by Tyler Dilts
I’m not sure why it struck me as so vital and important to the success of the case that our victim had someone to mourn deeply for him. What was wrong with me? Any other detective I knew would be glad to be in this situation—no next of kin to notify, no bereaved wife to console, no children whose lives would be forever changed because of a stranger in a coat and tie knocking on the front door. With a victim like this, there was no one left to hurt. The damage had been done. Why couldn’t I just be satisfied with that?
6
LEVI’S JEANS, MEN’S, TWO PAIRS: ONE SIZE 34/32, FADED, HOLE IN RIGHT KNEE; ONE SIZE 36/30, DARK BLUE, GOOD CONDITION.
When I got to my desk in the squad room, I had a message waiting from Kyle.
“Good news,” he said, answering my return call. “We got prints off of the chess set. Two sets of prints. No hits on one, but we got an ID on the other.”
“Could the good set be our vic?”
“Doubt it. The guy was army. Only twenty-nine.”
“Please tell me we can find him.”
“We do have a current address. Less than two months old, so it’s probably still good.”
Jen came in while I was still on the phone. I told Kyle thanks and to let me know if anything else came up.
“Good news,” I said to Jen.
“Yeah?”
“There was a chess set in the shopping cart. Two sets of prints, one with a solid ID and an address.”
“And the other?”
“Hopefully,” I said, “our victim.”
The Century Villages at Cabrillo was a transitional and low-income housing development just north of Pacific Coast Highway and nestled up against the Terminal Island Freeway, State Route 103. We were on our way there to interview the man whose fingerprints were on the chess set. Jen was behind the wheel.
“You know they filmed Terminator 2 on the 103, right?” I asked.
“Yeah. You tell me that every time we get anywhere close to it.”
“Mr. & Mrs. Smith, too,” I said. “I never mention that one because I know how you feel about Angelina Jolie.”
“Well, thank you for that.”
“You think it might be the shortest freeway in the state?”
“Why are you trying to annoy me?”
“I’m not. I’m trying to be witty and charming.”
“Oh. I couldn’t tell.”
“I have a good feeling about this. We’re going to get an ID for our vic.”
She bit her lip and kept quiet.
“What?”
We were nearly at the entry gate for the Villages. “That worries me. You faking optimism is never a good sign.”
Jen badged the guard at the gate, and he asked if we knew where we were headed. We lied and drove on through. Neither of us had been there before, and we were both surprised. From the look of things, it was difficult to differentiate the place from any of the other gated communities that had sprouted like weeds in cracked concrete all across Southern California until the big housing collapse. The Villages were different, though. They’d been one of Long Beach’s most successful charitable enterprises of the last decade. The organization behind the development had raised tens of millions of dollars and invested it all in the complex that provided transitional housing for the homeless and destitute. There was a lot of support from Veterans Affairs and other government agencies as well, and things really got rolling when the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan started needing help and began to take advantage of the opportunity.
“I didn’t expect it to look so nice,” Jen said.
“I know,” I said. “I thought it would be more projecty. I almost don’t want to make fun of the name anymore.” Looking around at how very normal the place looked, it occurred to me that the clichéd name of the development had been chosen precisely because it was indistinguishable from a million other communities. The people this place served would welcome that kind of uninspired normalcy. The realization left me with more respect for whoever was in charge here than I expected to have.
The set of fingerprints we’d matched belonged to a man named Henry Nichols. He’d done two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Twice in the last fifteen months he’d been questioned by the LBPD on vagrancy-related misdemeanors, but he’d been released each time. I’d talked to one of the uniforms who’d picked him up. Nichols had apparently suffered a head wound before his medical discharge that had left him with some lingering effects.
We found the street we were looking for, and Jen parked in a small visitors’ lot close to his building. It was a nice-looking place, all two-story earth-toned stucco with tile roofs. The style had a southwest Orange County vibe.
“That’s his car,” she said, pointing to a white late-nineties Jetta. “According to the DMV, he’s had it less than a month.”
“That means he got it about three weeks after he filed the change of address to this place.”
“Think he came into some money?” she said.
“He came into something. This looks like a decent place to get back on your feet.”
Inside, the building had a shared living room, kitchen, and restrooms, while each tenant had an individual bedroom. Kind of like an old-school boarding-house arrangement. We found Nichols’s door and knocked. Nothing happened, so we knocked again, harder. Jen leaned in close to the door and said, “Mr. Nichols? Long Beach Police Department. We need to speak with you.”
A few seconds later, we heard a muffled voice from inside the room. “Hang on. I’ll be right there.”
The door opened. Nichols was wearing sweat shorts and a gray T-shirt, and his hair was disheveled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was sleeping. Been working nights.” He ran his hands over his head in a fruitless attempt to make his hair more presentable. “How can I help you?” There was concern and a vague distrust in his expression, but he didn’t respond with the kind of wariness or fear I’d thought likely.
