by Bill Bernico
“He wants to meet at the Gold Cup in fifteen minutes,” I said. “It’s just down the block, so that’ll give me time to take Daisy for a quick walk. I’ll be right back.”
I walked Daisy down the block and around the corner. I turned into the alley with her and waited while she did her business. I slipped the plastic bag over my hand and picked up the mess, dropping it into a garbage can that was sitting alongside the building next to ours. I made it back into the office in seven minutes. I walked Daisy to her corner bed, unclipped her leash and told her to lie down and that I’d be right back. She did as she was told and Bud and I left the office.
Eric still had not arrived when Bud and I found a booth and took our seats. He arrived five minutes later and spotted us from across the room. He looked down at Bud and then back at me. “Looks like this is going to be an expensive lunch,” he said.
Bud held up one hand. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m not that hungry.”
“So,” I said, motioning for Eric to sit across from me. “What have you got for us?”
Eric slid in next to Bud, bumping hips before Bud got the hint and slid further into the booth. Before he could fill us in, the waitress came to our booth to take out order.
“Three coffees?” She said.
I held up two fingers. “Just two coffees and one chocolate milk,” I said.
“Got it,” the waitress said and disappeared.
I turned back to Eric. “What did you find out?” I said.
“Bud looked both ways to see if prying ears were nearby before he leaned toward me and said in a low voice, “The body’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” I said. “It just didn’t get up and walk away.”
“Our forensics guy was there last night,” Eric said. “It looks like someone may have found the body and taken it away.”
Bud turned to his right. “Away?” he said. “Who would take a body away and why?”
“Same thing I wanted to know,” Eric said. “It could be a week or more before they can even identify her, so we’ll have to keep this low key until then. I mean, no discussing this with anyone.”
“Who are we going to tell?” I said.
“Just the same,” Eric said. “It’ll be a while before we know if her name is Bonnie or Sunny.”
The waitress returned with our drinks and then waited for our orders, her pencil poised over her pad. She started with me.
“Just bring me a cheeseburger and some fries,” I said, closing the menu and slipping it back behind a napkin dispenser.
“I’ll have a grilled cheese sandwich,” Eric said and closed his menu.
The waitress turned to Bud. “I’ll have the open-faced roast beef sandwich with a side salad and a slice of your apple pie.” He closed his menu and laid it in front of him before the waitress disappeared.
“I thought you weren’t very hungry,” Eric said.
“I’m not,” Bud said. “In fact, I’m trying to cut down.”
“I’d hate to see the bill if you weren’t,” Eric said, retrieving his wallet and checking his available cash.
I looked over to Eric. “What are you going to do next?” I said.
“What do you mean?” Eric said.
“I mean, are you going to take a pro-active role in this investigation?” I said.
“As far as anyone else knows,” Eric said, “This is just another case and I don’t plan to treat it any differently than the rest of them.”
“You have more cases like this?” Bud said.
“Well,” Eric said, “There have been two other cases in the past six weeks that involved dead hookers. I guess it’s an occupational hazard. We haven’t solved those cases yet, either.”
“Did the forensics guys get anything they could use out of that girl’s purse?” I said. “Seems like hookers all carry those little sequined purses with the long silver chains. You’d think at least one of them would be a little more original and buy…” I looked at Eric and noticed his face go blank. “What is it?”
“Something you said about a purse,” Eric replied.
“What about it?” I said.
“She must have had a purse,” Eric said, “But I don’t remember one getting wrapped up with her in that shower curtain.”
“Speaking of the shower curtain,” I said. “What did you do with it?”
“I burned it in the incinerator in the basement of the police station,” Eric explained. “There’s nothing left of it.”
“And the curtain rings?” I said.
“Out the window one at a time,” Eric said. “I took a long ride down Sunset and tossed them out the window with a couple of blocks between each toss. No one will connect a single curtain ring with anything.”
