The .22 Caliber Homicides: Book 1 of the San Diego Police Homicide Detail featuring Jack Leslie

by William Barrons

  “The rain caused an electrical short. But that car was worn out and it had an incredible ninety seven thousand plus miles on it when it conked one last time.

  “It was raining rather hard. Well, he was in his cab right behind me and blew his horn because I’d stopped in the street. He came up to my window to find out the problem and was then good enough to push me over to the curb, with his shoulder, mind you, in the rain.

  “Anyway, he not only got us both home, he took care of that worn out Pinto, too. He was so very nice. He found out I liked Mustangs because they’re American and really reliable and he looked one up in the Want Ads that very night.

  “The next day he helped me chisel down the son of a paint shop owner who had died after he only put on a little over three thousand miles on the prettiest car I’ve ever seen. It’s a 2005 blazing red Mustang convertible with a white canvas top.

  “The owner had covered over the factory paint with a sparkling candy-apple red. He put very fancy chromed wheels and even a prancing-horse hood ornament on it. It was less than a year old when I bought it. The son of the deceased fellow said his old man was an idiot for investing so much in the car but I thought it really beautiful.

  “Now regarding Donald McCoy, he’s a nice man and I can’t think he’d do anything like shoot someone,” the red haired one said.

  “That’s interesting; two men of your acquaintance with .22 caliber rifles,” Leslie said. “I’ll bet in this town of way over a million folks, there aren’t a hundred who own a .22 rifle. Farmers and their sons own them, for squirrel hunting and for shooting varmints. And I guess maybe some guys own them for target shooting because the ammunition is so cheap. Well miss, it’s a puzzle but hopefully, we’ll find out something,” Leslie said.

  “Sergeant, I’m going to fix some coffee. I want some even if you don’t. What are those folks doing behind me?” she said as she got up, being careful not to look into the entryway.

  “They’ll be bringing up a gurney any minute now and they’ll be taking Mr. Williams away,” he answered.

  “I’ll go in there to speak to them while you’re making coffee. I’ll take you up on that offer. I’d like some after all, please.”

  Leslie went in to watch as the investigators had their noses to their business. They took any number of photographs. The dead man’s wallet had been taken out and was on the floor next to him.

  “Any money in there?” Leslie asked.

  “Three one hundred dollar bills, two twenties, a fiver and three ones,” a young woman told him. “So that just might rule out robbery as the motive. Except he’s a real big man and he was holding his ass down on the wallet real good. It still could’ve been to rob him, but maybe things got out of hand,” the woman said.

  “Figured that all by yourself, eh?” the Detective Sergeant said.

  “All by myself sir,” she grinned up at him.

  “I don’t have gloves on, so I don’t want to touch it; was there anything of interest in there besides the money?” he asked the CSI woman.

  “Didn’t check it much, but there’s a driver’s license and pictures of him and I guess his wife and kids. Three kids in the photo; teenagers.”

  “Well, well. Isn’t that interesting,” Leslie mused. “I hope you can get him out of here before his body starts draining onto that oak flooring.”

  Then he turned to see the gurney coming into the room. In short order, they had the body over onto the padded table and then extended it up to waist height. There was no blood on the floor, indicating that the bullet had not gone all the way through the man. Only then did they cover him with a sheet.

  They hauled him out of the apartment but two of the investigators stayed behind, on hands and knees. They looked through large magnifying glasses as they searched for clues on the floor and even up the walls.

  “I can see there’s no blood on the floor,” Leslie said to the one of them.

  “Sergeant, there was obviously no hole in his back. And we can find no blood splatters, either. Okay?”

  “No fooling? Gosh, you’re really into it!” Leslie said and stood awhile, puzzling.

  The visitor was in the kitchen or living room looking over the unusual cabinetry as an intruder came in, he imagined. The man had heard someone entering and went to the hall to see who it was. The intruder then shot the visitor. So he should then have fallen backwards, toward the dining room; but he fell with his head toward the entry door.