“A man was killed last night,” Jen said. “We’re trying to identify him. We think it’s likely that he was homeless.”
“Can we come in?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s not much space.” He was right. The room was maybe ten by ten, with a twin bed, a small dresser, a writing table, and a cheap-looking wardrobe tucked into the corner in lieu of a real closet.
“I only have the one chair,” he said. He pulled it out and turned it toward the bed. Jen sat down and motioned for him to take the spot across from her on the bed. I backed into the corner and leaned against the wall and tried not to seem intimidating.
“Thank you,” Jen said. “The man who was killed, we don’t know who he was.”
“And you think I can help?”
Nichols was backlit by the sun coming in through the window. From my position, I noticed something odd about the shape of his head. When he would move and the light hit his dark hair from a different angle, it appeared as if there was a significant dent in the right side of his skull.
“We hope so.” Jen smiled warmly at him, and he seemed to relax. “You’re a veteran?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Army, six years.” His voice was flat, and I couldn’t get a solid read of how he felt about it.
“And you got a medical discharge?”
He nodded. “IED. Traumatic brain injury. Still kind of messed up with it.”
“You were on the street for a while.”
It was clear that he was embarrassed by the fact.
“I was. Took a long time for my VA benefits to come through. Had to stay in my car for a while.”
“That must have been tough,” Jen said.
“Wasn’t great,” he said. “I saw a lot worse, though. Had a minivan, you know, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been.”
“How do you like it here?”
“It’s good. There’s a clinic and people to help you with the VA stuff. They helped me get a job, too.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Jen said. “Where are you working?”<
br />
“At the Home Depot in Signal Hill. Doing overnights right now. Unloading and restocking, cleaning.”
“How do you like it?” Jen asked. The warmth in her voice was genuine, and he was responding to it. He was starting to get comfortable.
“It’s okay. I never thought I’d have to work retail after I got out, you know? But it’s a good opportunity. I think I can make it work.”
“Sure you can,” I said.
“I want to go full time, you know? I can’t right now because I’m on partial disability. But I want to get off of that and go full time.”
“Of course you do. Who wouldn’t?”
“Oh, there’s guys who don’t want to. Or can’t. Some of us are luckier than others, you know?”
“That’s the truth,” I said.
His eyes lost their focus and he blinked twice. “Could you tell me why you’re here again?”
“Sure. We’re hoping you can help us.”
“Oh, yeah. Somebody died, right?”
“Yes. Did you know a man named Bishop?”
A look of concerned sorrow flashed across his face but disappeared almost as quickly. He was used to losing people. “Bishop died? Oh, man. What happened?”
“He was murdered.”
“Really?” He shook his head and clenched his hands into fists. “Fuck,” he said as he pressed the bottoms of his fists into his thighs. “Shit. Do you know who did it?”
“Yes. They’re in custody.”
“Who? Who did it?”
“We can’t say yet, but we believe it was gang related.”
“Fuck, man. Shit.”
“I’m sorry. Did you know him well?”
“Yeah.” He thought about it. “Well, yes and no.”
“Tell us about him.”
“We used to play chess sometimes. He was nice to me. Used to let me win when I was having a really bad day.”
“How did you meet him?”
“We both used to like it down at the harbor. All that industrial stuff. There’s a lot of places you can stay and not get hassled. Be by yourself, you know? We both liked that. Didn’t like being around other people too much.”
“How’d you meet him?”
“I was down at Palm Beach Park one day back at the beginning of summer. I had the minivan, but sometimes I just liked to be by the water, you know? He was there, too. We were both there awhile, probably an hour or two. I was sitting in the shade under one of the trees, kind of forgot anybody else was around, and he comes over and says, ‘I don’t want to bug you, but you play chess?’ I told him I wasn’t very good at it. He said, ‘Long as you know how the pieces move, that’s good enough.’ So we played. When it was over—he didn’t let me win that first time—he said, ‘Thank you for the game. ’Preciate it.’ And that was it. Figured I wouldn’t see him again.”
“But you did?”
“Yeah. I liked that park. It’s pretty quiet during the week. So I’d hang out there sometimes.”
“How long until you saw him again?”
“Four or five days maybe? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track, you know?”
“What happened then?”
“He just came up to me and asked, ‘Feel like another game?’ So we played. Then I’d see him every couple of days or so, and we’d play.”
“What can you tell us about him?” Jen asked.
“He was kind of quiet. Never talked about the past. Not his past, anyway. Always wanted to talk to me about my time in the desert. Asking if I was okay, shit like that. The funny thing was I never thought I wanted to talk about it. But he pulled it out of me somehow, and most times it even made me feel a little better, you know?”