“But what about the purse?” Bud said, between sips of his coffee.
“I don’t know,” Eric said. “I don’t remember seeing one.”
“Is it possible she could have had it at the motel?” I said. “And when we were cleaning up is it possible we overlooked it?”
Eric shrugged. “I just don’t remember,” he said. “What if it’s still there?”
I set my glass of chocolate milk down and sighed. I tried to picture the room of that cheap motel but could come up with a mental picture of any purse lying around. I looked over at Eric. “Is it possible it could have fallen between the bed and the wall and it’s still there, under the bed?”
“We can’t leave that to chance if it is,” Eric said. “I’m going over there right now. You two stay here.”
Before Eric could slid out of the booth, the waitress returned with our orders. Eric grabbed the two grilled cheese triangles, wrapped them in a napkin and fished a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet. He threw it down on the table and hurried out of the coffee shop.
Eric ate his grilled cheese sandwich on his way back to the motel. He pulled his cruiser into the parking lot of the Rest Easy Motel and killed the engine. He found the manager sitting behind the counter in the front office. When he saw Eric coming in, the manager stood up and tried his best not to look like the lowlife that he obviously was.
“Good morning, officer,” he said.
“That’s Lieutenant,” Eric corrected him. “We got a complaint at the station about a disturbance in one of your rooms.” He held a hand up to the manager. “Don’t bother, I’ll have a look and be on my way. The person who called in the complaint said the disturbance was coming from room twelve. Just give me the key. You can stay put. This won’t take me but a minute to check it out.”
The manager turned and retrieved a key from the hook behind him and handed it to Eric. “Here’s the key,” he said, “But there’s no one in there, otherwise the key would be gone.”
Eric took the key from the manager and walked out of the office and across the parking lot to unit number twelve where he let himself in with the key. He closed the door behind him, locked it and peeked out the curtains toward the office. No one followed him and no one was watching. Eric turned on the light and dropped to his knees, trying to see under the bed. There was nothing there but bare floor and some dust bunnies.
He stood up, hands on his hips, and scoured the rest of the room, looking for any place where a small purse might lie undetected. There was nothing. Next to the bed sat a small two drawer lamp table. Eric pulled the top drawer open to find nothing but a Gideon bible. He slid the drawer closed again and tried the bottom drawer. Bingo. There in the bottom drawer lay a small, sequined purse with a long silver chain. He reached for it and then thought better. He hurried to the bathroom, rolled off three feet of toilet paper and wrapped that around the purse before stuffing it into his jacket. He quickly locked the room again and was out of there in under a minute. Eric stopped at his cruiser and pretended to call in his location. He was actually using the time to stuff the wrapped purse under his seat before returning to the office with the key to room twelve.
Eric walked back into the office and handed the key back to the manager
and thanked him for his cooperation. “Must have been a false alarm,” he said. “Sorry to have bothered you.”
He slowly walked back to the cruiser and drove away as if it was just another call. He drove three more blocks before he spotted a large parking lot with no cars toward the back of the lot. He pulled into one of the spaces and put the idling car into Park. He retrieved the wrapped purse from under his seat and laid it on the passenger seat before reaching into his glove box for a pair of latex gloves he kept there for crime scene investigations.
Eric slipped on the gloves and then opened the purse. He was surprised at what he found inside, since it was such a little purse. He found a small wallet, a round makeup case and a .22 caliber automatic with pearl grips. He left the makeup case and gun in there and pulled out the wallet, flipping it open to the driver’s license window. She wasn’t a Bonnie or a Sunny. The hooker’s name was Constance Barlow—Connie. According to the license, Connie was twenty-three and lived on Cherokee Avenue, between Yucca and Franklin. It was just a block and a half from Hollywood Boulevard. How handy for a hooker to live within walking distance of where she plied her trade.
