garcia, who lived a few doors down from the Valdez family. Apparently, the Valdez’s moved out of the area in ’87 and live somewhere in the Orange County area.”

  Franklin jotted this down in his own notebook. “And Louie McWiggin is dead, right?”

  “According to David Bartell, he is.”

  “Your date?”

  “Yeah, my date.”

  Franklin looked reflective. He looked out the window of his Saturn at the grocery store parking lot. It was the middle of the afternoon and business was beginning to pick up as people stopped in on their way home from work to pick up groceries. “So we’re dealing with a prostitution and drug ring that operated out of the Valesquez home, one that was supported and protected by members of our own police force.”

  “That’s what it sounds like.”

  “And you got two solid names. Harold Oblowski and Billy Dennison.”

  “Yep.”

  “Has your buddy from LAPD called yet?”

  “He called me on my way down here.” Tom quickly related the phone call he received on the drive to the Von’s grocery store. His friend, Miles, had picked up David Bartell at Peanuts and checked him in to a Hampton Inn in the San Fernando Valley. “Miles said he would look after him until eight, but then he’s got to go on duty.”

  “He going to keep Bartell liquored up?”

  “Only enough to keep him functioning.”

  “We’re going to have to talk to Getz about this,” Franklin said.

  “I agree, but I doubt we’ll get to see him in private today. We might have to wait till tonight and pay a visit to him at his house.”

  Franklin was silent for a moment. Tom felt better now that he had brought his partner up to speed on his end of the investigation, especially on his talk with Danny Hernandez the other night. He could tell Franklin believed his theory that Raul was responsible for the murders of those kids. There had been a subtle shift in Franklin’s features as Tom laid out his evidence against Raul, a sign that he beli
eved the allegations and was disturbed by them. Those features remained as Tom detailed what he’d learned from David Bartell and Robert Valesquez today.

  Now they sat in Franklin’s Saturn in the parking lot of Von’s, trying to determine where the latest events would take them. They would have some explaining to do officially for Getz; their boss would want to know why they’d been unable to get to the hastily assembled task-force meeting earlier. Tom suggested he could always plead that he was involved in pursuing a lead. “That doesn’t explain the last hour and a half, though,” Franklin said.

  Tom sighed. “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Let’s assume everything we talked about is correct,” Franklin said, turning to Tom. “Eva Valesquez was an alcoholic prostitute, who sold herself out of her home, entertained clients while her children were present, and did drugs and drank while they were present. She wouldn’t be the first, either. What makes this case different? Some of her clients were cops who protected her, looked the other way. Maybe they did it for sexual favors. Maybe some of them benefited financially. Whatever. Let’s assume this is the case and there were even some local government officials in on it, too. Maybe some of her customers were big time drug dealers or something, and somebody on the force knew about it and was skimming off the top. You with me here?”

  “So far so good,” Tom said.

  “Okay, so naturally her kids are affected by this. How much do we know about Eva Valesquez’s background?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid,” Tom said, shaking his head. “The stuff I read in the original case file simply mentioned that her husband was killed in a car accident shortly after Raul was born and that she logged an arrest for public drunkenness six months later. Robert told me he learned she came from an impoverished background, was abused as a kid, and that her parents were alcoholics. Things turned around shortly before she turned eighteen, when she met her husband. He was her savior, and she turned her life around. When he was killed that life shattered, and she went rapidly downhill after that.”

  “You said something about Robert telling you that the reason he’s been able to make something out of his life is due to his refusal to let his past influence his life,” Franklin continued. “He said that was his mother’s problem...that the reason she was so fucked up was due to her past. What do you think he meant by that?”

  Tom shrugged. “Maybe he was referring to his dad being killed?”

  “Maybe. But maybe there’s something else, too. Do we know if Eva Valesquez had a prior criminal record before her first arrest?”

  “Not that I know of,” Tom admitted, wondering where Franklin was going with this. “Judging by the data in that report, she was seventeen when she got married and gave birth to Robert. There isn’t much in there on her home life in the early years of her marriage or her upbringing. I learned a few things from Robert, but it wasn’t much.”

  “I think we’re going to need to look into her past life more,” Franklin suggested. He was looking out at the parking lot now. “See if Robert will open up and tell us more. I think he meant something more than just his father getting killed when he said that to you.”

  “Like what? You think he meant her own upbringing?”

  “I don’t know.” Franklin turned to Tom. “But I think it’s important. I think it will help the overall big picture, which we don’t know much of. Right now we know that in 1977, Eva was a drunken hooker who severely neglected her kids and two of them were pretty badly affected by this. Remember your courses on abnormal psychology in college?”

  “I majored in Budweiser and the American Female in college, not psychology.”

  Franklin ignored the sarcasm. “Then you’ll obviously remember that emotional detachment during an infant’s formative stages from its mother is the first step in forming a sociopath. No doubt, Mr. Valesquez’s death really affected Eva badly. Look at the combination. Husband is killed suddenly shortly after Raul is born, a few months later she logs her first arrest. You saw her record ... she was arrested continuously for all kinds of petty offenses over the next ten years for drugs, alcohol, and prostitution. You think she bonded with Raul when he was a baby? I don’t think so.”