  Why no blood splatters on the walls or the floor? There was almost always blood splashed around from a gunshot wound. Almost always.

  The CSI people would of course use an “evidence vacuum” to gather up stray hairs in that hallway and they would keep the result on file.

  Fingerprints on the doorknobs and elevator would be useless since so many had been in and out of the place.

  In short order the McCarty woman had a cup of coffee poured for each of them. Leslie sat down near her and added a spoon of sugar to his cup.

  A clock on the soffit nicely centered over the range hood, showed 6:35.

  “Little Anne will be waking any time now,” she said.

  “If she’s practically a teenager, why do you call her ‘Little’?”

  “Oh, I named her after my older sister. She’s ‘Big Anne’ to us. I guess it was kind of confusing, both with the same name. Didn’t think of that when I named her. But my sister is truly, exceptionally nice. She lives in Chicago, on Milwaukee Avenue. She still runs the family sausage shop although business isn’t what it used to be and she’s mentioned that she might sell it and hopefully, go into the restaurant business somewhere; maybe here in San Diego.

  “Too bad though, her husband is a terrible drunk; he’s not a nice man at all but she loves him. At least, I think she still loves him although she doesn’t talk about that sort of thing anymore with me. He’s a genuine alcoholic while my ex Winnie only gets drunk once in a while. My sister visits with us yearly and we go visit with her once a year. Our Mom passed away about six months before your folks were….before they passed.”

  “So, you’re from Chicago?”

  “Yes. Winnie and I went to school together, from the time we were little, on the Northwest side back there. We grew up living next door over our family’s stores. His dad died when he was small and mine a lot later. His mother ran their bakery, next door to my folks’ sausage store.

  “Winnie’s older brother inherited the bakery and Winnie got his mom’s insurance. It was so amazing; her life insurance was for a quarter million dollars. A real fortune! My dad had been in the Navy here and told us about San Diego being such a perfect paradise, so that’s why we came out to see for ourselves and then we came here to build these apartments. Gosh, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” she said.

  “So your husband built this place with that money?” he asked.

  “Actually, both of us did. I helped as much as I could and of course, we had to have a big mortgage. The place cost over a million bucks, even though he worked on it and I did, too. His experience with concrete construction saved a great deal by him being his own contractor. But we had to eat and pay rent on an apartment nearby for a year and a half so that’s when I went to work at the Cecilia.

  “First I worked in the restaurant and quick as I turned twenty one, the boss insisted I work the bar. It was quite a bit more money. I’ve been there ever since; a little over ten years now.”

  “Buildings usually cost more than was figured,” he opined.

  “Sure did with this one. I give Winnie credit; he worked day and night on the place. He bought the plans of a building in Chicago that he’d helped build and duplicated it here, except instead of brick outside, it’s stuccoed. Everything else is the same, even the garage under the whole thing. It’s worked out quite well with four two-bedroom and six one-bedroom apartments on each of the five floors. This one’s a little more deluxe than the others,” she said.

  “I notice you have a patio on both sides,” Leslie s
aid.

  “We call them terraces. One’s for all the tenants and this one over here is much smaller and it’s private; you know, for us.”

  “So you own it with your ex, then?”

  “No sir I don’t. It’s his and I just get this place rent-free until Little Anne is twenty-one and he has to pay the electric and provide heat, too. Winnie only pays alimony if I move out before she’s twenty-one; you know, if he becomes obnoxious to me. His folks were Irish, as you might guess by the name and my parents both were born in East Prussia, during that terrible World War Two.”

  “From your red hair and freckles Miss, we know those Vikings long ago sure got around,” he smiled.

  “Well, yes; I suppose so,” she said but stayed sober-faced as though his remark about the Vikings meant nothing to her.

  “My folks never knew their parents or when they were born except it was by different mothers in some village in East Prussia. Prussia is a part of Russia now, of course. The Russians took plenty of revenge for the unjustifiable cruelty of the Germans when they invaded. Of course, since many of the Nazi officers were from the Prussia part of Germany, I suppose the Russians thought that was the source of most of that evil they did.