Eric slipped the wallet back into the purse and slid the purse back under his seat. As he was leaving the parking lot, he pulled up next to an open trash container and dropped the wad of toilet paper into it. Eric drove back to the Gold Cup, parking in a tow-away zone. It was one of the perks of driving a black and white cruiser.
Bud and I were just walking out the front door as Eric was walking in. He motioned for us to get into the back of the cruiser.
“Well?” I said, when I’d shut the door.
Eric turned in his seat to face us. “I found it in the lamp table drawer,” he said.
“What did you do with it?” Bud wanted to know.
“I’ve still got it,” Eric explained.
“Well, you’d better get rid of it quick,” I said, “Before someone finds it in your car. You’d never be able to talk your way out of that one.”
“Way ahead of you,” Eric said. “I’m going back to the incinerator in the precinct basement. There won’t be anything left of the purse, either. Only, there was a small .22 automatic in it. I’ll have to dispose of that someplace else.”
“So who did she turn out to be?” I said. “Bonnie or Sunny?”
“Connie,” Eric said.
“Close but no cigar, huh?” Bud said.
At that moment a call came over Eric’s radio. Officer needs assistance. Shots fired. Eric grabbed the mic and announced that he was in the vicinity and that he’d take the call. He turned back to us. “Come on,” he said, “Out. I’ve got to roll.”
Bud and I slid out of the back seat, slammed the door and watched as Eric sped away, his lights flashing and his siren wailing. Eric sped up Hollywood and turned south on Highland Avenue. Almost directly across the street from Hollywood high School on Sunset Eric saw a black and white patrol car at the curb, both of its doors open. Officers crouched behind those door, exchanging gunfire with a man crouched behind the hood of his car. Eric pulled around the corner and slowly made his way to the edge of the building that sat on the corner. He quickly peeked around it to see the gunman from behind. He was still shooting at the two officers and hadn’t noticed Eric.
Eric got into a shooter’s stance and yelled at the man to drop his gun. Startled, he spun around and aimed his gun in Eric’s direction. Eric opened fire and caught him in the chest with two carefully grouped rounds. He dropped like a sack of rocks. Eric hurried to the gunman’s side and stepped on the hand that was still clutching an automatic. Eric reached down and pulled the gun from the dead man’s hand and tucked it into his waistband. He waved to the other officers. “All clear,” Eric said.
The other two officers scurried our from around their open doors and joined Eric on the sidewalk. “What happened here?” Eric asked.
“Damndest thing I ever saw,” one of the officers said. “We were just pulling this guy over for a faulty taillight and he jumps out of his car and starts shooting.”
“Let’s go take a closer look,” Eric said, leading the two officers to the rear of the gunman’s car. Eric motioned to one of the officers. “Would you go and step on the brake pedal a couple of times, please?”
“Yes, sir,” the cop said and slid behind the wheel, pumping the brakes.
“That’s good,” Eric said. “Come on back here again and bring the keys with you.” The officer returned to the rear of the car. Eric looked at him and said, “The brake lights seem to be working all right.”
The second patrolman, a rookie named Simpson, pointed to the right taillight. “That one’s got a broken light cover,” he said. “That’s why we stopped him.”
“Let me have those keys,” Eric said to the first officer. He slipped a key into the trunk lock and turned. The trunk popped open and the three of us took a collective step backwards. There was a body in the trunk. It was a young girl and Eric recognized the clothes she was wearing. They were the same clothes he and Elliott had dressed her in before they took her out of the motel room. Eric closed the trunk again but not far enough to engage the lock. “Call this in,” he told Officer Simpson. “Make sure the medical examiner comes with them. He turned to the first cop and said, “You stay with the gunman on the sidewalk. Make sure no one gets close. We can’t have anyone contaminating the crime scene. I’m going back to my cruiser to get my latex gloves.”
The two cops did as they were told while Eric returned to his car for the gloves. He also retrieved the sequined purse from under his seat and concealed it beneath his jacket. He hurried back to the rear of the assailant’s car, lifted the trunk and slipped the purse under the body before straightening himself up again just as Officer Simpson returned from calling for a backup squad and the medical examiner.