  “You think that’s why Raul turned out the way he did and Robert turned out okay?” Tom asked. “Because they were born seven or eight years apart and Eva was more or less a normal Mommy in the early years of her marriage?”

  “I think so, but I’d like to find out more about the marriage and her background before I make that decision. Here’s something else to think about. You ever heard of Jesse Pomeroy?”

  Tom shook his head. “Nope.”

  “When you told me your suspicions about Raul Valesquez being the possible killer of those two kids in ’77, and your conversation with your old buddy, Danny Hernandez, I immediately thought of the Pomeroy case. To this day, Jesse Pomeroy remains the youngest murder defendant ever sentenced to death row in the U.S.”

  Tom’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “No kidding?”

  “The sentence was later commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole,” Franklin said, pausing briefly. “Correction: life in solitary confinement without the possibility of parole.”

  “What the fuck?”

  Franklin laid out the Jesse Pomeroy case quickly: 1872, Boston, Massachusetts. Seven children were kidnapped and savagely beaten and tortured horribly over a period of several months. They were usually found tied to posts in fields or abandoned outhouses, their clothes stripped off, their bodies covered in horrible welts from floggings and numerous bruises and savage cuts. The criminal eluded detection for months until the last victim was able to provide a detailed description of his assailant, which led police to thirteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy, the son of a widowed grocery store owner. Jesse quickly confessed to the crimes, saying he just “couldn’t help himself”, and he was sentenced to seven years in a boy’s reformatory school. Proving that the nineteenth century judicial system was just as mistake-prone as it was now, Pomeroy was released a little more than a year later on good behavior after proving to be a model prisoner. The Pomeroy family moved to a new neighborhood. Shortly after they moved, a little girl disappeared from the neighborhood. A few months later, a five-year-old boy’s badly mutilated body was found near the shore. Witness descriptions once again focused on Jesse Pomeroy, and the boy was picked up again. While in custody, the rotting corpse of the missing girl was discovered in the basement of his mother’s grocery store. This time justice was swift. Convicted on two counts of murder, Pomeroy was sentenced to hang. Controversy from both sides of the case brought the attention of the governor, who reviewed the case. Pomeroy’s sentence was commuted to life in prison in solitary confinement.

  “He spent the next thirty years in solitary,” Franklin explained to Tom, who was fascinated by the case. “Only people he ever saw were the guards and his mother when she made her weekly visits. When he was finally let out into the general prison population, the other inmates were afraid of him. He’d become something of an urban legend to generations of kids growing up in Boston. He was the kid that liked to torture and kill other children. A lot of the hardcore criminals who were doing time in there were spooked to shit to be in prison with him, since they’d grown up hearing stories about him.”

  “I bet,” Tom said. “I can see why you would have thought of that when I told you about Valesquez.”

  “Naturally, Pomeroy isn’t the only kid who’s ever killed somebody before,” Franklin said, his fingers resting on the steering wheel of his car. “Criminal history is rife with kids who kill, and there are cases both before and after Pomeroy’s that prove the phenomenon isn’t a recent one, despite what the media trumps up thanks to those kids who decide to show up to school one day with a gun to get even with every other kid who’s ever looked at them cross-eyed. But I do think there are even more cases that go unchecked at the time they occur. Serial killers have to start somewhere. Dahmer was eighteen when he committed his first murder
. Fritz Haarman, the Dusseldorf Vampire, was around Pomeroy’s age when he claimed his first victim. It’s been suggested that Ted Bundy first killed when he was thirteen or fourteen. Gary Ridgway tried to kill an eight- year-old kid when he was sixteen. I have a buddy who’s a lawyer, specializes in protecting children in various issues, who told me about a kid he defended who was conditioned to kill other kids from the time he was a year old in kiddie porn films.”

  “Please tell me your friend didn’t get his client off on some technicality,” Tom said, that last anecdote not sitting too well with him.

  “Nah, he was able to get him into a state hospital,” Franklin said. “Kid’s been in there since he was sixteen. He’s in his twenties now, and the only thing that’s keeping him in there is he still doesn’t understand that it’s wrong to kill people. Other than that, he’s perfectly normal.”

  “Define perfectly normal.”

  “The point is, from everything you’ve told me, Raul was probably made into a sociopath through years of systematic abuse. We know the mother was fucked up, we know she had a criminal record, we know the kids were neglected and Social Services attempted to take them from the house but were thwarted repeatedly by the City, who were alerted to the fact, I might add, by the police department. We have two witnesses who now tell you many of Eva’s customers were cops and that there was more than just a drug and prostitution ring going on. I get the feeling there was something deeper going on here, something more than just a bunch of cops and government officials hanging out at the home of the local ho, taking their turns with her and living like Caligula, but I don’t know what.”