  “Both of our parents were about four or five when they got to America in l948, brought in as their own kids by a Polish refugee couple who adopted them as their own. They gave them each names and birthdays.

  “That couple had been Polish Jews who renounced all religion because they figured there couldn’t possibly be a God with all the endless cruelty going on around them during and even before the war began. Although my sister’s and my parents grew up together like brother and sister, they married at last in their thirties. My dad was in the Navy for twenty years and it was only a few years before he retired that they got married.

  “Little Anne resembles my dad and sister, both being blonde and I’m supposedly the mirror of my mom. They knew they were from separate mothers in that far away land but they had no knowledge at all of their families or ancestors. Everybody says I’m the one that looks Irish, not Winnie.

  “Anyway, we got married right after high school and Winfred had worked as an assistant for four years to his cousin who was a big contractor building concrete buildings. I received a cash settlement in the divorce here from Winnie because of the Community Property law. That went into a trust account for Little Anne’s education. That’s what was decided in the divorce and its fine with me.

  “I’ll move out when she’s of age or if I re-marry and so I’ve been saving for that day. I’ll buy a condo then, I suppose,” she told him.

  “So you two had a disagreement and broke up, eh?”

  “That’s hardly it. About the single time in my working life, I got a splitting headache and Mr. Stevens said I must go home. He filled in for me at the bar.

  “So I went home and found Winnie and our twenty-two year old baby sitter in our bedroom. He was standing, holding her upside down, both naked, and as my attorney told the judge, ‘they were practicing stand-up simultaneous mutual cannibalism.’”

  Leslie recalled his wife talking about the case, that the attorney made fun in court of the cheating husband, saying, “He had been caught with his tongue in the cookie jar. And while his wife thought he was bowling, he was balling the baby sitter.”

  “It seems kind of funny now because he dropped Trina when I screamed at the sight,” she said. “He dropped her on her head and she was knocked out for probably four or five minutes. But that he got caught like that sure wasn’t funny to me at the time. She confessed that they’d been having sex since she turned eighteen while I was at work and I thought he was out bowling. I never suspected anything all that time; not once.

  “Mr. Lopez beat Winnie up something awful. The old man knocked him down, kicked him and broke three of his ribs. And I got him out of my life; simple as that. He’s been a rather heavy drinker since. And I’ve found it not easy to trust any man after that time.”

  “Seems you had reason aplenty. So he has to pay alimony only if you move out?” the Sergeant asked.

  “Right; although it costs him nearly the equivalent, I guess. He’s forever buying Little Anne things, too. He’s not such a bad father; he was just a very unfaithful husband and I couldn’t put up with that. Little Anne visits with him all the time and he has baby-sat with her while I worked, even after the divorce. I don’t hate him; not anymore. He has girlfriends, including that young Trina and I care not a whit.”

  “But the Russians, Miss; do you hate them for all the raping and killing that went on when they got to East Prussia and then into Germany?”

  “No sir, I do not. I’ve read quite a lot about that war, especially on the Russian front and I doubt very much that the Russians were any worse than the Nazis. Probably the Nazis were much more to blame for the atrocities they committed since they had no reason for taking revenge as the Russians did. Don’t you think so, Sergeant?”

  “That does make sense. Oh, this has to be Little Anne,” he said as a young girl came from the living room in pajamas.

  The girl seemed surprised to see a stranger there, quickly turned around and disappeared without a word.

  “She didn’t know I had company,” the McCarty woman said as she jumped up and went after her daughter.

  In a few minutes they were back.

  This time the girl was wearing a long pink robe and a face full of questions. Leslie thought she would naturally be shy at that age.

  “This is Detective Sergeant Jack Leslie, honey,” Veronica McCarty said to her daughter. “You’ll remember his late wife, Donna Elsie; that nice lady that used to fix my hair while you watched. He’s investigating how a friend of mine got shot and who did it.