“Did he tell you anything about himself?” Jen’s voice got softer with each question.
“No, not really. He’d talk about his day sometimes, but never anything from his past. I asked a few times.”
“What did he say?”
“He’d always either change the subject or just ignore the question.”
As they talked, I let my focus drift down toward the carpet so he wouldn’t feel compelled to meet my gaze and could focus only on Jen.
“Do you know his first name?”
“No, just Bishop. I don’t think that was his real name, though. That first day we played chess, I introduced myself. He said, ‘Everybody just calls me Bishop.’ Like it was a nickname or something.”
“Any idea why they’d call him that?”
“No, not really. I just figured it was because of the chess set or something.”
“Do you know why anyone might have wanted to hurt him?”
“I can’t think of a reason. He was really low-key. Kept to himself, mostly. He was streetwise, too. Used to give tips on places to park overnight where I wouldn’t get hassled. He was right, too. Those were good tips.”
He looked down at his hands. They were folded in his lap. There was a subtle tension in his posture. I wasn’t sure if it was from emotion he was feeling or if he was just uncomfortable talking to us. The army had done a good job of teaching him to keep a lid on his emotions. They’d probably also done a good job of teaching him how to deal with news of a death. He seemed fond of Bishop, but I couldn’t tell what else he was thinking.
“Do you know anyone else who might be able to tell us about him?” Jen asked. “Did he have any other friends you know of?”
“Not really. I only ever saw him away from the park a couple of times. Usually just around the street or something. Once I saw him at Saint Luke’s Homeless Shower Program. We both just showed up at the same time.”
Jen said, “Only once?”
“Yeah. Neither one of us really liked the Jesus stuff, you know? So we both tried not to go unless we really needed to and couldn’t get cleaned up anyplace else.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“I moved in here the first of August, so maybe a week before that?”
“Did he seem any different?”
“No. He never seemed different. I think that might be what I liked most about him, you know? He was always the same. Consistent.”
“Did you know you were coming here?”
“Not for sure.”
“Did you tell Bishop about it?”
“Yeah, told him I was hoping. He said, ‘That’s good. Real good. You don’t want to be out here too long.’ Like he knew from experience.”
“Any idea how long he was out there?”
“Long time. A lot longer than me. I told him if I got in here, I’d still play chess with him. That just made him laugh.”
“Why do you think that was funny to him?”
“Because he knew I wouldn’t. I mean, I meant it when I said it, but once I got here, I never really looked back. Now I wish I had.”
“I know,” Jen said. “I know.”
7
ONE CAN DEL MONTE FRESH CUT SWEET CORN, CREAM STYLE.
“Well,” I said when we were back in the car, heading east on PCH passing Long Beach City College’s Pacific Coast campus, “that wasn’t as fruitful as I hoped.”
“What did you expect? That Nichols was hanging onto Bishop’s wallet with a driver’s license and Social Security card? Something like that?”
“I guess I was just hoping.”
“We got plenty. Give MUPS a chance. You said it yourself, we’ve got three murderers in jail with a rock-solid case against them. We’ll figure out who Bishop really was.”
I knew she was right. The impatience I was feeling was not something I normally experience with a case, and the frustration was expressing itself as a twisting pain running from my elbow up into my shoulder. I took a few deep breaths. At the next stoplight, she studied me.
“Six?” she asked.
I took a brief inventory of my pain at the moment and said, “Yeah. That’s just about right on the nose.”
In the time I’d been dealing with chronic pain, Jen had heard me vent my frustration with the diagnosti
c tool everyone in the medical field calls the pain scale. Every time you see a doctor or nurse, they ask you to assign a number between one and ten to your level of pain. The higher the number, the more you’re hurting. Somewhere along the way, Jen had realized that she could read my symptoms from my physicality—the tightness in my neck, the way I held my arm, the rolling of my shoulder, and any of a dozen other characteristics—and place me on the scale with an astonishing degree of accuracy. She claimed it was because of her years of training in aikido and jujitsu, that those particular martial arts had so sharpened her ability to perceive stress and tension in someone’s body that it was really just a more subtle version of what she did on the mat every day. I knew that was most of it, but I was also certain that she knew me better than anyone else, and I liked to think that it was our friendship as much as anything she brought with her from the dojo that allowed her to see me the way she did. Maybe, though, I just needed to believe that. To believe that I wasn’t alone.
“Jesús didn’t go to school yesterday. Think he’s there today?” Jen asked.
“Let’s find out.” I found the number for the Solanos’ landline in my notebook and dialed it. A young man answered.
“Doug?” I said.
“No,” he said. “There’s no one named that here.”
I read him back a phone number that was one digit off from his.
“No, that’s the wrong number.”
I apologized and cut the line.
“He’s home.”
In the late-morning traffic, we made it to their house in less than ten minutes.