Eric made a show of pretending to be pulling his gloves on, letting them snap on his wrists when he’d finished. He made sure Simpson was watching as he rolled the body to one side, exposing the sequined purse. Eric grabbed the purse and opened it, pulling the wallet out. “Constance Barlow,” he said, reading from the driver’s license. Eric closed the wallet again and returned it to the purse. He pulled the .22 automatic out and held it up with his forefinger and thumb before dropping it back into the purse. He laid the purse back in the trunk, closed it and turned to Simpson. “Guard this area,” he said. “No one gets close. I’m going to string some crime scene tape. I want everyone else to stay fifty feet back from here.”
“Yes, sir,” Simpson said.
It was late afternoon before they’d finished processing the crime scene. The medical examiner had taken both bodies away. The city tow truck had hauled the gunman’s car back to the impound lot and twenty minutes after that, you could never tell anything had happened on this street. Eric drove back to the twelfth precinct and completed his paperwork on the day’s events.
A week had passed when Andy Reynolds, the county medical examiner, came into Eric’s office with his findings on the case that involved the hooker found in the trunk of the car on Sunset Boulevard. “DNA came back on that blood drop they found in the ravine in Griffith Park,” Andy said. “That blood came from one Constance Barlow.” He handed Eric the sheet with the DNA results.
“Barlow,” Eric said. “That name sounds familiar.
“It should,” Andy said. “She was the girl you found in the trunk of that car on Sunset last week.
“And the gunman?” Eric said.
“They identified him at the scene,” Andy said. “He was a local named Lee Lawson.”
“So it stands to reason that this Lawson character was the guy who must have dumped the girl’s body in Griffith Park,” I said. “Chances are he thought better of it and pulled her back out of that ravine, figuring he could find a better place to dispose of the body.”
“Sounds like as good an explanation as any, Lieutenant,” Andy said. “But then, I just process the bodies. Figuring out who done it is your job.”
“Thanks, Andy,” Eric said. “I’ll let the captain know that we can close this case.”
An hour later Eric called Cooper Investigations and got Bud on the phone. “Bud,” Eric said. “Is Elliott in?”
“He will be in a few minutes,” Bud said. “He’s walking Daisy around the block again. You know, Eric, on slow days like this, if Elliott didn’t have that dog to walk, he wouldn’t get any exercise at all.”
“Well have him call me when he gets back, would you?” Eric said.
“Do you have something for us?” Bud said.
“Second thought, don’t tell him to call me,” Eric said. “I can probably be there before he gets all the way around the block. See you in a few minutes.”
Eric parked in the lot behind the Cooper building and was heading for the back door when he spotted Daisy and me coming toward him. “There you are,” Eric said. “Where’s your little plastic bag?”
“All that walking,” I said, “And she didn’t have to go. I gotta pass this duty off to someone else. That’s all there is to it. So, do you have something for me, Eric?”
“Come on,” Eric said. “I’ll wait until we get back to your office. I don’t want to have to tell this story twice.”
Back in the office, Daisy retreated to her corner and Eric flopped down on my leather sofa. Bud and I each rolled a chair over to the sofa and sat, eager to hear the latest developments in the case that was hanging over all three of us like one big loose end. When Eric finished the story, Bud and I looked at each other and then back at Eric.
“Gees,” I said. “You fell into that pile of crap and came up smelling like a rose, didn’t you?”
“No one can get that lucky twice in a row,” Eric said, “So from now on, it’s the straight and narrow for me. I’m going to treat Leslie like a princess. And you know what else? I think I’m going to ask her to marry me. I completely ran out of wild oats and wouldn’t sow any more even if I had some left.”
“Good for you,” I said.
“Yeah,” Bud said. “Why should you have it any better than the rest of us?”