  “Sir, this is our precious Little Anne; she’s always gets straight ‘A’s’ in school. I told her they already took the body away.”

  “Hello sir,” the girl said as she sat on a stool. “I’ve never seen a person, like, dead, I don’t think. I’m glad he’s out of here. Do you know why he was killed? And sir, who would do such a thing?”

  “No miss, we don’t know yet. I’ll bet you’re ready for breakfast, eh?”

  Little Anne couldn’t be quite five feet tall and he saw when she had the thin pajamas on that she was going to be a handsome woman, he thought.

  She didn’t reply to the breakfast question so Leslie asked her, “Did you hear anything during the night? I mean, such as doors opening and closing or especially, anything that sounded maybe like a shot being fired?”

  “No sir.”

  “Did you hear any sounds at all? Oh, maybe like men shouting at each other?”

  “No sir.”

  “Okay, thanks. The man and woman in the hallway are Crime Scene Investigators and they must search the place. It’s just standard procedure, you know. Then we’ll be leaving. That’s okay with you, miss?”

  “Mom, is it okay?”

  “Sure sweetie. Sergeant Leslie, why don’t you have them go right ahead? Anne, I’ll fix you a bowl of cereal.”

  Leslie nodded and got up and told the two in the hall to begin their search.

  “The deceased never got far, so you shouldn’t take long. But please look for a shell casing,” Leslie told them.

  He stood in the center of the hall where the body had lain, watching as the two began their search. They would even look under furniture to spy anything out of the ordinary.

  Leslie stood there, puzzling over why there were no blood splatters anywhere. Then he saw something.

  He stepped over to the chair used at the computer on the dining table and lifted a long hair off the back and held it up to the light, inspecting it. He stepped into the kitchen.

  “I think I’ve found a truly important clue,” he said to the McCarty woman, trying to look serious and holding up the hair.

  “It’s long, it’s curly, it’s red and mighty suspicious!” he exclaimed.

  “Sergeant Leslie is a very clever detective, wouldn’t you sa
y so Anne?” the mother said wryly.

  “I’ll just have to confiscate this item for evidence,” Leslie said, keeping a mock serious look on his face. He put the hair in his shirt pocket.

  “Honey, he’s only being silly. Another officer said he was the sharpest policeman around, but now you and I can wonder,” she said with mock seriousness.

  Leslie thought she had a wonderful smile as she said that.

  He sat on a stool again.

  “Look, they’ll be done around here shortly, I’d think, so we’ll soon be out of your hair – ah, so to speak,” he grinned. “Anyway Miss McCarty, let me review things with you.

  “Did I understand that you bought the wine you brought home?”

  “Yes, of course. I only bought one bottle because it’s twenty bucks a bottle there and it’s less at a store. All the three dozen good quality wines we sell are the same price; four dollars a glass or twenty a bottle. Many people would have access to that sack and bottle before I got back Tuesday night. It might disappear and I’d already paid out twenty whole dollars for it. It was kind of funny, the way Mr. Stevens laughed that I’d forget something worth a twenty-dollar bill. Oh! Why? Did you suppose I’d steal it from my employer?”

  “Oh no; I made no such assumption,” he quickly assured her.

  “Now then, you drove Mr. Williams home in your car since he’d been drinking, even though you felt he wasn’t necessarily drunk. But some people hold their liquor better than others, as I’m sure you know.”

  “No, in my opinion he was not intoxicated,” the red headed woman said.

  “How long after you got home did you go back to your car and back to the hotel?”

  “Oh, just after a few minutes, I think. I didn’t need to look in the refrigerator since I remembered I had forgotten to get more wine at the store. I showed Jay the knotty pine cabinetry here in the kitchen and in the living room and told him Little Anne was asleep so we’d have to be quiet. He began looking into the cabinets and I dashed out for the elevator, the garage, drove to the hotel, told Mr. Stevens why I’d come back and then got home in short order. There he was, all spread out on the hall floor, eyes and mouth wide open and I saw the blood on his chest and I knew he was dead.